246: My Journey In Life And Business - #GrowYourLife

Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski, and on this podcast, I talk about ways for course creators and coaches to grow, increase their income, and make way more money than they are right now with proven methods that work to sell your courses and coaching online. We host live events every month. This podcast is full of lessons for you that will transform your life. And today, I want to talk about something that I've never done a podcast episode on before. It's new for me. I'm a little nervous to do it, but I'm going to go for it. And it's really a. A tell all about my childhood, teenage years, and getting into business and what got me to where I am today. So really, if you talk. If you're. If you're talking about it, it's an autobiograph autobiographical episode. But there's gonna be lessons throughout this, and so it's not just gonna be me reminiscing about the past. We're gonna tie this to lessons that you can learn. Okay? And so, earliest memory I have is of my mom dating a couple of guys. I was born. My mom was a single mom, raised me. She was on welfare. We would get a lot of our food from the local church food bank. Growing up, we didn't have much at all, which is such a juxtaposition from where my mom is today. One of the wealthiest people that I know financially as well as relationally, spiritually, mentally. And an inspiration to me is what she has done in her resilience. And if there's one lesson that you're going to get out of this here today, it's a lesson of resilience. Not letting where you came from destroy you. Not letting where you started from stop you from what you dream of. And this all started with a dream. You know, I have been a dreamer for my whole life, and I've always had big dreams, but I was disconnected from being able to really accomplish them until recently because I struggled with my own mental health, my own mental health journey. And if I share anything with you here today is that if you grew up like I did, and you have childhood trauma, you have trauma from work trauma, you have trauma from just you've been hurt by people and you're noticing triggers. Like, if you get angry and lash out at people, okay, that's. That's what was happening with me is somebody could push my buttons enough and loose cannon would blow up at. At anybody, and then kind of back off, tuck my tail between my legs, not Intending to hurt anybody, but just that's all I knew. And it was to like, let them know, like, hey, you don't scare me is kind of what it was. And that was my biggest thing that was, that was, you don't scare me is kind of the motto that I lived by for so long. So the earliest memory that I had growing up was of my mom dating some guys. And, and I felt the pressure to be a good boy so that we could find a dad, find a guy to take care of us and things like that. And so some of y' all know, my mom divorced the man that she married after 20 plus, 25 plus years. You know, I don't have much to say about that. That's. That, that's a tough one for me. It's funny, I feel like I'm like, yeah, there's, it's a lot I still have to process there that I haven't fully processed. And I think that there's some. Going to be some beauty that comes up that. But what I have processed through is we're going to be talking about here today. You know, I've struggled with alcohol. I've struggled with going to jail three times. I've struggled with. And, and some people may see this as a character flaw and, and all trust that they have in me is now destroyed. I, I understand that. If that's the standard that you have for your life, I applaud you for that. For those of you that, you know, aren't looking for a perfect person who's never made a mistake, can I get an amen? Like people that are actually like all of us are, because I think that we've all made mistakes. But some people are looking for perfect people that they can listen to. I'm not that. And so if that's what you're looking for, I'm sorry, I'm gonna disappoint you. But for everybody else who's willing to, you know, talk about the stuff that maybe we only talk about behind closed doors, talk about the private stuff, talk about the stuff that makes us feel uncomfortable, you're gonna like this, and you're like this story and you're gonna like what has happened from it. You know, in the last year, my wife and I have built and grown our own business to multi million dollar status. Our son is almost 12 months old. We bought a beautiful house with a pool in the Austin, Texas area. And really I could say everything that I imagined and that I dreamed, that I wanted my life to be, that's what I'm living today. And so that's why I've not talked about any of this prior to today because I didn't feel like I had a leg to stand on as somebody who was happy with the life that he lived. I'm happy with the life that I'm living today. Very grateful. Working towards the next level. What is the next level? 