James Dumoulin: Authority Hacking & Growing Your Platform

He posted 400 times on Instagram with 50 followers. Most people would have quit. James Dumoulin just kept going. I've been waiting to have this young man on for a while, and he did not disappoint. At 23 years old, James has built something I genuinely did not think was possible at this age: 21 million followers, 200 million views a month, 70 employees, and 48 billionaire interviews including Tom Cruise, Tom Brady, Will Smith, and Reid Hoffman. He built all of it from scratch, starting as a Chick-fil-A employee who saw TikTok as a marketing engine before anyone else did. James is the co-founder of the School of Hard Knocks, and what he has learned sitting across from the wealthiest people in the world will hit you in the best way possible. In this conversation, we go deep on what it actually takes to build something great when you have no connections, no credibility, and no one betting on you. James breaks down the exact strategy he used to get into rooms most people will never see, including how he cold-approached Mark Cuban at South by Southwest with nothing but nerve and a borrowed title. We talk about what the wealthiest people in the world actually have in common, whether money buys happiness, and why your age, your background, or your starting point is not the obstacle you think it is. James also gets honest about the moments where it almost fell apart, including the day their revenue dropped from $30,000 a month to under $5,000 overnight and what he did to rebuild. This is one of the most practical, fire conversations I've had in a long time, and James is the real deal. Here's what you'll gain from this episode: The Authority Hack: How James borrowed credibility he didn't have yet to get in rooms most people will never see, and how you can do it starting today with what you already have. Billionaires Think in Decades: The single mindset shift James observed in every billionaire he's interviewed, and why your obsession with the short term is the real thing holding you back. Concentration Builds Wealth: Why trying to do too many things too early is the silent killer of most businesses, and what the wealthiest people actually do first. The Rejection Blueprint: Why James says "no" just means "not yet," and how posting 400 times with 50 followers is what actually built a business doing $700,000 a month. Are Billionaires Actually Happy? What James has witnessed behind the scenes with some of the most successful people in the world, and the one thing the happiest ones all have in common. This is one of those conversations that changes the way you think about what's actually possible. Don't miss this one! Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to ⁠https://quo.com/mylett Get your choice of a healthy free protein staple like chicken breast for a year or ground beef in every box for LIFE PLUS $20 off when you go to https://ButcherBox.com/mylett 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LINKEDIN⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEBSITE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 P.M. And my third day, 6:00 P.M. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time, too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it. Waiting weeks on a big bank for capital? Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

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• 1:35Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed and Myron Show.

• 1:39Ed Mylett?

  All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So I've wanted to have this young man on for a while. You may be the youngest person I've interviewed, or at least one of them. You're in the, in the, one of the youngest we've ever had on the show, and also one of the most impressive. And so, because you've done something that I think, you've turned what could be a weakness in your life, which is your age, into a great strength in what you've built. And I want to talk about that. Let me tell you what he's built. Once you see him, if you're on YouTube watching, you'll recognize him. But some of you may not know his name. His name is James Doomlin. He has a program called The School of Hard Knocks. Just to give you guys an idea of what this young man's done at 23 years old, okay? 21 million followers on all platforms combined, and he does about 200 million views.

• 2:21Ed Mylett?

  A month, a month, everybody, not cumulative. And so he's built something absolutely remarkable and he's become a celebrity. And he's done it at a very young age and he's had a big impact in the world as well. You're gonna learn a ton of lessons about how to build something, even though you might not think you can. James, welcome to the show.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me on and I also want to add in there, this last week, I just interviewed my forty eighth billionaire. Arthur Blank.

• 2:43Ed Mylett?

  Arthur.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Founder of Home Depot, owner of the Atlanta Falcons, so forty, forty eight billionaires and counting. I, I, I'm waiting to find out if I can figure out anybody who's interviewed more billionaires than me.

• 2:52Ed Mylett?

  I think it is you, brother.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  It may be.

• 2:54Ed Mylett?

  Arthur parks his boat in the harbor near my, my place, my island in Maine. And so, yeah, he, he certainly is a multi, multi billionaire. So, and you're probably gonna be too, the rate you're going.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  If, if it's, if it's a byproduct of what we're doing, I'll be happy to make it happen.

• 3:08Ed Mylett?

  All right, so here's where he starts, you guys, take me through here. You're working at Chick-fil-A.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:12Ed Mylett?

  Everybody, just get ready if you think you can make your dreams come true. You're in high school, you're working at Chick-fil-A, you're doing a little construction, right? So you're just, you're a high school kid.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21Ed Mylett?

  Right? What the heck happened? How did this start? Where'd the idea come from, et cetera?

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you said it best, you know, first two jobs I had growing up was working at Chick-fil-A and working construction. Going into my senior year of high school, I discovered TikTok, which is now, you know, the largest search engine in the world. And this is back in two thousand nineteen. Uh, nobody really took TikTok seriously, right? It was the dancing app at the time. But I saw this as the greatest organic marketing that ever existed because you could have a thousand followers, five hundred followers. You could put out a piece of content and millions of people could see it overnight. The only way that you could have millions of people see your content without having a massive brand at that time was paying hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars on ads. And so I, I just, I discovered TikTok. And, you know, during COVID, it was from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty, I just started to post content.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Get really familiar with the algorithm, how social media actually works. And before I knew it, I grew a personal channel on TikTok from zero to eight hundred thousand followers. And just learned, that was my skill set. The one thing that got me to where we are today is I mastered short form viral content. Now, I've learned a ton about business since then, but that was really my first, I guess, segue into entrepreneurship.

• 4:31Ed Mylett?

  Did you know anything about it?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  I didn't know anything about it, other than the fact that, you know, one of my favorite sayings is that going viral is like hitting the lottery, but creating consistent content is like investing in your future. So I just, it didn't matter, it didn't matter where I was, you know, during, during COVID, you know, right before I was getting ready to move out to Austin to go to the University of Texas. I was posting every day, it doesn't matter if I was on a train, a plane, if I was on a boat, three times a day, every single day for that entire year. And that's how I went from zero to eight hundred thousand followers. Now, as I grew the channel, I started to learn a ton of lessons and was able to scale, you know, other channels prior to scaling, you know, the big one now, which is the School of Hard Knocks. But I didn't know anything about it going into it, other than, you know, with time went on, I learned how to pivot, I learned hooks, I learned all these different things to really help me go viral and build a brand.

• 5:18Ed Mylett?

  What would you say to somebody who, because you're, you're, you're a high school kid becoming a college kid, right? So if I were you, I would be thinking, well, why would anybody want to listen to me? Right? And I think that's what most people think. They're, they want to get on social media, they want to post. But what I always hear from people is they go, I don't have anything to say, I'm not interesting, I'm not, I've not made it yet. So Ed, I know why you did well on social, you were already a very wealthy guy, so you had credibility. I'm working at Chick-fil-A, or I'm doing this or that. What would you say to somebody who thinks they have nothing to bring to social media? Because you hear that too.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Hundred percent, authority hack. You know, when I started the School of Hard Knocks, it was initially me, my brother and a childhood friend from the DC area, where we were just making content about business. But we came to the realization early on in growing the channel that nobody gives a about three, three young twenty year old kids talking about business and giving business advice. So we're like, you know what? Let's take our pride and ego out of the way. Let's be the ones to go extract from the most successful people in the world, their lessons, their insights, their knowledge, their credibility. Let's borrow their authority and let's interview them, let's get their insights. Let's get in rooms that most people didn't think were possible to do, which is exactly what we did. So we kind of borrowed that authority. But then I have another saying that I love, which is that information can change situations only through implementation. And that's what we did.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  We're spending so much time with all these multimillionaires and billionaires, guys that are running ten, eleven, you know, figure businesses. And we started to actually implement, you know, the things that they were teaching us. I love the saying that most people are addicted to education but allergic to execution. Right? A lot of people like you'll host events or and there's a lot of people that will go there and be tactical. Or they will consume your content, will consume my content, but a lot of them won't do anything about it. And so I tried to get very knowledgeable about. How to actually kind of execute and like build businesses around things, which is what we've done, you know? A lot of people think that we just do street interviews, but we've got 70 employees now, you know, we've got a couple of different.

