From PASSION to PROFIT: 3 Proven Strategies for a Thriving Side Hustle

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This special episode of the School of Greatness is brought to you by TikTok shop. Now we talk a lot on this podcast about purpose and mindset. Finding the things you want to do, things you're passionate about, and getting the right mindset to achieve those goals. For a lot of you, we know those goals are entrepreneurial. We're partnering with TikTok Shop on this episode, all about side hustles. Because TikTok Shop can help you launch and grow your business, TikTok Shop offers a powerful new way to sell and shop on TikTok. It's really cool. Brands and businesses of all sizes can reach new customers, collaborate with creators, and drive more sales by showcasing their products and selling directly on TikTok. Visit tiktokshop.com podcast to discover more. That's t I K t o k shop.com podcast and stick around later in the episode to HEAR More about TikTok shop and how it helped a member of the School of Greatness family bring one of their passions to life.

Before you try to sell somebody something, figure out what they care about.

Yes.

Spend time learning about them. You should always win the relationship, even if you lose the sale. If you focus on making sales, you're going to feel pressure. If you focus on building relationships, man, it's going to be great.

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now, let the class begin.

Foreign.

Welcome to this special master class. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock.

The power of your life through this specific theme today.

It's going to be powerful. So let's go ahead and dive in.

So once you figure out what your side hustle is.

Yeah.

How do we start the process of monetizing our side hustle?

Dude, this is such a good. That's such a good question. Because that's the thing, right? It's like, we want to make money. We want to help people. We don't want to be the desperate salesperson.

Please buy my thing out of pity.

Yeah.

We don't want to be the needy guy. And, you know, and this is something I've spent my whole life doing. I went door to door. So I worked in retail sales when I was like, from my time, I was like 4, 16 years old. And then I spent five years going door to door. 14 hours a day, six days a week, interrupting people 14 hours a day, door to door. 14 hours a Day, door to door. You know, interrupting people. And like, you know, pretty intrusive, as I sometimes say, that being a door to door salesperson is like being the human version of email spam.

Right?

Telemarketer.

Yeah.

Marketer.

Yeah. It's like telemarketers are, you know, than us, we bug telemarketers when they're eating dinner. And then, you know, we built a sales coaching company to eight figures, teaching salespeople how to sell. How do you generate leads? And then brand builders, we do more like marketing and digital lead generation. But whether you're like a Fortune 100 company, a personal brand, a professional service, or just a person with a dream for a side hustle, this is the question, how do you make that first sale? Like, how do you get money? Where do you, where do you find the people?

Before you answer that, what was the greatest lesson you learned going door to door for five years about yourself and about selling in general?

You know, there was this, this thing that we used to say all the time that the answer's behind the next door.

You never stop, there's always another door. You'll find the answer in the next place.

Yeah, it was always like. But that part of it I think actually is good because this is true about sale. I mean, a part of the good news for both marketing and sales is that they are both a numbers game. They are a numbers game. It's not like it won't work, right? Like you have the fear, like, is anyone going to buy this? No, somebody will buy. No matter how bad you are or how crappy your thing is, if you talk to enough people, which is not what the goal is, but that people will, they really will buy if you keep going. The truth about most sales is it's people think of it as like combat. Like, you know, I either have to put the magic marketing words on the page or I need to say like the voodoo mind trick to like convince you to buy something and that it's kind of like this battle. And it's more like an Easter egg hunt where it's like there is some number of eggs out there in the field that have candy in them. And no matter if you did anything or not to dessert, candy being in there, they're just there. You just have to go find them. And there's a lot of empty eggs along the way. There's, there's a lot that you're going to open and it's Empty. And, and so that is one part of it. But the biggest problem, the biggest problem that people have in selling is that they're self centered. The reason we don't sell more is because we're focused on how do I make money, how do I convince people? And we approach it wrong. And I would say that sales has been taught wrong, done wrong, promoted wrong. I mean, you know, we're big fans of cleaning this up and changing the way that people think.

I think we're also self centered in the fact that we're afraid of people saying no and how to make us feel about ourselves when they say no.

Absolutely. Yeah. When I say self centered, part of that is kind of like the, you know, I don't necessarily mean selfish, like I'm gonna take in for me instead of you. Although there's a part of that where it's like, you know, the sale is convincing people to buy something they don't want. Right. That's not, that's not what we're into.

Right.

But it's also fear is self centered. Fear is extremely self centered. You only feel fear when you're thinking about yourself. You know, we say there is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. When you're focused on helping someone else, you're not worried about it. Right. I mean, it's like if there's a car accident, someone's on the side of the road, you run up to them, you're not thinking about how does your hair look and you know, are your clothes or your, you know, is your outfit cute? You're going to help somebody. We're always at our best when we're serving others. And one of the magic, one of the magical powers of service is that being focused on service releases our insecurities.

