How to Make $10,000 a Month Starting With Nothing | Chris Koerner

Chris Koerner, serial entrepreneur and host of The Koerner Office podcast, breaks down how to launch a business with no money, the barbell method for choosing what to build, Parkinson's Law, and the post and ghost strategy for beating fear of failure. Koerner also shares the story of his daughter's double lung transplant for pulmonary hypertension and the kidney he and his wife each donated to strangers.

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

• 0:02Lewis Howes?

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• 0:47Speaker 01

  People are masters at playing business and not doing business. They go get an LLC, they make a business plan.

• 0:53Lewis Howes?

  A logo.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  They start talking to their friends about it. I'm making moves. You don't do any of that. Go find a customer. I don't care if it's your mom, your best friend, I don't care. You gotta start somewhere. I don't care if it's an unpaid customer and you do it for free just to get a five star review. Go find a customer and then figure everything else out after that. Sell it before you have it.

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  He is a serial entrepreneur who has launched 75 businesses with multiple of them becoming seven and eight figure brands. And he's here to teach you the fastest way to add $10,000 plus a month to your life. You have the inspiring Chris Koerner in the house.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  It's the fear of the perception of failure from others. That's the only thing we're afraid of. It's not one of the things, it's not the fear of failure. It's what will people think about me if I fail? The thing is, if you do fail, they're probably not going to think anything about you.

• 1:37Lewis Howes?

  How does someone develop a more resilient mindset when they launch something, they get laughed at and they lose money and they fail? How do they not let that insecurity or that self doubt stop them from trying again?

• 1:50Speaker 01

  It's an overly simplistic answer, but we.

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  I've always heard people say that it takes money to make money. Is that something you believe?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Maybe 30 years ago that was true, but that's no longer true.

• 2:05Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  We have more resources, tools, everything at our disposal today that we've never had before. We could use an AI tool on a free trial to launch a service business and sell something to a business owner that pays us 2,500 a month. Right? You don't need money to start a business, period.

• 2:25Lewis Howes?

  What do you need?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  You need to shed your ego. You need to stop thinking that people care about what you're doing or saying on the internet. You need to just let go, like as cliche as that is, you need to just do your own thing and stop worrying about other people.

• 2:41Lewis Howes?

  But what if someone spends a lot of time, energy and money launching something and they get zero results and they lose their money?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Well, how much money did they spend and why did they spend it? Right? What business did they pick is what I would ask them. I can think of very few exceptions where you need over a hundred or a thousand dollars to start a business. Even if I were to start a restaurant that costs half a million dollars to open, I could still largely de-risk that idea by going to farmer's markets and having people taste my recipe or a pop up or, you know, renting a food truck for a weekend just to see if people come or people come back or if they care. There's a thousand creative ways to launch a business without money.

• 3:19Lewis Howes?

  And testing it first to make sure the model works, then scaling it, then getting the half a million dollar investment in the storefront or whatever it might be. Once you know you have customers, once you know that there's product market fit or whatever it might be, right?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 3:34Lewis Howes?

  And you told me beforehand that you can't be prideful and broke at the same time. Why is that?

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Because we are most likely to get our first customers from our friends and family or from social media, from our Facebook page that has 300 followers or Instagram page that has 262 followers. The people that trust us, like us, know us, know our background, they are most likely to want to support us. Right? But so many of us are too concerned about what that guy from high school 20 years ago will think about me if I post a selfie video talking about my new service business. He doesn't care. He doesn't know. And if he cares, he's not a person that you should care about. So we just have to let go and realize that people have more distractions than they've ever had. We're swiping so many things, they're not thinking about you, they don't care about you.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Just do your own thing, let go of the ego and you will win.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  Were you always good with money?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  I grew up poor, so I've had to be good with money. I've, I've had to have a kind of a scarcity mindset around money because I grew up poor.

• 4:42Lewis Howes?

  Do you still have a scarcity money mindset around money?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yeah. Depends on the thing, not around food. I'm a foodie, so.

• 4:49Lewis Howes?

  You'll spend it all.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  That's where I ball out, right?

• 4:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Around a lot of other things I do because those habits are hard to break.

• 4:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So you don't want to go back to being poor?

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  So would you say you have a scarcity mindset or a frugal mindset? Or a live beneath your means mindset?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  I think I'm a walking contradiction.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  I could point to like, I built the house more expensive than what I could afford in my twenties. But at the same time, there are other decisions I make that show my frugality mindset.

• 5:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  It just, I'm just, I don't know. I guess I'm a hypocrite. I'm inconsistent when it comes to money. It just depends. But I will say this, I like to say constraints equal creativity and building a house more expensive than I could afford in my twenties was one of the best things I could have done because it was a motivating factor to just to work harder. And I don't want people to misinterpret that, misunderstand and say, well, I can go buy that $13 avocado toast because it'll just motivate me to grind more. Like, I think that's kind of a weird quirk of mine, but for me it worked. Like I, I also had my first kid when I was 23.

• 5:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  And my fourth when I was 29, right? And so that's always been the forefront of my mind is providing for my family. And so if I did make a poor money decision, I always knew that A, I could think of a creative way to start a business and, and make it back. Or B, I would just have to work harder to be able to afford my lifestyle.

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

  So interesting because in my twenties, my first apartment was $250 a month and I thought it was a lot of money. Then it was $450 a month. That was a stretch. Then I went from that to in Ohio, to, to New York City and it was 2,600 a month from, for a rental for one month. And I go, this is like six months of rent in Ohio. And I was like, this is insanity that I'm spending this to sleep. And then the next month after that, I went to 3,600 a month and I go, this is, this is way too much. And it was like six grand a few years later and I was just like, are you kidding me? My younger self would be saying that you're just wasting your money.

• 6:55Lewis Howes?

  But for whatever reason, every time I stepped into a new environment in my living space that cost more, it's like I unlocked financial abundance. Like it's like I got creative.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:07Lewis Howes?

  Maybe it was a certain level of constraint by that framing where it made me think in a different way. I was like, I need to go earn way more to be able to pay for this so that my bank account doesn't go down.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:19Lewis Howes?

  And again, like you, it doesn't mean go spend as much money as you can next month's rent. But that pressure caused me to figure out how to provide at a different level of thinking than the lower level of financial pressure.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:34Lewis Howes?

  And maybe not, maybe there's limits to how much pressure I can handle.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 7:41Lewis Howes?

  Before it's like, oh, and I actually break down.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:44Lewis Howes?

  But incrementally going into that new level supported me in being creative.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:51Lewis Howes?

  Financially.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:52Lewis Howes?

  And taking risks and not worrying about looking silly and just being risking like failure.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:00Lewis Howes?

  Cause I was like, I need a yes, I need people to consume or buy or whatever it might be.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:05Lewis Howes?

  And is that something that you've experienced as well?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  I think we don't put enough pressure on ourselves. We need, like, we hear a lot of people like, just let, you know, just don't be so hard on your. I think we need to be a little harder on ourselves. We need to put a little pressure on ourselves. You're familiar with Parkinson's Law? So for those watching, Parkinson's Law is the, is the theory that time and or resources expand or contract to fit the space allotted to it. Right? So in high school, if my chemistry teacher said, we've got this project due in two months. It's a third of your grade. We were going to take two months to do it. What I normally did, I have ADHD, is I would completely forget about it.

• 8:46Lewis Howes?

  To last night.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  To the last night. And he would tell us, this isn't the type of thing that you can procrastinate. I'm telling you, I'm like, okay, we'll see. And last night I would forget, I'm like, oh crap, I have that project. I would stay up all night and I would submit something amazing, like objectively, he wouldn't have never known. And that's Parkinson's Law. And that's pressure, whether artificial or natural, that is pressure. And what you're describing is the same thing. It's just not in a time format, it's in a monetary format.

• 9:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  So there, there are pressures that are outside of our control. Like if I took out an SBA loan to buy a business and then it turns out like the business was all a sham or fraud and I could declare bankruptcy, like that might be way too much pressure for me. But for what you're describing, it would motivate you to go do a little more, try a little harder, do this, you know, stay clocked in a few more hours. And when that pressure is applied is when you unlock these amazing things. And a lot of pressure over a long period of time compounds to an insane amount to where at the end of 10, 20 years of doing that, you're like, you're insanely productive and efficient and you have all these revenue streams

• 9:53Speaker 01

  and these beautiful things have happened because you've, you've allowed that pressure to affect your life.

• 9:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they say if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  That's Parkinson's Law.

• 10:02Lewis Howes?

