Yeah, hey, philip, thanks for having me on. I'm gonna try to make this a little bit of time that I have as impactful as possible and and hopefully give as much value to to everybody that listens to this as much as I can. And you know, I wanted to try to think on what I could talk about that I have the authority to speak on. That I think can give people the most value. And I think what I want to talk about is just, you know, coming from, you know where I grew up and spoke in Washington to go into the Navy to where I'm at now. It really put in light to me something very, very clear and that is being successful at any level is one accessible to everybody. But it all comes down to your choices. And I think what's really, really important and I think where we get it messed up a lot, is there's different levels of success and you have to, first off, choose what level do you really want to go to and understand that, whatever level you choose, you can get there, and I'm gonna explain how in a minute.
Speaker 1:
But we have, with social media, made success look very different than I'm sure some people's version of success is right. You may decide you want to be the best father, best husband, whatever that's successful. You may want to build a multi-million dollar business. That could be your success. All comes with some level of sacrifice that you have to give up to achieve those things. I truly believe that. But the other end, at the end of the day, you have to choose it. You got to choose one and go for it now throughout life. You can also change it, right. You don't have to stay with the same thing all the time, but you have to choose. And if you choose, you have to go all in.
Speaker 1:
And to kind of illustrate why I think this is accessible to everybody is I just want to compare two things that seem dissimilar but are actually very similar, and that is bodybuilding and business. Right, and I know, as you know, it's so funny before I joined a Navy, I wanted to go into special operations and I weighed, I think, like 110 pounds, and I had to gain weight to even become physically fit enough or weigh enough to actually go into the Navy. So at the time I would look at a bodybuilder and think, oh my gosh, that's so far beyond what I can do, which is probably how a lot of people in today's world feel, right. They see people on social media killing it. They see people on yachts, on boats, pop and bottles spending money. Right, they see all these people living these lives that they think they should, that they want, and it seems unattainable, right, the same way that if you look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, it probably seems unattainable, but it's really not. And it's only unattainable if you don't know the path forward. And my hope is to, kind of one, show that path forward in more of a cloud sense, and then I'll try to get into the dirt of it at the end. But if you can imagine the greatest physical fitness person in the world, like I'm talking, arnold Schwarzenegger, or maybe you know Phil Heath, you know just the top, top of the chain when talk about bodybuilding. And then you think of the top of the funnel when you think about business the Bezos, the Musks, you know the Steve Jobs, whoever the thing is. Those people, anyone can technically be those people, right, you just have to do the same actions in the same steps and make the same choices that they made.
Speaker 1:
So there's a theory in the fitness and bodybuilding community that it doesn't matter what your ethnicity is, it doesn't matter what you look like. It doesn't matter old, you are 45 pounds. 45 pounds, the weight is the weight. So the thing about getting big and becoming, let's say, an Arnold there is a path on how to do that. Right, you must lift the weight and you must lift a lot of it. You have to eat for a long period of time. You have to train for a long period of time. You have to be consistent with all these things for a long period of time. You have to have your nutrition supplement stack set up the right way, and odds are you'll probably need a coach to get you from certain levels To different levels. Right, you might need just a local gym guy to get you into fitness at first, but then, if you're trying to go pro and become like an Arnold, you may need a professional bodybuilding coach to get you there, to get you on a train regimen, to track your progress, to make Sure you're doing the right things.
Speaker 1:
But the end of the day, the work just needs doing. You just need to get up, you need to eat, you need to train, you need to lift the weight, and that 45 pound weight needs to be left. Doesn't matter if you're a man or a girl, and what's funny is, doesn't it doesn't really matter what your Genetics are? If you just lift the weight and you do it consistently, you can get there. But the problem is you probably don't have a long of time horizon to get there. Same thing happens in business. All right, you got to feed the business the right way, you got to train your teams, you got to train yourself, you got to learn about business. Okay, you got to deal with life. That just happens right and, just like fitness, you have to have a long time horizon.
Speaker 1:
The reason why business is fail the reason why business fail they don't become successful is that everyone wants to get rich quick. They want to be the guru or the guy too quick and they don't actually put a longer time horizon on what that looks like. The same way, when people get into Resolutions or do these fasts or do these diets and like, oh, I'm gonna get ripped and fit this year, this is my year, that's too short of a time horizon. If you can only do something for a year, you shouldn't do it anyway, because the people that actually change their fitness and their lives do it for a long time. Same thing for business. If we're gonna do a business, you need to do it for a long time and you need to do the right things all the time to get there.
