Lewis Howes with Shane Mac

Hey everybody, we got Lewis Howes here today. He's the author of Linked Working, he writes a blog on lewishowes.com, and he's got something new in the works called the Sports Executive Association that's going to be coming out soon for everyone to look out for. You know, I reached out to you because one, you do the whole sports thing, which is awesome, and you kind of, you know, bridge the gap to the business world. But two, you seem like you really love what you do, and you know, your Skype tagline right now is "living the dream," right? So everyone always talks about passion, everyone talks about all this stuff, but what are you really passionate about? What drives you?

I guess that's the question I asked myself a couple years ago when I retired from football, because my main passion was playing sports. That's all I ever thought about in college, in high school, and, uh, my whole childhood growing up. The only thing I wanted to do was professional athlete. So that's what I did every day, was focus on achieving that goal. Um, after that was over, I ended up playing arena football for a little bit, so I got paid to play sports, which was my passion. But after that ended from a surgery and an injury, I tried to figure out what I was passionate about because I wasn't really sure after that. Once my main passion was taken away from me, I realized that what I did love was being with the camaraderie, the brotherhood, working with mentors, coaches. So basically just being part of a great team was what— and being competitive at the same time is what I was really passionate about. Those feelings, those emotions, those experiences. I realized that I can still share those, I can still have those same experiences, those same feelings in the business world by being competitive, having great mentors and coaches I can reach out to and strive to achieve a certain goal or create a certain product. That's kind of what I'm passionate about.

It's so funny you say that because honestly what happened to me is I broke 6 bones in high school, one. That was not cool. And I played football and baseball. I was never the all-star athlete like yourself. But baseball, I was pretty decent. I had the best batting average the sophomore year, and then I came back junior year and I got cut. And I thought, you know, I thought that's what I was passionate about. I thought that's what I really liked. And actually, that moment of my life, I joined choir. And at the time, it was like, you know, "Oh, you're a loser. You're joining choir." And all my friends, I was a jock. But that moment, now my friends are like, wow, you play music, you do all this stuff. And it's like, but it was because I did that moment when I got over you saying I was an idiot and then made them all realize that like we're all the same and it's just this little game. And then it wasn't even music, it wasn't even careers, it wasn't even sports that I was passionate about. It's exactly what you just said. Like, I can take all these experiences and then now I'm helping my friends get jobs. Like, now I help a friend who's having a problem here and like, I don't have all the answers, I don't have all the solutions and like the process of helping people and someone saying thanks and being a part of team, exactly like you said, I mean, it's 100% on point to exactly how I feel. And, you know, I don't think there is one passion out there or there is one dream job out there. And like, I like to do a lot of different things. And but like, relationships, I believe, are life. And like, that is kind of what I found in the last few years is like, it's all about that relationship you build with a bunch of different people and helping us all realize that we really are all the same. Yeah, a lot of us do a lot of different things and a lot of us do better things than others, but what you just said is awesome because it's kind of what happened to me. I just didn't have the all-sport, two-state college athlete professional part of it, right?

Well, I think you can really get anywhere you want. You don't have to be the most talented at something. You can be really good at it. And you can still achieve any goal you want if you have a great team with great coaches. So the relationships like you talked about are probably the most important thing in life because we really can't achieve the biggest things in the world or the biggest accomplishments without the help of others. And if you don't build up relationships with others, they're never going to help you along the way to get to where you want to be. So there's nothing you can really do all alone. On such a huge game.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. My new thing is called enabling others, and it's enabling others to see a path that they didn't even know existed. And that's what I say, that's like my tagline in my bio. Because it doesn't matter what I'm doing or who I'm with, but someone walks in the room all down, and you're like, "Alright, no, no, no, no, no, we can figure this out." And then when you do, and then all of a sudden you're asking questions, making them think like what they're doing is important, and then it is, and then they figure it out. And then everyone's like, "Yeah, we did it together." Like, I've learned, that's probably the biggest thing I've learned is like, how can you help other people see something that they didn't know was there and then help yourself? Like, I learn more from those who I teach, right? It's like, I don't have all the answers. And yeah, I think we're on the same page, man. That's really cool. It's like, there isn't something like, "Oh, I'm passionate about this," like one thing. I think it's more like, you know, working together to solve problems and kind of, you know, working to figure it out. But hey everyone, I'm gonna cut it there. This is Lewis Howes. He's the author of Linked Working. I'll probably go buy the book because I'm trying to get into LinkedIn more and I suck at it. So he's got a new thing coming out called Sports Executive Association. And hey, thanks, Lewis, for taking the time, man.

Thanks a lot, man.