Ep. 2-Live An Obsessed Life with Evan Stewart

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, winner and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the You Winning Life podcast. I'm Jason Wasser, licensed marriage and family therapist here in my office in Fort Lauderdale. Today I am super excited for my guest who has been incredibly gracious to share this morning with me. It's Evan Stewart. He is a master coach, trainer, entrepreneur with years of experience building businesses and people to a higher potential. Evan's success, success as an 8-figure closer, not a 7, but an 8-figure closer. Jeez, man. His background is one of the top-producing realtors in his market, expertise working with luxury and ultra-luxury products, and years acting as an entrepreneurial consultant to growing businesses. Work together to provide the perfect framework to identify, learn, adapt powerful structures in professional growth. So today, Evan counsels businesses on duplicating top quality clients, mastering objections, working with high net worth individuals, shortening their sales cycle, increasing a position in the marketplace, employee productivity and retention, and more. Geez, I don't know how he keeps it all together. Evan is a speaker, a coach. He is for sure regarded as a leader in implementing this mindset and the actions required to build a life that you can truly be obsessed with. Evan, thank you so much for hanging out with me today.

Jason, thank you so much for having me on. I was so, so excited when you sent that message and said we've got to get together on your show. And I really enjoy spending time with you. I think that, you know, when we collaborate, our energy and the things that come out of that conversation are superb. So really happy to be here.

Thanks so much. Well, we both have that belief that like-minded people doing like-minded things are—

exactly—

tackle together. And we have a mutual colleague, right, and coach in common. Um, which we're going to get into a little bit later. But so this massive kick-butt bio, right? You're, you're doing so much. How old are you, first of all?

Thank you. Um, I turned 26 in December— or in September, right?

That's, that's, that's insane, right? So I'm turning 41 in a few weeks, and, and you're 26 years old. And, and right now, this—

almost 26, right?

It's, it's, it's, it's crazy because this entrepreneurship thing is the right now, right? And started off in real estate and coaching and you're doing online training programs, right? Tell us who you really are and what's your mission in life.

I love that. That's a powerful, powerful question. I think, and that's a question that I've had to ask myself over the years as well, is defining that. So at my core, I'm just an individual that believes in helping other people. I believe that my sole purpose in life, my mission, is to— well, really my gift that allows me to live my mission is to help other people identify their giftedness and then live a life that plays in their giftedness instead of defaults to their weaknesses. You see, I looked around and I saw so many people were defaulting to weaknesses. And weaknesses doesn't necessarily mean like I'm good at this and I'm bad at this, so I'm living in that. It could just mean that I am willfully sacrificing my potential because I am building a life for people that are expecting one thing when in reality I should be doing something And so at my core, everything that I do is pushing out to impact, inspire, and improve the lives of other people because I fundamentally believe that that's exactly why I'm here. So every, every inkling of me, whether it's this conversation, whether it's working in business, whether it's working with people, regardless, everything I do, I just try and leave people better than I found them and help other people identify and live in their giftedness.

That's awesome. So you just used the words building a life, and right, there's a lot of talk out there about this generation of millennials and young professionals, that they're lazy, that they're not willing to put the work in, and right, but yet we know that technology and entrepreneurship and, and things that are happening in the world are coming a lot out of that generation. So yes, when you say building a life, what do you think are the key building blocks to help that.

Absolutely. Well, and this is actually something I'm going to be talking about at the conference when we talk about this concept of obsession. Really, that, that, that's the answer to the question starts with obsession. And that's my whole concept, the whole build a life you can be obsessed about. Really, it's just how do you have something so exciting, fascinating, and motivating that when your eyes open, you cannot go back to sleep, where every morning it's like Christmas morning, where you're living in such a magical zone that you get excited just to be able to attack the day. That's what I talk about, and that to me is obsession. And without going too far down that rabbit hole here, because some of that will be reserved for the first Obsession keynote conference, is obsession is, is 3 things. It's an emotion first, and then it's a mindset, and then it's a discipline. So when I talk about building, what I'm talking about is identifying in the motion, using it as emotion, right? A propelling fuel to push you towards some further diligence towards a concept, right? Obsession starts with revelation. It's to get so caught in a cause that you become evangelical about a purpose and you baptize your world in your mission. You saturate anyone that interacts with you in that specific cause. And so the emotion propels you into the cause, which works on the mindset. And there are some specific secrets I'll talk about at the conference of how to develop the mindset, and then the discipline is how we keep it. Because we've all heard the saying, it's not getting it, it's keeping it. Everyone gets their brief moment of fame. Everyone will come in contact with a little bit of money every once in a while. It's keeping it. And so the concept of building a life is how do we find something to get behind, actually get behind it, build in sustainability to have that be our life for as long as we live, And then through that, through the obedience of working in our obsession, how do we cause obsession overflow? Or what is the saturation of pouring out of all the harvest of your continual planting, pouring out into everyone's life that you care about? So that, in an overarching conceptual sense, is really what I'm talking about. But there are ways to do it. And it takes a lot of time. I'm blessed to have gotten started really, really early. And I fundamentally believe that I found my obsessions early in life that propel me and excite me to continue to push hard here. But something that you mentioned that I think is really interesting, I'd love to highlight, is this concept of the millennial generation, because millennial generation is interesting. There are people in the millennial generation that are friggin lazy. I'll say that. The funny thing is there are people in every generation that are lazy. It's just that in the millennial generation, it's highlighted more because everything that we do nowadays is amplified. If you're great or if you're crap, it's going to be amplified because you can immediately have a point of comparison. Whereas before, if you wanted to sit down all day in front of the TV, you know, before cell phones and all that, right? You grab your nasty junk food and sit in front of the TV. Well, that was you, and you didn't quite know what other people were doing until you put on decent clothes, hopefully took a shower, and went to another environment. And so there was more insulation around the immediacy between your failure and someone else's success. But when we look at the millennial generation in general, it's very mission-driven. It's very entrepreneurial, right? Matt Manero talks about this concept. I know we have We know Matt, and that's why I bring him up. He talks about this concept of intrapreneurship over entrepreneurship, of how can the people in my business as the business owner be running their own businesses and find fulfillment in an entrepreneurial way without going out and starting something on their own. And I believe that this generation really— I mean, you would have never heard phrases like that years and years and years ago because it was, well, Jason, if you work for me, You do this and then that's pretty much it. And it was the company's goal really to find the mission and get that concept for you to drive towards. And that's still important, but we see this huge paradigm shift now in how people work, how people operate. I mean, think about it. If we would have talked 20 years ago and I would have said, you don't even need a college degree to go out and work at some of the best companies in the world and make hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.