• 7:04Ed Mylett?

  Are you serious?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Seventy employees, a couple of different verticals and businesses.

• 7:07Ed Mylett?

  James, you're serious. You have 70 employees.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Seventy employees, yeah.

• 7:09Ed Mylett?

  At 23 years old?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Twenty-three years old, yeah.

• 7:12Ed Mylett?

  Oh, boy. That's impressive. I mean, really, that's congratulations. I mean, I told you that when we met off camera, congratulations.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  And we still run super lean too. Like that's, that's the thing like we.

• 7:20Ed Mylett?

  You know, you said something there that I, my, my first mentor is a very successful guy. And I remember him looking at me and he goes, you know, I give this information to everybody. He goes, I need you, Eddie. To be coachable at the speed of instruction. I'll never forget that phrase and, and it's sort of what you just said. It's not just being coachable.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:38Ed Mylett?

  But it's almost like suspend disbelief, actually even suspend having to understand why I'm telling you to do this. Just execute. I'm further down the road than you. I think there's all the, don't you think that people have all these filters of? Well, I need to understand that. I need to know how it would fit for me. You don't know where I live, the market's different or. My age or this or that. I think people. Build in these filters. But you left, success leaves clues. I keep hearing this from people that are proficient on social media. I obviously built, you know, several million followers myself and then sort of backed away just. Out of fatigue and age and health, but. I'm still on there, everybody. But you said post three times a day. Is that sort of a, I hear Gary say this often too. Is that the number or is there some random reason that's it?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  So. This is a great question right here because I think it actually changes with each level of social media. I'm at a point now with the school of hard knocks. I have not posted a single video on Instagram and since April 2024 that has gotten under a million views. Since April 2024, we're now April 2026. So in the last two years, I've posted just about every other day. Have not had a single video hit under a million views. Everybody can fact check that as well. I've never bought a view or anything like that, like a lot of other people. There's a lot of other people that do do that unfortunately.

• 8:49Ed Mylett?

  And they ruin the algorithm by doing it too.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  It's crazy and it's like, it's, you might as well just start a new channel. Once you start to do that. But. At the beginning, when you're on social media, I like to say that quantity breeds quality. The more you post, the more data that you get, which kind of tells you, hey, you should continue to create that type of content. I like to say people should have three to five different pillars when they're making content. So if you're trying to build a personal brand, or even if you're trying to create content for your business, it's like part of it could be founder stories, your individual stories and coming up with the product or the service that you're ultimately selling. Two could be testimonials where you're talking about, I took this person from here to here. Third could be things that are just relevant knowledge. You know, I think you mentioned Gary Vee. Gary Vee gave me one of the best pieces of advice when it comes to content creation, which is PAC.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Okay, PAC is platform, algorithm and culture. So PAC or platform, that's the first one. P, be on every platform. Content diversification is huge. A lot of people like, I make more money off of Facebook than YouTube. Then all the platforms combined, I make more money off of Facebook than any of the platforms combined. And people are like, Facebook? Yes, yes, Facebook. Go look up what happened in 2020. That was the first year that Facebook ever stopped growing. So then they're like, okay, how do we get the biggest creators to come to our platform? Well, we're going to pay them more than everybody else, which is exactly what they did. So platform, be on all the platforms. You hear Gary talking a ton about Snapchat. Making sure that you're, and the beautiful thing about that is you're able to build an audience, you know, in all these different demographics. If I'm on TikTok, I'm appealing to a much more of like the, you know, high school to college.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  But if I'm on Instagram, it's 25 to 35. And then Facebook, I could be having people that are 40, 50, 60, 70 years years old watching our content, which I love. I was just in London all last week, you know, doing some interviews out there. And I had people from high school, people that weren't even in high school yet, all the way up to people that were, you know, in their 60s that were coming up to us saying, hey, we love your content. And I always like to ask, hey, where do you follow us from? You know, and it's all different platforms. And so that's the first one is platform, then algorithm. What's, what's going on right now? Okay, Instagram just launched. Now you can do up to three minute reels. Test some of that longer content out, see how it performs. So should always be trying to learn about what the algorithm is pushing then and now. And then the last one, which is the most important one to me, which is culture. And this is what Gary Vee talks about.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  The biggest cheat code with content is finding the things that are like the most trending. I'll never forget this. Just because like I'm very like analytical about business content, whose content I think is like doing really well. But I remember, and just a figure in the entrepreneur space, it's been very relevant for a long time. It's like Grant Cardone. And Grant, obviously, from an engagement standpoint, does really well. But I would say on average, he gets a couple hundred thousand views on his videos. Occasionally, you'll have a video that pops and does a million views or so. The day that Charlie Kirk was assassinated, you know, when he was, you know, murdered, Grant Cardone posted a video, I think, an hour after that news broke out, of just a short 20-second clip of them on stage. Forty-eight million views on Instagram. I think it's probably pinned to his profile.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  But that's just an example to put into perspective that if you can like tap in and be one of the first to create content around like a relevant, something trending, whether it's in the business space, fitness, you know, no matter what industry you're in, if you can understand like the platform, algorithm, culture, like that is such a cheat code. Now, back to kind of what you were saying. I don't want to go too far off about quantity versus quality. Early on, I think it is all about volume. I really, really do. Quantity breeds quality because it tells you it's going to give you the results right there. If you're making different types of content and there's clearly a winner out of the different pillars that you're making, double down, triple down, 10x, that type of content. I think the bigger you get, the mistake people make is they do start to post too much. I think when you were at that realm where you have a couple million followers, you should not be trying to post two, three times a day. You already have your authority built. Focus on the content. Like, this is crazy.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  I have eight million followers on Instagram. If I post a video and it gets a million views, I lose followers off of that. So I'm only making content now with the mindset that it's like, this has to be such a good piece of content that it could get three to 10 to 20 million views on a video. So it shifts from quantity to quality, I think, as you build the brand up a little bit more.

• 12:44Ed Mylett?

  By the way, I really appreciate you sharing tactics. A lot of times you get people on the show, it's just, you know, generalities and philosophical stuff. So I appreciate that. By the way, those of you that are listening right now or watching going, okay, I'm not going to, I'm not a big social media person. We're about to shift gears in a minute because you maybe have interviewed more billionaires than anybody in the world. So we're going to talk about their mindsets in a second. But I want to put a bow on the social. I want to unpack a couple of things he just said that with my 10-year experience on there that I totally agree with. One. Is this idea of posting more when you're smaller? And letting the market tell you which content it likes. That's why when you're putting three or four posts out a day and you're doing it multiple days, the market will tell you, oh, your whiteboard content where you're writing on the screen, that works, or the green screen behind you, that's working, or this topic's working. So I want to acknowledge that.

