The LFG Show
Talking with movers and shakers who grew up with nothing and worked their asses off to achieve success. Let's 🤬 Go!!!!
The LFG Show
Ezra Firestone on Work-Life Balance While Running a $100M+ Empire
🚨 THIS EPISODE WILL FLIP YOUR BRAIN UPSIDE DOWN 🚨
“What if everything you believed about success… was WRONG?”
That’s the bomb Ezra Firestone drops in this raw, *unfiltered*, truth-loaded episode of The LFG Show.
From “a bum on a couch in Brooklyn” to leading companies generating hundreds of millions annually, Ezra doesn’t preach from a pedestal—he’s lived through both bankruptcy and massive wins, and he’s here to expose the lies we’ve been sold about scale, stress, and success.
💣 "The perfect business? Probably \$5M–\$10M a year with a 20% profit margin."*
đź’Ł "Small enough to manage, big enough to win. Less stress. More life."
💣 "If you can’t be happy here and now… you won’t be happy there—and no amount of money will fix it."
Inside this conversation:
âś… Why chasing scale can wreck your life
âś… The trap of tying your worth to output
âś… What real fulfillment actually looks like
✅ How to build a sustainable business that fuels your life—not consumes it
✅ The truth about “balance,” burnout, and setting boundaries like a boss
Ezra dives deep into the psychology of entrepreneurial dissatisfaction—and more importantly, how to escape it. He lays down a new blueprint: less ego, more intention. Less grind, more growth.
If you’ve ever felt like something’s missing—even when the money’s good—this is your sign to rethink your metrics.
đź’ˇ Success isn't more. It's better. It's now.
👇 Tap in. This episode could change everything.
🎯 Sponsored by the game-changers:
🔥 Ringba – The #1 call tracking platform for performance marketers
🔧 Roofs in a Box – Cut your staffing costs by up to 70% with elite virtual teams
#EzraFirestone #LFGShow #EntrepreneurshipUnfiltered #BusinessMindset #SustainableSuccess #LeadGenLife #HustleWithPurpose #NoMoneyNoHoney #Ringba #RoofsInABox #LFG
Timestamps:
0:00 Meeting Edward Fires
1:38 From Couch to Hundreds of Millions
3:18 The Joy of Real Success
5:10 Roofs in a Box Business Model
8:39 Separating Self-Worth from Business
12:33 Creating Balance for Longevity
15:11 Podcast Closing
LFG man we got. Listen, we need a duo. Usually we do 20, 30, 40 minute, three hour interviews. We're doing 15 minutes. But this 15 minutes we work every fucking single second. We got Edward Fires man. We got the five the world. Right now, bam bam bam. He's hosting this whole ATO affiliate takeover. He's cursing us. He don't give a fuck. Heo affiliate takeover. He's cursing us. He don't give a fuck. He knows motion creates emotion. It's great to have you here. Thanks, brother.
Speaker 2:Happy to be here.
Speaker 1:If you've been in e-com, you've been in this space, you know who the fuck this guy is. Need an introduction, bro. I love the energy. I'm all about energy. It's fantastic, ato man. How ATO man, how you liking this shit so far? I feel like, bro, it's intimate, it's a great crowd.
Speaker 2:Something happens when you step out of your daily routine. You know in your life you're taking out the trash, you're watching the kids, you're cleaning the dog. You can step out of that and then you put all your attention on growing your business, all your attention on networking, meeting people, and you can make the kind of progress that would take you months at home in like a day, because it's directed focus attention. I never want to come to these things. I literally I'm always like why I never want to go to these events. However, whenever I do, I'm like man, I should be fucking going to these.
Speaker 1:It's good you meet people, you get a different perspective, you get energy, so it feels good, yeah. So let's talk about the stage you're in right now. Right, Because I think you're, you're aspirational for a lot of people that get into this industry. Right, you fat, you got companies doing, you know I eight figures done, nine figures and $40 million for one brand I mean. So what's the stage you're at right now, man, and what are you?
Speaker 2:so we're doing a couple hundred million a year, but I'm some bum off a couch in Brooklyn. Okay, I started working a full-time job. I didn't make it out of high school. I don't come from money. I, I, I bootstrapped my way so I did it from like do it yourself, entrepreneur all the way to like, then building a team, scaling and now I invest and advise like I'm no longer operating. So I kind of traveled the whole spectrum, went bankrupt a couple of times, didn't pay my taxes, did all the stupid shit. Thankfully, when I was younger, you know you could do that when you. You don't want to make those mistakes when you have a lot of money, cause it's very costly. But where I'm at now is like. It's not like.
