18 Kyle Maynard: The No Excuse Approach to Success

Despite being born with no arms or legs, our next guest on The School of Greatness podcast has led a life of staggering accomplishments. Kyle Maynard has lived his life without excuses, even though he has every right to make them. Not only is he a remarkable athlete who challenges himself in ways that are almost […] Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 18 with the four foot giant Kyle Maynard.

• 0:08Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  What is upgrades? Hope you're having a fantastic day today. This is gonna be an amazing episode because I've got my good man and awesome friend on here, Kyle Maynard. Now Kyle has been an inspiration of mine for the last few years since I first met him. And every time I have an excuse about anything, I think about Kyle, his story in his life. Very inspiring guy. I want to get to Kyle here in just a second, but I want to get to the quote of the day first. And this is inspired by a previous episode with Don Yeager where he shared this quote. He says, "A loss is not a failure until you make an excuse."

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  And that's quoting Michael Jordan. And there's a lot of excuses we make every single day, whether it be in sports or business or life, or whatever it is we're trying to achieve. We've always got excuses. I've got them. You've got them. We've all had them and they're a bunch of BS if you ask me. So we're going to talk about how to get over these excuses. And Kyle is an exceptional individual to talk about having no excuses. A guy that was born without arms and legs, who has done probably more, has accomplished more things than, you know, me and a bunch of other people combined who have arms and legs. This is a guy who's climbed up Mount Kilimanjaro on his elbows essentially, crawled up a mountain. Took him 12 days, I think.

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  He's won two ESPY Awards for being the most inspiring athlete in the world, basically. And he's just an amazing individual and he's here in the studio with us today. I'm super pumped. But before I bring him in and let him share kind of some of his experiences about how to overcome these excuses and achieve some of the craziest things that you can achieve in your own life. I want to talk about quickly. Uh, the fan of the week and the fan of the week comes from, uh, Michael Lynch. And he sent me an email just the other day saying that his brother uh, is a marine who's in, who's in Afghanistan and they've been listening, him and all of his marine buddies

• 2:40Lewis Howes?

  have been listening to the podcast and they're, they're big fans. So just want to say a quick shout out to those Marines out there, uh, in northern, northern Afghanistan, I guess he said when he emailed me. So thanks to all you guys listening. Appreciate what you guys do and uh, hopefully this has been some good stuff for you guys. I want to give a quick shout out to the review of the week and this comes from, uh, reviewer EXP14 and the title is drives me to be my best. He says, great podcast. I drive an hour to work every day and this podcast inspires me and keeps me awake while on the road. I was able to listen to all the podcasts in a week and a half. Keep them coming. The guest interviews

• 3:24Lewis Howes?

  are my favorite. So, uh, I'm glad I'm able to keep people awake when they are driving to work. So if that's, uh, if that's what's this is doing for people, then at least I'm keeping you guys safe on the road and hopefully there's some inspiration in there as well. Uh, with that guys, this is a big week for me. One, because it's the national championships, the USA national championships in team handball. And again, a lot of people in the US have no clue what team handball is. If you're one of the listeners from Europe, you're probably very familiar with the sport because it's a very popular sport throughout all of Europe. Uh, but for me, I've been training non-stop, doing a lot of CrossFit. Big shout out to Brick CrossFit and all the coaches and athletes over there who've just been

• 4:09Lewis Howes?

  supporting me and pushing me to, to stay in shape every single day and training to be a better athlete. Uh, I am pumped about this. In a couple of days, I'll be flying out to Reno, Nevada for the USA national championships, trying to bring home the gold for New York City team handball. So I'm pumped about this. I'm prepared. I'm ready to go and hopefully in this next episode, uh, you'll hear some good news coming back from me. With that guys, we're going to learn all about how to overcome your BS excuses and learn from a true champion in this world with Kyle Maynard.

• 4:53Lewis Howes?

  All right, welcome everyone. I'm here with my good friend Kyle Maynard. What's up Kyle?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Hey man, uh, I'm a big fan of the show, so I'm just excited to have, to be on here.

• 5:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man. We just got done with the sweet workout at Brick CrossFit here in West Hollywood. And Kyle almost dropped a 70-pound kettlebell right on his private parts. So that was an interesting moment.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Full-blown castration. It was, uh, what did they give him? Uh, probably never happened at Brick CrossFit before, although it's a pretty intense gym, so maybe they would have had it. I don't know. First time for me.

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  Now Kyle, uh, for those who don't know, Kyle was born with no arms, no legs. And so it's kind of weird to me, hear me say, but he's holding a kettlebell at 70 pounds. So it's pretty inspiring what he's able to do. And what is it actually? What's the thing called when you're born with no arms and legs? What is that?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  It really, there's not really any clear explanation. Doctors didn't have any idea what, um, what caused the disorder, disability to happen when I was born. Um, it's, uh, kind of referred to as congenital amputation. So if you have people a visual, basically my arms in right where your elbow would be for each arm. They're both about, you know, same length and my legs in slightly above where the knee is and I have two feet, but, um, so there's a little bit different. Like, uh, I don't know, one of them's got like an upside down foot. That's like my, my trigger foot and, uh, in Halo for Xbox, but the, uh, uh, basically just, uh, four limbs affected, which is about, I think the estimate was like one in 10 million or something like that, that, yeah.

• 6:26Lewis Howes?

  Crazy. Now, how tall are you?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  That's a good question.

• 6:30Lewis Howes?

  So people know.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  I can be, I can touch like my tippy toes in the four foot part of the pool if that, uh, the, um,

• 6:36Lewis Howes?

  So you're like three something.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  I think I'm like three eight, three nine.

• 6:40Lewis Howes?

  Three nine. So you're like a four foot giant. That's what I'll call you. Four foot giant.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  See if that dot com. See if that name is taken. Some cyber squatter on there is gonna go and get this.

• 6:50Lewis Howes?

  Now Kyle, what a brag for Kyle for a minute. He has done some amazing feats and accomplishments. In middle school, you played football. Now again, remember, imagine a four foot giant without arms and legs. This is Kyle who we're talking to right now. He's playing football with other middle schoolers. Then in high school, he was one of the top wrestlers in high school, one of the top 15, is that right? Once you're ranked like top 10.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I ended up, I mean, the kind of the story is with that, we may go into a little bit more, but I had lost a ton. I mean, really, you know, football is actually something that came natural to me. Down there on all fours and you know, in the very first play that I ever took, very first snap that I ever took, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but I was playing nose guard right across from the center. And so I knew he was going to go and snap the ball between his legs. And so I figured like my job was to go and follow it. So as soon as he snaps the ball between his legs, I just dove underneath his legs and smashed my element of quarterback shins. The first play got the sack. So it was guys kind of figured out how to go and block and stuff like that. But um, you know, it was pretty, pretty decent. You know, it's, you know, the thing or two about football. It's all about getting lower than somebody and driving off the ball. And nobody's getting lower than me down there in the ground.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  So the uh, with wrestling though, it started off and it was, you know, it was really bad. It's kind of easy to go and talk to people about successes with stuff, but I had to fail a ton. You know, I lost every match for a year and a half. So 35 times in a row.