An insane concept.

An insane concept. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, that's incredible. It's funny, as you're saying that, the first thing that pops into my mind about, right, when you start talking about setting goals and building something and being evangelical about it, right, is the idea of we get from a new car smell, right? We go out, we get that new car, we have that fresh, fresh feeling and that fresh smell in it. But I think the same thing happens to all of our goals, that once we start getting into that motion of it, then it becomes normalized and then we forget the excitement around it. And I think there's that level of instant gratification. It's like you said, right? Matter the generation, it's now being amplified because of social media where we do put either that face out there to show that we are so busy, right? We are doing all these things or you're the person consuming all of it. Right. So we have that. Are you creating it or are you consuming it paradigm? But I remember this story when I was probably 20 years old and after high school, I went to go live in Israel for 2 years. I went to go study in Israel and then I was— I moved to Long Island. For a little bit, and I was teaching at an after-school religious school, Hebrew school, at a synagogue. And part of my responsibilities, you know, before when the kids were coming in, like, we would rotate around and the teachers would help with the snack bar. And I remember the kids would come in from after school and, "I want this, I want that." And I remember turning to the assistant, the secretary who was helping me on the bar, and I'm like, "God, like, instant gratification." Yes. Turned to me, and I remember it like it was literally 5 minutes ago, and this was 1998, 1999 when she said this to me. And she goes, instant gratification is no longer fast enough. And that's the generation, right? So this idea of building a life.

Yes.

Right. Patience.

Yes. Yes.

Right. Purpose first. What's your purpose? What's your mission? Right. That's why the question I wanted to start off with, you're doing all these crazy things, but what's your mission? And that's what I want to and really push upon people out there that are listening to your podcast, to my podcast, to, you know, to people out there consuming all this amazing stuff. What is your purpose? And then are you being patient enough?

Absolutely. Right. Well, and the caveat to that is I do believe in patience. And yes, you know, a lot of people go, ha, well, you're young. Well, I've come from a line of entrepreneurs and I had my first business in elementary school. So I've actually been entrepreneurial all my life. And, and, but as far as the success that I'm building off of right now, like the reason we're having this conversation, when we talk about, you know, running an 8-figure business and having another 7-figure business and being able to impact these people, that took nearly a decade to get there, you know, that type of thing. So when we talk about patience, it's extremely important to recognize the two things. First of all, when we talk about patience, we're talking about a patience of years. Warren Buffett even said I don't know if it's been a good investment unless we've been at least 5 years, and even then, not until 7 to 10. I'm talking about nearly a decade of obedience. That's the first thing. The second thing though, is patience does not equate to sitting on your butt and just waiting for things to happen. Yeah. Patience is the recognition that there is so much intensity in the work now, but the reward is what you have to be patient for. For, so you're mentally sitting down and waiting. You're sitting on that train waiting to go to the destination mentally. Physically, you're building the train so you can get to the destination. I hear so many people say, oh man, you just have to be patient, right? Gary Vee's term that he talks a lot about is short-term hustle, long-term patience, which is true, but then there are so many people that are staying home and they're going out and they're doing all this, yeah man, you know, I'm just being patient. No, you're using patience as an excuse to fall into complacency because you don't— excuse me— because you don't want to really encounter that intensity of work. And that's a huge caveat that I want to make sure is— when we talk about patience, it doesn't mean that you can just sit down all day and wait for things to come to you.

Well, I think it's a mixture of, right, where Matt talks about on his podcast, on the You Need More Money podcast, are you in the right platform? Are you in the right vertical? And then, right, and then what I think you're saying, what I also share with a lot of my therapy and coaching clients, is what's the right effort? People tell me, right, it's kind of like, I want the I want the good marriage, right? And my couples come in for therapy and they're like, we want a great marriage. I'm like, okay, well, let me ask you a few questions. What, how many, you've been married for how many years? Yeah. Okay. So how many times have you come to therapy before me? First session, right? 5 years, 10 years, whatever. First therapy session. Okay, cool.

I got it.

Got it. How many, how many books have you read about relationships and You know, whatever. Zero. Okay. Podcasts, YouTube videos, zero.

Yeah.

Conversations with your preacher, your rabbi, your imam, your guru, anybody, zero. So they have this idea that like, I want this. And you can apply that whether it's a couple, whether it's a business, whether it's financial goals, whether it's health goals. But yet they're not doing the due diligence. They're not doing— they're not becoming informed consumers. And I think that's one of the biggest, biggest limitations that people are talking about. I want, I want, I want, right? The hustle, the grind, the rising riders, which you and I, I'm sure, have a very similar opinion on that, right? Versus are you in the right platform and are you putting in the right effort? Which I think, and I think, I think you'll agree with me, is what is your purpose and what are you here to bring into the world, right?

