The Way Out Isn’t What You’ve Been Told

You don’t really know what you’re made of until you’re flat on your back in a roach-infested apartment… or hooked up to chemo.

In this episode, we sit down with a creative entrepreneur who went from losing every client overnight and living with cockroaches, to building multi–seven-figure businesses—while walking through an aggressive form of blood cancer. This isn’t a highlight reel. It’s a real conversation about identity, calling, and what “freedom” actually means when comfort is stripped away.

We talk about the moment you draw a line in the sand and say, “I’m never going back.”
 We unpack how discipline, faith, and brutal honesty with yourself can become weapons against chaos, fear, and distraction.

We also get into the tension you probably feel too:
 – Being insanely good at your craft, but avoiding the hard things that actually move your life and business forward.
 – Wanting to honor God with your work and money, but wrestling with control, tithing, and trust.
 – Trying to “hear from God” in business decisions without over-spiritualizing everything.

📌 Key Topics:
 ✅ From cockroaches and zero income to consistent $70k–$100k months
 ✅ Why doing hard things first changes how every other decision feels
 ✅ How identity (“this is who we are, so this is what we do”) fuels consistency
 ✅ Quantity vs. quality in content and why creatives get stuck in perfectionism
 ✅ Blending faith and business: tithing, stewardship, and resisting the love of money
 ✅ Hearing God’s voice practically in our day-to-day decisions
 ✅ Redefining freedom after walking through chemo, suffering, and survival

Listen in, then ask yourself: What hard thing am I avoiding that my future freedom is quietly begging me to do today?

Transcript

Landon, welcome. I appreciate you coming here. Holiday time, so yeah, get away… beautiful Nebraska weather. But haha, what I want to start off with—so you went from cockroach-infested apartments to building a multi-million-dollar business, all while battling an advanced form, aggressive form, of blood cancer. When you look back at that, what was the moment that forced you to redefine who you were and what you were called to build? Kind of a deep question to start off.

Yeah, it’s going right in, right in. Um, yeah. I would say the thing that forced me to redefine—uh, the first thing—was failure. So like, when you… you’ve maybe heard this before, that when you know, when you get closest to God is when like you're… it's like life, death, and tribulation basically of any kind is when you normally like would get closer to God. And that’s definitely what happened with me.

So like, I was building an agency, just like… was like a lukewarm Christian, you know, wasn’t like living for the Lord, and just was… I was also focused on business, getting rich, making money, you know, just really trying to like make that—it was the obsession at the time because I had just left my full-time job. And then I found myself in this, what I would find out to be a cockroach-infested apartment. And yeah… I was at rock bottom and so I had to figure out how am I going to get out of this place.

And I mean, I woke up one morning— I would say this is a very life-defining moment— was I had just quit my job, had a couple retainer contracts in our video agency. We were doing pretty good, and I was actually making like the equivalent of two full-time incomes. So like, I was feeling great. Twenty-five years old, making two full-time incomes, was killing it. More money than I had ever made in my whole life. And all of a sudden, right when I left, I didn't factor in the fact that people don’t automatically renew retainers. So I lost almost every single one off of annual renewals.

And so like, I went from like two incomes to no income very quickly. So hit rock bottom and had to move out of my apartment into a pretty rough spot that I would find out was filled with cockroaches. Then from there, I had this really intense moment where I was praying and I was like trying to just like center myself because I was so… my mind was just chaos all the time.

So I would wake up 4 o’clock in the morning, you know, I read all the gurus’ books and everything, watched the YouTube videos, and so I heard that if you wake up early and then you meditate or you pray, you will be able to at least like calm your mind for the day. So I would have to do that just to make it through. And anyway, I’m closing my eyes and I get done like attempting to meditate. I didn’t know Jesus—like I was a raised Christian but had kind of fallen away and gotten really lukewarm. I would still say I was a Christian, but I wasn’t living that way.

And I woke… I opened my eyes one morning and all of a sudden I see roaches like crawling up my wall. And so I'm like, “Oh, I'm trying to like zen out here,” you know, just relax, and I'm seeing bugs literally crawl up toward the light. I'm like, “This is awful.” And then I'm like, “Okay, I gotta get out of here.” So I go to grab some food, grab a piece of bread out of my bread bag above my fridge, and all of a sudden I see roaches like crawling on the inside of my bag. And I just snapped. I like lost it.

