“Why are you here?” came the voice screaming! ”I’m here because I want to figure out what my next business is,” I replied. The voice came at me again, “Raise your right foot for me. Go ahead and step forward. Both feet in.” Now I’m up to my knees in ice water. The voice asked again, ”Why-are-you-here?” I had the same response, ”I’m here to figure out how I want to continue to scale and make money.” Apparently the voice did not like my answer as I heard, ”Go ahead and have a seat.”
This time, they have me sit all the way up to my neck in a freezing cold tub of ice. Now I’m cold. This isn’t cold water. This is an ice bath. If you’ve never done this, you need to do this. Sitting in an ice bath is a skill that will follow you, and it will strengthen you. It’s the entire purpose that I’m telling you this continuous story. I’m up to my neck in ice water. I am slightly physically exhausted, but capable of doing the workout. I am extremely cold. It is that first 60 to 90 seconds of being in ice water, what you might or might not realize is, that it hurts before it numbs. And I was in the pain stage. I was physically exhausted, and now cold prickly needles all over my skin. “Why are you here?”, came the voice. I continuously gave the same shallow answer over and over. Only this last time they started to pour ice water directly on the crown of my head.
Now I’m just miserable. I feel like I’m slipping in and out of consciousness. I feel like my eyes are squinting closed to keep the cold water from making my eyeballs hurt anymore. I can feel the ice chips hitting the top of my head, and through the water, through the pain, through everything I hear it again, “Why are you here?”
I just broke down. The misery was unsurmountable. I answered with, “I don’t know what the fuck you want me to say.” They lifted my blindfold to an iPad opened up to Facebook with a picture of my family. In that moment, in that second, I began to cry, and I uttered the words, “I’m here for them.” Finally, they stood me up. I started to crumple back down just a little bit, and they grabbed me to stop me from falling. Looking into the eyes of my Warrior coach the voice, his voice said, “That is your why.”
I share this with you, not because my why is relevant to you, but because that’s what I had to go through to see what my why truly was. I had to remove layers of bullshit and stories. I had to get beyond being physically exhausted. I had to shock my body through pain. I had to be suffering to realize the raw answer to this question: What is my why? Why do I hustle? Why do I grind? Why do I put in 18-hour days? Why am I relentless? Why wasn’t I willing to quit? When things got tough, why do I persevere? When companies all around me were failing in the ‘08 crisis, why did my company scale from my living room to 50 million dollars a year in sales? It was the girls in my family, my wife and my daughters. They are my why. They are the reason.
Now I’ve done some work since then, and I recognize that I have lots of layers to my specific why. My initial why, my sprint away from poverty and being 300 thousand dollars in debt in 2005, and my why for being a multimillionaire by 2010 was different. My why in those periods was to escape poverty and to change my family’s story. However, I realized that a person can only earn so much money. You can only own so many cars. You can only buy a certain caliber of house before it exceeds the need of your family. There’s a point where you get on your phone and think, “I want to buy something, but I have everything I want.” Literally you will spend $500, $600, $800, or $1000 just because you can. If you are like me, you will buy the dumbest shit. Then you’ll find out that those material items are nothing. They mean nothing. They bring nothing. They won’t make you happier. They won’t make you feel more fulfilled. They won’t lift you up. They won’t feed the lion. Savvy?
As men and women who are wired to hunt, or to pursue excellence, we are driven differently than the rest of the world. Few people are wired for this hunt; few are motivated to pursue growth and expansion to create the success they’ve envisioned. We have to be driven by a why that genuinely matters. Our why must be our passion. It must be so tied to our being that when we talk about it, emotions rise in our bodies. When I’m talking about these integral moments, like the moment that blindfold was lifted, I have to fight back tears. When I talk about my family, my past, and my history, I feel the wave of my emotions begin to overpower the dam I’ve built to conceal them.
I don’t cry all the time. In any circle you would place me, I would be considered a guy’s guy. I love guns and to hunt. I love to work out. I love to build things with my hands. I’m not the kind of guy that tears up very easily—until you get close to my why. That’s when you know you’ve grasped onto something that has true relevance. I’ve heard people reference things they care about. I’ve heard people explain their why, and it’s different than any other blasé conversation. If you’re going to succeed and if this book is going to do you any good at all, then you need to associate so tightly with your why. Anytime you feel safe enough to share that vulnerability with someone, they shouldn’t hear your words, but they should feel your heart. When they look deep in the eyes of the lion, they see a hunter. Savvy?
Climbing Your Mountain
Social media today has altered the way that John Q. Public perceives entrepreneurship. There are images of cars, trips, lifestyles, and clothes; everything looks easy and fun. It seems as though anybody can start a business, call themselves an entrepreneur, crush it, get rich, and win. This perception directly ties to the reason I’m spending so much time telling you my story of finding my why.
