Lewis Howes

the School of Greatness podcast, Lewis Hose. We discussed the importance of having coaches and mentors throughout life, how to look within to find the confidence you need to be your best self, and what it takes to go from being unemployed sleeping on your sister's couch to becoming one of the most influential podcasters on the planet. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode. Today is a super super special day one. It is snowing in the city again.

I don't remember the last him it snowed so much in New York City. But that means I don't have to go show properties. It means I can sit here and I can talk to one of my favorite people, a former professional football player, keynote speaker, now media entrepreneur,

high performance business coach everyone Lewis house Um. We first met when my first book Felt Like Sir Hnt came out and he was gracious enough to help me launch the book in Los Angeles back when people used to talk to people in person and we used to have a book events. That was really really cool. You guys know him from everything. One of the biggest podcasts in the world, the School of Greatness, which we'll get into, recognized by the White House and President Obama is one

of the top entrepreneurs in the country under thirty. He's met Tom Brady. Okay, that's really really important to me, amongst many many other things. Without further ado, Lewis House, thank you so much for being here, man, my man, appreciate you and congrats on the new book. Excited to have you on my show soon to talk about it. Yeah,

let's do it before we start though. You know, I've been on other people's podcasts for a long time, right, millionar listening started and years ago, man, you were like, what two when that happened. Yeah, it was twenty and now the time goes by real fast, and kind of right around that time. A couple of years later, right, you just celebrated your your eight year anniversary School of Greatness. Yeah. Yeah, this year we just celebrated eight years over a thousand episodes,

thousand episodes. Man, it's crazy and it goes by fast. Like you said, I remember the first episode. You probably remember your first episode. And you were probably terrible on TV and I was terrible on podcasting, and you know, look at us now. So can we go back though to the beginning before I get into all the questions I have about your kind of career right in your professional life and and what a lot of things mean to you. But you graduate college, you go into arena football,

you get hurt. Whole life leads up to that one moment. What do you do for me in the moment. It was an identity crisis because my whole identity was tied to being an athlete and being known and being valued for my athletic abilities. And so when I was when I'm not able to do that anymore, and that's the only identity I have. I had to learn the hard way. It took a couple of years to figure out, Okay, my identity does not define me, uh, and I can

always reinvent my identity. So imagine if you lost all the ability to sell real estate or talk about real estate, or by real estate or invest in it, just for whatever reason you lost that ability and that's been ten years of your life for a lot of people, and transitioning sports into real world. Afterwards, they get depressed, they get unsure of themselves, and they don't have that same confidence when they had that identity into the next stage.

And I lacked the confidence. For a couple of years. I was on my sister's couch. I didn't have any money. I was trying to figure out how to get a job. This was two thousand seven or two thousand nine when the UH economy was crashing. Yeah, everything, So for me, I didn't have a college degree yet. I eventually went back and finished, but I really didn't know what to do.

And so I again, I just use what I learned from sports and said, what got me to being uh, you know, professional athlete, What allowed me to accomplish all American status and a couple of sports and then break records and all these things, was having incredible coaches. And why would I do life or career or business alone without a coach, Because this is what I know, and in order to get to the top, I've needed coaches

in order to stay at the top. The greatest athletes in the world invest in better coaches, you know, Kobe Jordan's Lebron. They don't say I'm the best, I don't need a coach. They say, no, I'm going on the team that has the best coach because I want to win multiple championships. I don't want to just get to the top and that's it. And so I started to leave look for mentors. And originally it was people that I've already met from you know, professors at school or whatever.

But then I started reaching out on LinkedIn to finding kind of local entrepreneurs in Columbus, Ohio, which is where I was basically the time, where I'm from, and started reaching out to them and essentially begging them to mentor me because I had nothing to offer them. I had no skills, I had no career, I had no value

except for a curious heart and a listening ear. That that I learned how to ask the right questions so that people would reply to my emails on LinkedIn, so that people would go to coffee with me or actually take me to lunch and pay for my lunch because

