11 Mins of Advice That Will Blow Up Your Business

Oh man.

I.

I can't thank you enough for being here today. I went through this process recently. So for those of you guys who don't know I'm a person of faith, we got a lot of great speakers you guys are going to hear of. But I've been going through this process recently. It's like, okay, well, what information am I really called to deliver?

What am I really called to serve? How am I called to serve? How am I uniquely qualified at some level to teach something that's deeply meaningful to people?

And as I've been going through that process, we spent the last several years talking about life mastery. So a lot of events that I've done called Transform youm Live and Unstoppable Live, and these other events have historically been about life, life mastery, which is great. The trick is, or the interesting thing was, is as I looked around at all the people that I was hanging out with and all the people that were coming to me for various levels of advice, and all the people that I was texting at the wee hours of the morning or the wee hours at night, or getting on last minute zoom calls because something's going on. As I was going through all of that, one of the things I began to see really quickly was that they all had something interesting in common.

They were all either an aspiring entrepreneur or very much an early stage entrepreneur.

And this entire time I thought I was called or qualified to talk from a life place because a lot of times when I've been interviewed on different platforms and stuff like that, it's been about the homeless journey. How did you go from homeless to building a business and, and da da da da da da. Now I'm thinking to myself, well.

Is that really the story?

Is that what really what God did through me or with me so that I can then give that to someone else? And if you're not a person of faith, it's cool, like no harm, no foul.

But as I'm going through this, I'm beginning to understand a greater level of what I think I'm called to do. And then I had this other interesting epiphany.

If the people who are coming to me looking for help and assistance are doing so from a specific place of understanding, a specific place of longing, a specific place of wanting to scale and develop and grow specifically in the realms of business.

Then I feel like I have something I can offer.

And while I do get a lot of credit, and I will tell you unjustifiably so, from my perspective for building a homeless, a Business from going from homeless to well into the eight figures, approaching nine figures at this stage in the game. There are so many failures along the way.

So many, so many massive mistakes that coulda, shoulda took me out. Even now I remember some of them.

And I think.

I think there's something there.

And then I popped on the Google, right? So if you're as old as I am, you're almost at the place, you either call it Google or the Google. And I said, okay, well Google, since you're the know all, you're omnipresent nowadays. What's, what is there?

So I did a quick search.

And when I did that, it surprised me. It shocked me even.

Because I didn't know this at the time. But over the last 25 years, from when I started my first business to all the way to the place it is now, and the other businesses that are now connected to it or revolve around it are somehow approaching it.

Something interesting occurred.

I discovered that 670,000 businesses started in 2019. 670,000 businesses, 670,000 people took a step of faith that says I'm going to try to make a business, I'm going to try to scale an organization. I'm going to try to do something for my family, I'm going to try to do something for the marketplace, I'm going to try to do something for the community.

And two years later, only 20% of them survived.

I took that for granted because as a business owner myself, I got lost in the day to day, right? I wake up at 5am every morning, I head to the gym, I get a shower at the gym, I do my podcast, I do my own personal development routine, I get my vehicle, I drive on down to the building and I start my day. I have my C suite meetings and I have my drives down to Charleston and these other markets and places that we have business. And I go meet the customers and shake the hands and quote, unquote, kiss the babies and doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it on a regular basis.

And lo and behold, I look up 25 years later. 1998 was when I drove the first nail for the construction business that ultimately provided the avenue for me to be here with you guys today. I look up 25 years later.

With my own, with one of my team. Like my nearest team member that is still working with me today has only been with the company 12 years.

That means I've got 13 years of history before my single team member actually like has a reflection of kind of where we've been and where we came from.

And then I began looking at things. I began thinking, okay, well.

Why.

Outside of my faith in God and all that, and how did. Why. Why me? Why did my business succeed when so many others had fallen or failed?

Did I do something different? Did I think differently? Did I strategize differently? Did I take different steps? Did I. What happened?

And then I got a message on Instagram.

And I'm weird. If somebody messages me and they're not asking me to buy followers and somehow scale my Instagram or whatever, and they ask a sincere question, I'll take the time to answer it. And so I was down in LA and I was filming something that just. Actually just got released yesterday on Instagram with a boxer video and some stuff like that. So hopefully you guys will enjoy that. But I was done with the filming for the day. I went to the hotel. I walked in the hotel, I sat down at the little restaurant, I started to eat, and I got this message. This guy says, hey, look, you don't know who I am, but I own a tanning business. Now, when I say a tanning business, I don't mean, like, your skin. I mean, like, he goes and takes deer carcasses and takes the skin off and tans them.

And he goes, you know, I don't. My business isn't, you know, normal and whatever. And I don't. I don't know how this is gonna help or hurt or whatever. I'm like, well, what's your question?

Well, I have all my product, I have my buyers, but I don't know how to price it.

I'm like, you don't know how to price it? What do you mean, you know, you don't know how to price, like, your cost, your margin, like, you know, add it together, and I discovered something interesting. The things that I now take for granted are things that I had to learn along the way.

A few weeks later, he messaged me again through dm. He said, you know what you should do? I've been watching your content. I've been following you on social and stuff like that. I love the content. However, what I think you should do is I think maybe you should help people like me who need help starting and growing a business from the ground up. That's what you need.

And then I went home and I went in my closet, which is where I choose to pray, and I sat down and I said, maybe this is this what I've been searching for.

And one of the ways I know that it can be good Is because if the content creation flows, so if I can sit down at a computer and.

I know that I'm onto something, if I had to sit down at a computer and slowly, man, what am I thinking about?

Then? I know it's not for me. Some would call that operating in flow. And I sat down and I began. And I began reflecting. Okay, well, this almost took me out of business. This almost took me out of business. This almost took me out of business. This almost cost me my marriage. This almost cost me this. This almost cost me that.

There's stuff there.

So then I began doing more research.

And as I researched, I looked at all these wonderful programs. There are hundreds of seminars, courses and programs and things that an entrepreneur can benefit from. And all of them are great programs and they have their place and they're, and they're strong at what they've got. The one thing that.

Was missing.

Was what about the entrepreneur that hasn't broken through the seven figure ceiling yet?

What about that entrepreneur? Are they any less valuable than one that has? Are they any less valuable to the economy? Are they any less valuable to the people and the places and the things that they can impact uniquely?

And as I began digging through that, I began understanding that there's a greater purpose behind what has now become unstoppable startup. Now, unstoppable is a term we began using because we used to have. We actually have a podcast that we interviewed great people on. We've even had. I'll talk about it a little bit later, but even the co founder of Netflix and some other people on it's called Stuck to Unstoppable, right? My theory is if you're stuck, the only reason you're stuck is because you're not making progress. And if you're unstoppable, all you're doing is making consistent progress.

The reason I chose the word unstoppable is because apparently when I was about three years old, my mother decided to name me Steamboat because I had two switches I had off and on.

And as a result, one of the things that happened was I began thinking, okay, really? All right, if I go to the core, the core of the matter of how I was able to build a business.

It'S not because I'm special, guys. I have a ged.

That is the extent of my scholastic education.

What I did have is I had immense resilience.

And I can promise you there have been thousands of times where I wanted to give up.

And if I could inspire one of you guys, just one of you guys, not to give up on your dream, your ambition, your business, and instead give you practical steps to build it.

That the marketplace just really isn't really sharing.

Then we could do some really cool stuff in the world.