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  The freshman and sophomore year, right?

• 8:09Speaker 01

  It was, I started in sixth grade. So in middle school, around the same time as um, you know, playing football there. And the thing was, you know, having a blast playing football. And then with wrestling, you know, I'd sit in these tournaments and people would go and say like, you know, Kyle doesn't have hands to go and grab someone or arms long enough to get out and grab their legs or all this stuff. And they'd make a blanket statement, which kind of makes sense, you know, logically out of context, but it's, you know, they'd say a guy without arms and legs would never be able to win a match in wrestling. And for a while I bought into that belief.

• 8:38Lewis Howes?

  For a year and a half, you didn't win any, right?

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Any, I mean, I'd be crying going out to every one of these tournaments and begging to quit. But my parents, you know, they, they kept me going.

• 8:47Lewis Howes?

  So what, what was it like your first win? What was that like? Do you remember it?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  No, I remember it vividly and I, I, I think I was more shocked than the guy that I beat because like I remember grabbing his arm and flipping him and landing on top of him and being like, this is awesome, but I have no idea what to do now. I was so lost and uh, so I figured I'd just go and do the same thing again. My dad saw that I was lost and told me to let him up. And so I just went in after him again, grabbed his arm, took him down, let him up, figured this is working. I'm gonna keep doing it. Took him down and let him up.

• 9:14Lewis Howes?

  So you didn't pin him, but you?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Took him down 15 times. So they stopped the match and beat him by the mercy roll.

• 9:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  And that was, yeah, so that's why I tell people, it's like it's, you know, it really had nothing to do with the physical side of things, right? It had everything to do with the fact that for a long time, you know, I bought into the belief of other people telling me that, you know, I'd never be able to win a match. And so I didn't.

• 9:34Lewis Howes?

  Sure. That limiting belief that you just believed.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  That you couldn't win because of the condition, right?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and then, and once you kind of, you know, we all have those moments, right? Where we, we, we buy in and we still do, you know, you and I, I mean, everybody in this planet, I don't care who we are. People are, you know, full of it if they say that they, they don't allow other people to go and affect their beliefs. And, you know, when you go and turn on the news and you go into, you know, for the, through the business owners that are watching this and, you know, the belief that's affected based off of other economic projections and other things like that.

• 10:03Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  So many things going on.

• 10:04Lewis Howes?

  Or they're like, don't go outside because something's happening with the weather or whatever, you know?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:08Lewis Howes?

  Just creating fear, these beliefs in our minds, right?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, it's, I think we gotta go on and ask like, what's, what's real? What's not? Yeah. Cause that first time that we go and break through with something. Then, I mean, you, you can't go back and, and, and believe something that at that point I, I could, you know, when people said I'd never win a match, that first one that I won, now it's like, I can't, I don't, I never go back. So the next year after that, in eighth grade, I was undefeated going in the state tournament.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  So it was, you know, it had nothing to do with the physical. It was just, you know, huh. It was total.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  It's all mental, right?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  And it was a, it was a, it was a big part of it. Also too, just kind of figuring out how to. You know, use my body and be comfortable with with with things and figure things out. Couldn't emulate other wrestlers to go and figure out their style.

• 10:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. Now, in high school, what did you end up? Weren't you like one of the top in high school though for your for your weight?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Did pretty good. I um, so wrestled varsity for one of the top teams in the southeast senior year of high school and wrestled 103 pounds, which there's no way I'd be able to go and make that weight right now. I had to cut, cut a good bit of it to to make it in high school. And then I ended up winning 36 varsity matches, beat a couple of state champions, couple of state placers, and got invited to nationals and placed top 12 in the nation.

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing. Top 12 in the nation. Wow. Interesting. And so after that, you also got into MMA and fighting, right? Because it's naturally transitioned from wrestling to fighting and you were the first guy without arms and legs to fight in a cage, like in a sanctioned MMA fight, right?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Right. You can see how stupid I am too for signing up for some of this stuff. I mean, there's a common thread here. I don't know. There's this MMA was a blast. And I've been training for for a long time. That actually taught me a lot about myself, though, because it um, that was the first time that other people really voiced major disapproval with what I was doing. You know, with wrestling, people would go and say like, oh, you'll never be able to win a match, you know, and they wouldn't say it directly to me necessarily, but you know, I'd hear if it was a great find. With MMA.

• 12:10Lewis Howes?

  They were like afraid for your life, probably, right? They were like, we don't want you to get your face knocked out, right?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Or other people that were hoping that it happened. You know, people's true, true colors kind of come out on the internet, right? When you can be behind an anonymous screen name, then there's no.

• 12:25Lewis Howes?

  Say whatever you want.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, type my name into YouTube and you can see, you probably pull it up right now and go and see some of the comments that people go and say, I mean, it's crazy. People said, you know, Kyle's going to be the first televised death in the sport. Have no problem kicking my effing skull in, like, people saying, um, he's doing this because he's just a, you know, drama whore, like, saying like Kyle's trying to get back on Oprah and all this stuff. Like, and there was even one comment that I'll never forget. Somebody said like, you know, come take a, uh, come take a chainsaw and cut off my arms and legs so I can be a limbless freak show like Kyle.

• 13:01Lewis Howes?

  Jeez, that's really bad. Wow.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  So it's, you know, but then.

• 13:05Lewis Howes?

  Now, why did you want to do a fight then? What's the reason behind it for you?

• 13:11Speaker 01

  And I, I generally, kind of one of my, one of my core beliefs is that you gotta have things that, that you're passionate about to be able to go and really just live to your potential, right? And then I, you know, I've been training for this. I didn't want to be a pro fighter and I had no delusions about that. And I just wanted to experience it. You know, because 99.9% of the fans, you know, of the sport, they would never step into the cage and that's okay. Maybe they're fans, but I didn't want to be afraid. I wanted to go in there and experience it.

