THE TRUTH About How the RICHEST CREATE Their SUCCESS!

People that are very successful with money are constantly learning about money, see it as a tool.

So you're a pretty rich guy.

I don't like to use those terms, but I hear what you're saying.

Well, today we're going to talk about how the richest people create their success.

Okay.

So. Yeah.

All right, well, look, here's the deal. First of all, I guess the first thing I want to acknowledge is people that are wealthy are not necessarily people that are evil. There is. I'll tell you this. This past week, I was kind of unfortunate. You know, we did a. We do live events, and we did a live event in 2017, and it was the first Transform youm Live we had done. And during the course of that transfermu Live event, we had people that I let work with us as part of that event. Some as volunteers, some as volunteers, some as contractors, and some as team members. Right. So our team obviously was really well bought into the event, what we were doing and stuff like that. What most people don't understand is that was a very pivotal event for me. So much. So here's what happened. The night before, I was supposed to step on stage and teach for three days straight all of our TransferMU curriculum, or the bulk of it anyway. You know, I had some guest speakers that were even coming up that we had that were teaching some of my content, just because I didn't want people to, like, stare at me the entire time, because that's not what it's about. But as a result, what most people don't understand is the night before, I was notified by one of my team members of my flagship company that my former executive team was about to try to take my company out from under me. The one that I had spent the prior, what, 17 years at the time, 18 years at the time, building and putting into that, as you might imagine, I was in rare form. So this is the night before. And it's like something out of a movie because it was like, it was raining super hard. I literally got the phone call. My wife and I had just left the movie. And that was the first date night we had had in probably four months. Because, as you guys know, on the team, to put together a live event that actually does damage in a good way. Like, it actually is inspirational, is motivational, is educational, is empowerment. It's hard to describe what Transform youm Live is like right now. It's just hard to describe it. You'd have to be there to understand. But it takes a lot of work to pull that off. I mean, we're talking months, months and months of work to pull this off. And as a result, I had barely seen my wife. You know, she was obviously justifiably a little concerned. Hey, what about me? Right? Well, it just so happens we go out to dinner and a movie that night for the first time in a long time. And then at the end of that movie, I get a phone call and, you know, it's literally my team member, Hey, I don't know how I'm gonna tell you this. I don't know how I'm gonna tell you this. I'm like, dude, just tell me. And it was kind of funny because as he was saying that, I was actually thinking about, Like, I actually instinctively knew what he was about to tell me, which is kind of weird. You didn't.

Did you have any, like, signs or anything like that?

I mean, look.

