Why You're Still Broke (And It Has Nothing to Do With Money) | Myron Golden

Myron Golden drops a revelation early in this conversation that stops you in your tracks: if you are broke, you are not spiritually bankrupt, you are spiritually deceived. Most people carry a hidden belief that money is evil and that having it requires doing something wrong, a lie so deeply embedded that it quietly sabotages every financial decision they make. Myron connects that deception to universal struggles around worthiness, fear of success, and the painful tension between faith and financial ambition. He then lays out the practical path forward: awareness is the first move, because you cannot change what you cannot see, and most people are blind to the abundance already surrounding them. Whether you are stuck at your first dollar or trying to break from six figures to seven, Myron shows you that the ceiling is never a money problem, it is always an identity problem, and the shift starts with how you complete the sentence "I am..." The Greatness Playbook: The Value Creation Edition Myron’s books: From the Trash Man to the Cash Man: How Anyone Can Get Rich Starting from Anywhere B. O. S. S. Moves: Business Optimization Success Secrets from a Million Dollar Round Table by Myron Golden Myron’s website Myron on Instagram Myron’s YouTube channel In this episode you will: Discover the spiritual deception behind financial struggle and why poverty is never a sign of piety Shift your entire sales approach by understanding the difference between convincing and persuading Identify the three sources of value that make it nearly impossible for people to say no to your offer Break the "I am not" identity trap that keeps you locked out of the abundance already available to you Learn the four stages of child development that will shape how your kids relate to money, authority, and their own potential For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1911 For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960 Follow The Daily Motivation for essential highlights from The School of Greatness More SOG episodes we think you’ll love: Lewis Howes Solo [$0-1M in 2026] Eric Thomas Jaspreet Singh Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  People don't lack abundance. They lack awareness to the access they have to abundance.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, what does that mean?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  That means there's more than enough for everybody to have more than enough, and there'll still be more than enough left over. But most people are unaware that that's the actual case. It would be like walking through life and thinking there's a limited amount of air.

• 0:22Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  And if there's a limited amount of air, then I don't want to breathe too much because there might not be enough left over for everybody else.

• 0:28Lewis Howes?

  A business strategist, bestselling author, went from growing up in poverty to building a multimillion dollar business, helping thousands of people change the way they think about money, value, and purpose. Myron Golden in the house.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  I think it's the most important skill any entrepreneur can accomplish. Like, they need to develop the skill of selling. I had it so programmed out of me because I thought it was yucky. You're programmed not to like to talk about money. Certainly don't want to ask for money. You don't want to ask strangers for money. So we don't even realize we have all this subconscious program that's against selling.

• 1:00Lewis Howes?

  When we hold on to a story of belief that things were against us, how do we shift it to believe they're actually for us?

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Well, first of all,

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  one of the things I appreciate about you the most is your ability to speak about faith and financial abundance at the same time.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  If someone is financially broke right now, or if they're struggling with their finances, does this mean that they're also spiritually bankrupt?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  I don't think it means that they're spiritually bankrupt. I think it means they're probably spiritually deceived.

• 1:31Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Well, what that means is most people believe that money is inherently evil.

• 1:35Lewis Howes?

  Ah.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  That's what most people believe, and they believe that in order for you to make a lot of money, I've got to do something evil. And if somebody has a lot of money, they've already done something evil. And even if they don't believe that consciously, they believe that subconsciously.

• 1:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  And people who break through and start having some moderate business success, they believe that money's not inherently neutral. I mean, money's not inherently evil, but it's inherently neutral. I don't believe that wealth is inherently evil or inherently neutral. I believe it's inherently good, even though there are people who do bad things with it.

• 2:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Right? And so I think that's what I mean when I say they're spiritually deceived.

• 2:14Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Because I believe the Bible. Satan is a spiritual being. God is a spiritual being, but not a religious being. And so, wealth is a spiritual concept, but so is poverty. And so, in fact, it's really, it's really interesting as we, as, as we study the Bible, we see that the very first temptation in the history of the world was the temptation to focus on lack. Because Adam and Eve had everything in the Garden of Eden for free, except one thing they didn't have. The enemy, Satan, got their attention on the thing they lacked, and they lost focus on all that, focus on all their abundance. That was the very first temptation in the history of the world. What do most people lack today? Awareness. Around what?

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Around almost everything. But I like to say that people don't lack abundance. They lack awareness to the access they have to abundance. Hmm, what does that mean? That means there's more than enough for everybody to have more than enough, and there'll still be more than enough left over. But most people are unaware that that's the actual case. It would be like walking through life and thinking there's a limited amount of air. And if there's a limited amount of air, then I don't want to breathe too much because there might not be enough leftover for everybody else. If you're a good person, that might, you might think that, right? And so, there are opportunities everywhere. People might, somebody might say, well, Myron, I don't know how to do anything. I don't have any skills. I only know how to cook. You can't make any money cooking.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Tell that to Rachael Ray. She's a millionaire with an M, turned on a camera for cooking. I'm just a housewife. Well, there's no such thing. I've never met, met a married house. But a homemaker, um, says, oh, I'm just a homemaker. I don't know how to do anything but like, turn my house into a home. Really? Martha Stewart's a billionaire with a B, and she created content around her experience of being a homemaker. It's, it doesn't matter what skill set you have. There is a way, I shouldn't say it doesn't matter, because it does matter to some degree, but most, if you're a functional adult, if you're a functional adult who has a family and you take care of yourself, or even if you don't have a family, and you have the ability to take care of yourself. Oh, there's, there's enough abundance around you for you to be wealthy. You're just unaware of it.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  So awareness is the first thing that people lack the most? Yep, because, because all transformation begins with awareness. Think about it. There was a time when the thing that you wanted the most was to be a football player.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  But when you broke your wrist or arm.

• 4:44Lewis Howes?

  Wrist.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Wrist. When you broke your wrist and lost the opportunity to be a football player. And you you kind of lost your way for a little bit. The reason you were lost is because you had no idea that you would become this Lewis Howes. You didn't have any idea that this Lewis Howes could exist.

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  But the the the capacity to become this Lewis Howes was always inside of you. As long as you became aware of the opportunities as they showed themselves. And so your sister who helped you by saying, hey, you're either gonna have to pay rent or you're gonna have to you're gonna have to move out. She helped you become aware of the fact that, okay. Other people expect me to take care of myself. So hmm, maybe I can take care of myself. You see what I'm saying? So it's a lack of awareness of your ability and capacity for to grow your ability. And it's a lack of awareness of all the opportunities that are around us all the time.

• 5:28Lewis Howes?

  If someone feels like they're a good spiritual person. They have this perspective themselves. Maybe they go to church a lot. Maybe they they talk about their faith a lot. Maybe they feel like they're acting in accordance with their spiritual faith. But they really struggle financially.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:44Lewis Howes?

  Is the thing they lack the most awareness? Is it courage to act on making more money? Is it the belief that money can actually be good? What is the thing they lack the most?

• 5:53Speaker 00

  There are people who are spiritual. And are still unaware of spiritual concepts. Like, right. And there are people who are religious who are unaware of spiritual concepts. And when I say religion, here's what I mean. Here's what I mean when I say religion, because I don't believe that. That God is a religious figure. I don't believe the Bible is a religious book, which is very different than what most people believe. The Bible is is a governmental document. It is not a religious document. And what I mean by that is religion to me is. A man or a group of men or women. Making a bunch of rules for other for themselves and other people to live by to appease God. Well, the Bible doesn't teach that at all. The Bible doesn't teach you need to do something to appease God.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  And so the Bible is a book about a king, a kingdom, a royal family and the culturalization of a foreign land called earth. Now let me ask you a question. Is a kingdom a religion or a government?

• 6:48Lewis Howes?

  I guess it depends your interpretation of kingdom. If it's a spiritual kingdom.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Well, the definition of a kingdom is the king's dominion, the dominion over which the king reigns. It's the realm of which the king reigns. So it's a government, right? And so, most people when they think of kingdoms, they think of a physical place. But a kingdom is a jurisdiction over which a king reigns. And that's why, like, if you even think about, like, America, or you think about Russia, or China, or any country, they have land, but they also control this thing called airspace above that land, right? And so, when I think of a king, I think of a king that rules over a realm. And see, I believe that even if people are unaware of it, physicality is not reality, it is just one of the manifestations of reality.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Spirituality is reality. Invisibility is reality. In fact, this table that's physical, sitting here in front of us, is made of invisible molecules that we can't see or touch, but we can touch the table. Why? Because it's a picture, that, just that whole concept of everything physical being made of invisible molecules is a testament that invisibility is the foundation of visibility, and physicality is a manifestation of spirituality.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  There's a lot I want to ask you about wealth.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:06Lewis Howes?

  But I feel like you have a unique background where you didn't have wealth growing up.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I was poor. I was pitiful poor. That's when you're so poor, poor people feel sorry for you.

• 8:17Lewis Howes?

  You were poor, but also you, you know, you had, I think it was polio, is that correct?

• 8:21Speaker 00

  I had polio as an infant, yeah.

• 8:22Lewis Howes?

  And you have a brace on your left leg?

• 8:25Speaker 00

  I have a brace on my left leg, metal brace from bottom of my foot all the way up to my hip.

• 8:29Lewis Howes?

  And you just, you didn't start out, even in your career, you started out as a trash man or a garbage man?

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Trash man. Driving a trash truck for $6.25 an hour, as a married man with a wife and a new baby.

• 8:40Lewis Howes?

  So you didn't have wealth?

• 8:41Speaker 00

  No.

• 8:41Lewis Howes?

  And you didn't have a wealth mindset, I'm assuming?

• 8:43Speaker 00

  I didn't have a wealth mindset, but I did have a wealth awareness, because I also, when I was a trash man, I got enrolled in a business selling insurance and investments on the side, part-time. So I would wake up at 2:30 in the morning. Get ready for work, go to work, get to work at four, drive a truck for eight hours, ten hours, come home, take a nap. And then I would go out and on sales appointments to sell insurance and investments. So I learned principles in that company about the magic of compound interest, pay yourself first, all these financial principles. And I became aware of the fact that the reason I had to work so hard for money is because I had no money working for me. And so that's where that whole transformational journey started where I realized, wait a minute.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  This person is wealthy, they're not any more talented than me. If it can work for them, it can work for me. But the only difference is they were actually good at it and I was terrible at sales.

• 9:33Lewis Howes?

  So would you say sales was the the best skill that helped you generate wealth?

• 9:36Speaker 00

  I think it's the most important skill any entrepreneur. Or anybody who who desires to succeed can can accomplish, like they need to develop the skill of selling. And people say, well, I'm just not a naturally born salesperson. Well, first of all, I believe that everybody's a natural born salesperson. And we have it programmed out of us by the cultural hypnotic societal mechanism.

• 9:59Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Right. When you got you got two new babies, they're four months old, right? Have they ever woken you up in the middle of the night and persuaded you fully to come and take take care of them?

• 10:07Lewis Howes?

  Of course, crying.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Right, right, exactly. And then my granddaughter, she's six years old. And she, when she was three, she said, my pop, I want you to sit on, she calls me my pop. My pop, I want you to sit on the floor and play with me. But Ari, I can't sit on the floor and play with you right now because I've got to do X, Y, and Z. She said, but my pop, you have to. I was like, why didn't I think of that?

• 10:27Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Right, exactly. So I sat on the floor and played with her, right? And so we're we're all born to be salesperson, salespeople. And we're a natural born salespeople and we ask and ask and ask and we hear no, and we ask again and we hear no, and we ask again. Can I have a cookie? No, can I have a cookie? No, can I have a cookie? Here, have the whole jar. Go play, right?

• 10:45Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  And so we have it programmed out of us. But I I had so programmed out of me because I thought it was like I thought it was yucky. I thought sales was yucky. I didn't want to be begging people for money. You're programmed not to like to talk about money, certainly don't want to ask for money. You don't want to ask strangers for money. So we don't even realize we have all this subconscious program. So subconscious program that's against selling. And even salespeople have subconscious programming against selling. They say, you've probably heard this phrase. People love to buy, but they hate to be sold. I think that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. That's the dumbest, that's like, that doesn't make any sense. I believe people love to buy and they love to be sold. But they hate to be convinced. And convincing is what people in sales who are not good at sales resort to because they're so bad at sales.

• 11:30Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between convincing someone versus selling someone?

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Great question. Selling is persuasion.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Convincing is when I attempt to get you to do something I want you to do for my reasons. I call that having commission breath. Right? But persuasion is when I help you make a decision you already desire to make for your own reasons. Now.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Have you ever in your life, and maybe you don't now, but have you ever in your life had, uh, when I get enough money, I'm gonna get one of these list? Right? Pretty much everybody has a list like that, right? When I get enough money, I'm gonna get one of these.

• 12:05Lewis Howes?

  Want to buy a car or a watch or this?

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Why, what, or any house, whatever, vacation, whatever. Right? So I realized one day that there are millions of people in the world. Or at least thousands, tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, but I believe millions, tens of millions of people in the world. Who would love to buy what I'd love to sell if they only knew I existed. And so what most people in business do, and most people in sales do, is they go and look for people to sell stuff to. And people ask me that all the time, man, how do I find people to sell stuff to? You're asking the wrong question. How can you expect to get the right answer? The better question is, how can I make myself more findable for people who already want to buy what I already want to sell? The reality is, if you've ever bought anything, you bought it because it was sold to you. The people, now.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  The people who are best in the world at sales do a, use a concept I call seamless selling. Which means they will sell you something and they will make you think it is your idea.

• 13:02Lewis Howes?

