How To Go From Broke At 25 To $100 Million By Age 30! (WATCH NOW) - Joel Marion Interview

hi I'm Joel merriment from broke to 100 million by age 30 and I am one of the passionate few yeah all Mars a rockstar that's why he's on where the rocks are on Instagram he's that's my guy he asked some incredible questions we had an epic interview and I think you guys are really gonna get a lot of insight inspiration from it thanks for watching welcome to this episode of the passionate few today we get to hear the incredible story of Joel Marion and for those of you that don't know Joel went from broke to a hundred million dollars by the age of thirty pretty amazing feat considering it at 25 he was making 40 grand a year as a schoolteacher so in this interview we get to your whole story how he got into writing how he got into copywriting and digital marketing and how he put his head down and committed with only a few hours of sleep a night over the course of months to be able to figure out this business and succeed massively at it so I want encourage you guys sit back relax enjoy a lot of the wisdom in this one because Joel shares what it takes to be a top achiever even if you don't think that life is working for you now it's an amazing story and plus Joel came from humble beginnings so he can relate to you no matter where you're at in life and also I want to encourage you guys if you want to support the passionate view you can check out our passion face shirts in the description below there you'll be able to purchase your shirt and feel good knowing that for every shirt you purchase not only will we be donating shirts to the homeless in need but we're also giving away a free meal so you can check that out in the description below plus I put together something very special for you guys if you've ever wanted to start a podcast if you've ever want to start a show but you have no experience and no following no clue how to get in touch with guests I want to serve you so we've helped you by putting together free PDFs in the description below you can download those right now totally free and you can check out how to start a podcast how to grow it how to monetize if you have a business and how to get in touch with your dream guests so check that out and with no further ado I want to encourage you guys to sit back relax enjoy the powerful story of Joel Marion enjoy thanks for being on the show today Joe it's a pleasure man thank you so much for having me absolutely brother now a lot of people have seen not only what you've done in business but a lot of people might not know that you've also built a huge following not just in a digital marketing space but recently on Instagram right I think in the last four-and-a-half months you've gone to over a million followers yeah four and a half months it's it's been a journey about it's been a fun one and it's crazy because a recurring theme in your life and in your career has been you just go all-in yeah so before we talk about the business success let's talk about some of the early days cuz before you became entrepreneurial you were a teacher right yeah so yeah so talk to me little bit about that I actually double majored in exercise science and health and physical education teaching and that was at the advice of my of my dad I had this his aspirations I didn't really know 100% what I want to do if I'd knew my passion was health and fitness I had a somewhat of a desire to get into personal training and then my grandmother showed me some newsletter at some newspaper article that had incomes of different professions okay yeah and then it's your personal trainer in the average is like twelve dollars an hour or something yeah that's again work for twelve dollars an hour you need to get a good profession so right he encouraged me to double major added another year to me being a university of college but ultimately I I graduated with both the exercise science background that health and physical education as I was trying to get my fitness stuff off the ground with article writing and breaking into fitness publishing as when I got into teaching I taught for four years as I was getting other things off the ground I had articles and I had a book and then we could get into the story of all that and how that led to me getting online it's all online marketing and information publishing so so let me get it straight so at the time you were set on kind of being a teacher right like that was kind of direction you're headed within the house it's not what I ultimately wanted to do full-time long term but it was the what I could do to make a decent income while I was getting other things off the ground gotcha yeah okay so where did you graduate from where'd you go College New Jersey I actually spent my first year out at a private university Christian school called Oral Roberts University in Tulsa Oklahoma I mean getting the story of that and how that ultimately that played a major role that first year and ultimately what I'm doing today and I hated it while I was out there yeah yeah but there's a reason why I was out there I can see God's hand and all these different pieces of my life so I spent my first year out there and then I transferred back home and I just commuted to a local University College in New Jersey used to be Trenton State University as a teacher's college gotcha so when you went there your intention was to teach fitness right or nutrition health stuff like that so did that was that passion born younger like talk to me a little bit about your childhood and what formed there like the desire to be fit and the desire to achieve stuff like that really oh I didn't I I wasn't a big exerciser per se when I was younger and nutrition was kind of lost come from a lower middle class family where'd you grow up Trenton New Jersey is where was originally until I was about 13 years old and then I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia in Cherry Hill New Jersey so I wasn't always in like I wasn't in health fitness exercise as a young guy didn't have any health exercise or fitness influence on me however I will I got into sports so I was a basketball player I went to a small Christian school well we had a powerhouse I've let it a basketball program there my high school my high school basketball team we had a seven-foot one guy at six foot ten guy six foot nine guy and I was small yeah you know that's a Tier four big dude yeah it's this one wrong small team so I played all through high school and I was getting ready to graduate and I had the opportunity to play like the division three small time ball but I didn't want to let something that I knew was not gonna be extend beyond college we dictate you know I was ultimately gonna come to go to school in my academic future so I had to going out to Oral Roberts University I felt like I was being pulled out there a friend of mine a very close friend of mine who's a year older than me who play basketball with all our lives was was out there already playing for Tulsa University and then as I was going out there he transferred back home to Rutgers so we had these these grand plans so I get an apartment together and like you know obviously that was my best friend so we had talked about it and then he had an opportunity to come back home and play for Rutgers is just the right fit for him but I was still going out to Tulsa no are you so at the time you know we can get in a little bit of the story of me out on Oklahoma I was majoring and the health and fitness of Fame Exercise Science predominantly before I transferred back home and added the teaching track to it and at that time were you entering fitness contest go there one time there's like a big fitness contest that you just said I'm gonna win it even they had no clue how you were gonna do it yeah so while I was out there this is this is kind of God's hand in all this so I go out there my best friend transfers back home I feel like very alone out there I didn't really Drive with the Tulsa Oklahoma crowd people at the University were seeing a little bit weird to me like I didn't feel like I didn't feel like I fit in Frank I had a couple friends but like nothing that lasted out less of my time there you know I hung out with a few people but once once I transferred back home more relationships that extended beyond you know so but while I was there I I spent the first semester there it didn't love it I came home for Christmas break so all my old friends again and I was loathing going back like I I really hated the thought of having to go back to Oklahoma for second semester and I told my mom I said mom there's it's gotta be somebody I can't I I don't want to go back look I don't wanna go man she said it's paid for you're going you know get on the plane and like I was hating it you know I I remember being at the airport and literally like in tears the the fact that like I was had to go back there's my friends again there was just the people and the energy and all your friends are back home right yeah I was very homesick I was very homesick so I thought there that I was nineteen years old a door I go back out there the second semester and I took a course where one of the professor's was very into health and wellness and they introduced me to a book called body for life by Bill Phillips Bill Phillips is kind of a fitness legend and your body for life was on the New York Times bestseller list for over well over a year I mean consistently and and he owned a supplement company called EAS at the time my apply shakes I mean it was one of the biggest supplement companies at the time they had a partner magazine called muscle media so I started learning from Bill I bought the book and then I learned that he had this body transformation consciousness 12-week transformation contest and I was coming off my basketball career I was starting to get into health and fitness and bodybuilding or and then I learned about Bill Phillips and read his book and I was just like like I do everything you know this is like a hundred percent in and they I entered the contest and I told all my friends family I'm like I'm entering this contest and you know I mean I'm not a bodybuilder or anything like that but I'm gonna win this thing you know I'm gonna win this thing and you were put and what made you were you kind of like trying to pressure yourself to do it or like what was this I just always had this uncommon self belief in myself that I was destined for something great and even lubricated yeah we were younger you know and I guess maybe that stemmed from kind of my my relationship at home or I didn't have the most supportive father and I was I was even told to the contrary I make it you're gonna go to school and get kicked out your first year you're you're you're rebellious or this do that yeah and then on your shoulder to a certain yeah I did have a chip on my shoulder do do to some of the things that were kind of from my own dad you know what I mean Oh meanwhile I had teachers and mentors that had a lot positive things to say about me but I guess there was a chip on my shoulder that like you know I wanted to prove my dad wrong that I was gonna be something yeah and then you know whatever I put my mind to I just had this belief that like if if I worked as hard as possible and I become more obsessed with it than anybody else that I'm gonna come out on top so that was my mindset coming into the contest I entered the contest twelve weeks later submitted my you know my application and all that with four answers to the questions before and after photos and then I had a call later in the year that I had won and that's a kid and I'm 19 years old a 19 year old kid in college and won $25,000 for all expenses paid trip to Maui Hawaii all this other swag that I got free supplements and all this stuff how excited were you when you found us yeah my mom and I was on top of the world because honestly like I was so passionate about it yeah and I wanted to ultimately inspire other people to make the same transformation that I did I knew that by winning this contest I would have a much better opportunity to do that so I became friends with the editor-in-chief of muscle Media magazine and how did you get in touch with him oh well he was part of the committee that was the judges of the crash she said that open up your network and they knew your name and came right to leverage exactly so I was a body for life champion which to the muscle media crowd was a big deal and and literally there weren't that fit at all you just went too deep right so you're working out like twice a day like what was your regimen or what were you doing differently physically that other people weren't yeah I would probably was putting in more than what the book prescribed yeah you know yeah I was I was probably going another 50 to 100 percent beyond beyond that and the diet was perfect yeah I was I was a very dialed in very evident so after win the contest I got introduced to the editor-in-chief there a guy named David Kennedy and he said you know well I actually put together an article because I wanted to give back and help other people who want to do the same thing that I did so I put together an article I submitted it to him and he said you know I enjoy your perspective what do you think about being a regular contributor to muscle media I'm like yeah heck yeah love to I would love to be that this is what I want to do you know I want to I want to write I want to help inspire others so I started running for that magazine and then I started submitting to other magazines and I wasn't a body for life champion to them because I wasn't connected you know I mean it was a partner magazine so I had dozens and dozens of my original submissions outside of muscle media rejected and at that point in time I said to myself well there's got to be a reason why you know it's it's not just because nobody likes me it's not just because they have this special gift that nobody gets her understands maybe I just need to be a better writer so that was my first lesson in that I internalized the rejections and the failures in a way that was positive instead of negative instead of saying oh maybe this writing thing isn't for me I'm not good enough I said well I'm not good enough right now about how can I become good enough so I started studying the magazines that I was submitting to I started learning what was important to them the style of articles that they were writing and I refined my craft and reworked my articles and started submitting again and before long you know within the next 12 to 18 months I was getting published all over the place I was published in in men's fitness men's health I was on the training advisory board for men's fitness and then I was running for a lot of online magazines and stuff and ultimately that led to kind of the next part of the story got ya where I had my first book published so I have a question right because it seems like one reoccurring theme not only on how you built your businesses but and how you kind of like started from your teens and into your early 20s is that you go all-in when you want something what is