From Prison To Financial Freedom: The Journey of Reshaping Your Identity w/Wallstreet Trapper EP 1209

Today’s guest is Leon Howard who is better known as Wallstreet Trapper. Growing up in New Orleans, Leon is no stranger to the streets and the pitfalls that come with it. He has an incredible story that we dive deep into today about his 10 year prison experience where he learned about the stock market and the similarities to business in the real world and business in the streets. He provides a ton of resources ranging from courses and e-books where he simplifies wealth creation and creating wealth through the stock market. In this episode we discuss how Trap’s upbringing and experience of going to prison saved him and taught him the foundations of building wealth, the similarities between business in the real world and business in the streets, the key steps to begin to build financial freedom, the simple concepts people misunderstand about building wealth, how to truly change your identity and the trajectory of your life and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1209Check out Wallstreet Trapper: www.thetrapperuniversity.comDaymond John on How to Close any Deal and Achieve Any Outcome: https://link.chtbl.com/928-podSara Blakely on Writing Your Billion Dollar Story: https://link.chtbl.com/893-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,209 with the Wall Street Trapper.

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:30Lewis Howes?

  Welcome, my friend. Today's guest is Leon Howard, who is better known as Wall Street Trapper. Growing up in New Orleans, Leon is no stranger to the streets and the pitfalls that come with it. He has an incredible story that we dive deep into today about his 10-year prison experience, where he learned about the stock market and the similarities to business in the real world and the business in the streets. He provides a ton of resources ranging from courses and ebooks where he simplifies wealth creation and creating wealth through the stock market. In this episode, we discuss how Trapp's upbringing and experience of going to prison saved him and taught him the foundations of building wealth, the similarities between business in the real world and business in the streets,

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  the key steps to begin to build financial freedom, the simple concepts people misunderstand about building wealth, how to truly change your identity and the trajectory of your life, no matter what you've been through, and so much more. If you're inspired by this, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired as well. You can just copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this, or go to lewishowes.com/1209 and share that link. If this is your first time here, please click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest from the School of Greatness podcast. And I want to give a shout out to the fan of the week today from MERS. And they said, "This podcast is pure in goodness and valuable for so many reasons on so many levels."

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  And Lewis decided to live his truth openly and in the process is able to influence and help people at scale that would not be possible otherwise. So a big thank you to MERS for leaving a review over on Apple Podcasts and being a fan of the week. Okay, excited about this one. And in just a moment, the one and only Wall Street Trapper.

• 2:22Lewis Howes?

  When did you realize that you were gonna start learning about financial literacy? And then what did it look like when you got out?

• 2:28Leon Howard?

  Oh man, so you know, born and raised in New Orleans, first and foremost. And New Orleans has always been a city that I feel is full of culture, right? And on the front side, people know it for food and

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  Music.

• 2:43Leon Howard?

  Music, you know, the good times. But there's a part of New Orleans that also is on the other side that gets a lot of light, which is it being a murder capital, high crime, right? A lot of poor, a lot of underdeveloped people financially, just in so many different ways. And so I grew up in that. Saw my moms get shot when I was nine years old.

• 3:07Lewis Howes?

  Saw her get shot?

• 3:07Leon Howard?

  I saw her get shot when I was like nine. Maybe like a hundred yards away from me.

• 3:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:13Leon Howard?

  So immediately I had a connection and understanding of violence, right? So at nine years old, kind of like when I got older, like I now think about how that played in my brain over and over and over again.

• 3:27Lewis Howes?

  And when someone, when a kid sees violence at an early age in the family, what does that do to the kid? Does it normalize it? Does it make them want to be more violent, be less violent, like and run away from it? What happens?

• 3:40Leon Howard?

  So what it did for me was it did two things. One, it made me, it made me realize that violence in my environment was a necessary evil.

• 3:47Lewis Howes?

  To do what? Protect yourself?

• 3:48Leon Howard?

  Protect, whatever, like if anything happened, violence was now the first result. No matter what that violence looked like, whether it was fighting, whether it was shooting, whether it was like, okay, if someone can shoot my mother,

• 4:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 4:02Leon Howard?

  then they can shoot me. So now I'm automatically in protect mode. Okay, cool, this is what it is. But also it becomes a tool for regulation.

• 4:16Leon Howard?

  Like you you understand understand like, okay, like violence is what gives me respect. Violence is what keeps me from being a prey. Right? And so you just start to normalize it. Like I always, I said this to somebody before I said, if you come to New Orleans and you're in a park and a gun goes off, if there's a bunch of kids in the park, I can almost guarantee you, they won't run, they know the protocol. They know to get down, look both ways, see where the gunshot is coming from, and then go the opposite way. That is normalized. That's trauma. No kid should understand the protocol to what to do.

• 4:53Lewis Howes?

  For gunshot.

• 4:53Leon Howard?

  Yeah, but it's like understood. Like I even knew it at a young age. I would be inside. Gunshots ring, the first thing we do, we get under the bed. You know what I'm saying? Like this, this is understood, so.

• 5:03Lewis Howes?

  It's like the, you know, in school, they teach you like.

• 5:05Leon Howard?

  Stop driving road.

• 5:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. Where there's a tornado warning, a siren, it's like, here's what to do.

• 5:11Leon Howard?

  This is what you do. So it's like a survival handbook, but in real time. And you also see that no age limit is off limits to getting killed.

• 5:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow, because young kids are getting shot up.

• 5:24Leon Howard?

  Yeah, like it's happening. So you start to understand like, okay, this, this is my environment. Me seeing guns, me seeing drugs, prostitution. All right, cool. This, okay, this doesn't scare me no more. I get it. All right, cool. So now I got the, I have to now walk around

• 5:47Leon Howard?

  and understand how that feels. I have to walk around knowing if I don't do the right things, that could be me. At a young age, right? So.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  So you have to educate yourself on violence and protecting yourself and being aware of what to do and how to get out of situations and how to defend yourself.

• 6:06Leon Howard?

  Conflict resolution, like all of those things are apparent at a young age, even even when it comes down to even just like bare fistfights. Like you understand that if I don't handle this situation right here, right now, then it's certain things in this neighborhood I will not be able to do. You know what I'm saying, like, I will not be able to go to this store if I let him take him or whoever they are, take this dollar from me, fifty cent from me.

• 6:36Lewis Howes?

  Well, I want you to be out in the store.

• 6:37Leon Howard?

  Because now every time they see you.

• 6:39Lewis Howes?

  They take more.

• 6:40Leon Howard?

  They's gonna take more.

• 6:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, unless you defend yourself.

• 6:42Leon Howard?

  Unless you, and it's either gonna be, man, it ain't even worth my time going over there messing with him, man. Yeah, I don't got time to hear that.

• 6:51Leon Howard?

  Yeah, right, so it's like.

• 6:52Lewis Howes?

  It's like the bully in school, it's like the bully keeps beating you up until you stand up to the bully.

• 6:56Leon Howard?

  And, and then the thing about the bully is, the bully never really wants a tough fight. Why would I do something tough when I could go where it's easier? Right, so you, you just start to understand those things, you like, you know what, and then you start hearing things in the street, like, your people tell you stuff like,

• 7:14Leon Howard?

  let's say you go home, you, you, you my uncle, you send me to the store, and I come back and be like, oh, man, son of such them took it from me. Well, don't come back in here until you either come back with what I gave you, or you come in here bloody.

• 7:28Lewis Howes?

  Prove me.

• 7:29Leon Howard?

  Right, show me that somebody, and now we gonna go out there and take care of it, so now like, those are the realities at a young age, and it doesn't say, okay, you're too young for this. Now, it's whenever it happens, you gotta be, and so now you develop that mindset, that mentality, from a little bitty to adulthood, and what happens is now, you see it so much, it becomes you. Oh, I know how to handle this situation right here, out the gate, boom, boom, boom, and then you now teach that trauma.

• 7:57Leon Howard?

  Right?

• 7:57Lewis Howes?

  You replay it.

• 7:58Leon Howard?

  You replay it, you, so sixteen, maybe like fourteen, I was homeless. So my grand, I live with my grandmother, my grandmother passed away, and I was homeless, like, literally homeless, cuz my, it, it, it wasn't that my family didn't want nothing to do with me, but everybody has their issues. Nobody wants to take on another burden, you know what I'm saying, no matter what it is, so, I dealt with that for a minute, just being homeless, and then I moved with my aunt, who was on drugs, and I. Started hustling out her house, you know, for survival purposes. You know what I'm saying? Just been able to survive. Just understand, like, I learned this from my mom. So, this is how I'mma eat.

• 8:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:39Leon Howard?

  Right, so school becomes second nature, survival becomes present, you know, this was has to happen, so. Sixteen, I go to prison for attempt murder. Um, I got robbed out of some drugs and some guns, some money. And in the streets, it goes back to that same mentality where if I let you get away with this, then I can't hustle no more.

• 9:02Lewis Howes?

  Then you're gonna do this again to me over and over again.

• 9:05Leon Howard?

  And not only are you gonna do it, but.

• 9:06Lewis Howes?

  Someone else.

• 9:07Leon Howard?

  Everybody else, I'm, I'm fair game.

• 9:08Lewis Howes?

  They'll hear that you gave in.

• 9:10Leon Howard?

  I'm fair game. And then in the streets, there's this, there's this code of. There's a difference between robbing me and jacking me.

• 9:22Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference?

• 9:23Leon Howard?

  So if I jack you, it's, yo, give me this, what you gonna do about it?

• 9:28Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 9:29Leon Howard?

  Right? Whether it's a gun or not.

• 9:30Lewis Howes?

  It's mine now, yeah.

• 9:31Leon Howard?

  Yeah, what you gonna do about it? Robbing you is if I have a mask on. I don't really know who you are, right? So robbing you, you kinda get like, alright, I gotta find out. But jacking me, it's a bold statement, it's like, whatever. And so, that has to be met with some type of consequence. You know what I'm saying? And not always saying it's right, but in a jungle.

• 9:54Lewis Howes?

  To survive.

• 9:55Leon Howard?

  Exactly.

• 9:56Lewis Howes?

  Otherwise, you gotta move.

• 9:57Leon Howard?

  You gotta.

• 9:57Lewis Howes?

  You gotta move to another city.

• 9:58Leon Howard?

  And this thing we're doing. And then nobody, nobody, and you don't have time to do all that.

• 10:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Leon Howard?

  That's just why I'm mad.

• 10:03Lewis Howes?

  Trying to get to the store.

• 10:04Leon Howard?

  Yeah, so, uh, I went to prison for shooting him, and I got ten years for attempt murder on robbery. Um, and that's kinda when, I'm not gonna say life changed, I'm like, alright, cool, I'm in prison.

• 10:19Lewis Howes?

  Like, cause your mom was there for another year.

• 10:20Leon Howard?

  My mom was in prison, yep.

• 10:21Lewis Howes?

  And you would visit her, so you kinda knew that this is an environment that I could potentially be in one day.

• 10:26Leon Howard?

  Yeah, that's, like, that's, that's kinda understood already.

• 10:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:28Leon Howard?

  Like, you already understand that at some point on your journey, you're going to prison.

• 10:36Leon Howard?

  Like that's it, you're going to prison, um, you're going to at some point use a gun on several different occasions. Right, like this, I just understood already. Um, and I know it'd be kinda hard for a lot of people to understand that because if you, if you, if you've never been introduced to that, you never, you know, like if you've never seen a lion hunt, then when he eat the gazelle, you're like, that's so ferocious, but you don't understand the rules of the jungle. You don't understand the rules of the safari. Right, so it may seem grotesque, but in the safari, we know that's, that's the ecosystem. Right, so in the streets, that's just like part of the ecosystem. Yeah, it has to happen.

• 11:15Lewis Howes?

  What was that like when you knew that you were sentenced ten years at sixteen, were you like, was it devastating, is it kinda like, this is my badge of honor, is it kinda like, man, I was only hoping for a year or two, not ten?

• 11:27Leon Howard?

  So, I remember, uh, my great aunt came to court for me. Um, cause they wanted to give me thirty-five years.

• 11:35Lewis Howes?

  Jeez.

• 11:35Leon Howard?

  Because the dude, you know, he wasn't, again, it was a temporary, so he wasn't dead. Um, and my aunt, she knew the judge.

• 11:44Leon Howard?

  And she kinda like just told him my story. She's like, look, he's just been going through a lot, his mom's in prison, my sister passed away, which was her, my grandmother's sister. Well, he's just been out here. He's a better kid than that. You know, he just, you know, so, he actually gave me, he, he came to me and he said,

• 12:04Leon Howard?

  you have no other option than to take these ten years. I'm not asking you, do you wanna take them?

• 12:08Lewis Howes?

  You're going to take them.

• 12:09Leon Howard?

  You're going to take these ten years, right? And the DA was like upset about that. Right, cause he has an opportunity to take, again, you know, and I'm not saying he mad, but here's an opportunity to take somebody off the streets in a city who's, that's plagued with crime for shooting somebody. Like, he has to go. So, in my mind, I was just like, because I had saw it so much, I was kinda numb to it. You know, it was like, all right, how much they gonna give me? Right, and I kinda, to be honest with you, the ten, I was like, all right, cool, this is a cakewalk. You know, think about it, sixteen, ten years, I'm like, I'm already like, okay, twenty-five, twenty-six, I'll be home, that's cool. But let me tell you something that's crazy, let me tell you something that's absurd.

• 12:53Leon Howard?