So true. This is something I learned speaking on stages. I said there's different levels to my speaking life. There's the 13 years ago, being terrified to speak in front of three people without stuttering and sweating and being nervous. And me saying, okay, I need to go learn how to get some reps speaking in front of people. So I'm not nervous. So I joined Toastmasters, which you famously got second in the world for.

Toastmasters famously bring that up every time we talk about second place in the world.

Second place at the world championship of public speaking.

True story.

No big deal. And I did that for a year. And I gained confidence through the actions of repetition, of showing up, of preparing, of reviewing my speaking film and just improving through reps over time. And I remember for about Seven, eight years, I was getting now paid to speak for my credibility, for my expertise through LinkedIn and everything else. And I would still get nervous for a week before a big speech. Then I got better over time and it was like, okay, it's only two days before I'm nervous. Then it was a day before and I remember it stayed a day before. But it wasn't nerves of excitement, it was nerves of insecurity. It's like I'm afraid of what people are going to think about me. And I remember asking a coach of mine that I had hired for a while, he was a good friend of mine, and I said, I'm about to go on stage in an hour. I don't know why I'm still so nervous. Like I've been doing this for 10 years, shouldn't I be over this by now? And he said, because you're focused on the way you look, not on serving other people in the audience. And the moment, exactly what you said. The moment you start focusing on service, knowing that you will probably forget something, you might make a mistake and not worrying about those things, know that something might happen that's not perfect. But when your heart's on service, it's hard to be nervous, as you say. Ah, isn't that one of something you said?

Uh huh, yeah, years ago on our very first interview together. But yeah, that's it. And so, you know, somebody watching right now, it could be like, okay, well like how to make the money, you know, like, how do I get the lead? But this is how you get the lead is you serve first. So in a digital world, you provide value for us. Value, value, value, value, value, value, give out. It's the three E's, right? You' content that is either educational, encouraging or entertaining. And typically some mix of all three. Educational, encouraging or entertaining. And the digital marketing strategy that we employ at Brand Builders Group for Rory Vaden Personal Brand and for all of the clients that we work with that we teach these personal brands is teach everything, you know, for free, one bite at a time, but in all random order. Right.

So it's not packaged in the right order as you would have in a book or a course or a workshop or an event.

Right. You know, we've said this before, people don't pay for information, they pay for organization and application.

Yes.

And we have a thing called the services spectrum which basically says, you know, information is down here, it's free, organization is here in the middle, you can charge a little bit like in a course or a book or like membership site, but applications up here at the top, which is like a coaching program or consulting, you know, done for your services. Application information is social media, podcasting, blogs, YouTube videos. People don't pay for information, but you're just giving them bite sized chunks of information. You're teaching everything you know, but not all at once. And in the right sequential order, people pay for the right order. That's organization. I mean, we tell. One of the reasons people hire us at Brand Builders Group is because we have a very set curriculum, the Brand Builder journey. And we say, look, one of the biggest problems with personal brands is that people do the right thing but in the wrong order. They're like launching Facebook ads the first month and it's like, that's step 76. You're like skipping.

They don't have a funnel yet, so they're launching it to nothing.

Yeah, you're driving it back to nothing. You're spending all this time on social media driving back to nothing. So the first thing is find your uniqueness, figure out what you're good at, then extrapolate that into a product. You know, create your service, your product offer. You may already have that. And then after that it's like, okay, how do I drive traffic? If we're. And there's two worlds here. When I think of marketing and sales, I think of the online world and the offline world. And we've done both, which is rare. Most of the people have done one or the other, you know, and it's like I've done the door to door thing. I worked for a startup IT company doing inside corporate B2B phone sales. Then when we started our former company, we did phone sales like B2B for like small businesses. And we did free presentations and we sold. But the fastest mechanism to generating a lead is to do a free presentation demonstrating your value, your expertise. It's giving people a sample and then offering them the next step. Yes, here's what it is. It is the food court. When you go to the food court.

Want some orange chicken?

And the orange chicken on a stick, man, tastes good.

I want the whole thing now.

It's a sample. And if you want more, I'm right here.

See's candy gets me every time. Get you a free piece of candy. Just going to the store and you're like, oh, I want the whole box.

Yeah.

I mean it's, it's a free presentation. You could do this through many different mechanisms. It used to be free workshops in person speaking.

And by the way, like when I say this is what everybody does. Like, this is what Jim Rohn did and Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins and like everybody in the personal development industry, they used to go do. This is how we built our formal.

This is what people in real estate industries do.

They do it.

They teach at a free seminar.