something you notice among maybe competitors that you can tell kind of you get what I'm saying like when when there's other writers your peers they're also aiming for the same magazines or the fitness people who are aiming in the same contest what is it that you were doing differently than everybody else like what was the mindset there that was different yeah so for me and and this is actually something that I teach now I try to stay extremely focused on what my objective is and not worry about the other people who are doing X Y & Z because now I'm comparing myself to so-and-so or I'm thinking about this guy and instead of thinking of the end goal the outcome of the objective so I think the the main thing was probably different is that other people tend you know in in business and writing and whatever tend to be concerned with the competition when I'm just ultra focused on what my end goal is and with writing I just I knew what I had to do and no matter how many other people were crowding the space submitting articles as well I knew if my articles became the best that they possibly could be then didn't matter what everyone else was doing then I would we get published the rest would take care of itself that yeah and then did you find that like your focus was naturally kind of good or were you like like because most people would consider themselves to have an ATT right yeah like oh I don't know anything or I'm not good at it or maybe Joe had a knack for it yeah I'm sure you got a lot of that all your natural so like how much of it was actually conscious effort to like enhance your focus versus you just kind of having that knack for it well I don't think that I have really had a knack for focus I I believe that I was very intentional about it and I if I wanted to do something or accomplish something then I was all in on it and I would learn as much as possible and I would absorb as much as possible and I would try to be the best that I could be and I do a lot of self experimentation it wasn't definitely wasn't that like I had this gift were just being ultra focused but it was so important to me that I became ultra focused kinda yeah and for me a lot of people say you know you accomplished so much did this you did that like how did you stay focused on your goal and I'm like well the goal was the most important thing to me at the time so I just prioritized what was most important you know it was it became natural once I had my priorities in order and a lot of people I think they overthink the whole focus thing is just just concentrate on what you're most passionate about and what your ultimate goal is and if you want to achieve it that bad whatever is most important it's gonna trump everything else gonna pray art prioritize it in front of other things gotcha and then once you get success it builds momentum and confidence just keep going and going yeah okay cool so continue from there you basically at this stage sir again published start developing some confidence in your writing and that leads to your first book that you publish yeah so my first book which is actually another you know series of failures to even get to even get published how are you at this time I was 24 years old okay so I'm 24 years old and I just started teaching I was think this is my second year teaching and I had been writing articles which would pay me you know as a freelancer unpaid a couple hundred dollars an article wasn't anything that was going to pay the bills but I was developing my platform and then I had this idea for a a book based on an article that I wrote about how to use your favorite foods to accelerate fat loss which I thought was a very powerful concept this is about how our bodies go into starvation mode when we decrease calories and how you can actually operate regulate your fat burning hormones by having a cheat day and eating some of your favorite foods enjoy some pizza it was like a message that I thought would resonate very well with with the weight loss crowd and it proved to be part me you know it proved to be well accepted in the end by ultimately guy I got a book deal and for somebody who was at my position I had a hundred thousand dollar advance was just very significant yeah in the traditional publishing world how many publishers rejected your book before that so it was really not publishers but it was agents so I was I there's all these gatekeepers and everything right it's like the editors for the magazines and then it's the agents to get you in front of the editors for the books so I needed an agent no one's gonna take unsolicited proposal from an author that they never heard of you know and you need that agent go-between to be your source of credibility with ravishers so I was looking for an agent and I I got connected with a few different people from magazine editors that I that I you know had come to know through writing articles and it was just really slow going I somebody would take a month to get back to me and then they would ultimately say they had a conflict of interest it was good but you know they couldn't work with me and then it was another month goes by and submitted somebody else they had a different vision for the book and was it to be a paper book they were thinking really small was thinking really big right so it's like a series of four or five different agents that I had submitted to and we're like getting six months into this I'm getting really frustrated like this is a this is a winning concept I'm just I felt like almost mass abating to hundreds at once although that's frowned upon in industry because you don't want multiple people to accept your project right and then you have to tell somebody like Oh everyone with somebody else yeah yeah so it's like the one at at time pain was like thank you long yeah it was taking way too long but that was that was how it was told to do it so I said I'm gonna give this one last try I contacted an editor at Men's Health I said do you know anybody else you know I talked to this guy I talked to this guy I talked to this lady ultimately it didn't work out do you know anybody else that would be a good fit and he gave me somebody's name and I Mel Berger and said well Mel Berger I don't know him personally I don't can't give you any contact information but I know that he's worked on a number of big books he's worked on his own with Barry Sears he's he's currently working with Montel Williams on his book he worked at LL Cool J on on his fitness book is I think he might be a good fit for a project so I didn't get any direct contact in there's no intro or anything like that so it was time for me to like put my detective hat on and and just trying to get in touch this guy I found like on the wayback machine or something like that at an email address for him and I emailed him and unfortunately it still was a good email address he got back to me relatively quickly and said it sounds like an interesting concept I'm gonna read your material this weekend and I will get back to you on Monday what she did he was the fastest person to get back to me Monday he contacted me I loved it let's go to work I'll send you agency contracts and we'll see what we can do for you sign the contract two days later he gives me a call and says I just had lunch with somebody who was an editor chief at Random House she's one of the biggest New York City publishers said her chief at Random House and they won an exclusive submission for you know the rights of the book so I said well what would you do is that's they said normally we start with an exclusive if the deal is not materializing or it's not big enough then we'll submit elsewhere but I think it's a good you'll be in really good hands with these people as long as they come to play so I went to New York I had a meeting I I you know over delivered performs well in the meeting I did call the next day and said they're offering $100,000 for the book I think if we if we take some other meetings we might be able to drive up the price a little bit ultimately I think this is the right team and we had really good energy in the room around or any meeting so I felt like it was a good team so the editor in chief there was Heather Jackson and she had worked with Tim Ferriss on 4-hour workweek home for our body and what uses this is going back probably like 2006 ish somewhere around there and how old are you now like 25 yeah now today I would say 36 36 kind of yeah yeah so this was 11 years ago she took my project on we went through the whole editorial process to publishing the book launches and the book flops for all intents and purposes the book flops and you've got an advance for a hundred grand yeah I got a I got an advance for a hundred grand which you know your that's based on a 15% royalty of the cover price has worked out to be like three dollars and something per book right yeah I think in total that book to this day has sold maybe 5,000 copies right so 5,000 copies times are like the $15,000 that I actually earned of that events but you know that's the way the publishing industry works it's kind of a control legalized gambling you know gonna put in events out there there's nothing in the there's nothing in the contract that says like I have to pay it back or anything like that if it doesn't perform yeah it's an advance against world he's a-comin I wouldn't make any additional royalties until that was made up but the fact that I didn't actually sell that many copies you know didn't affect me in any way other than the fact that I felt like you know the end of this is the end of my career wasn't really even that because they're used to that in the publishing industry they take risks on first time off it's gonna be big I'm actually very good friends with the editor still now and we do some cool stuff together and we're looking to rekindle the relationship and maybe do another book well at that time you got a hundred grand what's going through your mind at 24 yeah right the biggest check you've ever seen any other write the $25,000 check for body for life and then like missing you know I got a hundred thousand dollar check from from a publisher I'm a teacher making 42 grand a year and I'm like well this is it this I really felt like that was the break that I needed I freaking plowed away with all the article rejections finally made even in that industry and became a published author and trade magazines I dealt with all the rejections from these all these agents and Here I am after I got the right agent on board turned around really quickly I got a hundred thousand dollar book deal this is it like this is the path to my future right here yeah I wanted to be a New York Times bestselling author I wanted to share and inspire and the health and fitness and nutrition category with multiple books future books so then the book launches and the book flops doesn't do well at all and I'm sitting there thinking like I'm never gonna get another book deal you know on the people wanna see the performance of this book and and then that's the end of the road for me when it comes to being an author at the same time I'm thinking what am i what's Plan B or what's Plan C you know I can go back to teaching and just live an average life or I can try and figure it out so I'm at this time are you aiming to be like a multi-millionaire is that like a goal like my goal at that time was to make twenty thousand dollars a month that was my goal like I mean that's just the number I picked yeah a year yeah I mean I was making 40 grand a year as a teacher and a couple hundred dollars here and there on articles yeah but I said to myself if I can't make 20 grand a year yeah I mean 20 grand a month like I'm I'm freakin set how does that number compared to your mindset now yeah well obviously we smashed that goal and then we smashed another goal and then it was to make a hundred grand a month and then you know that I've had years you fool calendar years where I made over a million dollars a month yeah so the 20 grand was obviously because I had an experience thing anything greater at that point right and that was so much higher than where I was that currently right and I feel you know with people and goal-setting that's how it works right you set a goal that's that seems kind of ambitious compared to where you are now but once you hit that goal Seether you're gonna just get comfortable there or you're gonna realize that hey I was here and I achieved this huge goal now that I'm here I can probably set the bar a little bit higher and achieve that and we just went through that cycle can you do it in steps you didn't do it like I want to make 100 million dollars yeah as a high school teacher I'm a hundred million dollars at business is like I never would have even dreamed that or thought that at that point right now if you would have told the 25 year-old you that you would run that in your 30s how would you have felt that I feel like there's been a lot of times in my life where I looked back and said I don't want to know what's going on 10 years from now you know yeah because I don't even think that my mind right now understands the potential and the capability that where I'm going to be when I'm 45 right you know so I looking back if somebody when I was 25 to somebody told me like hey you're you're gonna be running 100 when you're 30 years old you're gonna be running 100 million dollars or something the company I don't I would like what do you know what to think right yeah it would it would be beyond me beside me to even think at that level what time but as you experience some success then you start to get used to it right and then you raise the bar you do the next level next line it becomes normal to a certain degree right yeah yeah it doesn't become this big epic oh it doesn't become shocking anymore right yeah there's a matter of fact yeah okay so at that time that's your big break sure getting some confidence you're 25 what happens next right so the book flops and that was a heartbreaker for me I'm facing the reality of having to go back to teaching or figure out something else and I actually did go back to teaching that next year while I was learning all my marketing and because I I did not want the end of my story to be the book that flopped I did not want the end of my story to be are you just gonna be an average physical education teacher for the rest of your life there's anything wrong with people who teach you no I have loads of respect for people are educating our youth and it's one of the most unappreciated underrated physicians but for me I just there are aspects that I loved of it but it wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life I had bigger goals and ambitions so you know I I kind of go back to the drawing board I knew some guys running for in the magazine industry that information products there were so many DVDs on the side they own their own gym they were writing articles and then they had these information products or just selling ebooks or DVDs or whatever so how did you initially discovered is your marketing through these guys yeah I would serve us through other friends of mine in the magazine publishing