The Biggest Thing I Had to Overcome Was Fear of Failing with Ivan Earle

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weidel and let's get started. I'm here today with a legend across the United States. He operates out and lives in Columbus, South Carolina. My good friend, Ivan Earl. Ivan, welcome and thanks for taking time to talk to us this afternoon.

Thank you, Larry. I'm glad to be here. I'm excited about spending some time with you, Excited about this project that you're working on. Just glad to be a part of.

Well, you know, we both work with young people on the way up from every walk of life and we look around and we see people that most of the time we feel like every bit as talented as us and probably more so. But they don't quite have the whole puzzle put together in their mind. And anything you and I can do to help them get those missing pieces which they don't know they're missing and we don't know which ones they are. But just by going over these things, creating the opportunity for people to have light bulbs go on in areas that they didn't know they were missing, you can make magic happen. And of course, for background, people need to know not only is Ivan a million dollar earner, built an organization and company from scratch all over the United States, involved in many other outside activities, successfully as well, but he's a senior national sales director, He's a coach of the African American Leadership Council and founder of that organization. He's a member in his company, the Circle of Champions. So, Ivan, congratulations on all of your success. And of course, you're just a lucky guy. And they came by and left all this stuff at your front door and all you had to do was just pick it up. Right?

Thank you, I appreciate that. But think about all those accolades and you think about all the things that you have achieved and then you think about what it was like when you first got started. You realize that, you know, nobody's going to give it to you. So it's just awesome to look back and see what, what your efforts have compounded to be, you know, over the years, things that you've gotten accomplished.

What would you say that looking back, that you're really grateful for that went right for. Well, just first of all, tell people where you started, how you started so they can get, get it out of their mind that you started at the top of the mountain. Give people an idea of where, where you came from and when you're starting out in the world to be your own boss, get your own job, be in charge of your Life, build a family and earn an income. So what was your starting point there?

Well, you know, Larry, I think I was like everybody else. You know, I grew up, went to high school, graduated from high school, but I didn't decide to go to college, and I decided to go into the workforce. At 19 years old, going into the workforce, I was excited about that, you know, and I decided if I'm going to go in the workforce, I really do need to go in the workforce and not just pick up any job. So I sat back and asked myself, where do people in my community go that really make some real money? And like so many neighborhoods in America, that was the plant. So most people were at the plant making a decent income. So I went out to the plant and put in an application. Didn't think they were going to hire me at 19 years old, but, you know, I guess I always had an attitude of why not take the shot? So I took the shot, put the application in. Lo and behold, two, three days later, they called me back for interview and offered me the job. I think that right there started my success path, because I never forget what the guy told me when he hired me. He said, you know, he said, this job is going to change your life, and I don't know whether you're ready for it. And I was like, what do you mean? He said, well, you a single guy, you don't have kids. Most single people are out partying, having fun. And if you're going to take this job, understand this job is going to require a special price. Meaning you're going to work seven days a week. You're only going to have two days off. After that, you're going to rotate shift every week, and you won't get but one weekend off a month. And at 19 years old, I'm not sure you're willing to pay that price. I was so broke, I was willing to pay any price. So you gonna give me a job? And back then, that was a job paying 18, $20,000 a year. I was excited about it. Here I am, a young guy, 19 years old. I'm starting to make a real wage like grown people making with families. And I thought all my goals and dreams were gonna come true. I saw having the apartment, I saw the new car, I saw I'm gonna be the only one 19 being able to afford things. I was excited about it. And I worked that job for five years, did everything you're supposed to do. Show up early, stay late, good employee, anytime they need overtime or what. I raised my hand and then five years in, I went to work one day and they called a meeting and said for the first time ever, we gotta lay some people off. And I never thought about that. I had never thought about that somebody could walk in and take your job away from you just like that. So that scared me. So that day, matter of fact, I didn't get laid off. But they said this is what they did. They put a sheet of paper on the wall in the back of the room and they said, if your name is on this sheet, you can go home. In fact, you don't have to worry about filing for unemployment. We already did that for you. So make sure your checks will be there on Friday. If your name is not on the sheet, you can report to your department. But we want to mind you that in six weeks we may have to lay some more people out. Man, that blew my mind. That blew my mind when I saw people walking through the hallway crying, asking themselves what they going to do. Maybe they just bought a new car, maybe they just bought a new house. They looking at each other saying, what are we going to do? Because plants are notorious but for hiring husband and wife. So you both just got laid off. So I realized that day that I had to do something because I only had six weeks. If I didn't do something in the next six weeks and they laid me off, my life would be destroyed because I had no money in the bank, no savings, and I had no way to replace that income. So I left work that day looking for a business opportunity and went to some people who I knew to ask them did they know of anything I could do and, and got invited to an opportunity meeting and went to that meeting and heard some things and changed my life. That's how I really got started in the business. That's really what gave me my start because I came here looking for part time income, but I found so much more in the entrepreneurial world. I really found something out there that the reason why some people are successful and, and some people are not successful. I finally figured it out and I saw it and I took advantage of it.