It'S hard to say that I had direct signs. I had indicators. And I would. I would do my best to dig into the indicators, and if I didn't find enough evidence to pursue it, I would pause it, and then, you know, so I would address that at time. But for some reason, I instinctively knew what he was about to tell me, which is my executive team that I had at the time, I guess, wanted to basically take the company and essentially kind of build their own thing and whatnot. To be honest, I don't have a problem with people actually going on the marketplace and competing, but character and integrity come from how it's done. No one had ever come to me and said, hey, we don't like this. We don't like this direction, whatever. In fact, the two years leading up to that, they almost had free reign to run the business. You know, it was done over time. I didn't just say, here's the keys, good luck. It was like, you know, let's test your competency here. Let's test your competency here. Let's test your competency here. But inevitably, for whatever reason, call it greed, all of them were making well into the six figures, some double six figures in their overall compensation package. And, you know, my focus had been on getting a lot of men off the ground. So, that being said, phone call comes in, I immediately could take my wife home, hop in my truck, it starts downpouring, raining, go to my office, lock everybody out of the building, out of the computer systems, everything, because I didn't know how bad it was. The phone call just said, hey, look, so and so, so and so and so and so. This is what they're doing. They're currently trying to get so and so, so and so, so and so and so and so and so and so. All of them are planning on leaving literally tomorrow to go start their own thing, which I thought was interesting timing, knowing that I was about to step on stage for three days straight. Okay. All of that being said and done, I got maybe two hours of sleep because when I got home, my wife and I are on the bathroom floor and we're crying, holding each other's arms. And it was funny because I had about a two year notice where my wife had actually come in. And actually, now keep in mind, my wife and I were relatively newlyweds at the time. Karen and I have only been married, gosh, pushing. We're going on seven years now. Okay. And our love phase or whatever, our dating phase was like a fast and furious straight out of the notebook kind of like, like it was miraculous in nature, so we knew it was legit. But one of the first things that I did when I got back from Ireland from a trip that I was on was to actually walk my then girlfriend into the building and say, hey, look, I just want to, I want to introduce you to all my team members, right? Because I was, I, you know, I was super excited with the team that I had. And, you know, the company had been growing, we had a great reputation, we were making money, everything was in order. Well, my, as my wife goes, or now wife, Karen goes around the building and she's like getting to know everybody and, you know, hugging people and you have to be around Karen. It's what she does. She comes across my vice president and she sits down, or actually, no, we didn't sit down. She's just kind of. We were just talking and she just. You kind of saw this weird, vibrant woman that was like super, like excited to see everybody all of a sudden, kind of like, hey, like, what's going on? And when she kind of had that notion, I noticed that, you know, my former vice president went to go like kind of extend his hand to kind of say hello. My wife doesn't remember it this way. This is how I remember it. But she went to go shake his hand, kind of pleasantry wise, touched his hand and immediately, not necessarily jerked it back, but was like she got some kind of funny electrical vibe or something. Now she didn't know who's my vice president at the time. She had no idea. Right? Well, she kind of gets weirded out. We go downstairs, we get in the truck, we go to lunch. Because we're having essentially a Lunch date. Get in the truck. She goes, I don't know who the guy is. That last guy, that last guy in the office, the tall one. And she described him in detail from a physical appearance. And she goes, I don't know who he is, but he's dangerous. Get him out of your business right now. Now, here I am with people that have been with me for 12 to 15 years, okay? So some of these people that had been with me had. Literally, one started with me delivering pool tables. One was selling jewelry and insurance, okay? And the other one was a relatively new CFO that I'd hired, okay? So you take all of that kind of wrapped up into everything, and, like, what am I supposed to do? I'm like, you barely. You don't know them. You haven't been around. I can't walk in and just fire people. Just, you know, just because my girlfriend says I should. That's just, you know. So I try to discount it and play it down and stuff like that. Well, all of those moments came rushing back to my heart and mind all at the same instance while we're huddled up on the bathroom floor. Because I had built my entire career on trying to be of service, trying to be the market leader, all that kind of stuff. I had definitely trusted these individuals who had played a role in helping me build part of the company. And I couldn't, for the life of me, I couldn't understand why. I couldn't understand why was it like, they weren't making enough. I mean, quarter million dollars a year is a lot of money. You know what I'm saying? That's a tremendous amount of money. It's like, what was I. You know? So I went through this kind of, like, what? Why would. I wouldn't do this for them. Why would they? I just. I'm confused. Right? Well, immediately that comes rushing back, rushing back into my brain. And as a result, my wife and I are sitting there, I'm cuddled up to her, and I remember uttering these words, and I said, babe, I said, I'm so sorry for failing you. And you'd have to know, Karen, you definitely. My wife, she went into what we refer to as mama bear mode. She looked at me and almost yelled at me. She said, oh, no. Oh, no, you didn't fail me. They failed you. And then I uttered something back that in my moment of the greatest weakness that I can remember since being homeless, I said, well, maybe I should just give it to him because I was tired. I had already spent, you know, 17, 18 years building that company, you know, I didn't know if. I honestly didn't know if I had it in the tank to do it again. Like to literally not necessarily start from scratch, but I didn't know how far, how far I was going to have to start to rebuild. I didn't know if I was going to be all the way back and stuff like that. And she said, oh, hell no, they can't, not like this. No, we're going to fight. I'm like, okay.

I took some Benadryl to try to get some sleep and met everybody at the live event center the following morning. And I remembered, I'll never forget this for as long as I live. I had a friend of mine.

Her name was Dee. And she walked up to me at the beginning and I was tearful. I was like, you guys are both there. You yourself were there. Brian, who's behind the camera, who you guys can't see, were actually there.

I was actually attending.

Yeah, you were attending. That was your first event. That's right. You were an attending. And.