industry and some of them were making like 10 grand a month off of like digital ebooks or DVDs or whatever whatever their information product was then making like 10 10 grand a month and to me I was like well if I can make 10 grand a month selling information products as opposed to being a teacher and working for the man and dealing with the bureaucracy of the administration all that I'll take that all day let so let me let me throw my hat in this ring of information publishing right and had no clue how to do any of it no I knew nothing I knew absolutely nothing and that and the reason that my book flock did flop is because I didn't understand marketing at all I expected the publisher to sell all the books like hey I'm gonna bring you a great concept and then the publisher is gonna get in the bookstores and there's gonna be all these displays and all this stuff and then next thing you know they'll give me all these TV shows best you know the the books are flying off the shelf because my relationship with its publisher right now we didn't get the big breaks we didn't get on Oprah or dr. oz or any of the morning shows or anything I got on a couple local news things helped move you know a couple hundred bucks a couple hundred bucks you know yeah for appearance or whatever but it wasn't anything earth-shattering and that's when I learned that if I am going to be successful in this I'm gonna have to learn to control my own destiny and I found out that I needed to develop my platform more and understand marketing so I you know I kind of came from the world that you know what these guys who are doing these information products and I wanted to learn that so I started learning I learned from a guy named Ryan Lee he was teaching personal trainers to create information products meanwhile what vision the sidenote funny story I was I'm known you know I'm a marketing guy now I head up marketing for a 100 million dollar company i sell sell sell and negotiate constantly that's all i do with what partners that promote us and all that I'm negotiating deals and selling non-stop when I was in college I did an internship as a personal trainer I was that I was at a Gold's Gym I was the worst sales guy in the entire entire facility yeah like they were they had nine trainers there and I was always at the bottom why is that at the time I kind of thought sales and marketing had this negative stigma like the pushy I don't want to be a sales guy I don't want to you know if some people if they're not great boy right exactly I don't want to walk up to people while they're training and I'm trying to sell them on my services or whatever I didn't want to be pushy now I understand if you have something of value to offer it's you're doing this disservice to the world by not getting it out there or advertising it or or trying to get it in front of people or convince people or persuade people to get on board with what you're doing so best aside storia it's my my humble my humble beginning in sales where I was terrible but all these things are alone learned skill right so I I got into learning about online marketing I took a bunch of courses I became up pretty much obsessed with it you know as you mentioned before if I do something that's gonna be all in yeah and what's the one where an off-camera were talking about it what's the one word you would say you would attribute to what it takes to to master your craft yeah it's a mentioned tenacity and its really just going over and over and over again no matter what happens no matter how many people push you down along the way how many knows you get no matter how many obstacles are on your way no matter how many failures you have you have to power through that and push through and get to the other side because there is something special waiting on the other side but most people never get to the other side because they're not Stacia enough not persistent enough they give up too quickly they heard too many knows they you know somebody did them wrong and this sort of circumstances caused them to get you know fall behind and in the race in their dream and other people got ahead of them and that was it was over instead of realizing that we have a lifetime we're running this race for a lifetime we're playing this game for a lifetime I'm dealt a hand but I'm really the only person in the game and I'm destined to win all you have to do is put my cards out there when it's time but you have to stay in the game you know that's the big part of it I love that ya know that's powerful so then at that time you see the information products start learning and then you go out I want to test my first one yeah so what's going through your mind at this time so I like I know right yeah yeah this is ten years it's just 2008 going here like 26 27 yeah she doesn't hate going into the 2009 school year of 26 years old I learned sales copy from guy Yong silver I learned information product in from Riley and I was I was ready to get going so I wrote my own my first sales letter for a coaching program that I had the that I had it was $197 a month finis coaching fitness coaching never get a customized nutrition and supplementation and exercise program every month customized to their needs and information stuff like yeah so my application only we I had about 2,000 people on my newsletter list through the article writing that I was doing I had my own personal website but I never was doing anything to drive traffic there was just all organic so these are like my best fans right God 2,000 people there I wrote a sales letter that drove to an application and then we closed the deal on on through email on the back end or phone call if necessary so I promoted that and we got like 48 people in at $197 a month foremothers a four-month minimum so here I am a teacher and now I'm making like ninety ten grand a month off this coaching program as I'm going back to cheese's well that's your first even attempt at it yeah yeah exactly so here I am I'm going from $42,000 a year and getting back into the teaching game knowing that I wanted to do other things knowing that I wanted to ultimately do something much bigger I was you know put it put putting my foot down learning all this stuff going in another direction and Here I am I'm making almost Center head I'm off now and are you tripping out that it's working like oh my god I can't believe so I launched the first code the coaching program there right and then I saw the first applications come in and then I replied with what to do nets and it was a PayPal link and all their rights to sign up and I have you know the first four or five people who came in was pretty surreal you know it was like this could be something it's just two hundred bucks a month and Here I am I'm making a couple grand a month and three four grand a month or whatever yeah and now like I got five people signed up to another I said that's a thousand dollars a month extra right now if that's where it stopped like I'm like oh this is great extra income I paid for payment with this or whatever right so I was excited I was excited about it and then by the time their promotion ended you know throwing it for three or four days we're sitting there and we're making 10 grand a month now so that's when I really said alright this is this can work you know I started to really believe that this isn't just an idea but this this I'm seeing it in action there's actually orders being placed in revenue coming in and at this time you're going deep learning taking courses reading so it wasn't just like you were like an [ __ ] here's my life that year okay this is a 2008-2009 school year and this is what my my daily life look like I wake up at 5:30 I be at school teaching my first class at 7 a.m. any break that the kids had whatsoever working on the business sending the emails of to people that want to connect with throwing headphones on what kids are testing listening to marketing courses my lunch break was like all learning and were you Dan Kennedy get Dan Kennedy's Frank firm Jeff Walker's guys Yannick silver you know the the reckless response legends you know Ryan Lee on how to market how to write how to make offers yeah yeah different types of information products you know higher priced high ticket items all this kind of stuff so here you know working all day long about every break I have an opportunity to work a little bit more on the business or absorb some more knowledge I'm doing it then I come home 3:30 taking power and after 30 minutes get some food in my system and then I'm working to 2:30 3 o'clock in the morning every day up at 5:30 to the next day so you're getting three hours of sleep in here III slept for 3 hours a night for 9 months straight every weekend was all business I did I didn't see my friends for months you know like I was just I had admit I was on a mission I had to get out of this teaching gig and I had to launch this new thing like like with authority you know like I couldn't just slow play it and then hope it would work I knew I had to be all-in on it so you know I would catch up with my friends here and there or I'd call somebody and catch up and somebody was close to me but I saw them much much less frequently than I was used to you know and it was because I my new mission my new focus was getting out of teaching and getting this online marketing thing off the ground to 20 grand a month was that right all right very month yeah I'm at 10 20 I'm gold you know so I was networking my butt off and leading with value this is something I teach often they have the power of network yeah it's it's all it's all about what can I do for you I connected with the top people in the industry when I had very little to offer because I had the right attitude and the resources that I did have I gave freely of them like hey I write for this website or this magazine which like I could get I could interview you for that I'm somebody who has a traditionally published book on the mence fitness advisory board already expert testimonial or a blurb that you can include on your website about about your book so any value add that I could offer to somebody I offered it I became really good friends with all the top guys in the industry which ultimately wouldn't have met anything unless I had him all my marketing ducks in a row when I came to launching my first product but I had all these great friends that I did so much for everything I could over a period of months and then it rolls around April 2009 and I'm and I'm launching my first book okay my first ebook now this is an interesting story because I took the same concept that was my failed print book that flopped she Toulouse diet and I turned it into an eCourse called sheet your weight then yeah you would think why would you take a flop book concept and then try and sell it again like you're setting yourself up for failure but I knew what the problem was the first time around it wasn't the content of the book was just that nobody heard about it I couldn't get in front of enough people I didn't have the platform to really blow it up so but I knew it was good so I repackaged it I rewrote it I turned into a multi manual course some Oreos Olivia the book original book was about 270 pages had recipes and all this stuff in there but we extracted all that stuff out and this is one of the reasons why were able to charge so much more so the book was twenty four ninety five and through most retailers or Amazon you pay like seventeen or eighteen bucks for it had all the same content just repackage into my eCourse we had we broke it up into four or five manuals and we took the recipes out and we include that as separate manual it's the meal plans out and that was a separate man it's like a free bonus or so right right so you had the main diet manual this is the how-to of the diet and then you had all these bonuses stacked on there we sold it for forty seven dollars and then there was an upgrade with some extra add-ons where you could upgrade to a $97 package we sold like six or seven thousand units of that how long did that take go back to like the first day you launched yeah though this is a fun day for me so I had all my ducks in a row I had to get I was on Clickbank Clickbank is the largest digital marketplace in the world for affiliates and affiliate off direct yeah so here I am lost in this ebook yeah I I had hired our mutual friend Craig Ballantyne as my coach I worked with him on some of the copy I was actually in one of his masterminds just a few months prior to launching my ebook they helped me really refine it I was on I was like 80 80 to 85% the way there and they helped me get it 100% and he was the first coach you hired to read it for I and that was an interesting thing because I was a broke physical education teacher I was $20,000 in credit card debt I was making 40 grand a year just paying the bills and going deeper and deeper into credit card debt over standing myself and I paid $3,000 to have Craig coach me and my girlfriend at the time told me like it was it was it was a big fight for us you know I can't believe that you're gonna spent $3,000 on this sales thing your dream and what are you thinking right stupid just save your money yeah needless to say you know that's not the girl that I ultimately end up with right and that was that but that was the catalyst for me being really successful because I got all the extra knowledge I needed to take an offer that was 80% the way there are to 100% so how important is coaching in your opinion extremely important I still have coaches to this day you know I'm running a hundred million dollar company I still have mentors still have coaches I just joined a mastermind group with two other individuals who I stand to learn a lot from and in different areas that I'm getting into and we were just at a bitterest his Empire mastermind the last couple of days so yeah it's amazing so the man the whole mastermind opportunities the get a lot of like-minded people in the same room and you're learning from smart people who have been there done that huge so I go to launch my first ebook first day of the launch okay I again I was running on very little sleep for a very long period of time going into this and I'm working full-time right but I took the next day off I was launching my problem taking day I called in sick yeah and check the numbers every five minutes I had called in sick and I even go to bed and so maybe 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning I had affiliates start from OH at midnight so I know there was traffic coming in and it's almost like the affiliates were people that you had interviewed prior and built relationships with yeah yeah like all the top guys in Fitness be publishing information publishing I was friends with and I had done solids for them in one way or another and they were just like let me know how to support you bro let me know what I can do for you while I am getting ready to launch date book yeah so we had a really robust sales funnel in place I knew I had a good feeling that I was going to do well I felt like I really prepped very well the copy was really good I