So I drove to a nearby crappy diner because it's all I could afford, and I was like, “I just gotta get out of here.” And so that was like a defining moment of like, I will never be back here again. I will never ever let this happen. Because I didn't grow up impoverished; I didn't grow up… our parents took really great care of us. They did just fine. My parents are successful farmers, and my mom’s worked in investing and banking for a long time. They are amazing, right? So like I didn't grow up with like… some people grow up maybe in a poverty state and they’re like, “No, I never want to go back there.” But I feel like that was a moment where I was like, “I’m never coming back to this point.” And it was kind of self-inflicted though.

And so yeah, I decided from there that I was going to build a business. And I like locked in, for lack of a better term. And we went from barely being able to afford rent to within a couple of years, we were doing like 70k per month consistent in our video agency, even some months hitting over 100 grand. And I’m in my late 20s trying to manage a team of 12 people—like it was a lot. So I'll just pause there, but that was a very defining moment of like, no turning back. And yeah, I look back and that was a pretty key one.

Were you married then? No, single at the time. About the same, man. Single at the time. That would be… I don't think I could have… yeah, there’s so many things that probably would have gone way better though at the same time if I would have been married. Because my wife—like, I had just renewed my focus on my faith at that time, and then my wife was like jet fuel to that. My wife and her family were just like… they are amazing.

Did your wife come from a strong Christian background? Yeah, they’re all worship leaders. So it was like, you get plugged into that and your entire environment just changed, and it was all for the better. Again, not because I wasn’t raised that way; I was raised in a Christian household and everything. I just decided to fall away when I was in college and stuff. And so yeah, coming back to that now it’s like… it’s like you're playing with cheat codes every single day.

Like, all the things that I used to deal with where it was like going out and drinking and partying super late at night, or addiction to nicotine and smoking and like… all this stuff, it was just distraction. It was just a distraction from my calling of what I was supposed to build. And literally I would numb myself out just to get through the rough times I was putting myself into. And so that cycle just continued, but it all stopped when I got around the right people.

So was the switch the roaches, or was…? There were a lot of switches. I would say the first switch was the roaches. And then I had this amazing guy call me at midnight when I was in that apartment. And he—I don’t even know if he knows this—but I was dead broke. I had like no money to my name, was barely able to afford rent, living in this terrible place. And all of a sudden I got this call from a guy named Tony Goins. Do you know Tony Goins? Yeah.

So Tony was the CEO of Cabela’s and had lots of other business ventures at the time, owns Capital Cigar Lounge in Lincoln. OK. And he called me—he’s like, “Hey, I have this event coming up tomorrow morning. Can you be there to film me? Because my friend Eric—or my friend and his friend Eric—said that you were good at video. Can you be there?” I was like, “I'll be there.” Didn't even ask a price, didn't tell him a quote. I was like, “I'll be there; we’ll figure it out later.”

Cause it was literally midnight, and it was at 8:00am the next day, and I had to be ready to shoot. And so that moment was also huge because that was like enough cash to survive, and then just, you know—live to fight another day, essentially. And then we built it up.

Actually I do think I know Tony—he's on our list. Oh, you should totally interview him. Yeah, yeah yeah. I remember him. Yeah. He's a total stud. I won’t tell the story for him, but please—he’s on my podcast, highly recommend you have him on. Very nice. He's a stud.

So… talk about your business, kind of go into that. You film stuff. Do you do more than just film other people? What's kind of your story?

Yeah, yeah. So with my first business, it was called Grindstone. We were a full-service video agency. We did video production and then also paid advertising. And so we built that up, and that was really like the catalyst that exploded. Like, we went from barely able to afford rent to then literally doing 100k months or consistent 70k months.

And what we would do is we would do corporate video production for the largest businesses in the state and in the Midwest. So like, we would work with eight- and nine-figure companies and help them tell their brand story in very high-end productions. So that was our focus there. And built that for basically eight years. And that was awesome. It was an amazing ride. It introduced me to tons of people.

I started a podcast out of it called Spark to Fire. I no longer do that podcast anymore, but it was 75 episodes of just like the coolest conversations ever, where I got to interview really brilliant people. I mean, I had the founder of Starbucks—or the president of Starbucks International—on. Like, I’m not sure still today how that happened, but Howard Behar. So there’s the two Howards that run Starbucks: Howard Schultz and Howard Behar. Howard Behar was on the podcast.

So podcasts are really cool too. And that’s also what we would do. We would actually film and produce podcasts for people and then do all the distribution, all that stuff as well.

