Retired Football player, co-author of LinkedIn success book, LinkedIn Master Strategies book and LinkedWorking - Lewis Howes

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If you don’t know Lewis already you’ll be excited to hear his story. He also tells us Exactly what he would do if he were starting today with no contacts and only $1,000 to start. Great tips and advice for finding a mentor too!

Have you found a mentor? I’ve been asked a lot about this lately. How important is it, and how did you find them?

Check out LewisHowes.com.

And buy his book on webinars here.

Any questions? Let me know!

Transcript:

Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast. I’m Jaime Tardy and today we have Lewis Howes on the show. Lewis is awesome. He’s an information marketer. He also was just in Argentina playing with the Olympic team handball team, which is super cool. He does LinkedIn. He actually wrote a book called The Ultimate Webinar Marketing Guide. He’s sort of all over the place and knows everything about the internet. So I am really excited to have him on the show. I met him out in New York City. Thank you so much for coming on today, Lewis.

LEWIS HOWES: Thanks Jaime, appreciate it.

JAIME TARDY: So first, did you guys win the game?

LEWIS HOWES: We did not win.

JAIME TARDY: Damn! I knew I shouldn’t ask you if it was going to be a no but okay, keep going.

LEWIS HOWES: We didn’t win. I had a great experience in Argentina. We played against some different Olympic teams against Brazil and Argentina themselves and we did not qualify for the Olympics however I am going out there to just go watch the handball games.

JAIME TARDY: Really? Well congratulations though. That’s really cool. You came this close to being in the Olympics. Are you going to try again?

LEWIS HOWES: Oh yeah. We’ll try again, of course.

JAIME TARDY: That’s awesome. So that’s cool but you also do a ton of stuff in business and actually the cool thing is that the reason why you could do that is because you have a really flexible business, right?

LEWIS HOWES: Exactly. That’s what it’s all about.

JAIME TARDY: Tell me a little bit, because I have heard your story and I know there is a lot of people that have, but some people that are listening to this haven’t heard your really awesome story. So tell me about how you were on your sister’s couch and built all this.

LEWIS HOWES: I guess it was about four years ago, four and a half years ago I was playing arena football, got injured, had to have surgery on my wrist and for six months I was pretty much not able to do much because I was in a full arm cast. I didn’t have any savings; I didn’t have a backup plan. I didn’t get my college degree yet and so this was around 2008 when the economy was pretty bad and people were just losing their job left and right. So who was going to hire a college dropout who had no internship experience or anything really and no degree during like one of the worst economic downturns? For me, I couldn’t do manual labor because I only had one good arm.

JAIME TARDY: You’re like this all the time.

LEWIS HOWES: I couldn’t move furniture or like mow lawns or something. I couldn’t work a desk job that made me miserable just thinking about that and so for a year I was at my sister’s place and all I could do was I had my laptop and I could go on the internet. What I started doing was reading a lot of blogs and just seeing what people were doing online to kind of build their personal brand or just grow their career, find a job, at first I was just looking how to get a job and I was using LinkedIn a lot because my mentor recommended I check out LinkedIn to just see if I could connect with people to find a job.

That’s how it all started, just tapping into LinkedIn to see if I could get a job. I realized that there were some very interesting people on LinkedIn that I could connect with just to learn how they got to where they are in their career or how they grew their business or how they made millions or whatever it may be. So I just started reaching out to people one by one asking them if I could ask them questions, if I could interview them or meet them in person for breakfast, and just ask them how they got to where they are. I learned some very interesting things by interviewing these people or just meeting them in person.

The more I grew my network, the more I realized that I could leverage my network to pretty much create my own business and do whatever I wanted and I didn’t have to go work for the man or go work at a corporation. That’s kind of how it all started. I started my own website online eventually around the sports industry and I had built a large audience within LinkedIn of sports executives and I learned eventually how to monetize that audience by promoting products and services and live events that I was offering through my website and since then it has just kind of grown. I’ve learned how to monetize more and more over the last four years.

JAIME TARDY: So first it’s really impressive that it was only four years. You’ve come a ridiculous long way in a relatively short period of time, which is crazy.