• 13:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  And, and the cool part was, it took, I got denied to fight in Georgia, which was a big setback. The head commissioner was a paraplegic who was an off-duty police officer, got shot in the spine. And he said, "It's great what you're doing for people with disabilities. Like, I'll be out there to support you." And then, uh, three weeks later, I got denied. So it took two years, um, went across, it was in, that's in the state of Georgia and my home state. I live outside of Atlanta. Went across the state line to, to do it in Alabama two years later. And I, uh, joke now that the, there's a little bit, which is true, there's a little bit less government regulation in Alabama. And I'm, I'm pretty sure they would have let me fight like a pack of hyenas in Alabama if I wanted to.

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  You would have bear.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  That's a goal of mine. Don't joke. The, uh, um, but then ended up, uh, it was April 5th, 2009. I got to go and step into the cage. And I remember hearing that pin when they went and put it in the door and locked me inside. I'm thinking like, whoa, I'm in here now. This is real.

• 14:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And if you guys go, if you go search on YouTube, Kyle Maynard, cage fighter MMA, you'll see a video pop up and it's, it's like crazy and inspiring at the same time to watch this video because you're literally just getting the shit beat out of you from a guy with arms and legs.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 14:57Lewis Howes?

  Who's like a professional fighter, right? He was like a pro, wasn't he? Or what?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  I don't really know what his, uh, what his background was, you know?

• 15:03Lewis Howes?

  He was ripped. And he was like...

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, I, I just, I didn't try to get caught up in, into him. I actually did a ton of, um, really cool stuff with guided imagery to go and get ready for the fight. I mean, I was mentally, I felt better than I ever did, you know, and physically too.

• 15:18Lewis Howes?

  You looked like, the video, you looked like you were ready to go, man. You were so in the zone. It's just, there were so many moments where you like, could tell after like the first round where you're getting frustrated because the guy wouldn't let you like get close to him.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  And he just kept like pegging you in the face. He would not let you get close to like his legs.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Is uh, the uh, yeah, this is a strategy to go in and and keep me sort of away. My fight would be a goal. Goal is to go and bring it to the ground, you know, standing at three foot eight. I'm not much of a kickboxer. So it's uh,

• 15:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  The um, but yeah.

• 15:49Lewis Howes?

  He was like five ten or something, wasn't he? Or how tall is he?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Something like that, yeah.

• 15:52Lewis Howes?

  One eighty, five ten or whatever, yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  He um, you know, but I really, I respect him for going in and taking the fight because a lot of people, you know, were, were, I had several opponents that dropped out from it. And um, people, when, when other people got on their case and saying like, what are you doing and all this stuff? And so I, I definitely, I definitely do respect him for it. Um,

• 16:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  I wish it, you know, to me, I didn't care about the outcome. I wanted to be able to go in there and have the experience.

• 16:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  It was uh, the coolest part was um, after the fight was over, it was uh, just one of the most really tranquil moments that like, one of those times where it's just like time stops for a second. And I could just go and look around and just go and see like, looking out through the cage. I mean, other people, you know, friends and family that supported me and I saw a lot of random faces and, and for the first time, actually, I just felt sympathy for the people that said the things that they said.

• 16:46Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Cause it was like, you know, I'm sitting here inside the cage looking out and the vast majority of them would never have this vantage point.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  It's true, man.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  So.

• 16:57Lewis Howes?

  I mean, how many people have experienced that? Maybe a thousand, maybe like, I don't even, inside a cage, maybe a couple thousand people, you know.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Sports growing now. I mean, but it's, you know, it's, it's still, it brings that primal feeling out of you and it's just, we all have it, you know, we, we, we were at some point, you know, uh, in, in our, you know, in the course of human history. I mean, like that's ingrained in our DNA. So it's.

• 17:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So that was cool. You did that. And then after that, you decided, you know what? I haven't, I haven't done enough, so I'm gonna co-climb a mountain. You climb Mount Kilimanjaro, which is one of the tallest mountains in the world, right? I mean, what is it like?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Kilimanjaro is the highest peak in Africa, so it's right there in the equator and East Africa and Tanzania and it's the highest freestanding peak in the world, meaning that it's not a part of a mountain chain like the Himalayas. There are many peaks in the Himalayas that are higher, but it's here, it's the only thing that's in your sight. So it's a single mountain.

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. How tall is it?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  19,340 feet.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Damn, that's high. That's really big. So you decided, you know what, I'm gonna climb this thing on my elbows, basically, my knees and crawl up the mountain. Are you the first person to crawl up a mountain?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  I think so. Again, coming back to this stupidity, like signing up for this stuff. I, uh, the craziest part to me was though-

• 18:18Lewis Howes?

  Haven't people died on that mountain or no?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  We knew that several died on our route. Actually, quite a few people do end up dying because many people attempted and aren't prepared.

• 18:27Lewis Howes?

  And they die walking and you crawled.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  It was a-

• 18:31Lewis Howes?

  Pretty impressive.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  It was definitely, it was, it was undescribable. There was, I remember the first couple of days were fun, you know, in the rainforest, my friends having a good time. And by the fourth day though, my elbows and feet were swollen up so bad, I was broken.

• 18:46Lewis Howes?

  And you have these special shoes over here, which are like, uh, what are they? Carbon fiber?

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically it's a carbon fiber that goes around my arms and my feet and it's padded on the inside and it has a Vibram shoe sole on the outside. So it's just we, and it hooks up to a climbing harness. So it goes on my arms and my feet and just bear crawl.

• 19:06Lewis Howes?

  This thing's very cool. I'm holding it right now and it's like, it looks like the five finger Vibram sole, but then it's got, it's really hard casing and some foam inside. It's a, it's a pretty sweet little contraption right here.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  That thing, uh, we got that gear Janu, we left January 3rd for Africa of 2012 and got the gear finalized December 15th. So it was like celestial alignment and everything pulled together.

• 19:32Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. Now, how long was the hike? How long did it take total?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  12 and a half days.

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  12 and a half days. How long does it take for a normal, I guess, someone walking on two feet?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Generally, it's a-

• 19:42Speaker 01

  It takes about seven round trips, six to seven depending.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  Round trip and it took you 12 to just get up there?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  12 and a half total. It was 10 up and two and a half down.

• 19:51Lewis Howes?

  Almost double the amount of time.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And you had the same amount of crew as a normal packwood going up there or did you have extra crew?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  We did. We had, because we had a lot of camera equipment and stuff like that. We had a, uh, it was team of nine of us from America. Uh, we had, called it mission Kilimanjaro, one of our goals. My dad, my dad was army, so I've got a big passion for working with veterans. I was born at an army hospital and so our goal was to go in, you know, just send a message to some of our troops that have literally sacrificed their limbs for our freedom. To go and say, you know what, you may have had this happen to you, but you're still able to live the life that you want. You're still able to go and create the life that you want. You're, you're not a victim that you, it might not be Kilimanjaro, but you've got something that you want to do.