2x3xing our income reaching an 8 figure level to where we're making over a million dollars a month. That's the. Or over at least $833,000 a month basically is eight figures. And so that's what, that's what my next level goal is right now. Right now. We, you know, I'm grateful for where we're at. It's an incredible life. My goodness. But you know, I've seen, we've built multiple eight figure companies. My mom and I did in the coaching core space. I worked with friend of mine, Rick Pino. We built a eight figure coaching and course business with Rick Pino. And so I've been around course creators and coaches that are making over $10 million in profit a year and that's been like the tribe that I've hung out with for the longest, the longest time. Okay. And so, but just a little bit like to my background and story is, you know, I have, I have memories of being with my grandmother when my mom was in a psychiatric ward which created abandonment issues. I have memories of my mom blowing up at me verbally as a child. I have, you know, which terrified me completely. I have memories of being brutally beaten by my dad to the point that it made me bleed. So you know, that was hard. We got it. We all have hard upbrings. Some of y' all might hear what I'm saying and say wow, that was easy. That sounds like cakewalk compared to what I had. So listen, we're not here to compare our wounds. We're not here to compare that. You know, I, I grew up in a church that was emotionally and mentally abusive. Cultic thinking and teaching is very cult like. I was taught this thing called worm theology that we have to see ourselves as lower than worms as Christians in order to. For God to like us. And that God actually hated me is what I was taught and that it was my job to save everybody for the kingdom, for this God that hates them or else, you know, I am just, I am not a good Christian. That's what I was taught growing up. This idea that manipulation of human beings choices and being able to control what other people choose to do is the equivalent to a godly lifestyle. Sad, right? And I'm sure some of y' all like. Like, that gives Christianity a bad name. And we used to say that, gosh, there's so many Christians that give Christianity a bad name. And it was because they were living a godless lifestyle. They were living with any mistakes whatsoever. You know, so perfectionism was just the way of living growing up. And. And if I didn't want to go to hell or displease God, which I didn't believe, that I could lose my salvation. But, you know, we were. We were taught that, like, you can't lose the sa. The salvation of Jesus Christ on the cross, who died for your sins through the blood, but you better not do anything wrong. That's. That's what it was. And so that's why I am such a proponent of this freedom message. Having freedom, not operating in perfectionism, Being willing to just do what you want without worry about what other people think about you. That's why I. I purport that so often. I have people who hate that. I purport that they think it's evil, violent, terrible, bad for people, whatever, but not being able to, like, choose the life that I want to live, and having to basically live to serve God, growing up, it made me, when I turned 18, leave the home. You know, I struggled with pornography as a teenager. I struggled with pornography as a young man. And I went off and tried to recreate the lifestyle that I had seen from rap music videos and pornography. Basically, that was the blueprint of life that I had in front of me. I mean, so understand that that's not a pretty picture right there. And so in that, I. I had to grow. I was also homeschooled at the same time as all this. I was not in a normal school, and all my friends were just from church. And honestly, I had great friends at church. And I remember my friend JC we used to get together and play Nintendo. My happiest memories were playing Nintendo. I used to go over to Bill Van Dyke's house, and we would. In fact, he had this poster on his wall. If you see. I have a poster in my office. It's a Corvette poster. Bill had this on his wall, that poster. You know, the Legend of Zelda series. I used to play this. Whoops. This series at Bill's house, this video game. So my love for video games. My love for video games came in during that. That time period because it was like. It was something that I enjoyed when everything felt chaotic and it felt like I had freedom. So my freedom came from playing video games, which is why, you know, I enjoy playing video games to this day. They help me relax, they help me calm down my nervous system and things like that. But I also love business, and I love helping people succeed. I love helping people break up with patterns that they have in their life that are stopping them. I love helping people be able to take action, actually start closing sales in a business. You know, I used to be really afraid of what everybody thought about me. And it's because I was taught, you know, you better not do anything wrong and anybody see it or think wrong of you, because if somebody thinks wrong of you, well, then it must be true. And that the truth and reality is actually in what other people's opinions are. And that is what I was raised with, was this firm foundation that I must please everybody and make everybody happy for safety and security. And that was the message that I went into the business world with. I started working with a company named DannyJohnson.com helped put together video products. And truthfully, I was a very. That was a very religious experience. They were a bit cult