  It's Parkinson's Law. It's like, it, it's so funny because I've had the, you know, the, the honor of interviewing a lot of people on this show and, you know, stay in touch and stay friends with a lot of them over time. And it's the people that you wouldn't expect to get back to you the fastest. The people that are the most successful, the busiest, that have the most on their plate. I text them, I call them, they text back within minutes.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:26Lewis Howes?

  The people that are. Not doing as much that take days.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:30Lewis Howes?

  And I'm like, really? It makes no sense to me.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  I'm like, you can't reply within a day, or at least just a thumbs up, an acknowledgement, you know, so.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  It's so funny that the most successful people usually are the fastest to reply, or if they see it, they're gonna give you some acknowledgement or say, I'll get back to you tomorrow. They give you something where they're saying, I want to take action now.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:51Lewis Howes?

  And that action snowballs into more results.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  Typically, you are a master at showing the world the easiest ways to launch a business and make five to 10K a month.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 11:04Lewis Howes?

  Pretty quickly with a little amount or no money at all.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 11:08Lewis Howes?

  Which types of businesses are the easiest to scale to 10K a month right now?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  I like to think of it like a barbell when it comes to businesses. Very, on one side of the barbell, you have no AI, no tech, no internet, sweaty, hands-on, difficult. I love those businesses because people don't want to play there.

• 11:28Lewis Howes?

  Manual labor.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:30Lewis Howes?

  Plumbing, the lawn mowing, the freaking tree removal, the, the dirty work, right? Which you can charge a premium for, I feel like, right now.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. AI isn't about to disrupt that.

• 11:40Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  On the other end of that barbell, you have AI-heavy, right? All online content, AI-heavy. That's where I like to be. I don't want to be in the messy middle where either side of that can be disrupted by the other side. So I really like reselling right now. Reselling anything, I don't know when that's gonna go out of business. I talked to guys just yesterday that are reselling VCRs. They're paying five to $10 for VCRs and selling for $100 to $150.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  They might be getting for free some of these probably, right? It's like some of these things, you just like find donations.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:14Lewis Howes?

  And then fix it up, right?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  These guys are in like the middle of nowhere, Virginia. And so when we were talking, I pulled up Facebook Marketplace and I live in Dallas, Fort Worth, there's nine million people and I typed in VCR. And I just watched their eyes lit up because there were hundreds of VCRs for five to 10 bucks. And they were like, that one's worth 200, that one's worth 75, that one's worth 150. And I crunched the numbers and I'm like, you can make six figures a year. If you lived in Dallas, Fort Worth, buying VCRs on Facebook Marketplace where people don't know the value and selling them on eBay where there's a fair price, a fair market value for it.

• 12:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  VCRs, right?

• 12:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  And you could, you could rinse and repeat that category with hundreds of others. These guys were selling camcorders, all types of stuff. So that is a business where if.

• 12:58Lewis Howes?

  Reselling.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Reselling, anything.

• 13:00Lewis Howes?

  Could be clothes, it could be games, it could be toys, it could be whatever.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  I know a guy that makes six figures picking up free or close to free couches on Facebook Marketplace. And selling them on Facebook Marketplace, like people that only buy on Facebook Marketplace and then sell on the same platform to the same people for a profit.

• 13:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I think I've seen a lot of people on Instagram. I love people documenting their journeys of like reselling.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:25Lewis Howes?

  And picking up whatever, $50 furniture and selling it for a thousand.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Now, maybe they put a couple of days of like labor and paint and sanding it, but if you have that skill.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  To refurbish something and then resell and make it look nice.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:39Lewis Howes?

  That's like $800 right there in profit, which is a couple of days of work.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  But if you're willing to hit record on the camera, put your phone on a tripod and you're like, you're not embarrassed. Then you can grow an audience who's cheering for you and rooting for you. And then eventually you're gonna have an audience that won't necessitate you to go buy dressers anymore. You can do whatever you want with that.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. It's almost like if you can create content showing the launch of an idea.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:03Lewis Howes?

  Is more valuable than the idea itself.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's okay. That's okay. Cause people are good. They want to support people. They want to support the underdog. And if you're the underdog and they're watching your come up from zero to something, they're gonna support you.

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Okay. So reselling is one.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 14:18Lewis Howes?

  What other couple of ideas you got?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  I mean, I had a couple come to my house just last week. Um, they washed windows. That's it. I paid them 500 bucks and it was a husband, wife. They're like early mid twenties and they washed my windows and that like, this isn't how it worked, but this is how it could have worked. They could have said, Chris, can we wash the windows? And I'm like, sure, I want to support young entrepreneurs. So, okay, we need to uh, require a deposit. No problem. How much? Half. Here's 250. Okay. They could have had $0 to their name. No car, no LLC, no insurance, anything. They could have Ubered to Home Depot, used that 250 to buy all the equipment for 50 bucks, come back to my house, spent five hours.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Well, like it's hard work. I'm not saying it's easy and put hundreds of dollars of profit in there. They could have been paid to start a business, right? That's a business where you would need money to start. You get paid upfront. It's not unreasonable to ask for a deposit. That didn't happen. I just paid him, but I'm saying like back to our, you don't need money to start a business. That's one. So any, any service business that you start with your hands. That's unsexy, that's physical. We're, we're missing like three million plumbers, HVAC and electricians in America right now. We have a shortage of like three million. And those are just the big three that, the home services that everyone talks about, but there's thousands of home service niches. If you look at just gutters, you have gutter repair, gutter replacement, gutter cleaning, like there's thousands of home service businesses. So

• 15:48Speaker 01

  anything you do with your hands that, you know, robots aren't about to take over. Because the smart people developing robots are making robots that can, you know, package orders and, and do things at scale, not.

• 15:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Replace a toilet.

• 16:00Lewis Howes?

  A few years ago, I was, you know, we bought a home and I was, you know, trying to hang stuff and curtains and TVs and all this stuff. And I was like, I don't have time to do this right now. And I, what is it? Task Rabbit? I went on there and it's like, I think I paid someone like four or $500 to hang a TV.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 16:15Lewis Howes?

  You know what I mean? And it took them maybe an hour and a half. And there was probably 50 people on there that this is all they did full time.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:23Lewis Howes?

  And they're making bank.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I know.

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  Like this is insanity.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  But I was also like, ah, I don't want to spend three hours doing this right now and I need to get it done. Uh, let's go to the top person ranked on, you know, Task Rabbit. And okay, they have a hundred reviews. Good enough for me. Let's do it. And it's like, you know, I'm sure there, I paid a tip probably or something. It's like, you're making bank doing service work. That is good money.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  And they own their, they, they own a business.

• 16:50Lewis Howes?

  They own it. And literally all they have is like a little tool belt with maybe some nails and a hammer.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  It's, it's not expensive to start that and put up a profile on Task Rabbit, right? And I was just thinking of like window washing. They probably, these guys or gals could have said, hey, we're gonna come once a quarter. Can you give us a deposit for the next one and have these, this clientele? And then just go around the neighborhood and have a full schedule.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:13Lewis Howes?

  Cleaning windows. You can do that with cars, boats, anything.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny you bring up the, the TV hanging because I tweeted, I had the same experience like a year ago and I tweeted about it. And every time I have a contractor come over, I always pick their brain. I'm like, how much do you make?

• 17:26Lewis Howes?

  I said the same thing. I'm like, dude.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  80 grand a year hanging TVs.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  So this guy comes over, I paid him like 275 to hang a TV and I was like.

• 17:34Lewis Howes?

  Texas is a little cheaper.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  It'll cheaper. Yeah. And I was like, how many of these do you do a day? He's like eight to 12. And I'm like.

• 17:38Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  I was like, you're making 300 grand a year? He's like, yeah. It's like it varies. Some months are 10 grand, some months are 40. And I was like, okay, where do you find customers? Are you good at like SEO and ads? He goes, no ads. He says, I have a profile on Google LSA, Thumbtack. Home Advisor, Angie's List, Task Rabbit. They feed me all my leads. I do good work. I ask for five star reviews. They take, some of them take a cut, some of them don't. Some of them he boosts his profile to get more jobs. Six figures a year and he doesn't, he's not a marketing, he just lists himself on these free platforms.

• 18:12Lewis Howes?

  Crazy. The skill is not that hard.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:15Lewis Howes?

  I mean, it's like, if you're, if you spend a week or two to learn the skill.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:21Lewis Howes?

  Of that type of skill and you master it.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:23Lewis Howes?

  You could get really good at that skill.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:25Lewis Howes?

  And people are always gonna need that.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:27Lewis Howes?