  If you are down to your last dollar.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:05Lewis Howes?

  And, or in that space where you feel like I'm really lacking, I'm in debt, a month, a month, whatever it is, paycheck to paycheck.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:13Lewis Howes?

  And you have this thing that you're trying to sell.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:16Lewis Howes?

  How do you not feel so needy when you're like, I really need this commission right now, or I really need this person to buy because I'm not gonna survive. So how do I make it so convincing that they need this or persuasive that it's for them?

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Rather than.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 13:30Lewis Howes?

  I really need this.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  So, so you have to work with human nature instead of working against it. And human nature works like this. If I chase, you run. If I run, you chase. If I lean in, you lean out. If I lean out, you lean in. And so if you have, you have to first begin with an awareness. Okay, awareness of what? An awareness that I don't have to make this sale. I have to make a sale. But I don't have to make this sale. If I understand the principle, principles are like, they don't, they don't lie. They always tell the truth. And so if I understand the principle of the law of averages. And I understand that everybody in sales has an average, including me. This is how I got good at sales, by the way. I knew I had an average. What do you mean an average? You mean?

• 14:15Speaker 00

  If you talk to X number of people, X number of people are gonna buy. A certain number are gonna buy. And so let's say, let's say your average is one out of 10. So if your average is one out of 10, every 10 people you talk to, somebody's gonna buy, on average. Right? So if I know I'm gonna talk to 10 people today, I don't care which one buys. Interesting. Right? So now I can, I can emotionally lean out. Because I don't need to make this sale. And me being leaned out, if you desire the thing. Makes you more inclined to desire it from me than somebody who's chasing you. Yeah, you're more resistant to people chasing you. Exactly. See, because if I'm, if I'm, if I'm selling, or if I'm selling, if, if a man is dating a woman, a woman's dating a man. It doesn't matter, boy meets girl, it doesn't matter.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  If I am making you feel like I need you. You believe you don't need me. But if I can make you feel like you, I don't need you. Then you believe you do need me. Now, in order for me to make you feel like I don't need you. I need to feel like I don't need you. How do you do that? By realizing I've got a law of averages. And I have to make X number of sales, but you don't have to be one of them. And if I realize that, you know what, it's a privilege to work with me. I'm one of the few people in the world that have your best interest in mind. Like, who will sell you something and, and be happy as a lark in the park if you say no. Because, people say, well, that's easy for you to say because you have money. But no, I have money because that's easy for me to say.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  And it's easy for me to say because it's easy for me to feel. Because if I'm selling something to you and it's not in your best interest. When you say no, I'm glad for your sake and my sake, you said no. I'm doing an event in Orange County, right? This weekend, tomorrow and the next day. And I asked you, I said, why don't you come up and speak? You're like, where is it? I said, it's in Orange County. You're like, no, that's too far. And when you said, no, that's too far, like, it made perfect sense to me.

• 16:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Right? And I kind of picked and jiggled at you a little bit.

• 16:11Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  But, but, but it made perfect sense. I wouldn't want you to have to deal with like an hour and a half of traffic and come speak at my event and empower a bunch of people and then have to deal with an hour and a half of traffic coming back. And then you feel yucky about that experience. And now every time you think about me, you're thinking about that. I would rather you say no and think, man, when I have the opportunity to do something with him, I'm gonna look forward to it. You see what I'm saying?

• 16:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  So I, I, I really believe that the main ingredient, the most important ingredient that you have to have to be successful and like super successful in sales is to love the people you sell to so much that you would never sell them anything that would do them harm.

• 16:50Lewis Howes?

  Now, I, I love this, but life for me is about enrollment.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  It is.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  And so when do you know to stop not trying, but stop enrolling or persuading someone in your vision, in your product, in your speaking thing?

• 17:04Speaker 00

  Most people who watch this are not gonna like my answer.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  I stop when they say no because.

• 17:09Lewis Howes?

  The first time?

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it depends. Yeah, for the most part, yeah, I do. Because I know they'll be back, right? Okay, so for instance, if I'm doing an event, I don't hard close. I don't ever hard close. I don't ever, like, I do a, I do a challenge once a month. And at the end of the challenge, I say, well, this is the, this is the offer we've created for you. If it makes sense to you, and if it's for you, you're smart enough to know it. Take advantage of it. If it's not for you, you're smart enough to know that. But if you're waiting for me to sit on this Zoom call and talk to you for 45 minutes about why you should take advantage of it, that's not gonna happen because I've got a tea time. I'm going to the golf course. If you enroll, we'll see you in the program. If not, we'll see you somewhere else across the world. Have a great day. And I'm done. I, there's zero pressure because I don't want you to buy because I talked you into it.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Because if I got, if I've gotta drag you in, I've gotta drag you around and that's exhausting.

• 17:58Lewis Howes?

  That is exhausting.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  And people really respect you.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  When you really respect them.

• 18:05Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. So how do you persuade people in the hour or two hour Zoom call or whatever it might be throughout so that when you're making the offer, you're you're backing, you're leaning back versus saying, hey, you really need to buy this or whatever. And how do you persuade throughout to add value?

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Right. So first, the first, the first problem most people have in sales and in persuasion, what they think is persuasion, which is really just a really old school sales model that's very, it's very horrid, it's so bad. Is they talk about the wrong things in their presentation. They do no positioning. And then they feel like they have to beg people to buy. The reason is because you haven't given the people any reason to buy. You've, you've given them your, what you value, but you haven't given them what they value. See, in order for somebody to buy from you, you have to uncover value to them. Well, if you have, if you're going to uncover value to them, you have to know what's valuable to them. If you don't know what's valuable to them, you have no ability to uncover value. And I mean, doesn't that make sense?

• 19:02Lewis Howes?

  So you have to, how do you learn what's valuable to them?

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Well, first you have to understand where value, where value comes from. Right? So where does value come from? Right? So I, value comes from a couple of different places. Number one, value comes from past perceived voids. Things that were missing in the past are things that I value in the present. So when I was 17 years old, my friend Stan, his brother Lonnie, had a 68 Pontiac GTO. And I wanted to buy that car from him and he wouldn't sell it to me. So guess what I bought two years ago? A 1968 Pontiac GTO convertible. Brand new, that car was $3,300. I paid $40,000 for that car, right? And just got it back from being restored. It's immaculate. Well, why would I do that? Why would I buy that car?

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Like, I've got cars that are so comfortable that when you sit in, they hug you and say, where you want to go today, baby, right? And I'm driving in this 68 Pontiac GTO and it's all bouncy, you know? And I'm like, why did I want this car so bad? Oh, be, why did I, what was so valuable? Oh, I wanted it in the past. I couldn't have it, but I can have it now. So I'm going to have it. So if you can understand what people have been missing out on in the past, you know what to talk to them about in the present. That's one. Number two, present, so past perceived voids, that's one place the value comes from. Number two, present perceived virtues. When somebody perceives something as good right now, they value it. And so, most people, when they're selling, when they think they're selling,

• 20:30Speaker 00

  they're talking to the prospect about what's valuable about their offer to them, instead of to the prospect. They have no idea what the prospect perceives as good, because they do all the talking. They don't have a dialogue, they have a monologue. In a presentation, a really great sales presentation is a dialogue where you don't do all the talking. Okay, so that's number two, present perceived voids. The last place that values come from is future perceived visions create present perceived values. So, if my presentation can show people how they can have all the things they were missing in the past, all the things they think are wonderful in the present,

• 21:09Speaker 00

  and they can see themselves living a compelling future, oh, it's really hard for them to say no. Right. Right? And so, that's, that's, that's the first thing. So, that's the first thing that has to happen in a presentation. I have to have the, the basic big idea has to be surrounded by those things. Number two, I have to, I have to position my offer correctly, because I would rather, as a salesperson, I would rather have an average presentation with great positioning, than a great presentation with average positioning. And so, what do I mean when I say positioning? Well, I'm going to position my offer, the thing that I'm selling, next to something they've already paid for, that's given them less value.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  That's one. I'm gonna position my offer next to the, the, the price of my offer, next to the cost of not getting the result they've been seeking, and show them which one's more expensive. So I'm gonna have a posi-, like, the positioning is of the utmost importance. And then, in addition to positioning the offer, when I do the presentation, as much as possible, I'm gonna get, if I'm selling something to you, I'm gonna get you to give yourself my presentation. And I'm gonna do that by asking you questions. I'm gonna do that by asking you what? Questions. Questions, see? To come back. Exactly. I'm gonna get them talking back to me. And so, I really believe that for good salespeople, the prospect provides the content, and we provide the context.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  And so, I don't wanna talk about the pieces of my offer. It's got seventeen workbooks and whatever, or it's got these components and these ingredients. No, I don't wanna talk about the pieces. I don't wanna talk about the process, and I sure don't wanna show them the process, because if I show them the process... It's gonna distract them from the payoff. Hmm hmm. So I don't wanna show them the pieces. I don't wanna show them the process. I don't wanna sell my person because I don't wanna be married to you. Like, oh, you get so many hours of my time. No. No, I don't want to, no. When I, when I'm selling you hours of my time, I am telling you that it's so hard you can't do it without me. That's not the message I wanna convey. Does that make sense? Yes. So the only thing that I emphasize when I'm selling, after I do the positioning, after I uncover the value, and then I present the value, the thing that I do, is I show them the payoff.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  And I show them what it's gonna feel like to have the payoff, what it's gonna sound like, and how other people are gonna look at it, and how they're gonna feel, and what they'll be able to do then that they can't do now. Oh. And so, when you emphasize the payoff, people have the ability to see themselves in their desirable future, and it makes it easier for them to say yes, because you're the first person who's ever talked to them about a bridge that gets them from where they are to where they'd like to be. Does that make sense? Hundred percent.

• 23:51Lewis Howes?

  I, I've heard you say a quote, wealth is a spiritual outcome.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  It is.

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  And you talk often again about faith and finances, and people are conflicted by this a lot.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  They are.

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  They're conflicted by faith and finances.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:04Lewis Howes?

  But why do you believe faith and wealth actually belong together?

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Well, because God is a God of abundance. In fact, so much, God is so much a God of abundance, that when he put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, even though there were only two people there, and they were married to each other, and all the food was free, and there were no stores, and there was nothing to buy, and there was nothing for sale. He put gold in the Garden of Eden. But he didn't just put gold in the Garden of Eden. He put gold in the Garden of Eden and told us that it was good. Why do I believe that wealth is good? Because God said so. Why do I believe that wealth, that abundance, is spiritual? Because Jesus said, um, I am come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly, but the thief cometh not, but for to steal, to kill, and to destroy. Well, if you kill something... You have a lack of life.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  If you steal something, you have a lack of property. If you destroy something, you have a lack of property as well. So abundance and lack are both spiritual. Abundance is the result of understanding the spiritual principles that lead to wealth. And people think that God wants them to be poor. I find that fascinating because if God wants you to be poor, he also wants you to be a drunkard. He also wants you to be lazy. He also wants you to be a glutton. He wants you to be a fool. Why do I say that? Well, because like from a biblical perspective, the Bible says that love not sleep lest thou come to poverty. So what does that mean? That means if you're lazy, you're going to be broke. So if God wants me to be broke, then he has to want me to be lazy since brokenness is spiritual.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  If I think poverty is piety, then if God says that laziness leads to being broke, then he must want me to be lazy if he wants me to be broke. Okay, but it says that if you have wisdom, it'll fill your house with great treasure.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  So if God doesn't want me to have great treasure, then he must want me to be a fool. The drunkard and the glutton shall lie down together and drowsiness will clothe the man with rags. So God must want me to be a drunken, gluttonous, lazy fool if he wants me to be broke. Because he promised to bless me with wealth if I have the opposite of those characteristics. That's why.

• 26:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Lewis Howes?

  When was the moment you felt like you had true financial freedom in your life? Where you feel like, okay, I'm not living paycheck to paycheck. I've got financial abundance. I don't feel like stressing for what's coming in the next six months.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  I can tell you the moment when I felt like that, even though I was still not wealthy. And this was, it was in April of 1999. And I remember it very specifically.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  27 years ago.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Right, 27 years ago. I accidentally made $6,200 in one week.

• 26:45Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  In one week.

• 26:46Lewis Howes?

  You know what's really, before you go on with that.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 26:49Lewis Howes?

  This is weird. The synchronicity of this because the moment I felt like I was the richest man in the world was when I made $6,200 in one hour.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Okay, so you did it in an hour, I did it in a week.

• 26:59Lewis Howes?

  Well, I was also doing it.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Young people these days.

• 27:02Lewis Howes?

  But the fact that it was sixty, literally sixty-two hundred dollars was how much I made in one hour from a webinar presentation.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 27:09Lewis Howes?

  To, to someone else's audience is my first webinar made sixty-two hundred dollars.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  And you were like.