• 20:34Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. It's pretty inspiring. And then ESPN ended up doing a documentary about it. And if you guys go check on YouTube again and just type in ESPN Cal manager, go see him climb up the mountain. It's pretty inspiring. And then you also won two ESPY awards. One was for climbing Kilimanjaro, right?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:53Lewis Howes?

  And then the other one is for what?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Uh, wrestling and weightlifting.

• 20:56Lewis Howes?

  Wrestling and weightlifting?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:57Lewis Howes?

  Okay. What did you do in weightlifting?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Actually, I competed. I started with, started with five pounds basically. And when I started lifting, I could barely, it was all, middle school and, and, um, you know, I always wondered like, will I ever be able to go and lift more than this? And looking at these other high school kids lifting. Gradually kept working up and getting stronger. I used to tie ropes around my arms and lift off my back. My favorite lift was a butterfly press.

• 21:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Modified bench press.

• 21:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, nice.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And I had ropes that I broke and ended up getting chains, broke those chains, got bigger ones and had, uh, in 2009, right before the MMA fight, the personal best in a bench press, uh, did 420 pounds.

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So you roped, rope around your elbows?

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Chains, yeah.

• 21:41Lewis Howes?

  Chains around the elbows and then?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  And then like tied to would have been two ten to each arm with

• 21:48Lewis Howes?

  Two hundred and ten pounds on each

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Calbels

• 21:50Lewis Howes?

  So you're basically lying on your back

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Right

• 21:52Lewis Howes?

  With your arms like Jesus and then folding them, bringing them together for visual for people. Um, with two hundred something pounds on each arm. That's pretty impressive. Basically at your elbow that you're lifting up. So, man, is there, is that a record or what is that?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  I, there was a, that wasn't the record. I did compete for the record in my, is modified bench press on in the Arnold Classic. I think it was in, um, two thousand seven and, um, lifted, uh, three hundred and sixty pounds at the competition there.

• 22:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay. What's the record you did?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  That was the, that was the record that and then for whatever it was the, and I got to lift at the GNC show of strength. It was, um, in Atlanta, did, uh, two hundred and forty pounds for twenty three repetitions.

• 22:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow. Twenty three, two forty. Wow. My best was ever was like two twenty five for like fifteen reps. That's pretty impressive.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. The goal now though is just to go and say that it's, I think it's, a lot of us, we kind of draw a separation with things. So we think that like these lessons that we go and learn are different.

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  And they're not, you know, the physical lessons are very similar to the entrepreneurial lessons or the, just the, the other bigger goals that we have in life in terms of, of seeking our purpose.

• 23:00Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. So now it seems like, you know, while you've been doing all these awesome adventures for yourself, you're basically trying to say, okay, what is it that I'm not able to do and how can I do it? How can I figure out a way to do it? It sounds like it's kind of been your whole life because you were born without arms and legs. So you've had to modify and adjust and be adaptive to everything, everyday life.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:21Lewis Howes?

  You've got your own car to drive. You've got your own place. You do everything on your own. Uh, and you've tried to take on these challenges, just like people said, I could never run a four minute mile.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 23:31Lewis Howes?

  And then someone did it and now everyone can do it now. So you're, you're taking this approach to yourself to say, okay, can I find a cage? Can I do CrossFit? How can I do the same workouts as other people? How can I?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  And then if we go there too, how, who would go and help other people figure out the same thing? That's the, I think that's really the truest purpose is to go and say, it's not just about us, right? If you talk to like, Yeah, some of the Navy SEALs, for instance, I've got a good couple of good friends. I just did this 12 hour, 13 hour Navy SEAL challenge. It was awesome and terrible at the same time, but these guys, I was talking to them, like, how do you go and get through BUDS training? How do you go and get through Hell Week? And they would say, you take eyes off of yourself and you put it on your team, you put it on your swim buddy, and you put it on the people around you. And that's, I think, an important lesson is that we've sometimes got to realize, like, why are we doing what we're doing?

• 24:20Lewis Howes?

  Right. For me, I've always felt like, you know, I want to take on challenges and opportunities that inspire me personally, but also through me being inspired, hopefully it's inspiring and helping other people, you know, take on challenges for themselves.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  It's contagious, like the people that end up around, you know, we were talking to your brother earlier today and like, it's, I mean, you just, in close proximity to people that are living their dreams, then it spreads.

• 24:46Lewis Howes?

  It does, it does.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  It's a virus, it's a good thing.

• 24:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, if it's all about yourself, then it's not going to help as many people, obviously, or, and it's not going to help you. But when you think about, like, okay, this is serving me, but also serving whoever, my community, my family, my, the world, then usually we're able to break even bigger limitations.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  That's the key, too, is you mentioned something there. It's like, it's serving me. I think that's one of the things that I've had to learn the most is, last year, we, you know this, we've talked extensively about this, but I mean, I was on the road, traveling, doing the speaking thing.

• 25:17Lewis Howes?

  Two hundred and something days or whatever, right?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, like over 250 days, speaking, traveling, and I love what I get to do. It's my biggest passion, but the catch is, like, you gotta be on the road that much, and so it's, it's tough. And a lot of times, it's hard to take care of yourself when you're doing that. And, you know, the metaphor that I think about all the time is, every time that they go through the in-flight briefing, when you sit down in an airplane and the oxygen mask falls, put your own mask on first.

• 25:45Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Don't put the kids on next to you. Don't put the person who needs help. Put your own mask on first.

• 25:49Lewis Howes?

  That's everyday life, man. It should be focused on you first. It's like you have to be selfish, in a sense, like, to make sure you're fully taken care of yourself, all your needs are met, your wants, everything, then you can help others.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 26:04Lewis Howes?

  But when you put, like, yourself second, and you're always putting others first, you can only serve so much. That's why I'm always like... Making sure I take so much time for myself every day to to eat right, to train right, like, I don't sacrifice my time that I need for me. And whether that's selfish or not, it is what it is because it's the only way I'm gonna be able to serve.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  You're putting your oxygen mask on. You know, you're able at that point to be able to go in and help other people. And without that, then then you limit your ability to.

• 26:31Lewis Howes?

  Limited, yeah. So you gotta be selfish in some ways.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  It's I think it's I think it's actually the, you know, it sounds crazy, but I think that by focusing yourself, it's the least, it's the most selfless thing that you can do.

• 26:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Because at that point, I think it, you you take care of that and you're able to now say, but if you stop there, then then maybe it is a selfish thing.

• 26:50Lewis Howes?

  But if you're just focusing on yourself.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Just focus on yourself, right?

• 26:52Lewis Howes?