  Well, what is the thing most people do first that immediately puts them behind before they even start when they're trying to launch a new side hustle or product or business?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. People are masters at playing business and not doing business.

• 18:41Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  It means they go get an LLC. They make a business plan.

• 18:45Lewis Howes?

  A logo.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  They start talking to their friends about, I'm, I've got, I'm making moves. You don't do any of that. Go find a customer. I don't care if it's your mom, your best friend. I don't get, you gotta start somewhere. I don't care if it's an unpaid customer and you do it for free just to get a five star review. Go find a customer and then figure else, figure everything else out after that. Sell it before you have it.

• 19:09Lewis Howes?

  I call that the bootcamp method or the Kickstarter method, like launch the sale of something first before you launch the business. And this is something I did early on. I would do a free webinar. If ever wanted to launch a new course, product, offering, event. I would do a free webinar and then ask for a sale before having anything to give people. It's like 15 years ago. And then I would do a bootcamp around this.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  I would teach and train and I'd say, all right, we're gonna do a six week bootcamp training on this thing that you want to learn.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 19:42Lewis Howes?

  I would record that and then I'd sell that as the course.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Same thing.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  So I just called the bootcamp method. It was like, do people really want this? Before I build a whole site and landing page and this and that, run a, let me just see if I can get a few sales. And if it's exciting enough that people really want it.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  Then I'll record it live. Repackaged it and sell it over and over again now that people want it.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:06Lewis Howes?

  And try to go the least amount of, well, maybe not the least amount of effort, but the least amount of work building the business and just create the sale first.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:14Lewis Howes?

  And then do the service.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  First.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Yes. And have very generous like refund policies.

• 20:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, a hundred percent, whatever.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:21Lewis Howes?

  You don't get the results, all right, we'll refund your money.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  I've got a story that perfectly exemplifies what about that I did right and what about that I did wrong. My first like real business was an iPhone repair store. And I had it in my head that I needed to open a retail store. I was a student at the University of Alabama. I met a guy that was doing it out of his dorm room, making good money, and I was like, that's my business. I don't know why, I was just like, the iPhone was a year old, these are gonna start breaking. And I read an article about some guys at LSU that were making like twenty grand a month from a retail store. So I, all right, I need a retail store. So I had no money, I, I got a credit card advance, I got some of my Pell Grant, and I got this retail store, and this was the dumb thing to do, I was playing business, right? It worked out, uh, so that's what you shouldn't do, but I did it and it ended up working out, but

• 21:08Speaker 01

  another thing I did is I never even learned how to fix iPhones. When I signed a five-year lease with a personal guarantee, twenty-three hundred a month, my mortgage was five hundred a month.

• 21:17Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Okay, I had a ninety thousand dollar house, this was two thousand eight.

• 21:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Uh, twenty-three hundred a month, five-year lease, personal guarantee. And people would come in with their iPhone and they say, I was like, oh, okay, yep, uh, yeah, ninety bucks, okay, cool. Come back in three hours, okay, they'd leave and I'd go to YouTube and I would just type in what they'd tell me and I would learn how to repair iPhones on their phone.

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  And this was the thing that I would suggest people do. Now, a couple of times I screwed up and I remember I put a screwdriver through someone's screen. I broke their screen, I was fixing the battery, but I broke the screen and it was a seven hundred dollar brand new iPhone four. And I had to go to the Verizon store and spend like a week's worth of sales revenue on a new iPhone. And she was okay, but like

• 22:03Speaker 01

  had I waited six months to learn and perfect, A, I'm gonna lose momentum, probably, I'm probably gonna lose steam. I never even opened, who knows where I am.

• 22:12Lewis Howes?

  Never.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Right? Or B, if I do end up opening, I miss out on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sales waiting six months to open. So net of net, the two thousand I had to spend in broken iPhones made me an extra six figures because I opened that much sooner and I didn't lose the momentum.

• 22:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  So that's one example of doing it right and wrong.

• 22:32Lewis Howes?

  It's like learning on the fly instead of waiting till you feel like you're perfectly mastered the skill.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:37Lewis Howes?

  A lot of people wait until they feel like, I need to get more degrees, more education, more training, until I can launch.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:44Lewis Howes?

  They play the perfection game and they never make any money or they never launch something because they need it to be perfect first before just launching, whereas you launched, made mistakes, lost money, but learned through the mistakes and then kept earning on, on the way.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:02Lewis Howes?

  And that is the difference between someone who's a perfectionist and someone who's an entrepreneur, willing to get dirty and messy right away.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  I'm the opposite of a perfectionist.

• 23:12Lewis Howes?

  You could use more of that in your life, probably, like, okay, let's try to optimize this, but.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  But look, I look at it as tuition.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes, of course.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  We'll go to university and spend eight thousand a semester, but we won't like be willing to lose a couple hundred bucks on a couch on Facebook Marketplace. But we're, if we make a couple hundred bucks, we're being paid to learn. It's like going to a state school and they're paying you to go there, that doesn't happen, but in business, if we're willing to learn as we do the thing, worst case, we lose a little money, but we learn, it's just tuition, or we get paid to learn and we have a little extra stress along the way.

• 23:49Lewis Howes?

  Why do so many people lack the mindset to learn and make money rather than pay to learn?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  You know what I mean? So many people feel like they have to spend two hundred grand on a degree until they can start making money. Whereas you started saying, even though you went to school and then paid tuition, but you said, I'm gonna not go to business school, I'm just going to start running a business and learn while I get paid and I might make mistakes and lose money along the way, but that's my price of admission.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Lewis Howes?

  To learning.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think people create artificial stakes for themselves because they think if I pay to learn this thing, I'm gonna be more likely to do it. Cause they, they look back on their life in a negative way. They're like, you didn't do this, Chris, you were supposed to do this, you didn't follow through. So if I pay two thousand for this thing, I'm actually gonna do it, it's gonna kick my butt into gear. What I've noticed is there's zero correlation between how much you pay to learn the thing or to learn the skill and you actually following through and doing it. There's no correlation. So just do it, just go watch YouTube.

• 25:04Lewis Howes?

  Right. But why are people afraid of launching something? Why are they afraid to start the business? Is it the fear of failing and it not working out? Is it the fear of what other people say about them when it doesn't work out? Is it the fear of success? What if it does work out and I make all this money and now I have all this people and team and taxes and problems that, you know, come with that as well? What is the greatest fear about being able to launch something and make money around it?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  I, I don't think that fear of failure is real. I don't think that exists, I don't think anyone has an actual fear of failure. Here's my analogy, you're stranded on a desert island and you know that the mainland is like thirty miles away, but you gotta get there. So are you gonna be too afraid to fail at building your boat, to not even build your boat? No, you're gonna try to build a boat. If you fail, you know, you get a mile out and it fails, you have to swim back and build a better version, fine, who cares? You have to do it. But if you were, if someone was live streaming you to the whole world or to your three hundred, you know, Facebook friends or to the six people that you played high school football with, you would approach that completely differently.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  You would like really want to perfect that raft, because you're embarrassed, you don't wanna be put on the spot. So what you said is the absolute truth, it's the fear of the perception of failure from others. That's what, that's the only thing we're afraid of, it's not one of the things, it's not the fear of failure, it's what will people think about me if I fail? The thing is, if you do fail, they're probably not gonna think anything about you.

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  Maybe for a moment and then they move on.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter, yeah, it doesn't matter at all.

• 26:47Lewis Howes?

  Which business did you think this is gonna be a home run? And when I launched this? That you're like, man, these other people are doing this, it's working, like this is gonna be a home run, it's gonna be easy? That was actually kind of like a dud or a failure for you?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Which one did I not think that? I'm the most delusional optimist ever. I got tested for ADHD in college and she said, you don't have ADHD, you have delusions of grandeur. I was like, wow, I paid eighteen hundred bucks as a poor college student to learn that, thank you so much. So I'm just, uh, I'm just an optimist, unashamed optimist, right? So I launch businesses because I believe they'll be successful. And I truly believe that any business could be successful with the right distribution. I could tell you the dumbest idea in the world right now, objectively dumb, right? And if Elon Musk tweeted about it, he'd sell thousands of units.

• 27:45Lewis Howes?

  Distribution.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Distribution. So there, with the internet, that's the asterisk, four billion people are on the internet with that. If you can find the right message, the right offer, the right pricing, the right audience, the right channel, is it Facebook ads, is it Google ads, whatever, if you can find it, you can sell anything. And I firmly believe that, so with that framework in mind, I love every business idea.