You must have been twitching when you came in here today. Oh, I mean… and I get it though. Like everybody's… it’s crazy, dude. And I also know that you were talking about like, “Hey, we feel like we have ways to go production-wise.” But it’s story that actually makes it. Yeah. I mean like—even Rogan’s setup is still pretty basic when you think about it. Like obviously it's really nice, but it’s not crazy, you know?

It’s not like this… here’s an example: the guys from… who's the guy that founded Quest—Quest Nutrition, Quest Bars? He has this crazy studio, like Oprah when you walk on the set. But it doesn't matter if the story is not good. Nobody cares unless the content and the story is good. It can be as bougie as whatever, but that’s really what people are looking for. That’s what gets people to keep coming back and consuming—stories.

So how do you build that brand story for these large companies that you…?

Yeah. It all starts with the people. So I start off by interviewing the founder. And what we'll do is—this all happens in what I call discovery. So we’ll do discovery, which is like before the presentation and sale happens. And I'll ask them, “What's the outcome of what you're looking for? What's the story that you want to tell?” And then from there, that opens up a myriad of different routes we can go.

So like, hey—I’ll give you an example: Houseman Construction is a good friend of mine and a client of ours at Grindstone. They had a foundation—or they have a foundation—for Rebecca Houseman, Joey's late wife. And that’s the most important thing to Joey. Like, it's his family, that foundation, and then Houseman—they're all at the top, right? Because it's Rebecca's legacy.

And so that’s such an emotionally charged subject and such an important project. So we’ll ask them questions about: How does this… how does this want to be portrayed? What do we want this to look like? How do we want to come across? What's the story that we want to tell? Who are we helping in the community?

And then like, I just ask all of those questions, take all that information in. Then what we do is a little bit different than a lot of people. Instead of scripting it all out, we'll actually ask questions to pull out the gold from the conversational flow that they're talking. And that was one of the things that set us apart, I think, from a lot of other agencies.

During our interview process, we would just stay with them and interview them until we got that perfect cut. And then we would use B-roll and stuff to cover, and then we make a movie out of it. So that was how we did it. We just interviewed people during discovery, then we get into pre-production planning—it’s like a whole long process. But yeah, that's how we did it.

Very interesting. So you talked about building it up to seventy, hundred thousand dollars—yeah, a hundred million a month—but a hundred thousand a month. And then you got sick somewhere along this process. How did that… what toll did that play on your employees? I guess kind of look at it from their point of view, because a lot of your thinking, a lot of your work, your leadership pays their checks. So they had to be a little apprehensive about their future there.

Yeah. The nice thing is, I had already made a point to position my sister as the CEO of the company. And the goal, even before I went into chemotherapy, was to sell the agency to her. Because I found that my obsession and my love was really in business coaching. I loved helping people make their first six and seven figures because there’s nothing like it. Like, watching someone’s entire life change.

Like, I liked video for a… like, I loved video for a season. And Alex Hormozi has this amazing quote—he talks about, or this amazing video—where he has a spectrum of artist to entrepreneur. Have you guys seen this before? It's incredible. And he says that everyone starts off somewhere on the spectrum. It's artist over here, entrepreneur over here.

You might start off as the guy that makes videos. That actually wasn't me, ironically enough. I started off like right in the middle. I was helping people with social media management and running paid ads. And then I happened to see that video was—one, lucrative, but also very needed for building a brand. And so then I shifted a little bit into my artist lane on that side of the spectrum. And then what happened is, once I felt like I had mastered that as much as I wanted to—not like truly mastered but like as much as I desired to—excuse me, I shifted back into business. Like, harder into building the business and working on the business as opposed to in the business.

Someone that starts off as an artist, they're going to be obsessive about: “I want to work in the business every day; I want to be the one cutting the clip,” you know, clipping the podcast. And there are people—that’s like where they want to be, it’s where they want to live. I wasn't that person. So I knew myself and I was like, “Alright, I built this thing up.”

And then COVID absolutely threw a huge wrench in things. Right? I mean, we physically could not be on set with people to film because it was against city code. So like, that made things really difficult. For certain… like live—we would do live event coverage and stuff. Like live events were getting shut down. We had to be so many feet away, had to be masked up. Even our interviewees—technically, if we were following all the code—had to be masked up. So it was… I had people in my podcast studio—they were masked up. It was just a mess.