like, cultic as well. Yeah, I'll say it. Some of y' all still follow them. They were not. They were not very healthy. And, you know, I mean, the fact that, like, me even saying that makes me think, well, they're gonna send me a cease and desist legal letter to take this podcast episode down because they were so concerned about controlling what other people do or. Or saying that what I'm saying is libel and slander. That's not. That's literally what. How they were. And so understand that I went from, like, one thing that I grew up with to something pretty similar to it. But it was my first time around millionaires. It was my first time around people that were making a lot of money. And it. It changed my life, being able to see that, which was awesome. And, hey, I wish them the best. I hope that they grow out of this incident. Insecure way of living that I used to be a part of. Okay, this. This need to control everybody. That's why I talk so often about letting go of control. I think it's a powerful technique that can help us in business. Letting go of control over other people, learning to accept other people, letting go of control of. Once you make a choice, just seeing what happens, taking on experimentation, mindset. You know, that's not what I grew up. Like, it's not how I grew up. But then learning to walk through that has taught Me how to be successful. Every single person that I know in business, Danny Johnson included, did so by taking a risk. And they had team members that were willing to take risks. Same with my mom. And yet we often believe that we got to be perfect, that we got to do everything perfect before we launch what we're doing and put it out there. It's ridiculous. You don't have to be perfect. That's a big facade because all the people that you think are perfect aren't actually perfect. They just fake it really well. Okay. So anyways, from there, I got a taste of alcohol, drank a lot, got arrested a couple times for alcohol related stuff, and then started working with my mom. We helped her build. I helped her build that business. We helped thousands of coaches and course creators and online marketer people who wanted to learn online marketing for years that, you know, she started that business, I think around 2007, 2009. Ish. Coaching and mentoring people. Prior to that, my mom had actually ran an online kitchenware store that was actually making millions of dollars. And so we grew up without any money. Think of. So y' all are like, where's that fit? We grew up without a lot of money. And then the money came in when my mom launched a website, a kitchenware store that was online. And. And you can even see the website if you go to archive.org you can type in healthforyou ministry.org which is funny. She. She had the name Health for you ministry on the title of the actual business. For some reason, she felt like that would like legitimize it a little bit more, you know, Health. Yeah, it's. Let me see. Is it www. Yeah. Oh, no, they don't have it on here. Is it dot com? It's dot com. There it is. Yeah. So this goes back to 99, but it started way, way before 99. I think I'm pulling. I'm actually, for those of you that are not on the video, we have a YouTube version of this podcast. And so I'm actually pulling up my mom's first original website where I can actually show you, you know, what it looks like. And it's having trouble pulling it just a little bit right now. That's okay. But it was says. Was not archived. Interesting. But it says it was archived. So. Yeah, so they're having some trouble with that. After that, my mom went into network marketing and that's how I got connected with DannyJohnson.com because Danny Johnson was a trainer and coach in the network marketing industry. So again, remember, I Teach coaches, trainers and mentors. Danny Johnson was a trainer and mentor in the network marketing space. My mom was a client of Danny Johnson. Oh, here it is. Here's one of the first, here's the first website 99. Look at that. You can go a little bit further and you can actually like see my mom's face. So actually pull up there too, which is pretty cool. But so my mom was a client of this coach and mentor, Danny Johnson, to get better in her business. So you can see this is like if you go to my mom's site, a real change.com back in 2004 it was a opt in for a network marketing business. It was a lead magnet and let's see, 2006 and I actually built these lead magnets right here. Yep, I built this one right here. Powered by Desire to Design. And if you click on that, it'll take you. Owned and operated by Jeremiah Krakowski. Created by Desire to Design. Yep. Because that's what I did. I did website design, I did video production, I did content management systems, graphic design. And I would put these little sites together. So you can see here training for success with Danny Johnson. And then my mom talking about like her mission serving. This is my mom right here helping people make a six figure income with this network marketing company. Okay. And so that's how I got kind of into that world with coaches and course creators and all that. And that's what we help people do today is that we help them find clients on the Internet, build the best lead magnets, build the best landing pages, build the best offers that get