  But you need to focus on your growing and learning and getting new skills so you can help more people.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  I always think about at every single level in the world, if you look at the biggest, you know, universal level, intergalactic systems, I mean, we've got, as stuff is moving, you know, this earth is spinning like twenty thousand miles per hour through space, right? And then down to the tiniest subatomic level, like the Planck scale, the ten to the negative twenty six centimeters, like every single level in between, everything is moving. There's motion constantly.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, even this this table.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Tables moving, right? So it's like, what what direction is our life moving?

• 27:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, hmm. Interesting. What direction is your life moving in?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Put me on the spot. I hope it's, I I think I've had an awakening lately that I needed to have.

• 27:42Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  I sometimes have to kind of eat some of my own dog food. When I speak, I challenge people to to think about, what is the one thing in your life that you can change that is keeping you from reaching your highest human potential?

• 27:57Lewis Howes?

  Right. What's the one thing keeping you from reaching your highest human potential?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  If you could only pick one thing in your life.

• 28:02Lewis Howes?

  What's your one thing?

• 28:05Lewis Howes?

  And it probably changes every couple of years or something, or you know, even.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Right now, um, it's a, it is like, I don't know how to go and sum this up into one word. It's being just on top of, of communication, correspondence, getting back to people. Like I, I'm very much like a kind of a present minded focused person. When I'm going and doing a speech, I'll try to be there, you know, with the group. But I, I have to like, I'm, I'm sometimes I'll linger, I'll let a thousand emails go and pile up. And then I feel overwhelmed and I don't go in and handle it.

• 28:40Lewis Howes?

  You don't do anything. You're like, ah.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Paralyzed.

• 28:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  But I'm not doing that anymore.

• 28:45Lewis Howes?

  So now you're more on top of it, you're staying.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  But by focusing on that, if I brought my whole, if I try to go and say, all right, I'm going to go and do 20 things at once, I'm going to go in and have more time, I'm going to go have more time to vacation. I'm going to go and read more books. I'm going to go and have the long walks on the beach. I'm going to go and do this, do that, do that. I'm going to go and start a new business. I'm going to go and, and whatever else, it's like, you can't do it. We get burnt out. That's like new year's resolutions, right? You go on right down 20 things you want to change.

• 29:13Lewis Howes?

  You don't, you don't, JJ.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Three weeks later, after new year's resolutions, it's painful for us to look at the list of stuff we want to change.

• 29:20Lewis Howes?

  And we haven't done anything.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 29:22Lewis Howes?

  Maybe for a week, we did one thing and then stopped, right?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  So what's your one thing? What's your one thing you could change?

• 29:27Lewis Howes?

  The biggest thing holding me back from achieving greatness?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  From achieving greatness.

• 29:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh man, I haven't thought about it, but probably. Man, learning when to say no. Cause for, when I started my business a few years ago, I was just like yes to everything. Cause I just wanted to like, help everyone and be there at every event and speak everywhere. And so now it's learning to like, how to manage my time efficiently and effectively so that I'm not. freely giving it to things that aren't going to serve me to the highest value and serve others to the highest value. So that's probably not the biggest thing, but that's just the thing that popped.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  That's a huge one, man. Think about what this is sometimes in the entrepreneurial world and overused example. But look at the Steve Jobs example. When he came back into Apple, they had 50 products that they're going and doing and he said, no, we're going to, we're going to stop. We're going to do five, right?

• 30:25Lewis Howes?

  And make them amazing.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  And world changing products, right? We can't, we can't do that when we're spread so thin.

• 30:31Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. I would, you know, I'd, I'd pull it back and say managing energy in general, probably just managing energy. My time efficiently throughout the day, knowing when to do things, when to get things done and not allowing things to take too much time. So probably just managing all that. And I think, you know, as relationships coming out of your life, plus personally, business wise, family wise, things like that. Your energy changes, your, your time changes. Uh, so you have to be able to adapt and be flexible to that. So.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  So here's the next question with that. Like if you could think of, and for everyone that's doing this, right? Then I think going through this process helps us think about this sometimes. And I do it myself. Every time I talk, I get to go and think about this, which I'm fortunate to. What is about managing your energy? What's one excuse that you've made about that?

• 31:24Lewis Howes?

  So I think one of the excuses that I make about managing energy is really figuring out the time that I'm doing things. And, and when I'm supposed to get it all done, you know, I might build up a lot of different projects. And I try to get it all done myself as opposed to, I guess, bringing on the right people who are better than me at certain things, managing tasks and projects and getting them on board. So I'd say that my excuse is either, uh, I like to do it all myself, or maybe I can't find the right people sometimes. Although a lot of times I feel like I do, but that's, that's probably one of them.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  So if you, uh, if you could start there and change that one thing, what would you do differently?

• 32:04Lewis Howes?

  If I could change one thing, I'd probably find the right people to help coach me and managing my time better, learning how to say no better. And also finding the right people to then manage that time for me. The tasks that take an extra 10, 20 minutes here and there throughout the day. Basically having a full time assistant or project manager or something like that.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Sure. So just hypothetically, if you envision what your life, your business looks like a year from today, after changing that one thing, how different would it be?

• 32:35Lewis Howes?

  After changing it, it's easier, it's efficient, it's seamless. It's even more exciting. It's all those things combined.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  There you go. If you focus, the coolest part is, is I think that anyone that's listening to this is, is able to go through this. It might be different for every one of us. I think that it is. If I speak to a room of a thousand people, it might be a thousand different things that people want to go and do and change, which makes it kind of hard to really narrow and pinpoint it down. You have to get specific and, and exact about it. And then I think you have to focus on one thing. Like we talked about before, the laundry list, things that you want to go and do and change. You fall on your face if you try to go and change too many things at once.

• 33:17Lewis Howes?

  Right. Now, what do you think is one of the biggest things that holds people back? Is it their, the way they were raised with their family and the mentality of the things that were said to them? Is it their own inner voice, their own limiting beliefs? Is it their peers saying they can't do something like how people said you would never win a match? What do you think's the biggest thing that holds people back?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a really good question. I think it's, um, just speaking from my own experience, I think sometimes I can be my own worst enemy. I can go in and just chunk something off to make it, you know, just seem like way too huge, way too big to go and take it on. And then I, I don't and I hesitate. Um, but that being said, some things like, uh, for instance, like the, um, the past.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  The past and the stuff that happened to us there, good, bad, or indifferent, doesn't matter because we can't change it. When I was younger, when I was 10 years old, I used to like, cry myself to sleep some nights, you know, because I would, we just wished that I would go and wake up and have arms and legs. And like, no matter how hard I would have focused on that forever, it never would have happened.

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  So when we go and focus on those things that we have no control over, then it brings us nothing but unhappiness.