Absolutely. Well, and when people talk about the— what you just highlighted is exactly why I've really broken down this concept of obsession, exactly why I'm speaking on this. And later in the year, once I kick it off in July, I'll be a lot more open with it. I'm just saving it for the event. But, but really what you have exactly described is the emotion, right? That's step one. That is where a lot of people end because it's the quick fix. It's like, it's like a spark. It just flashes and then it's out. There are two things that we can do when we're encountering that mindset. The first one is we can use it as a propellant to move further into action. And the second is we become a victim and we get affected. And so when you say, I want this, the very next thing is you should be moving towards that by finding people that have accomplished it 1,000 times above even what your goal is. So you can work back from there. And so many people say, "I want," but that's it. And then the fact that they're sitting down with you at that point in the marital situation, well, that's good. That could be the first step to action, but there's so much that you can do. My number one principle is commit first, figure it out later. And I use that really as an insulator for complacency. And so when I have this feeling of I want, I want an amazing life, my family's legacy, complete, my financial legacy especially changes with me, right? My name when I leave this earth will be known as one of the people that changed it. And that's what drives me. And so, when I say that I want this, the minute that pops into my mind, I step out and I take action on that. So, if we use this concept of obsession, my Business Obsessed Academy, oh, you're a coach and you're a consultant, okay. If my goal is to help other people live in giftedness and to inspire, impact, improve the lives of other people, leave people generations, countries, the world better than I found it. Well, when I'm coaching people and with the podcast and with the videos and with the conference and with the speaking and with engagements and with this and with books, it's all an extension of that goal. And so everything in movement, oh, I'm doing this and doing this and doing this. No, no, no, I'm doing one thing. It's just manifesting itself in many different verticals because Jason, you may love video and hate reading. And somebody that's watching or listening to this, you may love engaging with that type of content. But not want to be doing anything in person, or you may want to do something in person on a big scale and not in an intimate scale. It's that inventory slide of business to where I want to make sure that my giftedness and ability to help you find yours is not going to be limited by only having one vertical that you can interact with, that type of thing.

And I think the accessibility of what technology in 2019, as we are getting closer—

oh yeah, right.

This is, this is what it was. I think it was Gary Vee, I think, who also said like, if you don't— if you're not leveraging this, you don't exist, right? If you're a business If you're a brand, if you're a professional like us, right, whether you're in real estate, whether you're therapy, whether you're coaching, if you are not leveraging this, people— no one's going to find you and no one's going to— no one's going to be able to engage with you. But one of the things that you just said I want to go back to is this, the concept of a victim. I talk about this a lot in my practice. And, you know, it's right. I'm Jewish and my family, my grandfather on my dad's side was a Holocaust survivor. He escaped from one of the trains in Nazi Germany and he came here and he created a furniture business in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It's now third generation. My brother and sister are taking, have taken it over and they're expanding wonderfully. But this idea of like coming from a place of victimhood, and I always have this paradigm to explain to my clients, it's like you have this idea of being a victim or you have a place of being empowered and you can't be both at the same time. So I always challenge people to come up with a list of where the things that they have in their beliefs or their experiences that they're still blaming other things, other experiences, other people for what they're not getting. And really come up with a solid list, a genuine, honest list about that. And then where are the things in their life that they're empowered? So, right, this is coming easy to me, this is where I'm taking full control over, this is where, right, I'm committing first and figuring it out later, like you said.

Sure, sure, sure. Right?

Because I have this idea, right, if you're a victim, you're not creating. You're not moving forward, you're not creating your mission, your purpose in the world, and you're just coming up with massive justifications to stay stuck.

Yes.

Right. So, so shifting from this victimhood to empowerment, I think what you're talking about, this concept of being obsessed about one specific thing, and then seeing all the different ways it can manifest in the world is such a profound concept. Because we talked about like, oh, I'm obsessed with this car. I'm obsessed with this, with my new Mac. I'm obsessed with Starbucks coffee.

Yes.

But, but we take that for such a— I can't think of the word right now. But we're taking that on such a light easy level.

It's like, it's like saying, you know, like the words I love you, you know, it's so easy to fall into, oh man, well, you know, love and obsession and all of these deeply powerful words, you know, the neurological connection of love between the physical environment, the physical self, the emotional, the spiritual, that connection through that word is deeply impactful. And the same thing actually is with obsession. You know, when you are obsessed with this car, obsessed with start, that's the number one thing that I, that I've been talking about. That's when you're living in the emotion. You haven't established the mindset, you haven't established the discipline, which means that you've obtained it but you can't sustain it. You see? And that's, we keep going back to this concept. I mean, the formula works, which is, and that's the same thing for a lot of things. If we wanna use the other example, like love, you're living in the emotion, but you have to sustain, you have to work. The marriage is its own unique being, right? You have to work in the marriage, you have to love your spouse, you have to be, you know, in all of these different ways. It has to be maintained just like your business, just like your work, just like your life. And so the concept of finding one thing and going deep, you know, as a point of action to the listener base, we're speaking very idealistically and conceptually. So I like to get down to the gritty sometimes. And, and what I'm talking about here is when I say giftedness, what I'm talking about is if you're listening to this, you very likely know one thing that you're really, really, really good at. Or if you really haven't identified that, there's what I call threads of consistency, which is when you go back through your life and you look at what you have done, there are moments of consistency that lead back to one general concept, which usually highlights your gift. As an example, Jason, um, right now I'm very deeply living in the physical manifestation of my gift, which is to bring clarity to really complicated subjects, articulate verbally, empower other people, Um, but even going back then, you know, I'm a classically trained concert pianist and I used to do music production and that type of thing. But even when I was in music, it was once I would learn, even though I was doing something for, you know, really for me, music was really for me. Um, I would get really good at something and then I would teach it. And when I was working, you know, having a very intense physical training, uh, in parkour years ago when I used to do parkour, I had learned it and then I taught it. And then way back early into my days in elementary school, this is not excluding all the other businesses I had been working on through that time, but from a hobby standpoint, I wanted to be a spy, right? I thought it was so cool. I bought like a little inspector jacket. And then what did I do when I, even when I was a child and I wanted to be a spy, I learned what I did and then I helped other people learn the same. And so, when I was identifying giftedness, I went back through my life and the thread of consistency was this concept of being a teacher and leaving people better than I found them all the way through. And so if the listener or the, the observer that's, that's interacting with this is thinking, okay, I really don't know where to start. Well, the, the, the actual point of action to identify your giftedness, if you don't know what it is truly and you don't have that insight yet, is to look back at your life and think, out of everything I've done, there's usually one thing, one concept that's behind it all. And when you can start to get really insightful and look back on your life in that way, that usually gives you the next step to go deeper into your giftedness. So maybe it's, I'm a teacher, I'm a teacher, I'm a teacher, I'm a teacher. Okay, I'm a teacher, but then what was I teaching? And how was I teaching? And who was I teaching? And then it can lead to the next step, which is, okay, now I've got this concept of teachability. How does that play out moving forward? What the 3 words is, what fascinates, inspires, and motivates you. And, and in that concept, and then that usually gets you a step deeper. And, and so finding that, so many people don't want to do the self-insight, but it's, it will change your life.