clients. And that's what we're hosting an event to do right now. But you know, I remember, I remember growing up and wishing that, you know, we were taught this thing called the Rapture about Jesus coming back and wishing that the Rapture wouldn't happen, you know, until I had the chance to have a sec. Have sex with, with a, a woman. It's funny, that was like my, my teenage dream, you know, was that. And obviously you know, you have, I have a son, so that's happened. So stupid. But what I'm talking about is that, you know, I lived in so much fear and so much worry and so much shame and so much guilty guilt. And you know, I was only happy when I felt like I was doing everything perfect. When everything that I did was perfect. And when I moved out of my parents house, I just kind of went crazy. Started partying, started drinking a lot, DJing. I DJed a lot Turntables here in Austin. Texas, where I live right now, back, back in like 2009, 2011, DJing out here. And so like, I mean, that was a while ago too. That was like 14 years ago. So I've been on this journey for a while, that was 14 years ago. And I would build these landing pages and these websites and I would start to put together the offers for my mom's business. And I helped, even through the alcohol, even like it sounds like, okay, like you destroyed your life. No, throughout all that, I was very productive. I helped put together a lot of the DVD products for Danny Johnson. I helped my mom build her business to multiple eight figures. I actually stopped drinking alcohol completely about two and a half years ago and so haven't had any since then. Sometimes I'll have maybe a, a kombucha or a non alcoholic beer, but they have such a minuscule amount that it doesn't affect me in that same way. But I don't do that that often. I'm actually on a health protocol right now. I'm on a detox protocol right now to heal my gut, to heal my inflammation. And it's funny is I feel a lot less fear right now. Healing my gut and inflammation. And truthful, one of the number one things that changed my life and it allowed me to be able to build my business to be over seven figures, was working with a therapist on my mental health healing from the trauma of my past, of my childhood, of the things that didn't go how I wished they would. And those are just a few of the highlights. You know, I anchor some of those down. Some people, again, like I said, would say my childhood was nothing. It was not painful. It wasn't like if we're comparing trauma, but again, that's not healthy. It felt so big to me that it crippled me and it stopped me from being able to be successful even when I had skills and I doubted myself. And I, and I presented myself to the world, world as somebody who is not trustworthy because I was so concerned with making everybody happy. You know, when we worry about making everybody in our life happy and never doing anything wrong and never pissing anybody off, when we worry about that we're divorcing our actual real identity because how we really are, we're hiding behind a facade. And this is why getting some healing helps. Because honestly, the reason why we hide that is we're ashamed. And we're ashamed of what's coming through the surface. You know, I was ashamed of a lot of stuff. Sexual desires, you know, beliefs that I had Beliefs that I held on to, people that I hung out with even I was ashamed to even tell people this story. You know, and truthfully, I tell people this story, some people say I made it up, it's not real, none of it actually happened. I'm like, I don't know how you could say that. It's really weird. It's literally exactly what happened. But, you know, you're never gonna please everybody and you're never gonna convince everybody that they should love you or buy into what you're talking about. And so part of what I teach people is you gotta lay down that desire to make everybody happy. There will be people that are disappointed, there will be haters, there will be people that disagree with you, that say you're wrong for doing the thing that's the very best thing that you do. You know, I have people all the time that come to me and say, jeremiah, you are a. I'm not even gonna repeat what they say. It's hurtful, it's untrue, it's not worth repeating. But they're so convinced of that, and it's funny, is they would rather I lie and say, oh, you caught me, I'm really all those things which aren't true, but they would rather I do that than actually be truthful to you and tell you what I've accomplished, what I've done. The multiple eight figure coaching companies that we built, the millions of dollars that we've sold, the lives that we've impacted over the years. And I used to shrink back and hold back from sharing my story with people because I didn't want to seem too big people, I wanted to seem too unbelievable to people. And I was so concerned with making everybody like me and approve of me and think good things about me. And now I give up that worrying, give up managing my reputation. All the time I have people tell me, gosh, if you don't manage your reputation, it means you're trash. And I'm like, no, it doesn't. It actually means that I have. My reputation is legitimate, I'm authentic. And I don't need to worry about what people think about me because I love