Free seminar. A 90 minute live free training Financial advisors do this. Come to my free dinner presentation on 10 keys to retirement. Why? Because it works like you're giving value and you're leveraging the law of reciprocity. Right. As I give to you before, instead of ask you don't. The way you make sales is by giving so much that at some point they like ask you to buy versus showing up and asking all the time. In fact, we use a rule called, we call it the rule of 10. And this is a pricing, this is more of like a pricing thing. But you know, people get really weird around price and asking for the money. And you know, when it comes to collecting a credit card or if you're on like a webinar or a Facebook Live or if you're. It doesn't matter if it's Facebook Live, it's a webinar, it's a video funnel or it's standing on stage or it's talking to one person. You gotta be convicted in the value you're bringing. And the way you do that is by over delivering. The number one way to drive your own conviction is over delivering. And everyone teaches sales as like, you know, the voodoo mind tricks on the person you're talking to. The real game is the mind is winning the battle in your own mind and being convinced that what you have is valuable. And the rule of 10 helps you do that. So basically when people are putting together their first offer, they tend to like swing for the fences and go, I'm going to charge for 2000, a $2,000 video course or something. And they say, well, I saw a video and you know, my coach told me, charge what you're worth. That's terrible advice. Don't charge what you're worth. What should we charge when you're starting out? Don't charge what you worth. Charge what you can get. Charge what you're convicted on. Charge what you can massively over deliver upon.

Yeah, yeah.

If I'm charging what I'm worth, there's going to be a bit of reluctance. When I deliver the price, they're gonna feel it and it's going to massively reduce the percentage conversion.

Yeah.

Someone once told me, charge what 10x the value.

Yeah.

That's the rule of 10, right?

It's like if it's charge one tenth.

Of what it's worth.

Exactly. If it's a And, if it's $10,000 worth of value, then charge 1,000, right? And if it's $1,000 worth of value, charge it's 100, charge 10.

So you always, you always have, you know, if it were a bank account, you always have this like credit, this balance with people, and you go, and it starts for free. It starts on social media, which is amazing. Like the power that social media gives us. It's not that you have to reach millions of people. It gives us a mechanism to push a button and deliver value. Because it's like people go, is it, it's like a chicken or the egg. How do I build an audience? You know, I want to provide value, but I don't have an audience. No, you provide value first. If nobody is watching you record and you teach value, you deliver it and people will engage with that. Now we have a process, which I'm happy to talk about, of converting comments into customers. So, you know, I don't know if you want to take this more like online or if you want to do like more offline.

Online is cool.

Okay, yeah, so let's talk about that. So, you know, it starts, it starts with the mind, okay? Self centeredness is the problem. Service centeredness is the solution.

Yes.

You never feel fear when the mission to serve is clear. You get your mind right, Then you go, okay, I'm going to go out and provide value. So you start pumping out value. We have a thing called the content diamond, which I know, I've talked about on other episodes. We can touch on that. But anyways, you're putting out value. And now what happens is people like and comment. And what most of us do is we go six views, right? And it's just like, I mean, and we get self centered again and we go, I only have six views. Jay Shetty gets like 6 billion views. And it just makes me feel awful because I'm thinking about myself. I mean, unless you're just doing the thing where you're gonna do it for years and years and years and one day you'll have, you'll have more audience. But even it's like, if you want to really impact lives, impact lives. Like that's what pisses me off is people are like, I want to impact lives. And it's like, great, okay, let's put, you know, put a video out there. Why don't have any followers Well, I don't care. Like, I'm not getting paid to do it. Focus on one at a time, one person. You said you wanted to impact lives. Impact lives. There's no barrier to impacting lives. There's no barrier. It's easier than it has ever been in history to impact lives.

I'm curious, for people that aren't entrepreneurs or they haven't done entrepreneurial things because you and I weren't entrepreneurs.

Right.

We kind of became one. Should they just go for it? Should they test something first and try to get a few sales and something? What do you think is the best approach now in today's time?

So I talk a lot about how I sometimes don't necessarily know what I want, but I know what I don't want.

Which is what?

Like, when I was in corporate America, I sat down at a table just like this, and my boss said, here's your five year plan. They never once asked me, what do you want? What, what's your next move? Where do you want to go? And I wanted to go to corporate. Like, I wanted to move back to Minnesota, be in Minneapolis. But here I was in a store, a glorified HR person that had to bring the garbage to the dumpster at the end of the night, wearing red and khaki, which, by the way, I hate red and khaki. And I sometimes I think that people get really lost because they're like, well, yeah, if I knew what my passion was, I could go figure out a way to make money. But I don't even know what my passion is. Right. And sometimes I think knowing what you don't want is just as important as knowing what you do want.

Right.

And sometimes it's an easier place to start with. Like, I don't want 10 vacation days a year. I don't want to work weekends and nights. Like, you know, and so it's like trying to figure those things out. But the other piece of that is that we have to, like, start to be open in saying, I've changed.

Right.

I'm evolving.

Maybe I wanted this thing for a while, but now I want something different.