• 13:29Ed Mylett?

  And then also this notion of not relying on one platform. If I made a mistake in my branding, it was that I really took off on Instagram. And maybe it was just being a middle-aged guy already, but I neglected TikTok. I neglected Facebook. I neglected X. And I didn't want to, I thought, I don't want to rebuild on these other ones. I certainly, podcast-wise, blew it on YouTube. I just went audio forever when the future looked like it was YouTube. So you're right, be on all the platforms. LinkedIn is powerful as well.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  LinkedIn's popping right now. We got over 100,000 followers in like two months. They're pushing that short form content now for sure.

• 14:06Ed Mylett?

  Okay, this is so good. All right, you've interviewed 48 billionaires. You know, you're going to interview me soon, so we'll add to that list a little bit. But is there a through line at all? I mean, you've got your, because there's different types. There's the new age sort of social media person who's built big brands and all that. Then there's like the quiet billionaire next door dude that you catch walking out of a restaurant and he's got flip flops and a T-shirt on and you'd never know it and isn't on social media. So there, in all these different businesses, anything that you've deduced is a through line with any of them, or are they just all completely different? This episode is sponsored by Ro. A lot of people assume GLP-1's cost a fortune and that assumption keeps them from even looking into treatment.

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• 15:34Ed Mylett?

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• 16:18Ed Mylett?

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• 16:46Speaker 02

  When it comes to like the commonalities?

• 16:48Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, personality traits, mindsets, anything like that.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  There's, there's so many. I think one of my favorite sayings is that billionaires think in decades, not days. Wow. And the reason why I love that one is I'll never forget. I was interviewing Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. He sold LinkedIn to Microsoft for $26 billion. And I was asking him, I was like, Reid, if you were to start from zero and you had one year to make a billion dollars, what would you do? And he stops me, goes, I never play a one-year game. It's 10-year day minimum. Todd Graves, the founder of Raising Canes, worth over $20 billion of selling chicken tenders. I asked him a similar question. He goes, you know, I'm worth $20 billion today, but what if I could be worth 30, 40, 50, 60 billion and I can help more people? What if my kids one day can continue to grow that? So he only thinks in generations. And that is such a common thread that I've seen in the most successful people.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  And I love this idea of. Macro patience and micro urgency. So in the macro patience, you have to understand that this is to build anything great. This is going to take a long time. Right? You know this from building companies, all the people, your friends and the people that I've interviewed, and even just in us and building up eight-figure business office street interviews. Our first three to four years, we, you know, like Elon Musk says, you have to eat glass. And entrepreneurship is like eating glass and staring into the abyss. There's a couple of years where, you know, you're going to have to eat for a while. And that's exactly, you know, what it was. So we had that belief in us that it's going to take a long time, but we have to be patient. You know, one of the things that my generation struggles with is instant gratification.

• 18:17Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  They see people on social media driving a nice car, want to, man, I gotta get that. I gotta get that. I gotta get that. But it's like, it doesn't, it doesn't just come overnight, especially if you're going to bring, if it comes super, super quickly, chances are it's going to be, be gone like that.

• 18:29Ed Mylett?

  You're right.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Um, or there's something isn't great necessarily involved with it. But then micro urgency, going back to what we were saying, can you say that quote for me again about being coachable?

• 18:36Ed Mylett?

  Coachable, the speed of instruction.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  I love that because in the short term, it's taking massive action every day. And that's, that's another commonality. I have so many billionaire contacts in my phone and Matt Ishbia, who's the owner of the largest mortgage company in the world. He owns the Phoenix Suns, great guy. And when I asked him what he notices about all his billionaire friends, they all text back instantly. They, they all respond instantly. You could email him, text him, he's, he's responding instantly. And I feel like, you know, that is something that I have noticed that if I shoot them a text, they'll let me know within John Morgan, Morgan and Morgan, like very similar thing. So I think that, um,

• 19:13Ed Mylett?

  Bro, you're so brilliant for 23.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I appreciate that.

• 19:16Ed Mylett?

  My son's here, you know that, and he's out back there wowing because whether my net worth is B or just close or whatever, it's, it's getting there. And it's one of the traits that I pride myself on most is I get back to people. And I, I actually can't go to sleep at night until I've replied to the people I'm supposed to reply to. And, and so these little macro things, can I tell you one thing I observe about you?

• 19:38Speaker 02

  What's?

• 19:39Ed Mylett?

  First off, people listening would forget that you're 23.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:41Ed Mylett?

  Right? With this level of wisdom. And by the way, I ask a question, it's reflexive. This is not stuff he's got to dig deep for, like he owns this stuff now. Speak to this just for a second, even though these are just pocket meetings, some of them are in your phone and you're knowing them. Here's what I see on you. I believe proximity to somebody changes your frequency with them. Meaning, I believe people, let's just take business. You're interviewing successful business people. No, I don't know whether they've got a good family life or not. That's a totally different situation. So I'm not saying these are people to emulate one way or the other. Some probably yes, some probably no. But when you get into proximity to other people, their vibrational frequency, the way they think, the way they live, the way they operate, impacts you just through association. There's a piece of this.

• 20:25Ed Mylett?

  When I look at you, I'm like, I can see the associations having poured into you. So from a confidence standpoint, you're a guy who grew up, part of your life, like as I read it, kind of a military brat. You grew up overseas for a while. This is not a dude who grew up in Palm Beach with money. Now looking at you, you look like a rich guy. You got a rich guy's haircut and all that. But the truth of the matter is you didn't grow up that way. So has just been being in the proximity of these people, do you think unknowingly, maybe even unconsciously, changed the way you view you in terms of your confidence level?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  100%, you know, I like to talk in soundbites like I think you do as well. I love the saying that the world is overly cruel to shy men and it rewards the courageous. I think that when it comes to being able to attach yourselves to successful people, they can tell whether you're kind of like hesitant versus like that confident person, being able to approach them. And in a sense, the hyper-successful people, they can see part of themselves in you. But I think it has definitely had an effect on me. But I think it does stem actually from an early age. I would say that's one attribute that I've kind of always had and may have been a big reason why the channel became so successful in a short amount of time. It's because I was always really confident to approach people. You know, my dad, he ran the largest overseas military base in the world.

• 21:40Ed Mylett?

  Awesome.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  He was the garrison commander at Camp Humphrey. So from an early age, I was there six to 10. I was, you know, going to these events where he was speaking at, you know, town halls and in the city in front of thousands of people. And, you know, I was meeting a lot of the people he was meeting because you know, with the military oftentimes, you know, their families come with them. And so I think that from an early age, you know, I had to realize that the way that it's the right way to act and also observing my dad and the way he interacted, that he was a great leader, very respected on the military basis that he was kind of running. And so that had a big effect on me. And then another thing was is another thing that I do growing up, I was I was in Boy Scouts. So I became an Eagle Scout and I I learned public speaking then and how to communicate. And you know, my scout troop that I was in in the DC, Virginia area was ran by a bunch of ex marine guys.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  So I had those little, you know, ounces of experience between observing my dad and interacting with some of the top military people, government officials that he was, you know, bumping elbows with, shaking hands with. And then also in scouts. And so that kind of, I think, translated to us being able to build the channel and knowing how to interact and operate the same way that I feel like successful people.

