How I escaped rock bottom & changed my life

People think greatness is about achievement. The wins, the titles, the numbers. But for me, it's always been about something deeper. Becoming the kind of person who shows up even when no one's watching. For over a decade, I've sat across from the world's most inspiring minds. Athletes, scientists, authors, healers, seeking to answer one question. What is the definition of greatness?

Greatness.

Greatness. Greatness. But this time, turning the cameras around. For the first time ever, you'll see what really happens behind the scenes. The raw, unfiltered moments that never make it into the podcast. You'll meet the people who make it all possible and get a front row seat to how we build greatness. One conversation, one challenge, one day at a time. This isn't a highlight reel. It's the real thing. The process, the pressure, and the purpose behind it all. This isn't just about the wins. It's about what happens in between the messy human stuff and the part that no one sees. And I've built a life around helping people unlock their greatness. But now it's time to look at my own. We started the Summit of Greatness ten years ago. It was a dream and a vision of mine to bring the podcast to life, to bring a community of people from all over the world that listen to the show, that watch the show to come together. And so we wanted to do an event and we called it the Summit of Greatness. There's a place every year where dreams come true for individuals. So where we're gonna go next year is the Dolby Theater. This theater is one of the most iconic theaters in the world. Actors, writers, directors, the people who've had dreams their entire life, they come true on this stage. For whatever reason, every Summit of Greatness, I'm always concerned if anyone's gonna show up. I think that's like my biggest fear. Like, we've put all this energy, we've been marketing it for a year, we've been selling tickets, but I'm like, is anyone gonna show up? I have no idea. So I'm always kind of a little bit anxious about that and worried. I'm really grounding myself in making sure that my energy is calm, is collected, and is prepared. So for me, it has to start with my presence, making sure I feel peaceful, calm, ready to go. Let's go, let's go. We got a video to cue it. I'm feeling extremely grateful for the thousands of people who have shown up. So many people have flown from all over the world, have invested their time, their Money to be in Hollywood to experience this moment of greatness. So I'm so grateful, excited, and ready to go. Also, the gratitude I have for the greatness team, everyone behind the scenes who has been working for the last year to prepare this moment, have so much fun. So to be able to take a breath and look at everyone in this auditorium is such a beautiful moment. I'm grateful for all the hard work that we did to get here right now. 1, This is a powerful moment right now. But it wasn't always like this. I was born in a small town called Delaware, Ohio, about an hour north of Columbia. Columbus, Ohio. I was the youngest of four. For me, I always felt misunderstood as a kid. I always felt a little bit different. I felt alone. I felt very insecure, and I wasn't sure what my life was gonna be at all. And I think this feeling of being picked last, of being misunderstood, it drove me to want to be the best athlete that I could be. It drove me mad. I started playing football out of frustration, and somehow I was pretty good at it. This could be my ticket to accomplishing my dream of being a professional athlete. I broke a world record for the most receiving yards in a single football game with 418 yards. People were like, this is unbelievable. People don't get this many yards in a whole season, and you did it in one game. And so I pursued that all through college, trying to become the best I could be. This is my one shot. It's my senior year, trying to let go of all the pressures from my family, especially my dad. Mostly. I did play professional arena football, and that's when the injury happened and my football career ended. I think I was 23 or 24 when I broke my wrist. At the moment I was diving into a wall to try to catch the ball. Lewis Howes turns the jets on, and Lewis Howes takes it to the house. If I fall asleep, I'm gonna die. No, you're not. I wasn't really sure of my life at that point. My dream is now done, and I'm kind of grieving the loss of an identity that I had for so many years. I remember watching a lot of sports growing up with my dad. He was my baseball coach growing up. So this is a way that me and my dad can really connect. And he loved coming to my games. He loved helping me, coaching me, taking photos of me at the games. This is my boy right here. He brought him a lot of joy. So it is a way for us to bring bond. My dad got injured. My Senior year of college, and that was a challenging time. He had woken up from the hospital of a coma after three months in the hospital. But he never was the same person again. So I didn't have my father to really support me emotionally, physically. I didn't have a college degree. The recession was happening.

Employers cut 159,000 jobs in September.

This growing economy means that some entire.