Total game changer. I remember a few months ago, one of my clients, because I'm coming here, I'm sitting as a therapist and as a coach with my clients, and, and I'm not just coming from this, like, how does it make you feel, pathology diagnosis. It's all about strategies. It's all about solutions. It's all about beliefs and meanings that you carry and how you play that out and throw that out against the world. And of course, that's why sometimes you get stuck. And one of my clients is like, wow, you're really just like, like a human distiller, right? You're like a distiller. Like, you take all this stuff, you let it marinate, you let it percolate, and out comes this amazing, amazing, right? In the alcohol world, what do they call the thing that comes out? It's the spirit. Right.

Yes.

So, so I really, my job as a therapist and a coach is to be the distiller of the human spirit. And I love—

that's good, right?

So that metaphor is just so rich, right? And so powerful for me. And, and I always loved connecting with people. And I used to be the shyest kid in the world. I tell, you know, my clients, especially my teenage or college-age clients, like, I barely graduated high school. I had a 1.8 GPA. I had stuff going on with my family. I didn't really care about school. I wasn't a bad student, but I knew I loved connecting with people, even though I'm naturally an introvert. And people who meet me now are shocked to hear that I'm like this, you know, I'm shy and I'm really sometimes nervous to go over to, to talk to people. But I love connecting. It's like the Kevin Bacon game, you know, like, yeah, right. So in real life, there's, you know, in In the Jewish world, we have the— it's called Jewish geography. Which camp did you go to? Do you know this person? Oh, you lived here, you spent this time here. And it's like your immediate networking connection. It's like the LinkedIn before LinkedIn was—

that's awesome, right?

So, so it's funny, and this podcast kind of idea came out of who do I know? What have I learned from them? How have they inspired me, even if they're new in my life, like, like you are? But there's always been something that I've distilled, and now I can give back from someone like you, someone like Matt or Gary, or people I— right, I haven't even met Gary, but right, and then take that information and then offer that.

Yes.

Nicer, in a more cleaner package appropriate to whoever I'm sitting in front of. And I love this idea, right? Learn to share. Learn to share. That's just, that's it. Like, we can stop it right there, right? Although there's way more for us to— so, so I know you're working on this massive project right now, and you've been hinting at it and alluding at it, and it's your, your conference. So let's talk for a few minutes about that.

Sure, absolutely. Well, the reason— again, we just a couple of minutes ago talked about, you know, the conference being another manifestation of that overarching principle and mission. But, you know, as a person who was learning, I— there's a phrase I love called silent mentorship. And I didn't invent it, but I honestly don't remember where I heard it. I just know it didn't come from me. And silent mentorship was your ability to learn from people you've never met through podcasts and videos and that type of things. So, you know, one of your mentors of this generation could be Gary Vee. Well, how many of you have actually met and are truly one-to-one mentored? Well, not so much, but because he distributes so much content, you're able to get that value. So what I noticed is going to conferences, you go for closer proximity, saturation, and immersion in that type of mentorship, but it still was silent in the sense of I wanted accessibility to these people. And as a person who was learning and trying to continue to grow and continue to grow, I mean, once my sales package hit really 8 million, or excuse me, not 8 million, 8 figures, I looked around and I thought, okay, leveling up got really, really hard. Because once you get really to the top or close to it, getting better and better and better gets so much harder and so much more expensive. And so I had this season in my life where I was just going to conferences, going to conferences, going to conferences, meeting people, learning. And I kept walking away with two things. Number one, I was motivated because motivation is great. I don't necessarily believe in like motivating, but I get motivated. I believe it's just a deeper alignment with your actual and your potential. And I found I would see that clarity in the conference and, and, and I would get motivated, but that would wash away. And the second is there was no accessibility to the people that truly impacted. There might be accessibility if you buy this, you know, $15,000 VIP mastermind thing, but, but for a normal person, that's not completely doable. And there wasn't accessibility. And so when I started building relationships with some of these people that I used to see on stage and we started getting closer and I started having amazing conversations, I thought, you know what, I'm just going to do it myself, right? And so what I wanted to create was an environment that was intimate, but gave you the points of action over motivation. So it's not the, you can be better and just do it and be awesome. No, it's like, here are the 1, 2, or 3 things I did to build a 9-figure company or net worth that you can implement immediately, like in building a multi-hundred million dollar business, or You know, it's not just business, it's thought leaders, sales professionals, it's points of action through vast different industries. And here's what I did to build my life up to this unbelievable level, 1,000 times, you know, what the average successful person can achieve. Here's what I wish I knew when I was working at it, or, you know, working up to it. And here's what you can implement immediately. And so the point of action is huge, but then also the accessibility, you know, step off the stage and you can walk up and say, to whoever, you know, Lisa Copeland, one of the top automotive sales experts in the nation. Lisa, I loved what you talked about, about, you know, what you learned here, here, here, and here, and I have a question about that. You know, Matt Manero, Judge Graham, myself, Rocky Garza, Cody Askins, Coach Michael Burt, we've got an amazing lineup of professionals. And, you know, it's one of those things where if you want something done right, just do it yourself. And I kept walking away unfulfilled. I thought, you know what, I'll just Commit first, figure it out later, right?