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  Even with a horrible product, you can sell, you can sell it well online, you think?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you could position it as a meme or as like a, I mean, this guy makes a million bucks shipping potatoes to people.

• 28:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Like, it's like a prank potato or like vulgar things to people or glitter bombs, like if you can make it a meme, like

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  Then someone like sell farts in a bottle or something, it's like, it's crazy, right?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Pet Rock made millions of dollars.

• 28:32Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  That was like one of the first meme products.

• 28:34Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  So I think anything I start, uh, will be successful because I know that it can be.

• 28:41Lewis Howes?

  What thing hasn't been successful in your?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Most of them.

• 28:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Like I'm, I forget, I, I forget all negativity, like I just, I just.

• 28:49Lewis Howes?

  You're like, on to the next.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  On to the next.

• 28:51Lewis Howes?

  How long will you, you create, launch and try to market something until you say, oh, it's either not working? And is it because it's not working or you haven't found the right distribution yet?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  It always comes down to distribution. So if I pivot it all to a different business, it comes down to opportunity cost for me.

• 29:10Lewis Howes?

  Do you wanna keep working on this one until you find it? That might be months, it might be years, who knows, it might cost a lot more money for the distribution.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  There's a lot of people out there saying that you should focus, focus, focus, and there's a lot of truth to that. But no one's talking about opportunity cost. I was trying, back in twenty sixteen, I was really trying to focus on my business. I had a good business, it was doing millions of dollars a year, I had no reason to be distracted. Then I started learning about Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin, and I was just like, and my business started to slip.

• 29:39Lewis Howes?

  Cause you were putting more time and energy and focus on Bitcoin.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Learn, like what is this, why? And I bought a bunch of Bitcoin and I still own it today. And net of net, I did much better being distracted by Bitcoin.

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  But it could have been a

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  Worse, you could have lost it all.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  But you either win or you learn, right? I, I would have, you know, learnings compound just like money does. So if I would have lost it all, then those learnings would have compounded for the, for the better in some other weird, random way that might seem uncorrelated on the surface. So I, I don't launch something that I'm not excited about, but I don't launch everything I'm excited about, because I'm excited about everything.

• 30:19Lewis Howes?

  So you're excited about everything?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:22Lewis Howes?

  What is the thing that launched in the last three years that was the easiest to make money with that you did?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  It always comes down to like product market fit. The right pricing, the right offer to the right person and the right time. And that doesn't usually last forever.

• 30:38Lewis Howes?

  It might be a six-month window or something, right?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yes. So in a few years ago, four or five years ago, I went to this gas station called Buc-E's and there's only fifty locations, it's a huge gas station, it's as big as grocery stores. And they did not sell any of their products online. And that seemed like a missed opportunity to me. So this is one of those business ideas. I'm like, these guys, they're a billion dollar company. They don't sell anything online. They have shirts. They have, they're like the redneck Disney.

• 31:06Lewis Howes?

  It's like a cult cult following. It's mostly Texas or where is this?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they started there, but now they're everywhere. They're in Utah. They're going to Washington, DC, they're all over. And so my business partner and I launched a store to get their attention. And it worked and it was just

• 31:22Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean like an online store?

• 31:23Speaker 01

  We launched a Shopify store to get their attention.

• 31:25Lewis Howes?

  With their stuff and sold their stuff?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  I went to their store with my four kids and wife. We bought one of everything. I hired a photographer.

• 31:32Lewis Howes?

  One of everything?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  One of everything. And I just started cold emailing reporters. I just did what anyone in the world could do. I used my Gmail account. I went to Southern Living, Eater, Texas Monthly, and I just found, oh, who wrote this? So and so at Texas millie.com. I started email. Hey, I like Bucky's. I launched a store for him.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  I thought you would find this interesting. And they need stuff to write about. So they did. And it went mega viral. We did hundreds of thousands of dollars our first thirty days.

• 31:59Lewis Howes?

  Selling their products?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Their products, just marking it up.

• 32:01Lewis Howes?

  Did they sue you for this or no?

• 32:03Speaker 01

  No, they just wanted us to make sure it wasn't confusing to the customer. They didn't want us to look like them. It's called first sale doctrine. Any like I can go sell a Nike T-shirt. I just can't pretend to be Nike.

• 32:14Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Right?

• 32:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  It's no different. So we did that. We started that six years ago. And it does millions of dollars a year today.

• 32:20Lewis Howes?

  Still?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Still, yeah. And there we have a ton of competitors too.

• 32:24Lewis Howes?

  And you're selling their gear. And you don't have a partnership with them. You just do it on their own.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 32:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:32Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. And it's still doing millions in sales a year.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think it's important to talk about opportunity costs and distraction and all that. Because the backstory behind that was my partner and I had a fulfillment company. And part of the reason for us launching this e-commerce brand was to generate attention to get more customers for our fulfillment brand. At the end of the day, you know, that fulfillment company was doing three hundred thousand a month in revenue. Wasn't very profitable. We ended up shutting it down to focus on this full time. So at the time, we had every justification in the world to say, okay, that, okay, cute. We're gonna viral marketing site. Cool. But like, we've got, we're doing three hundred thousand a month. Let's keep our eye on the prize. You don't realize that business is going to fail a year later.

• 33:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Even though we kept staying focused on it. So had I not been distracted, this business today would never would never exist. It would be someone else's story to tell.

• 33:25Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. In the last year, I feel like I've seen so many different individuals launch side hustles, businesses online specifically, that are bringing them six figures a month or seven figures a year. What are a couple of things that you've seen that anyone with a small audience has been able to be successful with? If they really focus their attention on that?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  I'm going to say small audience is like four hundred followers.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  So anyone, this could apply to anyone. AI consulting. That's it.

• 33:56Lewis Howes?

  Everyone needs it.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Everyone needs AI. It's so AI is is not like the mobile wave or the internet or crypto or NFTs or web three. A large percentage of people on all of those things thought that they were fads, right? Nobody rational thinks AI is a fad. Nobody thinks like AI is just gonna go away and fizzle out. Nobody. It's here to stay. They've done surveys of small business owners and eighty-five percent of them know they need to use AI. And like twelve percent of them are in any meaningful way. And of those twelve percent, they're like getting chat GPTs help with emails. So there's this massive disconnect between what it's like cognitive dissonance. Like we know we should be doing something and we're not.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  And so all we need are individuals with a chat GPT account, a cloud account, Grok, whatever it is, to just learn some skills, learn how to prompt. Ten percent of all adults are business owners. Okay? So there's three hundred fifty million Americans, thirty-five million business owners. Which means that if you have four hundred Facebook friends, forty of them are business owners. You sit down with your friend, go to Starbucks with them, open the voice memos app on your phone, hit record, and just say, tell me about your business. Well, you know, okay, what sucks about your business? Oh, man, hiring is, can't find customers. And then just keep peeling back the layers. Why? Like, why is it hard? Like, just get to the heart of what they're struggling with in their business.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  And the framework for having this meeting is like, I'm trying to learn AI, but I need something to learn with. Like, I need something to hold on to that I can learn AI with. I'm not going to charge you anything. I just want to like learn AI skills around your business. You go back to chat GPT or Claude or whatever, upload the transcript of that conversation and just simply say, my friend needs AI in their business. They want to make more money or save more money. What suggestions do you have? Here's thirteen suggestions. Okay, number six sounds really interesting. Tell me step by step. How can I do that for them? Because I don't know what any of those words mean. Okay, start here. Download this tool, do this. Then have another meeting at Starbucks with them and say, dude, look at my Lord, you could be doing this.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  This guy over here has the same type of business and he's doing this. And they're going to look at to you now as like the AI God. You now know more about AI than anyone in their life. And they're going to say, take my money. Like, how do we do this? And you don't have to go learn how to find customers. You just have to let go of your pride and your ego and be willing to talk to a friend about things that they're struggling with. Be willing to serve your friend. Be willing to help them because that's we're not talking about like, you know, a multi-level marketing scheme here. We're talking about helping our loved ones by solving problems with them for AI.

• 36:41Lewis Howes?