  In prison, you will hear people say, well, I could do another five, ten years. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I was that person. At about age nineteen, I was like, yeah, I still got another ten. I could do another ten year bit. Why though? Why? Because you just, you don't see no other way. Right? You kind of have to mentally put yourself there, or else you go crazy, I guess. You, you kind of feel like,

• 13:20Leon Howard?

  one of the things that you don't see a lot in, in those communities, you got to remember, we financially and, um, they just underdeveloped. Yeah. Education, financial literacy, we, we underdeveloped. Coming up in that. Everybody you see is in survival mode. Nobody is thriving, but the drug dealers, the rappers, and the people that play sports. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Maybe a couple of musicians. And if you, and if you can't, if you can't, play sports, or you can't make it rapping, then all the power is now in the drug dealers. Or in the criminals, right? You see them living the life they want. Everybody that you see going to work,

• 14:04Leon Howard?

  they barely making it, right? You know people with two jobs, you know people with three jobs. And all you see them doing is coming home whipped. They still struggling, so you like, I'm not about to do that. If I'm gonna live a life, at least let me have some fun. At least let me do some of the things I want to do. And so, in, in, in your mind, you're like, if this is the, if this is the alternative, well, hell with it, this what it is. Right? And so you like, you just accept it. And so when you accept that life, you know what come with it. Right? And so you mentally preparing yourself like, all right, well, you ain't here for a murder, you ain't here for a attempted murder, you ain't here for a armed robbery, you ain't here for selling drugs. Man, like, what you messed up at? What you did wrong? So now y'all start swapping stories.

• 14:49Leon Howard?

  You know, he telling you where he messed up at, he telling you what he did wrong, you like, okay, well, I can get better. If I just don't make this mistake, then don't do this. So you learning, Right. real time from somebody who may have ninety-nine years, two hundred and forty years. Life, the debt penalty, like, you may, you may be learning. Learning what not to do when you get out. What not to do, where they messed up at. And remember, experience is the best teacher in any way in life. Right? What mistakes did you make? Okay, cool, that's what you did wrong? Got you. I'm, I'm gonna take mental note of that. And you gotta think, over the course of two, three, four, five, six years, you sleep on the side of somebody. You learning the game and in your mind, you just like, I'm gonna go home and be better at this than what I was before.

• 15:32Leon Howard?

  So you accept the idea of, alright, cool, I could do another ten years.

• 15:38Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 15:39Leon Howard?

  I did this ten, I could do another ten, it's in me.

• 15:42Lewis Howes?

  What's safer for you? What was safer, the streets or prison?

• 15:45Leon Howard?

  So honestly, prison saved me.

• 15:48Lewis Howes?

  Saved you?

• 15:49Leon Howard?

  Prison saved my life.

• 15:50Lewis Howes?

  Was it safer? Cause I heard some stories.

• 15:52Leon Howard?

  It's not, it's not really.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  I heard some stories.

• 15:53Leon Howard?

  I've been stabbed.

• 15:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Leon Howard?

  I, I got a stab wound right here, I think it was on this arm, yup, I got stabbed right here. I got stabbed in my back in prison. Um, I think they both have, you know, their shortcomings. Because you got, what, the thing about prison is you boxed in. So you, you can't run, you can't escape from that. And, and when you're in, in home, you can move around, you can do some things. There's advantages and disadvantages to both. Um, for me, I had no prison save my life. Because right before that situation, I had got into with somebody, I was almost kidnapped. Like, I was literally almost inside of the trunk. Um, and I barely got out of that, the skin of my teeth. And I literally came to prison, I really went to jail like three weeks later.

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 16:39Leon Howard?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 16:40Lewis Howes?

  Probably would eventually happen.

• 16:41Leon Howard?

  Which was going, so that charge that I went to prison for either saves me from going to prison for something more serious or getting killed. Right? And that's kinda always, again, that's always the, like, prison is always the lesser of two evils that you're willing to accept. Right? Because you're like, at least, I ain't gone.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:03Leon Howard?

  And you, you just start to accept it and.

• 17:06Lewis Howes?

  And what was the moment then, during prison, where you learned about making money?

• 17:10Leon Howard?

  So, I had got into a fight with two of my homeboys.

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  Is this like a verbal fight, a physical fight?

• 17:16Leon Howard?

  Nah, physical fight, yeah, yeah. I got in a physical fight with two of my homeboys and I go to solitary confinement.

• 17:22Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:23Leon Howard?

  And.

• 17:23Lewis Howes?

  How long, a week, two weeks?

• 17:24Leon Howard?

  Nah, so I got, I, I sent it to ninety days.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  Ooh!

• 17:28Leon Howard?

  It's solitary confinement.

• 17:29Lewis Howes?

  That's not fun.

• 17:30Leon Howard?

  So, it's crazy because this is where I feel like, I have this thing that I say that like, if you take a picture.

• 17:41Leon Howard?

  And you put it in a darkness, this is where it develops at.

• 17:47Leon Howard?

  Right? And the darkness is where it develops. You want, you don't wanna expose it too early cuz it'll mess up. But in the darkness is where it develops and when it's time, when you know just right, it can be one of the most beautiful pictures you've ever seen. If you let it develop in the right time. Prison was my development stage. So I'm, I'm, I get in a cell, this white guy. I'm in a full man's cell. And it's just me and him.

• 18:16Lewis Howes?

  Two bunk beds.

• 18:17Leon Howard?

  Yep, two on each side.

• 18:18Lewis Howes?

  A little two foot walkway, one little bath.

• 18:22Leon Howard?

  For forty-five days, me and him were just in the cell. No one else came in the cell. Which is.

• 18:29Lewis Howes?

  This for solitary confinement?

• 18:31Leon Howard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:31Lewis Howes?

  So it's shared confinement?

• 18:32Leon Howard?

  Yep, yep, yep. So it's thirteen cells on each side, four people in each cell.

• 18:38Lewis Howes?

  An hour a day out?

• 18:39Leon Howard?

  Hour a day out. So we didn't even get an hour, we got forty-five minutes. Take a shower together, come back in the cell. And for those forty-five days, we did a lot of talking. My first day in the cell though, like, I wanted to beat him up. Cuz I come into the cell and the first thing he told me was, "Man, y'all playing the wrong game." I looked at him, mind, I just had a fight with two of my homies, my blood still hot. I'm like, what? Like, what are you talking about? And he was like, nah, like, I don't mean no disrespect. And it's something about his tone

• 19:14Leon Howard?

  that made me just like, listen to him. I don't know what it was, I can't even describe it.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  How old are you at this point?

• 19:20Leon Howard?

  I'm, I'm seventeen.

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow. One year in.

• 19:22Leon Howard?

  I'm still a hothead. Yeah, I'm still a hothead.

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  Eagle mania?

• 19:24Leon Howard?

  Yeah, yeah. What, what you talking about? So he was like, I think for him, that was the first time he had seen that many black men in one spot.

• 19:35Leon Howard?

  Cause he had this look of like confusion, like he was confused. He was like, man, y'all playing the wrong game, bruh. And I was like, well, if you're playing the right game, why are you in here with me?

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 19:47Leon Howard?

  Why are you in here with me? What you talking about? He was like, what, what are you in here for? And so one of the things about in prison, like you don't just tell people what you're in prison for unless you're in there for something serious. Cause then you wear.

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Leon Howard?

  So I'm like, I'm in for a temporary on a ride. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, like I'm in like, don't play with me. I'm like, so what you in here for? So he was in there for embezzlement.

• 20:10Leon Howard?

  He embezzled eight, eight, two point eight million dollars. He kept two million, he paid eight hundred thousand restitution. And I was like, man, you lying. And so one thing about prison is you can always show somebody your paperwork of what you in there for. And so when I saw it in black and white, it was a different level of respect for me. Cause I'd never saw two million dollars on a piece of paper before. And so he said, this is why I'm telling you, playing the wrong game. He was like, how much time you got? I was like, ah, ten years. He was like, have you never seen a million dollars before? He was like, you'll never see it playing that game.

• 20:47Lewis Howes?

  Playing what game?

• 20:48Leon Howard?

  The streets. The drug, it's the game. Like you'll never see it playing that game. And I kinda just like took that in for a second. Because up until that point in my life, I never met a successful drug dealer.

• 21:02Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. You mean, maybe for a year or two, the boys get caught, you get shot, you get something, you get robbed.

• 21:08Leon Howard?

  Everything. Yeah, so I was just like, that was like one of those moments that like humbled me. So he said, listen, you gotta do these street things. You gotta start trading time for money. You gotta start learning how to make your money work for you. You gotta learn how to give value to people. I didn't learn that message. The value part, I didn't learn that till I started my business. And I was like, man, I had never heard nothing. Like, that was like scripture to me hearing that, right?

• 21:33Lewis Howes?

  What was three again?

• 21:34Leon Howard?

  It was, you gotta learn how to make your money work for you. Stop trading time for money and give value to people.

• 21:44Leon Howard?

  And so he kinda just, I'm not even gonna lie, like.

• 21:49Leon Howard?

  He don't that the way he said it with so much conviction. It kinda like mesmerized me like it caught me off guard cuz I had never heard nothing like that before. And so he just started explaining to me about how wealthy people use money. And and and how the streets is a game that we can never win. Hmm. We were only pawns in the game. The house always wins. Yeah, and I was like damn, so he just started making me realizing that and so I think in that moment, I just started looking at everybody from my mama. I was like damn, I don't know nobody that won. Everybody had moments, but nobody really won. Yeah. And so maybe before he left, he told me, you need to learn how to do these three things. You need to learn how to, wealthy people invest in stocks.

• 22:34Leon Howard?

  Mm hmm. They invest in real, start a business, and then they invest in real estate. And because he said stocks first, in my mind, I wanted to do whatever he was doing. Yeah. And so had he been to say real estate first, I would probably be in a real estate trap.

• 22:51Leon Howard?

  But because he started with that, it just, it stuck with me. So when he went upstate, he went to the, so he went to the federal prison. How long was he in the prison? So he did eighteen months. Right. He was in federal. And that was, that was another thing that caught me off guard. I was like, two point eight million dollars, and you about to tell me you had thirty years, forty years, he had eighteen months. And he told he should, he shined light on something for me. He said, even if I was to come back, the most they could give me is thirty six months at this time.

• 23:22Leon Howard?

  So even if he went home, kept the two million, paid eight hundred restitution, so he did eighteen months, kept two million dollars. If he went home and did the same thing again, the most they can give him was thirty six months based on those federal guidelines. Right. He still would have done less time than me, had more money than me. Right. That just blew me away. He was still doing something illegal. He was doing it illegal, yeah, but it's just like, it was a, it, it was a different level. Yeah, of course. You know, I was just like. Damn, like I'm playing a wrong game. He's like, you're risking your life for for thirty years. Yeah. A prison where I'm risking eighteen months. You're sure, yeah, you're on a level. So that's just kinda like, that was my moment. And so I remember getting shipped upstate to prison, so now I'm in the penitentiary.

• 24:07Leon Howard?

  At eighteen, you're going to. Yeah, I'm in prison, so I went from the Orleans Parish Prison to like Louisiana State Prison, like prison. Maximum security. And I remember stocks, stocks, stocks. So I remember the first book I read was, um, Rich Dad Poor Dad. Yep. I remember reading that, and I remember just being like, blown away at the idea of what financial risk it was. And I remember thinking like, why nobody never teach me this? And so then I remember starting to look at CNBC. In prison? Yeah, yeah. So prison is an odd place. You got a little, you got a little TV in the. Nah, nah, nah, so we got a, we in, we got a day room. Yeah. So the day room, it has like a, probably like a thirty inch TV in there. So sports is number one.

• 24:52Leon Howard?

  Of course, movies, oh, yeah. The news is number, the, the news, sports, the young and the restless. Right? Victor Newman, they like, grown men love to watch Victor Newman, right? So I would have to get up like kinda early. So I could watch CNBC, and I remember watching like Jim Cramer, I was like, yo, this dude is crazy. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And I remember just telling myself, why I don't see no black people up here? It's a lot of rich white dudes.

• 25:24Leon Howard?

  And they not risking their life.

• 25:27Leon Howard?

  And they was talking about numbers I had never heard of before. Numbers I knew I could never make selling them. Numbers I knew I could never make robbing nobody. And I was just like, yeah, I'm playing a wrong game. So I remember reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. And then I remember reading about a guy named Reginald White, Reginald, Reginald Lewis. And I was like, okay. Cause his book was why the white guys have all the fun. He built a billion dollar empire off private equity. And I was like, oh, I could play this game. And so I would watch CNBC, and I, I, I couldn't get it. Cause I couldn't understand it.

• 26:10Leon Howard?

  I couldn't, they were speaking it in a language that was just, I'm like, I ain't never heard that before. And I never forget, um, they was talking about terrorists and what they are. And terrorists were simply taxes that people pay for, uh, other countries pay for coming, huh, you know, hustling in the United States. And in my mind, I said, oh, that's the equivalent of paying draft. So a draft is like, let's say you live in one hood, I live in one hood, you wanna come hustle over here? I said, Louis, you gotta pay me some money to come over here. That's a terror.

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. I'll leave you alone as long as you're paying me.

• 26:45Leon Howard?

  As long as you pay me. I was like, oh, oh, this remind me of the streets. And then a friend of mine named Chris Kellogg, he used to get the USA Today. And so when I was in prison, I used to run numbers. I was a bookie. And I remember him telling me, you always get the sports section, why you never get the business section? You always looking at, um, CNBC. I was like, man, nobody looking at the business section. He said, well, you looking at stocks, this the part you need to be looking at. I was like, yeah. So I remember I started reading that from him. So every time he would get the, the, uh, USA Today, I would pay him to give me just the business section. And I would just read it. And then like, it just started clicking to me. It reminded me literally of the streets.