whatever they think about me. And I. And I want you to love me or hate me. I'm not trying to get people to hate me, but they naturally do. They naturally will. And even there might be some of you who are listening to this right now, you're just like cringing at everything that I'm saying. I understand that. It's totally fine. Doesn't bother Me. You know, one of the great things that's really helped me in my life is stoicism. The meditations of Marcus Aurelius specifically and learning, and also some of the writings of Ryan Halliday and his daily stoic content. This idea that we don't let what happened to us hurt us or define us. And even on a day to day basis, we're stronger than the situations that we're actually experiencing or feeling. And that's a really bastardized version of what stoicism actually is. But that's what I've taken from it is it's a tool for strength. You know, I'm still a Christian. I went to church this morning. Love going to church. I love God, I love Jesus. Still believe in Jesus Christ. You know, go to a non denominational Christian church. That's a little bit more on the whole. It's on the Holy Spirit filled Pentecostal bent. We grew up being taught that the Holy Spirit isn't real, that it's a, that it's actually a demon and any manifestations of the Holy Spirit are actually demonic is what I was taught growing up. So I actually swung that pendulum all, all the way over to the other side. And now I've kind of found a little bit of some, some balance in there. I think you can go way extreme to one side or the other, and neither of those are healthy. Extremes are not healthy very much at all. So understand that. You know, you could rely so much on therapy, you could rely so much on one denomination of Christianity or another that it's not even healthy anymore at that point. But it helped you through maybe a season. You know, it's kind of like being addicted to video games. If all I did was play video games, that's unhealthy. But the way that I use it, I supplement video games. Sometimes when I just, I have moments where I feel like I just, I need to play a video game. And creates creative pathways in my brain in those moments, moments when I really need to play a video game. It unlocks certain levels of creativity that I need. It unlocks certain things that I need to be able to experience all the things in life that I want to experience. And so what I want to encourage you is this is get to know your triggers. Get to know the things that feel uncomfortable. Understand why you do what you do. Learn human psychology. Your ability to close sales and business is tied to your ability to understand human beings and what motivates them overall. And I teach you this in my courses. I teach you this in my classes. Don't let what tried to break you and hurt you win today. We all have experienced what we experience. We've all gone through certain things. We've all had things happen. You know, I've missed out on at least a million dollars in profits that I could have made years ago because I didn't work on my mental health. And so the way I was thinking actually led, led me down a path to miss out on massive financial breakthrough opportunities that were very good, very healthy, very, very sustainable. Yet I ran away from them because I was afraid to piss people off. I was afraid to do the wrong thing. Okay? So I had to grow in this area. And I've had people that hate me. It's fine, doesn't bother me. But there's a group of people that love me and they love what I talk about and they love connecting with me and they love this story. And they're, they're glad and they're thankful for what I'm talking about. You know, I don't ever want to say any of this to dishonor my parents or dishonor my family or. Gosh. But certain activities aren't honorable either. And the sooner we can start talking about the things that maybe we hold behind closed doors, the sooner we are willing to shine a flashlight on what's not working and say, okay, what can I learn from this? How can I solve this? How can I resolve this? What levers can I pull to fix what's not working? And we start in our homes, we start in our families, we start in our relationships. And then that oozes into the business. We start with our health. You know, I can tell you this. There were things in my life, in my business, that I was avoiding looking at. And as soon as I've started to look at them and not be afraid to look at certain things in my business that will benefit me, it's unlocked brand new possibilities. The thing that you're running away from right now is your future breakthrough. It is, it's right directly connected to the thing that you're running away from that you're fearful of the most, the most most fearful. And when you actually understand that fully, you can change your life. You can become a multi millionaire. Most people cannot make a million dollars because they're too stuck in trying to make everybody happy around them instead of making themselves happy and actually doing the things that they want to do. When is the last time you did something because you wanted to do it, not because you had to do it, not because you were obligated to do it. When was the last time that you sacrifice yourself? You put yourself into a situation where you had to do