And it is a whole process. I've done something like that here in South Florida where I was a co-chair of a TED Talk-like program.

Yes.

Jewish community, and we had over 1,000 people for a one-day event. And every hour, and it wasn't like there was like a keynote speaker every hour. Every hour we had 4 or 5 or 6 speakers in different rooms. So you get to choose, right? We had that going on for the adult program, and then we had a full kids program going on. Parallel to that. So we had 1,000 people, just a 1-day workshop. So this was like massive, massive, massive undertaking. And it took a team and it takes a village, right? But absolutely, it is one of the things that I love about what you're doing is that you decided to kind of in a way disrupt that industry, right? People know out there that there's these big massive conferences that someone's trying to get 30,000 people in the Miami Marlins Stadium, but the relationships, right? And I went to a conference like that a few months ago, and I spent my whole time there was a few speakers I really wanted to hear, like the Jesse Itzlers and, and stuff like that. But my whole purpose of going there was the one-on-one relationships with people I'm not going to get in front of.

Yes. Yes. Well, and that's the thing is that I talk about this concept on a couple of different podcasts. I know one in particular, my friend Travis Chappell that runs the podcast Build Your Network. Just what immediately comes to mind is we had a similar conversation, which is when When you're leveling up, accessibility is one of the hardest things to get, but it's so, so, so important. There's no shame in paying for accessibility. There's not. If you have the financial ability to pay to immediately close the gap between you and someone that you have absolutely wanted to meet, there's no shame in that. Now, there is shame in that if you're trying to leverage that into improper, you know, You do your social media posting like, oh, look at my friends and all that, but oftentimes, like, I have relationships with a lot of people that are much, much, much more significant than even some of the players that we're talking about from a notoriety standpoint that I don't even talk about due to the fact that that relationship isn't for my publicity, it's for my growth, and it's for our friendship together. But some of those relationships started with, I'm gonna slap down some cash for, you know, a coaching session or for a mastermind or for a retreat or something, knowing that in that environment that, you know, this individual and myself were so aligned that it's like— and you've probably had this thought— if I just spoke to this person, I bet we would connect. Well, this is the ability to do that. And so you're exactly right, that level of intimacy is huge. But the reason why I believe this is an important step in achieving— well, not achieving, but a part of achievement in my mission— which is that looking back at my life and my business, if I had these types of relationships when I started out, I'd have a $100 million business, not a $35 million business. You know, if I had, if I had the network and the people, I mean, even just the relationships alone from running with like-minded people towards this common goal. You know, when you get in a room with people who are living obsessed lives or trying to find obsessed lives or trying to distribute obsession overflow, what that means is that your dialogues already are going to immediately go to impact. Like, Jason, I don't give a crap about yesterday. I want to know about your mission and your life. And, you know, and when you can immediately cut to that depth, you can build lasting friendships and relationships. You can make more money just through the people alone before you even get that knowledge, and then close the gap between you and people that have achieved on a massive level. And so it's, it's huge. There's no shame in starting off the relationship by paying to get around those people. And then the natural relationship can work its way out of that start, essentially.

Well, I think one of the things that held me back through the last 3, 3 and a half years, maybe at this point, has been this really amazing journey into entrepreneurship. And before that, I was a therapist and a healer. Right. I'm in my office in Hollywood, in Fort Lauderdale. And, you know, I have this little community around me that I have to tap into. And then I had a buddy of mine who's a chiropractor, who for almost probably 2 years was trying to convince me to come to this workshop in Dallas, in this program called Business Finishing School. And I turned him down for probably a year and a half, 2 years. And I'm like, I don't know anything. I ran away from my family business. If I wanted to do business, I would, I would go to the family furniture business, right?

Right.

Therapist, like, I don't, I don't touch that, right? I'll make my money. It's not a big deal. And he finally convinced me, I think the ticket I think the weekend was like $399 for the ticket for the whole weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Hotel was like $1.50 a night, right? And then, and then my airfare, right? So let's say I spent like $1,000, which was a major investment for me as a small business owner. I don't think at that point I was, I was maybe touching six figures in a business, right?

Yes.

And I was just working hard and serving tons of people, but just not getting Right, my value in return wasn't coming back in my income, even though I'm passionate and love what I'm doing. And I went and I'm hearing this information, and Rick Sappio, the creator of Business Finishing School, goes, you're an entrepreneur if you clearly define your core values, and then you make decisions from that place. So when you have a decision to make about what you wanna do in a certain vertical in your life, and you know your core values about that, and you say, does this align with my core values?

Yes.

Does this align with my core values?

No.

Then you're an entrepreneur.

Yes.

Like, oh, okay, that makes sense. And then here's what happens from that. And I also—

yes, right.

The pay to play, like you talked about, like the more I put in, the more I invest. And I'm realizing like my investment in that weekend has related, you know, has turned into having a person like a relationship with someone like Matt Manero, who's in my accountability group, which then from there made me realize my own personal value. Of what I bring to the table. I'm not just this like small guy in South Florida, but like I can actually bring value to people outside of this office. And then sitting in front of, and then, right, having the chutzpah, the audacity to walk up to Coach Bert at the 10X Conference in Vegas 2 years ago, introduce myself, and then get connected through social, and then start doing some work with him and his team, right? And then meet you, and then meet all these other people. And it started from the idea of me letting go of the, belief of one, I'm not significant enough to— I don't have enough money to do it because I didn't have enough money to do it. And I decided there's a credit card. And the income that has come with it, the influence has come with it, the relationships that have come with it. I would not be doing this, what I'm doing with you now, had that not started 3 years ago. So patience, right? Back to that.

Yes.

Right.

Absolutely.

This was a lot of doubt to do. Like, who am I to podcast another person with a freaking podcast? Right? Who am I? But I'm being ballsy. And I think that's one of the things when you talk about this mentorship by proxy. One of the most beautiful things is that like, what I now use, right, as a therapist, we always talk about like, what are the resources we can offer our clients?