• 27:28Leon Howard?

  Like, in order for a company to be great on the stock market, they have to have a good product. In order for a business to be, enough for me a good hustler, I gotta have a good product. In order for the company to have, um, great, they gotta have great revenues, they gotta have a great profit. In the streets, if I can be a great hustler, I have to know how to turn my revenues into profit. I gotta have more than re-up money. It has to be money that I can re-up with and then go get some more and pay my bills. Yeah. You have to learn that. And on the stock market, if a company has a good moat, a competitive advantage, they can beat off their defenders. Well, if I'm a hustler, if I got a good product, if I got a good price, I got good packaging, if I'm always out there, if I'm always available, I got a moat.

• 28:09Lewis Howes?

  Like 7-Eleven, baby.

• 28:11Leon Howard?

  It's, it's popping.

• 28:12Lewis Howes?

  You're always open.

• 28:12Leon Howard?

  I'm open. You know what I'm saying? And so I was like, yo, this remind me of the streets. It's no different. And so once I was able to make that connection, in my mind, I said, I could be the next Warren Buffett.

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:28Leon Howard?

  I could be the next Warren Buffett.

• 28:30Lewis Howes?

  So were you teaching yourself and reading books then for the most of those years? Or did you have someone else in there teaching you? Was it all self-taught?

• 28:37Leon Howard?

  Nah, everything was self-taught in prison. Um, kinda like nobody was really on it. Like everybody was like on sports. Real estate was the thing. Like everybody in prison wants to come home and get into real estate.

• 28:48Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:48Leon Howard?

  Everybody wants, and that was one of the things that Robert Kiyosaki talks about. Real estate, real estate, real estate, real estate, real estate. So, you know, that's kinda like the thing. Like I'm gonna come home, I'm getting into real estate. And in prison, I learned about real estate investment trusts, which is REITs. I was like, oh, so I can own the real estate without even, you know what I'm saying? Managing a property, none of that. Oh, this is, this is love. So everything was me just learning. So studying Mones Pro Bride, studying Warren Buffett, studying Bill Ackman, studying, um, just so many different people, Peter Lynch, just studying them, understanding them, Joel Greenblatt, just studying them, listening to them, like getting my people, man, send me some books,

• 29:32Leon Howard?

  uh, getting somebody I know like, yo, man, tell your people, send me these books, I'ma pay you for it from the commissary. And so I would just read, read, read, read. I had nothing else to do, I would go to work, come back to my dorm, read. And just read, and then I would get consumed in it because immediately I saw

• 29:54Leon Howard?

  that there were two different Americas. There was the America that I knew, and that everybody around me had the same problem. There was a, there was a particular thread that ran through every hood across America. Every hood that I went to was always the same.

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 30:11Leon Howard?

  And then we always look at another part of America, and we'd be like, yo, how do they get that?

• 30:18Leon Howard?

  And I was like, the reason why, in my mind, was because they have access to a different type of information.

• 30:24Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. So is it information, or is it an environment?

• 30:28Leon Howard?

  So it's a combination of both, right? So people like to talk about racism a lot. And while it does exist, I think classism is a completely different animal.

• 30:42Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 30:44Leon Howard?

  So a classism is, there is a group of people, no matter your color, that has a different information, pedigree, status, and access.

• 30:56Leon Howard?

  That other people don't have.

• 30:58Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't matter what race or religion or where you're from. So how do people get into that class? Even if they don't fit the majority of the class, look like the majority or come from the majority of that class.

• 31:11Leon Howard?

  So.

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  Where it could look like racism.

• 31:13Leon Howard?

  Yes, so and that's the thing like. Even though racism exists, but it it it exists on a bigger picture at a smaller scale. So what this is my introduction to it is understanding that.

• 31:28Leon Howard?

  Classism says.

• 31:32Leon Howard?

  This is how our family is set up.

• 31:36Leon Howard?

  Look, I'm gonna use you for example, your father says. Listen, you need to learn how to invest, you need to learn. How to start a business, but also I want you to meet so and so's son. I want you to meet so and so's brother, I want you to meet so and so's daughter. I want you to go to this school. I want you to go to this party with me. And so information gets passed down, life insurance get passed down, wills, trusts get passed down. Those type of things help you get access to room. That me or these people over here will never see.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  I wanna be in the room wearing that.

• 32:21Leon Howard?

  And so I was like, that's it.

• 32:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:24Leon Howard?

  That's it. The information is what changes everything.

• 32:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:31Leon Howard?

  And so I had this saying. Education and information changes the conversation. If you change the conversation, you can change the compensation. If you can change the compensation, you can change the realization. You feel what I'm saying? It's because if I can get access to information, just something simple as investing. When I started teaching my homies about investing, I was like, yo, in order to be wealthy, you gotta own something. You can't, you can't be, you cannot create wealth if you don't own nothing. If you don't own nothing, you're just a consumer.

• 33:10Leon Howard?

  And if you don't own nothing and you're a consumer and you don't teach your kids how to own nothing, then now you've let them inherit it being a consumer.

• 33:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they have the same education, information and repetition that you created. They're gonna repeat what they see, yeah.

• 33:26Leon Howard?

  And if nobody breaks it, nobody's a disruptor. Right, no one becomes a disruptor. So now it's, well, I don't, I've never seen wealth. So I probably can't be wealthy. Let me just live my life like, whatever. Let me live my life for me. Let me just keep buying things, right? Let me, let me work hard every day. And the little time I do get some free cash, because I work so hard for it, I need some type of self gratification. I need some type of reprieve from this. I don't care if I can't afford it. Sacrifice, what am I sacrifice for? It's all paying these bills. It, no, I'm not about to do that.

• 34:07Leon Howard?

  And so now Christmas becomes the day where we go broke buying liabilities.

• 34:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:13Leon Howard?

  Right? We, we have more month left than money all the time.

• 34:18Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:18Leon Howard?

  Right? We are, again, we are financially deprived.

• 34:22Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:23Leon Howard?

  Because we have no relationship with money. Whereas this other class says, this assets are the blood, are the oxygen to this. Right? Let me teach you about taxes. Let me teach you the importance of life insurance. Let me teach you the importance of this. Right? Let me teach you the importance of, you may not like this person. Check this out. You may not like this person, but just because you don't like them, don't mean you can't do business with them.

• 34:53Leon Howard?

  Right? Because they have access to such and such that you don't. So what over here is, if you don't like them, kill them. You don't like them, you know, have, let them know you don't like them. Let them know there's animosity right there. Cause I wanted to, like, there's it, the way that the world is viewed is two completely different ways. You feel me? And so because of that. This set of people until they get exposed to it, until this class of people gets exposure. Everyone will repeat that cycle.

• 35:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Leon Howard?

  Whereas this class of people, if you repeat, if you do anything less than what we've done already, like what is your problem? You know what I'm saying? Why won't you be great?

• 35:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Leon Howard?

  Right? And so, once I understood that, I was like, I get it. I get it.

• 35:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:42Leon Howard?

  This, this is the game changer.

• 35:44Lewis Howes?

  So when you, when you knew you had a year left in prison.

• 35:48Leon Howard?

  Hmm.

• 35:49Lewis Howes?

  Did you have a game plan? Was there a mindset of like, okay, I've been studying for eight, eight years, plus years, nine years? And here's my next three moves? Or were you like? I, you know, obviously if you don't have money, you gotta work a job for a certain period so you can invest to own something.

• 36:05Leon Howard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:06Lewis Howes?

  Whether it's be stocks, your own house, or real estate, or equity in something, you've gotta make money. To be invested, or you could borrow it from someone and invest it, but then you gotta pay something off. So what were the next three moves after you got out of jail?

• 36:20Leon Howard?

  So, the idea was to come home, I'm not gonna lie, I was like, yo, I could be Warren Buffett.

• 36:26Lewis Howes?

  Right away, like two years.

• 36:27Leon Howard?

  I could be Warren Buffett, cuz you know, when you're in prison, like, you paint this picture.

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:32Leon Howard?

  And you never know who you really are until you jump in the water.

• 36:36Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 36:37Leon Howard?

  Right? Cuz you gotta remember, I went to jail at sixteen, I come home, I'm twenty-six, I'm a completely different man. At this point, the majority of my life has been in prison.

• 36:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Leon Howard?

  My developmental years, I've been in prison. So my mind was like, alright, cool, I went to the halfway house, which was, um.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  So you worked it?

• 36:53Leon Howard?

  Six months to a year? Yeah, I was, I had six months. So I remember I came home with like forty-five hundred dollars, and I bought me a grand prix.

• 36:59Lewis Howes?

  After you got out of the six months?

• 37:01Leon Howard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:02Lewis Howes?

  You came home with forty hundred?

• 37:02Leon Howard?

  I came home with forty-five hundred dollars, and I said, the first thing I gotta do is I gotta get me a car. I don't even know how to drive, like I gotta get me a car. So I remember my cousin, who was a preacher at the time, he, uh. He came, got me, and I told him he had an avalanche, and he was like, man, drive. I was like, man, I don't know how. He said, if you don't learn now, you ain't gonna never learn. So I drive the avalanche, and then the next day. He took me to, two days later, he took me to the license plate.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:32Leon Howard?

  So I give him my license.

• 37:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 37:33Leon Howard?

  The lady tells me, she was like, you don't know how to drive, but I've been gone for ten years, she was like, let me give you a license.

• 37:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, that's crazy, that's, that's not good.

• 37:44Leon Howard?

  Wow. She said, you deserve it. Wow. I said, yeah, man. So I remember going to buy my car. And I was broke. By the time I bought the car and. Then you're broke now. I'm broke. You already bought something that's a liability. Bought the car. It's not an asset. You're already losing your money. I'm done. I'm like, alright, cool, but I'm like, I could get around. I don't gotta ask nobody that. You got some access, you got some flexibility. I can get around. And so. I remember. Um, I got into school. I was in Baton Rouge. So I, I learned how to weld. Like, I am gonna take this welding trade up. So I took that for six weeks, took fast track welding. So I got certified at that. I came home and I was an ironworker. So I started building.

• 38:26Leon Howard?

  Schools, passing some power plants, schools, power plants, prisons. I was doing all of that. And I was like, man. I'm gonna start hustling, man. Hmm. Going back. You know, it's too hard. This is, this work is not worth it. This is not it. You're like, I'm not gonna do this for ten hours a day. I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna do this. For ten bucks an hour. Nah, that's what I was making at the time. I was like, I'm not gonna do this, man. This is not gonna get me Warren Buffett fast enough. Right. So I get back in the streets. No way. Got back in the streets. Come on. Got back in the streets, man. Man, even after all that education, all that information, and knowing it's the wrong thing, and knowing that it can get you right back in there. Mike Tyson says something that's amazing, man. He says, everybody got a plan till they get punched in the face. That's true. You know what I'm saying? I got punched in the face. I was like, man. Again, I'm influenced.

• 39:12Leon Howard?

  Because I come home. Your environment is that. I see it.

• 39:16Leon Howard?

  I see the cars. I'm broke. I'm like, man, this ain't it. I'm going to work every day and I'm just looking like. This ain't, this ain't gonna get it. So I remember taking my check. It's like six hundred dollars. I got me a pound of weed. I said, we on. Oh, man. You start splitting this up and packing it and dealing it. I started selling weed. Selling weed to the people at work. Selling weed to the people at home. So I said, alright, I'm gonna be smart. I'm not gonna hustle all day. I'm gonna sell weed at work. And at home. Right. So I'm doing that. And, you know, I'm making money. You know, I started getting more weed. Like, that was my thing. So I started selling weed and X pills. Right? I was like, alright, cool. Like, that's it. So I would sell weed on the weekends when I was off. I would go to the clubs.

• 40:02Leon Howard?

  Sell X pill. I was like, alright, that's it. Like. I see my vision. And in my mind, I said, if I get a hundred thousand dollars. I'ma quit.

• 40:10Lewis Howes?

  No. When are you ever gonna quit that? When you ever quit? No. Not when I get three hundred thousand.

• 40:15Leon Howard?

  It never happens.

• 40:16Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 40:17Leon Howard?

  So, um, two thousand, so I come home in two thousand seven. In two thousand nine, me and my, one of my friends in the car together, he had three strikes. Police pull us over, I had just served him a quarter pound of weed.

• 40:31Lewis Howes?

  You just gave him?

• 40:32Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 40:33Lewis Howes?

  So he had it on him?

• 40:34Leon Howard?

  He had it on him.

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 40:35Leon Howard?

  Yeah, and so, police pull us over, he throw it.

• 40:38Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 40:40Leon Howard?

  And, police don't find it.

• 40:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh man.

• 40:44Leon Howard?

  But then something made them come back, and he finds it under the car.

• 40:48Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 40:48Leon Howard?

  So now me being a friend, I know that my partner can't go to jail for another time. He gone. So I said, man, that's mine.

• 41:01Leon Howard?

  So I was, I was, it may sound stupid, but in my mind, it's like, I was smart enough because I knew that I could only get probation, because it was my first drug charge.

• 41:10Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 41:11Leon Howard?

  Already got attempted on robbery, one drug charge ain't gonna kill me, right in my mind.

• 41:15Lewis Howes?

  Hey, man.

• 41:16Leon Howard?

  So, he like, man, thank you, bro. I'm like, man, it's all good, I ain't tripping. So about two months later.

• 41:25Lewis Howes?

  Did you think to yourself, okay, now I need to stop this, or were you like?