Communities face an uncertain future.

Things may get worse before they get better.

You know, there's no opportunities for jobs at this time. So we what am I going to do with my life? And I had this negative thinking that was a victim mentality that, like, why did this happen? Why is this happening to me? And at the time, I was like, maybe I'm done with sports forever. Now I'm living on my sister's couch during this recovery time. And the 2008 Olympics comes on and I see handball for the first time on tv. And something sparked inside of me. It was like. A new dream emerged. It was like I was a five year old, and as I'm watching the Olympics, I'm like, wow, here's a sport that I was born to play. Maybe I can be an Olympian one day. And that started me off on a whole new journey. The best team was in New York City. I need to get to New York. I need to play with this team so I can make the USA national team and go to the Olympics. I did everything I could over the next couple years to make money. I found mentors. I started getting on LinkedIn. I started using LinkedIn to build relationships. I wrote a book about it. Lewis Howes, author of the book LinkedIn working.

Lewis, LinkedIn guru over here. Joining us, author and entrepreneur Lewis Howes is back.

I created a course about it. I started speaking at events about LinkedIn. How's it going? Lewis Howes here. And I'm hanging out in New York City at my sports networking event. There's over 350 people that showed up tonight. That gave me the resources to eventually move to New York City to pursue my dream of playing handball. And I show up every single week to practice. And these guys eventually start to bring me in. They eventually start to teach me and show me their ways, and they mentor me and coach me. Within nine months later, I made the USA National Team. Challenge was we hadn't qualified for the Olympics since 1996, and we didn't know the next time we would qualify for the Olympics. And now it's happening in 2028, where there's an automatic qualifier because we're hosting it in the usa. I was always inspired by athletes overcoming extreme obstacles. My dream is to interview the world's greatest minds and athletes, artists, people who have overcome extreme challenges and accomplished their dreams and learn about their mindset, learn about how they became so focused on their goals and dreams and accomplish them. I want to learn for myself and I want to start recording these interviews and sharing it with the world and inspiring other people. And I wanted to do an interview once a week with an inspiring person, this for one year and see what happened. And that has been 13 years now of doing this every single week, multiple times a week. And I feel like we're just getting started.

After a career ending injury ruined his hopes for playing in the NFL, our next guest spent two years broke and living on his sister's couch. What happened next is unbelievable. Within a few years, he was making millions of dollars in helping others achieve their dreams through his book and podcast, the School of Greatness. Please welcome Lewis House.

Lewis How Lewis How Lewis How. Lewis House. Lewis Howes. Lewis How Lewis Howes is with us. It's called the School of Greatness. Ready, Matt? Born ready. Born for greatness. Let's go, baby. Let's have fun. Man. Look at this. Look at that. It's epic. Incredible. Adobe. The award goes to us, All the biggest celebrities in the world. Are you in the back here, Devon, or no? Where are you going to be, the side or the back? All right, cool. I'm really just thinking about making sure everything is running smooth, smoothly and doing a full walkthrough. You'll hit that timing right. This slide here, I'm going to do Chariots of Fire when I have to do a little breakout. We have some amazing speakers and performers this year, from Andrew Huberman, Gabby Bernstein to Matthew Hussey, Dr. Tara Swartz. We have incredible performers. We've got Jojo, we got Max Major. We have so many cool people coming. A lot of other great guests. We're just excited about what we're about to create. Anything else? Matt, you good? All right, cool. Yeah, it's good. Gonna change that typo. That's nice. It's gonna be nice, Matt. It's gonna be nice. All right. Anything else Feel good? Just make sure the intro video is loud. That's all I hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. All right. Anything else before we let them in? Are people coming in? Check, check. Testing, testing. One, two, one, two.

30 minutes late.

Yeah, I got you. They can hang out milk and stuff though. That's the only thing, you know. Eggs I didn't need anything. You want a bar? I'm all right right now. Yeah. At the end of the day, when we are beginning the show, there's nothing else I can do to control that. We've done everything. Our team has done everything. We've done a great job. Yeah. I mean, it's not enough people in there yet. Welcome. Thank you. And so this time, I'm more thinking about. My wife is seven, eight months pregnant at this time. Got a smoothie for you if you want it. Thank you. While also trying to take care of this entire audience, the speakers, the performers, and everyone as well on my team. We're just under a thousand right now. Oh, checked in? Yeah. Okay. Are there people still outside or not? There's about 200 in line. Right. Okay, cool. Yeah.