You know, Dee tells me, she looks at me, I go to give her a hug and of course, you know, I'm emotional wreck, you know, and as she's doing that, we, we have this situation where I go to give her a hug and she says, oh no.

Oh honey, where you're going next, this is the cost of the calling.

You can't get to where you're headed next without changing. Like without. There's going to be a work. And that's definitely the last thing that I wanted to hear. Now this is another reason because I'm being transparent. I'm just being real with people today. I can tell you that in that moment I was an absolute emotional wreck. I went from that very quick hug with a friend to literally clinging onto my wife behind the. It wasn't a curtain. We had like this wall behind, like on the opposite side of the stage. And I was literally, as we had a team member at the time that was acting, it was kind of doubling as our mc. And then we had made a pre recorded, pre roll of my announcing to the stage. Okay. And it wasn't like I hadn't done great things, meaning I had done some. I mean, I had built a company from homeless to that point. Maybe a $40 million company or something like that. $38 million company now to build it by myself. No, of course not. But I did kick it off the ground. I did get it going. You know, I wasn't in the day to day operations As a rule, that's not one of my strengths.

Well, I never forget this because I was literally hugging onto my wife. The announcement plays over top of the loudspeakers, the music's pumping, lights are flashing and doing, you know, doing the. Doing the, you know, doing the. We were intentional about our event. We set, you know, kind of the ambiance. And I literally remember walking up around the. The audience was here. I had to walk around the audience, down to the right of the audience, and then up to a small stage. Now, we intentionally kept that particular event, like 150 people. Like, it was intentionally designed to be high touch because I wanted to be approachable. I wanted to spend time with people and that kind of stuff. That was the original intent behind the event. I was an emotional wreck. I didn't know, literally before I actually walked up to the stage, I didn't know what my other business was going to look like. By the time I got off the stage, I was terrified. It was the scaredest I had been in a really, really long time. And I'll never forget this because as soon as my foot touched the stage, not the stage, but the stare to the stage, this overwhelming sense of peace started from the top of my head all the way down to my shoes. And I took another step. And it's like all the anxiety, all the fear, all the frustration, everything that was inside of me got removed from me for a moment.

The only other time I've ever had that sense was actually the litter box moment, which we just don't have time to get into today, which is how I found my faith to begin with. And then I proceeded to teach. But as I'm teaching, I'm literally going through this experience. I'm like, do I really believe what I'm teaching? Am I able to use this right now, in this moment and do what it set out to do in the name of the event? It's called Transform youm, of course, which is all about transforming others, essentially. And I was very fortunate because so many times during the course of the next three days. But even. Especially that first set of hours, because I had three and a half hours straight, I had three and a half hour windows to teach three of our core chapters of content.

And while I did that, and it was definitely connecting, I saw people in the audience who were crying. I saw people in the audience who were excited. I mean, I saw a ton from stage right.

I was able to answer without a shadow of a doubt, would I do this again? Would I use the same content that I'm teaching to, in this moment, to figure out what's going on. And the answer was absolutely yes. And I was so happy. Hindsight being 20 20, I definitely wasn't happy when it was all going down. But hindsight being 20 20, I was so happy that the answer was yes. Because the answer, if it had been no, that means I had been a fraud.

If, in fact, what I teach doesn't work where I can't use it in my own. My own life, which is where all the content came from to begin with, my experience, then I would have been a fraud.

I think what's interesting is that you had already spent 20 years applying what you were teaching, but you still had that doubt.

It wasn't as much as a doubt. It was that I missed. It was more like, did I miss something? Did I miss one of my steps? Did I not communicate something that I could use? For example, one of the frameworks we'll use, we refer to as the Grow framework. Now, GROW comes from a lot of different mentors that poured into me over time. One of the things we've learned a long time ago is that acronyms are easy for people to understand, and they're easy for them to kind of clarify where we're going. And as a result, we had this. I had in one of my journals and stuff like that. And that was funny, because I went back to a journal because you had actually come up to me and said, hey, why don't we call it Grow? And I had Gro in my journal already with the primary three steps, which is gain perspective.

That was all God, man.