Well, what I'm hearing you say is that you gotta go with what you know and you can only take advantage of the opportunities that are there. And so you surveyed the field and you said, I want to make money, I want to be on my own, that's the best spot for me. And you went up to the plate and took a swing, even though the odds were against you. And that like you said, that set up a pattern of winning in your life, where you took charge and you went after the best possible. First of all, you thought it through. You got locked in on what you wanted. And that was like. I talk so much about Ivan, you know, my father in the Air Force, and we moved 27 times by the time I was 21. I just had a strong independent streak that I didn't want to be a victim where a letter could come at any day. And all of a sudden we were moving. You know, I wanted a little bit more control over my life and, you know that I was willing to fight for independence. I wanted above average income. You obviously wanted to be independent. You wanted to make decent money and, you know, the best money you could make. And you went looking for the opportunity. And when you got it, people don't really think about how important that first success is because it sets the pattern to your life. The fact that you were willing to apply for it, took a shot, and then put yourself in a position where something wonderful could happen to you. And I think that probably helps had something to do with informing your actions when you found out this opportunity is drying up. And so I'm going to go look it again. I'm going to take charge. I'm not going to sit there like a fly and get swatted. I'm going to move while I can move. I'm going to move and reposition myself. You really have to look out for yourself, don't you, Ivan?

Yes, you do. You know, because we live in a world where I always believe that, you know, when bad things are beginning to happen, I believe people see them coming, but I believe that they become paralyzed and they don't react when they need to react. You know, most people don't react until they back against the wall. But you saw it coming. You knew what was going to happen if you didn't move. So something made you not move. And what. I just believe that successful people have an ability to see what's coming and to go to work and work on it, prepare for it, to offset it early. We fight to make it not happen instead of sitting back waiting on it to happen because life is going to happen. But I believe that, you know, I told somebody the other day, I said, you know, most things that happen in our lives happen because of decisions we made and things we've done, good or bad. Most of them are decisions we've made and things we've done. So we do have the power. We do have the power to counter, dictate and carve out our life. And have the type of life that we want to have, if we're willing to make some decisions and if we're willing to do some hard work and pay a price that there's nothing that we can't accomplish.

Well, the thing is, a long time happened, you know, a lot happened during that five years. What do you think? Instead of spending four or five years in college, you spent that four or five years in the workforce? In the real world, what kind of education do you think that gave you other than an income? What kind of education? How did that shape your worldview? You know that those first five years.