• 22:44Ed Mylett?

  Really great insight, James. So is there a hack? So those people, listeners go, hey, I'd like to meet some successful people and bring them into my life. Or is there a you're walking up to Tom Brady, you're walking up to Will Smith, you're and I don't know how many of these are orchestrated or not. I'm sure some are and some are random. Walking up to some billionaire, walking out of a lunch place in South Beach or whatever. Is there something you do or say? Is it a body language thing? Is there anything you would teach somebody to appropriately approach somebody whom they'd like to kind of draw into their world a little bit, but don't know how to do it?

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Such a great question and and extremely, I think, useful for people because I think that that is the ultimate cheat code in life, right? I like to say mentorship is like wisdom without the wounds. If you can attach yourself to just a couple very, very, very successful people, that is more valuable than any college degree, than any sort of, you know, general education that I think people can get, right? Just all it takes is a couple, you know, hyper successful people to kind of get in your corner and be willing to pour into you. But I think it starts with a couple of things, right? Like when we started the channel initially, we didn't have any connections, right? My dad was a military guy. He wasn't connected in the business world. And so it was us literally organically just going up to people, cold approaching them off the street. The first billionaire that we ever interviewed was at South by Southwest in 2022. It was Mark Cuban.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  And I went up to him after he was speaking at an event with my brother and I said, hey, Mark, my brother and I, we started a channel at the University of Texas, where we're just interviewing successful people, trying to give advice to the younger generation. Now, what did I say there? I started a channel at the University of Texas. Why? I'm borrowing that authority because it's bigger than me, right? So if you can find a way to borrow that authority, and a lot of people will see my interviews now where, you know, yes, Tom Brady was a setup interview, Tom Cruise was a setup interview, Will Smith was a setup interview, Shaq setup interview, right? And a lot of our stuff now is definitely a lot more set up, but. I'm a big believer in keeping the main thing, the main thing. The thing that got us here was that off the street content. So for example, I went out to London last week. I didn't set up a single interview. I went right to Mayfair, which is the wealthiest part and just went up to probably several hundred people

• 24:48Speaker 02

  within a week, just getting some incredible content. Nothing set up, probably more rejections than actual interviews. Just be, and the reason being is because people love to see that content. And a big thing that people see in our interviews that they love, whenever I get feedback from people that love my content, they'll say, I love how you're able to reel them in. They don't want to do the interview at first, but then they want to do it. And if, if you notice, like one of the things that I'll typically say is I have a channel with 21 million followers. I've interviewed, you know, X amount of billionaires in the last four years. We just, we need one minute. I, I'm a huge advocate that credibility kills all bad attitudes. That's probably my favorite saying ever. Credibility kills all bad attitudes. Like I remember, you know, Tom Brady, Michael Rubin, you know, I, a year before I was able to interview them, it was either rejection or they took it to them and they didn't want to do it or it was just crickets.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  But then when you interview a Tom Cruise, now it's like, okay, now, now we can talk, now we'll get in front of you. So I think that is a big thing for people, like don't necessarily get discouraged if like the first time it's a rejection or a no. Um, in, in business, whether it's you're trying to do a podcast or anything, trying to get a prospective client, it may not just be the right time. Maybe you need to kind of work on yourself more. Maybe you need to build up your credibility a little bit more. But I think that that's ultimately one of the things to do. Now, now if you're somebody that has no credibility whatsoever, right? In our case, we started just attaching ourselves to the University of Texas. Hey, we started a channel here. Then it was, okay, now we could attach ourselves to millions of followers. Uh, X amount of billionaires interviewed. So we don't necessarily struggle with having to cling to that. But I always like to tell people, and I'll just use Tom Brady as the example.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Tom Brady's the greatest football player of all time. Can I add value to Tom Brady's life to become a better football player? Absolutely not. But maybe there is something, maybe it's content. Maybe there is something that I could disproportionately do better than Tom Brady. Maybe it's somebody playing the piano. Granted, maybe Tom Brady has no interest in learning how to play the piano. I'm just trying to put it in perspective for people that if you have some sort of like skillset that is like very, very unique and you can double down and become one of the best in the world at that, you can attach that to people. In our case, one of the reasons. reasons why we were able to attach ourselves to so many people is attention. That's one of the most valuable things in today's world. A lot of rich guys like they have more money than they can do. Now they want to give back. Now they want legacy. Now they want attention. Now they want media. So that's kind of been our unique skill set that we've been able to add on to other people.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  And I think that this is very important as well because, you know, another one of my favorite interviews I've ever done is Robert Herjavec, the shark from Shark Tank. Incredible interview and such a nice guy as well. And I remember asking him the question, Robert, what do you think is more important, what you know or who you know? Ninety-five percent of people are going to tell you who you know is more important, but he said the biggest piece of, and again, I don't like to cuss, but I'm gonna say verbatim what he said. The biggest piece of advice that he's ever heard people say is that who you know is more important. Because you and I both know that if, and if you are on a high level at all cylinders, you're a busy guy, you have all the opportunity in the world. You are not just going to give your time to somebody unless they have some sort of like value that they can offer you. Now, maybe you do meet that, you know, young person, you can see the fire in his eyes and you can see that he's got a lot of potential.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Maybe he just needs somebody to pour into him or her and, and, and you ultimately do that. But ninety-five percent of the time, it's like you're gonna ultimately be with people that are gonna make you better, you know, add value to your life and vice versa. You're gonna do the same. Life gives to givers and it takes from takers. So big advocate in giving back and giving to other people. But the lesson there was that you have to be, if you become the brand, if you build it, they will come, right? If, if you become super successful and great at something, people are naturally going to come to you. And then it's like, you don't have to worry about, you know, who you know. So I know that was a bit long-winded.

• 28:15Ed Mylett?

  No, I actually think there was brilliance in there as frankly, every answer you've given. That idea of associative credibility, University of Texas in the very beginning, now it's your, the size of the show. But it could also be a cause you affiliate with, you know, that you're American Cancer, whatever it might be, or the Make-A-Wish Foundation. So if you have associative credibility, if you don't have it yourself and creating that, we even do that in branding in my companies now. When we get to a certain level, we'll associate with the PGA Tour or NASCAR. So associative credibility, you could do that on a small scale as well.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Authority hacking, this is such a, this is such a good.

• 28:51Ed Mylett?

  Well, you've mastered this, bro, like, no one's ever said that on the show and it's actually one of the best answers ever because it is true. This, this idea of, and by the way, once you get one, as you've said, hey, you know, I've got a show with blah, blah, blah viewers, we interviewed Tom Cruise or we interviewed Ed My, I should put myself in that category. We've interviewed Gary Vee, we've interviewed whoever. So you're right, finding a way for that. There's another thing you do, I think maybe you don't even give yourself enough credit for. Most people, including me, when I was your age, I had an allergy to rejection. I mean, it just, I was afraid of it and it destroyed me when I would get it. And I think if we were to cut out all the crap, why don't people post more on social media? Why aren't they starting a show? Why aren't they writing their book? Why haven't they started the business?

• 29:34Ed Mylett?

  Or why isn't the business growing? Why aren't they selling more if they're in a sales business? It is fear of rejection. End of story, right? Full stop. Do you have that? And whether you do or don't, what have you done to mitigate that fear?

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's important that everybody knows this, right? A lot of people, they see our channel now, they see that we've got millions of followers, but what they don't see is I posted 400 times on Instagram and had 50 followers.