  But how does someone develop a more resilient mindset? When they launch something, they get laughed at and they lose money and they fail.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  How do they not let that insecurity or that self doubt stop them from trying again?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Posting ghosts.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Post something to social media. Don't look at the comments. Like, hey, DM me if you want to learn more. Go stay in the DMs. What they'll find is if they do look in the comments, there's not going to be much there.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Right? Anyway, but just psychologically, sometimes it's just ignorance can be bliss. It's an overly simplistic answer, but we just have to get over it and we have to get we have to get to our own personal rock bottom with regards to anything, right? If I'm an alcoholic, I've got to get to my rock bottom before I start going AA and turning my life around. If I want to start a business and I'm just not able to get it together, I need to hit my rock bottom in that area of my life. And so if I'm not willing to get over that mental block, then I'm just not, I'm not ready to start a business. But maybe something happens. I, heaven forbid, I lose my job or something or this bill comes up, an unexpected emergency. That's going to be my rock bottom. And then I post about it. And it doesn't have to be on social media, but I just start talking about it.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  I'm willing to open myself up and put myself out there. Sometimes that's what it takes for us to step out of our shell like that.

• 38:06Lewis Howes?

  What would you say then is the number one skill that successful entrepreneurs have over those that aren't successful?

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Bias for action. They just have to be impatient with action, but patient with results. Both of those at the same time.

• 38:23Lewis Howes?

  How does that look?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  So we're all curious to an extent. We all have questions about the world. The question is, what do we do with that curiosity? So if I'm, I was on a walk with my daughter. We were walking down these railroad tracks. And I see that some of the railroad ties are wood and some are concrete. I'm like, what railroad ties? It's two thousand twenty-six. Why are we using these? Why not? Why not? They are concrete. So it's like I pull out chat GPT and I just start like, what is the word? Why is it concrete? What are the cost differences? And at the end of it, it's like, oh, that's really interesting. Okay, cool. Something that simple, we, when we have a question about anything, not just business or money related, we've got to get an answer to it as soon as possible.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Even if we're mid-conversation and it's rude, it's like, hold on, I gotta figure this out, right? The more we train that bias for action muscle and we we start answering these questions about the world and about ourselves immediately, the more we do it, the more it snowballs and it compounds. And then the the answer to the question turns into action. If I'm at a restaurant and I love making tacos and I'm at a taco restaurant and I see this place has a line out the door and everyone is there for these berry of tacos. And it's like, I love, I make really good berry tacos. I wonder how much money this place makes. Well, don't just go on to the conversation. Go outside, look at the line. Okay, eighty-six people in line. Look at the menu.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Seven dollars for two tacos. Eighty-six times seven. Oh, my gosh. Okay, limit throughout the rest of this hour, I'm going to see how many, wow, the line got even longer. Okay, this is a Tuesday. If they're this busy on a Tuesday, they're going to be way busier on a Friday. Okay, wow, they're doing three point six million a year just in berry tacos. That's not including drinks. And you're just doing all this mid-conversation. And it's like, if their margins are this and then, okay, what? Oh, okay, then go home and like make tacos and give them out to your friends like that night.

• 40:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Do like

• 40:20Lewis Howes?

  Take action now.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Now, like compress the time for us. Because we talk a lot about focus. We don't talk about momentum. We are human. And if we're going to lose excitement, we're going to lose momentum over a thing. So we need to be impatient with action.

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  See, there's something you do that I don't know if I could ever do because I also like to think about the time, the attention I put on certain things. And I feel like I did a lot of different businesses, products, programs, things like that to make a lot of money and revenue streams for many years. And then I felt like my time was stretched thin. I felt a little burnt out. I felt overwhelmed. I felt like I was putting lower energy in lots of places and nothing really was building exponentially. Where does?

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  Making money, making a profit and using your time, energy, talents with your purpose tie into building a business versus here's an opportunity that I see you can make tacos, million dollars a year with tacos or selling toothbrushes. But is that the best use of my time and talent and purpose towards launching that business for a profit?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 41:26Lewis Howes?

  What are your thoughts on that?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Is it kind of like the passion versus profit question like?

• 41:30Lewis Howes?

  I guess it's just merging both of them, you know, just because I can launch a shoe company doesn't mean I should launch a shoe company just because I can make money in an iPhone repair shop. Doesn't mean it's the best use of my time.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  For me personally.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  But sure, there's a million dollars to be made there. There's a hundred grand to be made here. There's and there's time managing a people and starting the business and taxes and breakdowns that you have to manage of those things as well. So how do you navigate that?

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I like to say chase the profit until you can afford to chase the passion. So I'm in love with business. So if it's iPhone screens, you know, Texas snacks, whatever.

• 42:12Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't matter.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter to me. Most people won't have the luxury of loving business that much to where they're they're agnostic about what they they go after. But to answer your question, people should chase the energy, like they should go to where the energy is.

• 42:27Lewis Howes?

  The excitement, the joy, the rush.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yes, because that's what's going to be sustainable for them. So let's say they're they love watercolors and but the market is telling them that people want these tacos. You don't have to choose one or the other. Number one, your passion doesn't have to be your profession. They can be two separate things. Number two, there's enough time in the day to do both and to even test both as a business concept. Have you ever seen a taco shop where you can paint watercolor at the same time?

• 42:57Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Might be because it's a bad idea. It might be because it's a great idea that no one's thought to put together yet, right? So what are you trying to optimize for in that moment of your life? If it's making more money, then you should put the passion on the back burner for now. Because if you can develop first principle skills around making money, then you can direct that at whatever you want in the future.

• 43:17Lewis Howes?

  On your passion later.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:19Lewis Howes?

  On your hobbies or your side projects that you like really love.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yes. But if you have a full time job and you're making good money, then you might have the luxury of being able to chase your passion right now and then finding out later, could or should you even monetize that?

• 43:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What do you think is the biggest problem that people make once they start making a lot more money?

• 43:38Speaker 01

  It's almost like the same problem of playing business. They play the role of someone who makes more money and lifestyle creep creeps in. It's happened to me.

• 43:46Lewis Howes?

  Spending more and?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they have it. Um, and I don't want to contradict myself because I do think that can be a good thing. But if it keeps you away from your kids or your family more because you want that second or third home, then I don't think that's a good thing. People, they contribute less and less as a percentage of their income to charitable causes, which I don't like. Um, like, let's say you're used to giving a thousand a month to charity and you make, you know, $10,000 a month. You start making $50,000 a month and you give 2,000 to charity. If you give 5,000, it's the same percentage, but you have 45,000 to work with. You're you're able to afford much, much more. You're able to

• 44:30Speaker 01

  be to do much more good with that money. It doesn't have to be a percentage or a real dollar value. So I think that's a mistake. Um, on how how much people give. I don't like, at the end of the day, we're not going to bring any of it with us anyway. Um, I don't want my kids to be hyper wealthy from stuff they inherit from me when they're 50 or 60. So I don't think at all about my second or third generation, how much money they're have. No, I don't care. I want them to work for it too. Right? So I think that's a mistake people make. And I think that people are likely to get prideful and to treat people on a lower socioeconomic status than them as lesser than them. And I think it should,

• 45:13Speaker 01

  I think it should go the opposite direction. I think they should get even more empathetic because they've been there before as well.

• 45:22Lewis Howes?

  What's your thoughts on the more you give, the more you are able to earn of your money, time, resources? Have you experienced that personally as a someone who gives?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:34Lewis Howes?

  And what's your philosophy on how much you give every year?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this is quote, I'm gonna try to remember it. He who gives his his money gives some. He who gives his time gives all, right? Something like that. I, I try to give even more. Um, I pay tithing to my church 10% as like a baseline. And then I look for other charitable causes on top of that to donate as well. But more importantly, I try to give of my time um, to younger people trying to start businesses um, in ways that don't necessarily scale. Um, and yeah, mission trips, our our kids are going to go on mission trips. I went on a mission trip. I plan to go on more.

• 46:15Lewis Howes?

  For two years, right? Where'd you go? Hungary?

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Hungary. Yeah, very good. Yeah. Yep.

• 46:19Lewis Howes?

  Well, you were 18, 20. How old were you?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  19 to 21.

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  Did you learn the language too?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 46:25Lewis Howes?

  What did that mission trip teach you about life, business, relationships?

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Every year that goes by, I realized that it was everything to me. When I got home, it was just like, I'm, you know, first of all, I got home with a ton of confidence. I got rejected tens of thousands of times. I felt like I was able to run through a wall and do anything, which was huge because I was not much at all in high school. I was very average and I was not like the valedictorian type, the freak athlete type. I was playing video games, delivering pizzas, waiting tables. I was very average. The mission fundamentally changed. It rewired me at my core.

• 47:03Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:04Lewis Howes?

  What shifted about your identity after two years of being rejected over and over and over again in a language that you didn't know?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 47:13Lewis Howes?

  How did your identity shift afterwards?