got I got great feedback from Craig and other people who actually have done this and do it and they said this you know this is good this should do really well and I had a lot of people lined up to promote it so I got a bit like 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning I this already like maybe three hours into the launch right and once it at midnight or something yeah once it at midnight and I didn't check the stats though cuz I was like a little freaked out I didn't want to look let me check in the morning yeah give me more time so I I slept maybe four or five hours or whatever I wake up and I log into my Clickbank account and it says $25,000 there's like a bar for your daily sales right so the day before was zero and then there was $25,000 and this is not like 8:00 a.m. so I didn't fully understand the Clickbank platform at that time and I didn't know if I still had to pay if Phyllis was offering seventy five percent commission so I was like alright well if I want four at 75% submission I made 25 grand does that mean like I really only made like six grands right boys and I have to pay Phillies or is this my portion I have to Commission so I called Clickbank and I get on the phone some customer service rep I told her my account name and I said you know we just started a new promotions my first time on Clickbank I'm not really familiar with the platform like I kind of knew this ebook thing I see my accounts this $25,000 do I still have to pay filly it's out of that or is that mine oh no that's all yours so that's your that's your take home that's their duty 5% yeah yeah and she said you're doing pretty good yeah all right thanks you know so then why the phone I'm bringing on top you just made five grand in your sleep right exactly exactly yeah I went to bed I woke up to twenty five friends and then that's when I was like all right this is this this is what I worked so hard for yeah now I'm in controlling own destiny and I have to worry about the publisher getting me these media placements I don't have to worry about other people doing this and that I'm in control here I built the relationships I've built on marketing knowledge I understand what I'm doing and I knew it was going to be sustainable because I already put the light work in what'd you tell your girlfriend right at the table we had already broken up but I so at that time I ended personally making over a hundred thousand dollars over the course of the three-day launch so over three over three days and three days I netted on her a grand we did four hundred sixty one thousand dollars gross you know and I was first that was my first launch it was my first ebook launch so 461 grand in how many days three days give four sixty one thousand gross sales and my system was over a hundred credits on that and you were making 40 grand as a teacher all right so years old you're like the next day naturally I go into and I submit my letter of resignation and I you know I I stuck out the rest of the school year out of respect obviously I don't you know leave them hanging and walk out the door but I don't know you know I won't be back next year you'll be I find a replacement did you enjoy I got a ask did you enjoy work a hell of a lot more the rest of those couple months finishing up the year yeah because because I didn't I didn't give a crap anymore about all the rules and and whatever you know I take em all right yeah the politics of dealing with the administration the principles think they're God's gift to you know their melody system right yeah and yeah you have to stay after school for all these BS meetings and all this stuff yeah and like if if I was a little late to a meeting I didn't care you know like that and it wasn't that like I was disrespectful about it it's just like I was working on other things and I didn't worry about the minutiae of what if I didn't follow every single role that this administrate I put in place and I really focused on the kids during that time it was it really truly became about the kids because I knew like a if they fired me or whatever that's what I wanted to be anyway like if you couldn't fire me fast enough but it was really it really became about a hundred percent about the kids and not about hey how am I going to perform in my next evaluation when someone's sitting in on my class or whatever and I always did well on that stuff anyway but you just had a much more relaxed atmosphere about what you're doing and where you're going because you you know that you're getting ready to go out you headed out the door anyway yeah you know you just saw what's most important and the thing that I loved about teaching was the impact on the kids and I get to focus on that for the last three months that's amazing so for people who are like unfamiliar with digital marketing like can you explain a little bit about how you went about making that money because a lot of people won't make that over the course of a decade yeah so can you explain the power of you know affiliates and building an email list and stuff like that just for people who don't have that much context just to show them how it's possible to do savile yeah so direct response marketing was just a couple of components to it one is building a marketing funnel that works and that comes down to learn the art of sales cop words that sell you know you agitate the end-users your potential customers pain points you highlight the pain points you agitate them you make them realize that they need to make a change and then you provide a solution to their problem and that's what a sales letter really is and there's multiple ways to present the sales letter we have these things called video sales letters which are video based sales funnels and then we have kind of what's known as the long-form sales page or a long-form sales funnel which is a big headline at the top and then you get into all the rest of the marketing materials to establish and credibility and teaching people something providing some value hitting on the pain points and then pivoting to the solution and then reaching people in terms of reaching people obviously to do a four hundred sixty one thousand dollar launch so that all came through affiliates I didn't do any paid advertising and doing running Facebook ads for it wasn't even really a popular thing back then I I just focused on having other the relationships that I built with other health publishers they were my traffic source they were the driving and we took care of them very well meaning they had large email lists right exactly these were other publishers in the health and fitness information marketing space who already were doing this for a while so they had large customer lists or leadless or whatever my largest affiliate had an email list of about 500,000 people by the time mike geary who spoke at this recent mastermind right he was the big of the big dog of the group but then we had a lot of other people that had you know a hundred thousand two hundred thousand some people had fifty thousand so I had this army of affiliates had about 50 people do at least one sale for that launched 50 different affiliate partners I like it Mike Geary did seven or eight hundred sales or something that's the number one affiliate and then you know the top ten it kind of gradually went down from there about I had over 50 people who were promoting and did at least one sale and you offered basically a 75 percent commission to them to incentivize them to want to do it right exactly we would give 75 percent of whatever the revenue that came in on the customer would go to the affiliate nowadays we pay a hundred percent the game the game has changed a little bit and we understand the value of acquiring a customer and shipping that initial purchase the full revenue over to the filling it and the more you can pay obviously the more traffic you can get yeah and the lifetime value of that customer makes it worthwhile when you've read emails yourself right gotcha so at that point you finished the year you start making money at what point you become a millionaire within the first year yeah within the first year of me launching I think I made just over a million dollars profit I was I think 27 I was also dreaming mind to move down the Florida I grew up in New Jersey and in the Northeast the winners are pretty harsh and I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could I didn't know how I was gonna get out there but I even said when I was a teacher like I need to not live here you know like I think I'm somebody's affected by seasonal affective disorder pretty badly so when it's cold and it's dark at four o'clock like I just became really unproductive you know almost borderline depressed by it you know it was just a gloomy time in the winter and I wanted to get out of there so I put in my resignation finish out the school year I put a deposit I came down to Tampa Florida I knew no one there I I don't know why I chose Tampa I just kind of did and they had a sports team there so yeah it was like a [ __ ] he's inside city yeah right anyway I put a deposit down on this on this condo and that I was you know leasing and I was off the races I moved down and in September remembers telling your family like that you made a million bucks sure I mean because you must have been freaking out at the time right like now it's commonplace to do that you know in multiple yeah month but at that time what's flowing through your mind like like at the time it was a little bit surreal but obviously I shared what was going on with my mom I didn't think told my dad and enough so you know you know family was congratulating me stuff they were they were genuinely happy for me I told him I was leaving teaching and I was moving to Florida there a little bit especially my mom was a little bit sad to hear that oh yeah you know she understood she if she had her wife she lived on Florida - yeah my dad stuck New Jersey so yeah you know I think that was the end that April is when I launched the book within a year I had made just over a million dollars and then I did the e-book thing for several years I built that business up to doing over ten million dollars a year and how that was maybe three years because from 27 to 30 it's only three or four years so uh three years so you went from your first million two hundred million three or four years right away my daughter company yeah okay so walk me through that that sort of gradual rise so I started I became known as the launch guy you know I ran the biggest launch of Fitness history my very first so that your very first launch was the biggest fit was ever on Clickbank in in information publishing space in the fitness industry it was the biggest ever by far ever yeah yeah by far I don't like the next guy who ran even even close to that was maybe a couple hundred grand yeah so with more than doubled their launch before that and you know I just had a knack for like getting everybody on board to one common goal you know is we're gonna launch this on this date we're gonna make a lot of noise here during this you know three-day period and I rallied all these people to join that mission on the same time and no one was really doing that before you know so what are some key takeaways you could give to whether it's digital marketers out there other entrepreneurs out there they're leveraging their network on how to rally the troops in a sense right because at that time are you people person are you a social guy I mean yeah what is building anywhere I've always been a social guy I've always been somebody who's considered to be very generous I'd give my resources freely I deposit in what I call my goodwill bank account in every relationship that way when I want to take withdrawal and I want to ask for a favor I know that I've already have a surplus of funds in that account and I'm just gonna take a small portion of that out I asked him for a favor you know so I had that good way Goodwill Bank company already established with all these people so that's number one you have to have a surplus of funds in your goodwill bank account which each one of those relationships number two is I incentivize people a lot because we did a bunch of additional prizes is what we're gonna pay somebody if I present Commission which you used to but then we're gonna run an affiliate contest and the top ten people we're gonna have a private mastermind in Tampa Florida or the big dogs are all gonna get together and network it's gonna be on my dime you guys I'm gonna fly you guys down and put you up in a hotel we're gonna have a you know a really fun weekend plan for you a lot of networking a lot of partying food great dinners all this stuff so the opportunity to network was kind of a carrot that was dangled and then we had cash prizes on top of that so if you came in first place she got $10,000 she came in second place she got an additional five grand it came in third place it was three grand or 2500 whatever it was and we had cash prizes for the top five people and then the top ten got invited to this private mastermind so because of all those incentives and all that stuff going on and because I had established all that good well with these people they wanted to support me they were all on board and set aside those seats for me now again if they mail it and it bombs like I would've got one mailing everybody that's it you know yeah I probably be the end of my career there right but I had put all my ducks in a row to you know ensure success not only for myself but for everybody else involved so when we rallied those troops boom like we we made a big bang and then I repeated it over and over and over again that's actually how I met my partner in the supplement industry so that became your formula and since your recipe oh so real quick before I move on in the story to people listening out there whether they're in a digital marketing space or any business can you talk about the importance of networking and how important it is to be an effective and powerful networker in life and business yeah so in whatever industry you're in you're not going to be able to get to the top by yourself you know and I least not quickly you know yeah you may be able to do it over a lifetime or something but like I'm talking about leapfrogging and making fast moves right and I'm all about quick moves fast moves building things quickly and in order to do that you need to have that armoury of support around you and it needs to be a win-win relationship if you can give a win/win like hey I'm gonna make you a lot of money you don't have to do any of the work I'm gonna put all the work into creating this marketing funnel I'm gonna pay you very handsomely for be willing to promote me I'm gonna test all the email creative I'm gonna give you all the marketing assets I'm gonna make sure it's a homerun for you huge win for you and it's also a win for me because I got you promoting and I got 50 other people from London at the same time so it's even though I'm getting a small slice of the pie on every sale times 50 it works out for me a lot of sizes of pie right a lot of slices of pie that I miss