• 30:03Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  I posted four, now we have 3,000 posts and 8 million followers on Instagram, but I posted 400 times on Instagram. I still have the screenshot of it and had 50 followers. How many people do you know would keep kind of posting after that?

• 30:15Ed Mylett?

  Most wouldn't.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Most wouldn't. So I would say I definitely do not have a fear of rejection.

• 30:20Ed Mylett?

  You don't have the fear.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  I don't have the fear. Now, there have been times where like I've been rejected and it's been very discouraging and kind of like where I've maybe lost a little bit of sleep over it, to be completely honest with you. But I would say I definitely don't have the fear. Again, I go back to the worst thing somebody can say is no. You know, I interviewed a gentleman recently who just sold a roofing company for high nine figures in Dallas and he said that you, you can't take rejection personal. They're not rejecting you, they're just rejecting your offer. And so I feel like if the more that you can kind of just not take the rejection personal. And again, I go back to that idea of like, there's been so many, like countless times where there's people that had said no to an interview at first or it went through and it was initially a no. I just, again, it just means you gotta try a little bit harder. It means that you know, doesn't mean never, it just means not yet. And so I've, I've really taken that to, to my heart, honestly, and.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  I think that this is one of the most important things that people need to learn how to overcome is that fear of rejection, you know, again, I'll name drop him again because he's it's true. He talks about this a lot, but Gary Vee said it is literally a pandemic as far as people worrying about what other people think about them. It's crazy. You know, they're worried that all they're posting content, they're wanting to grow their brand and somebody from back home is going to see it and send it in a group chat and clown them behind their back. It's like, who cares about those people? Those aren't even your real friends. And oftentimes, especially when you start to kind of take off and become a little bit successful, that's when it gets the worst because people are like, because you're doing something that they know that they could never see themselves like ever doing. And that hurts them. And therefore, you know, they're going to project their own insecurities

• 31:51Speaker 02

  and things on you as if like you're a bad person or you know, that you're corny or that you're a clown. So again, I love this idea that nobody else's thoughts ever paid my bills.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Which is, it's so true.

• 32:04Ed Mylett?

  Bro, you know how you do in a good interview when my guys behind the scenes I'm watching multiple times have gone, like, seriously, that's so good.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's.

• 32:12Ed Mylett?

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• 32:56Ed Mylett?

  get a ton of compliments when I wear them on the podcast and when I speak. So find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com/ed for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash ed. So you know, I've been trying to take my health and my morning routine to the next level. And I used to do a whole bunch of different stuff, tons of different supplements. And then I found all in one in a drink with IM8. IM8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine, finally, once and for all. 16 supplements replaced 90 ingredients across nine major organ systems in one drink. You can have all these supplements for $2.61 a day.

• 33:41Ed Mylett?

  I've changed my mornings, the whole IM8 routine has changed my mornings. I feel great and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to IM8health.com/Ed10 right now, or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at IM8health.com/Ed10. Code ED10 at IM8health.com/Ed10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Do you worry at all that you, by the way, I say this with respect when I say it,

• 34:22Ed Mylett?

  but do you worry at all that potentially you are projecting to young people or people watching your content? You know what I mean? That social media thing, it's every guy walking into a Lambo or whatever. Do you worry that people begin to think that someone like your father, who served our country, who made a huge difference, who's clearly a stud and a leader and has major influence on people, but he probably didn't become a billionaire working in the military, right? Do you worry that content about rich people, and that's not all your content, begins to pervert or morph people's view of what success is in the world?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:02Ed Mylett?

  Do you ever think about that?

• 35:03Speaker 02

  It's a very, very valid question. I've never actually been asked it before, honestly.

• 35:06Ed Mylett?

  I could see it on your face.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  That's a really good one.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Thinking about it now, I think it definitely does have the potential to do that. I think that it probably does a bit more good in the sense of like people can genuinely feel expired and they can be exposed to something like hearing the fact of like people that had come from rock bottom or had lost it all and were able to make it all back and what their mindset was in that moment, whether it was clinging on to faith, whether it was, you know, finding a loved one that was able to help them or just really grinding. So. Look, I mean, I'm a huge advocate and believer that, you know, especially we're gonna need people that go in the military. We're gonna need people that ultimately work jobs. And I think every job is a great job ultimately. Like if you can, you know, make a living for yourself and your family, like not everybody's able to do that. So it's a really good question.

• 35:56Ed Mylett?

  I'd love to see at some point, but by the way, I asked that question believing what you do is great.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 36:01Ed Mylett?

  Just so you know.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:02Ed Mylett?

  And I believe people want to be on the inside of watching people who've accumulated wealth, including somebody like me. It's why, that's why people probably listen to me a lot of the time as well. But, so I'm not saying that, I mean, to put you on the spot, I just wanted to hear your heart about it. And I wanted the audience to hear, I shook your hand when we first met, you have a ton of humility. I could tell you come from a good place. And I don't think you think wealth is the only means of success. And I just wanted to give you the chance to actually express that. That's the only reason I asked you.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  No, I appreciate that.

• 36:31Ed Mylett?

  Just so you know. Are they happier? So you're only getting these moments, but some of you got to know? Tell us, you know, is a guy worth 600 million or a lady worth 600 million or 800 million? And or a billion or 10 billion? Are they any happier than your dad or a school teacher? Or are they less happy? Or would you say the money part's irrelevant? They're people are people.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  I think it really comes down to the person. You know, I've been able to meet and spend a lot of time with these people behind the scenes. And I can definitely tell that there is definitely a lot of emptiness in a lot of them. You know, for example, like a Will Smith per se, he talks about this idea of cliff top. You know, there's rock bottom and then there's cliff top, right? And he says cliff top's the worst thing in the world. Cause you can be at like the pinnacle of success, but it's like you come to that realization that it's like, like where else kind of do I go from here? Especially for that person, you know, that that feeling of like never ever getting comfortable and never getting satisfied. They're always chasing something. It's a blessing and a curse because from a, from a business standpoint, from a success standpoint, it's always great to have that mentality. Mike Rapoli, one of the favorite, you know, guys that I've been able to interview.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  I mean, that guy, just the way that he thinks is incredible, just a raw obsession about business and success. But he talks about when the big guy, you know, when the big entrepreneur on top starts to get comfortable, the starving entrepreneur is going to come up and eat their lunch. And so that's why I feel like a lot of them, it's important for anybody to, I think, have that mindset. Like if you want to build a great business, you, you do have to realize that it's like, okay. When I get to a million followers, it's just the beginning. You have to keep on going, keep on going. But understanding that there is definitely a lot more to life than just the financial means of success. Like having that, I've noticed that the, the people that I've interviewed, when they do have a very healthy relationship with their family, with their, a good relationship with their kids, like you, again, you can't worship God and Mammon, right?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  And I had an incredible conversation recently. Uh, it was actually yesterday. I interviewed Tim Tebow recently and one of his business partners, Scott Donnell, just gave me a call just checking in and said, hey, anytime you need five or 10 minutes to, to kind of talk, um, I'm happy to. And, and he goes, he goes, do you know what, what Mammon is, right? And he was saying that how most people think Mammon is just money. And he's like, no, Mammon is just the, uh, idea. It's like wanting more of something, constantly wanting more, wanting more, wanting more. And so when he said that to me, it kind of like, just made me think a bit about that. And it's like, it's very true. So this idea of like, having to kind of like surrender yourself to God as far as that being the most important thing. And kind of about like the humility thing, the reason why I think that's so important is because