• 27:14Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, I am the richest man in the world. There was more money than I ever made in maybe years, right? Like, it was, it unlocked, like, is this even possible? Yeah, it was just like a hundred.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  So that was an, sixty-two hundred dollars is an unlock for you and it was an unlock for me. How crazy is that? Okay, so what happened? Tell me. So watch this. So, well, what happened was, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in January nineteen ninety-nine. And I realized, the reason I was broke, when I read that book, I realized I was broke because I didn't have any assets. So I said, okay, I'm gonna start focusing on my assets. I had some assets, but not, I, I had this little network marketing income from this little network marketing business I was doing. And then I was a traveling evangelist, so I had my income when churches would give me an offering.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  And then I had my tape ministry where I'd have my sermons on recording and I would sell them for five dollars at the end of the services. So, so, so what happened was, I didn't have a goal, I just, this church invited me to come speak. And they wanted me to come speak for, like, from Sunday through Wednesday. And so I came and spoke Sunday through Wednesday. And when I got done, they gave me a few thousand dollar honorarium. That week, I made twenty-one hundred dollars from my network marketing company. And I sold twenty-one, I sold twenty-one hundred dollars worth of tapes. But when I did that, you gotta understand, in nineteen ninety-eight, I only made forty-eight thousand dollars. So that's an average of four thousand a month. And I made sixty-two hundred dollars in one week, simply because I shifted my focus

• 28:39Speaker 00

  to acquiring assets and building assets. Now here's what happened next. As soon as I made sixty, I said, I made sixty-two hundred dollars this week. First thing I said was, wow. And I said it backwards, I said, wow.

• 28:50Lewis Howes?

  You're like, now how do I do this again?

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Exactly. Well, before I even said how I do this again, I said, that was so easy.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  And then somehow or another, I had this idea, this thought, that must mean it's easier to make a lot of money in a short period of time than just make a little money over a long period of time. As soon as I said that, I said it out loud, I said,

• 29:10Speaker 00

  From now on, for the rest of my life, I'm gonna ignore all the hard ways to make a little bit of money. And I'm only gonna focus on the easy ways to make a lot. That shift changed my life. By July of that same year, I made eight thousand dollars in one day in the stock market.

• 29:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Just because I decided to believe that it's easier to make a lot of money in a short period of time than it is to make a little money over a long period of time. And so even though, even though financially, since that time, I've been broke. I was aware of the fact that it's easier to make a lot of money in a short period of time than it is to make a little money over a long period of time.

• 29:47Lewis Howes?

  So after that moment, you had a new belief, you still became broke later, is what I'm hearing.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Like, I, I made millions of dollars and became broke later.

• 29:55Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had a whole series of situations that started in two thousand and seven. My oldest son was in a car accident and he passed away four days later. Most devastating, surreal, painful, unbelievable, even to this day, experience of my life.

• 30:11Lewis Howes?

  How old was he?

• 30:12Speaker 00

  He was twenty.

• 30:13Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, it was, um, yeah, he passed away four days later. The next year, and, and, and not to brush over that, but that was, that, that'll let a whole lot of wind out of your sails.

• 30:25Lewis Howes?

  Your whole life, yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Right, exactly. Even to this day, the most difficult thing I've ever gone through in my life. By far. By leaps and bounds.

• 30:33Lewis Howes?

  Before you go on, what was the greatest lesson that taught you about life? Losing your son in that way, what was the greatest lesson that season taught you?

• 30:42Speaker 00

  It showed me how much God loves me.

• 30:43Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:44Lewis Howes?

  How so?

• 30:45Speaker 00

  As a, as a man, like a real man, you wanna protect your family, you wanna provide for your family.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  And I had money, I had lots of money. My money couldn't help me. And I'm sitting in the hospital room, watching my son take his last breath.

• 31:01Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  And as hard as that was, you know what was harder? Watching my wife and my other son and my daughter, watch my wife's son and my other two children's brother, watching them watch their brother die, watching my wife watch her son die, and there's nothing I could do about it. And I would have done anything, I would have done anything, including trade places with him, if I would have had the opportunity. You say, well, how does that show you the love of God? Because God watched his son die for me. And he could have done something about it, but he didn't. And that made me hyper aware of a kind of love and a level of love that I have no ability to understand.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  But all the ability in the world to appreciate.

• 31:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  So that's the greatest lesson I learned.

• 31:43Lewis Howes?

  When did you learn to, I guess, appreciate or have awareness around the, the loss to where you could actually feel love rather than anger, upset, or any other emotion? Because I don't know if that happened right away for you. I'm assuming.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  No, that was, that's what I had realized when I was sitting there in that hospital room, watching, experiencing this. That was my, that was what I was thinking about.

• 32:07Lewis Howes?

  God loves you.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  God loves me more than I can ever fathom.

• 32:12Lewis Howes?

  How did you even get to that? I don't know if anyone could really think about that in that moment of like my son.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  I couldn't think about anything else.

• 32:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 32:19Speaker 00

  I couldn't think about anything else. Now, you got to understand, though. I came to Christ when I was 16 years old. I started reading the Bible when I was 16, the King James Version. Started reading Bible when I was 16. Started studying it when I was 20. And I had a very acute awareness already at that time that spirituality, that the invisible realm is the real realm, and that the physical realm is just a manifestation of that realm. So I was like, that part of, that a level of awareness I already had. And there are some things, other things that, and my study that God had been showing me

• 32:55Speaker 00

  years leading up to that,

• 32:59Speaker 00

  that put me in a position where that was the conclusion that I came to. In fact, when my son died, as hard as it was, and it was like, I can't, it's, I can't, I can't describe how hard it was. But I wanted to make sure that I preached my son's funeral. Because I didn't want somebody else to mess up what it meant. Because everybody in my family was going to have to live with this conclusion for the rest of our lives. And I wanted to give them a God perspective. So I'd, see, most people believe in God kind of as a genie. Maybe, and you know, I get him, I'll pray and he'll do what I want him to do. And I'll read the Bible to appease him. I don't believe, God is my king.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  He is sovereign. If he does something, it is the best thing that can be done, even if it's not the best feeling thing that can be done. If I can't trust him at that level, he's not really God. He, he's, he might be the God that I'm the God of, but I don't want a God that I'm God of.

• 34:02Lewis Howes?

  I mean, how can someone listening right now, when they see that there's wars or injustice, believe that if they're like, okay, all these people are dying around the world, these wars, these challenges, how can I believe that this is the best thing from God?

• 34:14Speaker 00

  I'm gonna give you two answers. How can I believe that water's wet? It doesn't matter if I believe it or not, it's wet. That's the, that's the first answer. Here's the second answer. If God cannot lie,

• 34:29Speaker 00

  and he is good, and he says he's good.

• 34:34Speaker 00

  If he, if I really believe that he is the God he says he is,

• 34:38Speaker 00

  then he's the one that's sovereign, not me. I can trust him even when I can't understand him. And I think here's the difference between me and anybody else you're gonna talk to, probably about God and about their faith. I'm not trying to get you to believe what I believe, believe it or don't believe it. But the belief that I have, oh, it's unshakable. God is sovereign. It's, it's so fascinating. I, I, I mean, I could give you a really long drawn out theological answer to the question you just answered, but the best answer is if God is really God, like the supreme being and the creator of everything, he can do pretty much whatever he wants to. When I was a kid, I used to build model cars.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  I don't know if you ever did that or not, but I used to build model cars. We didn't have the internet. Okay, but guess what else I would do? I'd take him in the basement and blow him up with firecrackers. Right? Why, well, why would you do that? You just spend all that time? I don't know. I wanted, I wanted to see what was gonna happen. I'm not saying God wants to see what's gonna happen. I'm just saying, but God is God. If, if he, if he is really God and he really owns everything, then when he wants me to know why it's working the way it's working, when he knows, when he believes it's time for me to find out, then I'll find out.

• 35:51Lewis Howes?

  You'll find out. There's something you've said, or the word you've said multiple times in the last few minutes.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 35:57Lewis Howes?

  Um, and your, part of your team was asking me some questions before you got in here and we were chatting. And one of the questions they said, you know, you've interviewed all these people, all these experts over the years. Like, what's the one thing maybe they don't say in the interviews that you've noticed? That makes them, you know, accomplish and be great and achieve what they achieve. And right away, I just said belief, you know.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  One hundred percent.

• 36:19Lewis Howes?

  Belief, and this is something you've said over and over now, is like this belief. I believe it's possible to make more money with less work. I believe in this. I believe you can make more in less time. Once you shifted belief.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:33Lewis Howes?

  Then you had to see how you could do it.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you can decide to believe. I decided to believe it's easier to make a lot of money in a short period.

• 36:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And so, how did you get to a place of belief?

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Great question.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  When you're working as a garbage man, when you're struggling, when you've got, you know, you got polio and you got, yeah, a leg that doesn't work. When you've got all you, I think you were born in a segregation hospital.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Segregated hospital, yeah.

• 37:01Lewis Howes?

  Like when all these things are against you.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  But are they?

• 37:05Lewis Howes?

  Well, when they perceived to be against you.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 37:07Lewis Howes?

  When you could tell a story to yourself that this was against me. Look how hard this is. Look at this challenge. Look at, I'm only making six fifty an hour. I'm only.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  Six twenty-five, bro.

• 37:18Lewis Howes?

  Six twenty-five an hour. It's gonna be impossible.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  But thanks for the raise.

• 37:21Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly. But when you, when we, when we hold on to a story.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:25Lewis Howes?

  Of belief that things were against us, how do we shift it to believe they're actually for us?

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Right. You can decide to believe that everything that happens to you happens for you. You can decide to believe that. So.

• 37:36Lewis Howes?

  Whether it's true or not, you can just decide.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  You can decide to believe, yeah, it could be because people believe things that aren't true. That's right. Whether it's true or not, I happen to know it's true.

• 37:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  And I'll tell you why I know it's true. So, and I'll tell you how I developed the sense of certainty that I have over the sixty-four years of being on this planet. So, um, one is, I believe that the Bible is truth because when I started reading it, I, I thought I was gonna find religion and I found principles. And I found a lot of, in the coding world, we call if then go to statements, conditional promises, if this happens, then do this. And I started testing those if then go to statements when I was a kid. When I was 16 years old, I was testing them. I remember the very first one I tested, Proverbs 15:1. "A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger."

• 38:25Speaker 00

  And I remember doing something in particular to tick off my brother Mike. He was, he was hacked, he was hot. He came in guns blazing. "Man, I can't believe it." I was like, wow, man, you know what? You're right, I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. You know what? I'm not gonna let that happen again. Sorry I did that, it's not gonna. And he just kinda deflated and walked away. I was like, that was amazing. It worked. It worked, it worked. It did exactly what the Bible said it would do. Yeah. But there are literally hundreds of biblical principles like that that I've tested since I was 16 years old. I've never had one fail.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  You say, how do you believe that what happens to you is, happens against you? It's, it's interesting how if you read more and you write more, it gives you the ability to think more clearly, right? And so, there's a story in the Bible about this man named Joseph. And Joseph gets thrown into a pit. And then he gets taken out of the pit by some slave traders. He's sold into slavery in Egypt. His brothers threw him in the pit. His 11 old, his 10 older brothers threw him in the pit. So now, he's a slave for this man named Potiphar. Potiphar's wife tries to seduce him. This is like, this is like a really tragic situation. He's hundreds of miles away from home. He's a slave in somebody's house. The man's wife tries to seduce him. He doesn't yield to her. She grabs his shirt, snatches off his back, lies to her husband.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  He gets thrown in prison.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  His brothers go back and tell his father that, um, well, we think Joseph's dead because we found his coat, they really took it. They tore it to pieces, put goat's blood on it, sheep's blood on it. Took it back to, I don't know if this is your son's coat or not, but. And then his father thought he had died, right? And so, literally, over a decade, Joseph is down in Egypt, in Potiphar's house or in prison. Anyway, long story short, Joseph ascends because of his interpretation of a dream to become the prime minister of Egypt. Joseph brings his family to Egypt because there's a famine. He introduces his father to Pharaoh. His father, Pharaoh asks his father, "Sir, how old are you?"

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Jacob, because of all the things that happened to Joseph, he said, "Few and evil have been the years of the days of the life of my pilgrimage. I'm 138 years old." Few and evil? You just got reunited with your son? He's the prime minister of the country that saved you alive? And all you can focus on is all the stuff, the pain that you were in in the past? Now, Joseph had the same pain that Jacob had, only worse. It was his pain. When he named his two sons, you know what he named them? Ephraim and Manasseh. Do you know what those names mean? One of them means that God has made me to forget all of my trials and my labor in my father's house.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  The other name means God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. The very same thing that Jacob perceived happening to him, Joseph perceived as happening for him. And you always have a choice when you have an experience of life. Am I going to respond like Jacob? Or am I going to respond like Joseph? Like, you go to the gym, you work out, I can tell you have muscles, right? So you go to the gym. Why do you lift weights? It's hard.

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  It is hard. It keeps me healthy.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Right. So you lift weights, it's hard, it keeps you healthy. Why does it keep you healthy? Because it breaks your muscles down. But that's bad. It's breaking your muscles down, right? It breaks them down so they can build back up. So can you tell me of anything in life that gets better because it's easy?

• 41:53Lewis Howes?

  I don't know. I mean, just maybe that if you're having an easy moment, it feels good in that moment.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  Right, it feels good. But it doesn't make the next moment easy.

• 42:03Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  And so the fact that I was born in a segregated hospital because black people weren't allowed to be born in Tampa General. It's a painful thing for my parents, difficult. I contracted polio because the conditions at hospital were so bad. I've been walking with this brace on my leg my whole life. I had a leg stretch operation when I was 13 where they broke my tibia and my fibula and put these screws through my leg and put it on this rack and turn these knobs and stretch the bones and cut my Achilles tendon and all that other stuff. I've got a metal rod in my ankle right now when I played golf yesterday and walking up and down those hills when I got done yesterday, it was like throbbing. Oh, that's so terrible. It's not terrible. It's just painful. It's just difficult. Like, we, there's not a human being who's ever lived who can tell whether something is good or not, looking through the windshield, good or bad.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  We can only tell that looking through the rearview mirror. I'm not smart enough to know what's good. I'm smart enough to know it's painful, but I'm also smart enough to know that everything that's painful is not bad.