yeah you know yeah and at the same time I'm building my customer file right so I would encourage anybody who's interested in you know entering an industry and becoming well-known in that industry or making a bang in that industry I did this all within a year there's there were guys who were in this industry for four or five years before I entered into it and I was a guy who kind of connected the dots for everybody it brought everybody together reality everybody together I started having these private mastermind events and there was nobody really doing that in the industry at the time it's become more popular eyes now but I was I was really the guy who started in the fitness information marketing line of work because I just wanted to get people together I wanted to all the people to I wanted to add value to other people's lives and when you add value it's very easy to attract people to you and then ultimately you have this booming network that of loyal people who are so loyal to you I have so many people in the industry who all I have to do is reach out to them and ask them for something and they're on it even if it was had no monetary connection so there's no win for them I've already just deposited so much right in that goodwill bank account that if I'm gonna ask them for a favor I need their help on something boom they're there for me cuz it really yeah and then when it comes to me launching a new marketing funnel hundred percent they're on board they know it's going to convert they have a track record of 10 years of delivering winners to them so I mean the power of what you're able to do with a network behind you and this kind of affiliate army doesn't necessarily have to be even affiliates but just other people connect you to other people who can help you you know move toward whatever it is your next goal is within that industry and that's really one of the major reasons why I got on Instagram and I started building that so quickly was to as I'm moving into this new portion of my career of personal development inspiring others I wanted to connect with other inspires so I built that quick and I think it's people it's important for people to know that you you started your Instagram about four-and-a-half months ago from the time of this taping yeah and you're over a million followers yes yeah I've talked to a number of guys who have worked with entrepreneur influencers Dan Fleischman whose office were in right now thanks Dan and my other buddy Alan and Paul the internet marketing nerd who run some ads for me and they all have said like we have never seen anybody in the entrepreneurial space come in and they have a million followers in the shortest period of time that you have in four months not in six months not in a year so how did I do that why did I do that you know just like anything else I know we haven't really talked about the supplement stuff yet and how that all happened but it's just a side Trek real quick on the Instagram that's how we do everything right it's I go all-in you know I want to have the massive the most possible impact that I possibly can and that doesn't mean slow playing my hand that means you've going all-in and and and being aggressive as possible to ultimately impact as many people and achieve you know whatever my ultimate goal is which is impact here as quickly as possible mmm so what would be your top three tips to grow your Instagram aside from boosted posts and and ads and stuff like that well we found giveaways to be extremely effective we give away ebooks that will never run what we call free reports but we also call them ebooks on Instagram with people tend to understand that lingo a little bit better so we give away ebooks and then we also give away some apple products electronics iPads and stuff like that we use those as lead magnets to get people to follow hey if you follow we do a weekly drawing for an iPad or if you follow we guarantee you will every single person who follows will give you this free report we'll post it for our bio link on this date so we've used lead magnets to encourage people to sign up and follow and then after their following it's the job of my content obviously to keep them around right not to unfollow and to engage the posts so we also do a weekly drawing for either phone consultation with me or some iPads or ebooks or an eCourse that I have we do a weekly giveaway and we incentivize people to comment and light like the image and comment as long as you comment it would tell them to turn post notifications on they have contests around turning notifications on that doesn't mean that they have to turn on notifications for every one post that they follow it's just their selecting to turn on to be notified when you make a post so they're following Joel Marian and then I encourage them to sign up or to click three dots at the top of this image and turn on post notifications and now they're gonna be notified every time I make a post so that even though they're not logged in the Instagram they're not checking it at the time they get a notification on their phone I posted a new image they enjoy following me to enjoy my content so they swipe and go and they check it out then we incentivize them to comment through additional giveaways but weekly giveaways that we have as long as you comment within the first 10 minutes you have notifications on you'll be eligible and the second part of that is even if you've missed the 10 minute window as long as you post on every phone as you comment on every post of the week you'll be eligible so we have people who may have missed the last few days they'll go back and make comments just right we're getting constant comments unless seven days of posts aw yeah I see they're like thousands of comments man yeah it's it's I had one post which was one of these notification contests that has I think like seventy four hundred comments on it and that was this past week I love that and part of me what you told me prior in private was that a lot of why you've done that is because you're not necessarily monetizing it is that for you it's a big part of your impact right you believe that it's your mission from God to reach as many people as possible so we'll get more into your story but can you talk a little bit about that now like what your sort of goal in your vision yeah so you know I've I've done the info marketing thing for a long time very profitably I transition into supplements for the last six years very extremely problem profitable we built a company from zero to over 100 million dollars in eighteen months and it's been over 100 million dollars a year since we've had you know obviously it worked out well extremely well for me financially and we also helped a lot of people along the way well charity is a big part of what we deal with biotrust we give back we've donated over 1.6 million dollars to Make A Wish Foundation kids who are suffering with potentially life-threatening diseases just giving them you know their wish they're their ultimate dream that's amazing sometimes it's meeting meeting a celebrity and then hanging out with they really admire sometimes it's for one of the kids that we recently did it for it was they wanted to be in a video game so he we sync them up in the video game company they made a video game with this kid as the main character no way so that was edible for you know the impact it can make on these kids through make toys just saying I know we strongly believe in and then with every order that we fulfill we we donate a meal to through no Kid Hungry to feed a hundred child and we have over three million order ships we've fed over three million kids that's a group good huh I got to shake your hand to that level of that and that's through biotrust right that I'm your company yeah so a little we've made that impact there right and we've done other you know I could go on about the charity work that we've done through bio trust and unfortunately we have the financial resources to do that the company's has been really profitable capitalism we're able to give back it's been awesome we're helping people get healthy and get fit but I always felt like there was something more there's a little something more that I needed seen maybe a lot something more that I needed to be doing with the gifts that I have I have this ability to create these massive followings quickly and have this ability to grow email lists and Instagram followings and anything that I really put my hand so I can grow up pretty quickly because I have the marketing expertise to do it right and and I understand how to connect with the right people who can help me along the way as well so which is one of the reasons why I connected with you so I wanted to do something bigger get a bigger message out there and impact people just beyond this lifetime if I help somebody get six-pack ABS that's awesome but if that's all I help them do I'm really falling short of what my ultimate calling is which is the impact people for eternity so that's where I'm moving right now I'm going from what I like to call from career to calling I've achieved quite a bit of success financially and then also in business and any way you want to look at that my professional career to date most people would say that Joel Marion has been pretty successful at what he's done however where I'm lacking is the ultimate impact beyond just the health fitness category or just beyond how my products are gonna serve somebody in this lifetime how is my message going to impact somebody beyond this lifetime how is my legacy going to impact the world beyond when people you know everyone expires at some point on this life but you don't expire forever you know you and I both as as people of faith we understand that that like there's there's a whole other realm out there right you know we're here for a short season and then how are we preparing people for the what's next so that's what I'm doing right now I'm moving the career to calling it so that's why he hopped on Instagram and through that so quickly to get an inspirational message how a message of hope 20 people who are so some people it's a lot of hurting people out there ya know so true a lot of hurting people out there and they're looking for inspiration and it's constant encouragement to me the dm's they get in the comments that are left I must get hundreds of them all the time yeah like like literally life's changed man like life's change and it's not and it's not just hey you know I had high blood pressure and now I don't it's which is great but it's it's like I you know I was depressed I was thinking about taking my life and I read one of your posts and you know I put the gun down type of thing you know and and that right there is like you feel like wow you're having such a deep impact and it goes far beyond just health and wellness and that's what I'm most excited about right now yeah you're doing God's work its way more fulfilling than just money or chasing some sort of I'm sure thing like that so let's go back to it and also real quick people who are interested in learning more about you have a podcast coming out soon right yeah so one when I got on Instagram I uh I have a timeline of how I want to do all this right it so I said I'm gonna get on Instagram I'm looking at money falls within six months that's my goal and I was hyper focused on that so check so boom four point five months later done and then I said once I hit a million followers I am going to launch this podcast called born to impact I have a vision for this podcast where I write it's a leadership podcast where I am going to do some teaching of my own and but also an interview style Podcast that you're doing yourself and you do so well I'm going to have entrepreneur I'm so I'm very well-connected in two different circuits one the church circuit with with faith-based leaders and the other obviously business business with entrepreneurial leaders so my vision my vision for for the podcast and what my ultimate goal here is that one week I may have an entrepreneurial leader sharing some business insights another week I might have a church leader or faith people's leader sharing some some really great leadership insights with faith and family and things of that nature and ultimately I like to bring the two worlds together and have some panels and stuff where we can bat around some really important topics and the entrepreneurial leaders can weigh in at the same time as to faith faith leaders and they all can inspire one another because I think that there that's missing nowadays yes yes this very it's it's very separate there's there's there's the church leaders they're all speaking at each other's events they're all you know you know they're buddies they're all hanging out doing life together which is awesome and there's entrepreneurial leaders same thing you know you see the grant cardone to Ed my lads Tai Lopez's all these guys that speaking each other's events they're doing life together they're hanging out with each other they're movers and shakers but there's like this whole other group on both sides that the word out connecting the dots and I feel like it's it's a big part of my calling is to connect those dots it's powerful man so okay now let's go back to the story so million bucks at 27 you realize you're onto something here and now it's time to build something bigger so what do you do from there 2:30 so I partnered with a guy Josh Mazzoni on an e-book launched I was known as the launch guy and I got connected through a mutual friend so this guy Josh who wanted to launch new book he came from the supplement industry was getting into information marketing he wanted to connect with me about running a launch I ended up partnering with him on that working as defense in a consulting role with him I did all the marketing I rallied all the affiliates he produced the product and you know I basically told on my whole form like he wrote a lot of the copy but you know he was modeling my my formula we built like a hundred thousand person pre-launch email list for that so for the anticipation then when we want live with it we did over a million dollars in sales and six days I think it was six days yeah that was that was not the first million dollar launch I had the first million dollar launch here's another funny story I the very first product I did a million dollars on it has an e book was called Xtreme fat loss diet this was an article that I wrote for men's health and had submitted to them I thought it was a really cool concept that I came up with it was extremely strategic but it was also extremely extreme and I submitted it to Men's Health and the editor at the time told me no one is ever going to do this program like it's way too extreme like you're ambitious and creative for thinking of it but like our readers would never do this no one's ever going to do this just like it's a cool idea it's it's a kind of a cool idea but just hang it up like no one's ever gonna it's not practical for anyone to do which motivated you to do it right so I said okay you know then and then I turn it into an e-book we launched it we did 1.2 