• 41:28Leon Howard?

  No, that's a little probation talk, man. That ain't nothing, man. That's probation, I just did it ten years.

• 41:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 41:34Leon Howard?

  That was probation, I'm, I already know they can't give me number probation, I'm not even mad at that. So I remember like, three months later, they kicked my door in.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh no.

• 41:45Leon Howard?

  Eight pounds of weed.

• 41:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, they found it.

• 41:48Leon Howard?

  Ten thou, ten thousand dollars.

• 41:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 41:50Leon Howard?

  A forty, forty, um, with extended clip on a beam, a two twenty-three, a hundred X pill. When the people kicked my door in, I remember. The man looked at my TV and the stock market was on. And he said, you watching the stock market and this what you doing? And immediately in that moment, I said, I done F'd up. Oh, you said this out loud? Yeah. Dope part about that was I was able to get found not guilty because they kicked my door in with no search warrant. Right, right, right. So it's called fruit of a poisonous tree. Oh my gosh. So I was able to get found not guilty on that. And a charge of my partner, we did what's called, um, the Crosby plea, saying that I copped out only in my best interest.

• 42:34Leon Howard?

  And then when it went to the full circuit court, they was able to throw it away. So I got away with a clean slate. You know how I was in state of Louisiana? Anybody looking at that, go look that up.

• 42:45Leon Howard?

  So but how long was that process? That energy was three months, six months? Nah, that was, so I came home in two thousand seven, that was two thousand nine. From two thousand nine to two thousand twelve, I was fighting those charges. Oh my gosh, it's a lot of energy. It's a lot, and it broke me. Yeah. And I remember after that, I broke again. Now you got, yeah, you got court fees, you got lawyer fee, whatever it is. I start robbing dope dealer.

• 43:14Leon Howard?

  Crazy, man. So I, this is what I know. Two thousand twelve, yeah. Two thousand twelve, I start robbing dope dealer. So like, all right. A friend of mine, he used to be with it. We robbing, he like, bro, what we doing? I'm like, man, we robbing dope boys now. Oh my gosh, man. This is what we doing. We robbing dope boys. You're not selling, you're robbing. We just robbing now. What they can do? Killing me here.

• 43:38Leon Howard?

  Like, I was successful for a while. And then I almo- we almo- I almost got killed. Oh my gosh. And I remember we was doing, hit, doing a situation and I forgot something. A dude put a twelve gauge to the back of my head. And he said, I would have knocked this shit off. And in my mind, I remember this, I'm about to go out. But my partner was there, God bless his soul. He said, bro, look, I can't stop you from killing my homie.

• 44:07Leon Howard?

  But if you kill him, no, you gonna die right with him. The next best thing you can do is let him go, and I promise I'm gonna let you go. God was with me.

• 44:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:16Leon Howard?

  Dude, let me go. I remember I was getting out of there and I said, "Dude, I'm finished." Like, I found out guilty twice, and this situation happened.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're like, "I can't do it. I'm gonna die in the next three years, or I'm back to jail."

• 44:28Leon Howard?

  Say, "I'm good," and I committed to it.

• 44:31Lewis Howes?

  So, but then you go back to welding or something?

• 44:33Leon Howard?

  Two thousand fourteen, I start back doing ironwork heavy.

• 44:35Lewis Howes?

  But you're making eleven bucks an hour?

• 44:37Leon Howard?

  Now, I'm doing good, so now, I was still doing a little bit, so now I was building stadiums and power plants. So, I'm making twenty-five hundred dollars a week now. So, I had them build my craft up, I had them got good, and I was getting like twenty-five dollars, thirty-two dollars.

• 44:49Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so you're building that up.

• 44:50Leon Howard?

  Yeah, I had to build that up, so now I was like, "Man, I'm, I'm, I quit."

• 44:53Lewis Howes?

  You're making twenty-five an hour now.

• 44:54Leon Howard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, so now I'm bringing home two thousand dollars a week.

• 44:57Lewis Howes?

  It's not bad.

• 44:58Leon Howard?

  Good working, man.

• 44:59Lewis Howes?

  It's great money. It's good money, man.

• 45:00Leon Howard?

  I still had it.

• 45:01Lewis Howes?

  You're making six figures.

• 45:02Leon Howard?

  Yeah, I was making like a hundred thousand dollars a year.

• 45:04Lewis Howes?

  That's not bad, man.

• 45:04Leon Howard?

  Hundred twenty thousand dollars a year, yeah.

• 45:06Lewis Howes?

  It's like a lot of money.

• 45:07Leon Howard?

  I was good, but like, I'm a hustler. It's just in me. But, I never went back to the streets. That's when I started taking this serious. Two thousand fourteen, I said, "Man, you playing the wrong game, bro." And I was still, the crazy part was, on the journey, I was still teaching my homies in the street about the stock market.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 45:28Leon Howard?

  I was literally telling them.

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  But you weren't doing it yourself?

• 45:30Leon Howard?

  Yeah, I was still investing.

• 45:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh, you were doing it.

• 45:32Leon Howard?

  I was still investing. This one made me take it serious. When they kicked my door in, they froze my bank account.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 45:39Leon Howard?

  They took my truck, but they didn't mess with my stocks.

• 45:42Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 45:44Leon Howard?

  And I said, "Oh, they don't think we that smart. All right."

• 45:49Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna show that one.

• 45:50Leon Howard?

  Cool.

• 45:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:51Leon Howard?

  So, I really just started telling my homies in the street, like, "Say, bro,

• 45:55Leon Howard?

  this one you should put your money in." Don't put your money, no, put your money right here. And so they didn't get it. Invest in, invest in something that can give value to people. Invest it. Yeah. We were at Nike's all the time. We should own Nike. Should own stock in Nike. Should own stock in Nike. All of us got Apple iPhones, just in the beginning. We should own iPhones. I'm like, yo, like, we were at Dicky's and Timbaland's, that's owned by a company called VFC Corp. We could own that. Like, we were at Louis Vuitton, Moet. We drank Moet, we drank Hennessy, that's LVMH on the stock market. We were at Gucci, that's P P R U Y on the stock market. We got eighteen ten, like, bro, we could own this. She was like, man, we go to the stock market crash, I'm like, if it crash, you just buy more. Right.

• 46:38Leon Howard?

  And so then, like, some of them got it, some of it didn't. But then I started, I had to switch it, I was like, well, what happens if you go to jail the day of tomorrow? You come home with no money. You got money in the stock market, what happens? You owe nobody nothing. You come home with some money. More money. And so I started preaching it to my homies. Hmm. And that's when financial literacy really changed my life. Because at this point, I was dedicated to like, I knew that the streets wasn't for me no more. Like, I hadn't already been through all the phases, I did the ten years in prison. I got found, I guilty, my life been on the line several times, I'm still here. I was like, you know, like, God got something different for me. Wow. Again, that's why I said, I was developed in the darkness. It ain't nothing that nobody can say about the streets that I ain't never did.

• 47:24Leon Howard?

  Nothing. So for me, it's like, from that, okay, I looked at myself like, I'm the person who can teach them, because just being real, if somebody go to them street dudes with a suit and tie, they're not gonna feel that, you ain't been through what I've been through. So now I wanted to represent something different. I wanted to represent Wall Street in a way that I'm wearing my hoodie, I'm wearing my teen tops, I'm wearing my tennis shoes, but I got the same information. Hmm. I could, I could help you change your life, I could teach you the game that they playing. If you wouldn't learn it, it reminds you of the old game. And so that's when my life shifted, when I started taking this serious. And I started saying, I'm gonna be the first person in my family to build wealth.

• 48:09Leon Howard?

  I'm gonna be the first person in my family to have a trust. I'm gonna be the first person in my family to own land. I'm gonna be the first, like, and I'm gonna teach a bunch of dope dealers how to do the same thing. But then my mission got bigger because I realized it wasn't just the dope dealers. It was people that was working nine to five every day that still didn't see a way out. So I'm like, all right, I'm gonna teach them too. All right, let me just, let me just start educating my people. Let me start educating this class of people. You know what I'm saying? Because now if we can get this information, now we can start saying wealth is possible.

• 48:47Lewis Howes?

  Right. When was the first big win, I guess legitimate win?

• 48:54Lewis Howes?

  Was it like, okay, I'm investing in stock and I saw like a five to 10x? So teaching and getting paid for your service and, you know, educating people and getting paid for that, was it?

• 49:03Leon Howard?

  So for me to first, I'll never forget this.

• 49:07Leon Howard?

  A friend of mine was in a jam. And at this time, I had been teaching him since 2014, so maybe like 2016, 2017. And one of his spots got kicked in. He had no more money. He was like, bro, I don't got no money, I don't got nothing. I said, man, sell the stocks.

• 49:27Leon Howard?

  Sell the stocks. And at this time-

• 49:29Lewis Howes?

  So he had been investing in stocks a couple of years prior?

• 49:31Leon Howard?

  There had been, like, I had, like, I've always been a leader. Like, I've-

• 49:36Lewis Howes?

  Are they setting up like a TD Ameritrade account or whatever?

• 49:39Leon Howard?

  Like, I'm literally walking my homies through the process. Like, I'm walking them through, like, look, we gotta get a bank account.

• 49:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and then put the money, legitimate money-

• 49:47Leon Howard?

  Put the money in the bank account, right? And I remember-

• 49:53Leon Howard?

  He was like, man, I need all your money. Cause I had told him, you put the money in the market, just forget about it. Just let it go. Your money's gone. Just let it go. It's gonna keep making you money. It's gonna, your, your money now becomes your employees. You know what I'm saying? Dollars multiplying, working for you. It's working for you. A dollar that ain't moving is a dollar that's losing. Yeah. So if a dollar that's consistently attracting more money, that's your employee. You sending them out that'll go get more money. They recruit us for you. And so, and I said something like, think about it, do a game like, you know this company got some good dope? And you know this company gonna be around for a long time. And so I remember, he sold like eight thousand dollars worth of stock. And it helped him from going to prison.

• 50:38Leon Howard?

  Cause he was able to hire a lawyer. He was gonna get a lawyer. And he ain't hustled since then. Wow. And so it'd be, the moments for me don't be about myself. It'd be moments like that where I know somebody can say, because of this? Like, this helped my life. This impacted my life. This changed my life. This made me see my money different. This made me feel like I, this was possible. Like, that's the power of financial literacy. That's the power of saying, now I got the right information.

• 51:12Leon Howard?

  Like, information would change our whole life. And so, that was it. Now for me, it was saying, like, first it was like, here's a thou-, I got a thousand dollars invested. I got ten thousand dollars invested. I got fifteen thousand dollars invested. And so for me, I started using the market also as like a savings account. Yeah. Because I know that my money wasn't making no money in the savings account. So I started buying like index funds. Yep. Like, I was just buy the index fund and I treat them like. Yep, that'll be my, that'll be my savings account. And then I'll do individual stocks for my real investments. So if I can get eight to ten percent on an index fund, that's better than zero point one, zero one cent in a savings account. Alright, cool. That's my, that's my savings account then. And it started, it's a mind game with me.

• 51:53Leon Howard?

  If I got the money in the index fund and I'm using the index fund as a savings account, as long as I see the money working for me, I'm not gonna touch it. Right. In a savings account, what happens is, I see the money. I can take it out. I can take it out easy. Right, and so it's all of those little tricks and those little nuances that make us be like, why I ain't never learned this? And so you start to realize that the reason why the elitists can't teach financial literacy to certain people is because then they lose customers.

• 52:28Leon Howard?

  A lot of wealthy people can't teach financial literacy to poorer people because those are the biggest customers. Who else gonna be the consumers? The lion can never tell a zebra or a giraffe how to get away, or the gazelle, what are you gonna eat? If the lion tells a zebra or a gazelle how to get away, they're gonna tell everybody else. Not a lion, no longer the king of the jungle or the king of the safari. It's a vegan. You know what I'm saying? Nothing against veganism, but it's, why would I teach you how to be a financial predator? Financial predators need financial prey. So if you look in my community now, you see check cash and places. What does a check cash and place do? The check cash, if I get a hundred dollars, you gotta get a check cash and place a hundred and fifty dollars.

• 53:14Leon Howard?

  That's taking away money from you. Right, and the reason why check cash and place is gonna always have, be prevalent in the hood because people have no relationship with money. So they're, they say that the average person spends a dollar and twenty-five cent for every one dollar they make.

• 53:31Leon Howard?

  You know what I'm saying? Like, that's horrible. So you have more people living above their means, you have more people like, saying, I gotta get this, I gotta get that. And one thing I've learned, like even about wealthy people, what I love is that there's never, um, I have to have this. It's about assets first, savings second, spend was left.

• 53:54Leon Howard?

  And hood is the other way around, it's spend first, bills. If I save, if I have enough to save, then I might save until I find something else I wanna buy. You know what I'm saying? So it's always like, for me, and where I'm at now in my journey is, how do I now make financial literacy prevalent? Everybody that comes from the class where I come from.

• 54:19Leon Howard?

  Because I know some poor ass white people too.

• 54:20Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 54:23Leon Howard?

  You feel me?

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Leon Howard?

  So it's like, how do I now teach them to employ the financial literacy? And so now we feel like we can have leverage in the game. Because now, you know, you tell us, like, I get pride if somebody say, man, I bought my first stock. That's the power of owning that first stock is a game changer.

• 54:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Leon Howard?

  Because you're telling people we never owned it a day in their life. So my motto is always helping the culture build well, one share at a time.

• 54:51Lewis Howes?

  One share at a time, yeah.