LEWIS HOWES: It has been fun.

JAIME TARDY: I bet. So how did you, the people that you meet, were they sports executives that you were trying to connect with and meet with or who exactly were you meeting with?

LEWIS HOWES: Originally sports executives because I thought I wanted to get a job in the sports industry. That was my degree that I actually ended up going back to college for and getting a sports management so I was like I like sports, I played football so this is the most natural thing for me. But then I realized, once I started getting job offers in the sports industry, I kept turning them down left and right and I was like why do I not want this anymore. I realized I didn’t want to work for someone and I wanted to work for myself and I wanted to create something on my own that I was proud of and excited about.

I kind of wanted to work on my own terms and my own hours so I could travel and be flexible and do the things I want to do in my real life and have the passion that I have. That’s how it originated. Then it just started being successful people in general. It didn’t matter what industry, I just wanted to connect with successful people and go from there.

JAIME TARDY: So how much were you making at the beginning just dealing with sports executives and stuff like that? I know things blew up for you, especially after you started doing the web marketing and stuff like that, but how was it back then?

LEWIS HOWES: In 2008 through May 2009, so straight from May 2008 to May 2009, the only way I was really making any money was hosting these LinkedIn or sports networking events. I was going around the country and I was hosting these live networking events either around the sports industry or just around business in general. I would get around 300 to 500 people to show up in person to these live three to four hour mixer networking events in different cities. It would be at a bar, a restaurant. We’d open up the space; people would just network and share business cards.

I was originally doing them for free to see if I could get anyone to show up because I had never done it before. Then I said, okay why not charge $5 and see if people would still come. They still did. I charged $10, then $20 and they still came. Actually more people came and embedded the people were like the losers who were just the bottom feeders who didn’t want to pay anything. So I was getting quality people when I started charging more.

Then I said I wonder if I could get people to pay like a sponsorship and sell a table. So I started selling $250 for tables and I’d sell out my tables. Then I was like you know what I wonder if I can, there’s like 500 people here, they’re making a lot of money off all this liquor and alcohol sales and they’re buying food. I wonder if I could ask them if I can get a percentage from all the food and bar sales. So I was getting up to 15 percent food and bar sales.

Then I came out with my book in March 2009 about LinkedIn and I was hosting these LinkedIn events. So I just had my own table and I was selling like 100 copies of my book. I was getting them for $2.50 and I was selling them for $10 or 2 for $20. So I was making all this good cash but I was lugging around these boxes of books everywhere.

JAIME TARDY: A hundred books every single time, man!

LEWIS HOWES: It was good money but it was a lot of work for me. I was starting to get burnt out. I had done 20 of these in a year and I was like man this is a lot of work for three/four grand cash. For me, I felt like I was making money finally but it was still not where I wanted to be. It wasn’t until I did my first webinar in I think May 2009 where I made $6,300 in one hour and I had no clue what I was doing and I basically messed up the entire webinar but I was in shock that I made that much money. At the time, I thought I was rich. I was like I am going to retire. I’m freaking rich. I can do whatever I want now.

I remember after the webinar I said to myself, I was like I could do this every single day for the rest of my life. I made $6,300. Now, if I make $6,300 in a webinar it’s a failure. It’s like I’m bummed out for the rest of the day because we’ve learned how to tweak it and optimize and do a lot of things to make it better but that’s where it’s at.

JAIME TARDY: So that’s huge because you sort of saw the power of webinars from that and then took off. So you have been doing a lot of webinars. So tell me about how many webinars you do now and like what sort of numbers we’re talking about, if you can go into that.

LEWIS HOWES: I have probably done over 500 live webinars.

JAIME TARDY: Seriously?

LEWIS HOWES: I can’t keep track anymore but 400 or 500 live webinars then the amount of automated webinars we’ve done thousands, but I don’t have to be on the automated webinars obviously. We did like last year, in 2011, we did almost $2.5 million in sales and it was mostly through webinars, like marketing. It’s really, for those who don’t know webinars; it’s really just getting an audience onto an event online. So having an audience watch a presentation online as opposed to going to a live seminar where you get a thousand people.