Recognize roadblocks, organize a plan, and then work your plan. And in that moment, it's exactly what I was doing. I was being forced to gain perspective outside of the live event, outside of the thought leadership, outside of everything. And it seemed like every time we lifted a rock or Jeremy or some of my other team leadership team members that are still here to this day, every time we lifted something, we found something broken. You know, we had one of our former team members that was with us in that moment who literally had the hardest time understanding what I was under. He could not, for the life of him understand why I wasn't at the office every day, why I wasn't, like, making a larger impact, why I'd kind of had kind of put them in charge of the podcast, why they were interviewing people. And it was like, dude, you want to come walk a mile in my shoes?

He said, yeah, I want to do that. I think it'd Be important for the team. I'm like, important for the team or important for you? Important for the team. Okay, that's what you want to go with? Sure. Okay, fine. Meet me at my house at 4am tomorrow morning. 4am yeah, 4am he said that? Yeah, 4am.

Okay. By the time I got home from 4am to 1am of the following day, we had hit three states. I had been in multiple meetings, I had dealt with multiple customer service issues. As we're driving, I think he thought he was going to do like you like to do, is pepper me with questions. And he couldn't because my phone was steady going off right as I'm driving the miles, I'm answering emails.

I pray to God that's an experience I never have to go through again. But I think I learned enough from it. Where that experience is now settled in that it's difficult to understand in a moment's time what's struggling. Because inevitably what happened is about a week and a half ago, I had one of the people that was kind of a quasi attendant, one of the contractors, reach out to me through social media, somebody that I've known since high school. And for the life of me, I could not understand.

What was going on because he sent me this massive like.

Hate mail kind of. It was almost like hate mail is really what it was. Right. And you know, Journey principles, the institute itself was a lot of things to a lot of people. A lot of people believed in it, still believe in it to this day. Right. But. But in that moment in time, I gave my heart. I would go to Transform U and I would be there the first half of the day. I would get in my car, I would have to drive the truck and really drive all the way back to my main corporate office, figure out what's going on, what needs to be done. I mean, we later found almost $1.4 million of unaccounted for funds. Like we could not account for it. We looked at the P&Ls, we had a forensic auditor to come in. You know, we had a forensic company actually literally go through everything. Okay, we go through all of that and I'm under all this pressure. Meanwhile, I'm thinking about the team members that are sitting inside the seats at che. They had done nothing wrong, but yet their employment was going to be justified. And I later found out one of the quota offenders referred to the team members both at Journey principals and its Che as this collateral damage.

What had I done to generate so much hate? Right, that's from the former guys in this moment, this person is like, they're messaging me. They had asked me to work with us again. Unfortunately, their work was not up to par. We had to reshoot the vast majority of our center camera, which this person was running one of our cameras. And as a result, I walked out of frame. Well, if you walk out of frame, I now can't use the content to then help somebody else. So it cost us something, right? So this person reaches out to me, this is a couple months ago, and I say, hey, look.

He's like, hey, I see you guys are back doing things. You guys are growing. Can I please? I'm like, dude, I just, you know, I don't think we have a place for you right now. 1. I'm trying to keep the team small, right? Because last time I hired a very large team to try to pull this off. Burned through a lot of cash. My wife, believe me, still gets my butt about that all the time.

But on top of that.

He was a direct cause, or he or she was a direct cause of what it is. We had to reshoot it, delayed the project from completion, and made editing twice as difficult as it needed to be. And I was like, well, dude, I just don't. I wish you well. I mean, I love you to death. I mean, as a person, you're. You're a good dude, good girl, you know? You know, like, I kind of like, that was where I was in the process, right? And, you know, several months goes by, and the. You know, all of a sudden I get a message on Instagram. I'm like, you know, it's like, who do you think you are? God? Like. Like, it was, like, weird, you know, So I.

Messaged the guy gal, and I said, hey, I'm just curious. Like, where is this coming from? What have I done? What have I done to injure you so much that you. That you're like, you know. And they went as far as saying, well, you're never homeless. You were never this, you were never that. And I think I mentioned this in one of the other episodes is that there was this essence of, like.