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Just resilience. Like, I I don't talk about this much, but I knocked on tens of thousands of doors. And I flew all the way there to teach people about the gospel. Even so, I'm an introvert. I don't like talking to people. I don't. And so I would knock on a door. And even though I flew there to do that, I would silently hope that they would never open the door.

• 47:37Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Of course. Who wants to be rejected? Who wants to deal with that fear?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's like, I felt guilty too, because I I also genuinely wanted to teach them. If they did open the door, it's not like I was bummed. It's like, all right, let's do this. But if they didn't, I kind of had to skip my step to the next door.

• 47:51Lewis Howes?

  That's what, yeah. No rejection.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Right. But then shortly after my mission, I got a job, a calling, an unpaid calling in my church to teach early morning seminary to high schoolers at six in the morning, every single day. And I'm not a teacher. I don't like teaching. I don't, that's not my thing. I don't like waking up early. And it was the calling that I always dreaded.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Always dreaded.

• 48:13Lewis Howes?

  That's why you had it.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I got it. And every single night, I would just dread having to plan my lesson. And then every morning, my alarm would go off at 5:25. And I was just dread. I've got to stand in front of 30 kids who are like.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  Exhausted.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Exhausted. They're like, looking at their phone. Some of them would have their phones sideways with headphones in like playing games. And I would dread it every day. Right?

• 48:35Lewis Howes?

  How old were you?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  22.

• 48:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  And did for four years.

• 48:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh, every day?

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:42Lewis Howes?

  You got holidays there. Oh, wow. Five days a week?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:46Lewis Howes?

  Four years?

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Four years.

• 48:47Lewis Howes?

  Holy.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Unpaid. But what I've realized is those moments in our lives where we're just like, I don't want to do this, but I will. Right? That's what I would summarize this. I don't want to do this, but I will. I'm dreading this, but I'm doing this anyway. Some people, you know, they'll do that hundreds of times in their life or tens of times, maybe low thousands of times. Like, we go run a 5K, we go to the gym. But if you do that, tens of thousands of times, I don't want to do this, but I will. I'm dreading this, but I will. It changes you. You can do anything. And to this day, if I got that calling again, I would still dread it. I enjoy, I loved it. It's like this very weird thing. Like,

• 49:29Speaker 01

  my mission was the best ever. I loved it. My calling with those youth, I I loved it. Like, I look back and I don't think of the negative. I think of the positive. At the end of the lesson, I would be like uplifted. So I don't want to say it was all negative, but I would still dread it, just like you might dread going to the gym.

• 49:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's like, you don't want to get on there, but then afterwards, like, I feel better.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Right. And that's a more practical way of approaching this. Running at five in the morning, like, those things change you. It's cliche. We've all heard it. It's nothing new. But if you do that thousands, tens of thousands of times, you can do anything, anything.

• 50:02Lewis Howes?

  Did I also read that you had a kidney transplant?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  How did that come about?

• 50:07Speaker 01

  My daughter was born with a rare lung disease, pulmonary hypertension. It's high blood pressure in the lungs, which is very dangerous because it forces your heart to pump really fast and really hard to get the blood through your arteries. Right? There's no cure for it. So we we had her on medication from three to nine.

• 50:27Lewis Howes?

  Three years old or three months?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Three years old to nine. And she was just constantly worsening. She had an oxygen tank. She had blue lips.

• 50:36Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  It was mostly an invisible disease, other than the blue lips. People thought she wore purple lipstick. Um, so it was tough because she had this disability, but people couldn't see it, you know? And so she was nine and the doctor's like, you, she, she's going to be gone within a year unless you get her.

• 50:53Lewis Howes?

  Double lung transplant.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Really? Yeah. And double lung transplants happen.

• 50:58Lewis Howes?

  That is intense.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:00Lewis Howes?

  Invasive.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  It is. It's as invasive of a transplant as you get. So lungs are the only transplantable organ that are exposed to the outside air. Everything else is protected. Liver, kidney, all that bone marrow. But the lungs get all of this air 24/7. And so they're they're fragile.

• 51:19Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  So.

• 51:20Lewis Howes?

  They think, open up your chest?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep.

• 51:24Lewis Howes?

  So they did, they did the surgery?

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they said, basically, you don't have a choice. You got to move to Houston. We were in Dallas, four hours away because it's the best pediatric hospital for lung transplants. To keep in mind, there's only like, I might get this wrong, but I think there's only like eight to 15 lung transplants a month nationwide or worldwide. They're very rare.

• 51:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Very rare. Uh, so we moved to Houston as a family with no notice right before Christmas. And we got her on the transplant list. We rented a house and we got a call at 10:00 PM one night. And they said, hey, we got, we got some lungs. We think they're going to work. The doctor's on a private jet flying to Nebraska. Um, he's going to inspect them personally, but it sounds like they're good. So we need you to the hospital like now. So that was the call we were waiting for.

• 52:13Lewis Howes?

  And there's no guarantees she wakes up afterwards, right?

• 52:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  It's like, it doesn't mean it's gonna work.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 52:19Lewis Howes?

  But they were, but they were saying, hey, if you don't do this next year, she's

• 52:22Speaker 01

  We didn't have a choice. She's like, yeah.

• 52:24Lewis Howes?

  She's gonna die.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we went to hospital and I had to sign these papers and it was like, the chance of death is low double digit percent.

• 52:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  But what do you do? So they took her back. We said goodbye and

• 52:39Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow. What was that like before your daughter goes into surgery?

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Oh, man, it was

• 52:43Lewis Howes?

  Like, did you think this might be the last time I hurt her? Oh, my gosh.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:49Lewis Howes?

  That is rough.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  It was rough.

• 52:52Lewis Howes?

  And you had three other kids at the same time or?

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Three other kids.

• 52:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:57Lewis Howes?

  Three boys?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Three boys.

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  And one girl?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:00Lewis Howes?

  She the oldest?

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Second oldest.

• 53:02Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow. That must've been emotional.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:04Lewis Howes?

  And then what happens? She goes into the operating room and then

• 53:07Speaker 01

  She goes back there. My wife and I are in the waiting room and it was like a 12 hour procedure. So we're sitting there and I had my MacBook out and someone on Facebook, a stranger, shared a post of me in my DMs and the doctor had told me the lungs were coming from Nebraska. Keep in mind, there's like 10 a month of these nationwide. Okay. And I see this Facebook post that a stranger messages me and says, you know, our boy Sam woke up unresponsive. We think he had a seizure in his sleep and he didn't make it. And so we're donating all of his organs.

• 53:46Lewis Howes?

  This was not his lungs.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was his. And I learned that as she was under the knife, which is like not normal. Like there's HIPAA laws, like you're not supposed to know. I didn't go looking for it. It was, this was sent to me.

• 53:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  And so I'm like, either this is a weird coincidence, but I think they, they even said in the post, um, his lungs are going to a girl in Texas or something.

• 54:08Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh. That's gonna be a chills. That's crazy.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I just, I remember where I was and I was like, I showed my wife and like, we started crying and like, and I just started like looking through pictures of Sam, this boy.

• 54:19Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. I felt like he was my son that I'd never met, you know, like my, my long lost son. And so I just had like this profound gratitude for him. Even though like he didn't choose, you know, like his parents did, but like surely he would have chosen to give up his lungs. So I'm like, man, that kid, I love that kid. Immediately, never heard of him, you know, an hour before I was at home, you know, watching Netflix. And I'm like, oh, how do I pay that kid back? So, long story short, she gets out of surgery and it was amazing. They were like, his lungs were perfect. Everything went perfectly. She's great. The freak, one freaky side note was, you know, her chest

• 55:03Speaker 01

  had swollen so much from the incision that was like this long

• 55:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  That they couldn't sew it all the way back together. So I could literally see her heart beating.

• 55:12Lewis Howes?

  It was open still?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  They put like, like a plastic sheeting over it.

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  I could see her heart.

• 55:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh, man.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:20Lewis Howes?

  That is intense.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:22Lewis Howes?

  But she woke up and she was fine? Like, I mean, it sure is a recovery period.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Long period.

• 55:27Lewis Howes?

  Like a year, probably almost like six months to a year of like full recovery, right? But now she's fine?

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So she woke up and she was supposed to be in the hospital six weeks. It was like four. So we came home. They wanted us to stay in Houston for a couple of months for like almost daily appointments. Everything went great. And so

• 55:45Lewis Howes?

  The chest finally closed and stapled it or whatever?