What's the book you guess?

Right? Podcasts. Oh my Lord, it's free. Right?

Yes.

So I have clients listening to the MFCEO podcast. I have people, one of my clients is literally leading leaving his job as a technician at a dealership and trying to build this whole massive thing on the side because I hooked him up with Matt's podcast.

Right.

And here's the crazy thing. He's now become obsessed with it and he listens to it while he's working. And they got married recently, my client and his partner. And when I was last at the Business Finishing School conference a few months ago with Matt, it was the same weekend of their wedding. So I go over to Matt, I'm like, hey, You know, Matt, I need a huge favor from you. My client's wedding's this weekend. Totally turned on, he's doing crazy things because of listening to your podcast and the work we're doing. Do you mind taking like a minute to like just record a video with me as a gift? And he was— the smile that was on Matt's face was just like— and he's so happy to do it, so gracious. And my client freaked out, right?

Oh, I bet.

And all I got back was a text message. I sent it on WhatsApp. It's like, was that Matt Manero? Holy crap. Like, So when you're talking about like this mentorship by proxy and then leveraging relationships, it was such a gift for me to be able to do that for somebody else.

Yes.

Not because, oh, these people that I'm starting to know are killing it in the world and look at me. No, right. It's because I just want to help. And this is what I know you're obsessed about doing is helping people have that, that emotion that's going to motivate them, turn them on, get them to the next level because we limit our stuff.

Absolutely right.

And I remember—

absolutely.

And I remember this story. I was, um, on a panel conversation with a bunch of therapists here in South Florida, and they were talking about business growth. And, and the worst people to be in a room talking about business growth is a bunch of therapists, because until 2 years ago, there was no such thing as any of this stuff. How dare I put myself out there and ask, right? So they were talking about the 6-figure business. How do I hit 6 figures, $100 grand? And I'm thinking like, this is crazy, like that they're just talking about this 6-figure business. I'm like, if you have a $100,000 business, that means your business is making $100,000. You are not making $100,000.

Yeah, that's exactly what that means. That's exactly what that means. You know, I love that, you know, I hear a lot of people talk about, and I love the fact that you alluded to that, of, you know, well, it's that if I'm make this, that one-time mentality. Once I make this, once I do this, once this happens, and that doesn't bring fulfillment. But from a business standpoint, well, I need to build a business that's $100,000. Well, that means you're probably making between $40,000, maybe $60,000, maybe $60,000. And without trying to sound disrespectful, $60,000 doesn't get you very far. And so if you want to make $100,000, like, shoot for the million-dollar business, because when you fall, it'll still be $350,000. You know, like, in my pursuit of my business, it wasn't, I need to make $100,000. It was, I need to make millions, so I fall back to, at the worst case, high hundreds, low millions, you know, in personal income, which means that the business needs to make tens of millions of dollars, you know, that type of thing. And so, but one thing that you alluded to that I definitely don't want to miss, so I'm going to touch on it real quick, about business finishing school and all of that. The $1,000 investment, I believe that you pay attention to what you pay for. And oftentimes one of the best motivators is commitment. If you're going to commit first, figure it out later, right? If you're going to drop the time, drop the money, make that happen, you're going to go with more of a mindset of, okay, I'm here, I need to get the best investment, and be more open to it. You know, if that ticket was $49 or $29, it wouldn't nearly be the same, that type of thing. But the, the, the thought that immediately comes up, well, that was a lot of money for me, as you said, That's why you need to go, not why you don't. You see, if you're looking at something like that and you're thinking, wow, that $300 ticket, or wow, that airfare, wow, that's a lot of money, that's why you need to be there, not the reason you don't. Because those environments make $1,000 investments insignificant over the course of years. And so there's this justification of, oh man, I need to walk away. No, you need to go all in. Like, so literally, there are people that I'm coaching right now, that I'm working with, that have refinanced cars, sold TVs. I mean, there's a client I'm working with in particular that is in a similar field as you, you know, in the therapy and the counseling and consulting. And when we started working together, this client and I, she was not, didn't have a great business yet, a great practice yet, and in the sense of, you know, great financially, and it was a hardship, and we had conversations. Should I be here? Should I not? Should I do this? Should I not? Going back and forth in doubt. And that— and I'll tell you what, my consulting fee for her business, my coaching fee for her as an individual, was a significant part of her income when we started. I mean, I don't want to give anything away, but I mean, it was— I don't know how she made it happen. She made it happen. That's all I'm going to say. Um, when this year is our third year working together, already this year she's made more money in the first 6 months than she has in any other year. And she will within 3, 3-year period between 9 and 11 times her income over the last, you know, year and a half, 2 years. And so when you look at that, I'm not saying that I'm great. I'm saying that your ability to get clarity is what's great. Yeah, Coach Burt says you can't see the picture when you're inside the frame. But if you're sitting there looking at a blank wall saying, somebody tell me, talk to someone that actually knows what to do, someone that's actually done it. I can't teach you how to become a billionaire because I'm not a billionaire yet, but I can teach you how to build a quadramillion, tens of million dollar company. I can teach you how to hire the right people, you know, that type of thing. People that have actually done it, I think that's so, so, so important. So not Didn't mean to go down the rabbit hole too, too deep, but I love just bringing that concept to light of like, oh man, you know, that's a lot of money. Yeah, that's why you need to, like, if you're thinking that, that should be the trigger to hit buy right there and to put yourself in that environment.

Right, and on a very practical relationship to that story is that, right, at that time, that weekend, right, it was not just the conference, but I chose to buy into the whole curriculum program, which is a couple thousand dollars. And I'm looking back now, I'm like, that was a big, that was probably outside of like maybe buying a car or graduate school, right? That was the biggest financial investment I've ever made in myself, right? And let's say it was a couple thousand dollars over the course of 4 years, which like, like, oh my God, $4,000, $5,000, whatever it is, right? If you average it out, it's really nothing. But that investment has put me in front of people and propelled, like catapulted me into a whole different place that my life would not be in unless I made that fearful, scared, oh my God, how am I going to pay this bill, to the point of like where I'm now doing one-day programs that are equivalent to that whole 4-year investment.