• 42:59Lewis Howes?

  What do you think this experience has provided you with?

• 43:04Speaker 00

  Having had polio?

• 43:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:06Lewis Howes?

  And having your, you know, leg broken and rods and all that stuff, that experience and living with that. Do you think you'd be where you're at today financially, spiritually?

• 43:17Speaker 00

  No galaxy.

• 43:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  No.

• 43:18Lewis Howes?

  Where do you think you'd be if that didn't happen?

• 43:21Speaker 00

  It depends. I'd probably be a professional athlete of some kind. I was very athletic, still am very athletic. I would have been very distracted by sports. And when I say distracted, I would have been focused on it, but all focus is a distraction and all distraction is focus, right? And so I would have been focused on a sport that would have maybe made me famous and maybe made me rich, but maybe I would have lost it by now, right? Like most professional athletes do. And so I believe that God in his sovereign wisdom ordained before the foundation of the world, that I would go through all of these experiences so my body would slow down, so my mind could speed up.

• 44:00Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 44:03Lewis Howes?

  But that's the, the, the belief you've created with this experience.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's the belief, I don't know if I've created it or if I discovered it.

• 44:12Lewis Howes?

  Either one. Yeah, yeah. It's the belief you've decided.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  I've definitely decided to believe that.

• 44:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because I can see it. Like, I can remember being a child because I wanted to run so bad. I couldn't run because my leg wouldn't, there are certain things it just doesn't do. Kind of most things that legs do. And I couldn't run, but I remember watching for hours, watching other people run to see if I could figure out how to make something that could help me run. Right? Because I always wanted to run. Because I always tell people I couldn't run, so I learned how to fight. So I couldn't run, but what it did is it caused me to be hyper observant.

• 44:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I know that feeling.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Right?

• 44:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Because when you can't do, you can observe.

• 44:55Lewis Howes?

  You watch.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 44:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I was the same way in school. I was, I was in the bottom of my class pretty much all through school. And I really lacked the skills to connect with people because I was just insecure that I'm not smart enough or funny enough. And so I just didn't really speak much. But I would just watch people speaking and observing them.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  And just watch their human dynamics, their behavior, and just be like, huh, why did that person laugh? Why did that person respond? Why did that person?

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 45:19Lewis Howes?

  Give that person a hug. I would just watch people all day long and observe. And I think that allowed me to have a different perspective of why people do certain things or why they say things.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  So good.

• 45:31Lewis Howes?

  And so that insecurity I had in me or that lack that I was facing allowed me to be more observant to see, okay, how can I have a friend? How can I connect with someone even though no one wants to connect with me?

• 45:43Speaker 00

  So good.

• 45:44Lewis Howes?

  And so it's a similar kind of dynamic.

• 45:46Speaker 00

  100%. Yeah. I, I mean, I, I remember going all the way through the seventh grade and only having one friend the whole year. So I can, I, I remember what that feels like.

• 45:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:56Lewis Howes?

  What is the biggest lie that you think people of faith have been taught about making money and creating wealth?

• 46:03Speaker 00

  The more money you make, it makes you more and more distant from God. And if you make too much money, you can't go to heaven.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:08Lewis Howes?

  Why do people believe that? Why is that?

• 46:10Speaker 00

  Well, because, because Satan is a master deceiver, right? And the best lies are the ones that seem like they're true. And so if you think about it, as, as, like when I read the Bible, I see that Satan deceived Eve by twisting God's words, not by giving her his own original words. The first temptation that Satan tempted Jesus with in the wilderness was a twisting of God's word. He quoted the, "Cast yourself down because in their, um, he shall give his angels charge concerning the in their hands." So he used the word of God to attempt to deceive Jesus. So he's gonna use the word of God to attempt Eve, who's never sinned before, she has no sin nature,

• 46:55Speaker 00

  and she falls for it, and he uses the word of God to tempt Jesus, he's not going to fall for it. Don't think he's not gonna use the Bible to deceive you. So, they believe that because of the fact that a lot of people who preach and teach the Bible have never learned how to study it properly. They've never learned the law first mentioned, they've never learned the law of context, they've never learned the law of definitions. And if you don't, if you don't apply those two laws, you're gonna, whatever you read, you're gonna come to an erroneous conclusion. Because you're not using the framework for understanding it that it was created for, to be interpreted. Right? If I, if I use a whole bunch of words, if I say, "Well, you know, I'm gonna promulgate my esoteric conjectations and articulate my superficial sentimentality with amicable and philosophical and psychological observations to beware of platonius ponerosities."

• 47:38Speaker 00

  If I said that to you, and you didn't know what those words mean, right? You're just like, "Uh, what?" Right? But that's how most people read the Bible. And so what they'll do is they'll take the surface inference and think that's an interpretation, it's not. So, there is a passage that says, for instance, for instance, this is one of the most misunderstood passages in the entire Bible. Jesus said about this rich young ruler, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Now-

• 48:04Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean? What does that mean, and how should we interpret that?

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Well, what it actually means, and you can't, first of all, I'm gonna say this. If you start the story with the rich young ruler, you cannot come to a proper interpretation.

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  You need the whole context.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  You need the whole context. And the context is, right before that happened, Jesus had got done speaking, and people were bringing his, bringing their children to him to have him bless them, and the disciples said, "Get those kids out of here." Jesus said, "Allow the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not." And then he said this, "For of such is the kingdom of heaven." So he said, bring the, let those little children come to me. So Jesus is giving an illustration of how salvation, biblical salvation works. Let the little children come into me. So what does a child do to provide for itself?

• 48:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  It's a child to provide.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  It cries, yes, sir.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  But does it earn money? It's crying.

• 48:52Lewis Howes?

  No, to provide now, it doesn't make any money.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  Can't provide for it, can't provide housing, food? In order for a child to survive, it has to be 100% dependent on someone other than itself for its survival.

• 49:03Lewis Howes?

  Unless there's a child star in Hollywood here and they're making money, but yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, but still they gotta, they can't walk, they can't feed themselves. If it's a baby, right. You see what I'm saying?

• 49:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  So, okay, great. So, right after that happens, he blesses the children. It says, and it came to him, this rich young ruler. And he says to Jesus, he asked him this question. Good master, what good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? He said, good master, what good thing shall I do? And Jesus said, why are you calling me good? Jesus wasn't asking him, why are you calling me good? Because he wasn't good. He was asking me, why are you calling me good? Because you're saying, good master, what good thing shall I do? Jesus was saying, if you believe I'm good, then you don't need to be good. And if you believe you're good, you don't need me because I am good. So is it gonna be you or is it gonna be me? And then he said, but if you wanna know which commandments, which by the way, Jesus knew he couldn't keep the, the kid couldn't keep the commandments.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  The young man couldn't keep the commandments. He said, but if you wanna be, if you wanna be, um, enter into life, uh, keep the commandments. He was giving the young man an opportunity to say, I've tried to keep the commandments and I can't. Because that's the real answer for everybody who's ever lived. The real answer is, I've tried to keep the commandments, but I can't. But the young man doesn't do that. He tries to play Jesus and he says, well, which ones? And Jesus named a bunch of them that he knew the guy hadn't broken. And then he named one that was evident to everybody around that the man was breaking all day long.

• 50:26Lewis Howes?

  Which were?

• 50:27Speaker 00

  He said, thou shalt not commit murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit, bear false witness, thou shalt not commit adultery, honor thy father and thy mother. And then he says this, love your neighbor as yourself. The young man says, all these I have kept from my youth up, what lack I yet? Oh, you've kept all of them, have you? Really? That's interesting. You love your neighbor like you love yourself. I can tell by the shoes you're wearing, you love yourself. I can tell by the robe you're wearing, you love yourself. I can tell by the chariot you rolled up in that you love yourself. You love your neighbor as you love yourself? Okay, if you're gonna lie to me, let's put it to the test. Go sell everything you have, give it to the poor and come and follow me.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  And the young man went away sorrowful because he had great possessions. So he didn't love his neighbor as he loved himself, because if he did, he would have been willing to do that. And then Jesus said, hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now, the word rich that Jesus used there is the word pluseo in Greek, which means figuratively rich. This man was rich in self righteousness. Which means he was not willing to receive the righteousness of Christ. Not it's and the reason I know this is true, because I studied the Bible and I study all the, I do word studies. The only other place that word pluseo is used in the New Testament is in 2 Corinthians, chapter eight, verse number nine, where it says,

• 51:46Speaker 00

  and you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, pluseos, rich in righteousness, yet for your sakes he became poor, he became sin, that you through his righteousness might be rich. So it's the exact same context and the exact same definition. And then when Jesus said, um, in fact, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. His disciples were confused. It literally says they were bewildered. Like, and then they said, well, who then can be saved? Well, why did they ask that question? Well, because David was rich. If, if he was talking about monetarily rich, Abraham is the first person the Bible says was rich. So Abraham couldn't get into heaven, David, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph,

• 52:28Speaker 00

  David, Solomon, their parents, them, they were businessmen. Well, who then can be saved? And then Jesus told them the answer with man, it is impossible. What's impossible? Salvation through self righteousness is impossible. But then it says, but with God, all things are possible.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  So that's the interpretation of how the passage actually reads and what it means.

• 52:51Lewis Howes?

  If someone listening or watching was once poor, maybe they didn't grow up with wealth, their family didn't have it.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  Or maybe they're poor now.

• 52:58Lewis Howes?

  Maybe they're poor now. But they all of a sudden start to apply the principles and generate wealth, but they don't know how to. Hold the wealth. They don't know how to manage the wealth. They don't know how, they've never experienced that level of wealth.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  Abundance and.

• 53:14Lewis Howes?

  And it's like, it's so unfamiliar. They want it, but then, oh, now I've got fifty grand in my bank. I've got a hundred grand. I've got a million.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 53:22Lewis Howes?

  And they don't know how to manage it.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 53:24Lewis Howes?

  Navigate it. They don't know how to perceive. Now everyone's saying, oh, give me money.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  Oh, oh, now you know how to make money, or you need to give more of it. And they have all these different things pulling at them. Their own insecurities.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  One hundred percent.

• 53:37Lewis Howes?

  They don't know how to hold it up. They don't know how to manage it. How do I spend it? Do I blow it? Do I hoard it?

• 53:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 53:42Lewis Howes?

  That's a fear of a lot of people also, that, that when I make money.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  I won't know what to do with it.

• 53:47Lewis Howes?

  I want to know what to do with it. People are gonna steal from me. People are gonna judge me.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:51Lewis Howes?

  How do you navigate that part of abundance of life?

• 53:54Speaker 00

  Well, a, a couple of things. You can't be free if you're worried about what people think about you. Like, real freedom is when you have nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to hide, nothing to prove. If you have, if you have those four things, you're free, whether you have money or not. You have nothing to hide. So if you have nothing to gain, if I have nothing to gain, here's what I mean by nothing to gain. When I am interacting with another person, I am never trying to get anything from them. That's nothing to gain. I, I didn't come on your show because I hope to gain access to your audience so I can sell more stuff. No, I like you, and I like the books you've written, and I like the podcast that you have. And you seem like a genuinely cool person. If something else happens for me, that's great, but that's not, like, I wanna do it because I wanna do it.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  I've got nothing to hide. I've got nothing to prove. I don't need somebody to believe something about me because the ultimate identity already believes something about me. God believes that I'm worthy of life because I'm still here. I'm worthy of his blessings because I'm blessed. I have, I have health. I have a family. I have people that love me. I have people that I love. And so I have nothing to, I have nothing to gain. I have nothing to prove. I have nothing to hide. I'm not doing some sneaky, underhanded thing in the shadows, and I hope nobody find out, find out about it. And I've got nothing to lose, because I'm just a steward, and it's not mine anyway. So, how does a person, so that's, you can't be free if you're worried about, oh, man, but now I have this money. What if I lose it? Well, I can't really lose, I mean, I could lose.

• 55:27Speaker 00

  If I, if, if something happened and I no longer had money, that's okay. Why? Because knowledge is better than gold.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  And you can take my money, but you can't take my knowledge. You can't take my skill set. You can't take my mindset. You can't take my toolset. You can take my assets.

• 55:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  But I can go build them again. And, and so it's wise to have a level of caution walking into any new arena, including wealth. But what you want to do is you want to hire people who are smart, where you're not, where you're strong, where you're weak. I have a CPA. I have a, I have a tax strategist. I have, I have a attorney that set up all of my financial stuff. Like, I, I'm, I don't want to, I don't even want to be good at those things.

• 56:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  Right? So you, you, you, you compensate for your weaknesses with automation and delegation.

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  When you were working as a trash man for many years, what was the inner dialogue that you were thinking while you were working? Cause I think you were listening to personal development tapes.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  I was.

• 56:23Lewis Howes?

  You were, so you were listening to things. You were hearing different perspectives. You were trying to develop your mind. But what was the inner dialogue? Because I'm assuming being a trash man is not where you wanted to be in the future. You're not thinking, I hope I'm here forever.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  Right. In fact, when I was working for the trash company, my, the, the general manager, they would always see me on my break, like if it was break time or I was just getting there, waiting for the mechanic to finish fixing my truck. They'd see me reading books. What are you reading? Oh, I'm reading The Greatest Salesman in the World. Why are you reading that? You're a trash man. No, trash, I'm, I'm a trash man, but I'm not going to be a trash man forever. I'm learning how to like, I have a business. I'm learning how to do stuff. And so my inner dialogue, my inner dialogue has always been strong. And I think that's a result of my parents. Because I had polio, they really overcompensated with me, telling me I can do anything I want to do and be anything I want to be.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 57:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:13Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, uh, I.