I can't afford it. And I would find these really successful kind of local leaders spending their time with me as a twenty four year old punk with no job, no nothing, And it was all around positioning, and I positioned my LinkedIn profile in the right way to get people to reply to me. I positioned my email messaging the right way so people would respond to me, and that position in created proximity where then I had access to people, people that had skills, people that had money,

people that had job opportunities, people that had experience. So I could learn from that proximity and from the people that had that knowledge. And that was the thing that out of necessity because I didn't have money. I was living off my sister's couch, eating her food, not paying rent for a year and a half. But she gave me a gift after a year and a half of not paying for anything or contribute, she said, it's time for you to leave. You don't need to pay rent

or you need to leave. And it was the greatest gift she gave me because it created urgency and it created opportunities to break through because I probably would have been on that couch from the year, two year, three years. I was a grown man at at the time, and you know, I didn't want to live off my sister, but it was also like, I don't have to work hard, So she created the sense of like, okay, there's hey,

they have to go live in the streets. What I did is I begged my brother to let me stand in his place, and he there exactly and he gave me a gift. He said, listen, you gotta pay two hundree f bucks a month for your room. I was like, okay, I gotta do something. I gotta figure out how do I make three bucks right so that I can pay here and also buy some food. And it just got me working a little bit more. Okay, what do I need to do? Do I go get a job, do I go try to make money? How do I make money?

And it went down that path of just next steps. That's insane, but that is a really, really, really cool story. What was your relationship to money at that time? Because you didn't have a whole lot of afraid, uneducated, ignorant, uh needy. I desired it, but I was also scared of it. I didn't know how to make money. I never made money before, really, I mean I was a truck driver for a number of months, making two or

fifty dollars a week driving driver. I drove NAPA Auto car parts from ConA from Columbus, Ohio, to Cincinnati and back every day. I dropped them off, take two and a half hours to get there, doing about a thirty to forty five minute pick up of new parts and bring them back to the Columbus warehouse. And so I was driving the largest truck before. It was kind of like the massive U haul before you needed a trucking license.

And it was miserable. It was a miserable experience. But I also was like, how do I make the most of this six hour commute daily driving car parts? And so what I did is I said, I'm able to play crazy games in my mind. The truck only went fifty five miles an hour when I put the pedal to the metal, and so everyone's passing me and in the middle Ohio. I don't know if you've been to Ohio, but there's just corn fields for hours, so you're not really there's nothing really to look at. And it's where

I learned how to salsa dance. I learned salsa dancing as a truck driver. What in my mind, so I would that's some inception stuff. I wanted to learn how to salsa dance because I was terrified of it. And I went to this like jazz club one night that had salsa dancing, and I was just blown away by all the Latin people who were there dancing salsa. And I was like, this is the most intimidating thing I've ever seen, but it's also probably the coolest thing I've

ever seen. And I kept going back to this place once a week they would do salsa dancing. I'd go back once a week and I would just watch. I literally the creeper. I wasn't trying to be a creeper, but I would sit in the corner and just be like, this is amazing, this is mesmerizing. And I love the music. I love the culture, the people that language, everything. And when I started truck driving, I said, Okay, I'm going

to teach myself salsa dancing. It's burn a CD of the greatest hits of salsa songs and I listened to this for six hours a day and I would practice on YouTube. Back then, YouTube had this channel called Addicted to Salsa, which taught you salsa tutorials before it's time, and I would watch these at night. I would practice in the mirror. I would then rehearse these moves in my mind for six hours a day while listening to

the music. So I was trying to figure out, how can I learn a skill making money doing something I don't like, and and that was that was the process. But I didn't know how to make money. I was a truck driver. I was a bouncer on the weekends, making out of maybe a hundred fifty bucks a weekend at a nightclub. And I never was entrepreneurial. I didn't have the lemonade stand. I didn't do the baseball card thing.

I didn't garage none of that stuff. I relied on my dad to kind of be like, okay, you know, here's twenty bucks or a hundred bucks when you needed or whatever. Um. He never gave me a lot of money, but it was always provided, like I had a house and food. I didn't need anything else. But when I was twenty one year only five, and you're sleeping in your sister's couch and you're not as cool anymore, and that's when I said, I've got to learn financial literacy.