Speaker 2:What people do is they, they compare themselves to other people and there's that. That saying comparison is the thief of joy. It's like yo, wherever you are is a good spot, as long as you keep going. The secret is consistency. Show up every day with a positive attitude. Put your energy in the direction of your goals. Take some action. It doesn't have to be a lot Compounding, consistent action every day.
Speaker 2:I've been doing it 20 years, yeah, and I made it. I'm making a lot of money, I'm having success, I'm feeling good, but you know what's interesting is, I know a lot of people who are rich and miserable, overworked, under, fucked, overwhelmed, staying up all night. So it's like how much fun is it if you make a bunch of money but you hate what you're fucking doing and you feel shitty about the products you're selling. It's like I believe the perfect business is actually probably about five to $10 million a year, at about a 20% profit margin, because you are at that point, your team's not too big, the stress isn't too high. How much money do you really need? Do you need more than a million dollars a year? The fuck are you doing? Probably not. So I like. I just bought a little brand, an Amazon brand 50 grand a year. I put an operator and they're running it. We're at about 500K a year later. I'm happy with that Beautiful little brand. That'll pay for my. I don't need more than that. So scale is this? Like demon that everyone will tell you it's gonna be bigger.
Speaker 2:If you get better, you gotta make more money. It's like dude if you can't be happy here and now, you won't be happy there, and then there is no amount of money you will make, there is nothing that will do it for you Be the same motherfucker chasing the same thing when you make money. So you gotta figure out how to enjoy your life. Enjoy your life Like. For me it was when I grew up. Mtv Cribs was on the TV. Motherfuckers would open their fridge and there'd be beverages and Lunchables. And I opened my fridge. We didn't have shit. So I pack my fridge full of beverages. I got little cans, I got kombucha, I got all kinds of oh. Every time I open my fridge I feel like I made it, cause it doesn't have to be big things. Like you want to figure out how to enjoy the life that you're having in this moment and then when you get there, you will also be able to enjoy that. But if you can't enjoy now, you won't enjoy there.
Speaker 3:There is a new endeavor called roofs. In the box it's just man from day one it's taken off.
Speaker 4:When I first started getting into the roofing industry, what was happening was my fixed costs were always there, and so for me, I was looking at how can we kind of one, save on these costs and then, two, how do I not lay people off during down times? But also maybe even the ability to pocket more money during the slow season or even the peak season. Since we've done this before, like with our legion companies where we have virtual staffing and from argentina or columbia, I'm like why don't we do the same thing in the construction business? Now, once we figured it out, we reduced their fixed cost by 70%, and so now, during the downtime they have real seasoned veteran type of players, but during the uptime they pocket. 70% of their operational costs are now going back in their pocket, and then, when it's time to scale, you have the back end prepared, already ready to go to help them.
Speaker 4:Like lift off, depending on what state you're in, you're averaging about 12.5% on what you pay out on taxes, insurance, like all the different insurances that you have to pay out, right? So, yeah, you don't have to pay out unemployment, you don't have to pay out bike insurance, medicare, social Security, the things that business owners have to eat. Roofs to Box is not just limited to roofing or home improvement companies. You can use it for any services, right? You can use for analytics. It doesn't even matter what the vertical is. It's like business in a box at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Pretty much. Yeah, were you still so colorful? You know? You reminded me of something. I talked to someone. I mean I paid my pay for it. Yeah, I was doing $500 million of that, bought out more copies. He got bought out like 10 million money and he would ask me about my business. I didn't even know. I met him at Affiliate World in Barcelona two years ago, right, and he's doing some programs like hey, how much revenue do you have? My revenue that year was maybe like 25, 30 million and he was like, bro, I wouldn't trade anything with, don't want to be at 500 million and I'm need a fucking suit. I'm doing this, I'm doing it and I heard that. I'm like are you fucking serious? I want to be in his fucking spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and james van ellswick you and I both know he spoke on stage right now. He gave such a powerful speech about telehealth and why isn't you guys like listen, you're never rich enough, you're never good looking enough, you're never skinny enough. I'm like, bro, that's the fucking problem. So it's like it's like a double-edged sword with the social media. You see instagram, you see this person, that person, do his fucking comparison. I'm glad I couldn't. I couldn't put into words where you did articulate it, but when you said it was fucking perfect. So it's like, but it's like a gift and a curse. That's how we make our money too, right? So where the fuck you find that balance, man, you know?