They'Re straight up hate. And what it boiled down to end up being boiling down to is jealousy. Jealous that for some reason, they have yet to take a step for themselves to overcome many of their own roadblocks. Where myself, I've been working literally since I was probably 22 years old when I first started my first company, trying to overcome as many roadblocks as I could possibly find. And while this. Here's why I Mention that I think one of the greatest things that people that experience high levels of success do differently than people who don't experience success. And which I don't necessarily equate that to riches or wealth. However, typically the behavior equals a certain level of wealth creation. Okay. Is step number one is you can't listen to the haters. You just can't. I wanted. I even reached out to that, to that person on a couple occasions, two more times and said, hey, look, I don't know what happened. I mean, I said, yeah, I was absolutely homeless. You can check with my family. Like, I mean, they knew the homelessness was my fault. I never said that somehow I had some kind of dirt bag sandwich and that moved me that direction. I was my pride and my own ego, you know, that got me there.

Which in my opinion actually makes your story more valuable because you put yourself there and you got yourself out. You made an actual decision. You made a shift.

Well, I definitely made a shift. Now, again, my faith came a lot, became a lot part of that. But in this specific moment, apparently what I said resonated. It's not hard to back check my story, right? This person had insinuated, because we went to school together, they had insinuated that I in fact had graduated high school. And then I'm like, you should pull your yearbook out. Am I in the senior yearbook?

Couple days go by.

No. Okay, so what justification do you think you have to question my story when there's a two year window when no one from our high school circles knows what I was going through or what I was facing? I say all that to say that people that are super successful and I share these stories really comes down to two main qualities.

First of all, they don't let haters dictate where they're headed. You should never let a hater dictate where you're headed. Never ever. Never ever. The second one is a certain level of resilience.

I had a good friend of mine who's a good friend that actually interprets dreams and stuff like that. And yes, I'm into dream interpretations like that because so many of my life shifts have come through dream interpretations and dreams, which is crazy.

I didn't believe it until recently. We'll just leave it at that.

Actually, we should do a show on that.

Yeah, maybe another time.

Everybody message Connor through Instagram and ask.

Him why please don't.

That kind of thing. But, you know.

In that I've discovered that the process of getting to where I am has been nothing more than A process of overcoming who I was.

The wealthy people, the top 1%, the success people, whatever buzzwords you want to talk about. And I use the word buzzword lightly because, look, you can. You can have all the toys, but also be in debt and act like you got it all paid for. And it not be paid for. That's what we used to refer to when I was in high school, and that was a long time ago. But as a front. You're fronting. You see what I'm saying? There's an element of humble confidence in people that are truly successful. They don't have to showboat. They don't have to grandstand. They don't got to prove it. I. I don't have to prove anything to anybody. I live my story. I know how true it is. Right. I know the principles that I learned along the way. I know the experiences along the way. I know the fruit of not living by those principles. I also know the fruit of living by those principles. And people who are super successful are resilient, they don't listen to haters, and they live by principle.

I mean, that's what. You founded this organization based on, the journey principles.

Here's the deal. I named the company the Journey Principles Institute. Not because of my first book, necessarily because I recognize that everyone is on their own journey.

If everyone is on their own journey, that's an independent life that happens to be interweaving between other lives around them.

The type of principles they live by or they're ignoring living by directly affects the overall outcome of what they're actually able to achieve, Period.

People who are struggling financially are not doing well with money. What little bit of resource they have, they don't strategically, historically know what to do with it.

Yeah, they're not using their money in.

The right way, nor are they taking the time to learn how to use it the right way. Hence, the people that are very successful with money are constantly learning about money, see it as a tool. Right? People who don't do really well with money, there's a handful of behaviors that follow them almost every time. Debt, buy it now, pay for it later.

The inability to have their savings or emergency fund. They're typically spending more money than they make because they're not actually using a budget to begin with. These are basics, right? This isn't, we're not getting into stocks, we're not getting into mutual funds, we're not getting into bonds.