You can do this virtually so it’s just a matter of getting the amount of leads, qualified leads to come watch a live training online as opposed to flying to an event and paying for hotels. It’s much easier, much less expensive and more accessible for everyone.

JAIME TARDY: Yes, they can sit in the comfort of their home drinking tea. I’ve done quite a few webinars so most of the people listening know what a webinar is and sort of how that goes and stuff like that. I didn’t realize how much of a part of your business this was through. This is like the lifeblood of your business, right?

LEWIS HOWES: It’s huge. Yes, without webinars we’d figure something else out but I mean it’s just so much a part, the conversion rate is better than anything else and just like driving traffic to a strict sales page or teleseminar even or whatever else you want to do online, I’ve did a sales letter which we didn’t have a lot of. It converts much better than anything else and it allows you to connect with an audience on a much deeper level. They trust you, they know you, they like you and they’re willing to buy from you more.

JAIME TARDY: So what I want to do, because people can totally read your book. I read your book about how to do webinars more and better and awesome and create conversions that are better. What I want to do is sort of go with you, like if you started again today, don’t you love that question. You started again today. I know you’d be doing webinars, right? But what exactly would you do? Say you didn’t have a list, because now it’s a lot easier for you. You can go and send to your list and say hey I’ve got another webinar. But say you had no list and you’re like webinars are the thing I am going to be doing, take us through the steps. What would you do?

LEWIS HOWES: Do I have money or do I not have money?

JAIME TARDY: You have $1,000 let’s go with that.

LEWIS HOWES: Okay $1,000. If I had $1,000 that’s all I have. Would I have my network still or is it just I’m back at the beginning?

JAIME TARDY: I was just interviewed and someone was like oh you have your network. I’m like well I just do this. So no, you have no network.

LEWIS HOWES: So I am back on my sister’s couch and I had to do it all over again and I’ve saved $1,000. I would start to create an amazing designed website for myself first and that was optimized to generate leads. That’s what I would do first. I would also buy a Go To webinar account. So that’s like $99 a month I guess. I would do that and I would build my audience on LinkedIn first. So I would create a LinkedIn group because, I would also be using Twitter and Facebook to build my list but I would first, I guess what I am trying to get at is I would be building a list.

LinkedIn would be the place where I would start. I would create a group first, because this group grows more viral than any other place and it allows you to send a message for free to members on that LinkedIn group once a week. So basically like having an email list but you don’t have to pay an email marketing provider. I’d use that group to get people on a webinar each and every week. Get them to promote it, get them to do whatever, give as much value as possible.

JAIME TARDY: Before you keep going, I am going to stop you. There are tons of LinkedIn groups in now; especially more than when you started because you’ve been telling everybody to start LinkedIn groups so there are tons of LinkedIn groups around. So how can we make our LinkedIn group actually work? There’s so many that I’ve found that nobody really, like it’s a ghost town. How do you get something to actually go viral and good?

LEWIS HOWES: I would spend eight hours a day marketing it. If that means, this is what I did originally. I would just put in sweat equity and hustle for a few months and I’d spend eight hours a day reaching out to people one by one and adding them to the group and saying here’s why you need to join the group. I would get 100 members a day to join. I would contact them personally. I would say would you mind sharing this with your friends on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn. I would just hustle.

I would be creating content in between like a sharable content on my website that I’d spent $1,000 to design. I would have the best content. I would share that through LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, everywhere I stumbled upon, drive traffic back to my site and get those free leads as well. So I would be building this audience all over social media but specifically through my website and on LinkedIn to start. In three months, I would be able to build at least a six to ten thousand person list.

JAIME TARDY: Really? Hustling at 100 a day though, really?

LEWIS HOWES: I think, because of how I know how to share articles and where I can get them featured.

JAIME TARDY: Okay, tell us some of that stuff then. Where do you share articles and how do you get them featured?

