710 Discipline Yourself for Greatness with Eric Thomas

ROCK BOTTOM IS JUST THE BEGINNING. Look at where you are right now. Are you at the bottom? Are you at a plateau but feel like you’re not moving? Everything you’ve done so far is the foundation for where you’re going next. It’s never too late. You never have too much stacked against you. That’s why I’m so grateful to share a Q+A from this year’s Summit of Greatness with a good friend and powerful speaker: Eric Thomas the Hip Hop Teacher. Eric Thomas AKA “ET the Hip Hop Teacher,” is a critically acclaimed author, speaker, educator, pastor, and audible.com Audie Awards Finalist. As CEO of his Consulting Firm, ETA LLC., Eric has led his team through the doors of dozens of reputable organizations and Fortune 500 companies such as General Electric, Quicken Loans, AT&T, Nike, Under Armour, New Balance, and UPS. He has also consulted for major Universities and the major sports teams within the MLB, NBA, NFL, and MLS. He was formerly homeless on the streets of Detroit but went on to get his Ph. D. Eric is an example that no matter where you are right now, you can still accomplish your dreams. This is just the beginning. So get ready to learn how Eric got to the next level and lives to the fullest on Episode 710. Some questions I ask: What was your biggest quitting point? (6:10) Do you have to lose sleep to succeed? (11:26) How have you been able to deliver teachings to your son when you didn’t have the best example yourself? (16:18) In this episode you'll learn: How to be more motivated (7:55) What to do when you’ve lost your faith (10:25) About Hustling vs. Self Care (12:00) How to grind to accomplish your goals (13:00) Why you should do something uncomfortable every day (14:00) The importance of your social circle (16:50) 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 710 with Eric Thomas, ET the Hip Hop Preacher.

• 0:08Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  J.K. Rowling said, "Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." If you feel like you're in a rock bottom moment right now, if you feel like you're stuck, if you feel like you're struggling, if you feel like maybe you're just not sure where to go next, this is the episode for you. And make sure to share this with your friends, even if you feel like you're doing incredible things, but you're not sure how to get to the next level, listen to this episode. Eric Thomas has become a good friend of mine. He has taken the world over by storm. From Detroit, Michigan, he was a former homeless individual on the streets of Detroit for a few years,

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  went on to get his PhD, speaks to professional sports teams and athletes and the youth and entrepreneurs and executives and CEOs. And he speaks all over the world about how to rise the vibration of your life and take your life to the next level. He's an author. He's got a big podcast. He's got one of the biggest YouTube channels. He is an inspiration. You want to make sure you follow him. And today, we talk about how Eric covers his lowest point in life and how he got out of it. Also, how you can care more about your passions and make them your focus and why we should be focusing on our passions the most. Also, what it takes for you to get your faith back if you've lost it.

• 1:52Lewis Howes?

  How long you need to focus and be uncomfortable to get the rewards you want. Eric Thomas just spoke at the Third Annual Summit of Greatness in Columbus, Ohio, and blew people away. This is from the Q and A I did with him onstage that had people move to tears. And I wanted to share with you the Q and A section with me and him onstage. It's super powerful. Make sure to share this with your friends, lewishouse.com/710.

• 2:24Lewis Howes?

  Also, follow both of us on Instagram and let us know what you enjoyed most about this interview. And if you haven't gotten tickets for next year yet, we've already sold over a thousand tickets. Almost half the tickets are sold out. So go to summitofgreatness.com to get your ticket right now. Again, a big thank you to our sponsors. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode on how to create the life you want and overcome your biggest obstacles with the one, the only, ET, the hip hop preacher.

• 3:01Lewis Howes?

  Very excited about this. So let's, let's dive into Q and A. Uh, let's start right here. We have mics, we have mics down here still. Right here. Let's get down here in the front right here. There you go. Your name, name what you're grateful for and your quick, direct question.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  So my name's Tom Burden. I am from Columbus. I actually live like a 30 minute walk that way. So it's too close. Um, I'm grateful for Eric Thomas. I'm an inventor. And, uh, my lowest point, your videos really got me through it. And, uh, today we've sold hundreds of thousands of my products. And, um, it was actually, it got me to the point where I was on Shark Tank and I got three sharks investing in my company from it. So, um, I wanted to ask you, what was your biggest quitting point?

• 3:54Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Sorry, two questions. What was your biggest quitting point? And second is, I was recently on a podcast and they asked me if I could get lunch with anyone on earth, who would it be? And I said Eric Thomas and Elon Musk. And so I was wondering, how can I get lunch with you?