I've got to learn and understand what it means to make money, how to make money on your own, what it looks like to get a job, how to manage my personal finance. It's just all the basics that no one teaches in school. So what was your first job? Then now you're crashing, you're paying your brother. You had to figure out how to make money? Right? I did? And the podcast came years later, didn't it? Yeah? Years later?

That was actually the dream. Back then, when I was on my sister and brother's couch, I was like, what do I want to be doing? I had this idea of back in two thousands, seven, eight and nine. I was like, I just want to interview the most fascinating people in the world and ask them how they got there, because I wanted to be cool if you just get paid to just ask questions of smart people. And but I was like, no one will listen to me at

this moment. No one would. I don't have any credibility, you know, why would they show up to my show? Why would these people even talk to me? So I knew there was something I wanted, and I spent about five years building a business online marketing business to where things started to take off pretty quickly. It took about two years of being broke and on my sister's couch and then my brother's place until I made really my first dollars online. And I remember I did a for

those two year period, I was obsessing over LinkedIn. I was obsessing over because I was connecting with these thought leaders in my local community. Um And eventually people started reaching out to me and saying, hey, Louis, can you show me how to use LinkedIn for you know, connecting to people or generating leads and traffic. And since I was just doing it all day long, I started writing articles about it. I eventually wrote a book about LinkedIn that was one of the first people to write a

book about it. In two thousand nine, and I started hosting LinkedIn networking events. And so I hosted a LinkedIn networking event using my connections messaging two thousand nine, messaging people one at a time. I think I started my first one late two thousand and eight, and not only just message everyone, I knew one at a time custom email message on LinkedIn and said hey, and they had an events feature, so I said, Hey, we're hosting a

LinkedIn networking event. Here it is please bring three friends, It's free. Uh, you know all this stuff, And I sold four sponsorships at two hundred fifty bucks for like a table, like a little booth, and I exactly, And I called up the local a few local restaurants, and I said, what's the worst night of the week for you when no one comes in? They were like Tuesday

night or Wednesday night or something. And I said, can I have it for free if I can bring people, you know, a hundred people to this and they were like sure, and they had food and drinks and bar and all that stuff, and I said, you can keep all the money that I just want to have this space. And the first event we did, we had three d

three and fifty people show up. I made a thousand bucks on the sponsorships, but the coolest thing was the connections and everyone thanked me afterwards, saying wow, like I met so and so, and now we're going to talk about doing this. I met so and so who I'm gonna hire whatever it is. I became essentially the champion of everyone's problems into solutions. And I was like, wow, I wonder if I did this again. And I charged

for people to come. So I charged five dollars at the door, and I was like, I don't know if anyone's gonna come. And we had more people show up, and I was like, oh wow, okay, So I sold sponsorships the second time and I charged five bucks. I won if I can charge ten bucks, and I just started going to the next level. Okay, we meant ten

ten dollars at the door sponsorships. Then I started to build a relationship with these restaurants and I said, hey, will you give me ten or fifteen percent commission on the food and bar and they were like, yeah, it's the worst out of the week. No one's coming in, of course. And so I was getting three levels of revenue from one event. Then I was doing one on one consulting for people that said hey, can you show

me how to do this on LinkedIn? So I was charging hundred dollars and two hundreds and three hundred dollars a session for doing one on one. Then I was like, okay, let me write a book around this so I can have something to sell at these events. So now I had five levels of revenue, and I just kept thinking, Okay, what else can I do? Then I started making money off of connecting people and getting commissions on deals, and I just kept thinking how can I make more money

with one event? What can I do? Then the thing that really transformed everything is when I was branding myself and positioning myself in the social media world as the LinkedIn guy. I was like, everyone's talking about being a social media expert. I know social media platforms pretty well, but not as well as LinkedIn. And everyone was like, I'm a social media expert online there bio, and I was just like, no, I'm the LinkedIn king, Like I

don't care about anything else but LinkedIn. And because I positioned myself as that, that wasn't That wasn't what I wanted long term. I wanted to do a show, but at the moment I knew I needed to position myself as an expert at one thing, as opposed to an expert at all things. And by doing that, opportunities started to come to me. Every social media conference said we need a LinkedIn you know room, who's the guy who