But if you don't know how to do a budget, you don't know how to spend Less than you make. You don't know how to start working your way out of debt. You don't have the grit and determination to actually grow yourself out of a problem, Then you are always going to experience the semblance of the problem that you are living, which is why suffering continues. You see, most people are suffering right now because they don't know any better. They simply don't know any better. They don't know why it's important, what they need to do or how to do it. Which is why I create the Journey Principles Institute, because I want to merge their journey with principles that work. And if they apply the principles that work, then the sky's the limit. Right? I don't have to be Warren Buffett or a billionaire necessarily to help somebody who's barely making ends meet.

Well, I mean, you've built something great, almost lost it all, and rebuilt it three times.

Yeah, three times. And I learned something about each one of those experiences. You can't let one failure dictate the rest of your future. You just can't. You can't. I mean, had I done that, I would not have had the second chance with Steve. I would not be sitting here right now, nor would I have escaped the bridge that I almost took my life from.

And if you weren't sitting here right now, I probably wouldn't be, and neither.

Would Brian, who's managing the cameras right now.

We underestimate the overall power of our presence in the world.

Because we're not thinking past ourselves. When someone takes our life, it affects a family, it affects friends. It affects whether or not some people see them as being resilient or some people see him as giving up. When we don't protect our money, we create a problem for our family. Right? Instead, so many people that I see that are struggling financially buy cars first.

They want an Audi, they want a Porsche, they want to escalate, they want a whatever, and damn it, they can't afford it. They cannot afford it, but yet they go buy it anyway. And then they go, well, I really, really want to save up for a house. Really want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do that.

Good luck. Now.

You just put your many payments.

You just put your cash in what's called a depreciating asset. A vehicle, anything with a motor and brakes is going to depreciate over time.

I'm glad you taught me that lesson, because when I got my first car, just like $3,000 cash, and it's broken a few times, I've had to put some money into it. Hasn't been fun, but I'm glad that I'm completely debt free. I don't have to worry about that.

And you're already starting it way ahead of me. Right.

Homes, for example, typically appreciate or appreciate as an asset. In other words, they gain more value. I think I've mentioned on show my wife and I are building a new house. We're at the tail end of it now. The house that we're building now is our dream home. It has everything that we think we will ever want in a home. And I'm pretty much able to pay for that joker with the equity from the house we're living in, which is not like super like woo, woo, like you're not gonna see me on the Lifestyles of Rich and Famous, you know what I'm saying?

Because to me, it's more important, yes, to have a quality life, to be in a place of comfort, to have a level of fulfillment, have a level of meaning, to have some significance, to actually have those things. But the rest of my time on earth should be giving. Like I should be finding people who actually want it. That's why I get asked for money probably, gosh, 10 times a week in one way or shape or another, okay? And each of those times I say what I have. What I have is greater than money. Would you want it?

Do you know that only 1% of the people stick around for that next question.

Really?

1%? Yes, 1%. And what I have to offer them is the way to create it.

Create wealth, create money, create health, create relationships, create opportunity, create advancement, create passion, create purpose, create fulfillment.

You give them something that's so much more valuable than money, you literally give them the answer to how to create it.

Well, if you remember. So we had this again, we're going a little bit behind the scenes. I apologize guys, because the video's getting a little long. But I'm telling you, there's things here that you need to understand and know. It wasn't that long ago that Steve Myrick's granddaughter came to this building and she got to see the seed that her grandfather placed in me. Now, Steve never got to see the vast majority of what has become the to date of my life. He and Susan Batts have no idea how much they impacted me and to what level the vast majority of the population would know who they are, except for the fact I talk about them all the time, every time I get a chance. Because while they were never, quote unquote on the lifestyles of rich and famous. I'm not saying so. Steve was wealthy, Susan wasn't. She was a hard working, blue collar, soccer mom kind of. Kind of personality type. Right.

They have equal value in my heart because both of them impacted me. Both of them helped me change things about myself. Both of them believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. Both of them gave me steps forward. Both of them committed to me. Both of them kept me, helped me understand bad relationships versus good relationships. Both of them kept reminding me of what my potential could be if I would just do the work and if I would just live by the principle, if I would just do it. And sure did. I go through a decade of, what do you guys know, Whatever.