Speaker 1:
But the beautiful part of that is it doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter where you come from, it doesn't matter. You know where you start out in life, right? If you just follow the same steps and you follow people have done it beforehand, you can be successful, which means you need you know success leaves clues. You need to follow the clues that are left for you. So if there's someone that looks like you that's been there, you can get there too. And the best way is number one Find the free stuff. Get out there and digest free information and find something that you might actually be really passionate about.
Speaker 1:
And the reason why and I can kind of speak on this is when I got out of the Navy I did my whole background was was law enforcement, executive protection, anti-terrorism. But when you get out during COVID, all the the cool jobs go away. Like my whole path was I'm gonna go work for a three-letter agency. You know, I had my TS clearance. I was ready to rock and roll, work for Secretary of Defense, secretary Navy. I was good to go, but life happens right. So I needed to make some money and I got in the sales and for me that was the game changer in life and for anyone out there and I'm gonna switch gears if you want to be actually financially successful, then sales or some sort of 1099 job where you can make commission is going to be the number one way for you to Financially get yourself out of whatever right you're into. I knew at the time I was in 20 30k of credit card debt at the end of those you know, year and a half, two years of Getting sales completely reverse it around and almost had nothing like a hundred and ten hundred twenty grand of cash With no, you know, real education to lean towards that in my bank account complete 180.
Speaker 1:
My life was able to start a business and do all these great things, but I started with a choice to go into something that I knew could make a lot of money and I had to work at it. The problem is It'll take some sacrifice and it's gonna be hard. And what's crazy to me is if you look on social media, if you look at the world, everyone glorifies how hard Successes you know it almost is like this thing like oh yeah, it's super hard, go get it right. And even like the best movies that you watch, you know whenever the hero of the movies going through something hard and gets through it, you know it's always romanticized. But the problem, when you actually get into real life and you have real consequences and you have real sacrifice and you feel how hard that is, people quit because it actually sucks.
Speaker 1:
Okay, that, uh, that little High you see from social media doesn't feel that great when you're actually in it, when you're actually trying to make payroll, when you have people quitting and stealing from you, when you have To get sales and to keep the business alive, when you know for me, for example, when I first got into sales, you know my loved ones were like I don't know if you're going to sales, right, it wasn't seen as like this high, prosperous job, especially with my resume, did not path me to do that right. My entire life. My resume had me very, very qualified to get a very, very high paying federal government job with a lot of security and a lot of benefits. But you know, got to go with your gut and I saw what the opportunity was over here and I stuck with it on a long time horizon. I'm still on that time horizon. It sucked for a while because I took a massive pay cut. They won, didn't have security, didn't have the safety net, didn't have money coming in. Mortgage wife and kids well, mortgage wife and dogs Guess they're calling my kids, but that's it right, and most people aren't afraid to do that and I get it.
Speaker 1:
There's a lot of situations where people can't people are, you know, they get strapped in or they get into this situation where they really feel like there is no escape. But the reality is there always is a choice and Sometimes, if that choice is harder for others, sometimes you start out in a situation that makes that decision difficult. Maybe you don't have people around you that can actually help you go into the right direction. So my hope is, if this message gets to you at all, that this is the message that you need to actually get on the right direction. And if you don't have a direction, if you don't know where to go, step number one if you were just really in the worst area in your life, with no role models, go join the military for four years. I know that sounds like crazy, but it completely changed my life. You don't have to do a full term, but four years will get you cultured or get you worldly. You'll meet some amazing leaders. It'll make you grow up, you will get some perspective and you will learn some very valuable Meta skills, like being able to confront people, talk to people and deal with stressful situations. That will give you Massive benefit in the real world.
Speaker 1:
Then the last thing and I'm a little biased because it did change my life is go get a freaking sales job. Unless you have some other passion that you really want to do, the truth is that money will buy you freedom, okay, and the reality is you can be happy broke. You can be happy rich. I can tell you right now, having more money will like to do more things.
Speaker 1:
If you have a passion that you really want, if you can have a savings that allows you to do that passion without stress, that passion of yours will probably do much better. So I would highly recommend, if you're a hard worker or you want to try to get into that world, to go get a sales job. There's plenty of industries out there, from water treatment to solar, to roofing, to alarms. They all pay very well. Find an area, find someone, go learn the skill and I promise you, if you dedicate yourself to it for a couple of years, you will set yourself life up financially to where you can then pivot to do really whatever you want to do. And yeah, that's my time. I.