• 4:10Lewis Howes?

  He's bold. He's bold. I got a VIP lunch right after this.

• 4:16Eric Thomas?

  And I'll be there.

• 4:17Lewis Howes?

  And I'll be in there. He'll be there. Thousand dollar ticket if you want to be there with him. Pay the price and get it.

• 4:23Eric Thomas?

  Yeah, we can make it happen today.

• 4:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Eric Thomas?

  No, I think when I was homeless.

• 4:31Eric Thomas?

  And I had an estranged relationship with my mom. You know, my mom was my heart. Uh, but unfortunately, my mom married and didn't tell me who my biological father was. They changed the birth certificate and made it appear that this person was. And I knew something was wrong because they didn't get married until I was about five. But you know, you're still young at five. Memory's not great. And so when I was homeless, I would pick up the payphone and call home and my mom would answer it. And I wouldn't say anything because I was angry and I didn't want to talk to her, but I wanted to hear her voice. And so Thanksgiving's not going home, Christmas not going home. That was probably my lowest point. I wanted to take my life during that point in my life. After that, and me and mom's reconciled, I don't think I've had a, a point that low, you know, ever in my life since then.

• 5:21Eric Thomas?

  Right here. You got the mic?

• 5:25Speaker 03

  My name is Brendan Jackson from Lexington, Kentucky. I'm grateful that you brought all of us together, Louis. Thank you, Sarah, my girlfriend, for making sure I got here.

• 5:39Eric Thomas?

  Good. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  ET, CJ, and your team, your family. Thank you for, when I need somebody to tell me to just shut up and work. You're the man, you know?

• 5:55Eric Thomas?

  I'm sorry, how did me to do that?

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Somebody needs to do it. Somebody needs to do it.

• 5:59Eric Thomas?

  They come, they come to me for a hug. They come to you. Breathe and shut up.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  That's, that's, that's what it is to me. My question is, I know what I want to do for my community, my family. How do I care more about it every day? So I get to the level where I can throw my alarm clock away. I can wake up at two in the morning with my goals waking me up.

• 6:20Eric Thomas?

  Good, and I don't know that you need to get up at two o'clock in the morning.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  That's all right, but.

• 6:24Eric Thomas?

  That was my journey.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 6:25Eric Thomas?

  And there was a reason for it, but I would say to you, where your focus goes, your energy flows. And so I make sure when I wake up in the morning, we talk about what are you grateful for? I put my focus on my wife. I put my focus on my kids. So I start the day off by either on my phone, looking at their picture. When I'm downstairs, just thoughts about them, remembering. I told Sean, soon as I saw Sean, it's the first time I've ever saw Sean before in person. Of course, Sean T, of course, you know.

• 6:56Eric Thomas?

  You know I can't do this while I don't have the abs, right? But I told him, I said, Sean, I know you, you know. We didn't even talk about workout. I talked about his kids. And how when I watch him online, I see the kids all the time. And I remember when Jalen, my wife, he's here somewhere. I remember when my son was that little, he would travel with me. And that's who I think about regularly. I don't think about him as a 23-year-old. I promise you, we get into it, right? Uh, but I always remember him as that kid. And every day I wake up and still look at, I have a picture on my phone of when they were like five and two. And I look at that picture every day because that was the picture that made me go get that four-year degree. That was the picture that made me get the masters, even though I hate school. So I would just say, keep a picture of, keep them in your mind and on your heart on a regular basis.

• 7:41Eric Thomas?

  And if your focus keeps going to them, then your energy will go to them as well.

• 7:46Lewis Howes?

  That's good. Let's go up top.

• 7:51Eric Thomas?

  She's jumping up and down here, you see it?

• 7:54Lewis Howes?

  You got someone up there?

• 7:55Eric Thomas?

  She's jumping up and down.

• 7:56Lewis Howes?

  Oh, we got someone jump, okay.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  My name's Jackie, I'm from Detroit.

• 7:59Eric Thomas?

  Hey.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Hey. Um, my question-

• 8:03Lewis Howes?

  We'll let you guys in. We'll let you into Ohio.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Just a couple of us. My question was, what would you say to someone who's lost their faith and is trying to find their way back?

• 8:13Eric Thomas?

  Well, I'd say the same thing to anybody that loses anything. Go, go look where you had it last.

• 8:21Eric Thomas?