can come speak? Well, I know Lewis, and Lewis is writing articles about this, and Lewis has wrote a book about this, and Lewis has hosting events on LinkedIn. Let's bring Louis in. So I was doing that and then Eventually I met a guy at a conference and he asked me to come on one of his webinars. And I didn't know what a webinar was in two thousand nine. Um, but I said, let's do it. He was a pretty big name in kind of the space at the time, and um, he said, I need you to do a

presentation about LinkedIn. It's gonna be a free event. You're gonna present and at the end, I want you to sell something. I want you to sell a course or a program. And this is back in two thousand nine, when there was no course platforms. There was no It was really hard to build a website back in two thousand nine and put stuff together. I had no Cluto's doing. And I said, Okay, I don't have the time to

put together a course or training. But what I'll do is I'll put together a PayPal link and I'll give a free presentation. And then at the end, I'll say, hey, for anyone who wants more advanced training on LinkedIn, like pay me here. I charged a hundred fifty bucks pay me here, And what I'll do is three weeks of more online training, like on a live webinar. I'll just give you access to a private link and I'll teach you this, this, and this every week. And at the

end and I was horrible. It's my first time giving a presentation and no clue what I was doing. The slides where Yankee, and you know, I was stuttering the whole time. But at the end I closed down the webinar presentation, I opened up my Gmail and it was probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life, more than any girl I've ever seen. It was my entire email on my my screen that said You've received payment. Every line said you received payment. You see payment. I

was like, I was literally screaming. I was at my brother's place at this time, living two bucks a month and there's sixty in my paper account in minutes. And I was like, I am the richest man in the world. I could do this every day for the rest of my life. If I get to teach about LinkedIn and make I'll do this all day long and for the next six years. That's pretty much all I did. I said, Okay, how do I become a better teacher, How do I

master LinkedIn more? How do I understand webinars? How do I learn about online marketing, copyrighting, How do I create relationships and affiliate partnerships to drive traffic? How do I buy traffic? How do I how do I do more of this thing? And I just obsessed over becoming better at that. And after about four or five years, I

got like tired of just talking about LinkedIn. I was like, this is not what I want to do, Like my dream that has been to do this interview thing, and I don't know the best platform, Like I'd like a TV show, but no one's I'm still not really known. I'm known as a LinkedIn guy, but not known in anything else. And so I took about a year off where I sold the company to my business partner. At

that time, had saved pretty much everything. I pretty much lived like I was on my sister's couch, still saved, didn't have a car, didn't have a TV, just like walked everywhere, saved money. And then I had a couple of years of runway where I was like I could do whatever, and I was like, I really want to do this interview show. And podcasting back in two thousand

twelve wasn't a thing. It was like Joe Rogan was on there some weird like basement tech shows were on there or something, but no one knew even how to go download a podcast. But I had two friends that had just launched one in the middle of two thousand twelve, and I just moved to Eli at the time for a girl didn't work out quickly, and I said, but let me stay here. And I was driving in l A traffic and was miserable, and I was like, man, I just kind of feel stuck in my life right now.

I feel stuck that I moved here for this girl, that it's not working out, like it's kind of resenting myself. And I was really frustrated because I was supposed to go meet someone a mile away and it took like two hours to get there in a car, and I was like, this is exhausting, and I go, how are people doing this every day? Stuck in their car, stuck in their life? Like there's gotta be a way to serve people who feel this type of stuck nous, whether it be literally in a car or just in their life.

And I said, I want to just create a free show, like a podcast. I heard a couple of friends are doing it. Let me call them, So I called them in the car ride literally and asked them both like, what is this podcasting thing? Is it worth it is? It's going to be a waste of time, And both of them said it was the most fun they were

having of anything they're doing in their business. It was the most qualified leads they were getting for the things that they were selling eventually, and they were just having a blast doing it. And I was like, if these guys could do it, I could probably figure this out. And probably about four or five months later I launched the show and um, yeah, end of January, so eight years ago, and it's just been figuring it out process every day since. Crazy. You know, I could listen to

you for a year straight. I think I don't even have to make noise. Your story is just so interesting. You skipped over one thing just really quick. You coaches got you to a certain point. Did you end up finding that life coach, business coach or or mentor when you were gonna stuck in there? It was mostly just leaning on friends. I had three mentors at the time.