1.4 million dollars in less than a week on that and then I have a transformation contest with that very ebook program we did one point four million dollars we over 20,000 customers came through the funnel within less than a week and this isn't you're not spending any money on ads this is all through all all the lays at the time at the time and you who those email lists by giving out free reports or writing write growing really calm promoted free report something to get him into the funnel to learn about the product we're about to launch and then they were very pre-qualified when we launched the product so this is so I just want to get context cuz what's the first million-dollar product you make is it what you were talking about on your first launch ever or is it this one that's the first million dollar so it was this one yeah the chief in the model that we had going at the time was kind of a launch in dire model or you would do you would dis kind of program for the launch you would do big sales at the speed affiliate push for a period of time and then you just kind of melt the Melisande the customers to get them other complementary product supplements other things like that right that they would want but you didn't sell whole lot of that same program after the launch Xtreme fat loss diet when we launched it we did the first million dollar launch so I was a program of the editor told me no one would ever do we had transformation contest on it and we had people who lost between 20 and 30 many people who lost between 20 and 30 pounds doing this program which I then forwarded to the editor had a few people looks like a few people end up doing it I know What did he say when he phoned that yeah he kind of laughed and you know I think everybody does it if it's if it's done tactfully it definitely was a good still friends with the guy you know yeah so you weren't a jerk about it yeah yeah yeah I just wanted to show you like hey remember the article you that you rejected that you told me nobody would ever do well not only did we just do a million-dollar launch on it but here's a bunch of before-and-after people who did it you know hi yeah so like oh you were right on that one you know yeah though you're right on that one so yeah and how long was that e-book that was very similar to the other things that that I put you know I have a main diet manual is probably only 40 to 50 pages guy and then you have these supplementary manuals with recipes and meal plans and stuff like that and you're selling on for like 47 bucks or something that was $67 610 times your landscape now it's hard to charge that in today's day and age because so many people are doing these free plus shipping off or isn't give my stuff away for free it's harder to get the premium price points for ebook packs but at the time this was 2010 the $67 price point worked really well convert we split tested it versus 77 and 47 67 end up being a winning price point and we did over a million dollars on that launch in a week less than a week in a week yeah yeah so the the second one was when I partnered with Josh Mazzoni it was my partner something in the industry we worked really well together but trust the launch we behaved we stayed friends after that and then maybe a little over a year later he told me he was interested in getting back for the supplements and said hey man we weren't so we eat well together on this you're like the LeBron James of marketing in our industry there's nobody else that I'd rather partner with the new what do you think about going in on supplements and I was already promoting another supplement company on the back end of all my products and we were selling a lot of it so you were an affiliate to $4 a filet for supplement company yeah and a lot of people don't know this this is a fun fact your email list to date is how large this is this blew my mind when I heard about the bio trust email list is over 16 million subscribers 17 million yeah and then the other ebook list that I that I built over the last years is now over millions 1.6 million and the act of subscribers is probably in the eight to nine hundred thousand range that's active within the last 30 days and that's a pretty short window it's count as active if I panned it out to a hundred and eighty people who have opened or clicked an email in the last six months be a much larger segment probably even 1.2 1.3 million and that's just in the last year yeah and that's all through not only I mean obviously you bought some of those some of them were actually generated leads but that's years and years and years of building that list right yeah so how many years in total would you say it took to get 16 million from 0 6 yeah that's where we're at today it was toward 2012 Wow yeah well we had a seven-figure list of email subscribers from the first year though and you tribute that to what today affiliates because affiliates is paid media it was us us understanding the data one of the biggest things that I bring to the table what my skill set is the ability to interpret data and the fact that once the list starts growing and we're publishing content every single day so you know we have 30 this 30 plus email sends over the course of a month and we can go back and we look at all that that I wouldn't see what worked and what didn't you know we can say okay we pick the top three campaigns that we sent over the last 30 days these are although these are the home runs you can ones that got exceptionally high open rates and then our next free report that we're using as a lead magnet we just pick whatever people already said that they wanted so we have all that data that way I told somebody earlier today like we don't ever come out with duds we come out with home runs and then we turn them into Grand Slam store optimization but we had the data to know like this is already we already know this is gonna work because every time we send a newsletter about this August guy hi open rate and really high engagement so why don't we create a free report around it and then we put that out into the world as a lead magnet we know people want to flock to it gotcha so two quick questions technical on the technical side nowadays what's a what's considered a good open rate for emails 20% would be considered good up towards 30% would be considered great my one email list opens at about 18% the bit the larger one and then the most recent the one that's a little bit newer opens up at about 26 27 % joshiya and then the second question would be what's an average cost per lead so say somebody themselves is offering their first free ebook or they're taking their first foray into digital marketing on average how much should it caught is a good considered good obviously it varies depending on the product in the nature of the industry but what's an average considered good pretty minute so I'm gonna speak from from acquiring leads from other email lists and if you're using that which is the highest quality lead that you can get because someone's already responding to an email and opting in to your email list you know that they're an email responder so from other email lists around $2 a lead sub $2 lead you're doing great around $2 is good is what we'll do what I consider would be average and then up to $3 you can make the numbers work and then how about in cold traffic on cold traffic on Facebook and stuff like that you can you can get leads a lot cheaper depending on the targeting and all that it's persecutory the international and all these types of things but if you're looking for u.s. leads within your target demographic you probably looking at anywhere from 75 cents to a dollar 50 on Facebook to be able to back it out but it's not going to be as quality person as yes quality as from other from affiliates or from other email lists gotcha okay cool so then going back then so Josh hits you up and says hey Joel what do you think about starting a supplement company you're 28 years old give or take yeah and so what happens from there so I said let's do it you know because I was already selling so much supplements on the back end already I knew my but there's a great fit for my customers and if I can own a supplement company and build some equity value and a company selling something that I know my customers are already gonna buy what's make it happen so we you know we both were running successful a publishing businesses so we had cash reserves we were collectively we both put in a million dollars in total to start the company up to buy inventory we had four SKUs we bought 5,000 units of each SKU and then we wanted to have some money in the bank and then plus we need to pay salaries for our initial team started with 8 people pretty small team and our goal was to do ten million dollars that first year we had written on sheet paper so have a sheet paper it says what the company goes for the first year and it is to come out with this many offers and told them I do the top-line revenue 10 million dollars we did something like 88 million in in the first 12 months and our first full calendar year in business were over a hundred million okay so that was a little bit crazy right we had a team of eight people we had this team of eight people when we're like hoping to do 10 million and next thing you know like we're doing 10 million a month like worldwide month for you know we're doing 10 million in a month and we were just bailing water you know for a long time trying to keep her head our head above water and trying to keep the ship from sinking honestly were you guys prepared with the supplies of all the supplements like what woman 3 guys say we were we had 5,000 units of each flavor protein we had a probiotic we had a digestive enzyme and then we had like a all natural metabolism support product so if for products that we started with and we had 5000 of each you know with the protein it was 5000 of each flavor we launched the protein we sold out within the first week and it was like 10 weeks to get more protein so we're sitting there and we're pissed because we're like we know this stuff is gonna sell like gangbusters we just sold out in a week and it's gonna take us ten more weeks to get more product resupply the worst oh then we just pivoted and said alright well we have these other products that sell them meanwhile we ordered more of everything right regular mortar as we just saw this is going to be such a hit so we ordered more of everything we sold out the rest of the inventory we were able to expedite for one or two of the products there's a quicker delivery date than the protein and very very quickly I mean we're very profitable we had a very high average order value 88 million the first year yeah the first 12 months show we launched in July of 2012 in July of 2013 we had done 88 million our first full calendar year was 2013 was over a million and at that time that's way next level compared to what you were used to digital marketing right yeah well we both were running companies doing or 10 to 12 million dollars a year so you're doing about a million a month and then that 10 next base data per month we 10x it and with tenants everything we went from a team of 8 to over 150 in the first year now over 250 employees and we went from doing you know no revenue with us to start up to over a hundred million that was it was a pretty crazy insane time yeah yeah and that's dominantly gonna be through your email list and affiliates the same thing same plug-and-play system that you had been building and then we started expanding it's called media cult my first taste is called maybe a BIOS Justin that's how we were about scale so much bigger than outside of the affiliate realm so he had affiliates we had our internal email list mine and Josh's from their publishing businesses and then we started doing what's called cold email which you can read other people's email list so you have like a men's health or Newsmax or somebody like that who will send on your behalf to their list from them but they'll promote your product and you pay them a flat fee to rent the list so you're running out we ran in a bunch of email lists so it's like getting new of a ton of new affiliates on board it's a little bit more expensive than what you would pay an affiliate but the there's a crap ton of inventory out there so it's very scalable so we started doing that and then we started running Facebook ads and we started messing around with Google Display Network at one point in time we were about three million a month ad spend on Google Display Network just several of our video cells that are funnels what's your guys's ad spend currently a day currently right now it's probably in the 50 to 60 grand range a day you know and although you guys products are phenomenal with IO trust how much do you tribute because there's people out there listening that are blown away by these numbers right and you know especially nowadays a lot of people are getting an entrepreneurial bug trying out not only supplements but trying their own little pop-up companies and startups how important would you say marketing is compared to actually just having a great product like can you weigh in well they both really go hand-in-hand the R&D department we attribute a lot of our success to because we're not just trying to sell somebody something once marketing can sell anyone anything once mm-hmm but if you don't deliver on the goods then that we're gonna rebuy you're not gonna have a good lifetime value for the customer so the tandem between great effective products and superior marketing superior marques don't bring people in it's also done to encourage people to rebuy but if the products aren't good and they don't have a good experience then you're never gonna have what you want as far as a sustainable long-term business that's growing month after month not only is the product important but the third part of that is customer service because we don't do everything perfect sometimes you screw up on an order and sometimes you ship the wrong product types of shipment it's late it's something out of our control with the carrier but we take responsibility as the ultimate ultimately the company that they purchased from right and we make it right with the customer we one of the one of the foundations of our business in the early days or we were go we will go into over staff customer service to have just an impeccable customer service experience wait times on the phone like up to one minute or acceptable by a by any standards we wanted to have less than 10 second a whole time your honor to be pretty into yeah so and most of the time it was no no wait time they got ahold of somebody so we overstaffed customer service everyone had a superior experience if they needed something they could call and boom someone picks up the phone or wait on hold for minutes at a time we we trained our staff to empower them to have the midden have to get approval on on making the situation right with the customer who said hey if it costs less than $100 just make it right the customer if they're very adamant about whatever is that their problem is and then even if someone's becoming