LEWIS HOWES: I would also be writing guest articles on some of the most popular sites online. Now that I know that you can easily write guest blogs on Matchable, Copy Blog, all these different huge sites, problogger.net, I would be just writing great content for other sites that would drive traffic back to my site. If I had a great looking designed website that was optimized and had a few pieces of content on there originally, people would just come back there, they would automatically assume it’s trustworthy and the more I am featured I would make it known that I am featured and build that perception that I’m a valuable brand and people would opt in.

JAIME TARDY: So how do you get people to join your list? Do you do like a free giveaway? What do you do for that?

LEWIS HOWES: I’m not the best at it right now, because it’s not my main focus, because I get a lot of leads through webinars. I’m not stressed for leads right now. But if I was in the beginning, my website would look completely different probably and I would be focusing on that only. So maybe I’ll go back and revisit my own site because I know what I am doing wrong. I’m just lazy right now.

But I would giveaway probably liked a free LinkedIn strategy session or something or it would be just like, I’d say it’s a free LinkedIn strategy session where it would be just a 30-minute overview video or something like that or what I would do is I would give a free 15-minute profile makeover interview. If I was really strapped for cash what I would do is I would say opt in and set up a time on the calendar for me to call you on Skype and do a profile makeover for you where I am going to show you how to rank number one for your keyword. I am going to show you how to become more a thought leader. I am going to show you how to get press. I am going to show you how to get a job. I’m going to show you how to do everything.

What I would do there is get people on the phone and I would say, “Here are the things you need to change. For $300 I can do this for you or you can do this yourself. By the way, we’ve got another hour where I can talk about all the other changes you can make but here are a few you can make right now.” So, if I needed to make money, I can do that easily. With that cash, I would reinvest it in buying a list.

JAIME TARDY: Good. So we’re still moving. So what would you do to buy a list?

LEWIS HOWES: I would do Facebook ads probably because of the cheapness right now and I can drive a lot of traffic and build a list that way. I would run them to auto webinars. So I would drive the traffic to an automated webinar, get people through a 60 to 90-minute live training so they connect with me or it can be a live webinar once a week that they would opt in for and with that I would just build the list. I would create a product or I would sell live training.

JAIME TARDY: Okay, I am going to stop you again. Facebook ads, so give me an idea, as far as what we can expect. If we have a team of Facebook ad people that are amazing and awesome, like how much money do you spend and how many leads do you get? Do you know like some of those sorts of numbers?

LEWIS HOWES: I would literally just buy the best Facebook ad course that’s out there right now and then either just do what it says or hire your brother or something for $10 an hour or a certain amount every day to run it for you. Or you can just run it yourself for a few weeks and once you figure it out, just give someone kind of like the cheat sheet of how to do it. But I really don’t know how to do it because we have a team that does it for us.

JAIME TARDY: I love that, right! You don’t need to know how, if you’ve got other people that can do it for you.

LEWIS HOWES: Exactly.

JAIME TARDY: But like how much are you paying in marketing and what do you expect for a return in that?

LEWIS HOWES: We’re not doing that much with it right now because we’re getting so many leads with webinars, the free ones we do, people share them for us and we do joint webinars with people where we get all the leads. But I would expect, I don’t even know the numbers to be honest with you, but I would expect to putting in $1,000 I would want to get $1,000 in return right away and then expect to make more off of leads on the backend and the upsells. So that’s just what I would want but I don’t even know what we’re doing to be honest with you. I just know they’re working.

JAIME TARDY: I love that. Don’t abdicate though. You’ve got to know what they are somewhat.

LEWIS HOWES: Yes, that’s how you would be able to build a list and I said that’s how I would do it.

JAIME TARDY: So that’s really interesting because, like you were saying, if you had a network you would be able to go to your network. You wouldn’t need the cash up front for Facebook ads and stuff like that.

LEWIS HOWES: Just ask an affiliate to promote the webinar for me.

JAIME TARDY: So how do you build this network because I know you are very well connected, sir. So give us some networking tips.

LEWIS HOWES: I think and again, if I had to do it all over in the beginning, I would go to the large or special events and trade shows that I would see these affiliates or these big internet marketers were going to who are in my niche or in my audience kind of realm. I would go there and I would just become friends with them. I would hang out late at night and talk to them when they had their guard down and build friendships first and not talk about business really at all, just really try to become someone’s friend because a business contact you aren’t willing to do anything for. A friend you’re willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that they’re taken care of.