Speaker 2:I think it's like so men, we're men, right, and we are told by society that our value comes from production. The same way, women are told that their value comes from youth and beauty. So women doubt their attractiveness and men doubt their ability to produce and we always think we need to produce more. It's why George Clooney can be like 75 years old with a 20-year-old love interest in a movie. Because he's rich, he's famous. You get like an old, broke guy that's not going to have that. So we think we need to make money and that's like conditioned into us.
Speaker 2:But if you just focus on that and you don't have any relationships and you don't have any hobbies and your body feels like shit, it's like it's not very pleasurable. You want a whole. You can't extract one piece. You need the whole thing in order to be happy and fulfilled. You've got to have more than just a work cycle Like fulfillment is this interesting thing? It cannot be gotten, it cannot be obtained. You must be fulfilled from within. It's an internal, it's a, it's an inside job, it's a mental state and it comes from feeling like you have purpose in the world, having a social connection, feeling good in your body, feeling like what you're doing is meaningful, having some kind of meaningful way to produce and take care of your family and community, like it's all a part of it, but we ignore everything societally and focus only on production. And it's like, look at those people, they're not happy. So what I want is to be happy, and part of that is to win at work, but it's not the only thing.
Speaker 1:I love what you say. I didn't know this was the direction we were going to take, but I love it. So one thing I want to talk about obviously I know I was in a weird talk and I was reading about you you really value balance and that's like a bad word for an entrepreneur. You hear so many people and it's true. I think when you start You've got to push and obsess and go crazy to lose balance in the beginning to make some money.
Speaker 2:But you talk the skill set of intense ability to push right. You have to be able to sometimes work a 10 or 12 hour day for a week while you're launching something, but if that is the backdrop of your existence, you will burn out. You know, the most common experience for entrepreneurs is burnout, overwhelm, overwork. Their body falls apart, their relationships fall apart, they get addicted to substances. We all have gone through it as entrepreneurs. At some point you have a burnout experience.
Speaker 2:But it turns out it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. You can't sprint forever. So you have to know how to sprint, but you have to deliberately not you have to pull back, recognize that you're in it for the long haul. It's not about what happens this year or next year. It's about what happens five, 10 years from now. If you can set yourself up to say, look, my goal is to be where I want to be in 10 years, then you have a better strategy, something that will actually work for you.
Speaker 2:So it's like balance is really not what it's about. It's about deliberately creating a sustainable infrastructure. So what I think about is permaculture. Right, permaculture is this concept in gardening, where you reuse all the resources. You capture the rainwater, you water the garden. You take the chicken shit. You use it for the compost. So I look around at everything that I have available to me and I try to use it. I take my content from my e-commerce businesses, I put it on my blog, I share it with business owners. I take the money I make from that, I put it back into the e-commerce businesses. I open source what's working in the e-commerce businesses. I make it as software. I'm trying to use everything I can to make it all work and it's like the goal is not necessarily balance, it's longevity, and it turns out if you want longevity, you can't burn out, and going super hard leads to burnout, so you need some kind of a system for longevity.
Speaker 1:I know there's so many stories of people getting out of paper. I do what? And I know there's so many stories of people getting out of paper. I do what the nine know. You throw yourself a dollar and then they overdose.
Speaker 2:And I don't think they do it intentionally, but to sustain that lifestyle. You're on pills, you're on uppers, you're on downers, you're on all-arounders.
Speaker 1:It's not going to last. So the point is that obviously, I think that affiliate marketers, people in digital marketing you look, there's an addiction You're looking at every day. Click it. How much am I up? What I'm down, right, you click it, it's dope, or you don't believe so when you have a bad day, that can affect the rest of your fucking month right.
Speaker 2:Well, here's what it is. If and this goes back to men being valued for their ability to produce is people assign their personal value to the success of their business? Right and it's like. For me, the way that I view myself and my personal value within my own self is like am I walking through the world in integrity with my own moral compass? How do I feel about my contributions to my family, my community and society? Am I like doing good? Am I, am I offering a contribution of spirit to the world? And if I feel yes, I feel good with my wife, we're having fun, we're in're in.
Speaker 2:Communication doesn't mean you're not gonna have conflict, but like then I'm happy and it's like I don't care, I've been broke, I could be broke again. The businesses go up, they go down. It doesn't affect how I feel about myself, because my personal value is equated to how I feel about I'm, how I'm showing up in the world, and if you can make that switch, it makes it easier to be successful in business, because now it's like you can handle the ups and downs. Business is going to fucking fail. It's going to go up, it's going to go down, there's going to be chaos, there's going to be intensity, it's going to be good, it's going to be bad, like that is entrepreneurship. You're not getting out of that. So if you then judge yourself, every time there's an up and a down, you're fucked, because now you're a mental case.