One was um it's funny. At the time. Also, when I just finished playing football, I had to have a surgery on my risk because I broke a bone in my wrist, and so I was in a full arm cast from my shoulder to my fingers. I kind of looked like the kid from Rookie of the Year that I had. When it got out, He's like it was like a wet noodle. I couldn't I couldn't move my arm when he got out. I didn't have power of strength, and so I was in this cast for six months.

It was miserable. Miserable and um. During that time is when I was just on LinkedIn because I couldn't really work out. I didn't have a job, nothing on my sister's couch, and I reached out to a few people. One was a former like headmaster of the school I went to, like the college I went to that I became close with. He was an Olympic qualifying athlete all this stuff, so I kind of connected to him over sports. He was my kind of spiritual leadership, compass, great family man,

a success in business. Then I reached out. Um. I had into a product during this time that I called the cast Comfort because this cast I had I had to wear it for so long was smelling. I don't know if you ever broken a bone and had a cast, but it's smell smelly after a week dirty, It's like screw exactly. And I was like, there's gotta be a better solution if someone's wearing a cast so it doesn't

look and smell dirty. And so I went on Ali Baba at the time, and I actually and I had no money except for like a hundred bucks or something, and I spent I think it was like, yeah, I don't know, seventy bucks to get a couple of samples. I designed a sample of I was like, there needs to be something you can put over this, and I actually still have them, and I just I was like I needed a double thickness sweatband, like an armed wrist band,

but seven times the length. And so I was just kind of designing this thing on a piece of paper, like uploaded to Ali Baba, found some manufacturers in China and I was like can you make this? And ended to me in Ohio and six weeks later I got like my first prototype and I was like, this is amazing.

I had different colors, I had different lengths, and I was like, I need someone who can help me design this better package it, sell it, you know, marketed all this stuff I have no idea how to do any of this, And so I met someone at the time who knew an inventor and begged this inventor to meet with me and showed him my design and and everything I had it there, and he ended up mentoring me

for the next six months. He was like, come into the office like a few days a week, asked me questions like and work for me for free essentially, and I'll help you launch this thing. I'll help you get off the ground. We ended up not getting that off the ground, but I ended up learning about product design, product development, naming. He's a master of like naming, uh,

you know, trademarking. We go to design shows together. So I would go to trade shows with him and just learned about like the business of networking, and I just learned about how to take an idea in your minds and make it a physical reality and manifested from every process from idea to manufacturing to licensing to PR everything. So that was an amazing six month experience. He was my creative mentor of like how do I take an

idea and manifested into a physical form. And then I at the salsa clubs because I started going salsa dancing a lot and teaching myself salsa dancing. I met um. I met another guy who was a professional speaker, and at the time I was terrified of hope speaking. I could not even speak in front of an audience of four people without stuttering and being nervous. And I was like, man, you go around the country and you get paid to speak.

That sounds amazing, but I could never do it. And he mentored me and and said, you need to join Toastmasters. You need to overcome the fear, learn the basics of public speaking, and I want you to go every week for a year to Postmasters until you feel confident enough in presenting without notes, without preparation and for of an audience. And I went every single week for a year about film It's I would get feedback from him all this

stuff until I finally overcame the fear. And I didn't know that speaking would be a thing in my future because I was terrified of it. But that mentor and coach really guided me to overcome those fears. So those three were really instrumental. But then every year I'm finding hiring new coaches. You know, I'm paying for experts at different levels to help me in my health and wellness, business strategy, relationships, therapy, and her work all that stuff.

So I'm always looking for great coaches. Where do you think your or what do you attribute your your sense of enthusiasm to, Like, you have great energy. I think one thing that did big body of energy. Man, you gotta have that, you know, I think one thing. People are attracted to you about it, and it's so fun to to listen to you and just to listen to

your interviews you do on the podcast. I'm sure why people take take your courses and everything is that you you have this amazingly authentic, a new sense of energy almost every day. You Graham to tweet you said, mindset is everything. The way you think affects your energy and actions, change your thoughts, and your life will start to change,

which is right. So you're just saying, you're just talking about, you know, the things you think about now as part of your work end up becoming the things that you're doing two to three years from now, as long as you put in the work. But you mentioned that word energy, and then I watch you even now on that amazing high resolution camera that you have that my team needs to figure out and you've got that incredible energy. Is it do you credit your parents or just excitement for life?