Yeah, it's like we get so attached to our identities that the thought of, like, saying, oh, I'm different, or, I know I said I wanted this, but it doesn't feel the way I thought it would. And so I want to pursue something different. It's like this. There's this notion. Dr. Maya Shanker was on my podcast and she talks about identity, foreclosure. And it's like, the reason why you hold on to jeans that don't fit you anymore because you remember how you invested in them, or the reason why you get the degree, even though three years into it, you know that you don't want to do the profession. It's this idea of like, so I got to make it worth something, but instead, then we're wasting our future. Right. And so you call it identity closure, identity foreclosure. Foreclosure, like as in, I'm foreclosing this piece of me. I am shutting it down because I am no longer who I was. And it's fascinating because even being here with you today, having a book coming out, you're seeing a changed mind.

Yeah.

You didn't want to do this years ago.

I mean, you are the one person who truly witnessed how much I said I wouldn't do this.

Yeah.

You're like, just go launch a course and make a bunch more money and have less stress.

Yeah.

Thanks for joining us on this special side Hustle episode brought to you by TikTok shop. And I want to take a quick break from the episode to highlight a TikTok Shop success story. Jordan from my team created an amazing children's picture book called Mirror Face, which he's been selling directly on his own website. To reach new audiences and drive more sales, Jordan signed up for TikTok shop and has seen a huge lift in book sales. Go support his book as well as thousands of small businesses like his who are also on TikTok shop. And now is your time to sign up for TikTok shop too. Entrepreneurs, if you're just getting started selling your products, this is a great way to let people know about your new business. TikTok is such an incredible tool for building and growing an audience. And now with TikTok Shop, it's a super simple way to convert your viewers to actual customers through shoppable videos and live shopping experiences. Later in the episode, you'll hear more about some of these world class brands using TikTok shop every day. It has easy to use tools that can help businesses of all sizes. And visit tiktokshop.com podcast to discover more. That's T I K t o k shop.com podcast yeah.

And so it's like we are so afraid of changing and not just changing, which is scary and uncertain. We're afraid of people seeing us change. We're afraid of being like, I know I said this one thing, but I don't believe it anymore.

Yes.

And I think that change is like growth and Evolution. And, like, we're in this thing called life school, School of greatness, Life school, where we are learning, and if we're not learning and evolving, like, what are we doing? We're missing this opportunity. But I would say for those people who are like, maybe I have this idea or whatever, do it as an experiment. Don't attach money to it. Don't attach deadlines. Look at how I wrote the book. Do it in a way that proves to yourself that, one, you're capable of taking action, but in a way that doesn't necessarily paint things as, like, black and white, success and failure. Look at everything as an experiment. I'm going to try this thing. All it's going to do is yield a result, and that result is going to guide my next step. And I feel like nowadays it's like we have to, like, define, is this a success or is it a failure? No, no, no, no, no. I've done many things and failed. I've tried many different things and been like, oh, that was not. Like, I did senior portraits one year because I was like, I can make bank shooting seniors. I hated it. Did it for one summer. I was like, never again was it a failure. No way. It was just a point on the path that was guiding me forward. And so I feel like getting really open to, like, trying things. And the other part of that is that every single time I've tried something different, it's always been a side hustle. I've not abandoned the 9 to 5 to jump all in on something. I've used the 9 to 5 to fuel the other something. Then when I did courses, I used the courses to fuel the podcast. And when I did the podcast, you know, it's like they all pour into each other. And it's like we're so quick to neglect something because it wasn't the perfect fit. When it's like that can propel you forward if you lean on it. And it'll give you this ability to not feel the desperation that makes us say yes to the wrong things or do things that were never meant for us.

Right?

Absolutely. What was the biggest identity foreclosure you've had in the last few years?

Getting rid of my Abercrombie jeans from when I was 18. Truly, I remember how excited expensive those suckers were and how I saved every pretty penny. And I told myself, someday they'll fit again. And guess what? They don't. And they're not even in style anymore. But I literally. No, I mean, that was part of it. But I Think for me, moving back home, which is something. So Drew and I met in college in Wisconsin, lived in Wisconsin for over a decade, and moved back home to Duluth, Minnesota. And, you know, one. I never thought I'd move home. There's just something about it where it was like, the people that are there are still doing the same things.

Still the same people, different mindsets, stuck in the ways or whatever. Yeah.

And I had noticed, too, a trend. And I'm curious, like, when you go back to Ohio, if you, like, stay where you grew up, like, do you kind of revert to your old self a little bit?

Yeah. I really love it, though, because. Yeah, I do. Cause I'll hang out at the restaurants, and I'll, like, just talk to the people. Just, like, I'm there, you know? Like, I'm from there.

Yeah. It was funny, though, because I, like, whenever I would go home, like, in college, I'd, like, find myself, like, sleeping on the couch again and watching MTV and eating raw, like, things that were not a part of who I was. But, like, there was just this, like, comfort. Like, this is what I do. I never thought I'd move back home. And I had this vision after our second loss. I, like, hired someone to, like, help me unpack the grief, because I was. I skipped, like, denial and went straight to anger after our second loss because I just was like, what is wrong with me? Why is this happening? You know, I was very public about our first loss and felt like there was purpose there.