And so COVID didn’t have an immediate effect on us. It had like a one-year-after pretty significant effect on us. And then basically, as things continued to go… I said, “Wow, I’m realizing that I love consulting even small business owners.” So we started doing social media consulting with small business owners, even inside of Grindstone. And then I started picking up like people started asking like, “Hey, how did you build this?” And then I started investing in other companies and helping them. And then it just kind of took off from there.

So a couple people asked me, and then it went from one client to three clients to 23 clients and just exploded. And now it’s been over 200 clients in the last couple years that we've helped, like specifically video agencies.

Is that… so you're helping now people grow agencies? Yeah. So like, I started off building an agency, and then my company, The Wealthy Creative, is a consultancy that works with videographers to help them scale six- and seven-figure video agencies.

Very nice. Yeah. So on the Hormozi topic—yeah, curious for your thoughts on his and Gary V’s philosophy of quantity over quality. I think the best example I've heard is that art school thing—they were tasked with the painting… you’ve heard that one? And Atomic Habits, it’s an amazing book.

Yeah. So what are your thoughts on when people are getting the video production going: is it quantity or is it quality?

Quantity leads to quality. It's that simple. The story is incredible. I’m sure if the listeners haven't heard this yet: the art class was tasked with—it was like, the class split into two groups. One group: “You have to spend all your time making one piece of art.” And the other: “You have to make a piece of art every day; the highest volume possible.” And then at the end, they compared them.

The “theory” group had one photograph, pretty average. The “volume” group had practice getting better every single day and blew it out of the water. And so that’s my take on content: you're going to suck at it at the beginning.

And even now, like, I want to get more consistent on my organic. Even right now, I'm like, “Man, I gotta build the system. I have to build a better system.” I have some systems right now, but they're just not good enough for where I want to go. And the brand that I want to build.

So… but I know that the thing I have to watch out for—because I do know how to shoot, edit, play around in After Effects; I know how to do a lot of it. I catch myself too deep in the weeds sometimes, like, “I just need to get this thing posted.” Because quantity really does lead to quality.

And also—quality is subjective. What you think is a good video is different than what you think is a good video. And all of us could think it's really good and it actually sucks. Or all of us think it sucks but then the audience loves it. The problem is you don’t know until you put it out there.

And talk to anybody that's been successful on organic social—that is 100% true. There are proven pathways of stuff that does work, and you have to research to find out what those outliers are and then implement those outliers into your content. But we don't just know because no one knows.

I’ve noticed a pattern with agencies, and maybe you found it or found the solution to it. It seems like most agency owners could be phenomenal at every level at what they do, but terrible at branding—or not branding but their own personal outreach. Have you seen that at all?

Absolutely. Yeah. I see it every single day.

Why do you think that is?

I'll… I know exactly why. Because I’ve experienced it myself, and then I coach people through it every single day. So it's, one: it's a boundaries and a time-management issue.

So like, hypothetically say I was the one responsible for editing this podcast and getting it out, and then I also have a personal brand that I'm growing to go get new clients. Podcast is due today. You automatically, out of my integrity, have to come first. And so if the quality is not where you or where I want it to be, and I had another editor—basically a junior editor—take care of it, it’s not my standard. I then have to stop what I am doing to complete that thing. Right?

And then my time—I just went from working on the business to dropping down to working in the business. So you have to put strong boundaries in place. And really talented people…

The answer to the question is: talented people. Because talented people—like, my operations manager is working on a campaign right now. He’s building out infrastructure for a campaign, like a Meta ads campaign. We're going to be spending probably about $1,000 a day for the next 13 days. And he has to prepare that campaign today. He’s been trained for months by me to do this.

But like—and then when I get back home today, I have to go create content. So if I had something that was due to somebody, that, in my mind of hierarchy, still has to come first. Because I promised them that I would get the thing done. And I will live and die by my integrity; that’s just my number-one core value.

So I think that's the case for a lot of creatives. It's that. And then the second thing is: they like making it better. So when something is like an eight out of ten—let’s say it's actually a ten out of ten in their eyes—they're actually happy with it. But they enjoy tinkering, making it one percent better. But what they don't enjoy is the rejection of making a piece of content and nobody liking it. What they don't enjoy is making the phone call, getting rejected by a business owner.

You see, it's the thing they want to do versus what they don't want to do but actually need to do to be successful. So I think that's the… and so that leads to a lot of dissonance where you know you should be doing one thing, and then you overspend time on the thing that is actually good enough and ready for the world and ready for the client. But you want to obsess over it because it gives you significance.