• 39:02Speaker 02

  even though we've had, you know, I say we, cause it's me, my brother and a childhood friend that are all partners in this thing together. We've had tremendous success in our early to mid twenties. I still have that realization that like, I'm extremely insignificant in the sense of like, there's ultimately a creator that's much bigger than me that is, is running this whole thing. And at the end of the day, we don't take any of that money with us. And that's the one thing that I would probably challenge a lot of these guys that are, you know, worth billions of dollars. Um, and that are that successful. It's like, do they really think that like this goes on forever? You know, cause it doesn't. And so I think that the ones that do have that humility and that belief in understanding that, hey, this is great. I'm going to leave a legacy. You know, I, I created a great company. I did this, but at the end of the day,

• 39:46Speaker 02

  there is, I think a lot more to life and, and from a fulfillment standpoint that these people can have. So I think a lot of the happiest ones are the ones that are actually have great relationships with God. Um, and, and have a, have a belief in a higher power and a, and a creator, honestly.

• 40:00Ed Mylett?

  I'm proud of you, bro. Great answer. Timmy's been on the show a bunch of times. He's one of my good friends.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Tim Tebow?

• 40:05Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  He's a good guy, man.

• 40:06Ed Mylett?

  I think he was just on a few weeks ago.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:08Ed Mylett?

  And, um, Gary's been on and, uh, Rob, uh, is about to be on. We're about to interview him. Um, what's it feel like? So take us inside. You got a dream.

• 40:20Ed Mylett?

  And it started to happen. What's that feel like? I think a lot of people would just love to know, like, do you, when the dream starts happening? Uh, cause I know how it was for me, but I, I'm, I'm not being interviewed right now. I'm asking the questions, but like, is it, oh my gosh, this is happening? Or is it completely different than you imagined it? Is it the pressure of not losing it? Like, oh my gosh, this could go away. What's the feeling like as a dream you have at one time starts to materialize itself in your life? And then you're walking through your life. Is there a part of you that's like, I can't believe I just talked to Tom Cruise? Or, or what's the whole process feel like as a young man going through it?

• 40:57Speaker 02

  One of the things that I've really had to instill in myself, uh, along the way with my partners, as far as with all these things that we've been able to do, is to take time to celebrate the little wins. Um, I feel like oftentimes, especially when you're building something great and, and trying to achieve something, oftentimes people forget to look back and, and feel a sense of, you know, proudness for themselves. And just to really think about your blessings and, and be really thankful for like what's happened. So we've tried to be a lot more intentional with like, we close a big deal or, um, you know, we land a huge interview and we do it and it goes well, then, you know, ultimately like we, we try and take time to really take that in and, and think about it. Um, I, I also think that, um, one of the most important things for anybody is to understand this idea of momentum.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  You know, like last, like last year, I was probably on a hundred to a hundred fifty flights, probably be on the same amount, if not more this year, just continuing to go all over. And the reason is because, you know, with over 20 million followers now, like I want to, and again, it's, it kind of does go back on some of the things that I just talked about. But it's like, I have the understanding that like, if I, if I do stop, somebody else could easily come up. And I'm like, I want to continue to just build this moat. I want to continue to just grow this thing as big as I possibly can and take advantage of the momentum that we do have. So if that means like, you know, I'm going to interview another huge NBA team owner out in New York next week. And, you know, just continuing to do all these, you know, great things and, and awesome collaborations.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  It, it really does feel amazing. Um, it does, and I'm very thankful and blessed for it. Um, but I also do, I think have that. Pardon me, that like feels like there's so much more to still do, honestly.

• 42:38Ed Mylett?

  Good. Yeah, you do. You, we're much is given, much is expected. And actually, after meeting you, I'm glad you're one of the young people that has influence in the world.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 42:47Ed Mylett?

  I think it's been, you have a stewardship, you know, man, there's a lot of people that look up to you, that are going to continue to look up to you. If you come back and do the show with me here in a couple of years, you're, you're going to have 50 million. I mean, you just will, right? Because I don't think, I think you understand momentum when it's a very fickle friend. And if you don't keep feeding momentum, it can go away. Momentum makes a guy like me, who's pretty average, seem a lot better than he is. And that momentum is a magnifier, and you want to do everything you can once you get it to feed it. Most people do the reverse. They get some success, they start to think it's them, they cool it, they start to sabotage themselves, and then it goes away. Sustained success is understanding momentum's a blessing and continue to feed it. So I'm really grateful that you said that. Okay, two more things.

• 43:33Ed Mylett?

  And I wanted to ask him in this sequence because I opened up with this, but you did something unique. I opened up with, he took something that could have been a weakness and he flipped it into a strength, which is your age.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:43Ed Mylett?

  A lot of people think, I've got this, this isn't going to work because I'm middle aged. This isn't going to work because I'm too young. It's not going to work because I'm not rich. It's not going to work because of my career or whatever. But I actually think if you were a 50-year-old dude who started this channel and started walking up to random billionaires, I think that part of a successful person who wants to pay it forward wouldn't exist. So I actually think your age, do you agree, in an odd way, was an advantage walking up to these more senior people? Because it was almost out of respect and looking up and looking for advice. Would you give someone advice to say, look at what you think your biggest deficiency is, and it might actually be the catalyst for your uniqueness as well?

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I think our differences do make us stronger. And I do think that this idea of reverse mentorship is so powerful. And I learned this from a gentleman named Mark McLean. He sold a company to Oracle for hundreds of millions of dollars, and he now is, he started and is the CEO of a publicly traded company. I think they're called SailPoint. They're worth- Several billion dollars. He's actually based out of Austin, incredible entrepreneur and a great leader as well. And, you know, he talked about this idea of like, one of the most important things that they do with this company, at his company's reverse mentorship, where he knows that, hey, even though I'm an older gentleman, a lot of these younger guys can actually come in here and teach me a lot about the new technology,

• 45:03Speaker 02

  about the new, you know, branding side of things, whereas I have a lot more kind of skin in the game. I've been around for a lot longer and those years of experience in business, you know, can certainly teach them. So I do think that that idea of reverse mentorship is very true. And look, I've probably been turned down by a lot of people also because they didn't see enough gray in my hair. And that was probably definitely a very real thing. So I do think that it is important to understand where people have their strengths and weaknesses. But yes, those weaknesses, whether they think it's their age, whether they think it's their gender, some people think, you know, it may be color of skin for some people, right? And I think that people can ultimately, you know, maybe utilize those to advantages in some way.

• 45:45Ed Mylett?

  Find a way, because it actually may be true that it's that your age was going to hinder you doing this, but you found a way in the way you approach University of Texas, the way you leverage that weakness into a strength. I think it's a key. I did it in business too. When I was very young and I was coming up in business, I thought, no one's going to take me seriously. So I had to become so good at what I was doing that all of a sudden, oh, he's a prodigy. He's a prodigy. So they don't call prodigies aren't sixty. Prodigies are young. So the fact that I was very good at what I did and very knowledgeable and young was an advantage. So I became a prodigy instead of just a young kid who didn't know what he was doing. So there's a way to flip that. What about AI? Do you worry about what AI is going to do to the influencer space, the branding space in general?

• 46:28Ed Mylett?