• 34:31Lewis Howes?

  So you feel like we're our own worst enemies?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Well, but we're also too, our greatest ally in terms of our capability to get past it. But I think it's, I think we are very like, we can be incredibly motivated, but I think we're very vague a lot of times in what we really truly want. I think we need to really get clear.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  So the more clear we are in the things we want, the easier it is to get them.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 34:51Lewis Howes?

  That's what you're saying.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Well, how do you, you know, for, for instance, I mean, how does someone define greatness in their own life?

• 34:57Lewis Howes?

  Well, what's your definition? They usually ask this at the end, but I'll ask it now.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Well, I knew ahead of time that you were gonna ask that eventually, so we had to talk about it. My definition of greatness would be trying to find my own true potential in my life, whatever potential exists, and, and then using whatever I was given there and whatever I worked for to be able to go and help other people do the same. That to me is, whether that's helping kids that grew up with a totally different background, maybe, you know, in a, in a poor neighborhood or something like that, or, or someone who's gone through some type of injury, or even somebody who, who just is kind of going through living life in the status quo and, and being in a mediocre place, like helping them go and move to just something greater. And, and in the process, trying to go and do that

• 35:45Speaker 01

  and live it myself. Because if we're not being authentic, then, I mean, that, that kind of sucks. I, I've been there before too.

• 35:50Lewis Howes?

  Now, who's someone who's really inspiring to you that you look up to?

• 35:54Speaker 01

  So here's something kind of messed up. If you'd asked me this like six months ago, I would have probably said Lance Armstrong and Oscar Pistorius.

• 36:01Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow. Yeah, of course. Well, the guy, for those that don't know, Oscar's his name, right? The guy who has no legs but ran the Olympics for South Africa, who was basically a, you know, hero to so many people and a legend and would sell out track meets leading up to the Olympics and would get paid a lot of money to, to come and do that. The guy who, you know, broke records and all sorts of things, but now he's on trial, I guess, for

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Murder.

• 36:24Lewis Howes?

  murdering his girlfriend, right, or his wife, or, okay. So him and Lance Armstrong, who is obviously, everyone knows that story. So those are your two guys that you thought defined greatness?

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and There are, you know, a handful of other speakers and other, other people like that too, that I go in and really truly admire. I mean, from a business perspective, if I had to go and pick one person, I would say Tony Robbins.

• 36:46Lewis Howes?

  He's good.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  He had, uh, Tony had a, I mean, from a, just from looking at it from a business perspective alone, he had a $400 million IPO with Anthony Robbins, Inc. Basically took his name publicly traded. I mean, there's nobody that's ever done that in the world of motivation. But I think it's all about, to me, having like, sort of like, the whole picture, the whole grand scheme, like, and it's not just being great in one thing, but like, ecologically balanced life.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  Didn't you say that? Because Don Yeager, who was just on the previous episode, I can't remember the reference he used, but basically like, the best football player in the world, if they don't have a great balance of life, if they're not continuing to grow in other areas of life, he's like, that is not greatness to me. No, he said this actually about Tiger Woods. He said, I said, you think Tiger Woods is, you know, defines greatness, he said, he's a, he's a great golfer, but I don't use him in my definition of greatness because of everything else in his life.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 37:45Lewis Howes?

  And, because it's not balanced.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not balanced. One, one thing. Right.

• 37:49Lewis Howes?

  And, uh, so you have a very similar.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  I'll give you one person, though, that really like, stands out to me, and this isn't somebody who's like, a big, big celebrity, but he's somebody that's really important to me in my life. And, um, a guy named Sergeant Travis Mills. And I met him, Sergeant Mills, Travis, he was, uh, I call him Mayor Mills, he knows everybody, and, I mean, just, the guy's a crack up, but I met him three weeks after he lost all four limbs. He set his book bag down on an IED, and a chain of like, 17 IEDs went off, and lost all four limbs, and, and basically, his initial response was like, he didn't, you know, he didn't want the medic to do anything, he just wanted to like, just go, just pass. And then the guy's like, no, it's not that bad, it's not that bad. And he's like, dude, I got no arms

• 38:34Speaker 01

  and legs, like, it's pretty bad. And, uh, so then, he go and stabilize, and they get him back to, um, they get him back to Walter Reed Army Hospital in DC, and he's laying in the hospital bed there, and I met him about three weeks after he came back. And came in the room and this guy's spirit was just like palpable and you just touch it. I mean, it was amazing. And um, so we hung out, uh, I got to sign like a book for him and, and just like sign a DVD for him. I mean, just took a bunch of pictures together, talked for like three hours, guys, I mean, cracking us up the whole time. And afterwards we left and they had to go and put him back in a um, short-term coma to go and deal with the pain. And he lost his short-term memory from this, this coma that briefly they put him in.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  And uh, so he's got these pictures and books and stuff like that of, of meeting me and hanging out and he's like, has no memory of it. And so this is the first time I've ever met somebody for the second time, like, you know, in a row and them having no recollection of it. I wondered how that was gonna go, but so I came in and like hung out again, awesome dude. And um, this is a couple of weeks later after that and uh, so long story short, he goes and like pulls me over to the side and he's like, dude, dude, like you gotta be straight and level with me. Was I as cool as the first time we hung out? And I was like, nah, man, you were way more drugged up last time, so. But that guy epitomizes us that,

• 39:54Speaker 01

  there is that, that, that saying that we've probably all heard that life is not what happens to us, but our reaction response to it. You know, it's ninety, ten percent of what happens to you, ninety percent of what you do with it.

• 40:06Lewis Howes?

  How you react, how you react to it. Your, your attitude, your response, yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  And, and the deal is, is that I'm, I don't have any idea what it's like to lose. I was born without my arms and legs. So I have no perspective of that.

• 40:16Lewis Howes?

  Born and this is how it was.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:18Lewis Howes?

  Nothing new for you, I mean.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  But you know what, there, even then, even though we go through huge, huge losses and some people go through enormous things, it doesn't, it shouldn't, that doesn't have to shape your perspective and who you are.

• 40:33Lewis Howes?

  Right, your mindset, your attitude, your gratitude, all those different things, because you can always be grateful for something.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's, there is very real, you know, mental challenge and mental illness. I mean, that's undeniable. However, I would say, um, at the same time, our perspective is always our choice.

• 40:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Everything that happens to us, and this is something where I've gotta eat my own dog food with this a lot, right? Cause I'll go and like whine and complain like, oh, woe is me, like the flight cancellation, oh, my day's ruined, like whatever. And then I'm like, alright. Sit back and step out and like in the grand scheme of my life, is this gonna matter?