So I originally went out and just said I want to become friends with everyone and I took that approach as opposed to here promote my product. I didn’t have a product originally. I didn’t have a business. I didn’t have anything so I wasn’t out there trying to get people to promote me. I literally was like how can I promote you because I have a website and that’s about all I have. How can I promote you? I’ve got these audiences through LinkedIn and I started promoting people originally, getting them traffic, getting them leads and sales. They were like how are you doing this and I would tell them through LinkedIn.

So that’s what I would do. I would just become friends with people first and then when I had something to sell I would be like hey do you mind sending a message out or can I guest post on your site about this or whatever it may be. Make it as easy as possible for them to promote you without them having to do any work.

JAIME TARDY: Because then it’s not that big of a deal because you’re just asking a friend. You’re not like hey I don’t know you very well but hey will you do it for my stuff.

LEWIS HOWES: Right. If it’s a business contact, I hate when people just email me and then they ask me to promote something right away when I don’t even know them. I’m never going to do that. But if it’s a good friend of mine who is just like hey man I just put this article online do you mind tweeting it for me, of course. I wouldn’t even read through the article half the time. I’d just trust the guy and tweet it out or promote a webinar, whatever it may be or do a partnership with someone. If it’s a friend of mine, of course, I am going to do it much more so if it makes sense than someone I don’t know – someone who is a good businessperson.

JAIME TARDY: So how do you, because you talked a lot, actually I saw you speak out in New York City too. You talked a lot about mentors and stuff like that. Is that the same process that you go through or is that a bit different?

LEWIS HOWES: Someone asked me this question the other day actually about how I found my mentors and I talk about three main mentors that I have had the last four years and I think the way I found them was I was seeking something personally. I was seeking like I wanted to be like someone or something. I wanted to have information about something. So I said I need to find the person who knows the best information about this or someone who is an expert about this topic that I want to know about.

I was just seeking people. I was just like do you know someone who can do this? Do you know someone? I would go places trying to find people and when I found the person that I felt like was in tune with my personality, with my values and ethics and morals, then I would harass them basically.

JAIME TARDY: We’re teaching people to harass people, yes this is great!

LEWIS HOWES: I would basically harass them until they realized that they weren’t going to get rid of me. I was going to just show them I could provide so much value to them and they had to have me around. It didn’t matter if I was going to work for free or whatever it was going to be but they had to have me around because I needed them to know this information. I knew that I needed, for some reason I didn’t know that I was supposed to have mentors like early on. I just knew that I wanted to get there as fast as possible. I didn’t want to go to school for four years. I didn’t have the resources to do that.

I had to find someone who could teach me this fast so I could make money. It was like a survival mode. I need to get off my sister’s couch, can you show me how to do this so I could make money.

JAIME TARDY: Then they felt bad for you. All right, fine.

LEWIS HOWES: I think they saw that I had so much hunger. I was just so hungry and they were like okay, yes, let’s do this.

JAIME TARDY: That’s awesome. It’s funny that you talk about you don’t have four years for college and stuff. You did this in four years and I think that’s what’s a little ridiculous. Anyone that was normal and went the traditional path went to four years of college and came out still broke whereas doing it your own way you could make so much more by actually implementing and learning and implementing and learning.

LEWIS HOWES: I tell people now, like a lot of people, I just met someone last week who is going to Harvard business school. I was like gosh, man, I don’t think I would ever go to Harvard business school. The only reason I would go there is for the network but I am not going to learn anything there that I couldn’t learn anywhere else. Take that $150,000 or however much it costs for two years and I would hire a mentor. I would pay them $20,000 a year. If they weren’t going to do it for me for free, I would say I am going to pay you to be my coach or my mentor and I am going to shadow you and I am going to do all your bitch work for you and I am going to learn everything and whatever you want me to do I will do it. That’s what I would do.