"They're avoiding discomfort." Exactly. Because they're seeking significance instead of discomfort. And “they” is me. I’m not pointing fingers. I've totally done this too.

There’s a quote: “The success that you're seeking is in the thing that you're avoiding.” Yeah, 100%. I think about that all the time.

Yeah, it's real. I catch myself barely… like, I'm starting to catch myself more and more doing that. It's like, “I'd rather do this,” so that's what I do. I'm like, “Ah, I should probably go have that tough conversation with whomever.” You know, there's a litany of things I should be doing.

So can I share a hack that’s really helped me with that?

Go ahead.

It's like, you have to do something super uncomfortable to get your day started. It’s like a cold shower. I found a cold shower or cold plunge—something like this. Like, there's obviously health and body effects. I'm talking about the mindset effect. If you get yourself to do something that’s really hard and uncomfortable to start your day, everything from there is downhill.

Like I had a crazy day yesterday. I had—not exaggerating—I think 10 hours straight of meetings. There were little half-hour and hour blocks. One of them was a large group coaching call. Tons of onboarding calls. And then we have this thing called deep dives, where we'll get in with people and I'm helping them plan their next 30–60 days. So it's intense thinking. And this was like 10 hours long.

And I think to myself, “If I wouldn't have hit my workout really hard in the morning… If I would have woken up at like nine, rolled into my first meeting, I would have been fighting an uphill battle all day long.” But instead, I got up earlier, got after it, “won the day,” so to speak, like Andy Frisella talks about. And then it was way easier. It ended up being a great day. Really not a big deal.

And entrepreneurs are Ferraris, man. You can't expect to treat yourself like a Toyota Prius and drive 200 miles an hour. You're a Ferrari—at least if you desire to be a Ferrari and move really fast. So it requires a lot more maintenance. You have to take care of yourself. You gotta go to the gym. You gotta eat well. And some people are expecting their body to perform like a Ferrari but they're treating it like it's a 1987 Toyota Corolla or whatever.

Did you always have that mindset, or did that come after getting sick?

I've always had that. I had that before going through chemo and cancer. Yeah. And it actually carried me through that, thank God. It was like an embedded belief system already—doing the hard thing.

Yeah, just doing the hard thing first. I was so… like, context: I was in chemotherapy, and I would wake up and work out even in chemo because it's an identity thing. “This is who I am, so this is what I do.” Not, “Well, I'm in chemo and everyone says I need to just relax.” No, no, no. “This is who I am, so this is what I do.” And then I affect change. I set the thermostat. I do not let these outside circumstances control what I will or will not do in a day.

And like, barring being at home filming content—obviously I couldn't do that because I was in the hospital overnight—but yeah. I think that's what entrepreneurs need to develop: “This is who I am, so this is what I do.” And if you just live out of that identity, live from that place of conviction and certainty, everything… you just have complete disrespect for the obstacle. You just, like, blow right through it.

It’s funny—you talk about working out and stuff, and I hired a mental or spiritual coach, whatever you want to call it. And we were talking about working out last week, and he was saying that working out is spiritual. Yeah.

He said even… like, a lot of people say wake up in the morning and read your Bible first. He said, “I would work out first.” I’m that guy. I did the exact same thing.

He said it opens up your mind to the spiritual realm and stuff like that. So yeah, anyhow…

I so agree with this. This is a recent revelation for me, by the way. This was a last-week revelation. I just figured this out two, three months ago. Life-changing.

Because what I would try and do before is I would force myself to read my Bible, and then I would always feel this tension of “The longer I read my Bible, the less time I have to work out.” And then I have a daughter and a wife, so I like to be present for my daughter when they wake up and stuff. And I just… this constant tension. And I was like, “This is dumb because I'm not giving my all here, and I'm not giving my all here.” I switched them, all the feelings went away. I got time in the Word even before I came here—centered, walked in for the day, felt great. And there was no weirdness of like, “Oh, I'm giving less time to the…” None of that.

Yeah, you start off with some worship music, kind of get your mind…

100%. That’s on the way there. Yeah. I’ll listen to Jonathan Shuttlesworth—he’s a really… I really love his stuff. It’s like spiritual pre-workout. I'll listen to that on the way to the gym, or worship music. And then I hit a really strong—like, we had a leg workout today, which is brutal. Then I came back, got in the Word, feel great.