And everyone's really excited to be here.

Yeah, it's gonna be good. No, we don't have to start soon. We can wait till they get old kid in. So we got time. We got a buffer, right? Like, how much time do you want to go, Matt? You know me. I'll do five, get them height. Can you do 15? We don't want to be too long behind. So we're gonna get them started maybe in five minutes, and then we'll tell you to keep going if you need to. That's it. Yep, pretty good. Your family's here. Very good. Yeah, you just lay here and relax. You can. We'll turn the volume up there. You can watch and listen here.

I am so grateful for you in my life. I didn't know, but I trusted that you existed somewhere.

I did have one. One final question that I wanted to ask, and I actually have never asked this question to anyone in 10 years of my podcast. I wanted to ask you. I was curious. That moment when I proposed on stage, that was, like, the loudest I'd ever heard in auditorium. It, like, erupted on my ears, it was so loud. Are you. Barely. You'll be good. Everyone's crying in here. Two big surprises today. I'm going to share one. Tomorrow, I'm going to share one. Yeah. Oh, my sword. So what's the gender? You have to wait and see. Wait and see. I know what it is. You guys don't know what it is yet. So the gender reveal on stage was something that I thought of kind of like in the last week leading up to summit. I thought, you know, we got engaged two years ago. Wouldn't it be cool if we did something on stage to kind of reveal the gender? Because we hadn't Shared anything online yet. There's going to be smoke and lights, and whatever you see is going to be the first one. So I'll say, everybody ready? And I'll go, 1, 2, 3. Okay. Thank you guys so much for your support on this journey. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Gracia. Give it up for my amazing wife, Martha. The smoke went up, we celebrated and had a hug and a kiss, and then, you know, went on with the event.

This man always astounds me by how big he thinks in everything he does. You know, he goes from theater. That is the most extraordinary theater I've seen. And that was his first. First Summit of Greatness event. And I did that one, I don't know, seven years ago, something like that. I haven't been back on this stage since, and now I'm back, and he's on the Oscars stage, which is so ridiculously.

Louis.

This was.

If I have helped you in any way and you come up to me and say hi, or you give me a high five, or you say thank you, or you give me a hug, I just think I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I have this opportunity to make an impact. That. See you in the morning. I don't want to be known for anything else than I helped you improve the quality of your life. I gave you some inspiration, some type of tool, or hopefully I was able to give you some wisdom that I've learned in my life. The day before Summit happened this year, one of the guys that runs the production company with us, he brought a little prayer that was called the Greatness Prayer. I wanted to start the day with a quick image. I'm going to throw an image up on the slide here real quick. I just thought synchronicities of this were really cool because he cut it out of a newspaper clipping that he got at his church. And that's something that my dad used to do all. All the time. He used to cut out newspaper clippings and send them to people in our city, in our community. I was reading it backstage the other day, and my sister. My sister started crying because she was like, he's here. And for me, I haven't felt his presence. I haven't felt his presence that often. And so to feel his presence here is a very special thing. And for whatever reason, I hadn't been thinking about my dad that much lately until this week. There were different things that were coming up that were making me think about him. So I used this as one of these moments of magic where I Wasn't planning to do this. I said, let's take a photo of this, let's put it up on the screen. Let me tell this story because the whole event started to be around the signs and, and synchronicities in your life. And maybe someone it'll resonate with, maybe someone it'll be a sign for them, whether that be to connect with their parents more or to think about something differently in their life. And for me, it was a special moment, thinking of my father, knowing that he's one of the reasons why I created this event 10 years ago. Love you, Enjoy. Weird to be small. So the signs are strong for me and I hope you're feeling the signs for you, for whatever you feel like you're meant to be doing in your life. And I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And I'm grateful for you for showing up here for yourselves, for investing in this experience, for continually growing in your life. I have a question I want to ask someone I've been picking on this whole time that I want to ask a question. Go ahead and stand up. Since the beginning of Summit, I kind of picked on one man named Rob in a loving way throughout the entire two day experience. Big Rob. Stand up. Big Rob. You made it. I made it. You made it. Okay. My wife brought me on here because she's always giving it back, right? So thank you. What's your wife's name again? Christy. Christy. How long you guys been together?