I would build a friendship with someone extremely powerful and learn everything from the master themselves and pay them if I need to. You’re probably not going to have to pay them. They’ll probably eventually pay you, which is the thing people don’t understand and take basically, connect with all their powerful friends, see exactly how they connect with people. Man, that’s how I would do it. I think people don’t understand that you can do something different than go to school and you can still come out okay like a non-traditional route.

JAIME TARDY: I am just reading the book The Education of Millionaires and looking at my, the 70 millionaires that I’ve interviewed. Some of them went to college but some of them went to school for music or English or have nothing to do with what their business is right now. I went to school and spent a lot of money on an IT degree, which helps me with computer issues like you had now, but in general, I don’t do too much with it and it’s kind of ridiculous but I was one of those people who thought I had to go to school but nowadays you don’t and I think that’s huge for everybody listening, especially for our kids, you know what I mean to be like it’s ridiculous. It’s like $40,000 a year for a regular school.

LEWIS HOWES: I know a guy, to give you an example, my brother is the number one jazz violinist in the world. So it’s a very specific niche, jazz violin. There’s not too many of them. He was a professor at Berkeley School of Music, which is like one of the top music schools. So he was teaching jazz there and these kids were spending tens of thousands of dollars every year to go to this school. He also had students who couldn’t afford or couldn’t get into that school who he knew who were violinists that wanted to learn from him still.

So what they did is they would spend like ten grand for the year and they would get private lessons from him and he would take them out to gigs and learn how to become a musician and how to hustle and book your own gigs, how to make money, how to sell CDs in the back of the room and make extra money, he was teaching them everything else besides just like chart music and everything that you learn in school. So I think he’s getting a lot more value out of learning from the master than going to a school to learn and spend more money and go through this BS through school. I think there’s ways you could do it to become better at your craft by just hiring a coach or an expert.

JAIME TARDY: Yes, instead of having that piece of paper and being like woo-hoo. I just find mine over in the corner the other day. Like oh yeah there’s my, okay good. That was expensive. Good to know. So give me some tips. What have you learned from your mentors? What are like one or two really specific tips that you’ve learned from your mentors that have helped propel you?

LEWIS HOWES: My mentors I feel like are very ethical and it’s more about, for them, this is something I’ve learned I think is it’s more about doing the right thing than like screwing someone over to make a buck. For me, I’ve hold true to that because at the end of the day I don’t want to be, I don’t want to make a billion dollars if I am going to kill a bunch of kids or something. It’s more about just being sure that I am becoming the best version of myself that I can be and I am really giving back to my community and adding value to the people that I surround myself with as opposed to just doing whatever it takes to make money.

For me, I really love being around my mentors. I ask them a tough question and they always stay true to what is the best thing to do as opposed to yeah I would do this, this or this to make the money or do the deal. They won’t work with negative people that are bad. Even if it’s the best company in the world that’s making billions, they will not do a deal with them if they know the CEO is doing something that’s unethical. For me, just trying to become a better human being I think. They teach me every time I talk to them how to become a better version of myself, how to like challenge the status quo and not just do it because it’s the easy way or makes a lot of money but really to become the best version of myself so that I am setting a good example I guess.

JAIME TARDY: That’s awesome. That’s more about the person than about the money and I think that’s what we like to talk about too. It’s totally about the person you’ll become. I mean if you make a million and lose it all, it’s what you learned that whole way.

LEWIS HOWES: I don’t want to lose all my money but I am not scared of the fact if I lose it all because I know if I have time and I have the energy and my resources still then I can make it back very easily. I’m not afraid of that. If I didn’t have the time or the resources then I would be scared I guess.

JAIME TARDY: Well that’s a good question. So let’s talk about this because at the beginning and I know you and you talk about the freedom and the lifestyle and that’s what we talk a lot about too. That’s why it’s called Eventual Millionaire, right, it’s not necessarily making as much money, whatever it takes as fast as you can, but then when we sort of talked about starting over again, it sounds like you would be working your ass off for 60 plus hours a week. So tell me about that. Like what about the hustle and living the lifestyle you want, especially for someone who is not where you are right now.

LEWIS HOWES: Are you saying give me an example of if I had to do it again and I didn’t have the money or from now forward?