Is it something you developed because you were because you knew you needed to have it. I think I always had something like there was always something inside of me. And I don't know if everyone else feels this. Maybe you felt this as a kid, Ryan that I always felt like, Okay, I don't know why I'm here. And there are many times that I would get in trouble as a kid and get something the principle's office and I would tell them all the time. I wish I were dead at a darker childhood in a lot of ways.

I mean, I was sexually abused as a five year old. It took me twenty five years to open up about it and start sharing and start healing. So I I lived with a lot of resentment and anger in moments of my life, but I had this duality of like passion and childlike joy and energy as well. But when someone triggered me, it was like, don't ever try to take an advantage of me or or or abuse me. Otherwise I was like, I'm going to destroy you. And I didn't understand why, but I was sexually abuse as

a kid. My brother went to prison when I was eight for four and a half years, so every almost every weekend, I was in a prison visitor room with a room full of inmates and their families, and because there was visiting hours for for my brother, and so there were, you know, there was just a lot of I was in special needs classes until I graduated college after seven years of college, all the way from as long as I remember, so there was a lot of uh,

you know, inner suffering that I created myself based on experiences, and I just wanted to be happy. I wanted to be joyful. I was a loving kid, but also when I was triggered, there's a lot of anger and resentment. And it took me many years to learn how to heal and learn how to accept and love myself. And I was about eight years ago when I learned that process, and I'm stilling that but still in that process. I'm not perfect. But I've also had a deep sense of

gratitude at the same time for my life. So there was like a knowing even though I was like angry and upset and resentful as an younger kid, the older at God, I was just like God, I'm supposed to do something for the world. I don't know what it is, but I know my life is more meaningful than being a dumb kid and just being an athlete. But it's I don't know what it is, but I need to

figure it out. And that listening to that voice, trusting it, or that knowing nous is what's allowed me to wake up every day, literally, I kid you not, with just so much gratitude that I have another day to express myself, to enjoy life, to meet cool people, to share what I've learned, to learn new stuff. I mean, I woke up this morning seven am. I did a Spanish class because I committed to learning Spanish, and it's I've been

doing it for six months. This one on one Spanish class, I have, uh some of that teaches me on zoom. And for twenty years, Ryan, I've been telling myself I want to learn Spanish twenty years. Every year I say I'm gonna buy this course, I'm gonna download this learning app, I'm gonna take this thing. And I try it and it's so hard on my brain that I get exhausted,

and I'm like the hardest thing I've ever done. And the middle of last year, I said, you know what, Every year I tell myself I'm gonna learn the Spanish, and every year it's New Year's Eve and I say, I haven't done a squat, and I feel like I

always let my self down. And I said to myself this year, I was like, I don't care if this takes me ten years to learn, Like I need to stop speeding up the process of being fluent in Spanish and I needed to enjoy the process of like just a small little wind, you're like just figuring out one thing every class and being okay with sucking. And I'll tell you what, the first six months have been the most challenging, humbling thing for me because I feel like

I've got nowhere. But today, literally this morning was the first morning where I was like, I'm understanding some of these things. Maybe I'm a slower learner, and maybe it's extremely challenging based on how I learned, but man, I'm like, it just felt good to be like, Okay, even though I'm probably not gonna be fluent for many, many years, I understand more than I did six months ago, and I can be proud of the progress. And that's been that's been fun, dude. I am so excited for the

future day whenever. That's good. When you put out there you're one episode at School of Greatness complete exactly, It's gonna be awesome. You like, I don't even understand how I'm here right now, but this is happening. Yeah. You something you also said you spent so much time on kind of one on one with people, whether they're your coaches or the people that work with you, or or kind of students and stuff. And I remember when you