• 41:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. You know, it's interesting. We met back at Tim Ferriss's event a couple, was it like two years ago almost now?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Something like that.

• 41:19Lewis Howes?

  Year and a half, two years ago.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  We're getting old. Don't, don't date us.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right. I think it was like, when was that? Like August of two thousand and eleven or something or somewhere around there. Anyways, we met there and I remember hearing about your story then and then doing, doing more research on you and being really inspired by it. We've become friends over the last couple of years, hung out a bunch. And, you know, whenever like shit would hit the fan for me over the last couple of years, I somehow automatically come back to thinking about you and I'm like, gosh, there's nothing to be ungrateful. I mean, there's nothing to be ungrateful for. There's things that I can be unhappy about and be like, I don't like this, so I'm gonna change it or whatever, but it's like, whenever something like happens that I feel is like bad or I could be depressed, I'm like, you know what? I've got my arms and legs and I was thinking about you and I'm like, geez, if Kyle can just be like doing all this cool stuff he's doing,

• 42:05Lewis Howes?

  then so can I and I don't have to like have a bad attitude about it. So I'm always reminded by that and I appreciate our friendship and being able to hang out and.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Well, I think we got, that's another thing too, is that we have to be around other people that, that do help us out, you know?

• 42:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Jim Rohn, one of my favorite motivational leaders, you know, from a guy that I really admire. He, he lived, I think, a pretty, I had never met him, but he, I think he lived a pretty cool life.

• 42:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  And he, uh, he said, um, that we were probably most impacted by the five people we spend the most time with.

• 42:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  And, and I think that's true.

• 42:37Lewis Howes?

  It's true, it's true. I'm a big fan of mentors and I think mentors are the key to really getting to where you wanna be faster than you can do it any other way and achieving greatness. You can't really achieve greatness without mentors, coaches.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  I used to be, it's funny to say that because I used to be opposed to it.

• 42:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:54Lewis Howes?

  You wanted to like be the lone wolf and.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, I kinda, I thought that it's like in a, in a way that it's like, um.

• 43:02Lewis Howes?

  Cheating or something?

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like you're not being original and not being your true self or something like that. And then I met my, my mentor and a guy that's, um. His name is um Ron Shapiro, sports agent. He's really helped me a tremendous amount.

• 43:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Shapiro, yeah.

• 43:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a.

• 43:21Lewis Howes?

  He's a friend of yours with uh the agent for Cal Ripken?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:24Lewis Howes?

  No way. I know Ron, I've interviewed him.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Have you really?

• 43:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  No kidding.

• 43:28Lewis Howes?

  That's hilarious.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  But Ron is.

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  Smart guy, man.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Incredibly smart and like, you know, and I didn't know how much I didn't know until I spent time with him.

• 43:37Lewis Howes?

  And his son is the GM of like the the Indians or what is it?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  His son's the GM of the Indians, yeah. His son-in-law, um Eric Mangini was coach of the Jets and the Browns.

• 43:46Lewis Howes?

  That's hilarious.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Um, yeah. So he's done some amazing stuff and I think, but Ron too is another guy that I'd look up to and admire because the deal is with Ron is that if he had solely monetized his life, he probably could have been a billionaire. But at the same time, you know, he's he's done extraordinarily well, but he's he's he's now, he's got an amazing marriage. He's got, you know, amazing grandkids and he's got a good business where he's got, you know, a handful of really quality people that work for him and it's not overextended. And and I look at that and I'm like, wow, that's a pretty cool life. And he just got back, you know, did a cruise around the world and like, spent time with his wife for like six, eight weeks. And you know, it's that that to me is, but it's also too, it's it's it's living for something bigger. It's taken that now and he can go in,

• 44:33Speaker 01

  not just with me, but the other people that he's helped, many thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that he helps. He can go and take these lessons that he's learned and impart them on other people. So that, I sent him an email about this recently and said like, you know, before I met you, like, I hated that word mentor, which he's a big advocate of.

• 44:50Lewis Howes?

  That's funny.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  And it's like, but it's taught me how much I didn't know, that's for sure.

• 44:54Lewis Howes?

  It's funny, every successful individual I talk with and meet, they always have a coach or a mentor. They either hire someone or they have someone that's, you know, mentoring them. And they talk about how important it is to have someone to be able to analyze what you're doing and just help you make the right decisions, you know, lead you in the right way. And I'm a big believer in that. So tell me, you've you've been speaking all around the country and I guess all around the world as well for the last ten years or something. And you have spoken in front of probably, how many people? I don't know, a few hundred thousand people?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I tried to do the math on that recently. I have no idea, but it probably in a couple hundred thousands.

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  A few hundred thousand people and you've heard a lot of crazy stories. You've met a lot of inspiring people, people who've had challenges, lost limbs, you know, got fired, you know, bankruptcy, everything. And what is like the average characteristics of like, what's the one person that you see almost all the time you go somewhere like who's like, what do they do? What do they think? What are their doubts, their fears? There's got to be like an example of one person that like you hear about all the time where they're always like, oh, you know, I'm struggling with this or I want to get a raise or I want to do this, but they have some type of limitation or some type of thing they need to break through. What does that person look like to you?

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Well, I think it starts with, I mean, like you identified that there is that like latent dream there. That's that that thing that like, you know, you know that you want to do, but you haven't done. Maybe it's doing Kilimanjaro. Maybe it's going and and just, you know, making your first thousand dollars from a speech. Maybe it's going and writing a book. I, you know, maybe it's starting a business. And and then we think about it, we think about it, we think about it. And then years go by and we don't do it. We don't go and and and and quit our job so that we could go and start something else. We'll go and deal with the same nine to five and the same thing, the same, yeah. And and the deal is, is that time, like our time on this planet is the one resource we never get back.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  It's even a more finite resource than any crude oil than than than any, I mean, any any single thing. I mean, it's it's exhaustible and it's it's it's going right now. And instead of stressing about that too and freaking out, then Just think like, what would I really want to do in my life if I couldn't fail? If I took failure out of it? I mean, you gotta go through the suffering and the failure to get there. But at the same time, if we just take that out of there, like, what would you want your life to look like? If you were the architect? And, and just start. I think that that's a big part of it is, is we, we wait and we hesitate and we put this stuff off.

• 47:27Lewis Howes?

  So not taking action. When we were just talking about a good friend of mine who just came in here a minute ago, who was talking about, you know, he spent four years at a job that he didn't like, that he wasn't happy at, that he wanted to go back into doing something else he did love. And now finally, after four years, he's like, okay, enough's enough. But he hesitated for so long. And I feel like a lot of people-

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know what? He did it.

• 47:50Lewis Howes?