Yes.

The second one, you were like, this is frustration and anger.

Yeah.

And I was like, I got the lesson already. I don't need this again.

Right. And I was, like, praying to God, like, where is your redemption song? Because I want to, like, prove how great you are. And now you've let me down again. And, like, I don't know even. Even know where to go from here. And I hired this person to, like, help me unpack my grief because I was like, I'm angry. I hate my body. I don't know what to do. And she, like, led me through this exercise, and we were, like, sitting together, and we would get on the phone once a week, and every time I wanted to, like, hit ignore, you know, Like, I was just, like, didn't want to do the call.

Deal with it. Yeah.

Yeah. Because I was just like, I know this is going to suck. And we're, like, on the phone, and she's like, okay, we're gonna do a little exercise, and I want for you to close your eyes and, like, breathe and her name is Erin Trelor, and she runs a really cool Instagram called Raw Beauty Talks. And it's all about, like, coming back to your body. And so she's, like, having me breathe, and she's like, I want for you to envision, like, the most vibrant version of yourself. Like, you are happy and energized and alive, and. And it didn't just stop at, like, the vision. She's like, you know, like, put your fingers in your finger slots. Like, step into your feet. Like, I want for be there and, like, feel what it feels to, like, be fully alive and to enjoy your life. And she said this line, and it was like. Like a dial on a stereo. I want for you to turn your intuition up and turn the noise of the world down. And I was, like, envisioning all of this. And in the vision, I saw this little girl and pancakes and a Persian rug. And I was wearing jeans and a white linen shirt. And I opened my eyes after the vision. I was, like, bawling. And I said to her, she goes, you know what came up for you? And I was like, I think we have to move. And she was like, what do you mean? And I was like, I love the house we're in, but there's this bedroom, and it was always going to be our baby's bedroom. I get so emotional, but. And I'm like, every time I walk by it, I just think about what hasn't happened.

Yeah.

And I was like, I just. This vision of, like, this long table and, like, this rug and this baby, and, like, I see it. And I was like, I think we've got to move. And that day, because I'm a quick action taker, you're, like, looking at houses.

You're, like, literally finding an agent.

I get on Zillow and I type in Duluth, Minnesota. And Drew and I had never talked about moving home. Like, it was like a. Maybe one moved to Minneapolis someday. Like, you know, kind of stay.

Where were you living at this time?

We were in a really small town in Wisconsin called Fort Atkinson, and we had great friends and stuff, but we didn't have the support of a family. And I found this house on Zillow, and I text my family text thread as a joke and say, maybe this will be the Kutcher Craftsman. Like, it was this beautiful home in Minnesota. We had never talked about it. Drew is out on a run, and his phone starts blowing up because my family's like, move home.

He's like, what? We never talked about this.

Yeah. He gets home, he's like, what is going on in your family? Text thread. Like, it's going crazy. And I was like, did you see the listing? He's like, what listing? And I was like, saw this house in Minnesota, and I thought he would be like, you know, maybe three years from now. And. And he's like, oh, we could do that. And I was like, what? And, you know, it's crazy because I didn't necessarily move because of the vision, but it was like the first thing where I was like, you know, where we are is not working for me. The craziest part is this, Louis. We didn't move for, like, seven, eight months. The day after we moved in, I took a positive pregnancy test.

Wow.

It was. It was literally. I, like, I always say, I'm like. It's like I would, like, had to move home and, like, be grounded at home. Like, it just felt like this, like, crazy moment where it was like, I'm home and I'm ready. And like, this is it.

And that next day you moved in. That's crazy.

It's crazy.

When was this?

April 1st of 2017.

Oh, my gosh.

Or 2018. Yeah. So it was like.

It's like right after the mastermind.

That.

Yeah, yeah, that next year.

And it was like. And here's the thing that's so wild about my journey because, you know, one in four women experiences pregnancy loss. Is that when you're in it, I mean, it is dark.

I can imagine.

And I often think about. It's like if you were like, walking through, like, a warehouse and it's just like, pitch black, and you're literally just like, inching step by step. Like you don't know where you're going. And it's like you just. You have a flashlight so you can only see, like, directly in front of you. And once you get through it, it's like somebody turned the lights on and you see where you were and why you were there. And I hate the line. Like, everything happens for a reason. Because when you are in it, there is no reason. Yeah. There is no reason why that happened. But our, like, three year waiting season, I can see now, with hindsight, was required for me to build a life that supported what I was waiting for.

Really.

When I first was pregnant with my first pregnancy, I was shooting 25 weddings a year. I remember we were in Hawaii and I looked up the due date and I was like, I can't be due. Then I have, like, four more weddings. I mean, I, like, have to cancel on these. Like, I literally was Like.

Like you were sabotaging your body.

It was like, I didn't know how I would do it. You know what I mean?

Like, your body's like, we're not gonna let you do it then.