  Like wherever you left it. I'm just being honest. If I left my, lost my keys, I'm thinking to myself, where was the last place I saw them? You know, let's go back to that place. Let's at least start there. So if you lost it, where did you lose it? Was it a relationship that got in the way? Was it business that got in the way? Are you not waking up in the morning like you used to wake up in the morning? Do you not put yourself in that environment that you used to go to when your faith was high? So wherever you left it, I'd start wherever I left it and, and rebuild it from that point. Does that make sense?

• 8:52Speaker 04

  Yes, thank you so much.

• 8:53Eric Thomas?

  Thank you.

• 8:55Lewis Howes?

  Up top.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  Hi, my name's Nick Padilla, from Toledo originally, live in Columbus, Ohio. What I'm currently grateful for is Louis, indirectly you and your sister Heidi have introduced me to Chris Hawker and Abe Alexander and Summer Renallo. So, thank you for that.

• 9:15Eric Thomas?

  You're welcome.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  Changed my life. And my question for Eric is, I've heard this speech, you know, when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, you'll be successful. And I've heard you talk about the, you have to be willing to lose sleep.

• 9:31Speaker 05

  And I would love if you would speak into that, that mentality versus actually self-care. Does that make sense?

• 9:38Eric Thomas?

  Yeah, it does. And so, whenever I talk about, somebody asked me the other day, ET, you still getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning? Today, I did. But I can't say that I always get up at 3. Now, why? Because DeeDee retired last year, March. So, we're traveling the world together, you know, keeping up, staying up late at night. You know, we used to go to bed early when she worked, you know, and the kids were home. So, I'm in a place now where I've been doing this for over 20 years and now we are, we're enjoying the fruits of our labor. And we're traveling, like, we don't even live at home really anymore. So, no, not now, I don't do 3 o'clock. But there was a time for a span of, you know, five or six years when I was working on the dissertation, that I needed to stay up to get that dissertation done.

• 10:21Eric Thomas?

  That I needed to not watch a movie when I was on the plane. That I needed not to play cards with my wife Uno on the plane, but I needed to study. And once I got the dissertation, and it opened up doors for me at Michigan State University, my money changed, my influence changed. So, I didn't have to work as hard because the dissertation was over. So, for me, I would always say, how long do you need to lose sleep? Is it for six months? Is it for a year? What's the goal? And how many night, sleepless nights are you gonna have to do to make that goal become a reality? But once you reach that goal, you no longer have to do that. Does that make sense? So, you're only not sleeping and you're grinding for the timeframe you need to make that dream become a reality.

• 11:04Eric Thomas?

  But once it becomes a reality, then you can chill. If that makes sense?

• 11:09Speaker 05

  And to add to that, I think...

• 11:13Lewis Howes?

  Clap it up. Yeah. I think to add to that, you know, when I moved off my sister's couch and then moved into my brother's place for $2.50 a month because he wouldn't let me live rent free.

• 11:26Eric Thomas?

  Long live your sister.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  But it was a good, it was a good lesson to, yeah, my sister was great. And, but it was good to like force me, okay, I have to spend $2.50 a month. How am I gonna earn this? How am I gonna make this? It got me uncomfortable. And then when I got to a place where I was like, okay, I'm moving out of there into my own place off First and High Street, this, I found the cheapest apartment I could find in the location that I liked, where I could walk, because I didn't want to have a car, so I could not spend money on that. I remember moving in and saying, what's the thing that's sucking a lot of my time? And it was TV at the time. And so I didn't have a TV for the first two and a half years, and I just focused. And I realized I was able to work that much harder because I was just saving two hours a day on whatever.

• 12:08Lewis Howes?

  And when there was a game on, I would go, you know, watch the Buckeyes play on Saturdays and, and go to like a bar and watch the game, or go to the game, whatever it may be, to do that purposefully. And so I think we get to be, we get to do something that's uncomfortable, whether that's getting up early every single day, whether that's eliminating TV, something that's uncomfortable every day so that we can create more comfort long-term.

• 12:31Eric Thomas?

  And I, can I be honest? People always ask me about the three o'clock. They don't ask the most important question.

• 12:37Lewis Howes?

  What time do you go to bed?

• 12:37Eric Thomas?

  What time do you go to bed? And I was religiously in the bed between 9:30 and 10:00. So I wasn't staying up till 11:00 and 12:00 and getting up at 3:00. I was going to bed at 9:30, 10:00, so. And according to research, I don't know how true it is, but they said if you go to sleep from 8:00 to 12:00, you actually get double hours. So at 8:00, it's 9:00, 10:00. So even though I was only sleeping maybe four or five hours, because I was going to bed so early, I was getting double rest, you know what I'm saying? So, yeah, going to bed early, not burning the midnight oil, and then getting up early in the morning.