  He did it.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  He did it. And it's, it's, I think that it's, it sounds crazy to say, but the, um, I, I, I love like, uh, looking at like the hero's journey, right? Like seeing that like all these journeys and, and all these hero tales are very similar. And, and all of us, and it's one of the stages of the hero's journey is the refusal of the call. Like you hear that call to adventure, the call to something greater. And then we kind of hang up the phone. We just, we don't answer it. We'll let it ring.

• 48:14Lewis Howes?

  We're scared.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  We're scared.

• 48:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  And we'll, we'll just put it off, put it off, put it off. But it takes a lot of courage to, to do that. And if you look up in the dictionary, one of the accepted definitions of, of a hero is one who shows great courage.

• 48:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow, yeah. So you, you see this a lot. I'm assuming 95% of the people you talk to, they're, they're not taking the call. They're not actually doing what they want to do. They're doing what they feel like they're supposed to or they need to for living.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:42Lewis Howes?

  Expenses for their family.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  They're supposed to is a big one, man. That's a-

• 48:46Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to doing what they, you know, if they could, if failure was not an option, what would they want to be doing? You know, 90 to 95% of people probably aren't doing that. So- What do people need to do to like get over that fear and take that leap to the call to the adventure? What do they need to, what needs to happen mentally or physically or what?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Let's go back and, and define it for every individual. And I get out a piece of paper, write down what you want with your life, right? At the top, I mean, what do you want your life to go and look like, right? And then pick, pick that one, what is one thing right now that is, that's, that's keeping you from that? That if you just did, it would set you on that path. It might be quitting your job. I'm, you know, I'm not saying that, I don't know if, but it might, it, who knows? It might be breaking up.

• 49:34Lewis Howes?

  It might be moving to a new city. It might be losing thirty pounds. It might be any of these things.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Any of these things.

• 49:41Lewis Howes?

  But the key is you have to make a sacrifice, right?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:44Lewis Howes?

  And people are not willing to sacrifice certain things.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  It's, I think that we have to also understand that like, we've got to just, I mean, with that sacrifice, like, there's gotta be a commitment. So I'll tell you what happened to me on Kilimanjaro. On the fourth day in the mountain, I was broken. And we had projected this is gonna take fifteen days to go and reach the summit. And on the fourth day, um, I was like, my friends were trying to introduce me to other people. There are climbers on the mountain that had heard our story and stuff like that. And I told them, I was like, I don't wanna be around anybody, like, just leave me alone. And I went inside my tent and I laid there hearing them laughing and joking outside and I cried. And I started crying because I, I realized at that moment, if I gave up, I was gonna have to come home

• 50:31Speaker 01

  and, and tell a mom, not my mom, but another mom, um, a lady named Vicky, that I had broken this, a promise that I'd made to her. And this promise was she had given me the honor of carrying her son's ashes to the top of Kilimanjaro. He'd been a Marine that had sacrificed his life to save several other Marines and had been killed in combat in May of two thousand and eleven. And I laid there in that tent and I made that decision that no matter what happened to me, I refused to come home and tell her I didn't make it to the top. And the pain didn't go away, but I can tell you that something in me changed. And Corey, Corey Johnson, he became my why, my purpose to get to the top.

• 51:16Lewis Howes?

  The ashes, right?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yep, to get him there.

• 51:18Lewis Howes?

  Right. No matter how much pain you were feeling. That was your why?

• 51:22Speaker 01

  And it just, you know, and it changed. And if you ask whether it's a Navy SEAL or, um, you know, a founder of a Fortune 500 company, I mean, or anywhere in between, I mean, like, I think that at some moment, you hit that wall where you're broken.

• 51:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  And

• 51:39Lewis Howes?

  I've felt that for sure.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Then it's, you gotta know, what's your why?

• 51:43Lewis Howes?

  What's gonna keep you going? Because we're all gonna feel this pain. It's like, why am I doing this? Like, why? You have to want it so bad. You have to know with so much certainty that you're gonna go through this. And one of the key things is, is having that. If you don't have the why, then you're gonna give up, you're gonna stop. So it's, it's important to know exactly why you're doing what you're doing and why you want to reach.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I tell people, it's like, you know, and so the other thing that they gotta go and write down on a sheet of paper, they've already written down the limitation, the thing that they gotta go and do and start. Now, why do you want this?

• 52:18Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Not, not just because it's gonna go and give you the nice car, the nice house, or whatever else. I'm talking like the deeper level gut feeling that's hard to even put into words.

• 52:26Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Why?

• 52:27Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Well, with that, you guys are gonna have to leave your comments on the blog of why you want what you want so badly right now. So Kyle, what are you, uh, what are you working on next, man? What do you got going on? Yeah, I know you got documentaries, you're doing all sorts of fun things.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Man, I'm in vacation mode right now. No, it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's gonna be a fun, fun journey. I'm thinking, um, thinking there's some other mountains in the future that I want to go and accomplish. But even beyond that, there

• 52:53Lewis Howes?

  Literally, and

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Literally, and, and metaphorically.

• 52:57Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Awesome.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Figuratively.

• 52:58Lewis Howes?

  Figuratively, great. That's cool, man. Well, where, where can people connect with you and find you online?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Uh, and people, if you go and check out my website, it's kyle-mainard.com, kyle-mainard.com, and Twitter, at Kyle Maynard, and Facebook, just, uh, check out Kyle Maynard. And, uh, and shoot me a message. It'd be great to, to hear some of the response from this. I look forward to it. And Hearing what you're doing too, man, I am a huge fan of this and I think that like so much of what people need, you know, it's you gotta program yourself, right?

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  You gotta keep, keep filling your head with good stuff because once you put down one good book, like you gotta keep it going.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  Keep it going, man. Well, that's why I'm doing this, hopefully to inspire other people and inspire myself by hanging out with guys like you. So, I appreciate you, my man, and make sure everyone check out Kyle Maynard online. Check out his videos, it's gonna inspire you. Shoot him a message on Twitter or Facebook and leave a comment on the blog, School of Greatness.com. Thanks, my man.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Thanks, brother.

• 54:00Lewis Howes?

  Again, one of the most inspiring guys that I know, Kyle Maynard. I appreciate him for coming on and I hope you guys enjoyed his inspiring message and stories. And make sure to answer Kyle's question over on the blog at School of Greatness.com. Would love to hear your answer to the question that he asked me and that I answered as well during this episode. And if you liked this episode, feel free to share it on Twitter, on Facebook, tag a picture of where you're listening to this on Instagram with my name in there, and leave us a review over on iTunes. Let us know what you think, let us know what we can do to make it better and how we can serve you even more. With that, guys, hope you have a fantastic week and make sure to do something great.