• 57:15Lewis Howes?

  That's wealth.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  That's wealth beyond measure, right? I've got six brothers, one older brother, five younger brothers. And my parents were amazing because like all seven of us were adults and we all get along. We enjoy spending time with each other. Right? Because my parents wouldn't allow us in their presence to fight and argue with each other. And one of the things that my parents taught us, when you're out there in the streets, if your brother's in a fight, you better be in a fight with him.

• 57:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  So we learned team dynamic in our family.

• 57:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:47Lewis Howes?

  It was like a sport.

• 57:48Speaker 00

  It was.

• 57:49Lewis Howes?

  You're a professional athlete in your family.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  In our family dynamics, for sure.

• 57:54Lewis Howes?

  Looking back then, what was the hardest part of growing up?

• 57:57Speaker 00

  The hardest part of growing up, there was a lot of hard parts of growing up. Like lots and lots. I wasn't good in school. In fact, I did really well in school all the way through the third grade. And it went downhill from there. Because I didn't like it. It was boring. In third grade, I was like, why are we still doing this? And I became disinterested in the third grade. So that's one. My dad, who was a wonderful, great man, had an alcohol problem, which created a lot of challenges for us. But a lot of great, a lot of great opportunities in those challenges. Like learning how to manage the delicate interaction of adults when you're a child. To keep from doing something.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  That like.

• 58:41Lewis Howes?

  Gets them angry.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  Obsess the apple cart. Yeah. Okay, so you do that. So that was difficult. The fact that we moved around a lot. So you had to get used to a new school. I think I went to nine different schools. Growing up. So that was difficult. But all of those difficult things were such an absolute vital part of everything that I do now. Like everything that I do and everything that I am, such a vital part. Like if God gave me an opportunity to do a do-over without any of those challenges, I would say, nah. I mean, if you want to give me a do-over and I get to do the whole thing again. And knowing what I know now, I'd love to do that. But even not knowing, I wouldn't, like, I wouldn't want a different do-over. I wouldn't want to go and have a do-over and have a life of Myron without polio.

• 59:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 59:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 59:26Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Because then I'd end up something other than what I am. And I love, I love who God has turned me into. I love being me. I love getting to be Myron Golden. It's, and that may sound arrogant. I don't mean it like that. Like, because I realize that anything good about me is not because of me, it's a gift. Even, yeah, and people would say, yeah, it was, it's because of you, because you worked hard. Yeah, but even the ability to work hard and the inclination to work hard is a gift.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  And so if I have, if I look at everything good about me as a gift, it gives me everything to be thankful for and nothing to be proud of. And now I can treat other people with respect and honor, even people who may not act out of respectability because maybe they didn't receive all the gifts I received. And if they had, maybe they would have done more with them than I have. You see, there's always a perspective that can help you become a better and more fulfilled person, I think.

• 1:00:32Lewis Howes?

  When someone in your, in, in life now crosses a boundary of yours or does something

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  It's really hard to do, but okay.

• 1:00:42Lewis Howes?

  Or someone that tries to lie to you or steal from you or hurt you in some ways, or you know, they want to inflict pain in some way, whether financially or whatever.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:00:52Lewis Howes?

  How do you interpret that? How do you respond to that? What do you, do you ever?

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  It depends on who they are.

• 1:00:56Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  And what my relationship is with them.

• 1:00:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  If somebody does something dishonest and they work for me, and if it's, if it's like, like really dishonest, I'm probably gonna fire them.

• 1:01:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  Right? But I'll still be friends with them.

• 1:01:08Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  And by friends with them, if they need help, I'd help them.

• 1:01:12Lewis Howes?

  Even if they intentionally tried to harm you? Or if they, they stole from you or they lied?

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  No, no, okay. So now we're talking about a different.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  They stole money from you and then they lied.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  So I can think of somebody right now. So there are other influencers, we'll call them that for lack of a better word.

• 1:01:26Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  Who I've done business with, who've not done the right thing. And I don't put them on, I don't put them on full blast. But if somebody asks me about them.

• 1:01:34Lewis Howes?

  You let them know.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  I'll let them know.

• 1:01:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  But I would never say anything about that influencer behind their back that I wouldn't say to their face, or that I haven't said to their face.

• 1:01:43Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  I've, I've had, I remember one guy's like, "You're a pathological liar, but you knew you were a pathological liar, and I know you're a pathological liar. You're telling people that I'm not honest. Well, I'm telling them you're not honest because you're not honest."

• 1:01:54Lewis Howes?

  And I'm telling you to your face too.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm telling you to your face. I wouldn't say anything to them. I won't say to you.

• 1:01:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  Right? So, so I don't, I don't have any problems confronting people. I don't like to fight, but I don't mind. Right? Right? Like, I would rather have a great, and maintain a great relationship with it. And, and even if I have a friend who's doing something that is a little off for how I perceive them, I'd go to him and say, you know, I'm I I I don't have any judgment for you, but I'm really like dumbfounded.

• 1:02:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, confused. Why are you doing it?

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  Confused. Why are you? This is what you purport, but this is what you allow. Why? It doesn't match.

• 1:02:34Lewis Howes?

  It's funny because I have a. If you've been in this kind of online world for a long time, I've been since two thousand eight, two thousand nine is when I kind of got into it. So eighteen plus years. I've seen every, I've seen a lot of people. I've worked with a lot of people. I've been in masterminds. I've been on stages. I've interviewed a lot of people and you just. You know, I have. So I have other friends who are kind of like up and coming and they're like, hey, this person reached out to me and I'm like. Uh, just call me and they're like, you know, they'll text me, what do you think about this person? I go, uh, call me and they're like, okay, I'm not to not to work with. It's like, all right, there's something here. You know, I'm like, I'm not gonna put this in text, but um. You just want to make sure you're aligning yourself and you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna try to trust people you think are good.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  Anybody can be honest.

• 1:03:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Right? And if you tell somebody you're gonna do something, even if it costs you time, effort, energy and money, do it.

• 1:03:23Lewis Howes?

  Do it. Or don't commit to it.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  Or don't commit to it. Yeah, just say no.

• 1:03:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, no is a complete, is a complete sentence.

• 1:03:30Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, in your mind, how are people actually? Blocking abundance and staying broke without even realizing they're doing it?

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  A lot of ways, but probably the primary way is.

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  People, people believe more in their lie identity than they do in their identity.

• 1:03:47Lewis Howes?

  Lie identity?

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Lie identity.

• 1:03:48Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  What is a lie identity? A lie identity is all the things, all the people, all your life told you you are not. You're not smart enough. You're not tall enough. You're not athletic enough. You're not. Handsome enough, pretty enough, don't dance well enough, can't sing well enough, you're, you don't talk good enough. So they are more in tune with who they aren't than they are with who they are. Right? That's the biggest one. Because everything in life pours out of identity. The very first success principle in the history of the world is this. It came straight from God. First thing God ever said to man is what he said, be fruitful. The word fruit, fruit, a fruit is a living organism who's seeded in itself. So when God said be fruitful, he's saying you produce on the outside of you based on what I play, the creativity I played on the inside of you.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  Be fruitful. Then he said multiply. Multiply is not a be. Multiply is a do. Do multiply. What does multiply mean? It means increase. Do replenish. What's replenish mean? It means filthy earth. Why? Because you're multiplying. And then subdue it. Subdue is also a do. What's subdued means? Subdued means a trample. It seems to not fit. But God is showing us that disruption always follows intention. When you decide to do something new that's good, the first thing that shows up is something difficult and painful. You decide to start working out and you haven't worked out in a while? You don't feel stronger first, you feel weaker. It hurts. It doesn't feel good first, it feels bad first, right? So disruption always follows intention. It doesn't matter what the thing is. Okay, so that's the next thing. And then he said, and have dominion.

• 1:05:11Speaker 00

  Dominion means authority over. So here's the first success principle in the history of the world. You ready? Be, do, have. Don't be, can't do, can't do, can't have. Watch this. It gets better. Be a little, do a little, do a little, have a little. But everybody can get excited now. If you'll be a lot, you can do a lot. If you'll do a lot, you can have a lot. Because everything that you have is the result of what you have done.

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  And everything that you will have is the result of what you will do. And everything you will do is the result of who you are becoming right now.

• 1:05:50Lewis Howes?

  That's so powerful. That's so funny because kind of emotional intelligence 101 is be, do, have, not if I have something, then I'll be happy.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  And that's what most people believe. They believe, well, if I had this thing, then I could do X, Y, and Z, and then I'd be, no, no, no. You got it exactly. Here's what's really interesting. Being speaks to my identity.

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  Right? Who I am. Doing speaks to my activity. All of our activity flows out of our identity. But having speaks to our property. Do you realize there is everybody who's alive and has ever been alive? There is a capacity gap. There's a gap in their capacity between who they are and who they could be. Between what they're doing and what they could be doing, and between what they have and what they could have. It doesn't matter how much you have and who you are and what you're doing. Elon Musk has a capacity gap in his be, do, have. So the question is, how can I fill up this capacity gap? Right? So I fill up the capacity gap

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  in my in my being. It's like, how do I become? More than I've been being.

• 1:06:54Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. How do you do it? With where you're at in your life, you know, you've got a lot of success, accomplishments, impact, service as well.

• 1:07:02Speaker 00

  But do I have as much as I could have? Absolutely not, not even close.

• 1:07:06Lewis Howes?

  Do you need more?

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  I don't need more, but does, do the people I serve need me to be more? That's a better question. Cause you gotta put me here by myself, but not for myself.

• 1:07:15Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. But what's missing for you then? What's in the gap from?

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  Nothing's missing, but there's a gap. Here's what, a gap doesn't mean something's missing. A gap just means there's room for more. That's what the gap means. And so how do I fill the gap? I fill the gap with intentionality. The, the, the, I believe that one of the number one common denominators in all successful people is they hyper-focus on intention and ignore distraction. Like it's the plague. And by the way, by intention and distraction, I'm going to define both words. By intention, I mean anything that I focus on that moves the needle in my favor. By distraction, I mean anything I focus on that doesn't move the needle in my favor.

• 1:07:50Lewis Howes?

  That's funny. Yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:07:52Lewis Howes?

  I was, I was telling your team, not to cut you off, I was telling your team beforehand. I was like, they're saying the same thing because, you know, belief is one thing, but then you could also believe you can do anything. And the distraction of, I know you have lots of money-making opportunities just because I can start a toothbrush company.

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  Doesn't mean I should.

• 1:08:10Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't mean I should, just because I can create a, a nail salon and do well at probably.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:14Lewis Howes?

  Is that really my purpose or what's meant for me?

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:08:17Lewis Howes?

  It's not, just because there's money there, it doesn't mean I should spend time doing it.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  1,000%.

• 1:08:20Lewis Howes?

  And it's gonna pull me away from the bigger intention, the bigger purpose, the bigger mission that I can uniquely serve.

• 1:08:26Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's your hyper-intentionality that makes you, that continues to fill that gap.

• 1:08:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes. What is the gap for you then, from where you are to what is possible at the next level?

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I think, I think it's always who and how many. And what I mean by that is who am I serving and how many of those people am I serving? That's really the question. Because fulfillment, fulfillment comes from three things. Fulfillment comes from creation. I have to create something. God planted a different aspect of his creativity inside of all of us. But if I create something. And I don't have anybody to enjoy it with, then it feels empty. Yeah. People who create something, that's why you have people who build multi-billion dollar companies and they're miserable. Because they they alienated themselves from their families and they're disconnected from the people that were put in their life for connection. So you create, then you connect because your connection gives you somebody to appreciate your creation with. Yeah. And then the last one is contribution.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  I don't contribute to justify my creation or justify the wealth that comes from my creation. I contribute because I can and contributing makes me a better person. I contribute because I believe there is no lack and there is no limitation. I contribute because it doesn't cost me anything to contribute. Even though I'm spending money, I don't have an infinite amount of money, but I have an infinite amount of access to all the money I ever want to make. Like, we ate breakfast a little while ago, right around the corner at this little place called Eat. I don't know if you've ever eaten there. Eat? Yeah. I'm over there. So good. Oh wait, no, I know which one it is. Yeah, yeah. The food's great, the service is great. So anyway. I've been there, yep. Okay, so I went around it and so the bill was for me and my, um, some people in my team and my granddaughter was with us as well. And so it was four, there were four of us and it came to eighty nine dollars.

• 1:10:05Speaker 00

  And so I pulled out my American Express and said, ah, we don't take American Express. Okay, cool. So I took out some cash. Yeah. And so I gave her a hundred dollar bill. I said, here, okay, well, let me give you some and you keep the change, but here, here's some more change. And I gave her a twenty dollar bill. She said, you want me to keep the whole thing? Well, yeah, I want you to keep the whole thing. And that thirty dollar tip on a ninety dollar meal probably made her day. I'll probably never think about it again in my life. I won't miss it at all. Right. And so, so the contribution, I, I think, I think one of the, um, Professor Arthur Brooks at Harvard University. Yeah, he's been on the show, yeah. Okay. Great. Brilliant guy, bro. I love that. I love that dude. Anyway, he talks about real friends and deal friends. Uh huh. Right, right?