I've been getting a lot of Christian metal on my TikTok feed. Oh yeah.

It’s like, dude… save it to the playlist. It's interesting. I know…

I have friends that listen to that. I tried a couple. You have to send me what you find, because some of them are so like… I can't even hear lyrics. Like, I can't hear the words they're saying.

Oh, old Landon loved all that stuff. I'd say the stuff that I find is a lot more along the lines of Skillet. OK, great.

It’s not heavy metal-heavy metal. There is some that's A Day to Remember-ish. Like, that's my… I always liked that stuff way more, even from like a secular perspective anyway. But I've never listened to it, so I don't…

Yeah. But it gets me going. Dude, I listen to… my buddy posted a story of that yesterday. I was like, “Dude, this makes me want to go work out just listening to it.” So yeah, I might have to check it out.

Because a group I was in—Maddie Montgomery's the lead pastor for whatever, and what's the name of his band? But that's what he… and I know some of his bandmates or something just released a new album last week.

I mean, hark: high school football and obviously in the military and all that stuff—when we were working in the shop, we just had the gnarliest metal playing all the time. And then the further along I get in my walk, the more I'm like, “This is not good to surround my mind with all day.”

Yeah, dude. It'll put you in a dark, dark place if you listen too long to that stuff. And yeah, I'm getting really sensitive to that too, where the Lord will be like, “Uh-uh. Nope. It's not it. It's not for what you want to feel like and how you want to operate. The gifts you want to operate in—it's not going to work.”

So you talk about building multi-seven-figure businesses, chemotherapy, just life, you know, all the things you've been through—how has that reshaped your viewpoint of freedom and what freedom is?

I've never been asked that question before. The quote that comes to mind is that “A sick man only has one desire: just to be healthy.” I mean, it's like… and I was very blessed. The Lord literally protected me through every single thing that I went through. And I mean that to the cellular level.

I went through the most aggressive form of blood-cancer treatment that I think a person—one of the most, if not the most aggressive forms of treatment a person can go through. And the only thing that happened to me throughout that entire process was I lost my hair. That was it. So like, I was operating essentially two companies. I was the CEO of one and guiding another. We were literally hitting record months while I was in a hospital bed. And it was the Lord. I can't do that on my own strength. Like, there's no way.

And so all this stuff is happening, and I’m realizing: yes, the value of health is so, so critical. Because it just reroutes all of your energy into, “I have to solve this problem.” And I was very blessed that the Lord protected me from all the effects of all the treatments and everything. So I actually could still operate my companies from a chemo bed. Most people, that is not the case.

I think that has a lot to do with how you go into it, how you think, and what you believe going into it. I had doctors tell me, “This is going to be like…”—well, I was really blessed. I had a doctor who was like, “You're going to breeze through this.” That's what he told me. And I just looked into this—it’s called the Pygmalion Effect. Do you know what I'm talking about? It’s the study on the kids, where they told the teacher that certain kids were star students, and the teacher treated them differently. The teacher expected more from them, and their performance rose to match the expectation.

And so like, that—power of expectation—is really what that's all about. My expectation going into this was that I will literally steamroll this treatment, and this will be the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I really did believe that. And I brainwashed myself by just listening to the Word of God over and over and over.

I literally brainwashed myself healthy. Straight up. I got around so many people that had proven testimonies—friends healed from stage-4 prostate cancer; a lady who had a 13-inch tumor disappear from her stomach overnight. An angel literally came and removed it—gone overnight. Like, no water loss or anything—the mass was just gone. And so I met people like that. Those people were around me. So my expectation was just like, “This is nothing compared to what these people went through.”

But I was walking around with like a four-inch tumor on my neck for months—like the size of a tennis ball—if you can imagine just sitting there on my neck because that lymph node was where they said the cancer was.

So… I don't know if I even answered your question, but health is so important. If you don’t have it, everything is harder. And so I would say that’s what it taught me about freedom. It's that we are so blessed to—like, we walked down the stairs today. We're breathing without assisted oxygen. We're hearing each other. Like, I mean, there are so many little things that you just gain gratitude for when you're hooked up to a bed and you can't leave.

Like, I physically wasn’t even able to walk outside with the treatment that I was on. Because if I walked down the stairs and my cart spilled over with the treatment, it would have triggered a first-floor-wide hazmat alarm.

Because you had so much? Because it’s the stuff they were pumping into me.

Wow. Think about that. Wow.