• 54:52Leon Howard?

  One share.

• 54:52Lewis Howes?

  Instead of being, consuming everything, start owning something.

• 54:55Leon Howard?

  Own a thing.

• 54:56Lewis Howes?

  Even if it's one stock.

• 54:57Leon Howard?

  One.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  One index fund, you know, a piece of real estate from a real estate investment. Um, you don't have to buy a whole house.

• 55:06Leon Howard?

  Nope.

• 55:06Lewis Howes?

  You know, you can buy twenty dollars for a stock.

• 55:10Leon Howard?

  That's it.

• 55:10Lewis Howes?

  And let that work for you.

• 55:12Leon Howard?

  Let it work. And then, over time, what I know about human nature is progress breeds like addiction.

• 55:23Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 55:24Leon Howard?

  You know what I'm saying? Like, you start seeing something, you're like, what?

• 55:27Lewis Howes?

  We get more of this.

• 55:27Leon Howard?

  I want more of that. You go to the gym, you see one little muscle.

• 55:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I want more. It's funny, I saw, um, you know, I get a, I get a dividends every month from a real estate that I'm involved in, right?

• 55:38Leon Howard?

  Okay.

• 55:39Lewis Howes?

  So I got a, this morning, right before you came in, I just opened up my email and there was three notifications of different payments from three different real estate, uh, properties I've invested in.

• 55:48Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  That I invested in a few years ago, right? And every month, I get a check.

• 55:52Leon Howard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:53Lewis Howes?

  From money that I invested in years ago. That money's not sitting in the bank just like depreciating in value with inflation. I'm not blowing it on some car or something. I got a car, it's great.

• 56:04Leon Howard?

  Right.

• 56:05Lewis Howes?

  I don't need more clothes.

• 56:06Leon Howard?

  Right.

• 56:06Lewis Howes?

  I'm putting it into things that can bring me passive income.

• 56:09Leon Howard?

  Yes.

• 56:10Lewis Howes?

  To then pay my bills.

• 56:11Leon Howard?

  Yes.

• 56:12Lewis Howes?

  And then the extra cash that I have, I put it into more assets.

• 56:14Leon Howard?

  Yes.

• 56:15Lewis Howes?

  To help me pay my bills, hire more people in my team, and help serve my mission.

• 56:19Leon Howard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:20Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's a You know, I see that I'm like, man, I wish I would have put more in.

• 56:25Leon Howard?

  Yes.

• 56:25Lewis Howes?

  You always think.

• 56:26Leon Howard?

  That's always it.

• 56:27Lewis Howes?

  I should have bought more of that stock. I should have bought more of that real estate. And you can always get started now, putting more in.

• 56:32Leon Howard?

  Yes.

• 56:33Lewis Howes?

  Um, what should be people thinking about when it comes to investing then? How do they know what to invest in and to not? Cause you can invest in something and lose all your money.

• 56:42Leon Howard?

  Yes.

• 56:42Lewis Howes?

  So what approach do you give to people there?

• 56:45Leon Howard?

  So I always say the first thing is, and I say this and I want people to understand is, invest in what you understand.

• 56:52Lewis Howes?

  So if you wear Nikes.

• 56:54Leon Howard?

  Yeah, you should be looking at apparel brands, right? Nike, Lululemon, because you understand that, right? If you a workout person, then you should be looking at like Planet Fitness, things like that. Like if you are a tech person, if you use an Apple phone, you should 100% be on looking at Apple, right? If you're a car person, like, but one of the things I like now is fintech, financial technology. So everybody uses PayPal or Square, right? That is the way money is changing. The way we using money is completely different now. So I think everybody should be investing in fintech right now, 100%. But I look at it as, so every investor has what's called an investor identity.

• 57:39Leon Howard?

  Like what you're willing to risk, your risk tolerance, what companies you're more familiar. If you're a doctor, then you know more about medicine. So you should be in biotech or pharmaceuticals, healthcare. You should, that should be your thing. If you are, again, a person who's in software, then cybersecurity, software. That's where you're going to be strong at and that's where your strong points are. I remember Warren Buffett said for a long time, he didn't understand technology. So he didn't buy technology. He didn't buy Apple stock until like 2017. He's like, I don't understand. I don't even have a computer.

• 58:11Lewis Howes?

  I don't use it.

• 58:12Leon Howard?

  I don't even use it, right? So I learned that from him. He said, I put things in a too hard box. If it's too hard for me to understand, I don't, I don't do it. And what I love about investing is.

• 58:25Leon Howard?

  It's not a IQ sport. It's not about who has the biggest IQ at all. Because it's mostly about how do I stay in my circle of confidence and what I understand because that's what gives me the advantage. Whatever I under, like for me. It's banks, like I love banks, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, love it. Fintech, love it, still dealing with, like I love money, I'm a hustler, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I love that, um, so that's why I'm like heavy at.

• 58:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 58:54Leon Howard?

  You know what I'm saying, but I'm not a, I'm not a bio pharmaceutical person, so I stay away from that. How do I stay away from it, right, so the, the, the, the easiest thing is like wherever you work at. Like look around, wherever you shop at, look around. Every time I buy a product, I'm looking at who made it. So I can go look that up, see if it's a public company, if it's a private company, right, if it's public, that mean we can all invest into it. If I can invest into it, I want a piece of it. You know what I'm saying, just to keep it simple, we don't even have to make it hard, right, you don't have to be Warren Buffett out the gate. Right, you don't have to be that, like Warren Buffett didn't become Warren Buffett until twenty years, thirty years in.

• 59:32Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 59:33Leon Howard?

  You know what I'm saying, so you gotta figure out who you are as a person, who you are as an investor that take you to that next level.

• 59:39Lewis Howes?

  Do you have a strategy where every month you're automatically putting money away into investments? Or when you get a chunk of money, then you're putting a certain percent into it? What's your mindset around investing in terms of how often you do it, how frequently you're putting it?

• 59:54Leon Howard?

  So every time I get money, at least fifty percent of it goes to invest.

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 59:59Leon Howard?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm heavy with it, I could do a lot with less.

• 1:00:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Leon Howard?

  Like I don't live my life like that, I literally, and I'll say this on camera, I only have like ten thousand dollars in the bank.

• 1:00:08Leon Howard?

  My life, if something happens to me, my life is not set up in a way where I need a lot of money on hand.

• 1:00:17Lewis Howes?

  And you could like sell stock and get money.

• 1:00:18Leon Howard?

  You know, so for me, it's, I do three things every time I get some money. I invest with my daughter first, and then I invest with myself, and then I see what else gotta be paid.

• 1:00:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:28Leon Howard?

  Right, so even when investing for myself and I'm putting money in the market. I'm sometimes just putting it in my account so it's available for me to use.

• 1:00:37Lewis Howes?

  The right time.

• 1:00:38Leon Howard?

  When the time permits, right? So every week I'm putting money in, okay, let me put this money in my account. Then I have a separate account because I got a portfolio that I designed to do different things for me. Right? So I have a dividend portfolio, whereas everything in that portfolio is about me having businesses that pay dividends. So I got Costco, T-Row Price, Home Depot, um, O'Realty, companies like that. That is just designed for me to get dividends.

• 1:01:04Lewis Howes?

  Even if it's only twenty, thirty bucks a month, it's something.

• 1:01:06Leon Howard?

  That's it. And so I look at it as, okay, this will, this will be passive income thirty nine. I won't need this until I'm fifty nine, sixty.

• 1:01:17Lewis Howes?

  It keeps reinvesting.

• 1:01:18Leon Howard?

  So I reinvest them. So now they buy me most shares of themselves. All right, cool. And then one portfolio I use for growth stocks. So all right, this is where my Apple's at, my fintech company, my PayPal's and Affirm's. Things like that, because now I'm gonna get a lot of growth. That's why I'm taking more risk right here. Right? And then there's an option portfolio I have, I trade at. So now I got three portfolios that have to do three different things when they have three different agendas. And I got a raw salary.

• 1:01:46Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:01:46Leon Howard?

  You know what I'm saying? That's, that's tax, you know, for tax advantages. So that's financial literacy.

• 1:01:53Lewis Howes?

  And life insurance.

• 1:01:53Leon Howard?

  Life, life insurance. Yeah. Yeah, got whole life insurance, right? So understanding, just understanding how the wealthy play the game. I just bought forty acres of land, right? I say I'm, I'm gonna create agriculture. Why? Because agriculture gets more breaks than anybody. You know what I'm saying? Bought forty acres of land, free and clear. It's mine. I'm gonna turn it into a farm. Right? Grow organic food, organic vegetables. I got water well on it.

• 1:02:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:02:21Leon Howard?

  Right? All right, cool. Let's do that. Tax advantages for this. Anything comes off that land, I can, I get breaks on that. So it's me sitting back saying.

• 1:02:32Leon Howard?

  This is how the wealthy play the game of life.

• 1:02:37Leon Howard?

  Not in survival mode, but in offense.

• 1:02:40Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:41Leon Howard?

  The moment you can switch from survival mode to offense, the game changes.

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:47Leon Howard?

  The more aggressive team in the game, the more aggressive boxer in the game, the more aggressive, like, that's when the game is played.

• 1:02:55Leon Howard?

  Again, class of people are used to life dictating them. I'm gonna take the punches how they come.

• 1:03:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:03:02Leon Howard?

  How you doing, man? You know I'm making it?

• 1:03:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Leon Howard?

  The responses be different. Man, what's up? How you feeling, man? Man, I'm making it, man. Well, you ask somebody, what's up, man? Just closed out on a deal.

• 1:03:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Leon Howard?

  You know, got a couple of business meetings. Like, I love attacking life.

• 1:03:18Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:18Leon Howard?

  And it don't have to be, it don't always have to be going to where you want. As long as you attacking it.

• 1:03:24Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:24Leon Howard?

  Every day I get up saying, yo, I got an opportunity to go attack. Right? Every, I got an opportunity to change something, to make sure, turn my last name into an asset. Right? Turn my last name into an asset.

• 1:03:36Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:03:36Leon Howard?

  Like, own my twenty-four hours. That's the goal. Like, the person who can own their twenty-four hours can create freedom.

• 1:03:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:03:44Leon Howard?

  That's the difference between financial freedom and then financial independence.

• 1:03:49Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference?

• 1:03:50Leon Howard?

  So, financial independence is saying, I now can make money for myself. I don't got to worry about my job. I don't got to worry about none of that. I can create the cash flow that comes into my house. Financial freedom says, money is no longer even an issue. Big difference.

• 1:04:07Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:08Leon Howard?

  Because even someone who can create money for themselves, still doesn't have freedom all the time.

• 1:04:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:14Leon Howard?

  You can be an entrepreneur and be a slave to the business.

• 1:04:16Lewis Howes?

  You, you build yourself a job.

• 1:04:19Leon Howard?

  You build yourself a job.

• 1:04:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Leon Howard?

  Right? But financial freedom says, your money is not even an issue no more.

• 1:04:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:24Leon Howard?

  And, and that don't even have to be a lot.

• 1:04:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:26Leon Howard?

  Whatever you.

• 1:04:27Lewis Howes?

  That's why I feel like some people, um, have this fantasy of entrepreneurship, is like this ideal lifestyle. Where I don't think people understand the weight of being an entrepreneur. And how long it actually takes. I mean, you hear great stories of people that are like, oh, I built this thing and sold it for a billion dollars. It usually took ten, fifteen, twenty years.

• 1:04:48Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Lewis Howes?

  And so many punches in the face and the gut and ups and downs. But most businesses fail after a few years. And the ones that succeed, a lot of the entrepreneurs are just working really hard to pay themselves a salary. And take more responsibility, weight and pressure, taxes, you know, insurance, all these things they gotta pay until they learn to break through.

• 1:05:10Leon Howard?

  Yep.

• 1:05:11Lewis Howes?

  And so it's not like the sexiest thing. It takes time and energy and a real.

• 1:05:17Leon Howard?

  Persistence. I remember like just before the show, I asked you, I said, outside of consistency.

• 1:05:22Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:05:23Leon Howard?

  What was one of the things? And you was like, man, now, and I was like, this nine years.

• 1:05:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Leon Howard?

  Like, most people quit year one, year two, like, no, this is too much for me. I can't deal with it. It's pressure, right? But there's this thing about getting up. And let me say that, I don't think there's nothing wrong with anybody working a job. Because I don't think entrepreneurship is for everybody.

• 1:05:47Lewis Howes?

  I don't think it is, man.

• 1:05:48Leon Howard?

  Right? But I do know that building wealth is for everybody.

• 1:05:51Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. And you can take your money you're making from your job and invest it so it's working for you.

• 1:05:55Leon Howard?

  It should be your biggest investment.

• 1:05:56Lewis Howes?

  And that's what you were doing.

• 1:05:57Leon Howard?

  That's what I did. But I feel too that like, I think that everybody should at least once in their life, go all in on something.

• 1:06:09Leon Howard?

  Something that you just believe in. That's living to me. Because for me, I always, I don't need motivation. Because when I look at my life, my motivation is saying, I'll never go back to that again.

• 1:06:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:06:26Leon Howard?

  My motivation is saying that I have a daughter that I never want her to experience that life. Right? So getting up every day knowing that. I can change my family, knowing that we are now in a time. But we've never had the opportunity like we have now. And if I don't take advantage of that opportunity, when it's time for me to go, I'm gonna feel real messed up about that.

• 1:06:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:06:52Leon Howard?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:06:52Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:53Leon Howard?

  Because I don't, it's a difference between never getting the opportunity and getting the opportunity and never taking advantage of it.