Oh, those first five years taught me a lot. What it taught me, you know, prior to that, I didn't know that at night when I went to sleep that the world didn't stop. You know, being a, being a high schooler, you have this tendency that when you go in the house and go to bed, everything stops. To the next morning, everybody wake up. Well, going to work there and having to rotate shift every eight days, you realize that nothing stops, you know, so one week you working from 8 o' clock in the morning to 4 o' clock in the afternoon, then you have two days off and then you come back and you work from 4 in the afternoon to, to 12 at night and then you have two days off and you work from 12 at night to 8 in the morning. And you do that for seven days and then you have a weekend off. So you know what? I learned discipline. I learned discipline because at 19 years old, to take that kind of job and make, to be willing to make that sacrifice because it was going to take a sacrifice, I had to have discipline. It gave me a hard work ethic because, you know, if you want to, if they gave me a salary, but if I wanted to make more money than that, then I had to work overtime. But sometime it was not eight hours. It might have been 12 hours or 16 hours. Sometimes it was seven days. You know, you don't even take your two days off. You go and work seven days and then start your next shift. So I developed an unbelievable work ethic and understood life. It started giving me responsibility. You know, you had to take responsibility for your own well being, you know, so now you running a budget, you know, you got to take the money you make and you gotta lay it out in a budget and you gotta decide what you can't afford and what you can't afford. And shortly thereafter you realize that, you know what, I'm running out of money before I'm running out of money. You know, every week I'm coming up sharp so that that creates desire, the desire to have a little bit more, wanting more. You know, I never forget riding down the street, going to work every day, and it was this house I had to pass by. And it was a nice house, and outside it was, the guy had a Jaguar and a Mercedes Benz parked in the yard. And I never forget asking myself, how does somebody do that? How can you afford something like that? And it just gave me an unbelievable desire to want more out of life, to want the final things out of life. Which means I became thirsty, thirsty for it. And eventually that opened up to looking for an opportunity that will allow me to have the type of life that I wanted to have by taking advantage of the opportunity and making the income that I was going to need to make to have those things.

Well, let's talk about learning discipline. Not everybody learns discipline. And I'm sure there's a lot of people you worked with that you noticed never seem to get better. But I mean, like you said, I decided not to go to college. I decided to go into the work flow. But you had to decide that you were going to excel. And that set the stage for you bringing discipline into your life. But you had to be noticing around you. Not everybody operated that way.

Yes, I did. And what I came to conclusion was it was a mindset, you know, and it has a lot to do with your surroundings, who you associate with, you know, what your environment is. You know, you take, you go. Most people, if they, if they look at the top five people they spend the most time with or talk to the most, well, normally they gonna be the average of those five people. So what I found is getting in an environment of people who are talking about doing something like people who are actively pursuing doing something special with their life, the conversation changes. It's not wasteful conversation. It's a conversation about always of how to do more, how to get better, how to achieve more. And then the competitive nature comes out in people and you get to pete and work and be willing to pay the price to get it done.

What things did you feel like you carried out of your first 18 years that set you up mentally to do the things you did there, you know, the foundational things, those aren't talked about enough. But when we think about our kids or if we were brought up and we didn't, you know, by a bunch of ding a lings and no offense meant or intended towards anyone, parents. But not everybody has solid examples from their parents to Benefit from. What do you feel like you carried out of your high school years? That was a plus for you to go out on your own?

I think the thing that I got out of my high school years was competition. I played sports in high school, so I played basketball and I played football, and I was pretty good at both. So competing, wanting to win, understanding team, understanding how to be a part of a team, and watching successful teams perform, you know, that's what I took out of high school. Just, you know, that competition in you, that competitive nature in you, that will to win, that will to be a champion, you know, want to be on top. That's the one thing that I took away from high school that I think made all the difference in the world, is that I competed and I had a lot of experience being part of a team, and that made a difference.

And when you went into the, you know, you got out on your own, what were things, the biggest things you had to overcome? Because it's not a piece of cake for you to make those adjustments, develop that discipline, do well and excel in an environment where you're probably the youngest person there, like both of us were when we started our businesses. We're probably about the youngest person in the room most of the time. What do you think were the worst things, toughest things you had to deal with? And were they inside you or were they things from the outside?