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  And so we all need more real friends, but we think we need more deal friends, right? And when you contribute to somebody that can't give you anything in return, we all need those kinds of contributions. Yes. And so I talked about the capacity gap in our identity, but I didn't talk about the capacity gap in our activity. Like, how do you fill the capacity gap in your activity? You only got twenty four hours in a day. That's right. So what do you do? So what do you do? You do it through ingenuity. What's ingenuity? You find a more efficient approach. Mm hmm. We live

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  in the most amazing time in human history. Exactly. AI, AI agents. Like, what? We used to have to have automation as one thing and delegation as another thing. Now we have automation that can be delegation and they have both. And the people that we delegate can have automation and delegate. It's like we literally have the ability to compound our results at levels that right now we can't even imagine. Right? So we find a new approach. And then lastly, we increase our property gap with intensity. And what I mean by intensity. Focus is that. Increasing the velocity of our investing. For me,

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  the reason I hyper focus on investing is because one of my desires is to never, ever, ever, ever, ever, again, in my family's genealogy from me forward, to ever have anybody who starts from scratch. So I'm, I'm intentionally investing the wealth for my granddaughter and her children and their children and their children. So when they start, they start with a foundation. And I know people believe that if you, if you have money and you raise your children in a wealthy, abundant experience, that'll ruin them. That's not what ruins them. What ruins them is not teaching them. Mm hmm. While you're raising them and giving them money. Yes. Right? Give them opportunities to learn, earn money.

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  My daughter is a brilliant, brilliant business person. My son's a brilliant, brilliant business person. They're brilliant in their own right. They're, they're brilliant. They're both more brilliant than I am in so many ways. They can do stuff I don't have any idea how to do. But it's because when they were kids, I didn't give them money. I heard one of my kids say one time, we're rich. I said, y'all ain't rich. I'm rich. Me and your mom are rich. Y'all ain't rich. Y'all just are privileged to live with two rich people. Yeah. Right? But the fact that we, I gave them opportunities and you know what? You know, you, you haven't experienced this yet because your children are still young. But like from age 14 to about 28, you become an idiot. Like you won't know anything. They will think you are the biggest dodo head that they've ever met.

• 1:13:33Lewis Howes?

  You're the smartest guy ever, and then you're the biggest idiot.

• 1:13:35Speaker 00

  And then you become the biggest idiot. And then when they turn 28, you're the smartest guy ever again. You even become smarter than people who they used to use to make you feel like you're an idiot. Right? And it's mind blowing that my kids, my son or my daughter, neither one of them wanted to work with me for a while. They wanted to go do their own thing. I'm like, hey, go do your own thing. And then they both came and started working with a business and the business started growing even more. And now they're, I mean, they have their own stuff, but they also work in the business and, and our family business. And it's just, it's an amazing thing. It's a family business is an amazing thing.

• 1:14:06Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. If you've taught them the right way.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  If you taught them the right way.

• 1:14:09Lewis Howes?

  If they're greedy and if they're this.

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  Right, yeah. Yeah. And my, both my son and my daughter are very frugal and very smart, very smart with their money.

• 1:14:16Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:14:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:17Lewis Howes?

  What is the specific identity that most people need to let go of or allow to die before they can step into true abundance or wealth?

• 1:14:24Speaker 00

  Anything that takes God's name in vain. I bet you weren't expecting that answer, were you?

• 1:14:28Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 1:14:29Speaker 00

  Right. So what does that mean? So, so what does vain mean? It means empty. It means waste. Moses asked God when he told, God told him to go to Pharaoh and tell him, I said, let my people go. He said, who shall I say has sent me? God said, tell him that I am that I, I am that I am has sent thee. What does that mean? Okay. Every time you say, I am not, I'm not smart. I'm not rich.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  I'm not good enough.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  I'm not talented. Every time you emphasize your I am nots.

• 1:15:06Speaker 00

  You're taking God's name in vain because you're taking, because you're saying, I am. Think about it. Think about I am. I am, is that a past, present, or future statement? I am.

• 1:15:15Lewis Howes?

  It's a now.

• 1:15:16Speaker 00

  That's a present. That's a now. Okay, cool. Just wanted to make sure we're on the same page.

• 1:15:19Lewis Howes?

  It's in this moment.

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  It's in this moment.

• 1:15:21Lewis Howes?

  It's your being.

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  It's exactly, it's your being this. So here's what's really fascinating.

• 1:15:25Lewis Howes?

  I was.

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:15:26Lewis Howes?

  Experiencing this is different.

• 1:15:27Speaker 00

  And I'm going to, but that's not the same thing as I am. Okay, so watch this.

• 1:15:33Speaker 00

  In the realm of time, we don't really have the ability to experience the present. Because as soon as I say now, it becomes then.

• 1:15:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it becomes the past.

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  Right, exactly. It becomes the past. That's what I mean. As soon as I say now, it becomes then. So it doesn't matter how fast I say now, it turns into then. Right, right. Soon as the W gets out of my mouth, it becomes then. Okay, okay. But in eternity, there's no such thing as the past or the future. There's only the present. That's why God is the I am that I am, not the I was that I was, or the I will be that I will be. Because God is the forever I am, because he lives in the forever now, which is what eternity is. So every time you say, "I am not", you're taking your limitation of "not" and infusing it with the power of eternity. No wonder you're stuck.

• 1:16:20Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. So how does someone learn how to remove the belief that I am not good at something, or I am not beautiful, or I'm not talented, I'm not smart? How do they, when all they see and feel and experience and know around them is that they are not? Like their environment, their friends, their situation is reminding them they are lacking.

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  Well, if they're watching, if they're watching the show, they're already shifting.

• 1:16:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:16:43Speaker 00

  Right? Because they're becoming aware of the fact that there's more than they've been aware of in the past. You have exposure, like constant, intense, perpetual exposure to anything shapes you. People who perpetually watch the news are negative, because the news is perpetually negative.

• 1:17:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  I don't watch the news.

• 1:17:04Lewis Howes?

  I don't either.

• 1:17:06Speaker 00

  I don't, but I don't need to. People say, "Well, how will you know what's going on in the world? How will you know what's going on around the world?" Well, can I ask you a better question than how will I know what's going on in the world? If I can't fix what's going on in my world, what am I gonna do about the problems in the world?

• 1:17:21Lewis Howes?

  Amen.

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

  Yours, yours, people are so focused on stuff that's going on around the world, you can't even pay your light bill. Like, why would somebody listen to you about a world problem? So, that's question number one. But then again, like you said, somebody's gonna, we're surrounded by negative people. If something negative is going on in the world, we will find out about it. We are surrounded by people who are, who have a media nu- negative news umbilical cord. And it doesn't matter whether it's consistently negative news CNN, or sly as a Fox News, or always been critical news ABC. All, they're all bad. Why would I wanna fill my mind with problems like, people don't even understand how much of an energy suck that is.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  If I fill my mind with problems I can't solve, I don't have any energy left to solve the problems I can. And so, you don't realize, and if all I do is watch other people, if all I do is watch other people win vicariously. And like, we didn't, when I was broke, we, we didn't have a television. My daughter was sixteen, we got our first cable TV in our house. As a, why? Because I'm not gonna watch other people live their dreams while I'm living a nightmare. Why would I wanna watch somebody else win and I'm losing? That doesn't make any sense. I'm cheering for them, my team won. Your team does not know you exist. Right? My favorite movies on, it may be your favorite movie, but you're not their favorite person watching. They don't even know you exist. Like, it's a distraction. Most people anesthetize themselves

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  from their unwillingness to yield to becoming the person they can be by watching other people win.

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  It's not worth it.

• 1:18:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. For years, I didn't have a TV as well when I was like, just getting into the business world. And it's funny, cause my dad would never let us watch the news and he would always turn the commercials off. Or he would turn it on silence, so we couldn't hear the programming of commercials that were around medical problems, disease, like, and medication. Cause most of the commercials, probably, I don't know, forty, fifty percent are around healthcare.

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:19:21Lewis Howes?

  Medications.

• 1:19:21Speaker 00

  Right. Sick care that they call healthcare.

• 1:19:23Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And so, it's just always programming. If you have this, when you have this, look out for this symptom, and here's what this drug will do for you to help heal you. And my dad always turned it off, because he was like, it's just programming you.

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  Well, that's why they're called television programs, cause they program you. That's why it's called broadcasting. They're broadly casting a spell on everybody.

• 1:19:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And I think it's funny because I did an interview, I don't know, maybe eight years ago with a pretty big political figure. And and I normally don't do political figures, but we weren't talking about politics. It was more of a life story. And this person was actually running for president one day. And I was like, yeah, I don't watch the news and they got kind of upset at me. They were like, you're doing a disservice by not being aware of what's happening and not watching the news. It was very like almost a make wrong. I was kind of like, I can still get informed of what's happening in the world without watching fear based news.

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:20:16Lewis Howes?

  Or programming that is keeping me tied to the TV, being worried about my life.

• 1:20:21Speaker 00

  Right, exactly. It doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. You're like manufacturing anxiety.

• 1:20:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  Which is the anxieties, the thief of your dreams. Why would I want to manufacture anxiety when I can manufacture anticipation instead?

• 1:20:32Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. You can't be creative when you're living in fear necessarily, you know? It's so much harder. So I got a couple of final questions for you. This has been awesome.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  Do your thing, bro.

• 1:20:41Lewis Howes?

  If money is a byproduct of value.

• 1:20:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:20:45Lewis Howes?

  And offering value and providing value to someone.

• 1:20:47Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:20:48Lewis Howes?

  What do most entrepreneurs completely misunderstand about creating real value?

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  They create what's valuable to them instead of what's valuable to the marketplace. I would say if you're going to build a really successful business, it has to start out there. It can't start in here. You can't write the book you've always wanted to write. You have to write the book the marketplace has always wanted to read. You can't start the business and invent the product you've always wanted to invent. You have to invent the product that marketplace has always been screaming for.

• 1:21:09Lewis Howes?

  That people want.

• 1:21:09Speaker 00

  Want, exactly. The thing that people desire. The two things that that will make our life complete, I believe, pleasing God, serving people. You cannot lose in those two arenas.

• 1:21:20Lewis Howes?

  Not serving God and pleasing people?

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  No, definitely not.

• 1:21:23Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 1:21:23Speaker 00

  Because I was created to please God because he created everything to please him. And God created me for the purpose of serving other human beings. In fact, Jesus said to those religious leaders, he said, here's what you did. I was sick, you didn't visit me. I was in prison, I was sick, you didn't minister unto me. I was hungry, you didn't feed me. I was thirsty, you didn't give me anything to drink. I was in prison, you didn't visit me. They said, when did we see all these things? He said, inasmuch as you've done unto the least of these, people have nothing to offer you, you've done it also unto me. How you treat other people is how you treat God. Not because those other people are God, but he put them here for you to serve. And it doesn't matter if it's a cashier at a grocery store who's having a quote, "bad day."

• 1:22:08Speaker 00

  Or if it's a client, or if it's a family member, or if it's some stranger on the street, a homeless person who comes up to your window when you're stopped at a red light. Doesn't matter. I was put here to serve people and I need to discern, how am I supposed to serve this person at the highest level while I'm in their presence? So that they will know through me that God loves them. It's interesting, the queen of Sheba came to see Solomon.

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  And she asked him a bunch of hard questions because Solomon was a consultant to his contemporaries. So his, his business model in the Bible was mind blowing. And so she came to him, she paid him a whole lot of money, like in today's dollars, it would be like 732 million dollars. Yeah, it's crazy. And she was just one of many monarchs that paid him. And so when he got done answering all her questions, here's what she said. Because the Lord loved Israel forever, therefore he made you to be king over Israel. Am I willing to live the kind of life? That God can demonstrate his love to people through my existence? That's what I mean when I say serve people.

• 1:23:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And it doesn't necessarily mean for those watching, like if there's a homeless person on drugs coming up to you asking for money.

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  You don't have to give money.

• 1:23:24Lewis Howes?

  You don't have to do that.

• 1:23:24Speaker 00

  No, you don't have to do that. You can give them something, you can take them, I'll take you over there and buy you something to eat.

• 1:23:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  And sometimes if I'm in a hurry and I don't have time to take them to get something to eat, I'll give them money. Because I'm not, I don't know if they're on drugs or not. Maybe they're a disabled vet and they just not, they've not been able to get back on their feet. I don't know. But if I feel like I'm, if I feel led, like I'm, if I feel impressed that I should give this person some money, I'm gonna give them some money. And then I'll let how they used it shake out with them and God later. Like, but I gotta do the thing I was put here to do, and that is, please God, serve people.

• 1:23:58Lewis Howes?

  If you could only share three lessons on wealth, creation and abundance.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:24:04Lewis Howes?

  From all the lessons you know and all the wisdom and all the experience you have, three lessons on wealth, creation and abundance, what would those lessons be?

• 1:24:12Speaker 00

  I've already shared one, it's easier to make a lot of money in a short period of time than it is to make a little money over a long period of time. Like literally, I believe that deciding to believe that will, and then deciding to only look for and look at easier ways to make a lot will change your life. That's one. Two,

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  this blew my mind. I didn't discover this until 2022. Poor people and middle-class people feel like everything's expensive because they pay for things with money they've exchanged their time for. So they feel like they're paying for everything with their life because they are. Somebody makes a hundred thousand dollars a year, they buy a hundred thousand dollar car, they're asking themselves, is this car worth a year of my life? They buy a five hundred thousand dollar house, is this worth five years of my life, plus interest?