Yeah. Like, it's crazy. And then the second time around was a huge wake up call because I found out that I had lost the baby, but my body was still pregnant. And I had to show up and shoot a wedding the next day.

Oh, my gosh.

And so I had to pretend like I was the happy, you know, the happy wedding photographer. And so when I look at those losses, they were massive teachers in my life. But by the time I was pregnant for the third time, I had built a life where I was able to move and I wasn't tied to anything, and I had no clients to answer to, and I had built that. And so there's this quote that I heard from a preacher. And it's like, sometimes the season of waiting is just as important as what it is that we're waiting for. I think a lot of people find themselves in seasons of waiting, and it's really easy to want to, like, twiddle your thumbs and just sit there. Right? Like, just wait and wait and wait. But I think we waste it. And it's like, I worked while I waited. And I don't mean, like, I hustled. I worked towards the life I wanted for when the time came, and it was so evident when it happened.

That's inspiring.

It's a crazy story, and it's one that I don't tell often. And there's a line in my book that says, like, okay, I know this story is wild, but, like, you don't have to move zip codes to start living more into yourself. One of the things I realized after that vision was, my vision was jeans and a white linen shirt. And I looked down, and I was wearing sweatpants and, like, a college T shirt. And I was like, you know what? Maybe I just start putting on the jeans. Maybe I don't have the baby and the pancakes and the Persian rug, but maybe I can just start dressing the way that I would dress if I was vibrant and alive and healthy. Maybe I just take a tiny step of becoming. I can't control the outcome of having a baby, but I can control showing up as a more vibrant version of myself right now.

Absolutely. You said during the season. The dark season.

Yeah.

That it's hard to think about. This is all happening for a reason. Right. What do you think we can think about during a dark season? If Someone deals with anything dark in their life, how should they be processing or thinking about it as opposed to, oh, well, maybe this is happening for a reason.

I don't think that. Yeah, I agree. I don't think that language is helpful. Helpful when you're in it. Right, Right. Because there are so many tragedies and things that shouldn't happen or that you shouldn't have to experience. There's this line in my book that talks about grief because we talk about it, and it says that a lot of times people want to move on from grief. You're waiting for life to feel normal again. You're waiting to feel like yourself. And I say grief isn't something that we're meant to move on from. It's something we're meant to move with. We're meant to pick it up and carry it with us, even if we're inching forward like we're getting stronger because of the things we've been through. You're not meant to come out on the other side of grief the same person you were when you went into it. Right. Like that. What a wasted opportunity for tragedy. And in my life, loss has probably been my greatest teacher. Right. Like, I look at those, like, lost pregnancies and I'm like, they were, like, somehow, like, looking out for me. And it doesn't mean that it wasn't hard or that I. I literally think about those babies every single day. But if I wasted that and, like, didn't use it, that would be a real loss.

That's the tragedy. What was the. The habit or the sweet switch from one year to the next that started to bring in more abundance financially? Not in a incremental 20%, but it was like, boom. This was 5x10x. What was that habit or mindset shift for you that started to develop more income?

So there's like the science and the art, kind of both sides. So, like, the science side is just the leverage. So the amount of money you make is proportional the amount of leverage you employ in your life. And so, you know, four types of leverage. This is not mine. This is Naval Ravikant's, but I'll just say that. So you've got labor, I call it. I use four Cs because it's easier for me to remember. He says labor, I say collaboration. So funny that you said that earlier. But it's just getting other people to basically use their time right for your cause. The second level of leverage is other people's money, is getting people to invest in your thing. And Then the next two are. So these two are permissionless. The first ones, like you need to get someone's permission to work for you. You need to get someone's permission to give you their money. The other two are permissionless so you can do them on your own. One is media, which is what you have here. Because the cost of making one video and having one person see it versus a million people see it is the same cost. And then the other is code. Right. So I say content and code. So there's my four Cs. So collaboration, capital, content, code. And those are not binaries. It's not am I using other people? Am I not using other people? It's to what extent am I using other people? Do I use other people's money, yes or no? No, it's how much of other people's money am I using? And so each of these are continuums, not binaries. So like somebody could just use other people's money and be a billionaire because of the extent they use it. But those are the types of levers that exist. And so as my income went up, it was by proportion of the amount of leverage I was employing.

Really?

How were you, what of these four were you leveraging the most?

So in the beginning I had no leverage because I was an employee. Right. I was using my own time. The next thing that I started doing was I became self employed. Right. So I had a little online training business that I started in between my quitting my job and starting the gym. And so when I started the gym, I started getting labor. Was the first people. Yeah, not a lot of it, but I got some of it. And so that gave me that first.

Next year I went from part time interns.

Yeah, yeah.

I went from $5,000 a month to I think about $30,000 a month. So that was the, that was the big jump. It was just I had a team, you know, I made a small team, but I had a team.

Right now that's overall in revenue. That's not your take?

No, that's sales.

You might have been losing money or whatever we made.