  I, behind the scenes, everybody should know, my peers who, you know, are influencers or business people or self-improvement are concerned.

• 46:37Ed Mylett?

  That they could be replaced by AI somehow, or that it's gonna change monetization or things of that sort. Virtual mentors, if you will, on social media stuff, any, because you're at the cutting edge of this stuff. You're talking to everybody. What are your thoughts about that?

• 46:51Speaker 02

  It's also honestly a really great question, a very relevant question. See, we're talking about that culture right now, that the pack platform algorithm culture, you're leaning into that, which I love. When it comes to AI and content and just kind of the future of that landscape. Personally, I would first of all advise people that if you think that AI created content for a personal brand is going to do well. No, I, I, I'm not a fan of people using AI to duplicate and clone themselves and create content. I personally just don't think it's up to the standard in terms of like that being better than an actual person creating content. So let's first kind of do that and establish that first of all. Second of all, I think with AI coming up, it is going to make it incredibly much harder. And this is why, like, this is a great time for you to ask that question and people to listen because

• 47:35Speaker 02

  if you think it's hard to go viral on social media now, you wait for the next three to five years. Because think about it this way, with AI, you're going to be able to start posting 10,000, 20,000 pieces of content at once. So think about how, like, when I think about it this way, right, I started posting on TikTok when, pretty much since it's and a couple of months after its inception, when it really started to take off, like 2020 was the year TikTok just over, over to Google as the number one search engine. But 2019 was when I started to post, so right before I would say most people started to get on it. And I would, I would tell people then, you could, you could post anything then and go viral. And I'm, I'm not kidding, like, some of the stuff that even I posted or that went viral then,

• 48:18Speaker 02

  like, it was way easier to go viral compared to like now, like, I'm being transparent and honest. Like, you have to put out great content in order to go viral. Let's be very clear, where social media is heading, it's gonna, it is, it already has become. But I think it is increasingly becoming less about the amount of followers that you and I genuinely genuinely mean that. Why? Because some of the biggest business creators in the world, like I see they have millions of followers on TikTok and some of them are their last 10 posts are getting 20,000 views on TikTok.

• 48:49Ed Mylett?

  I noticed it too.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  So which is crazy and that's the majority of them. Like let me say that like that's it's not like it's like one or two people. It's like, no, that's the majority of them. Um, I think Instagram's done a bit of a better job of of where if you have the audience and community, your stuff will tend to perform a little bit better on there. That's why I think TikTok is like the best test of like a content that's like viral and like like a great piece of content because TikToks, it's not necessarily about the audience that you have. It's about how great that content is and that's why it's never been like a better time to focus on pouring in and building that brand because I do think that even three to five years from now with AI coming onto the scene, it is going to make it a bit harder to to to build a brand and and stand out with people being able to

• 49:32Speaker 02

  where, you know, now and a year ago, you're only posting one piece of content or two or three pieces of content at once for different channels. Now with being able to clone accounts, like some people are probably going to be putting up 10,000, 1,000 pieces of content a day on behalf of their brands and whatnot. Think about what that saturates the hell out of a, you know, social media feed and whatnot for people. So I think it is very important uh to to to get in now.

• 49:56Ed Mylett?

  I think you're right. I think also the other thing you said that's true is like it's more important now the content's good.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  Oh, 100%.

• 50:01Ed Mylett?

  And and the cream will always rise to the top.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:03Ed Mylett?

  And our human being putting out great content organically, I think will always do better.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:10Ed Mylett?

  Than some AI generated content. And by the way, when I see AI generated content now, I know what it is when I see it. I can even tell when people are reading content that's AI generated on their podcasts and stuff now too. It's like it's it's made people very lazy to be creative and I think the space is going to open up even bigger for creative people.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Well, exactly. It's like you don't want to take the human element out of things.

• 50:30Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Because you you can tell like nobody wants to listen to somebody who's robotic.

• 50:33Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  You know, you know what I mean? And no, don't get me wrong. Like I do think that using tools.

• 50:38Ed Mylett?

  Sure.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  To your advantage to come up with creative ideas, strategy for punchy, bold things, soundbites and whatnot like absolutely.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Big advocate in using it for things like that, but I think for the most part, it's like, it does make people lazy for people that are writing copy for their ads. Like you can tell when somebody's using, you know, AI-generated stuff, so it's.

• 50:58Ed Mylett?

  You know, the other thing too is like, humans evolve. And so right now, the stage of AI, it's still pulling from what already existed. So like even when I ask AI, what would Ed Mylett say about self-confidence? It tells you what I would say about self-confidence three, four, and five years ago. Not what I would say about it now, as I've evolved and learned more and had more experience.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  What is the biggest thing that you would change? Like, like, like, like, three years ago, Ed versus now?

• 51:19Ed Mylett?

  Great question. Now you're being the interviewer.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Well, no, I want to know this.

• 51:21Ed Mylett?

  Well, I think that I used to believe that self-confidence was exclusively about keeping the promises that you make to yourself. I now think that self-confidence is stemmed a little bit more in my own case from intention. Meaning, my confidence doesn't always just come from my ability, but my intent to serve. So like when you and I are done with this interview, I'm about to go speak to, I don't know, seven, eight thousand people right in this arena that we're doing this in. I'm gonna want to go out there as a confident expression to myself. I'm not going to go out there confident because I think I'm the greatest speaker in the world. I'm going to go out there because I've attached my confidence that my intention is to make a difference for these people. My intention is to serve them. And so I can't control the result of it. So like Wayne Dyer said this to me when he was alive.

• 52:05Ed Mylett?

  I met him at one point and we became dear friends, but he said to me, Ed, you're going to change the world. And I'm sure he said that to tons of other guys, but to me, I was the only guy he ever said it to. And he said, and it's not because of your talent. Or the fact that, you know, God gave you a, a pretty deep voice, or you're a smart guy, or whatever, of which I'm not. He said, I just think you have a beautiful heart and you intend to serve people. You intend to make a difference. You're a good man. It was the first time in my life, James, that someone gave me a compliment I believed. Because I didn't think I was very talented. I don't think I'm that smart. But I do think I'm a decent man. And when he attached my ability to do something to my intent and not necessarily the skill, I believed it.

• 52:48Ed Mylett?

  And so he said, all your life, if you'd attach your confidence, Ed, when you walk in a room, to your intentions, that's what I picture in you, James. When you walk up to Tom Cruise, even though that one was staged, but whoever it is, anywhere. I don't think you're walking up there confident like I'm a badass, I'm the best ever. I think you're walking up there with an intention to learn about them, an intention to learn yourself, an intention to transfer that information to your audience. So I think your confidence is stemming from, I'm here to do good. And so I think confidence is more that than I used to.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  I love that. Yeah, I hadn't heard that before, but I love the idea about it being from like an intentionality standpoint.

• 53:24Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, well, and then the reason that's important that I'm gonna ask you a last question, that means anybody can be confident. I'm not saying don't get great at what you do. I mean, I've worked very hard at being a speaker, right? That part's the, that's the, that's the little leagues. But the question is, how do I walk out there as the best expression of that practice? So that the A game comes out, not the C game. I think when you watch a great athlete, when they're expressing their craft, they've put all the work in. But I think the confidence comes from, I've put the work in, I've kept the promises I make to myself, and my intention is to win here. My intention is to dominate. My intention is to serve, if I play for the Red Sox, win for the fans, win for Boston. So I think intention matters. That's just my piece. But you're not interviewing me, I'm interviewing you. Last question. By the way, this has been a great interview.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 54:10Ed Mylett?