They were inside. The biggest thing I had to overcome was fear, you know, because the fear of unknown, the fear and the doubt that somebody like me could actually do it. You know, I didn't come from a family of entrepreneurs. Nobody in my family had ever gone in business for themselves. You know, I came from a family where my mother was a school teacher and she raised us, and my stepfather was a school teacher and a banker, so they all had jobs. So here I was now getting ready to strike out on this opportunity to be an entrepreneur with no experience, no track record. I just was excited about the opportunity. So the fear, the fear of failure is what you have to overcome until you get developed to the point when you realize that, you know, you got. Everybody got fear and everybody got faith. And when you first get started in most people, their fear is stronger than their faith. But through experience and through environment and through hanging around the business and seeing a business work, what happens is your faith becomes stronger than your fear. And now you're not paralyzed anymore. You are empowered, and you are mobilized to go attack and do the things you need to do. But I think my biggest thing was overcoming Fear worried about this young guy that never went to college, that got a high school education. What will make adults that's married with families, what will make them listen to me? You know, until I got confident that the fact that I know what I know, I knew my business, I knew my product in and out. That gave me the confidence to overcome my fear and turn it into faith. Because I knew what I knew and I knew I was right. I knew I was right, and I knew I was good at it.

Talk for a minute about that last thing. Expand on that. When you're staring fear in the face, you can't keep looking at it. You've got to tell yourself, I've got to get better. Because the only reason I feel that kind of fear is internally, my subconscious knows I got to get better. You, you know, I need, I need, need to get work harder. I need to know my stuff better. And you spit. If you focus in on changing the dynamic, you can overcome fear and you can move forward. But if you just get let fear paralyze you, you're never going to go anywhere. Most of us can go back to places where we grew up and see people that never escaped the city limits of the town. And basically it was fear that held him back. Have you noticed that?

Yes, I noticed that a lot. I know for me, it became a psychological game. I never forget. You know, I was used to. I used to hang around a college campus a lot because I was a basketball player and I used to always go to the college campus and play basketball. Well, I became good, close friends with some of the professors in the athletic department there. And I never forget Larry wanting to ask the professors for appointments. But the fear paralyzed me. I was afraid to ask them because they were college professors. What would make them listen to somebody like me that never went to college? All I had was a high school education. And I remember what I really came down to is this. It came down to, well, you know what? If you never asked that, the answer is no, which means you got 100% guarantee that the answer is going to be no. If you ask, you got a 50% chance that the answer is going to be yes. So the worst case scenario could be using the same position you in. You got everything to gain and nothing to lose. So take the shot and act now. Forget. When I asked, 100% of them said yes. 100% of them said gave me appointments, 100% of them became my clients, 100% of them became my cheerleader and cheerleaded me on to success. From that month on. So see, it was all me, it wasn't them.

Fantastic. Thanks so much, Ivan. Really great insights to launching your career. And today, you know, we were talking earlier how your life is set up to where, you know, you're in the service industry, where you can do so much of your business over the phone with Zoom, but like you said, you're living on a lake, you've got a another home down by the beach, and your life has really not changed that. It's kind of like you got a. You've had a nice vacation and working full stop at the same time. I mean, it's gotta be a dream life for you right now.

Yes, it is. You know, I've been blessed. I'm living a life of my dream. I never thought that life could be this good. So I get the chance to wake up every day free. And that's worth fighting for anybody to be free. So I appreciate the time that we spent together.

Absolutely. And I can't wait to get back and talk to you again and find out about how you went through a complete skill set change, developed new skills, got involved in a new industry. And, you know, not by necessarily by choice, but you were forced to, but you used it to your advantage. And right now you probably look back and say, one of the greatest things that happened is the fact that there was not going to be a place for me to stay at that factory. I had to go find something better.

Yeah, you right. I'll be looking forward to talking to you about that because you're right, you know, sometime our blessings come in disguise. I was just glad to have my eyes open where I could see it.

Absolutely. And look forward to the next time. Thanks so much, Ivan.

All right, take care.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind with me, Larry Wydell, if I've helped you in any way, leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. For more information like this, listen to our other Million Dollar Mastermind episodes and check out my Wydell Academy YouTube channel and visit us on widelawnwinning. Com. I'm the Million Dollar Mastermind. And until next time, go, go.