• 13:08Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Awesome.

• 13:13Speaker 06

  Right here, she's standing up right here. ET, what up, what up? What up, what up? It's so great to see you. It's your boy, what's your, what's your name? It's your boy what? My name is Jeremy, from the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm here with my, I'm here with my wife. It's our anniversary weekend, hanging out. Nice, smart man. Respect, both of you gentlemen have helped me build my business and also helped me in my relationship, ET. The stuff that you've said have helped me come back to trying to be better with my wife, trying to be more responsible, things that you've talked about, appreciate you. My question to you is, you've talked about your relationship with your father. My relationship is similar in some ways. I didn't, I knew my father, but he and my mother divorced when I was young. My stepfather wasn't worth very much.

• 13:58Speaker 06

  My question is, how have you been able to, as a father, deliver the kind of leadership, the information, the teachings to your kids, especially to your son, when you didn't necessarily have the best example yourself?

• 14:12Eric Thomas?

  Well, you know, when you connect with people like, you know, Lewis Howes and others, you try to, what you didn't get, you try to look for an example in other people. So for everybody that I run with, I always ask myself, like, E, why would you, like, why are you connected to this person? And so for me, one of the things I love about Lewis, and I don't, like, if you guys go back and really research me, I don't do a lot of this. You know, and a lot of people call me, I want you to speak. I'm like, nah, because you're gonna be trying to, you'll bring the people in, but you're gonna be trying to abuse them or, you know, take something from them. And that's not what I'm about, you know? I'm a shepherd. So with Lewis, I see this strength, right? But this sensitivity as well. You know, I see this strength, but there's also a, we can share the stage together,

• 14:56Eric Thomas?

  like, we don't have to compete, right? So as I watch him, and I watch him move, right? I'm able to say to my son, it's so weird, I've never done this before, Lewis, but at coming here and just thinking about you, there's just things that, you know, are coming up. We were in the car headed to the train station. He was going to spend some time with his friends in Chicago. And I asked myself, how's your mental health? That's not a question I would have had. You know what I'm saying? Like, some of the other guys that I run with, they don't necessarily put me in the space of your mental health.

• 15:27Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 15:28Eric Thomas?

  You know what I'm saying? But when you're with someone like Louis, of course, there are certain things that, the energy and the frequency that he's on. So when we're together or I have to prepare to do something, he's sending me videos, whatever, so there's a frequency. So I just was sending my son like, yo, how are you doing? Whatever. He told me how he was doing. And as a father, I didn't have to be that macho, bravado father. I can say, yo, son, you need to be strong. But at the same time, you also need to take care of yourself. And I know you like to give, but what are you doing for you? So I think the people you hang around, you take a principle or two, whatever they give you, and you don't just kind of like hang out with them, you know, and just hope by osmosis it's gonna happen. But you're very intentional and deliberate

• 16:12Eric Thomas?

  about taking the characteristics and the qualities you admire about them and actually implement them in your daily life, if that makes sense.

• 16:22Lewis Howes?

  We have reached our time limit. We could do this for five hours, I'm sure.

• 16:32Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this one. Again, J.K. Rowling said, "Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." You've got to look at your life right now and where you are. Are you at the bottom? Are you trying to get out of the bottom? Are you at a plateau and feel like you're at a bottom, even though you're at someone else's top? Look at where you're at and realize everything you've done so far is just the foundation for where you're moving towards next. This is not the end all be all. It's the beginning. You're just getting started on how great you are about to become. But you've got to be willing to recognize and be aware of the moment that you're in.

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  And use it as the solid foundation on how you're going to rebuild your life. Again, if you enjoyed this, make sure to share it with your friends. LewisHowes.com/710. Go to that link, text your friends that link. Let them know they can listen to the episode there or they can watch the full video YouTube there as well. You can subscribe over on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, all these places and on YouTube. We are building a massive collection of video content on YouTube. Check it out there. YouTube slash Lewis Howes. And if you enjoyed this episode, again, let me know what you think. Post this on your Instagram story right now. Take a screenshot, tag me, put the video up there if you want to.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Tag ET, the Hip Hop Preacher as well. Connect with both of us. We want to hear what you enjoyed most about this Q and A. We'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.