and I met a couple of years ago. You know, you're on you're on your phone, um, and it's like, what do you do when you're like answering d M? It's like answering d M S. I just remember the look you gave me, and it is probably just, you know, random moment, but it's like one of those moments that stuck with me. It's like, holy sh it, Like he put so much passion and care into the responses to total strangers on social media, where I think you even

said like you were you responded to almost everybody. Still, even this morning, I was responding to d M. Yeah, dude, that is that is. I don't know if it's the smartest use of my time. But you know you're probably smarter by not doing it. But I feel like, um the stage of that. With my life, I'm trying to

be as connected to as many people as possible. It's I want to have a pulse of what people are saying and what their challenges are, what they're you know, their feedback, what their feedback is, what's working, what's not working, so that I can be like, Okay, I never want to lose touch and think I've figured it out and think I've made it or I think I've mastered something, because the beginner's mind for me is always benefit in

me at any stage of my life. And when I feel like I'm the man, that's when I slip up. That's when I make mistakes. That's when my audience can feel that, Okay, he's got a big head now and he's not you know, caring and compassionate. So if I'm not constantly reminding myself, the world will remind me in a way that's not as pleasant. I have so many questions for you, and I'm never gonna ask them all

because we're totally burning into time. But what do you bullish on in the twenties, like where do you think the world goes? Where does the world go? For podcasting? Like what's this? What is this business? I'm bullish on team, and I've realized that I've only been a I've gotten so far with a very small limited team before the last year, and a lot of it just being myself and saying I'm gonna bet. I was betting on me,

I was blush on me. But I realized what what got me here won't necessarily be the thing that's gonna give me to the next level of where my vision is my mission. And so I know that I need amazing people on our team. And I go back to sports, you know, Um, I need all stars. So I need people that are invested in a mission, who are hungry, excited just like me. And that's what we've been investing in.

We brought on I think seven or eight people in the last six months and I'm looking to bring on another seven people in the next three or four months. So I've been uh learning the skill of, you know, being a better coach to teams as opposed to me being coached and being the star player. How do I now coach people I've never really done that. You know, I have a little bit, but I've never done it

in my business context. And so learning how to build an amazing team because the more I spend time, I mean, you're around a lot of wealthy people, successful people who scale businesses. They don't they don't get a billion dollar exit or a hundred million dollar exit with five people on the team. I mean, that's probably extremely rare. It's like, yeah, we've got three employees, we have a thousand employees, we

have seventy employees. It's just you can't do it all in your own And so for me, it's how do I build team better? How do I build culture better so that they're integrated with each other and feeling connected without me um and and how do we how do we reach more people uh in the service of what

we're creating. So that's what I'm excited about building team because then I know that's the thing that's going to get us from you know, thirteen million downloads a month uh to a hundred million downllards a week, and the mission is to serve a hundred million people weekly to help them improve their life. And we can't I can't do that alone. I can't do it as a small team. I need the right team who is all in on the mission to help us create more meaningful content that

is scalable, that has better distribution, production value, all that stuff. Um, so it's scaling every aspect of the team and the different tentacles we have in our business. And also, I don't know if people have bought your book yet, but it just came out with congrats in the success I've been diving through. Man, I read it like everything you're sharing in there and uh the you know. So for me, if people are having bought the book, they need to buy the book Big Money Energy, because it's a it's

a game changer. And I love how you talk about confidence in there, because I think a lot of people don't have the ability to believe in themselves. That the skill of learning how to believe in yourself is one of the greatest skills that we can have. And it doesn't matter how much experience you have, it doesn't matter the credentials and years all this stuff. But and you teach that skill well in the book. So I want people to to get that and buy a couple of

companies in their friend as well. So thanks for the plug man. Of course, of course, man, and I can't wait to have you on our show, and I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you things that no one's ever asked you, and I'm gonna get you to share things you've never shared before. So people should listen to that too, right, Man, Go about your day, keep crushing it, keep being great. I will talk to you soon. Man, see you if

you're ready to take action today. Based on lewis Houses entire blueprint for how he got to where he is, go to Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast to download an action plan that I put together for you, as well as the show notes. That's Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast. Find more podcasts like Big Money Energy on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Big Money Energy is hosted by me

Ryan Sirhant. It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loresca and executive produced by Lindsay Hoffman.