But now every time I get on stage, every time I sit in front of a camera, every time I'm on a podcast, every time I'm on Clubhouse or Instagram or whatever, their names happen to pop up every so often, that's an impact. It is an impact, but that's the thing. Most people are striving so much for riches and success. They're not realizing they can make an impact now. And if they make an impact now, the success and the riches follows.

Yeah, I mean, I guess Susan Batts never would have even imagined what, that, what her pouring into you would have turned into, you know, you know, she.

Got to see some of it, not all of it. And here's so when it comes down to that's why, that's why I have such a hard time with the question, this is what the wealthy people do. This is what the poor people do. The only difference between the two of them is how they think and how they apply themselves. That's it. That's it.

That's it. There's no other secret sauce. There's no other secret. One lives by principle. One lives by habit.

One loves to study and learn. One's like, I'd rather watch tv.

One goes out and says, enough of this toxic relationship. I'm moving on. I've had enough of this. No one's going to talk to me this way. I know my standards, I know my security. And the other one says, well, I guess this is all I'm doing okay with. So much so that they get physically harmed in some cases.

When it comes down to quote, unquote, success versus quote, unquote failure.

It'S the way you think and apply. It's the way you show up every day.

What principles do you use to guide your financial belief? What principles do you use to guide your relationships? What principles do you use to guide your spiritual nature? What principles do you use to govern your emotional body when you get freaked out?

And if you don't have an answer to any of those questions, that means you're probably not living by any principles at all. And what happens if you do?

You end up where I ended up. In a very dangerous place full of searching for hope and never finding it. Searching for advancement, but never finding it. Searching for fulfillment but never finding it. Searching for a relationship, a valuable one, but never finding it.

How do you break that cycle?

It's simple. You learn. You follow our. You know, for lack of a better word, one of the first chapters that we teach in our curriculum is to grow framework. You have to learn to gain perspective. You have to learn to look at yourself with a different set of eyes because it starts with you. You're not going to change your behaviors until you change how you think, and you're not going to change how you think until you understand what needs to be changed and what needs to be not, for lack of a better word. So grow framework is gain perspective. How many different ways can I view this? Can I go to a trusted friend and out, hey, what are my blind spots? You know, I had a friend of mine, in fact, I just asked Evan just the other day, and I have no shame, I have no shame in my game about this. So I was very fortunate to be on a zoom call with Evan Carmichael. And we were just talking life.

And when you start set out to make a personal brand and your actual goal was to make an impact, in other words, I don't need to be a shining star. Right? I just need to be impactful kind of thing. And Evan knows that about my heart. Like, I think that's one of the reasons why he's been, he's. He's been so instrumental in helping us build quality relationships with other people in this marketplace. Okay. As we're doing that, one of the things I'll never forget, one of the things he mentioned to me was because I said, evan, what are my blind spots?

What do you see outside? Looking in from a brand perspective? Because now, and Evan's connected, Evan himself is a major thought leader. We're talking three plus million people follow Evan on a consistent basis.

Evan Carmichael.

Okay. Pretty legit. We're not talking about just a run the mill, anybody kind of thing. Right? Somebody who's trying to figure their stuff out. Right. You know, I've watched Evan push our mutual good friend Mark Drager really, really hard on a clubhouse call. So much. I was like, dang. When I was hearing that earlier, I.

Was like, oh, my gosh, he's really tearing into him.

But Mark Drager's turned out to be one of my best friends. I love that guy, right? Because we're all on the same journey. But I asked Evans, what's my blind spot, man? What am I doing that maybe would prevent any of these people you're connecting me with to partner and work together and come up with a better way to serve people and stuff like that? He said, honestly. He goes, man, obviously I don't study your brand, but everything that I see is going really well. Your Instagram looks great. Your YouTube channel numbers look great. It's clear that people resonate with you when you speak and when you share. I know you got Transform youm Life coming up. I'm excited about that. Right. You know, because he's going to be part of that. And he goes, honestly, dude, I think you just need to keep going.

Now. That's fantastic. Had he told me, just keep going, I was like, okay, I'll keep going, right? But he took it a step further. Watch out for this. Make sure. Make sure that all your livestream stuff, right? You know, one thing he's been on me about, he and others have been like, dude, we need to see you on more Instagram lives. People need to see your heart, right? Your social posts, your video clips, the stuff that we do, like this all that's great. They get value from it. He goes, but people need to. They need to sense who you really are. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go into your comments in your Instagram, find somebody that gives you a meaningful comment, and I want you to offer them 20 or 30 minutes of live coaching on Instagram Live. And just work with them. Just do what you do.

