Explainer

I am writing a new book.

As an experiment, I am going to be publishing chapters (as they are edited & ready for publishing) here on the site. When it is complete, you will have all chapters hosted online and I will likely leave it here for free consumption.

Some links may be inactive until the final chapters are written.

Preface

Before you read a book filled with advice from someone you’ve never met, it might be wisdom to first inspect who they are. If you already know my story then feel free to skip past this into the introduction. But for the rest of you, allow me to offer a bit in the way of introductions. 

Quick caveat: my goal with this preface is to both qualify and lend credibility to my viewpoints. That means some will unfairly penalize this sections as “bragging.”

I will never forget the first time someone called me arrogant. I laughed because I thought, “I am not arrogant, I am just better than you!” Soon after I realized, that was an arrogant thing to say. Thankfully, I have outgrown that viewpoint and no longer feel that my success makes me superior and anyone else inferior -- if you don’t have millions in the bank, it doesn’t mean you are inferior. Both superiority & inferiority create deficits in your life. 

It is a show of weakness for someone to believe they are better than all the rest because of their business, their money, their family or their background. Most people who exhibit this behavior are deeply insecure and use their ego as a way to cover up that insecurity. 

Anyways, let me fulfill the promise of this preface: I am rich. Sometimes that’s great for me and other times it makes my life more difficult. More important: I am rich in the areas that have nothing to do with money…

It did not take me very long to achieve the financial ‘status,’ it took me much longer to accrue the real wealth; the type of wealth required to go to be happy. That is what we should focus on.

In 2014 I decided, through a series of unfortunate events, that I was going to go out on my own. I transitioned out of my full time position in the real estate industry, and I started freelancing as a marketer. I knew very little. I made all of the mistakes, except for the fatal ones. 

You have to discover the talents you are naturally dispositioned to. For some, they love to speak. They love the crowds, and even the recognition. For others, they love to develop fewer relationships but deeper relationships. Some minds lend themselves to math. Some to language. We are genetically wired towards and away from a whole suite of different things. That is what makes you unique. 

My disposition is towards patterns.

My brain, as I’ve been told, is a calculator. I can’t round up, I need to know the decimals. I love the decimals. What this means, in the real world, is I very quickly decided to put together patterns of successful people. Then I emulated. 

So I started in late 2014. By the end of 2015 my waiting list was over a year long. People were paying me $10k and $20k wire transfers in advance as a deposit to utilize my services… a year later. I look back at that season and remember feeling, “This is crazy. This is awesome.” Knowing what I know now, it was also extremely rare. 

Despite the “success,” I kept in mind that success is relative and I started comparing myself to bigger fish. Thirty thousand dollars per month sounds great when you’re coming from a day job -- but the titans of the marketing industry were looking at hundreds of thousands per month. I thought, “I need to get there, then I can celebrate.” Then I got there. Quickly. 

After a year on my own, I was enjoying a 6-figure per month income. But I thought, “People in other industries see 7-figures a month, I can get there.” Then I got there. Then I thought, “Hedge fund managers do hundreds of millions per year. What would a billion dollars look like?” 

You can see the pattern that started developing in my life. Some of it was powerful and effective. Some of it was dangerous and destructive. I learned that chasing is fun. It can also create a life that is meaningless, each new thing you accomplish becoming less valuable than the next big thing you want to accomplish. 

“What does life look like to truly be healthy?” 

This question started dominating my thought life. I didn’t want to just be rich financially -- although I did enjoy being rich. I wanted to be healthy. Mentally healthy, emotionally healthy, financially healthy. Healthy in my friendships and relationships. Healthy in my family life. Healthy in my spiritual life. 

I touch a bit on all of these things in this book. But the main point I want to get across in this preface, in a nutshell, is that I am not very different than you are. I did not have special handouts. I couldn’t even qualify for a loan to pay for my first mentor. I started my professional career working at a church in Memphis -- not exactly the “industry of opportunity” for a hungry entrepreneurial youngling. My first year, I worked full time for $14,400 per year and I cleaned baseboards. 

There was leadership potential in my life even then. One day I showed up to work and brought a crew of youth students that I had convinced to clean for me. My boss found out, sent them home, and made me get to work. Looking back, I was not only trying to get out of doing something I didn’t want to do. I was piecing together how to get the job done through someone else so I could do what I was great at. That kind of delegation didn’t fly, not for that church and not in my position. 

When people ask me today at conferences or events where I learned how to lead, I tell them the truth. As a kid, my dad forced me to attend all of these business conferences that I did not want to go to. I remember a John Maxwell simulcast when I was maybe 12, he (my dad) promised me Chic-Fil-A if I went and sat quietly to listen. He wanted me to learn. I wanted the Chic-Fil-A. It worked. 

By the time I started hiring my own staff in 2016, things hit like a wildfire. I had all of this “muscle memory” from my childhood that I’d simply never had to exercise or use. In some senses, I’m just like you. I just came up through hard work, making mistakes, and always fixing my mistakes when I made them. In other ways, I am a different breed due to my upbringing & level of access. 

I really get frustrated with people who claim to be “self-made.” That’s just not realistic. There are a thousand factors that play into a person’s success. At this point, there is their schooling, education, family history, and unfortunately even their race. The place you are born on the planet and the level of access that you grew up — things like food, shelter, internet, and work opportunities. I don’t claim to be self-made. I have been honed by a dozen different factors & problems… all happening for my benefit to shape in me resilience, discipline, grit & work ethic. 

The good news is, what worked for me can be taught and replicated. I have done it, a few hundred thousand times with many (many) clients. One of our businesses trains consultants, small businesses owners, on growth strategies… there are hundreds of thousands of people in that business and between all of the individual companies I have trained & taught literally millions of people. 

That is another perk of this material, not only is this coming from my life. The material you are going to read through has been vetted & tested throughout the lives of a few million case studies.

If the material only worked for me, there is still ample reason to read this book. After all, one of the best “hacks” to a successful life is to read about the lives of other successful people. But it’s not just working for me.

It’s a proven recipe book that’s been tested in the lives of many, many others.

Let’s dive in…