  Like a 10 out of 10. I just want you to know that. You don't need that acknowledgement, but I love when I'm doing something that I know is gonna make a difference in the universe, which is what you did today. So thank you in advance, because I'm gonna have a last question. It's a simple one. Most people listening to us or watching us right now want to be happier, want to be wealthier, want to make a bigger difference, right? They want deeper relationships. Basically, they have dreams that they want to make come true. Most of them won't. Most of them won't. You are. So what advice would you give to them that currently aren't making their dreams come true? As a place to begin to actually turn that around and be a little bit more like you've been?

• 54:50Speaker 02

  I love it. Couple of things, um, number one, you're not a tree, travel, go see the world, you can only grow to what you're exposed to. Um, I'm, I'm a big believer, before the time I was twenty, I went to twenty countries and what that did for my mind and my perspective, seeing the world. I remember when I was nine years old, I was in Cambodia, I got to travel to all of like the countries in Asia when, because my, living in South Korea. And I remember, uh, I was nine years old, floating around in like a river in Cambodia. And I like looked out and I saw this little boy who was floating around in a trash can lid, arm cut off and a snake wrapped around his neck. And I was like, what that did for me then, seeing that at ten years old now is like, I, I often think about that whenever I'm like stressed or worried about

• 55:33Speaker 02

  some big problem that I have, it's like, you don't have problems, dude, you, you don't have problems. And so that was healthy for me. I think traveling, being exposed to different cultures is very important. Get out of your hometown. Uh, if you're not in an environment or a place that, where you have like-minded people that are wanting to achieve more for themselves. I like to say that the best decision I ever made was moving from the Washington DC area to Austin, Texas. Growing up in the DC, Virginia area, I'm very thankful and blessed. It was a great community that I grew up in, you know, great schools that I went to. You know, my dad was at the Pentagon towards the end of his career, so that's why we were ultimately there. But all the people around, you know, DC is structured, it's centered around government jobs, contracting, politics, defense.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Everybody's top level of success to them is going to get a hundred thousand dollar government contracting job. I didn't want that for myself. And so when I ultimately moved out to Austin to be with my brother at the University of Texas, I'm exposed to people that are authentic. People that are like-minded, that are young, they're building something great and it causes you to want to do the same thing. And that was a very important decision. So I would tell people that if you're not in an environment, it's going to cause you to grow. You know, you talked about proximity and what the frequency that that leads to in yourself, but yeah, that proximity is, is power. Where you can go in a coffee shop and you can see a guy sitting down who just sold a company for four hundred million dollars and he's in a T-shirt and flip flops. And so I think that that was very, very important, you know, people will take you places that money can't.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  I think that it is very important to, you know, build up a solid network of people from a, that can help you mentally, they can help you from a business standpoint, they can help you from a spiritual standpoint. I think that's very important. I think especially. As you are starting to grow in your business, it's important to have, you know, people around you that can keep you, help keep you grounded and give you those insights that it's like, hey, when you start to feel this type of way, just remember this, go pray about this, go reflect on this. And they can, and they can relate to you and they can kind of instill in you, pour into you some of those lessons. Um, and then I would, you know, kind of end by saying that we're, we're in a skill set based economy now. You know, I just interviewed one of the random guys I interviewed out in London was a, a guy who was an investment banker, you know, owns a hedge fund now. And he was talking about how, you know, again, it goes back to this idea of like what you know versus who you know.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  And he's one of the few people that will tell you what you know is more important. And he said, years ago, it was what you know. But he was saying that one of the governors of like the big banks out in London is complaining that his daughter can't get a job anymore. Now, 20 years ago, that wouldn't have happened because of nepotism. Like he would have made a phone call and this person got a job. But if you have connections and you don't have anything of like substance to offer those people, those connections are worthless. So I think that that's a, a, a very important thing. Um, you know, find that skill set. And me, it was constant. I became one of the best in the world at constant, was able to grow my own brand, then grow other businesses and then kind of also help attach that to other people, which helped me build relationships with people. So become, you know, great at, at, at one or two things, you know?

• 58:20Speaker 02

  The wealthiest people, they, you know, I mean, some of them now they have a diversified portfolio, but like the myth that the average millionaire has seven streams of income. It's, it's, it's not true. You become great at one or two things and then eventually, you know, you diversify. Like one of my favorite sayings is that concentration builds wealth, diversification keeps it. I just bought my first piece of commercial real estate right in the middle of Ohio state. Uh, five million dollar building out there. It's like a, kind of like a shopping center there. So it's right next to the highest grossing potbelly in the, in the country. So, uh, and again, that was the byproduct of, again, concentrated so hard for a couple of years. We're able to build businesses on the back end of what we were doing and, and monetize in a way where we weren't done with our money to where now it affords you to diversify and make those investments to where you'll be getting, you know, paid every month for the rest of your life.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  So I think that that's a, a good one. And last one, cause I gotta end it off with one more soundbite. I interviewed a gentleman out in Houston, uh, named Deal Woods. And, uh, he, I remember him saying this, he said, stay small enough, long enough, and you'll be big enough soon enough. Um, uh, that, I took that with me because. When we were making thirty thousand dollars a month off of just Facebook ad revenue, that was our first stream of income on Hard Knocks. It was thirty thousand dollars a month off just Facebook. Didn't have any businesses at the time. But one of the commonalities that I've learned from hyper-successful people is this idea of reinvesting back into the business, reinvesting back into the company, back into the company. So when we were making thirty K a month in profit, my partners and I were only paying ourselves two thousand dollars a month. And so, but that was important because even to this day, we still do that.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Now, what's important about the lesson about the thirty K a month is that thirty K a month went to less than five K a month because we got demonetized on Facebook. And that's why it's also important that as a content creator, you do not own the content that you post, once you post it on that platform. Instagram owns it, TikTok own it. They can decide at any time to ban you and your content. That's why that diversification piece is very important because you, again, you can't control what happens to your content if you get a content violation or a strike. So you need, you need to understand that and realize that you need to find a way to monetize, like you can't build a business off of just ad revenue. But what that lesson there did was because we were so good and diligent during those couple of months of making only thirty grand and paying ourselves two grand just to cover our expenses and put everything back into the business, is it gave us a couple of months

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  to go back to the drawing board and then figure out an appropriate way to kind of like monetize that made sense. And, you know, even to this day, where our businesses do one to one point five million a month in revenue, we do about seven to eight hundred K in profit, I still pay myself less than twenty K a month, you know?

• 1:00:47Ed Mylett?

  I'm so impressed.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  And everything else is going back into the business, hiring, expanding, buying, you know, and investment, you know, cash flowing, appreciating assets. So that's it right there.

• 1:00:55Ed Mylett?

  You're an impressive young man.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  Thank you, sir.

• 1:00:58Ed Mylett?

  I, uh, please stay this humble and confident at the same time.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:01:03Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. That was a great conversation today.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

• 1:01:07Ed Mylett?

  Oh, bro, I'm glad I did.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Ed Mylett?

  This is my pleasure. This is James Dooley and you guys, School of Hard Knocks. Go check him out. Share the episode today. This is one of those that'll go, go very viral. God bless you, everybody. Max out.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  This is the Ed and Myron Show.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

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