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:48Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  And so we had always said, if, if this surgery goes well, we want to see all 50 states as a family in 60 days. So this was 2022. So in the summer of 2022, we bought an RV. We saw all 48, lower 48, and we parked it in Seattle, flew to Alaska, flew to Hawaii. In 60 days, we saw all

• 56:06Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh, that's cool.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  But throughout this process, you know, I was thinking about Sam, Sam, Sam. And I learned about living kidney donation where, or altruistic kidney donation where you can, you can donate your kidney to a stranger. And that, that's not me. I've never been admitted to a hospital. I'm afraid of needles. I'm afraid of blood. And in fact, my brother-in-law needed a kidney a couple of years prior and I was too afraid to get tested for him. Like I would have

• 56:33Lewis Howes?

  You're like, I don't want it to know that that could work.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Right. I was waiting to be the very last to be tested. Thankfully, my other brother-in-law, who's braver than me, got tested and he donated his kidney to my other brother-in-law. And so that just kind of bothered me that I wouldn't, that I wasn't like first to raise my hand. But I started doing research and A, like, I don't want to sacrifice, like, I don't want to, I gotta be there for my kids. I didn't want to go through a surgery that was going to be a serious risk.

• 56:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Even to say thanks, it seemed like too much, but the chance of death is um, three in 10,000, which is about the same as childbirth for a mom.

• 57:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  And increasingly safer than childbirth. So I'm like, okay, half of the humans that have ever lived have taken even more risk than this to give birth, to, to create a life, but I can't do it to save a life.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  And I kept researching like, all right, what about like long-term complications? Almost zero. Any pills I have to take for the rest of my life? None. Dietary changes? No, just be generally healthy. Already planning on that. All these things. What about like, how painful is it? How risky is it? Okay. Well, what if my kids need a kidney? What if I give away my kidney to my kids? Well, there's a program called the, uh, it's the National Kidney Foundation. They have a voucher program where

• 57:49Lewis Howes?

  If you give one, you get one.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  You get to the top of the list.

• 57:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  You or five people. So I have five people in my family. So I put them all on the list. So now I have an insurance policy if they need a kidney. So I'm even better off, right? So, so I keep researching and then it's like, well, what if I need a kidney for myself?

• 58:08Lewis Howes?

  Then what?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Kidneys rarely go bad alone. They always go bad together.

• 58:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  So it's like, it's, I'm not, I'm no worse off if I only have one kidney and it goes bad because the other one would have gone bad. And so I'm just doing all this learning and I'm a very logical person and I'm like, there's no reason for me to not donate my kidney other than being like a little sissy. And that's not a good reason. So I just, I just did. I donated my kidney to a stranger.

• 58:32Lewis Howes?

  Do you know who got it?

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I found out.

• 58:34Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I donated on the, uh, I donated my kidney on the anniversary of Sam's death.

• 58:42Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  The next year, when he would have turned nine, I think. And then my wife, I was telling her all this. I'm like, dude, this three in 10,000 chance of death, like this and this. And like, you can get your hospital, like there's, you don't have to pay anything. Like if I had a job, they would pay for my time off work because it saves insurance companies a lot of money, right?

• 59:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  So my wife's like, hmm, maybe I should look into this. So three months later, she donated her kidney.

• 59:06Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Uh, to a stranger. She never found out who they were on the anniversary of, uh, on his birthday, what would have been his birthday, May 10.

• 59:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  So we both donated our kidneys to a stranger.

• 59:17Lewis Howes?

  Recently, 20 days ago. Yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  And I, I've run ultra marathon since, before and since.

• 59:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  I almost never think about it. I have the same energy. There's been zero changes. I would do it all over again. And it was, it was the best decision I could have made.

• 59:31Lewis Howes?

  Man, that's crazy.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  I found out who got my kidney the morning that my wife did hers.

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Cause I went to the hospital and they're like, Chris, we have a letter from your donor.

• 59:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:42Lewis Howes?

  Was it, who was it? Like, was it?

• 59:43Speaker 01

  It was a, it was

• 59:44Lewis Howes?

  The young person, old person?

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Older person in San Francisco.

• 59:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:49Lewis Howes?

  And they wrote a letter saying thank you and

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:52Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Here's the stat. If one in 10,000 healthy adults donated their kidney to a stranger, no one would die waiting for a kidney. But today, like 5,000 people a year die waiting for a kidney.

• 1:00:06Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  But it's needless. Like it's, it's literally needless. That number could go to zero. One in 10,000 people.

• 1:00:14Lewis Howes?

  Where's the kidney business that you need to start? That's the next, that's the next thing.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  That is

• 1:00:18Lewis Howes?

  Launch a Kizzy business.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  That is. I mean, that is kind of one thing I would like to do as a nonprofit. Let's advocate for that.

• 1:00:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  There's a couple of other countries that allow the government to pay people to donate their kidney. Um, and I think that should be

• 1:00:31Lewis Howes?

  You can make a business. You think it should be legal or illegal?

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  I think that should, it should be legal for people to be paid to donate their kidney.

• 1:00:41Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Assuming safeguards were in place, like in other countries where they do it, they, they interview them like, are you addicted to drugs? Gambling? Like, is this like just to pay off a debt? If they pass all these things and it's not like exploiting the poor, it's a beautiful thing and their kidney deaths went to zero.

• 1:00:56Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. But there needs to be an incentive. It's not enough to just like say, you'll feel really good, you know, because most people don't have my story.

• 1:01:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  But

• 1:01:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Like how much is, uh, how much is someone willing to pay for a kidney?

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Lewis Howes?

  How much is that? Do you know?

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Tens of thousands.

• 1:01:13Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. 30, 50,000 something.

• 1:01:17Lewis Howes?

  But it's like, what insurance pays for this through the hospitals or how does that even work?

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Insurance companies come out of pocket like one to two million bucks.

• 1:01:23Lewis Howes?

  For a kidney?

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like for all of that procedure and aftercare. So if they can pay someone 50 grand, they would gladly do it. But everyone wins.

• 1:01:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:01:35Lewis Howes?

  This is wild, man. This is wild. What did, what did donating your kidney to a stranger you didn't know teach you about life and money?

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  I don't know if it taught me anything about money, but about life, it told me that we're here for others. We're here to serve other people. And serving other people is one of the most selfish things you can do because it serves us so much. Like if you're miserable, go serve someone else and you'll be happy. Period. It doesn't have to look like a kidney. But thinking about others is the best thing we could do for ourselves. When we have two kidneys and we only need one of them, what are we doing? I mean, come on, that's for a reason.

• 1:02:13Lewis Howes?

  How has life shifted for you around making money since donating your kidney?

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Hmm. Well, I don't know if, you know, correlation is causation, but

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  I mean, it's funny you ask that because I've never really correlated it to the timeframe, but my financial life has never been better.

• 1:02:31Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ever since donating. So call it what you want. I believe in God, but I don't know if it's correlated, but I'm not complaining.

• 1:02:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What is the, what does the Bible teach us about making money that you apply to your daily life?

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Well, the verse is not, you know, money is the root of all evil. It's the love of money is the root of all evil. So in the Bible, they worship golden calves and idols, false idols. Today we worship other idols, technology, money. So it, it, it has to be the fuel that helps us to do more good and not the fuel to help us consume more. And that's hard. It's something you have to be cognizant of every day.

• 1:03:19Lewis Howes?

  What is the biggest money trap you find yourself getting into?

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Lifestyle creep.

• 1:03:25Lewis Howes?

  Buying more things or toys or cars or?

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:29Lewis Howes?

  Whatever.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  I find it every day. My wife's a lot better at it than me. I want to fly first class and she's like, why? Like it's an extra thousand dollars for that ticket. We could donate that. I'm like, yeah, but like we have it.

• 1:03:40Lewis Howes?

  We work hard for it.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  She's better than I am, but I fight that every day.

• 1:03:43Lewis Howes?

  But isn't, I mean, if you work hard for it and you earn it and you do it with integrity and you make a, you make a great product that serves people, why not spend it on yourself? Why not spend it on something new for yourself that you want? Why not spend it on first class or a nice hotel? Why not spend it on a trip?

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Lewis Howes?

  For your family to enjoy memories? Why be poor when you're creating wealth?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I, I think it just has to come with balance, you know? And I think a lot of it has to do with raising your children. I would love a private chef. We can afford a private chef. We will not have one until my kids are out of the house. Period. End of story. Like my kids need to do the dishes themselves. They have a chore chart. They need to help us cook food. They need to go mow the lawn. Like I can hire a lawn guy. We do it ourselves. So I'm, I'm more concerned about our approach to money with regards to raising our kids in a normal environment that teaches them healthy habits about money and teaches them that we live in a bubble that is not representative of the, of the real world.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  So we send them on, on mission trips, humanitarian trips, and we'll go on them with them and we try to teach them that stuff, but it just has to be something that you're always aware of.