I was probably making 20,000amonth at that point.

For yourself?

Yes.

After expenses, team and everything.

Yeah, that was then. And then what did that feel like.

Going from 5 to 20, did that make you feel something different? Was there a shift inside of you when you took that action?

Because for me, when I started this, it was all about vanquishing my father. So it was all about. I was Middle Eastern father, only child. So like I was raised by a Single dad, it was just me and him. That was it for the vast majority of my life. And so he's Middle Eastern, came here with a thousand dollars, became a doctor. He was a doctor, Came here, learned English from watching television. You know what I mean? Has the American success story. Absolutely.

That's amazing.

And so I was born here, though.

Speaking of the language, too.

French was my first, actually. There's a whole story around it, but anyways.

But yeah, French is your.

Yeah.

How many languages you speak?

That's the best one. I'll just leave it at that. But all of it was about making him proud. Right?

That's what you did you set out to do?

That's what I was trying to do. And then I think that throughout my, like, adolescence, I realized that it was something that was always going to be withheld from me. So it didn't matter what it was. The goalpost would always move so that.

It would never be proud enough.

Right. And it was just. And it was because he wanted the most out of me. And so, like, if I got, let's say, you know, a 99 on a test, it wasn't congratulations, it's, what'd you get wrong?

Oh, man.

Right. And that was always what it was. That's okay. Like, I. Yeah, we're cool. I'm very happy with my life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I realized that. And so this desire to gain approval turned into a very deep anger and.

So towards the world, him, yourself, other people, mostly him.

Mostly him. And most like him and myself probably split probably 50, 50, you know what I mean? And so it was like my earlier, I'll say quote, success was purely fueled by rage. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't like angry, it was rage. You know what I mean?

I was in the same boat.

Yeah, yeah. And it was like. And I. But there was probably some element of me that just like, almost enjoyed the suffering because I just would get in the space. When you ask, how did I feel by getting the extra 20,000amonth? First my goal was to make as much as my dad, and then it was to make more than my dad. And then it was to make more than my dad had ever made his whole life. And so once I had done that, the, the. I wanted the success to be unquestionable. Like, it couldn't, There couldn't be a. But there couldn't be an asterisk. It had to be so undeniable that. That vanquishing was the word. Right. And so for a five year period after I quit my Job my dad did not support. He didn't support me quitting my job. Why not?

Even though you were making money and building a business and.

Because he didn't. He's like, you're. What are you, a gym owner? Like, he's like, you went to Vanderbilt, you were on a management consulting. Correct. You like, you got, you know, you got above Harvard's mid score for your.

You could have had an incredible career.

Of course. Right, right. Gym owner doesn't sell well in cocktail parties. Right. What do you say? You know, he's, he's figuring himself out this little gym as a side thing about it. Right. And so, and I mean, I made plenty of mistakes too when I had the gym. So it wasn't like all, you know, sunshine and rainbows for me. Like, I had a lot of, of mess ups that I did. I got into bad partnerships. I mean, like all the things that you could possibly do. And over that five year period of me scaling to six locations with my, with my facilities, at the end of that whole thing, I ended up losing it all. Really. Yeah. Lost everything.

Six locations, Lost the whole business.

Well, I sold five of them. I shut one of them down because I wanted to start doing this gym launch thing, which would be like flying around, doing turnarounds because I started. That's when I met Layla.

You find a gym that's kind of like not succeeding and turn it around and you do a makeover.

Exactly. Bar rescue, Same exact thing.

Should have done a TV show with it.

Believe me, the many regrets I have. Right. That would have been an awesome one. We did 32 turnarounds.

Wow.

It was almost two years. Yeah. And so we started doing that anyways. I lost everything because I took all the sale money and I put it into my last location. And then the partner that I had there siphoned the money out because I was like, yeah, I'll put all the money from the sale of these gyms into this thing. It doesn't matter. It was my own mistake. It was on me. But it was even then. It was, you know, we'll see how like this isn't real. Like, we'll see. And then once I started, once gym launch really started taking off, it wasn't until I think we did like 17 million in EBITDA, like profit take home. In one year, in one year that my dad, I was 27.

That's crazy.

My dad called me and he's like, are you sitting down? I remember like at this point we were like not talking too much, you know, What? I mean, maybe every few months, it'd be like a five minute phone call. And so I was like, sure, yeah, I got time. What's up? And he's like, you're gonna want to hear this. And I was like, okay. What? He's like, I'm sorry. And it was the first time he'd ever apologized to me in my life. And what's interesting to me, though, is that it didn't feel like anything. I didn't care.

Why not?