It took me a lifetime of poverty, insecurities, frustrations, and people telling me that I would never make it. I had a life of failures, missteps, and mess ups. It took a lifetime of tragedy, mourning, and sadness to prepare me. I’m not saying that everything was terrible. I’m just saying that those mountains are in the journey. Some of the obstacles are just little hills that are pretty easily climbed over, and life is good. Some of these obstacles are enormous, like Mount Everest is in your path. These struggles often seem insurmountable. Here’s what will happen to the average person. Time will grab them by the collar and drag them through life, and they’ll close their eyes and shut out the journey. The average guy will hit a mountain like Mount Kilimanjaro and time will just pull him around the base of the same mountain. Like a continuous cycle, he will struggle with his mountain over and over again in his head. Most people will be trapped in the same circle around the bottom of their own Mount Everest.
You see, time doesn’t owe anyone any favors. Time is just time. Time is just there. It’s real; it’s a law. You’re hoping that in time you’ll get so familiar with the base of your mountain that you’ll learn how to navigate it best. Entrepreneurs understand they’re on a journey that’s bigger than one mountain or one story. Emotionally successful people will not allow their path to wrap around the base of a mountain because of a single story. These few, recognize that mountains are just roadblocks before the true greatness that is held farther down on their path. Now I’m not saying that entrepreneurs are impervious to struggles. If I spend an hour in a business that is just big enough for one self-employed person and I visit with the owner for just a short while, I can determine why their business cannot get off the ground. I can tell you the story, or the mountain, that time has been dragging them around. I can tell you what’s holding them back and keeping them in the same circling pattern, sometimes for decades.
The only way to truly track down this path and overcome the small hills and Everests in your life is to truly understand the destination. This is where the analogy gets a little bit elusive because the destination is every single step you take. What do I mean by that? I mean that I recognize every single hurdle I have to overcome. Every single step I have to take while working ahead and moving against my mountain requires that I grab onto my destination, which is directly attached to my why. My destination is to provide a legacy for generations, to impact the masses, and to maybe just help one guy or girl with a similar story to me. I am always hoping to impact thousands, hoping to leave a legacy
for my family, and hoping to drive ahead into something that impacts the multitudes. Every single step I take moving closer to my destination is rooted to that why. Every single step is for my family.
As I talked about earlier, when you get so deeply rooted to your why, it becomes emotional. When you choose to share that intimate why with someone, it will jerk on your heart cords. You’ll need that. You will need that pull whenever you’re fighting with time, fighting with a story, or fighting to overcome the obstacles that are put in your path. It’s not always sexy, but when it is, it’s terrific. You know, the great thing about climbing a mountain happens right before you get to ease down the other side. You get to bask in that victory, when you are standing at the top you stake your flag in it, and say, “I conquered that shit.”
Getting to the top of the mountain is a fantastic feeling. You have overcome the obstacle laid before you. You get to look 360 degrees and all sides clear of the stress of the mountain. All sides are clear of the battle and clear of the weight of everything you just went through to get to the top. It is in those moments you’ll find clarity. Your view is so clear and it becomes so easy to have a vision for the future. You see, once you have peaked and you have jabbed your flag which represents your success into the peak of that overwhelming mountain. In those moments of realization, the vision for moving ahead becomes so clear. The clarity of vision is there because you can look down, you can see the path you just traveled more clearly. You’ve just overcome one of the biggest obstacles in your life or maybe you’re overcoming it right now. When you look down, it is more clear than ever. After making it to the top, you can enjoy the view from there for a moment, and after taking in the clear vision, you begin the descent.
You head back down into the trenches. You’re not stopping and patting yourself on the back after each step you are already on to the next destination. You will find yourself moving ahead with a new vigor and a new excitement. You see, whether I’m winning or whether I’m losing, I recognize that it is all just my perception. Whether you’re winning or whether you’re losing, your perception of that experience is what defines your journey. If you truly wanna have a journey that is all inspiring and inspirational, if you truly wanna have a journey that every single day you spring out of bed to chase, you have to learn how to remind yourself insistently of your why. Savvy?
Remembering Your Why
One of the things that I do every single day to remind myself of my why is I take a cold shower in the morning. That’s tied so directly to my ice bath when I was reintroduced to my newest layer of my why. My family, my wife, Joy, and my beautiful daughters, Brooke and Maggie, they are my mafia level why. Every morning the ice cold water pelting against my skin reminds me of the experience. That cold water reinforces the reason I am the first one up and the last one to sleep every single day! Hustling harder than anyone I know! As I write this book, I am sitting in Turks and Caicos. My family is down at the beach enjoying the water. For me getting this message out to you and hopefully impacting the masses is more important than my short term wants and desires.
I knew I cared about my family. I knew I was providing for my family, but I wasn’t rooted deep enough to realize my driving force. I was still running around the same mountain of I don’t wanna be poor. I listed to the stories of: I don’t want my daughters to be poor, I don’t want my children to have the struggles that I had, I don’t want my kids to ever look under a Christmas tree and think where is everything? I don’t want my daughters to worry or wonder unless they choose this lifestyle. I want it to be their decision, their journey, their story. If I am successful there will be a paragraph in the story of them that includes, “My dad recognized that in order for us to have the opportunity, he had to sacrifice!” Literally there are so many little stories like that that I can tell you. As a child I put a fake smile on my face to not disappoint the people around me. All the while, I myself was disappointed, and I never want my children to experience that.