irate or whatever don't tell them that you can't do it tell them that you can do it it's less than a hundred bucks tell them you can do if it's more than honor but get a supervisor on the phone and more than likely we'll still be able to make it work but we're all about delivering impeccable customer service great products and then of course superior marketing on the front end those three things together is what really makes the engine go and next thing you know you're going when you traveling at Ferrari speed and you're boom you know you're a hundred million dollar company so how about with when it comes to customer service when it comes to partners obviously an important element of any business is having effective team members right so what's your thoughts on what it takes to not only build a culture culture of quality employees and quality team but to attract talent right because I'm sure you know that certain people can be dead weight right like if your team isn't you know running at optimal speed so whatever you found to be your best advice to people out there building their own team or their own business on how to recruit effective team members so we were recruit first and foremost based on skill and experience and then it's our job to lead them right to build a culture and build a culture and have them buy into our vision and our mission it's our job me and Josh as leaders in our executive team to empower the people who are under them to have them feel comfortable to have an environment where people aren't scared to bring up an idea fear of being ridiculed or anything like that so we bring people in who have to tell who believe to get the job done and then it's our job at that point our job there's their job to do the work it's our job to mold them into the company culture so we don't focus so much on of course if somebody's given us a really bad vibe in an interview we're not gonna we're not gonna go that route regardless of what their their skillset and and their experience has been but if we feel pretty good about somebody because you there's a lot of companies that hire really great employees from other companies that were just doing an amazing job in contributing and then they bring them into the wrong environment and they go stale because the you know their ideas are suppressed and then they become unhappy the company culture is not there and people don't want to work in that environment next thing you know somebody with extreme talent becomes you know their potential is never reached at that particular company and that all has to do with leadership and not their skillset and leading by example whatever so yeah okay so then once the company grows obviously biotrust has done phenomenally well so we're talking about a hundred million plus in revenue the last how many years five years no yeah six year old company five years over hundred million and and that doesn't get old does that does that trip you out at all I mean you know it's it it sometimes you got to pinch yourself and remind you know just I was the teacher making forty two thousand dollars a year yeah you know ten years ago yeah yeah I mean I I live a great lifestyle I just took my my family seventeen friends and family members on vacation in South Africa I saw the photos yeah incredible trip the entire vacation with several hundred thousand dollars I paid for everybody you know no lights and everything yeah yeah I know and I I have the money and the resources to be able to do that because I put the work in we provided value to the world we solve problems right and that's capitalism at its best and then we're able to give so much back not only am i able to give back to charities and all those other things that we mentioned but I'm able to impact people who I've been friends with or family with for a number of years share with them experiences that have been you know epic and incredible that they may not have been able to experience otherwise and it's because of the work that I did to not only be able to do that for myself but to be able to do that for others that I love might care about and that's where I get a lot of a lot of you know the most fulfilling part of what I do is the impact that it has on other people and there no better impact than the impact that you have on the people that are closest to you right the port over there you loved one though the whole time your loved ones your family your very very close friends to be able to do something special for them to be able to help them and in in a unique way we've we bought a house for my mother-in-law they bought a house for my father-in-law there they split up they're not together but we we own the properties but there have a allah you know a life estate and as long as they're here there they live there I paid off my parent's mortgage I want my brother the car of his dreams these are all things that I'm extremely proud of of how I've been able to impact the lives of others and my family my friends people were closest to us I mean we've been able to give people loans were in a bad spot and you know who I knew were good for it and who I didn't and at the same time one of the biggest blessings is the fact that doing that doesn't even really affect you too much right or right you too much right that's yeah that's what I'm in such a blessed and fortunate position to be like hey we we buy a $400,000 condo that my mother-in-law is living in now and it's it doesn't change my life in any way the revenue I mean how did it make it didn't make any significant difference in my income for the year right you know yeah and also you have a pretty ridiculous house you texted me photos I know that you said you bought it from a baseball player it's right on the water yeah yeah it's pretty awesome but from a baseball guy who was had the house up for sale for various reasons but you know there's a lot of athletes right in my neck of the woods Ryan Howard from the Phillies this was the MVP of Major League Baseball a few years ago he lived down the road from me max Trafford from the Detroit Lions a quarterback is building a house five houses down for me and then the house that I that I purchased four years ago was from from a very well known baseball player at one point in time was the highest-paid player in baseball so care to share his name or would you rather I rather yeah anyways yeah so that's insane so let me ask you this so for people listening that might aspire have these aspirations where like money and success and wanting to have an impact like you're talking about it's important how much does money truly buy happiness for somebody on the outside looking at this thing and can one day I want to be like that like it contributes it's definitely not everything though and this is where I think certain people think like a if I'd choir all this stuff if I've got the big house if I got the shiny cars if I you know have the things and all the material things in my life then I'll be happy they could be motivators for people they can push people to achieve a certain you know they can definitely motivate I was thinking like hey and for me it was always about giving back to others I'm like hey if I can get to a certain income level then I can pay my parents mortgage off or I can buy my brother that car you know and it was not really about the stuff that I wasn't acquired for myself but that didn't hurt right yeah exactly exactly it doesn't hurt and it's nothing wrong with going after that and it's only part of that as long as you understand that's only part of the picture it's only part of what we're going after here it's not just the material things because you know there's actors there's celebrities just all these people who you're rich you're famous you got everything in the world and you just commit suicide right you know it's not over dose right whatever and and why is that because and nobody is immune to going through tough times hard times and a lot of that comes from the fact that these people's lives are just a cluster they're a whirlwind of mess and they get caught up with the wrong people the wrong thing although they're very famous they're making money they have all this material stuff it doesn't necessarily bring happiness it only brings happiness if you're using it in the right way and then you also have the most important things dialed in your life your family life your relationship with your spouse your time with your kids all those types of things when that becomes the focus your relationship with God your your your time with your faith you know for me going to church every week it's a big part of who I am what's got a big part of your life when you were broke in your 20s trying to aim for all this big success so I grew up in the church I came from faith-based home my mother was very strong Christian woman and a huge influence on me and the person I became she was working as secretary you know what they now call executive this is doing yes middle-class house yeah my dad was a bus driver his lower middle-class for sure I grew up in a house now cost $80,000 until I was 13 when we graduated to like $120,000 home yeah so I was I was I grew up in that environment where you know there wasn't a lot and I came from a faith but I my mom was very strong in her faith I and she sacrificed a lot she sent us me and my brother it's Christian school on her salary which was a stretch or private school on my family's income was a huge stretch but I'm very grateful for that that being said I think we all even for people who were raised in the church or from families like that I think we all kind of venture out on our own and have maybe a prodigal son moment at some point in our lives where hates maybe sways a little bit faced ways a little bit you try to figure out stuff on your own you think you know you can you can handle it by yourself you don't need God all these types of things and I necessarily ever feel that way it was always part of who I was internally and my belief system but it wasn't always part of my life in the way that I acted and conducted myself so there was a period of time isn't and I never did anything crazy and over community major crimes or anything like I said major crimes there's mine over there I never well I did some stupid stuff but but I know it's one of the craziest things you died well I was 16 years old and I just sleeping over a friends house of mine and we decided to take his dad station why I don't know neither of us had our license and go Taco Bell so [ __ ] morning we hadn't been pulled over and you know we got arrested my parents had to come pick us up oh yeah it was just dumb stuff like that yeah it was nothing I never got into any trouble it's more just like being being a naive teenager and then your early 20s you do dumb stuff you make mistakes you know you get too drunk one night or whatever and things get out of hand but you know I've I've never had anything unfortunately I've never had anything you know where I fear too far off the path but there was a time where you know I hadn't go to church for for a number of years maybe I got there a few times here and there but like it wasn't a regular part of my life now I'm extremely grounded in my faith again but there was a period of time in in my 20s where it it wasn't as active of a part of my life as it should have been and I'm grateful for those times and of those offers you know how God taught me lessons through all of that and I looked at every hardship that I faced as an opportunity to learn and grow and fortunately I always chose growth instead of not learning from experiences and now you know I'm that was a several year period and and it got back to my faith all the time that I was growing my business I was very very faith-based so I'm just very centered in my faith again but it wasn't until just this last year where I started integrating my faith into my into my business and using my gifts to interject faith into what I was doing I was treating was very separate things like yeah the business thing this is part of my personal life of my faith and then I had the business thing going on and of course in my interactions with colleagues and stuff like that I had no problem talking about faith and people knew that I was Christian stuff but I never publicly talked about that kind of stuff to the customer to the end user and that's what's really changed over the last year and it's made a huge difference in the fulfillment that I'm getting out of my work so looking back would you have incorporated more of God being at a cornerstone in your life obviously you learn lessons by that not being there at that time maybe but looking back like what would you have done differently maybe in terms of mindset your relationship with God anything like that so when I sent the first inspirational newsletter out to my ebook list which one one every sort of that a year ago at last September we had about 60,000 people on that list at the time they said their first inspirational newsletter out people were signing up for health and fitness they weren't signing up for inspiration right so I was wondering how is this gonna go I sent a newsletter out I wrote and you know we call them the devotional or something whatever you would call it it's just a newsletter or writing you know a blog whatever you want to call it about miracles and I spoke to the things you know situations that people could be affecting people and hurting people loss of a job going through a financial hardship loss of a loved one a mom or I mean a daughter or a son that's straight away from the person that you've raised them to be a divorce terminal illness diagnosis all this type of stuff and they said no matter what your situation is no matter how big it is there's a god who's bigger than your struggle but how do you tap into that for strength number one you have to believe that God has your back number two you need to surrender your situation I have a tattoo on my forearm freedom and surrender and that's a big part that I had to be reminded of throughout my professional career that I was always trying to figure out stuff and fix problems on my own a lot of worry a lot of stress I was internalizing so much and every time finally I would wake up and say God let me just turn this over to you please give me a piece about the situation and help me direct my paths not that like I was giving up on and say god you just figure it out yeah but direct my path let me have the right conversations with the right people put me in touch with the correct person who can help me fix this yes every time I did that yeah guide me exactly I'm not asking for you to do it I'm just saying just point me in the right direction so I can do this without like feeling like I'm spinning my wheels for days or weeks at a time and every time I did that things very quickly they it got back to where they needed to be and I was just encouraging people that you know when you surrender you can trust God he's gonna have your back and no matter how the situation works out whole use that situation pretty good it quoted couple Bible verses to that effect and then I