Yes, one day. Yes, exactly.

And to see that trajectory change, that I never thought I would do that.

Absolutely right.

To jump on a plane for a one-day thing to go to Nashville to coach Bert's, right, uh, Person of Interest Day, to jump in and jump out in one day would have been absurd a few years ago. And yes, and I want to just touch back on this one other thing is, you know, there's a huge difference, and I'm sure we can talk a little bit more about this, is there's a huge difference in being great at what you do versus running a great business about what you do.

100%. And, and that's the absolute truth. You know, I alluded to this a little while ago, but, um, one of my, my, my passions is music. I love, love, love music. You know, I mentioned that I'm, I'm classically trained. I used to do piano. My specialty was Chopin and Rachmaninoff. And after that, I did, um, I worked in music production and, um, you know, toured around and did the fun stuff. And the reason why that didn't come to fruition to be something bigger is because the, the— when I was producing and performing, the person in my group— I had one other person— and the problem that we had was I wanted to run it like a business and he wanted to run it like a musician. And so just because, like you said, you're good at something doesn't mean that you're good at running the business, but you need to have the business mentality and have the self-insight in the sense of everything that you do should be business-oriented in the sense of if you're a great artist, your life doesn't become great just because you necessarily paint. That usually happens after you die, right? If you're a great artist, then find someone who's a great manager. Find someone who's a great PR person. Get people connected in your life. It doesn't mean that you have to be a business person. You can still live in your art, in your gift, whether it's music, whether it's art, whether it's therapy, whether it's accounting. If you just work in that one frame, but then delegate to make sure that you do in fact have a business, that's monumental. Now, one of my gifts does happen to be business. I had some great mentors and, and, um, business comes naturally to me. So it worked out to where that happens to fall into one of my strengths, but it doesn't for most people. And so if it doesn't, what I encourage you to consider is find people in your life who can help you construct that actual business around what you do and what you do so well. So that way you can propel your ability to impact other people. You can propel your finances forward. You've got to have both. You've got to have both. Agreed.

It's so funny because I stopped looking at people within my own little niche, my own little field, because we're all colleagues and we're all kind of doing the same. I don't have this universal belief of competition, right? I have literally the wall right behind me, there's a psychiatrist. After that wall, there's two other therapists. Down below me, there's another therapist, right? I have probably 8 other therapists in the building that I'm in.

Sure, sure.

None of them are competition, but they're all playing small. So I'm now looking to people who are the biggest people in my industry or related to my industry or influencers that have— that are trying to help maximize people's potential that I can literally hack, not stealing, but what are they doing that's so successful and just implement that for my own personality, my own ethics and my own core values.

Absolutely.

And I think that's something that people are missing out. It's like— and I tell this to my clients all the time. It's like especially when they're trying to figure out their career or they're a high school student or a college kid and they're trying to figure out what they want to do. I'm like, okay, well, don't tell me who you know locally that you might have seen growing up doing that. Who's the top person now that you can research and find in that industry? And a lot of times you'll find that, which is the whole E-Myth and the whole, you know, what a lot of other of our associates talk about is that the entrepreneur, the manager, technician perspective is that what you learn to be a technician about right, as a realtor, as a therapist, as— right, is we can only do so much. We can only get paid when we're doing the work we do. We're not getting paid when we're not doing the work we're doing, right? But how do you build something where it's not relying around you, where you're not Superman or Superwoman doing everything? And this mindset shift, this disruption of that, is a very big challenge. What you're talking about before, about you can go and create a multimillion-dollar business, $100 million business, without going to school. And that's such a crazy indoctrination opposite to what we've been indoctrinated in, right?

Or exactly, exactly. Well, and you touch on one thing at the very, very, very beginning of this episode, kind of making full circle. You talked about that, you just glossed over it real quick about the vehicle. And the vehicle is huge. You could be the most talented person and have a $100 million idea but be in a vehicle that can't get you there, right? It's like going down the racetrack but you're in a Ford Ford Focus instead of the Lamborghini. You'll get to the end, but it won't have the same result. And one thing that was— I mean, honestly, Jason Wasser, this was a hard thing for me to learn, was the vehicle. And the vehicle for me has changed significantly over the years. I mean, even now, real estate isn't the vehicle. Real estate gave me the platform of validity to build a massive, massive, massive book of business. So when I spoke to people about business, about closing, mastering the sales cycle, objections management, people knew I wasn't full of crap because I've done it. And then with the Obsessed Academy, building that into, you know, the business that is, and that's still growing and pretty significantly, you know, that gave me the platform of validity. But even real estate wasn't the vehicle for my giftedness, it was getting me to the right vehicle. And so that's a really hard concept to master, at least it was for me personally, to have the self-insight to look at my life and say what I know isn't what I need to be doing right now. And so if you're listening to this podcast and you're considering your own vehicle, there are a few questions I encourage you to think about. The first one is, with all the truth and self-insight and allowing yourself to give yourself some grace to think, is truly— is the world, the environment, the vehicle you're in, the job, the profession, whatever you want to call it, able to get you to where you want to go? Is the path easy? Is it frictionless? Is it easy as you get more intense? You know, if you think about— look back at music. Could I have built a massive, massive, massive business in music? Sure, sure, people have done it. But when you look at that path, because there's so much outside of your control, you have to get found, you have to do all this, that the ability to get there is so intense. And then even when I was there, when I started recognizing that I wanted to impact and improve the lives of other people, I recognized that music was not the main vertical for that, you know, that type of thing. Business wasn't the main vertical for that. And even real estate is a lesser version of that. Um, but then when you're, when you're asking yourself these questions, the next thought is recognizing that usually when there's friction in movement, you look at your life, you say, this is not what I'm necessarily supposed to be doing. When there's friction in movement, it usually comes because your identity has been grounded in your actions instead of grounded in your mission, grounded in something that is translatable to any environment. And so my identity was grounded in me as a blank instead of me as Evan, and I can transfer to different environments. And that, when, when that identity shift happens, it gives you the ability to have freedom and flexibility in movement. I am not afraid of having my name. I'll give you an example. Yesterday evening there was a big event in Dallas where I'm supposed to be, you know, honored as one of the top agents in the city and real estate and all this great stuff. And without sounding like a piece of crap, I didn't go. Why? It just didn't matter because my identity isn't grounded in that. I'll tell you what I did is I stayed home. I worked, actually. I was showing property and I was working on Obsessed Academy. And then later that evening I had dinner with my wife and that was great. And my identity, years and years ago, I would have been there to be seen and all that, but my identity is grounded in myself. Not in people's perceptions of my actions. And so that's one of the biggest paradigm shifts for leading into this concept of obsession or this concept while you're talking about, about living in, in, in, you know, your gift and being able to impact other people. Um, your, your placement of your identities is really one place where that starts. And that's one of the hardest ones to move. Once you move that boulder, you can usually work with the other ones pretty easily.