So like, they literally said if this spills, we have to shut down that part of the hospital until it’s clean. And that's the stuff they were pumping into me. And like, I had to almost—I tried. They never broke—but I tried to bribe them to take me downstairs. I'm like, “I'll buy you coffee if you take me downstairs and let me go outside.” And they’re like, “We’ll go with you, but you can’t buy us coffee.” They wouldn’t accept the bribes. I tried.

But they would eventually… but they had to be with me and they had to be holding on so I didn't fall.

That's insane. How did you… was it just your belief in Jesus?

Yeah. I’ll throw my wife under the bus with this one.

So when my wife was 14, she got E. coli. There were, I think, three people in Nebraska that got it from this place. I think the other two passed away. She was the only one—she had to be life-flighted, you know, all these pediatric hospitals and all this that and the other. So she—but she was 14, so we'll give her a little bit of grace with this.

But she went from—she actually got it at a church camp or on the way to a church camp—but she kind of went the other way in life. I’m not trying to say she was a heathen or anything, but she’s like, “I have a second chance at life, and I'm going to live it to the fullest,” versus, “I'm going to live it for God.” That's the easiest way to explain it.

How did you stay humble to that and not just go off the rails…?

I think that’s gotta be like an age thing. Because I can't put myself… like 14-year-old me was so dumb. I can't even imagine the stupid things I would have done. So like, I don't even think that's a fair comparison at all. Because your maturity does matter. Your life experience matters.

You know, and the story that you tell yourself—I guess this is the answer. The story that you tell yourself about the thing that happened is what's going to create your reality. So like, if I believed a story that… and there are people that sadly believe this stuff… if I believed a story that “God gave me cancer,” then I would go around projecting that into reality. Which is completely false, by the way. That’s not how the Word works at all. God does not give people sickness. Period.

It says in John 10:10 that the thief comes not but to steal, kill, and destroy. And there are literally 20 scriptures that back up that Satan and sin are the entry points to sickness. And so the story you tell yourself will affect your reality one way or another.

So the story that she said was like, “Well, this is my shot. I'm going to go live it up.” And that was the… you know. And then, I'm sure she learned a ton of lessons from that and has figured a lot of stuff out since then.

But the way that I did it is like, I just had such an insane level of gratitude for being alive. Because like, I love my life. My life is awesome. I'm very grateful for my life. And I was grateful for my life before—even more grateful for it now because, I mean, it’s… my life was saved. My life was totally spared. And I'm so grateful that I was around people that understood how to speak and how to speak to the sickness, and how to not get into agreement with the sickness.

Because it says in the Word that life and death is in the power of the tongue. So there you go—there’s one scripture that can pretty much determine how your life is going to go. It says the tongue is the smallest member on the ship, but it’s a rudder that leads to destruction if you let it. If you let it, it will lead you to destruction.

So yeah… man, I’m just grateful. And I'm alive. So yeah.

Talk to the tongue… and obviously I wasn’t there when my wife was going through this at 14. She tells me her mom was the one there speaking, rubbing her feet, telling her everything will be okay, walking her through that. So I think that gave her the energy. She said so many people came and were praying for her. She'd never seen so many prayers. So all of that, I'm sure, helped push her through. Because she told me she felt so bad she was literally praying to die.

Hmm. That must’ve been really painful.

Yeah.

And I saw a sermon the other day—I don’t remember if it was Byron… or is it Myron? Myron Golden.

Yeah, Myron Golden. I call him Uncle Myron.

Uncle Myron, he's great. But it was basically about how God has the ability to heal anyone, so how do you come to peace with the ones He chooses not to heal and trust that it’s for a bigger purpose?

Yeah. So… this is a big doctrinal dispute that I have with Myron. I believe something totally different than he does. He believes that God gave him—my understanding from his content is that he believes he was chosen to get this, and the meaning he’s taking from it is that he was chosen so he could become who he is today. He says, “I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't have polio as a kid.”

He’s basically saying God, in His sovereign will, decided that he would receive this. I just don’t believe that God teaches through destruction that way. New-Testament God. I just have a doctrinal disagreement with that entire premise.

It’s pretty crazy you brought that up too, because in all the content I was watching when I was believing to receive healing from blood cancer, that one video came up. And I remember thinking, “Wow—what a dangerous thing to say on a YouTube video.” Because people are contending and believing to receive their healing, and they're trying to get into alignment. And they're trying to cooperate with God.