Speaker 5:You've got, say, okay, this is what I signed up for. What do we do now? When I first heard of Roofs in a Box, I thought no way could everything be combined in one platform, from your CRM to AI, even virtual assistants helping manage all these things together. It has completely changed my business and I couldn't be where I'm at without it. So over the last eight months or so, I've saved at least a million dollars on what it would cost salary-wise to hire the engineer. I wouldn't have been able to do what I've done without Roof's in a Box, or be able to do what I am currently doing without Roof's in a Box. If you are looking to scale, get your business organized or get it ready to sell, I definitely want to give Roof's in a Box a call. They'll get everything tightened up, get you set up to do whatever you need to do for a fraction of the cost. Not everybody's got a million dollars.
Speaker 1:How do you actually do it? We've said it, but what are some techniques you do daily? I would imagine it's like meditation, but what do you do exactly?
Speaker 2:I mean, look, so human beings are chasing consciousness alteration. Take a three-year-old. The first fucking thing they do is spin in circles to get high. They figure out how to modify their consciousness. We're looking for ways to get high. You can get high through exercise. You can get high through meditation. You can get high through breathwork. You can get high through meditation. You can get high through breathwork and get high through plant medicines and marijuana and alcohol A lot of different ways to get high. You got to find what lights you up, what makes you happy.
Speaker 2:I do all kinds of shit. I have hobbies, I do jujitsu, I do breathwork, I run, I garden, I live on a big piece of land, I sit by my river, I hang out with my wife. I do all kinds of stuff that is like outside of my work life. You know, there's a uh, it's, it's maybe Murphy's law. It's Murphy, oliver or Parkinson, one of those three fucking guys. The law says this work will fill the time that you give it. So if you can figure out this is the hardest thing for entrepreneurs but if you can figure out truly how to set a boundary, because your phone's with you at all times, your computer's with you at all times you're thinking about it. They did a study in Stanford and it said they measured the brainwaves of business owners looking at their logos and they measured the brainwaves of parents looking at their children. It lights up in the same place. You love your business, you're attached to it emotionally, you love it like a child and so, if you can truly figure out, I start work at 10 am, I stop at 5 pm, period Before 10, I'm working out, I'm hanging out with my lady, I'm cooking breakfast After five, I'm going through hobbies, I'm hanging out with my friends. If you can actually set boundaries, you'll be and look, you're gonna break them sometimes when you're in a launch or something, but it truly actually makes your work more effective. You get more done in less time because what happens also is you run out of willpower. So by 7 pm, 8 pm, you're not very effective anyways and people just work long. They think long, hard work is better.
Speaker 2:I can tell you as somebody who has been more successful than most and there's no reason I should be. I'm uneducated. I grew up on a hippie commune. I don't have any like. I just figured out how to show up consistently and truly work during the times that I say I'm going to work and then not otherwise. And it's like that creates longevity, that creates a system to where you can show up and move forward.
Speaker 2:And the other thing is you know, when I was younger I had a hard time with this Ask for help. We all have blind spots. We all not like you know everything, I don't know everything. When you don't know something, don't have an ego about it. I used to not want to ask for help because it would be admitting that I didn't know. Now I'm like if I need help with something, I go find whoever knows. Hey, can you come help me? And what we do is we'll say who is the best in the world at X product launches hey, can you come, can we pay you eight grand and you coach us, tell us what to do. And we're not going to hire you on the team, but like just give us your system, we'll pay you for it. Come, coach us and then once a month check in with us. So we'll like hire whoever is the best at this thing to help us get better at it.
Speaker 1:So we ask for a lot of help oh, this feels fucking insane like you drop so much like normally do 30, 40, 50, 60, whatever low pockets. This 13, 14, 50 minutes was say guys, listen to this. Shit be peated, fucking amazing. I'm so glad you mean the time. He's a man of his word. He's on stations limited for time. He made a commitment he'd be here. You're're gonna be on John Castle, my friend's podcast. It had to work and you know what's funny the busiest people in the world. They fucking figure it out. You know how to make it happen. I appreciate it. That's rough. You're gonna see him again. I got a feeling we'll see him again If we see you in Brooklyn. We're getting this.
Speaker 3:Let's go Talking to guys with cash in for billions with a, b, and the best thing is, we're just getting started. So hold on tight. We're about to crank it up a notch. Get ready for next level networking and masterminds within the LFG community. Scare money, don't make no money, or honey. Hit the subscribe button, drop a like, leave a comment and let's fucking go. Thank you.