There are some people who will disagree with me and think you should let your kids have some failures. Why? Why can’t you give your family the best version of life? I was giving them everything which made me believe that escaping poverty was still my why. Neck deep in that ice water looking into that iPad, staring ahead at the picture of my family, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve scaled that mountain, and I was just flooded with emotion. Tears instantly began pouring down my checks as they stood me up and pulled me out of the ice. It hit me. I don’t have to run from that anymore. I can stand on the top and look around. My vision was clear. I could now sprint ahead at the next goal! This is exactly what I want for you! I want you to be able to get clear on your why, look around, and then sprint into action!
Just to kind of summarize, I think it’s important that you walk away from this with a couple things. This is a wonderful, rewarding journey that never has a boring day. You’ll be scared. You’ll be insecure. You’ll have to deal with employees and budgets. You’ll have doubts. You’ll have naysayers. Those doubts bundles together will cause you to question whether it’s worth it. However, if you are rooted deep into your why, every single time you face one of those challenges, you’ll smile because you’ll have already have won. Savvy?
Business in a Box
& Getting Advice From a Fortune Cookie Coach!
It’s incredible! So many times in my life I’ve had somebody step in just for a very brief period and say, “Have you ever thought about this?” Some of those “have you thought abouts” are just absolute asinine and won’t work at all. Then some of them have been gold, like just absolute gold. This is what we look for, when dealing with mentors or anyone for that matter. The dumbest person you know could potentially regurgitate the exact wisdom nugget that you have been seeking. Too many arrogant people exist in this world, people that think they don’t need to take the time to listen to anyone who they don’t see as being on their level or higher. Am I saying that you will get rich by lowering to your lowest influencer level? Absolutely not! I’m saying God could speak to you through anyone, if you will take the time to listen.
I actually love multi-level marketers. The reason that I do is because inside of MLM, there are an abundance of really brilliant, talented people. Then there are lots of parrots. Parrots are people who learn the things to say, regurgitate the things that they hear, and they just spit it out again and again and again and again and again. Parrots have some success and feel comfortable enough to be able to call themselves entrepreneurs. However they are simply doing what they were told. “Don’t reinvent the wheel. Do exactly what we do. Say exactly what we say. Present it exactly how we present it and just go, go, go, go, go, go,” says most MLM manuals. One thing that I love about Multi Level Marketing Companies is that they mine through the population seeking out the self motivated individuals. Multilevel marketing companies seem to dig up every person that has ever wanted to “be their own boss”.
Having stepped into that industry for a brief time really allowed me to understand what they truly had. Most MLMs offer a low barrier to market franchise opportunity. Some really great people who believe that there is more to this life than working for someone else can be found in your neighborhood MLM. Then some there are people who just want to belong to something, they find this through the community inside of multilevel marketing. Finally, there are also some true entrepreneurs who could excel and succeed in whatever they put their mind to. That is what MLM’s do. They hunt for people who are truly brilliant entrepreneurs before the individual has even discovered the truth about themselves. Giving the most immature entrepreneur a cookie cutter machine and counting on the fact that their peers are similar in nature. If you asked me to define this idustry it would be as follows:
There is one extremely powerful element to this multilevel marketing machine. It is this: MLM’s are the greatest testament to the power of mentorship and coaching. Not only does the MLM industry grow and build around leaders doing just that, leading. It also curat
es some pretty phenomenal communicators and motivators. The multilevel marketing industry spits out coaches faster than anything I’ve ever seen.
These coaches fire up their iPhones getting straight to work. They create videos talking about freedom. These guys become masters at delivering a lot of witty little cliché feel good comments, right?
There is a new style of this same snake oil. Some of them call themselves coaches, some consultants, some call themselves influencers. I look at them, research their history a bit and just shake my head. I hear a lot of these new-age coaches doing the same thing. These modern coaching guys, the most successful venture that they’ve ever had is the venture that they’re pimping right now — they’re a coach.
They’re a mentor because they were savvy enough to set up a Click Funnels account via Russell Brunson. They watched his videos and got educated. They read a few books like Dot-Com-Secrets, which in total fairness is an awesome book. They encourage these guys by saying, “You can read a couple three books and be an expert in any field you want.” At least you can be in the top 90% because most people haven’t read two or three books in any given field. Most people, since they’ve graduated high school, haven’t read two or three books.
Coaches with no actual experience in the business world will latch onto a couple different things that they hear repeatedly, and they pull them from all different areas. Some of these ideas come from other coaches. Some of the ideas come from thought leaders. Some of the ideas come from successful entrepreneurs. Some of the ideas come straight from the Bible. They will say things like seek wise counsel or you’re the average of the five closest people you surround yourself. Many coaches will tell you to write your goals. A coach might even ask you what’s your why? They crazy part is everything they are saying is true! These are all principles of wealth. Some of them we will talk about later in the book and they are real. Many of these principles will work. However, if you ask any one of the so called “experts” to elaborate, they would reveal their true aptitude quickly.
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