• 1:07:00Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely, man. Absolutely. How has mental health played in into your life?

• 1:07:04Leon Howard?

  Ooh.

• 1:07:05Lewis Howes?

  With the uh, the journey of learning how to heal so much trauma, pain, memories, experiences. Not only as a kid, not only as in prison, but six, seven years ago, when you were still doing a lot of things that were, you know, against the law and out of integrity and how do you learn to emotionally heal so much?

• 1:07:29Leon Howard?

  I'm still healing.

• 1:07:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Leon Howard?

  I just told you I gotta get your book, man.

• 1:07:32Lewis Howes?

  I know, man.

• 1:07:33Leon Howard?

  When you told, I gotta get that. I'm still healing. Man, I just, it's crazy because I just had a moment last night. I was talking to my mother and we had an old care relationship because she's still got a lot of trauma and pain that she deal with. And it's hard for me to attempt to heal, run a business, and be aware that she has healing to do. Right? Like, that'd be a lot. So, um, just last night, I was like, I can't take this, man. I can't do this. This is, I can't do all this. You know what I'm saying? It's because I was trying to deal with her situation emotionally and rationalize the logic,

• 1:08:18Leon Howard?

  then deal with, okay, I gotta do this, this, this, this, I'm trying to do this. And it was just a lot. And I had to step back. Me and my, me and my daughter's mother have a great relationship. And I told her, man, healing, this was my exact words last night. I said, man, healing is a lifelong process. I said, man, this stuff take forever. She's like, what you thought she was gonna heal overnight?

• 1:08:39Lewis Howes?

  Your daughter said this?

• 1:08:39Leon Howard?

  No, my daughter's mother.

• 1:08:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh, I was gonna say, man, your daughter was.

• 1:08:42Leon Howard?

  Nah, my daughter's mother. I said, man, healing is a lifelong process. She said, what you thought you was gonna heal overnight? And it's, it's understanding emotionally.

• 1:08:52Leon Howard?

  So there's three phases in my life. Well, more than three, but you gotta realize there was me before prison, just seeing, viewing, observing, seeing a violence. Like I not only saw my mom get shot, but I also overdosed. Right? So rationalizing that, me being homeless for a couple of years of my life at a young age. Then me going to prison, adapting to a completely different lifestyle. Then coming home as a grown man, nobody's gonna give you handsouts. So now I have to realize who I am as a free man. A free grown man.

• 1:09:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:09:30Leon Howard?

  Then in that process of learning who I am, I'm fighting cases again. Right? And then we go to, okay, well, this and I did. I'm just gonna, you know, get into robbery. Because the only leverage I feel like I had in life at these points is leveraging my life. Right? The only leverage, the only fighting thing I, the only, like, I don't, I don't, I don't know at the moment how to leverage information and knowledge. The only thing that I knew that I had was my life. So, okay, freedom of prison. I mean, prison or death, uh, it's the only thing I can. So it's, it's now breaking away from that.

• 1:10:10Leon Howard?

  And now being a leader, being an influential person, influential person in my communities, around the people, now accepting that. Because no one teaches you how to be a leader. No one teaches you how to do, you gotta learn that on the fly. You gotta learn, okay, I can't say this, I can't say that, and then social media is something different. And so I'm learning that.

• 1:10:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Leon Howard?

  I'm still learning how to heal. I'm still learning, I'm still praying more. You know, I gotta, just talking about, like, yeah, we gotta get back with the therapist, right? Just so I can brain dump.

• 1:10:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Leon Howard?

  You know what I'm saying? I got into journaling, like getting these thoughts out of my head. Listening to stuff like Atomic Habits and, you know, just stuff like that. So I'm, I'm still healing. And I know it's gonna be a lifelong process because you gotta remember, I done been shot before, I done been shot at, I done did some shooting, and honestly, if you shoot somebody, you deal with that all your life.

• 1:11:05Lewis Howes?

  What does that feel like?

• 1:11:06Leon Howard?

  Man. I still have nightmares about that. You know what I'm saying? Like, in the moment, you feel like.

• 1:11:16Leon Howard?

  I did the right thing.

• 1:11:17Lewis Howes?

  Justified.

• 1:11:18Leon Howard?

  You justify it, right? You you feel like, man, it had to be done, like. You know what I'm saying? And I think maybe the difference in a lion when he eats a gazelle is it's on to the next one. Right? But human nature comes in.

• 1:11:31Lewis Howes?

  You gotta live with the consequence.

• 1:11:32Leon Howard?

  Yeah, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill that man. You know what I'm saying? Like, when you deal with that and and and it never goes away. You know what I'm saying? Like, it never goes away. And part of you, you know, I'll have, like, right now, like, I don't even be wanting to be around guns.

• 1:11:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:11:50Leon Howard?

  You'll be like, man, I'm good, man. Like, I don't wanna go to the gun range, right? Like.

• 1:11:54Lewis Howes?

  It's not worth it.

• 1:11:54Leon Howard?

  Nah, it bring me, it bring me, it bring me back to a place of my life where I was. And I feel like the only way for me to move forward is sometimes you gotta, like, disattach yourself from certain environment, certain things. So I be like, nah, man, I I honestly don't even like listening to music that has a lot of, talk a lot of gangster talk. Cause one, I lived it and it brings in a different emotion in me. That I like, nah, if I'm gonna be here, I don't wanna get into that emotion. And I know with music, most people are telling their story. I don't wanna relive that story.

• 1:12:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:12:30Leon Howard?

  That's part of my healing.

• 1:12:31Lewis Howes?

  Trying to create a new story.

• 1:12:32Leon Howard?

  Yeah, so that's part of my healing. So I'm always healing, man.

• 1:12:34Lewis Howes?

  What do you think would be the uh, the three big things you need to take on? Or let go of in order to get to a completely different level in your life? One year from today? So when, when I see you in a year, in Atlanta or in LA?

• 1:12:49Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Lewis Howes?

  And you're like, I did these three things, or I let go of these three things. And it took me to another level of financial abundance, another level of emotional freedom? And healing. What would those things be?

• 1:13:02Leon Howard?

  Three things that I would let go.

• 1:13:05Lewis Howes?

  Or take on?

• 1:13:06Leon Howard?

  Or take on. Um, one is more mentoring.

• 1:13:12Lewis Howes?

  Mentoring more people?

• 1:13:13Leon Howard?

  No, me getting.

• 1:13:13Lewis Howes?

  You getting more mentorship, yeah?

• 1:13:14Leon Howard?

  Yeah, because I think that, um.

• 1:13:19Leon Howard?

  Life, I think everyone should has a mentor. Because we should always be learning. Right, and it doesn't always have to be with finances, it can just be with life experiences. So I think one of the things for me is like finding, like I had a mentor. Now I think I'll groom a little bit, so I'm ready to get another one. So one is mentoring, um, that I would, I would love to take on.

• 1:13:45Leon Howard?

  Two is truly cleaning up the way I eat.

• 1:13:51Leon Howard?

  Because you are one hundred percent a reflection of what you eat. Absolutely. Right, so I already don't drink, I don't smoke, but my eating habit is not the best. Yeah. And the third one would be actually just, um, sitting still.

• 1:14:06Leon Howard?

  Like, I'm moving around so much. In the process of doing this and doing this, I think one of the things that's important for us is to sit still. I pray a lot already. And I think when you sit still, you can get clarity and you can get instructions. Right, I think we move around so much, we don't get to get the instruction. I think everybody has an assignment. Right, everybody here has an assignment. If you're moving around so much, you can never hear the assignment. People always say, follow your passion, follow your passion.

• 1:14:49Leon Howard?

  I think it should be follow your purpose. Because the assignment is attached to your purpose. And it's not to get real spiritual or crazy on people, but I just feel like the only way you get that assignment is you sit down and talk to the person who gave it to you. Right. Your creator. That's it. Sit down and talk to the person who gave it to you, and the only way you could do that, the only way they can talk to you, whoever it is, is when you're sitting still. So for me, it would be getting like more mentors, I wanna have a mentor at all the time. Because, well, again, it reverses back to where I came from. It was OGs that taught you a lot of stuff.

• 1:15:33Leon Howard?

  And they only could teach you what they knew.

• 1:15:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:36Leon Howard?

  So you became a reflection of that. And then if you didn't have an OG to tell you something, you freestyled it.

• 1:15:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Leon Howard?

  And the freestyling.

• 1:15:43Lewis Howes?

  You made it up.

• 1:15:44Leon Howard?

  It cost you a lot. A lot of mistakes, a lot of hard times, a lot of money. And some people who freestyled it, it cost them their life. So for me, I take on those same principles and say, okay, like, not only am I a leader, not only am I influential, but my goal is to be a person who can change or be a vessel for change. And because it's all new to me, I need somebody who's already took on that journey.

• 1:16:14Lewis Howes?

  Yep. I'm always talking about investing in coaches and mentors. And I have a coach in pretty much every area of my life.

• 1:16:22Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Lewis Howes?

  And I think it's, it's hard to think we can do something on our own.

• 1:16:26Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Lewis Howes?

  If we've never done it before.

• 1:16:28Leon Howard?

  If you've never done it before.

• 1:16:29Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to think that we can do it consistently when things get challenging and hard, without some type of, you know, emotional support from a friend, an accountability buddy, a coach, a mentor, whatever it is, whatever you want to call it. I'm a big fan of investing in it so you're accountable to that time with that mentor or finding some skin in the game with a coach or mentor. And if you don't have the money right away, then you could find mentors without investing that, but finding other ways to add value. And I think that's such a massive, massive part of my growth and my success is being around the right people.

• 1:17:02Leon Howard?

  Yeah, it changes, like, I understood at first, I, at first, I, so I'm an only child. So a lot of me is always, man, I got this, I could do this, I don't need nobody to teach me that, I can do this. You know, like, you, you know, it'd be hard, but as you start to put that ego to the side and say, nah, like, I can learn something from that person. This person can teach me something. Let me humble myself.

• 1:17:31Leon Howard?

  To learn this lesson. Because if I learn this lesson from them. That's that's hardy and pain I gotta go through and. Learning from that person speeds up my process.

• 1:17:42Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. There's so many things I learned from my three older siblings. That I didn't repeat, you know. And I I mentioned before, my brother went to prison when I was eight. I went to the prison with my family almost every weekend to visit in the visiting hour, the visiting room. And I was like, I don't wanna be here. You know, I wanna make sure that I don't go down this path. I started doing things when I was twelve. Eleven to like twelve and a half, thirteen, where I started. Doing petty stuff. I was stealing like candy bars and cigarettes, like whatever. It was just like as a high. And I did it almost every day for probably a year, year and a half. I had to steal something.

• 1:18:20Lewis Howes?

  And it's it's crazy to think, but I remember getting caught once. And I got caught with my dad. I didn't even get caught by a store.

• 1:18:30Lewis Howes?

  I remember getting caught and feeling like. And I was kinda hanging out with the wrong group, just doing things that I wasn't really proud of myself, little stupid stuff. I remember thinking like. If I keep doing this. Here's where it could go. Maybe it doesn't happen the next year or two, but. Three, four, five years, if I keep doing these same actions. I'm gonna get more of these results. I'm gonna feel bad about myself. I'm gonna get caught. I'm gonna hurt other people along the way. And who knows what consequences could come from that. So I remember that moment was like, I'm never stealing or doing anything like this ever again. I need to change my environment. I need to change my mindset around this. And I like begged my parents to send me away to a school around kids that I. Private school, they sent me to, a private boarding school.

• 1:19:16Lewis Howes?

  Begged them to send me to this place to get me out of the environment. What you're talking about with your daughter, like sending her to a class of an environment that speaks differently. That has a different, you know, mindset.

• 1:19:27Leon Howard?

  Everything.

• 1:19:28Lewis Howes?

  Behaviors, all that stuff.

• 1:19:29Leon Howard?

  Important, even like. That environment is so crucial. Like even just being around, so like. For me. Being around people that understand the importance of investing. Not only just.

• 1:19:44Lewis Howes?

  Not just, yeah, not just spending their money.

• 1:19:46Leon Howard?

  Yeah, but investing the money, investing in their personal development, investing in their business, investing in teaching them how to run businesses and that, like being around them, I mean, we be like, damn, I gotta invest in myself too.

• 1:19:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:19:58Leon Howard?

  Right, like, and it's something we take for granted. And being around people who understand that a certain amount of money isn't what you may see, that's a lot of money. Somebody like, no, I may spend that on investing in myself, I may spend it on buying assets, like, understanding that people who build businesses are different. Damn, like, you build that business, like, okay, those conversations change your life. It's environment. If I'm in, if I'm in the hood, if I'm in my community and I'm telling people about investing and doing this and they'll, and all they wanna do is party and drink, then no matter how positive I am, at some point, I'mma say, that ain't even work, man, let's go party and drink.

• 1:20:42Leon Howard?

  Right, all right, cool, if you're around people that they complaining about their bills and their bosses and their work and everything, then that's not an environment that's conducive to you being successful.

• 1:20:53Leon Howard?

  That's not an environment that's conducive to change.

• 1:20:58Leon Howard?

  It's only, it's only so long that you can flirt with the other side of what you want, that you become that.

• 1:21:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:05Leon Howard?

  And like, if you wanna be healthy, if you wanna work out, you, it's only so long you can work, chill with people that won't go to all your E buff is all the time, where you be like, you know what, I might as well eat this too.

• 1:21:14Lewis Howes?

  You gotta change your identity in the, in the process too.

• 1:21:17Leon Howard?

  Evolution.