10 years. 10 years, married 10 years? Yeah.

What's the biggest relationship advice you guys have after 10 years of marriage that you can share with me or all of us?

I would say there is, there's nothing that you can't forgive. Nothing that you can't forgive. When you're faced with death like I am, it all melts away in the end. I can promise you that. Things that I never thought I would ever forgive, they don't matter now, you know, and so that really melts away. So you realize that there were all these layers that you thought were you throughout the years, and maybe they weren't. Maybe they were just my ego in the way. So when that's all melted away, it's just. It's just all forgiven.

I mean, that's huge. I mean, I wasn't planning to go here on this, but you said you're faced with death. Why are you showing up here or continuing to show up in different areas of your life if you're faced with death?

Because I think that it's important not what I'm taking. I think it's important what I'm leaving behind. So I need to leave a good example for my daughter. You know, I want her to see me live to the end.

Wow.

It's very important. I won't be around for all of these moments in her life. So the way that I can show up for her is by being present every day now until the end and not giving up. Absolutely.

Thank you guys for sharing. Man, I get chills thinking about this. I just thought what a beautiful thing to do to continue to live your life to the fullest. To show up full hearted, full spirited, full of generosity. That is a way to live your life even if you know you don't have that much time. It's just a very special thing to witness and I'm very grateful for that interaction. We have a special thing that we do after every summit of greatness, which is we do a highlight video. So at the very end of the event we've always done something where we share a highlight recap video. But I just want to come out here and say hi to you guys for a moment here. And I wanted to be in the audience and just connect with people as much as possible and remember this moment. First off, I want to acknowledge everyone who's worked here at the Dolby Theater, from the the staff to our production. Will James give it up to everyone. Thank you guys so very much. It's a beautiful environment. It's a beautiful theater. We don't know the next time when we'll be able to come back here. You know, we don't know if we're going to be alive tomorrow. So I just want to acknowledge the moment and the beautiful artistry of this theater. I also want to acknowledge my team, Team greatness, which is the greatest team in the world in my opinion.

Big thank you for team.

They've been working since last year summoned of greatness to make this happen. Every week we talk about you guys. Every week we think about you guys. Every week we're planning and designing to make this happen. So they worked very hard to make this happen. I'm grateful for them. And finally I want to thank my wife for beating my life. I'm very grateful for her and all the support she's given me. And, and then I just sat down and I said, we have our final video. Thank you guys so much for being here. Let's go ahead and watch the recap of the last couple days. And the video played and it was beautiful just to sit in the audience of the Oscar stage watching the movie of the last couple days where all the greatest stars go to watch others get the Oscar award who make movies. So it was a beautiful ending to a full year production of the summit of greatness. Every year the event goes by so fast. It's like. Sam. Then I go back into the green room and I can finally take a break because it's all complete. Let me go say hi to Martha real quick. You do it. I'm connecting with Martha. I'm celebrating with my team. Hey, we did it. Yay. High five. We did it. Diamond. Good job. Good job, good job, good job, good job. Three and a half months in, right? Yeah. Three and a half days in Summit of Greatness 2025. That's a wrap. New without. If you're liking this style of content, if you like this particular behind the scenes look, please let me know in the comments below. We're looking to create more of this, more of behind the scenes of the school of greatness. What happens? More of behind the scenes of my journey of pursuing the Olympic dream and now taking over the Los Angeles handball club. The more of my relationship with Martha, with our twin girls. There's so much happening in my life and if you're interested in watching or seeing more of this, let me know. If you you like this style of content, let us know as well. We want to continue to add value to you in many ways as possible. Hopefully this has added value to you today. Because I'm excited, I'm nervous because I wanted to clear I wanted to finalize all today because this is like a rare opportunity. I told him I like to act fast. We're going to do this. Let's make it happen in the next 48 hours. Make some photos and videos to be able to post on social media, music on.