something where you felt obligated to do it. That is taught in our upbringing that we have to do it even if we don't want to. I didn't want to be forbidden from listening to rock music and only allowed to listen to classical music, which I think was great. It helped my brain. I play classical piano. I love it. I think it's amazing. But like, come on, that was unreasonable, I think. And now I become like a sort of. Like I said. Remember I said I DJ'd? I became sort of like a music eclectic music knower of all things music related overall. And it's probably because I wasn't allowed to listen to a lot of different music. So now I know all the music you know as that you know. So, gosh, if you look at your life and your past and, and take what I've talked about just now as a blueprint, it will unlock for you patterns of behavior and influences that you can rewire to then positively affect your future, which will then unlock your income by building a new skill set. I will teach you. If you want to create a course, if you want to create a coaching program and then you want to sell it, you want to make six figures and you want to make a million dollars, I can teach you how to do that start to finish. We have clients that have done that and surpassed it, like Rick Pino. I remember my mom and I were working with Jennifer Allwood, seeing her surpass the revenue that we had even seen for her. You know, working with my previous client, Joshua Giles, over $140,000 a month, being able to build $160,000 a month business for myself, it's incredible. And so don't let what tried to break you, what tried to stop you dictate your life. You're gonna have to take action. You're gonna have to do the hard things. You're gonna have to do what feels uncomfortable. You're gonna have to learn how to sell. You know, there's a book that I share with people. These are two books that I share in my coaching group. The. The Ultimate Sales Letter. How to Write Words that Sell. And now we use AI to help with a lot of that. But this one is so valuable. The Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort. You know, I don't. I don't endorse his lifestyle, but I love his book. It's incredible. It's one of the best sales books on the planet about building trust with people to get them to buy what it is that you have to offer. And most people are just really not good at sales. It's not any fault of their own or any reason that they are subpar. Some people take it personally when I say they need to get better at sales, they need to get better at communication. I think we can all improve in our ability to communicate and use words to connect with people. Okay. And when it comes to the words that get people to say, yeah, okay, that makes sense. And then they give you like thousands of dollars afterwards that salesmanship ability. And that's a skill set that you need to learn, that you need to grow in. Because then all you got to do is you just got to gather people in front of you. Get like 50 to 100 people on a zoom call, on a video, could even be be a podcast episode. And then use that communication ability to tap into their thinking and their mind to trigger positively the belief that you can help them accomplish the thing that you can help people accomplish with your course or coaching program and that the best chance for them to achieve that goal by purchasing what you have to offer. I say this all the time. I think the best chance that anybody who's listening to this has. First off, subscribe to this podcast. Listen. Subscribe to YouTube. But joining my client growth accelerator program because we take it seriously, the results of our clients and we have more positive 6 and 7 figure case studies than most any coaching program that I've ever seen. In fact, we have some of the most seven figure results from this system, from the system that we teach. The system that I taught when I worked with my mom, when I was the CEO of my mom's company, we were growing that business and we built that business to a multimillion dollar enterprise. There's a process that works and that, that's what I teach you and that's what I teach our clients. And that's what I teach on my free events. That's what the other podcast episodes in this podcast are about. This one's a little bit longer of an episode. I wanted to go a little bit longer on this. But hear me out. You don't have to stay stuck making the kind of money you're making right now. Dream bigger. Connect with me and learn to sell. You can find people on social media. We teach how to use Facebook ads. And then you can create an offer and sell a course for a thousand dollars to 50 people. That's 50 grand right there. Okay. Understand that a hundred people spending $2,000, that's $200,000. And those are not normal. Those are actually very conservative numbers to the type of. To the system that we teach you and that we show you how to do. Okay. So I'd love to connect with you. Join me for one of my live events that we're hosting. Share with me how this podcast episode has inspired you, has taught you maybe things that you didn't know. I truly believe that any area where you're stuck right now you can break through from, and I'd love to help you do that as well. So grow your life, everybody, and we will talk soon. Have a good.