• 1:21:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you gotta change the identity and, you know, say, I don't do these things, that's not part of my identity.

• 1:21:23Leon Howard?

  That's it.

• 1:21:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Leon Howard?

  Hey, I read this book, can't think of what it was, and it said, uh,

• 1:21:30Leon Howard?

  there were two, there were two people that were, uh, attempting to quit smoking cigarettes.

• 1:21:37Leon Howard?

  One person said, went off the cigarette, they said, yo, I'm trying to quit, I'm trying to quit smoking, I'm good. And the other person said, no, I don't smoke anymore. The person who said, I doesn't smoke, I don't smoke anymore, immediately changed their identity. The person that said, I'm trying to quit smoking, still associated themselves with smoking. So it's only a matter of time before they say, well, let me hit the cigarette one time.

• 1:22:00Lewis Howes?

  Trying to, but.

• 1:22:01Leon Howard?

  Cause I'm trying to, but it's not. And so that is important.

• 1:22:04Lewis Howes?

  When you decide, I'm not, this is not what I do anymore, it's not my identity. Then you just have to keep saying that every time it tries to come up, no, it's not my identity. I'm not doing that anymore.

• 1:22:13Leon Howard?

  It's part of who you are, you change that, you evolve. And the evolution in who you are should be ongoing. Because who I am today, I won't be that person in ninety days or six months. Some aspects of me have changed, they're gonna change, and I want that. I, I've never, I've never let people, especially on this part of my journey, hold me to one layer of who I once was. Man, you used to do this, I know I used to because I wasn't this person. I'm, I'm not that no more. I can't be that no more.

• 1:22:48Leon Howard?

  I have way more to lose now than to even be that, or attempt to be that.

• 1:22:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:52Leon Howard?

  I'm not that, right? And so that's what, like, that's what, like, I look at me now and see the change. I look at me now and say, like, I appreciate where I'm at now. But more importantly, I appreciate, like, where I'm going. I appreciate the kind, I appreciate the people I'm around right now. I remember I was talking to a close friend of mine, and he got into, he didn't get into nothing, he, something had happened, I was like, brother, you need me, you know I'm here. And he said, I would never put you in that situation. I love you too much to bring you there.

• 1:23:25Leon Howard?

  I wouldn't love you as a friend if I did that. That showed me, like, all right, I'm around the right people. I'm around, because I come from an era of people where the only way you prove loyalty is through, I'm willing to die for you, I'm willing to go to jail for you.

• 1:23:42Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy, man.

• 1:23:43Leon Howard?

  I'm willing to do this for you, I'm willing to risk my life for you, I'm willing to leave my family to show you I'm loyal to you. Right? I'm willing to, you know, go to prison to show you I'm, I'm willing to hold this block down and show this block that I'm loyal, I'm willing to leave my same family who I say I'm protecting and providing for. I'm willing to leave them the, you know what I'm saying? Like, so it's that change in me. Now, it was like, what? Oh, I don't care about that. That that that's that's that's the change I want to represent. You know what I'm saying, that's the. Yo, like, you you really want to take care of your family, are you are you willing to go to jail?

• 1:24:23Lewis Howes?

  Let's not take care of family.

• 1:24:24Leon Howard?

  Cause the same people who. You are defending them from, you've now left them too. So like, are you really, so for me, it's it's it's teaching the financial literacy. But mostly, the evolution, the mindset shift, cause they can look at me and say, man, I know trap was in them streets. Cause he talked it the way I talk it, he he has the intricate details that only somebody in the streets know. If he could do that, man, I know I could do it. And then I come like, yo, it ain't easy. It ain't easy, but if you want it, and then now, you know, we've heard a million times, like, what is the why, what is the purpose? For me, it's so much bigger than myself.

• 1:25:08Leon Howard?

  I feel like your purpose has nothing to do with you. Like, you got this school of greatness, school of greatness is not about you. It's about how many people you gonna impact with this, like you nine years in. If it was about you, you wouldn't have made it nine years.

• 1:25:22Leon Howard?

  Personally, you'd have gotten burnt out, I don't wanna do this no more, but you know, every time you turn them cameras on, that conversation you have gonna change somebody's life. That's what keep you going. Every time I cut on something, I go do an interview, I talk, I get on Instagram, I know. I'm gonna change somebody like. I'm gonna tap into say, just a little bit different. And if I can do that, that's one person I kept out of prison. That's one person that I made him look that depth a little bit different. That's one family I may say, you know what, I won't be here for my little one, so let me do something different. That's bigger than me, man.

• 1:25:56Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful, man.

• 1:25:57Leon Howard?

  That's bigger than me, man.

• 1:26:00Lewis Howes?

  What um, when did you, are you still doing welding?

• 1:26:03Leon Howard?

  Nah, man, I haven't.

• 1:26:05Lewis Howes?

  When was the last time you did that?

• 1:26:07Leon Howard?

  So I walked away from my job in two thousand nineteen, man.

• 1:26:11Lewis Howes?

  Is that because you were making, you got enough saved up and invested, is that because you were doing other things, what?

• 1:26:16Leon Howard?

  So, two thousand nineteen, I was building a power plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was the SASSO chemical project, one of the biggest projects in the southeast region now.

• 1:26:29Leon Howard?

  I walked away from the job to be an educator.

• 1:26:32Lewis Howes?

  To be an educator.

• 1:26:33Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:33Lewis Howes?

  To teach.

• 1:26:34Leon Howard?

  To teach. I walked away and I said, well, they wanted me to shave my beard.

• 1:26:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're like, nah, I'm not doing that.

• 1:26:40Leon Howard?

  I was like, I'm not doing that. I had this thing for two thousand two. Not doing that, man. And they was like, what you mean you're not gonna shave your beard? I'm like, man, it ain't, it ain't worth it. And I remember, that's why I say, I think everybody should have one thing they go all in on. So I looked at my account and said, I got money invested.

• 1:26:59Leon Howard?

  Pretty good. Let me just focus on it and let me focus on teaching people. And I said, I quit. I walked away from it. And I said.

• 1:27:09Lewis Howes?

  You had enough saved and invested in the last, what, a year, two years, maybe?

• 1:27:14Leon Howard?

  I don't know, probably six months.

• 1:27:16Lewis Howes?

  Six months, yeah.

• 1:27:17Leon Howard?

  Yeah, probably six months.

• 1:27:18Lewis Howes?

  Bills.

• 1:27:18Leon Howard?

  Depending on how I live, yeah, depending on what I did. I remember calling my daughter's mama like, look, I'm about to quit this job.

• 1:27:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:27:24Leon Howard?

  So instead of me sending you five, six hundred dollars a week, let me just pay for her nursery, because my daughter was like maybe four at the time.

• 1:27:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:33Leon Howard?

  Three, something like that.

• 1:27:36Leon Howard?

  I was like, let me just pay for nursery until I figure this out. I said, I ain't going back to the streets and I ain't going back to that job. I said, I'm all in on me. I'm gonna create change.

• 1:27:54Leon Howard?

  I believe in it. I know this could change the hood. She was like, you believe in it, I believe in it. You know what I'm saying? And so two thousand nineteen, um, I quit my job. That was my last time. And I've been building this from the travel to Wall Street. I've been building a Wall Street travel brand ever since. Came with a lot of ups and downs, but I never turned my back on it, right? And I, and I realized, I, I knew that it was gonna change my life while changing a lot of people's life. And I was, I was cool with that. I I I bet on it.

• 1:28:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:28:29Leon Howard?

  I bet on it and I I ain't never prayed as much in my life.

• 1:28:34Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest myths around money that you've learned about since then, since kind of going all in on a business and your own thing?

• 1:28:42Leon Howard?

  Um, one of the biggest things I always said is is that um, I've never, I've I've never met a person working two or three jobs. That actually was doing better because all you did was sell more time.

• 1:28:55Lewis Howes?

  Sleep less, stress more.

• 1:28:57Leon Howard?

  Like that, I think that is one of the biggest myths is saying, I gotta work harder.

• 1:29:05Leon Howard?

  I don't think getting where you wanna go at in life is not about actually working harder.

• 1:29:10Lewis Howes?

  Right. And I get it, I mean, if you got, if you're already in debt, you got bills, you got kids, you got responsibilities, you got these things. Because you've been choosing those behaviors consistently for years, you've gotten yourself into a a hole. Uh, that is probably harder to get out.

• 1:29:27Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:29Lewis Howes?

  So how do you switch that mentality of like, I hear what you're saying, Trap.

• 1:29:32Leon Howard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:33Lewis Howes?

  It's not about working that extra two jobs, but I got all these bills, I got these, I got kids, I got this, I got that. I got my rent, food, I'm already taking government sub- sub-.

• 1:29:43Leon Howard?

  Right.

• 1:29:43Lewis Howes?

  Subs, subsidies, I'm doing these things. What's the next move?

• 1:29:47Leon Howard?

  Next move.

• 1:29:48Lewis Howes?

  To start getting me out of working harder or working smarter?

• 1:29:51Leon Howard?

  So I think now what happens is we now have to start saying, okay, I always say that we can um.

• 1:29:59Leon Howard?

  The problem is hard to identify, the problem is hard to identify, it's the lie that's hard for us to see. And it's saying that, all right, I don't have the money right now, that's the problem. Why don't you have the money?

• 1:30:13Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:30:14Leon Howard?

  It's the lie. I don't make enough, no? Well, you got bad money habits.

• 1:30:17Lewis Howes?

  Right. You're making bad decisions.

• 1:30:19Leon Howard?

  You're making bad decisions.

• 1:30:20Lewis Howes?

  Consuming.

• 1:30:20Leon Howard?

  And they're compounding.

• 1:30:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Leon Howard?

  Right? So it for me, and just to get to that question, is saying, okay, so now let's lay out an outline. I think one of the things we fail to do is plan, like, what is the strategy to get us out of this situation? And if we in a bad situation, sacrifice has gotta be made.

• 1:30:37Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:37Leon Howard?

  Right? So, okay, cool, how do we get out of this situation? All right, cool. So maybe you do take on another way. Maybe you do take on another job, right? Okay, that's cool. How long are we taking on that job? And. Why are we using this other job specifically for paying off debt? Or getting me out of this hole? Because the objective is not to work the two jobs. Right, or I would say. The world we in right now, that smartphone is so amazing. So powerful. So find a way to create some passive income from that thing, like it is is limitless.

• 1:31:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Leon Howard?

  Right, like. We are, the situation that most people are in, they didn't get in there overnight. So the goal shouldn't be, how do I get out of overnight?

• 1:31:25Lewis Howes?

  It should be a plan over time.

• 1:31:26Leon Howard?

  It should be a plan over time, this is. The reason why people who scam will always have a job is because. It's always easy to sell somebody in a desperate situation, how to get rich quick. It's always easy to sell somebody on how to get rich quick when you're in a desperate situation. The worst place you won't be at in life is desperate. It's the worst place you won't be at.

• 1:31:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:31:47Leon Howard?

  It's desperate because you're willing to actually put yourself in the worst situation to try to get better.

• 1:31:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:54Leon Howard?

  And nine times out of ten, it only gets worse. So for me, it's saying like, let's really take a back, and that's one of the things I love about the stock market is I've learned how to run my life like a business. Not my business, like my life is ran like a business, like I understand, okay, this how much came in. This month, this how much money I'm spending, not in my business, in my life, this how much my bills cost.

• 1:32:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:32:18Leon Howard?

  This is how much food intake costs. Right, this is how much I'm giving myself for, you know, miscellaneous things. Cause I'm not, I'm, I think some people feel like. I don't got to spend no money on, no, let's be realistic, you're gonna spend some money. Right, that's gonna happen, but let's not be abusive with it because money is the tool.

• 1:32:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40Leon Howard?

  Money is a tool, not a goal.

• 1:32:44Leon Howard?

  Money is a tool, not a goal.

• 1:32:47Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:48Leon Howard?

  If we use the tool for what it's for, it leverages our life.

• 1:32:52Lewis Howes?

  Right. What's it for?

• 1:32:55Leon Howard?

  It's for to give you leverage. It's for to build wealth. It's for to buy back time. It's for to give you access. It's for, it's for to give you opportunity. I always say that. I use my money for three things. Access, information, and assets.

• 1:33:12Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:13Leon Howard?

  That's the triangle, man. That's the Phil Jackson triangle, man. Information, access, and access. Why? Is because the information and the access allows you to become the asset.

• 1:33:26Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. You become the asset.

• 1:33:28Leon Howard?

  You become.

• 1:33:28Lewis Howes?

  Not investing in assets?

• 1:33:30Leon Howard?

  Well, both. So, investing in assets, but the biggest asset.

• 1:33:34Lewis Howes?

  You are the most valuable asset.

• 1:33:35Leon Howard?

  You're the most valuable asset.

• 1:33:36Lewis Howes?

  Your best of your knowledge, your experience, your, your last name, your credibility, your relationships.

• 1:33:41Leon Howard?

  Biggest asset. No one can never take that away from you.

• 1:33:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:44Leon Howard?

  So, you use the money to put you in a situation to get information and buy access. You can do those two things, you become the asset.

• 1:33:53Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:55Leon Howard?

  I sit down and talk to Lou, I sit down and talk to you every day, right? We build a relationship. I know who you know now.

• 1:33:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:34:00Leon Howard?

  Right? You be like, you know what, man? I know, I know somebody you should talk to. You should talk to my guy at Wall Street Trapp, man.

• 1:34:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:34:05Leon Howard?