By the way, guys, if you're watching this and you want to get in on that, you can leave a comment below this video as well. We check that as well.

Apparently, we're starting this.

I just decided you cool with that.

He absolutely told me that. But that's an example of having someone that can help you gain perspective. Okay. Successful people are always looking at roadblocks as not places of resistance, but something to build from. So when I look at a roadblock, for example.

Roadblock for the live event center we have, I don't like the backdrop. Not for our virtual live.

Oh, because of, like, the, like, weird shapes and stuff.

Well, it's not really that. I mean, it's just it's not really set up to have thousands of people behind me on these little screens or in front of me on these little screens. It's just not. It would take away from the experience that I want people to have when they come to our events. Right.

I want them to feel four things when they come to our stuff. Seen, valued, heard, and appreciated. I want them. Every single person we connect with, every last one of them matter to me. You know that I pushed you last week for getting back, not getting back to a client customer who trusted us. You know, customer service cannot be dead if you're gonna be. If you're gonna be in a personal development space, customer service is a number one. People need to know that we're legit because either we are who we say we are or we're not. And I refuse to be a fraud. But when you look at these different things that gain perspective. See, I got somebody looking this way. I got somebody looking. I'm looking inside. I'm journaling. I'm asking myself questions. My first book came out of one question. What does it take to change the essence of Stephen? I didn't like who I was at the time. I didn't.

I would come across arrogant, would mean to. I would come across overdriven, wouldn't mean to. I'd come across as somebody who refused to listen, didn't mean to. And all of those things, I had to own up to and say, okay, those are things I know I can do better. And then I started learning from other people. How do I make these things better? You know what I'm saying? Then you got organize a plan. That's just all. Organize a plan is. Is defining what steps you have to take to get to your ultimate destination. That's it. The W stands for work, your plan. So if you want to know what the rich people do versus the poor people do or what the successful people do versus the people who aren't successful, if that's what you want to know. I just gave you the framework.

You can go to the website, too. I'll put that in the description as well.

Yeah, I mean, you can totally do that. But essentially, look, we've got a step by step process to help people do that. Step by step. Because different people have different starting points, and because they have different starting points, not everything is going to work immediately for everyone in a specific field. What makes us unique, I think, is the way in which we break things down based on their starting point, utilizing the same principles, no matter what their starting point is. And As a result, we are able to. It sounds cliche, but take people from stuck to unstoppable. And again, stuck is nothing more than not making progress. Unstoppable is nothing more than always making progress or consistently making progress. And as we do that, and as you actually partner with us on this journey, no matter where you're at, I want to see you. I want to help you. Our team wants to help you. We want to see you. Happy to do it. You can go to our website, you can check out, you can take all the free content you want. Doesn't hurt my feelings. As long as you're continuing to grow, I want to see you win. I want to see you win in your life and I also want to see you win in the marketplace. So, I mean, those are the key factors in what we're about. And I think if you follow those principles and use the stories. I was just as vulnerable as I could possibly be about one of the the most difficult things in my life that I literally thought were going to take me out. I literally thought I was going to have a heart attack three times. So much so that I went to the ER twice. Wow. I didn't know that because of the pressure that I was under at that time.

But the people in which I was leading, it was not their fault. And I was going to do everything within my power, everything within my power to make sure that I did my best to protect them to the best of my ability. And in some cases I did a really good job. In other cases, I didn't do so great, but I was trying.

So how do rich people get rich and how poor people get unpoor or whatever terminology that would. The question came in. I think first of all, you got to get real with yourself. You got to put the growth framework to work for you. And then you can't look back. You just have to keep going. Hope that helps.

Sounds good.

As you can see, your questions are important. Do me a favor and drop your questions in the comments section below to make sure we can answer your specific questions. In the meantime, you're probably going to check out this video right here. So check it out. The most important thing that you can do to be productive is to eliminate distractions.