• 1:24:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:24:55Speaker 00

  Right. But wealthy, creative entrepreneurs, if you want to become wealthy, become a creative entrepreneur. Why? Because we don't pay for things with money we exchanged our time for. We pay for things according to our creativity. What does that mean? Notice I didn't say with my creativity, I didn't say from my creativity, I didn't say out of my creativity. Why didn't I say that? Because I paid for it with my creativity, from my creativity or out of my creativity, I would have less creativity after I paid for it than I had before I paid for it. But if I pay for it according to my creativity, I can use my creativity to pay for it and I have no less creativity after I'm done paying for it than I had before I paid for it. For instance, you know I used to be a trash man. So guess what I did? I wrote a book about my journey and how I went from being the trash man to now becoming the cash man. You know how long ago I wrote that book, Lewis?

• 1:25:40Lewis Howes?

  When?

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  Twenty years ago.

• 1:25:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:25:41Speaker 00

  You know what, you know that book that I worked, this is work I did twenty years ago.

• 1:25:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, still makes you money today.

• 1:25:48Speaker 00

  How much, you want to know how much money that book made me in the last year? Eighty-one thousand dollars from work I did. Twenty years ago. Just on the book sales, not on the potential. All the client stuff that's come from it. Okay, but I wrote another book in two, five years ago in twenty twenty one called Boss Moose. That book in the last year has made me a hundred and eighty six thousand dollars. So I've made over two hundred and sixty thousand dollars in the last year from work that's twenty and five years old. Why? Because I created an offer. See, here's what I mean. A wealthy person uses our, we use our creativity, we create an offer. Offer in that case was a book. The offer then pays for the thing. So if you're working, exchanging your time for money, you exchange the time, you get the money.

• 1:26:31Speaker 00

  You go buy the car, you don't have the time anymore, you don't have the money anymore. You only have the car. Eventually, the car becomes worth nothing, unless it's a classic, right? Okay, watch this. I go into my creativity.

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  I create an asset. I write a book.

• 1:26:47Speaker 00

  Do I still have the creativity after I write the book? Yes. I write the book, I sell a book, do I still have books to sell after I sell the book? Yes, so I still have the, I still have the creativity, I still have the book. I get the money. If I spend the money, I don't have the money anymore, but do I have another book to sell to replace the money? Yes. So the creativity never runs out, the asset never runs out, and the money never runs out because if you create the right kind of offer, it's what I call an S R A, a self replenishing asset. It's one of the greatest wealth lessons I've ever learned in my life. To me, it doesn't matter if I'm buying a pack of Tic Tacs, a pack of gum, or breakfast, or flying across the world on a private jet. It all costs the same amount. How, how can I say it all costs the same amount? Because I pay for all of it the same way. I pay for it according to my creativity. Anything that I buy, I create an offer to pay for it.

• 1:27:32Speaker 00

  And so I turn, I literally turn every expense into a profit center. I just bought a house. The house was two point four million dollars, which in California, it's a bungalow. In Tampa. It's a mansion. It's seventy some odd, seventy, seventy some odd hundred square feet. That's nice. Cool, yeah. And I, and I, and I like being at home. But guess what? I haven't started my golf YouTube channel yet, but I'm, I love golf. But I'm gonna start a golf YouTube channel. Some of it's gonna be simulator golf, some of it's gonna be golf course golf. I believe that golf channel will pay for that house. That's cool. So when I create an asset, so when I moved out of my old house, I didn't sell it. Why didn't you sell it? Well, because we have family coming to town. We have a big family. I want to have some place for them to stay, but it still needs to pay for itself.

• 1:28:17Speaker 00

  So we're going to put a podcast studio in it and my daughter and I are going to start a podcast. That's cool. You see what I'm saying? So you, I'm using my creativity. So that's the second one. Here's the last one. Here's the last principle.

• 1:28:29Speaker 00

  It's called Price's Law. Are you familiar with Price's Law? I heard Jordan Peterson talk about this. This blew my mind. Price's Law? Price's Law. Professor Richard Price discovered this principle that 50% of the production of any domain is produced by the square root of that domain, which sounds like a big scientific formula. Basically, what it means is if you have four tomato plants in a garden, two of the tomato plants will produce half the tomatoes. If you have four salespeople in a sales team, two of the salespeople will produce half of the sales. But if you increase the square root to three from two, because two is the square root of four, right? Two is the square root of four. But it's also half of four. If you increase the square root to three, if you have nine, three times three is nine. If you have nine tomato plants, half of the tomatoes are produced by three of the plants. If you have nine people in a sales team. Not half anymore. Not half anymore.

• 1:29:13Speaker 00

  Not half anymore. If you have nine, half is created by three. Half of the commissions are generated by three of the salespeople. If you have, let's say that 10 is the square root. 10 times 10 is 100. If you have 100 salespeople on a sales team, 10 of those salespeople will make half the sales, half the commissions. Yes. Is this similar to 80/20? It's similar, but it's very different because it shows you like 80/20 shows you that 20%, 80% of your results are produced by 20% of your efforts. This is showing you something totally different, but in a cool way. I shared this with Ben Hardy. It like, we became friends immediately, right? So if you go up to 10,000, you got a big insurance company, for instance, like New York Life.

• 1:29:55Speaker 00

  A hundred times 10,000. That can't be right. A hundred salespeople are producing half the sales. If Price's Law is true, that would have to be true. Okay, cool. I'm gonna prove it's true for the country. Are you ready?

• 1:30:06Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:30:07Speaker 00

  There are 30 million businesses in the United States of America. The square root of 30 million is 5,477, which means 5,477 businesses are producing half of the gross domestic product in the United States of America.

• 1:30:19Lewis Howes?

  Might be less. Who knows? You've got Apple and Google and, you know.

• 1:30:22Speaker 00

  You're picking up what went down.

• 1:30:23Lewis Howes?

  It's like.

• 1:30:24Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:30:26Speaker 00

  So what does, what does Price's Law show us? Here's what I believe it shows us. Two things. One, mediocrity scales exponentially.

• 1:30:37Speaker 00

  Excellence only scales incrementally.

• 1:30:40Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 1:30:41Speaker 00

  It means almost everybody is willing to do enough to be one of the mediocre many.

• 1:30:49Speaker 00

  But only a very small percentage of people are willing to be, do what it takes to be one of the fantastic few.

• 1:30:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:54Speaker 00

  That's what it means. Mediocrity scales exponentially. Why? Maybe because only a handful of people are willing to pay the price of Price's Law.

• 1:31:06Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 1:31:06Speaker 00

  To become one of the fantastic few.

• 1:31:07Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 1:31:08Speaker 00

  Isn't that mind blowing?

• 1:31:09Lewis Howes?

  That's true, man. That's interesting.

• 1:31:12Speaker 00

  I know, it blew my mind too.

• 1:31:16Lewis Howes?

  Based on that law then, what do you think separates people who make six figures? And only stay at a six figure level to those that break through that level to seven figures consistently, or even eight and beyond?

• 1:31:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Speaker 00

  That's easy. I, I think that one of the things that keeps people from 100,000 a month is 100,000 a year. One thing that keeps people from 500,000 a month is 100,000 a month. What do I mean by that? Like you get to the place you think, I'm, I'm there.

• 1:31:46Lewis Howes?

  I'm good. I made it.

• 1:31:47Speaker 00

  But I've got news for everybody. And this is a great financial principle. There is no there there. The journey is the there. And so if that's the case, if I've become, let's say a millionaire, or a multimillionaire, or a decamillionaire, a hectamillionaire. If I've become that. Am I, am I there? I'm not there because the whole purpose of me being is for me to be becoming. And so it's not necessarily all about the money. Robert Allen did me a favor. You know who Robert G. Allen is? Author of Multiple Streams of Income.

• 1:32:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:32:20Speaker 00

  Okay. Creating wealth. I was at one of his wealth retreats one time and he asked for a testimonial and I literally had one of his audio programs in my car for probably six years. It was called Infopraneering. I had it in my car for six years and I applied a lot of stuff and it helped me make a lot of money. And he asked for a testimony. It's like, I'm like, yeah. Um, I used to be a trash man making, I came up on stage, there's 700 people there. I used to be a trash man making, you know, $6.25 an hour. Now I make 30,000 a month. I'm living like a king. He said to me, wow, you're doing really good. Here's what he said to me. He said, you're about to have a breakthrough through the really big money. And I thought that my first thought was.

• 1:32:55Lewis Howes?

  Thirty grand is not, it's not a lot of money already.

• 1:32:57Speaker 00

  Right. I thought, did this guy just diss my 30,000 a month in front of 700 people? That was my first thought.

• 1:33:03Lewis Howes?

  From 6.25 an hour to 30 grand a month?

• 1:33:05Speaker 00

  Right. And then I thought, wait, there's a level where 30 grand a month is not a lot of money? Well, now I have a business where if it does 30,000 a day, it's not a big deal. Like, and I don't mean 30,000 in a day. I mean 30,000 a day, 365 days a year, that's not a big deal.

• 1:33:22Speaker 00

  But if Robert Allen wouldn't have said that to me, that expanded my thinking in ways that inspiring me couldn't. Say motivating me couldn't. He just said, yeah, you're about to have a breakthrough. You think, basically he said, you think you're doing good. You don't even know what good looks like.

• 1:33:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's interesting, I had, um, I had Grant Cardone on the show a few times back in the day. And I think he was at like, I don't know, 300 million in assets or 500 million or something. And I go, what's holding you back from a billion? And he kind of got like really frustrated. He's like, well, it's just not possible right now. And I was like, well, if it was possible, what would need to happen?

• 1:33:59Speaker 00

  Hmm, come on now.

• 1:34:00Lewis Howes?

  And he's like, ah, he just kind of getting frustrated. He was like, well, I'd have to do this and this and this, and I have to, all, all these things. And then a year later he comes back and he crossed that billion mark. And I go, why don't you have five billion? Like just.

• 1:34:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:34:14Lewis Howes?

  Not that you have to.

• 1:34:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:34:15Lewis Howes?

  But why not? What, what, what would it take?

• 1:34:16Speaker 00

  What's the difference?

• 1:34:17Lewis Howes?

  He goes, ah, it's just, well, now like a billion was, that was the number. Like five, it's like, come on, that, this is just too unrealistic now. It's like, it's not gonna happen. I go, but if it had to happen, if, what would need to happen in order for it to happen? And he got really frustrated this time.

• 1:34:32Lewis Howes?

  And then he said, you know what? Gosh dang it, Lewis, you know, you always do this to me. And then a year later, he came back and he was at five billion. And I'm not saying I'm the one who did this, but I was just allowing someone to think differently.

• 1:34:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you, if you challenge somebody.

• 1:34:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:47Speaker 00

  Who's a fighter.

• 1:34:48Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:49Speaker 00

  Right? If you challenge somebody who's a fighter, they're gonna go, they're gonna go prove it, they're gonna go figure it out.

• 1:34:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  Oh shit, you guys.

• 1:34:54Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, yeah. But it also, you know, and I think we all need someone to challenge us to just see a different possibility.

• 1:35:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:35:01Lewis Howes?

  Like, cool, what you've done is great.

• 1:35:02Speaker 00

  See past the horizons.

• 1:35:03Lewis Howes?

  And that means you have to make 10 times more to, to live a good life, you're living a good life.

• 1:35:07Speaker 00

  A good life.

• 1:35:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:08Speaker 00

  But, but if I could make 10 times more, why wouldn't I?

• 1:35:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And what would need to happen? Without you burning out, with you having more free time.

• 1:35:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:35:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and then the answer goes back to the same thing I said before, who and how many? The who I serve would have to be different. And how many of those who would be different?

• 1:35:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:23Speaker 00

  And, and most people think I'd need to serve more of a different people. It's actually that you need to serve fewer of a different kind of client.

• 1:35:30Lewis Howes?

  Give them greater value and charge them more.

• 1:35:32Speaker 00

  Give them greater value and charge them more. Or give more of the right ones of them greater value, charge them less. But give them, see, most people, most people, they, people say overdo, under promise and over deliver. I don't, I, I hate that, I hate that phrase, under promise.

• 1:35:48Lewis Howes?

  Just deliver.

• 1:35:48Speaker 00

  Just, how about this, promise big and deliver even bigger?

• 1:35:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:52Speaker 00

  How about that? Um, and most people, when they think of over delivering, what they mean is cramming a bunch of junk in there that's useless. So you become overwhelmed.

• 1:35:58Lewis Howes?

  Get them more results.

• 1:35:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:35:59Lewis Howes?

  Make it easier, better, faster.

• 1:36:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:02Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, exactly. That's powerful, man. What's a question you wish more people would ask you that they don't ask?

• 1:36:07Speaker 00

  You know what's really fascinating to me? Like, I have a lot of friends, like friend friends, like people that I love, that are friends of mine. And probably as many family members, my mom had like 11 siblings in her family, my dad had six in his family. Like, I've got a lot of cousins, I've got cousins I haven't even met, like first cousins. No, not first cousins, second cousins I haven't even met, okay, so, cool. I'm shocked.

• 1:36:30Lewis Howes?

  The people don't say, hey, Myron, you know, I'd like to do better financially. What do I need to do?

• 1:36:34Speaker 00

  I'd happily tell them. I don't know that they'd happily do it, but I'd happily tell them. It blows my mind.

• 1:36:40Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think people don't ask you that?

• 1:36:42Speaker 00

  It goes back to the very first thing we were talking about. They don't believe it's possible for them. They believe more in their I am nots than their I am. I am, you know, I'm, I'm not the kind of person who could become a millionaire.

• 1:36:52Lewis Howes?

  Really? What does that mean?

• 1:36:55Speaker 00

  If people would ask you, somebody like you, to help them.

• 1:36:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:58Speaker 00

  And you could.

• 1:36:59Lewis Howes?

  I'd do it.