It's so massive. It's so massive because a lot of times we're coming from a place of ego. And not from a place of purpose, right? And how many things that we are all doing out there, myself included, on looking good, wanting to look good, making sure, right, that we get it right before we put it out there. And I know, right, Norman is very, very, very big about this. It's just, just push record and just push it out. Doesn't matter what you look like, doesn't matter if you stutter, it doesn't matter, right? Just put it out if it's aligned with your mission, your purpose, your values. And I think that's a really, you know, I guess the last question I was going to ask you is, right, if, this concept that I love from Coach Burt, this is good for all time zones, right? Whether you're in Latin America, whether you're hanging out in the Deep South, whether you're in LA, right? That you're gonna find something where you're relatable to every single person, right, that you can come across and that you're gonna connect to them and they're gonna connect to you no matter their background or experience. So what is your good for all time zone, right? That if you can distill everything down that you have learned in life into a 2-minute or so good for all time zones teaching?

Well, that's a powerful question. Um, you know, I think the, the concept that I'm working with that's really translatable across everything goes back to that concept of obsession and giftedness. And the reason why I think that's good for all time zones is because everyone, regardless of where they are, know that there's something inside them that has the potential to, to, to allow their life to be better and their impact and their legacy to be better. And so my Good for All Time Zones is just identifying, regardless of your background, regardless of where you come from, regardless of where you live, everyone knows that they have this internal opportunity to be able to do something great. Now, You can listen to it or you can't. You can push it down or you can't. We all know people that have the overarching angst and anxiety and stresses from just pushing that down. My good for all time zones would be regardless of where I'm at, regardless of where you're at, listener or observer, you know that there's something you could be doing that's, that's more great. Tim Storey says, once you've touched the fire, you can't go back to living in the smoke. And so my, my translatable thought to that would be, What is it first of all that you believe it, all things aside, money is no object, not what is one thing that you would just take action on and do regardless of the outcome. If everything else is taken care of, um, what would inspire, fascinate, and motivate you every single day for as long as you lived, then action. And then with that concept of once you've touched the fire, you can't go back to living in the smoke. We usually glimpse these opportunities in our life of, touching the fire, touching the fire, touching the fire. And that, that can get you really excited. My thought would be looking back at your life, where's the time that you've done that, but you took your hand off and why, and how do we reverse that to make sure that you stay and live in that purpose? So, um, I don't know if that quite answered your question, but I believe that that concept can inspire action regardless of the background, regardless of socioeconomic status or racial status or marital status. Status or anything, regardless of where you're at, because it talks deep down to our own sense of humanity over who you are in your environment.

And the beautiful thing about what you're saying on top of everything else is if you're having struggles and those self-doubt and those uncertainty or lack of clarity, there are people like you and I out there to help everybody drill down and get really, really clear. So there really is no excuse. Use anymore to not figure this out. And I really think that, that Good for All Time Zones on one foot is, is so powerful. So how can we find you, right? There's so much going on in your world. You're, you're offering so much to, to our community of growers and learners, right? I know you have your, your academy and you're doing your podcast and this conference. So just let everybody know a little bit about how they can find you, follow you. Connect with you in person?

Absolutely. Well, I'm super active on social, so all of my handles are @realevanstewart, and Stewart is S-T-E-W-A-R-T. Of course, the conference is huge. There's an opportunity to meet me, meet these other speakers, and if you're listening to this and you're really kind of on the fence about that environment, just commit first and figure it out later, and you have my word that it will be life-changing. That is obsessedconference.com and you can actually use this code for your audience. It's Evan19 to get 10% off your ticket there. That's really the best place to start. You know, I believe in immersion over exposure and if you go to my social, just slide into my DMs. I'm super active. I'm very, very accessible. You already know, listener, I believe in accessibility. But, and then if you're ever in Dallas, just, you know, hit me up. I love, love, love working with one-on-ones. I love working with individuals. If you're looking to find clarity and find purpose through relationship with someone who's dedicated his life to doing that. That's what I'm here for. So, but, but from the super light touch to engaging on social media all the way down to the depth of that relationship, there's tons of opportunities to, to interact. So yeah, no, I'm, I'm accessible. And you know, I really, really appreciate you allowing me to be on your platform, Jason, and, and share my message with your audience. Hope it brought value to you guys.

Tremendous, tremendous, tremendous value. I really want to thank you again.. And I really also want to congratulate you on Winning Life. And I'm knowing that as people probably are going to re-listen to this, this episode, right? There's so much meatiness that we, that I got out of it. I'm hoping our listeners will get out of it, right? This is definitely one of the ones that are going to be hopefully reviewed over and over again. So thank you for joining us. And I'm really looking forward to hanging out with you soon in person as well.

I'm looking forward to it. Thank you.

Awesome.

Thanks, man.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at You Winning Life.