JAIME TARDY: The question is really about how can you still have lifestyle when you are building your business.

LEWIS HOWES: Now I have got a thing called leverage I guess which allows me to basically push buttons and allows me to create the wealth that I want.

JAIME TARDY: Push button wealth – let’s sell that – that would be good.

LEWIS HOWES: I’ve got systems in place. My business runs with a lot less effort and time now because I’ve got people, I’ve got a team. I’ve got again my systems, which are very important. So all I need to do now is promote certain things a little bit, show up when I need to show up for webinars, do live training and then continue to build my relationships with people. So my business and my lifestyle mix but there is a thin line between business and lifestyle because every time I am on the street or at the grocery store I am talking to people and I never know who I am going to meet, who is a CEO or something where they could partner with me eventually. I never know.

So it’s all about building relationships and seeing how I could help that individual because the more people I help connect and grow their business, it always comes back to me somehow. They know someone who wants to learn something that I’m doing. They know someone who can use my services. They know whatever so it always comes back to me. So having the flexibility to play handball and train and do whatever I want to do throughout the day allows me to continue to grow as a human, which allows me to give back more into my business and create more but also, I don’t know, the more leverage I create the less time I have to work on my business as well. I don’t know if I can really explain it too well.

JAIME TARDY: That makes perfect sense. You’re putting all the building blocks in place so that way you can remove yourself more and you can do the stuff you like doing. Building relationships seems like your core strength, like you’re really good at that.

LEWIS HOWES: I try to be at least.

JAIME TARDY: So far so good, right? So tell me about the lifestyle then. How many hours a week do you work now? We like to hear people going oh I went to this trip; I did this, because I mean we’re working hard for something. So what is this something that you get to experience right now?

LEWIS HOWES: The something for me is to be able to do what I want, when I want and how I want to do it. I don’t really have a set schedule of when I work which for some people that might drive them nuts. But sometimes I work really hard throughout the day and I work all day and all night. Sometimes I won’t work at all for a month. The last four months I really haven’t worked much at all. We’ve had a couple of product launches. We have a webinar every week.

We’re doing partnerships, we’re doing deals with people and I have spent less time working in the last four months than the last four years combined probably. It’s because I was in Argentina for a couple weeks playing for the U.S. Men’s National Team so I’ve been training, I’ve been doing a lot of other things in my personal life that I’ve always wanted to do but didn’t have the opportunities to do.

JAIME TARDY: Now has your business been growing in that or did it take a hit while you were gone?

LEWIS HOWES: It has been growing but not the way that I want it to grow. So it has been growing very, compared to last year, it has been growing but I knew if I would be putting in the time and the energy it would be growing a lot more. But it’s like, I’m in this world and I’m in this life to experience it not to just grind out all day and just to make money. I’ve got the money now to do what I want to do with my life so that’s why I am spending the time to experience the things I want to and to go after other things as well.

I think there’s a balance I’ll find eventually as opposed to just taking off four months and then working hard for four months. I think there will be balance and I’ve had that but, for me, it doesn’t really feel like work. It feels like fun, it feels inspiring to me. It feels like, I get energy when I am connecting with people and I am making deals. When I am on webinars I get like this power.

JAIME TARDY: Like yes, this is awesome.

LEWIS HOWES: So for me, it doesn’t feel like oh man I have to put my suit and tie on and go to work today. It’s like let me roll out of bed and oh there’s a thousand people on a webinar waiting for me, sweet. Here we go, I’m ready. It’s like how can I make an impact day in this next 60 to 90 minutes. The webinar is done all right cool I’m going to go have lunch with some friends, I’m going to work out, I’m going to hang out. All right let me get back to some emails and make sure that I’ve got all my deals done for the rest of the week. All right cool I am going to go watch a movie or hang with someone.

JAIME TARDY: It’s all integrated. There is no line now because it’s all fun. See and that’s what everybody wants to hear because that’s what people are working their butts off now to try and achieve. So that’s super cool.