Because it says healing is the children's bread, and that life and death is in the power of the tongue. There are so many scriptures that back up the fact that God's will is to heal people.

Here’s one scripture that will completely knock out the entire argument. Ready? Not even a scripture—just logic:

If God made it a point to make people sick—if He chooses some people to be sick—then Jesus was out of the will of God His entire time on earth. Because He went around healing everybody.

Why would God make people sick, and then Jesus come heal them?

It doesn't make any sense. It says the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Attacks of the enemy are real.

I see where you're going, and I agree with that wholeheartedly.

I think more along the lines of what I'm thinking is… who was the wife that Jesus chose not to heal? I can't remember whose wife that was in the Gospels…

There is no one in the entire Bible Jesus refused to heal. Not a single person. Never. Not one time.

There are people who could not receive, because of unbelief. That’s an unbelief problem. But there is no story—none—where someone asked Jesus for healing and He said no.

He asked, “What do you want?” They said, “I want to see.” He healed them. He spit in mud, put it on eyes. He healed everyone who came to Him in faith.

And I researched this deeply for six months while I had that tumor growing on my neck. I said, “I will find every case.” And I did. Every single time someone came to Jesus for healing—He healed them. Sometimes they didn’t even ask—they just touched His garment.

There is no example of Jesus refusing healing.

And there’s the Keith Moore series—God’s Will to Heal. Thirty hours. Free. Changed my life. Because I needed to know: is this God’s will or not?

I already knew the cancer wasn’t from God. It was an attack of the enemy. But I needed to know: will God heal me?

And the Word says yes. Over and over.

Now, God will use bad things for His glory—like with Myron. Myron is a walking billboard for God's grace. But that does not mean God gave him polio.

Let me give you something important:

There is a difference between fact and truth.

Fact: gravity. It’s pulling the cup down. That’s real.

Truth: the law of lift. Airplanes fly—they don’t negate gravity, they operate by a higher law that supersedes gravity.

Fact: I had a tumor the size of a tennis ball on my neck.

Truth: Isaiah 53 — By His stripes, I am healed.

So I kept speaking truth over fact. Over and over. And here I am—no tumor, no complications, 100% molecular remission.

That is the difference.

And that's why I get cautious about certain teachings: because people need truth, not interpretations built around personal experiences.

you’ll see incredible changes in your life when your treasure aligns with God. Try giving to something you don’t believe in — you’ll feel immediate resistance. But give to something your heart is tied to, and generosity becomes natural rather than forced.

Think about your family. Even when they drain you, you still want to provide for them. You want to give more because you love them. It’s the same principle with God. When your finances are tied into the Kingdom, your heart automatically follows. It becomes impossible for money to become an idol because it’s constantly being placed back where it belongs — under God, not above Him.

So, for us, integrating faith into business is about alignment. It’s about saying, “Lord, this business belongs to You. As it grows, Your Kingdom grows.” And practically, it shapes our culture too.
 We pray before every Monday team meeting.
 We pray before every challenge launch.
 We play worship in our coaching calls.
 We open with praise reports.

And here’s the amazing part: many of our clients aren’t even Christians — yet they love the environment because there is joy, peace, and clarity in the room. Christians should be at the forefront of the marketplace. We literally carry the mind of Christ. We have supernatural wisdom available to us. Why wouldn’t we dominate business?

People don’t realize how many top entrepreneurs are believers — they just aren’t loud about it. But when they do speak up, like the founder of Raising Cane’s, it inspires people. It’s powerful.

If someone wants to reach out — whether for coaching, consulting, or help growing an agency — what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Just message me on Instagram. My handle is @landonrroads.
 Whether it’s business coaching, mentorship, agency scaling, or consulting, that’s the fastest way to reach me.

We help videographers build six- and seven-figure agencies.
 We consult with all types of businesses.
 We’re also building an agency for home-service companies — roofing, windows, siding, doors — helping them acquire clients through ads and systems.

And the coolest part is: I’m doing the work alongside them.
 We test strategies live. We run real campaigns. I never want to become the guru who doesn’t operate anymore. I want to be in the trenches so that what I teach is grounded in real data and real results.

It’s a new direction and it’s exciting.

Well, we appreciate you being here. Thanks for driving down and sitting with us.

I’m honored to be here. Seriously — thank you for having me. This was an amazing conversation. I’d love to come back anytime.

We’d love to have you again.

Thank you, guys.
 Thank you.
 I truly appreciate it.