• 1:04:57Lewis Howes?

  What is the one skill, if mastered, that makes every other business skill unnecessary?

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Like resilience, which comes from being rejected. Sales, bias for action.

• 1:05:09Lewis Howes?

  Before you were financially successful, what was the thing you were hiding or struggling through that most people didn't see?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  I would call it income consistency.

• 1:05:20Lewis Howes?

  A lack of it?

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Income volatility.

• 1:05:23Lewis Howes?

  It's like up and down.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  I've had for the majority of my career.

• 1:05:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Even still?

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:05:28Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  But for

• 1:05:29Lewis Howes?

  Some months big and some months nothing.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, until my mid thirties.

• 1:05:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm in my late thirties now.

• 1:05:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  But just like feast or famine, I've had more zero dollar income years than I've had positive income.

• 1:05:42Lewis Howes?

  Really? Why is that?

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Comes with the territory nature of the, just being an entrepreneur. It's unpredictable. There's been a dozen times where I've told my wife, babe, this is it. This thing, this is it. This, I know I've said this been every time. She's like, okay, babe.

• 1:05:57Lewis Howes?

  This is the thing that's going to make us like?

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  This is the last thing we'll have to do. Okay. All right. I believe you.

• 1:06:03Lewis Howes?

  How many times you said that?

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  So many times and genuinely believing it, but the, the, the fat years and more than it up for the lean years or the zero years, right? So we've lived in our dream house since our late twenties, right? But like, there's been a lot of times that we've had to sell assets to just to pay the mortgage. Yeah. Not recently, but in twenties and early thirties. We had some rental homes. We had to sell, like we were forced to sell. Uh, and I'm not making like big risky decisions. It's just things always take longer than you think and they're harder than you think, and it costs more money than you think always.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Um, and I'm, I'm learning that still, but so from the outside looking in, we've been in our dream house since our twenties. Everything's awesome. But it's been very volatile.

• 1:06:52Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is going to be the thing that actually makes it for you? When you say to your wife, now this is the thing, what is going to be that thing? Do you think? Is it going to be the sexy new AI thing? Or is it going to be something more like basic and consistent that just serves a need over and over that people don't want to do?

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:07:15Lewis Howes?

  Or a combination of like 50 businesses all doing it together?

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Maybe a combination, like I could retire now if I wanted.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Like I could just stop doing anything and have enough money. So in that sense, it's different than that conversation has been in the past. Like this is the thing. It's probably something that I have just no idea about because I've been in so many industries. I just, I never know what I'm going to get my hands into.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  I don't know. But I love, I genuinely love what I do.

• 1:07:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  I can be honest about that.

• 1:07:45Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. If you could only teach your kids three things about money, what would it be?

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  First would be to be generous with it. Especially to

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  I try to teach them to treat service workers as if they're volunteers, right? Like if I had someone that was my servant, like serving just me all day unpaid, I would be so grateful for them. But like, if you get in an Uber, like, hey, thank you for picking me up.

• 1:08:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Thank you for getting here so fast. Like they're getting paid, but like they've got a hard life. So I, I, I do, I teach them that, like specifically service workers. Treat them as if they're unpaid volunteers and be more generous with them than you think you should be. The second thing I would teach them is no one's coming to save you. Like you, nothing is guaranteed. I don't care if you have a job, a pension, a, you know, you work for a great company. Nothing is guaranteed. No one is coming to save you. You have to be self-sufficient. You, I look at

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  entrepreneurial skills like food storage in our church, the LDS church, we're encouraged to have a year's worth of food storage. Okay. And we do. Uh, well, we used to before we had as many kids, we need to stock up. I don't want to be dishonest here, but I look at like reselling, stuff like that. I think people, everyone should have those skills. Just in case the crap hits the fan and they can sell some old iPhones or something just to make ends meet. So I'm not like pushing my kids toward entrepreneurship, but I want them to develop those skills in case they need them. So treat entrepreneurial skills like, like food storage. So you can use it in an emergency.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  And the third one is to, to convert your liabilities to assets, right? It's, which is kind of like a derivative of number two. So if you have a car, have the skill to make income from that car. If it's DoorDash, Turo or whatever, if you have a, a house, learn how to rent out a room on Airbnb. Because any liability could be turned into an asset with the right skills. So I'm actively, I guess passively trying to teach them how to do that in just the way that we live. I, I went and drove for DoorDash last week.

• 1:10:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just to see.

• 1:10:08Lewis Howes?

  Just to try it out.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I delivered pizzas for Pizza Hut in high school and I loved it. And I just wanted to see how much money I can make and it was a lot of fun.

• 1:10:14Lewis Howes?

  Try it for like a few hours or something.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was a lot of fun. Actually.

• 1:10:18Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Lewis Howes?

  Picking up orders, dropping them off and?

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  I would like send goofy pictures to them, like dropping them off, like just like, I was like praying over it and it got me extra tips. Like I, I learned I was actually able to influence my tips more than you might think.

• 1:10:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  More than just going through the motions. So.

• 1:10:34Lewis Howes?

  I read some like article online years ago about how if you're a service person, how you can like 10x your tips just by saying the person's order or their name back to them.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:10:46Lewis Howes?

  Like if you were a waiter and someone gives you the order and you say it back to them and say, that's a great order. And you ask them their name and you say their name, like, you know, Chris, that's a great order. That's a great choice you made.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Lewis Howes?

  Just doing that, making them feel good about their order.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Lewis Howes?

  And saying their name like gets you 10x the tips or something crazy, like 10% more the tips. And like, there's all these different strategies of being a, a good service worker to increase tips. And it's not always about being the best at what you do. It's being best with people in how you do it.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:22Lewis Howes?

  And it sounds like the way you just added joy for a moment of like taking a photo, praying over the food or like a smiley face. You brought joy to the service.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Lewis Howes?

  Which then they said, oh, I'm going to give 20% rather than 10.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:35Lewis Howes?

  Or maybe I'll give 40%.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and you stand out because no one else is doing that. But it's so simple.

• 1:11:40Lewis Howes?

  So easy.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Like the, the, the, the ROI, the hourly rate on taking an extra 20 seconds to do that is immeasurable.

• 1:11:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. You made a lot. You can make 10 extra bucks just like that.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Lewis Howes?

  By taking one little different photo.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I actually brought my kids with me to do DoorDash.

• 1:11:54Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Just to like teach them. That's cool. Couple of final questions for you before we get to them. I want people to check out your podcast. The Koerner Office, TKOPod.com, at the Koerner Office on social media, K O E R N E R on social media as well, where every day you're just sharing new side hustle business ideas that people could launch with little or no money and start making money right away. A lot of great ideas. So if people are looking for side hustle ideas or business ideas, they can go check it out there. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths. So hypothetical scenario, imagine you get to live as long as you want to live in this earth and create everything you want to create.

• 1:12:37Lewis Howes?

  Do whatever you want to do, but in the last day, you have to take all of your work with you. This content, your podcast, whatever you make in the future, it's gone from this world. But you get to leave behind three truths, three lessons that you would leave with the world. You just shared kind of three money truths, but what would be your three life principles that you would leave behind?

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Impatience with action, patience with results. That's one. In anything you do, people are much more likely to be not bold enough. It's very rare that someone is too bold, right? So be more bold, like with what you believe. Like just, just don't, just don't care about what people think. Like just stop. People don't think about you.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  And that's not an, that's not a pessimistic or negative thing. They're thinking about their family, their loved ones, their wife, like just do your own thing.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  And the third one, do things for the story.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  For sure. Like when you do things, if for no other reason, just to have a good story out of it, you will be wealthy. And happy and you'll be interesting.

• 1:13:48Lewis Howes?

  And rich.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:49Lewis Howes?

  Rich in heart.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. That's what, with the Bucky story, it was like, this is going to be a great story.

• 1:13:54Lewis Howes?

  And you're still telling it today.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Still telling it, but it's just that one thing has made me wealthy.

• 1:14:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow. That's cool. Chris, I acknowledge you, man, for being of service to so many people, not only with your intellect and your skills around entrepreneurship and business, but also your service around giving an organ to a stranger and saving a life, literally. So what you're doing is making a difference and I appreciate it, man. It's really inspiring.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:21Lewis Howes?

  Of course. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Greatness is simply being a net positive to the world.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Net positive.

• 1:14:32Lewis Howes?

  My man. Thanks, Chris.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:34Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter.

• 1:15:19Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.