LEWIS HOWES: But we don’t get to that point until we feel comfortable with our finances and making sure we have our needs met. So, for me, for the first couple of years, I had to make sure I had my needs met so I was just hustling to figure out how to make money and be an entrepreneur.

JAIME TARDY: When did you know? When was that oh it looks like I have enough money? Oh wow, I am doing okay.

LEWIS HOWES: I think it’s still like I don’t know if I’ll ever have enough. There’s still a little part of me that’s like I have to have more so I feel secure because three and a half years ago I was on my sister’s couch and I was like I never want to be there again. However, I know that if I had all my money taken from me today I could send an email out tomorrow and probably generate fifteen to twenty grand from a small segment on my list just by saying hey guys I’m going to open up coaching for a year. It’s going to be month to month, $1,500 a month. Just stuff I want to do, I don’t want to do one-on-one coaching but if I needed to make money, I could do that and be fine. It’s not a big deal.

JAIME TARDY: Resting in that security instead of having a certain number in the bank is huge too though.

LEWIS HOWES: Exactly.

JAIME TARDY: So for the last question that I ask everybody, what’s one action that listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

LEWIS HOWES: What has been the best answer you’ve heard in the last 70 interviews?

JAIME TARDY: You’re not supposed to ask me questions.

LEWIS HOWES: Well what’s a favorite? I’m just curious.

JAIME TARDY: Continuous forward motion. Just like not taking any excuses just keep moving forward no matter what.

LEWIS HOWES: Here’s what I would say. I had one, I’ll give you two things. The first thing I was going to say actually originally was work on connecting with the most powerful people in the world would be the first thing. But I think that’s probably not what I would say now. What I would say is work on learning how to become confident because once you have that confidence, people are going to be attracted to you like a magnet and they’re going to come at you and they’re going to be like who are you and what are you doing and I need to have a piece of you.

I think when I started out, I was like so ignorant to everything but I had this gumption. I was like let’s go. I had this moxy or whatever it was. I was like I’m taking off anything. I don’t care, I don’t need a degree, I don’t need this. I’m going to learn it. I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it faster than anyone and I was just like so confident that I was going to make shit happen that I like blew my own mind I think. I don’t know how I got that. I think it was probably from playing pro football against like meat all day long.

JAIME TARDY: Yeah, you’re not going to get hurt, right, going out there.

LEWIS HOWES: It was just like I put myself in so many pressure situations from sports that I had this like okay business world I can do this. These people don’t have to fight for their life every day like I did. But if you can learn how to become confident I think with yourself, so it takes a lot of like personal development, like really looking inward and saying how can I grow every single day as a human to become better, I think you are going to be able to build that confidence that way and the more confidence you have, the less fear you will have and fear is something that holds everyone back from becoming a millionaire, becoming anything they want to become because they’re afraid to fail.

But when they have that confidence, they’ll be less afraid to fail, more forward thinking on generating any type of results you want and that result will eventually come.

JAIME TARDY: So I think maybe now that is my favorite answer. I remember when I first started and I would walk into a networking event and be like hmm. As I kept doing more and kept doing more and kept doing more, like I will own any networking event that I go into now. It’s not a big deal. I’m like hey I’ve interviewed a bunch of millionaires, whatever and everyone is like oh my gosh you’re amazing. So that skill, whatever you want to call it, is huge for taking those risks for asking people for whatever it is to move your business forward. So I think that’s the precursor to that continuous forward motion because you don’t take any steps unless you have that.

LEWIS HOWES: Exactly.

JAIME TARDY: Good one. I am going to use that. Awesome. Well thank you so much for coming on today, Lewis. How can we find more about you? How can we get on one of your webinars and learn more stuff from you?

LEWIS HOWES: Best place is LewisHowes.com and I am on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn obviously so connect with me anywhere you can find me online.

JAIME TARDY: Awesome. We definitely will. Everyone check out Lewis Howes. He’s the man. Thanks so much for coming on. Have a great day, Lewis.

LEWIS HOWES: Thanks, Jaime.

Just to note, you can download the top ten tips from these millionaire interviews on the blog.

Thanks for listening. You can find out more great information like this on EventualMillionaire.com.

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