Because I had stopped caring about what he thought about me a long time ago. And it was like, when I quit my job was the day that, like, I. I accepted dying to my father because very much to me at that point was. I was really, really sad at that point in my life when I had the job, because I had really done everything that he had wanted me to. I finished Vanderbilt in three years as president of fraternity. I had won writing awards. I'd done, like a bunch. Like, I'd done everything, you know, I mean, I was in. I was vice president of the powerlifting team, like, every club, all the stuff I could possibly. Yeah. While still being president. And did it in three years. Right. And got a management consulting job. That was, like, a good job. Had all the credibility, and it just. I knew it wasn't enough, and I knew that. And so I knew that the choice for me was that I either had to die to him or I had to die to myself.

Wow.

And that was ultimately, like, the choice that I put in front of myself. And that was whenever I was like, maybe I should just. I was like, die to him or die to you. And so that was what gave me the confidence to break that. And then I physically moved because I couldn't be in the same area. Wow. So I actually.

You were 23 at this point, or 20.

So I called my dad when I was, like, in Ohio, and I was from Baltimore. So I'm like, how it was for you? I called him when I was there, and I was like, hey, by the way, I'm doing the gym thing. He was like, okay, it's like, why don't you come over? We'll talk about it. Because he knew, because he knew that, like, if he came over with enough battering, I would be like, fine. I know this is a smart thing. I'll take the gym. You know, I'll apply to, you know, Booth and Harvard, whatever, and I'll get the. I'll do that whole thing. And that. Because that was a cycle. I just kept doing that, and I Was just like, no, I'm not gonna do it. So I was like, well, I can't. I'm in Ohio. He was like, what do you mean? And then the tone totally shifted, and he was like, you always do these crazy things, and you're always like. He's like, you're never balanced. It's always extreme with you. There's no middle path, blah, blah, blah. And so anyways, I. You know, I did that five years, gyms, lost it all anyways, and then started gym launch, and then that's when. And then that really took off.

Sure.

And then. But when he called me and he apologized, and this is where I, like, you know, I'm ashamed of myself, but, like, I could have just let it lie and been like, thanks, Appreciate it, you know?

What'd you do instead?

Instead I said, I was like, you know, when people get up on stage and they're like, hey, you know, they get awards, and they're like, hey, mom and Dad, I just want to say thanks so much for always believing me. I was like, I won't say that.

Oh, my gosh.

I was like. Because you never did. I was like, the only time you accepted me, I was like, is once every other person on this planet had accepted it, too.

Oh, my gosh, man.

And so that's. So I said that intense on the phone.

You said that?

Yeah.

What do you say to that?

He said, well, we'll see how long it lasts.

Oh, my gosh.

So that was.

He was still kind of in competition with you.

Yeah. And to be fair, when he apologized, he said, you know, I'm sorry. He said, but in my defense, if it had been in my time, I would have been right. And so, you know, but all that to say, like, I should have just said, like, appreciate the apology, you know, thank you. Because, you know, Tony Robbins said something that I thought was really impactful was like, for the vast majority of my life, it's been, like, how my father shaped me or whatever. But rather than thinking, like, what. What can I use from this dynamic? Like, what gift do I have?

Yeah, like, from his mother kind of, like, beating him or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. Like, what do I. Like, what do I. You know, they're blaming for the good. Right. And so, like, I have so many things to blame for good from that, and I'm very, very happy with my life. That is why $20,000 a month didn't feel significant to me, because the goal that I had, My expectations weren't to make money. My expectation was that I had to make more than he had ever made. And so I had a very big vacuum to drive towards, which I think in a lot of ways was a gift. Because, like, I blew past 100,000amonth, 500,000amonth, million a month. Like, I blew past those things because, like, it was never about having enough money for me. It was about feeding this monster. But once I got there, I realized that what I had done was set up a game to win by my father's rules. And so then I.

And you could never win.

Right. And to be fair, would I want to win a game that I was. Wasn't for me, it was making you suffer. Sure.

You're playing the wrong game.

I'm playing his game.

Yeah.

And so I did win, but I wanted his game, not mine.

Right, right.

And so that was kind of what I think making that realization was. It was kind of a. The slow shift that happened from there.

So when you won the financial game or the game of, like, I've made more than you in a month or year than you made your whole lifetime, how did that make you feel? And when did you realize you needed to start playing a different game? And what would that game become?

Okay, there was three questions there. What was the first one?

How did it make you feel the moment you crossed the finish line of the game of making so much more than he'd ever made in a short amount of time? Relief.

Because we actually got a relationship back. Not like, you know, I wouldn't say we have, like, sunshine and rainbow, but like, we have a functioning relationship. I would say it's role based. Like, I'm a fo, you know?

Yes.

But what happened was we are both very, like, strong personalities. And it wasn't until I think that he accepted me as often our relationship that we were able to kind of, like, move forward again. Because before that, my. Because my dad's. He's a doctor, so he's always had, you know, like, decent money. And I wanted to be beholden to no one, you know what I mean? Including him. Like, I didn't want his money. I didn't want anything, you know, and so I think I had to establish my own. I had to, like, really plant my own flag to be seen as a man in his eyes. And so I think once that happened, I think I felt there was some level of, like, there's no conflict here anymore.

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