  Perfect person for you. I wouldn't have got that without building that rapport. I got access. What's up, Lou? How you feeling, man? Christmas, man? Let's send him something, man. Let him know, let him know it's all love, man. Let him know Trap think about it, man. How you doing, man? You good? Good. Cool. Man, I like Trap. Cool. I built, I built something here. You got a party? Man, I got a Christmas party. You should come to L.A. Cool. Now the information that I can provide is valuable. When I get in the room, that I got access to. I'm, I'm an asset. I'm an asset to you now.

• 1:34:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:36Leon Howard?

  Trap knows about investing. Trap may know something I don't know. I mean, now we swapping value. So, people need to learn how not to go in a situation and say, how much money can I make? How can I provide value to you?

• 1:34:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:49Leon Howard?

  I do that all the time. Man, how can I be of value to you, man?

• 1:34:51Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:52Leon Howard?

  You know what I do. What can I do to help you out? Right? Like, how can I be of assistance? How can I take some of the sweat equity off you? How can I make your situation a little bit better, all based off what I know? I become the asset. If we can become assets in every situation we in, that's playing offense.

• 1:35:08Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:35:10Leon Howard?

  That's plan, I'm all about full core pressure.

• 1:35:15Leon Howard?

  All about leveraging this thing called life, man, because

• 1:35:21Leon Howard?

  there's people out here making hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 1:35:26Leon Howard?

  They didn't do that on their own.

• 1:35:27Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 1:35:29Leon Howard?

  There's people out here living the life they could never imagine. They didn't do that on their own. They knew somebody at some point that plugged them with somebody. That put them in a room. That put them on a phone call. That helped them get that role. That gave them information that changed their life. That's how they get them.

• 1:35:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and you know how you get in the room when it happens?

• 1:35:53Leon Howard?

  Talk about it.

• 1:35:54Lewis Howes?

  You get there by adding value to people in the room that want you to be in that room because you've offered value in some way. The value doesn't need to be you're the smartest, most talented person ever. The value could be, I just feel good around this person.

• 1:36:08Leon Howard?

  Feel good around it.

• 1:36:08Lewis Howes?

  This person's got a positive energy.

• 1:36:10Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:10Lewis Howes?

  Good attitude, like, man, let's just bring them along. They make me feel better.

• 1:36:13Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Lewis Howes?

  That's value.

• 1:36:14Leon Howard?

  It's value.

• 1:36:15Lewis Howes?

  It could be, he's got a skill set. He's got some years of experience in an industry that I want to learn about. Let's bring him in the room. And I think when you can bring that value, uh, when you can learn a new skill and have that some, some type of value, bring it to someone who doesn't have it.

• 1:36:30Leon Howard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:30Lewis Howes?

  They're gonna give you access.

• 1:36:31Leon Howard?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:36:32Lewis Howes?

  That access is gonna give you opportunities.

• 1:36:34Leon Howard?

  Every time.

• 1:36:35Lewis Howes?

  You've got to be willing to move into those.

• 1:36:36Leon Howard?

  Every time. And that's why I said in the beginning, when he told me, stop trading time for money and start making money work for you. That was like, damn, all right. But when he said bring value to people.

• 1:36:49Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 1:36:50Leon Howard?

  I didn't learn that part till later on. That's why I said, I ain't get that till later, like, oh, that's what this mean.

• 1:36:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:58Leon Howard?

  Like, not going into a situation, man, I wonder what I can get out of this. Nah. What can I bring value to this?

• 1:37:05Lewis Howes?

  A hundred percent. That's why I always, when I'm doing my show, I'm always thinking, how can I serve the person? How can I give them a platform? How can I tell their story in a better way? How can I help promote whatever they have going on? And I don't ask for anything in return. Not until I really have something where I'm like, okay, I've got a book out. Something we can do together. But usually my goal is like, how can I add 10 times the amount of value to someone upfront? To when then it's a no brainer to want to add.

• 1:37:30Leon Howard?

  Want to back it?

• 1:37:30Lewis Howes?

  A little bit to me. Like, I don't even need 10 times back. It's just like, just to say, of course, like you've given me so much value. Why would I not promote this? Why would I not make an intro? You've built so much credibility with the person by adding value that they appreciate it. And if a person doesn't appreciate it and they're only a taker, then maybe that's not the right person you want to be in a relationship with. And not everyone's going to be able to pay you back something all the time, but it it it should be come back to in some way. The more you add value to people in general, it's going to come back.

• 1:38:00Leon Howard?

  It's reciprocate.

• 1:38:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:02Leon Howard?

  It it like, I feel like, so we all are cups. And if I'm always pouring, I want to make sure that I'm pouring into people that at some point they can pour back into me. You know what I'm saying? Because if I'm always pouring, then I'm gonna be like insufficient. Right? And so I'm a burnout, I'm gonna be depleted and then I can't finish my journey. So I, even in bringing value, you also need to be around people that see value in what you do. Or what you bring in them, because now it's easy to be like, nah, man. Trap. Boom. Like, that helps.

• 1:38:38Leon Howard?

  And then also too, just understanding how, like, I take my time to, one of the things prison taught me was understanding people.

• 1:38:50Leon Howard?

  Everybody operates in their own unique way.

• 1:38:54Leon Howard?

  I never expect people, this is one of the biggest mistakes that people have. Expecting someone to handle a situation the way that they would.

• 1:39:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I've learned that the hard way many times, many times.

• 1:39:05Leon Howard?

  Yeah, you are you.

• 1:39:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:07Leon Howard?

  So for me, it's always, what is that person's perspective?

• 1:39:12Leon Howard?

  Hmm, that's why they handled that like that. It's okay, and I appreciate it.

• 1:39:15Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. Don't take it personally. I did that for too long.

• 1:39:21Lewis Howes?

  I did that for too long, man. Too many nights, been frustrated, taking something personally, yeah.

• 1:39:27Leon Howard?

  Nah, I'm like, nah, it's cool, because that's the way we're handling it.

• 1:39:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Now you know, it's information.

• 1:39:32Leon Howard?

  Data.

• 1:39:33Lewis Howes?

  Do I want to be in partnership with this person in the future? You know, what do I need to do next time?

• 1:39:37Leon Howard?

  Yeah, that's it, and that has, that has truly helped me on the journey. Like, learning from, like, I'm good at intaking information.

• 1:39:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:48Leon Howard?

  And using it, because I know that life is something that keeps on revolving. It's gonna keep happening. Every day, we know Jim Rohn, one of my favorite people, he said, "We know that the sun is gonna come up, and then it's gonna do what? It's gonna go down." "The ocean comes out, what happens? The shore comes back in." Life is gonna keep doing that. So every situation that I've been presented with, it's only a matter of time before I'm presented with it again. May not be to the same extreme, to the same extent, but some familiarity to feel about that situation.

• 1:40:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, we gotta go through those lessons to create wisdom for the future, you know what I mean? Um, you've got the right thing, story, my man. I'm excited about everything you're creating and everything you've overcome. I think it's, it's easy to stay stuck in the past patterns that we're familiar with. It's easy to go back to familiarity. It's really hard to break the mold and create a new identity. So I acknowledge you for breaking the mold, man, for creating breakthroughs. Uh, again, I don't think anyone would celebrate the things you did, but I acknowledge the growth, the wisdom, the lessons, and the journey you're on to be of service to people in certain communities and cultures that maybe struggle with finding these types of breakthroughs. So I really acknowledge the assignment that you're on right now.

• 1:41:03Lewis Howes?

  And the journey you've been on, my man.

• 1:41:05Leon Howard?

  Man, I appreciate that.

• 1:41:06Lewis Howes?

  You've got, you know, powerful social media accounts, Wall Street Trapper. If you just Google that, you'll see it on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, WallStreetTrapper.com.

• 1:41:16Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Lewis Howes?

  With more resources, information, education on all this stuff for people.

• 1:41:20Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:21Lewis Howes?

  How else can we be of support to your mission? And where can we connect with you the best?

• 1:41:27Leon Howard?

  Yeah, so right now I'm pushing, you know, the Wall Street Trapper on Instagram. I'm working on a show right now called The Wealth Connect, man.

• 1:41:35Lewis Howes?

  Wealth Connect.

• 1:41:36Leon Howard?

  The Wealth Connect.

• 1:41:37Lewis Howes?

  Wealth Connect.

• 1:41:37Leon Howard?

  Yeah, The Wealth Connect. So I'm probably dropping that first of the year. I just want to take financial literacy to another level to, for those, to be a voice for those who need it, who I resonate with, right? I want to, my goal is to make financial literacy a household thing.

• 1:41:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:59Leon Howard?

  Like, that's my goal. Like, I want to be the voice that says, this is not over my head. This is just my cup of tea, right?

• 1:42:06Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:42:07Leon Howard?

  Right, so I'm working on a Wealth Connect. I'm definitely going to be dropping that soon, so, and that's it right now.

• 1:42:13Lewis Howes?

  Awesome.

• 1:42:13Leon Howard?

  Pushing that, you know, I'm going to drop a lot of stuff on YouTube, but that's my big project coming 2022, The Wealth Connect.

• 1:42:19Lewis Howes?

  Wealth Connect. That'll be, you can just go to WallStreetTrapper.com and you'll learn more about that.

• 1:42:23Leon Howard?

  Yeah, so I'm posting some stuff on it on the ground right now, but it's definitely on the TrapperUniversity.com.

• 1:42:29Lewis Howes?

  The Trapper University.

• 1:42:30Leon Howard?

  Everything Trapper, man.

• 1:42:35Lewis Howes?

  I like it, man, I like it. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of the show. It's called the three truths.

• 1:42:40Leon Howard?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:41Lewis Howes?

  So imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away from now. And you've lived out your assignment.

• 1:42:47Leon Howard?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:47Lewis Howes?

  You've accomplished your goals and dreams. You've created the financial freedom and helped others do that in situations that you grew up in and beyond. You know, you did everything you wanted to do. But for whatever reason, it's your last day.

• 1:43:01Leon Howard?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:02Lewis Howes?

  And you only get to leave behind three lessons to the world that you've learned.

• 1:43:05Leon Howard?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:06Lewis Howes?

  And they don't have access to Trapper University or the Wealth Connect.

• 1:43:09Leon Howard?

  Ooh.

• 1:43:10Lewis Howes?

  That's all, that's all gone for whatever reason. It's on to the next place with you. But you have three lessons you get to share. I call it, I call it the three truths. What would be those three truths for you?

• 1:43:20Leon Howard?

  I like that. Um, one is...

• 1:43:26Leon Howard?

  Live your life with no regrets.

• 1:43:31Leon Howard?

  That's twofold because in living with no regrets, I will want you to say that

• 1:43:38Leon Howard?

  in every moment, I'm willing to live in it. I think we don't, we don't appreciate the moments as we should. Right, so living with no regrets. Two, it is okay to say no.

• 1:43:55Leon Howard?

  No is a complete sentence.

• 1:43:56Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:43:57Leon Howard?

  Right? And three,

• 1:44:04Leon Howard?

  find your purpose.

• 1:44:06Lewis Howes?

  What happens to us when we don't find our purpose?

• 1:44:08Leon Howard?

  We walk around lost.

• 1:44:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:11Leon Howard?

  We live an unfulfilled life. I get up every day because I know that I'm walking in my purpose. So I get up every day happy. I get up every day and I say, yo, I get to do something that everybody don't get to do. Even there's entrepreneurs who aren't in their purpose, they just have a business. Maybe a successful business.

• 1:44:33Lewis Howes?

  Maybe they're making money, but it's not what they want.

• 1:44:35Leon Howard?

  They ain't fulfilled. When you find your purpose, you find fulfillment. I'm fulfilled. I'm still healing, I'm still growing, but I'm fulfilled.

• 1:44:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Leon Howard?

  Because every day I know I get up and I get to change somebody's life. Every day. Teaching, educating,

• 1:44:56Leon Howard?

  showing humility, letting people learn from my past, me learning. Like every day, I get to walk in my purpose. And for that, I get to live a fulfilled life. And I've said this, I say, yo, I know I got a lot of more stuff to accomplish. But man, I know that if my day was to come, I know I could say, I finally got it. I found it. And the longer we're here, the more I feel that you'll get more assignments added to what you got going on. Here's another assignment. It's like a teacher, oh, you're doing good? Here's another assignment. Here's another assignment. Because they know, the Creator knows you can handle it.

• 1:45:35Lewis Howes?

  You can take it on.

• 1:45:35Leon Howard?

  You can take it on. The more you, you walk into that purpose, man.

• 1:45:42Leon Howard?

  Your life changed and I'm speaking this and I get emotional in a way because my life is unrecognizable from three, four years ago.

• 1:45:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:52Leon Howard?

  Unrecognizable. Because every day I was walking around just in the dark, hurt, painful, abandoned. You know, all I knew was violence. All I felt like, I felt like I was empty.

• 1:46:07Leon Howard?

  To transition to saying, I'm fulfilled?

• 1:46:11Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:46:12Leon Howard?

  Man, you can't match that with nothing.

• 1:46:14Lewis Howes?

  That's good, man. That's good, man. Final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:46:19Leon Howard?

  My definition of greatness is being impactful and living the life you're proud of.

• 1:46:27Leon Howard?

  Doesn't have to do with money, doesn't have to do with accolades, doesn't have to do with notoriety.

• 1:46:35Leon Howard?

  Can I wake up every day and say, I'm happy with this life? Like I'm, like I'm, people don't really know what happiness is. And how many people can I, have I impacted people before I left here? Impact don't have nothing to do with money either. So if I can be impactful in the life that I can truly say I'm happy with, that's my definition of greatness.

• 1:46:59Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening. 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 show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.