• 1:36:59Speaker 00

  You'd do it. If somebody that I care about especially would ask me to help them and I could, of course I would do it. I, so, um, I, I, I, I don't know that I wish people, more people would ask me, but I'm fascinated that more people don't. Cause if I had known me when I was a trash man.

• 1:37:15Lewis Howes?

  You ask yourself every day.

• 1:37:16Speaker 00

  Bro, what about this? Cause because I was asking other wealthy friends of mine, I was asking David Mitchell, I was asking Ben Ginder, I was asking Tony Boiling. I was asking people that I got exposed to questions that had helped like break something free in my mind. That would help me see myself in their, in their shoes.

• 1:37:33Lewis Howes?

  And what's the thing you're most proud of that most people don't know about you? Maybe something you don't talk about or something that people aren't aware of.

• 1:37:42Speaker 00

  It would be way easier for me to tell you some, the thing I'm most thankful for than the thing I'm most proud of. Cause I don't think in those terms generally.

• 1:37:49Lewis Howes?

  What's that?

• 1:37:50Speaker 00

  I'm thankful that my children turned out to be really, really amazing people.

• 1:37:54Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  I'm thankful that my brothers and I, we all love each other. Like not tolerate each other, like celebrate each other. I'm thankful that I finally started listening to my kids. My son told me about Bitcoin in 2012.

• 1:38:12Speaker 00

  And I discounted it. I'm like, eh. But eventually I finally listened and I don't mind Bitcoin. I don't trade Bitcoin. I don't even buy Bitcoin. But I did something in 2017 that made me a cryptocurrency millionaire. Since, I think, April of 2017, I've acquired over 100 Bitcoin, hundreds of Ethereum, and I did it without buying it, trading it, or mining it. Which sounds like, well, what did you do? I just created some offers and let people pay me in crypto.

• 1:38:51Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:38:52Speaker 00

  There you go. So that's fascinating.

• 1:38:54Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:38:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, that is cool.

• 1:38:56Lewis Howes?

  I heard online, I can't remember who said this, but some wealthy, like, you know, older billionaire guy, when he was asked, what's the key to success? Or what is your definition of success? And he said, having my adult kids want to spend time with me, not because of my money.

• 1:39:10Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:11Lewis Howes?

  But just because they want to hang out with me. Yeah. That was success.

• 1:39:15Speaker 00

  There's nothing like it. To have my son and my daughter live in the same city as me, to have, we spend time together. Like, I see my granddaughter four or five times a week.

• 1:39:26Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:39:26Speaker 00

  It's, it's, it's a joy beyond words.

• 1:39:30Lewis Howes?

  If you, you know, now that you know that I'm a father of two twins, two different, you know, twin girls, what are three pieces of advice that you would give me or any new parent on, if they could apply these three principles, or say these things, or teach these things about abundance and wealth to their children, to my kids, on repeat, daily, weekly, monthly, throughout their childhood development, what three things should I be doing to support their mindset around abundance?

• 1:40:03Speaker 00

  Couple of things. Say yes when you can. Make yes your default answer for your children instead of no. Now, when I say yes, I don't mean, yes, dad, give me 100 million dollars. No, that's not what I mean. I mean, hey, can we go do this? Yes.

• 1:40:19Speaker 00

  But you need to figure out how we're gonna do X, Y, and Z. Like, give them part of responsibility. So before I give you that, let me give you, let me give you what I I've discovered, which the framework for parenting that I wish I had discovered when I was young. Give it to me. Can I give you that? Yes. There are four levels of parenting. Four is an interesting number because four is the number of the earth. There are four directions on the earth, north, south, east, and west. There are four seasons, winter, spring, summer, and fall. Four elements, water, fire, earth, and wind. So, so four is an interesting number. There are four, oftentimes when we find principles on the earth, they often show, like, that rule the earth, they often show up in force. There are four levels of value. There's four levels of teaching for four levels of learning. But there are four levels of parenting for four stages of child development. The first level is training.

• 1:41:03Speaker 00

  That's the first level of parenting. And that's when your children are between the ages of day one and four years old. You train them. And the purpose of training is to get them to respond appropriately to authority. Zero to four, it could save their lives. And here is the only response to authority when you're zero to four. Complete and immediate obedience. You do what I said exactly when I said it, not after I explained to you why, but simply because I said it, because you are not yet four years old. So, that's the first stage of child development. So that's training, so for the purpose of getting them to respond properly to authority. Second stage is teaching.

• 1:41:48Speaker 00

  This is the hardest stage of parenting. This is age five, six, seven, and eight. This is where you start explaining the reasons behind the rules. What's this phase called? Teaching. Teaching. Training and then teaching? Training is for response, but the purpose of teaching is so they can learn to reason properly, appropriately with truth. And so you teach them the reasons behind the rules so that they will keep the rules for the right reasons when you're not around. So you're teaching them.

• 1:42:18Speaker 00

  And then nine, 10, 11, and 12, that's transitioning them. And what does that mean? That's where you are preparing them with life skills by them doing things with you.

• 1:42:36Speaker 00

  To you doing that thing with them, to you them watching, then watching them do the thing. So they, you ask them, what do you want, what, what, what are we gonna eat for dinner this week? What are we gonna eat for breakfast? Okay. What are the ingredients we need to get? And they learn how to make a grocery list and they go to the grocery store and they learn how to find these things. And then they come home and then they help you prepare the meal or, and if it's not you, whoever. Whatever the things are that you're working on, that your children are working on with you, they are doing it with you. Get your children started working in your business as soon as they are able. Like if that's two, three years old and they're doing modeling or whatever and they're holding your book and you're creating whatever. Get your children started in your business.

• 1:43:20Speaker 00

  Pay them money for the work they do in your business and you know their tax advantages and all of that and all that. When they, from seven to seventeen, I think is the, it used to be the ages. I don't know what it is now. My children are grown. That's the third phase of parenting. Transitioning. Transitioning and then when Jewish children turn thirteen, actually when they turn twelve, they get bar mitzvah. Do you know what the bar mitzvah means? No. Bar means son, mitzvah means law. So bar mitzvah is your son of the law. You are now responsible to God for keeping the law for yourself. You're an adult. Wow, at twelve? At twelve, yes. I was in, I was in Israel. I was visiting with my friend Reese and we were out to dinner with her and her husband. And, and I said, well, what are your children doing?

• 1:44:03Speaker 00

  Oh, they're home with my oldest son. I forgot his name, but they're home with my oldest son. He's thirteen. He's a man now. That's what she said. And I was reckless at thirteen, you know? Right. Well, I'll tell, I'll tell you why that whole phenomenon exists in America. But anyway, so, so that's trusting your children because now is when you start trusting them as adults. That doesn't mean you give them the keys to the car. Sure, sure. But it means they are thinking like an adult. Do you know that in America, before the Great Depression, people would graduate from the eighth grade at thirteen and then they would go get a job? I believe it. Right? And were, and they were more literate than a lot of high school graduates and some college graduates are now.

• 1:44:45Speaker 00

  So why, why are children in America programmed to remain children until they turn thirty-six? Because some of the business moguls of the past believed in a zero-sum game. And so they set it up in such a way so that they would win at the expense of other people instead of the empowerment and the impediment of other people. And they realized that there are two classifications of people that you can count on for overconsumption of any product. Addicts and children. So if we can get people addicted, which is why the cigarette companies bought the food companies.

• 1:45:22Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 1:45:23Speaker 00

  And if we can get people to remain children longer, then we can perpetuate our sales to these people forever.

• 1:45:32Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 1:45:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:45:33Lewis Howes?

  What's the fourth phase called?

• 1:45:35Speaker 00

  Trusting.

• 1:45:36Lewis Howes?

  Trusting.

• 1:45:37Speaker 00

  You can trust them as an adult.

• 1:45:38Lewis Howes?

  Trusting. And that's thirteen two.

• 1:45:41Speaker 00

  From now on.

• 1:45:42Lewis Howes?

  Forever, yeah. This has been powerful, Myron. I appreciate.

• 1:45:45Speaker 00

  Well, thank you.

• 1:45:45Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate everything you've been.

• 1:45:46Speaker 00

  It's been fun.

• 1:45:47Lewis Howes?

  Sharing. This has been a lot of fun. I've got two final questions for you before I ask them. I want people to follow you. They can go to MyronGolden.com or Myron Golden on Instagram, social media, all these different places as well. You've got some great books. We'll make sure to link them up here as well.

• 1:46:01Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:46:03Lewis Howes?

  Where is one place people should go to to learn more about you or to get access to something?

• 1:46:07Speaker 00

  If you want to learn more about my business teachings, just go to YouTube, look up Myron Golden.

• 1:46:12Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:46:13Speaker 00

  One of my, one of my mottos for creating YouTube content is I never post anything on YouTube that I could not have put in a course and sold. So if I can't sell it, if it's not worth selling, it's not worth posting on YouTube.

• 1:46:23Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 1:46:24Speaker 00

  Right? And why do I do that? I consider YouTube not to be my free content because it's not free. They have to pay with their attention. I consider it my community service content. This is how I serve people who don't have $375,000 to buy a VIP day from.

• 1:46:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:46:37Speaker 00

  Who don't have $55,000 to join King Solomon's court. Or $25,000 to buy a two day event where I train them on high ticket sales. So I have my YouTube channel as my community service content.

• 1:46:50Speaker 00

  For those of people who want to learn more Bible from me, Bible study with Myron Golden on YouTube. Those are my two channels that would help them get the most out of those two different aspects, which are really the same aspect, but different aspects of how I teach and what I teach.

• 1:47:05Lewis Howes?

  Love it, love it. I want to acknowledge you, Myron, for the content you continue to put out, which is, and the content I see is really around faith and financial freedom.

• 1:47:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:17Lewis Howes?

  That's the stuff I liked seeing you talk about because most people only talk about one or the other.

• 1:47:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:47:22Lewis Howes?

  They don't blend both of them and make it part of their being.

• 1:47:24Speaker 00

  They've segmented their life.

• 1:47:26Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:47:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:27Lewis Howes?

  And I think you've really leaned into it and you've owned it 100%. Not been like, oh, let me shy away from this a little bit or only talk a little bit about faith. It's like, here is the principle I've learned that's helped me become wealthy. Let me just share it with you.

• 1:47:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:47:40Lewis Howes?

  And blending them, I think, is really cool. And there's not many people doing that. So I acknowledge you for

• 1:47:44Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:47:45Lewis Howes?

  for using your talents and your gifts to serve people. And please God. So I acknowledge you for

• 1:47:53Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:47:53Lewis Howes?

  for showing up in the ways you do.

• 1:47:54Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:47:55Lewis Howes?

  This is a question I ask everyone towards the end called the three truths.

• 1:47:58Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:47:58Lewis Howes?

  So imagine hypothetical scenario. You get to live as long as you want in this earth, but it's the last day in this physical realm.

• 1:48:04Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:48:05Lewis Howes?

  You get to accomplish and create everything you want. It all comes true.

• 1:48:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Lewis Howes?

  But for whatever reason, hypothetically, in the last day, you have to take all of your content, interviews, books, courses. Everything's gone, hypothetical.

• 1:48:19Lewis Howes?

  But on the last day, you get to leave behind three lessons. And this is all we would have of your content to remember you by in the world. So all your content is gone except for these three final truths that you would share about anything. What would these three truths be for you?

• 1:48:36Speaker 00

  One is a video that I did on YouTube about the 23rd Psalm called, "You Have to Go Through the Valley to Get to the Vision." That'd be one.

• 1:48:48Speaker 00

  Because everybody's going to face difficulty in their lives.

• 1:48:52Speaker 00

  Two would probably be my boss moves book. Because it's the ultimate guide to scaling any business in four moves. We literally show our clients how to scale their business 1,280% in four moves. And so I would leave that behind for the business owners. And I think because everybody's gonna die and everybody's gonna have a loved one who dies. I would probably leave the message that I preached at my son's funeral.

• 1:49:19Lewis Howes?

  What was the main essence of that message?

• 1:49:21Speaker 00

  That funerals remind us of three things. The brevity of life, even if you did live to be 300 years old, in the scheme, in the realm of time, it's like a fraction of a second. The brevity of life, the reality of eternity. When we die, we don't cease to exist, we just go to a different place. And most people think the place they're gonna go to is gonna be determined by if their good works outweigh their bad works. They get to go to a good place. If their bad works outweigh their good works, they get to go to a bad place. It's not how it works biblically. Which brings me to the third point.

• 1:50:05Speaker 00

  Everybody needs a Savior. That's the whole point. It's really interesting that everything in the Bible points to Christ. But everything in human history points to Christ. What year is it? What year is this right now?

• 1:50:22Lewis Howes?

  2026.

• 1:50:23Speaker 00

  What does 2026 mean? It means 2026 years after our Lord. That's what it means. Anno domini, after our Lord. Our dates are based on the life of Christ. It's either before Him or after Him. Why? Because everything points to Him.

• 1:50:46Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful. The final question, Myron, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:50:50Speaker 00

  Oh, that's easy. Serve other people. You wanna be great? Serve the most people. He will be greatest among you. In fact, I did a video on that too called, "How to be great even if you're not good." How can I be great if I'm not good? Easy, serve more people. Jesus said, "Who will be greatest among you?" Let them be serving of all.

• 1:51:11Speaker 00

  Think about it, who do you want to spend the most time with? Somebody who every time they're around you, they're trying to get something from you? Or every time they're around you, they're looking for ways to make your life better? That's greatness is not what you think you are. Greatness is what other people see you being as you serve other people. Amen. My man. Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 1:51:32Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:52:16Lewis Howes?

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