asked people if you or in a situation right now that seems like a dire that's you're hurting hit reply if you like somebody to pray with you I have some team members who would like to agree with you in prayer you don't have to give us the full extent of your situation share as much as you like or as little as you like but we're here to support you and pray with you so we did that at the time and the newsletter list was like sixty thousand people we would get maybe twenty to thirty responses to our average nutrition newsletter and we have 400 responses to this one Wow so hey that's when I was like I just saw at that point in time as like I had a conversation with God where I I just apologized for not for waiting this long you know I'm 35 years old at this point I'm 35 years old I've been in business for eight nine years now I built these massive following this massive email list it's in this health and fitness content and then the first time that I like had the balls to put my faith out there right and inspire somebody about something that's bigger picture a lot of responses come in and I just see how NIDA did it so I'm talking to God I'm like God I can't change the past I'm embarrassed that it's taken me this long to put this type of message out here it's always been a part of my core belief system but why haven't I shared it I don't I don't have the answers that but for darn sure I'm gonna make sure that this is my mission moving forward that I'm gonna get these messages of hope and inspiration out and I'm gonna I'm gonna build this next email list as big as I possibly can and I was even thinking about Instagram at the time but I'm gonna build as email list as big as I can and I'm gonna be pumping out these inspirational messages so we started doing one a week one inspirational message per week and every time we put something up and the list is growing so hundreds of thousands every time we put something out there we would get hundreds if not thousands of responses and then the fame level was a catalyst for me getting on Instagram was the Easter season was coming around in March and I felt this tug on my heart like hey I like I want you to to tell people the meaning of the season here and I sent an inspiring message about like how many times I messed up in my own life how many times I screwed up I'm not perfect that I've made so many mistakes and the only reason why I am have the opportunity to share this with you today is because I'm a sinner saved by grace and I talked about God's grace I talked about that you know the the whole story of God send his son to be redemption of mankind all this and then I at the end I said look if this newsletter hit home with you no matter what you've done not too far gone God's got your back he's waiting for you to just turn your chin towards him and if you're interested pray this prayer below and I had a prayer that just allow people to turn their life over to God and then I said if you prayed that prayer please reply I have team members that will be excited to celebrate with you about this extremely important impactful decision that you made in your life and we have some resources because a lot of people you know they they get involved with faith and they like an experience for the time like they read they read the newsletter they feel something in their heart the spirit comes you know on their life and they're like I know I need to do this and then they go about their business and they goes on next you know let's write back to living the same way so we wanted to get people resources and tell them how to get plugged into a church and understand how to read the Bible and stuff like that so we have 4,000 people respond to that 4,000 and that's when I was like I need to get this message out on other platforms ya know because people are are being inspired the lights are being changed I sent a message on forgiveness I had many people respond with something akin to like this is just one example what we had hundreds of these that they said because of your news that I reached out to my mother haven't spoken to for ten years and we're having lunch tomorrow please pray for me and that L fluence is way more fulfilling than come yeah I mean incredible the impact there right and and we see people restoring relationships doing life better changing the course of their life having better really chips with their spouses with their kids become better relationships with themselves - yeah right yeah and as personal developments family development its life development you know so we're teaching people and and again I'm I'm a teacher but I'll always lead every one of my lessons with like I messed up on this so many times and I learned these lessons and here I'm sure I'm sharing what I've learned from it you know so it always comes from a place of transparency and authenticity and not like I'm not the guy who's preaching to you and telling you why don't you have it figured out I'm like I didn't have it figured out I still don't quite have it figure it out but I learned a lot of lessons on the along the way on this on this topic and I'm gonna share with you what I did learn and how I think you can help you and everyone has been resonating with that extremely extremely well and that's that's what I'm doing right now man that's it's this is my calling I'm moving from career to calling I'm still doing the e-book stuff I'm still doing the supplement stuff but I'm getting crazy fulfillment from what I'm doing now it's just inspiring other people to live the life that they were born to live okay that's so powerful man so before we wrap up I got three three more questions for you and then we have a game at the end okay so the first question is what are some of the most difficult challenges or some of the most tough times that you've had to deal with that maybe you haven't shared before that you overcame and maybe share what about how you overcame them and maybe it could resonate with people around the world that might be listening to this and maybe right now are listening to it in a place where they're stuck or they're lost or they're broke or maybe their relationship just ended or maybe they're where you were when you were 25 looking for answers so can you talk first off of like what were some of the most challenging times of your life and how did you overcome them yeah so I could start all the way back going to all the the knows that I got and the failures that I had getting into business but I'm gonna fast forward and I think this would be a little bit even more inspirational because I'm gonna tell you two situations that I was involved in when I was already running a hundred million dollar company and people will think that I got it made I would just snap my fingers and trade places with you any day which you know if I was the eyes I might I would I would do the same thing right and take whatever problems came with it but you're not immune to problems when you're running big business in fact you a lot of problems to deal with bigger weight you wake up the problems every single day you know and then was that way for a long period of time but we have an aspiration to bring investors on and to sell part of the company and eventually exit the company down the line and part of that is growing revenue month after month quarter after quarter year after year right so we hit a million dollars and now we have a really high bar that set and we have to grow that can right now how do we get 210 million next year how do we get 220 hundred thirty million next year but new channels we have to open up and all this so we were doing that and we had a bunch of we were doing very well in Google Display Network we're spending over three million dollars a month at one point to make sure that it's been a over three million dollars a month on on Google Display Network and wake up one day and we got the Google slap which was basically we count that bad so we could not run any ads zero nothing zero you log in and say you your dashboard is available it's check stats but you cannot run ads your counters under restricted status overnight we had people who we had account reps at the pool and all that stuff and we're going through the channels they were not able to get it reversed quickly we're hoping a good reverse within 24 hours because I mean this is like I don't know what 50 50 thousand to 100 thousand dollars a day that was coming in through these ads and we were dependent on that for growing the top-line revenue three weeks to go by we still have no resolution I am like beside myself then I'm the marketing guy I'm responsible for all the revenue and this was happening owner when we were looking for a minority investment that year right right so this was a big year for us and we had to hit our budget we had to hit our numbers and then this happened smack dab in the middle of it takes away through three million dollars of revenue from us I'm stressed out I'm crazy amount of worry I'm borderline depressed my wife is like she's it all over my face I'm carrying with me everywhere I go I mean short with my wife being short with my kids I'm disciplining my kids and I'm running out of patience like way faster than I otherwise all because of this dress that's come from the job that's leaking in everything else I think into the rest of my life yeah and similar situation happened a couple years prior to that when we the the company that we're sending our email through all of our our email service provider the company that we would send our newsletters through they made some really poor business decisions with how they were going to treat their customers and we needed to get off the platform and find a new provider so I was in the midst of doing that and we were moving a list of 2 million people this was in December there's all this happened this company made these really crappy decisions basically they took away our ability to contact a lot of our customers out of the blue and for reasons that were very faulty and their algorithm that they determined what who were in active context was all wrong when I proved it wrong but they weren't budging on it so I said ok well we're gonna have to move this is a December she's going into this like December 15 right going into the holidays I'm spending the second half of December dealing with this nonsense of transition to another email provider spending my time all stuff that I would spend zero time on otherwise it was just an email like we do normally right I'm spending all my time for the next two weeks on you know something that just crept out of nowhere during the holidays then on Christmas Eve I was trying to work out email delivery issues with the new with the new platform that we were on I got to know the owner of the CEO of the company very well through this transition but we became like enemies and right the first couple of weeks were very different now but we became like enemies the first couple weeks because things were not moving smoothly and we're everyone was blaming one another right you know funny airs yeah and here we are moving into January our company revenue is half email fifty percent of our company revenue coming in January it's more like seventy percent right because it's such a big time for seasoned gram in France New Year's go right exactly the whole New Year's rush and health fitness gym membership school of people buy a lot more supplements we were anticipating the huge January and our email open rates had tanked from like we're at plus 20% 20% plus down the single digits and I was I didn't know what to do you know I I was so stressed out about hours trying I was on the phone with these guys constantly all the time trying to work out the issues the issues were not improving and it's funny because and I don't mean to interject but it's funny because you're not feeling the other millions and millions of dollars that are being made right you're just feeling that little thing I'm feeling what interesting exactly about what we're losing it's not about the other right millions that are coming in that's it's about the hundreds of thousands that we're losing I just wanted to mention that so people listening could you know get a glimpse of the context there yeah yeah and it's not like hey I'm not grateful for the other stuff coming in I just know we have goals to hit and this is a big bump in like this is gonna be extremely negative for us if we don't just turned around right so here I am messing with this in the holidays affected my family life again you know all this was going on and the the only thing that saved me was again it's just the whole reason why I got this tattoo bro was is I reached my wit's end we were losing so much money I was having screaming matches with this guy on the phone you know because I was I was about to lose it and you're pretty chill guy yeah it says yeah yeah I mean I was at the end of my rope when it came to like my patience level with this and they promised all this stuff they weren't you feel like they were delivering on it I'm blaming him he's blaming me saying we're not doing XYZ how long ago was this this was the second year of biotrust so this was a good 2014 okay the end of 2013 into 2014 the other issue that I mentioned wasn't 2016 with Google but so here we are the only thing that got me through that is finally after like just having a breakdown pretty much I said god I can't handle this myself died me I'm gonna leave this up to you I'm gonna stop trying to figure it out by myself in my own strength because it's obviously getting me nowhere I'm doing nothing but losing all of my peace give me peace and I just felt this huge weight lifted off of me even though nothing had changed in that moment with the situation I just felt like I turned it over to God and he it's up to him now just to put me in the right frame of mind to fix this the right way instead of doing it with so much anger and frustration and loss of patience and all that the next day we get on the phone with the mariposa team with the CEO and the director of deliverability we had a much different conversation than we've been having is very calm more of a brainstorm how can we fix this we came up with a couple different ideas to try tried one of them the next day it looked very promising and ultimately we were able to fix the problem with that the next day we had that call and we came up with the solution after I said God just help me handle this situation so I surrendered and again it's it says not just work stuff you know this is life you know you could be going through something that is you see think your situation is dire and it may be maybe you just lost somebody who's extremely close to you you don't know how you're gonna survive without them maybe or you'll understand why you'd only say my it's not fair or and so many things that happen in life you know you'd maybe lose a job and their family struggling for a while it's a health issue sell for love donors huh and in every situation when so in that email situation write this provider that were with made made some decision I didn't agree with we had to move it was a struggle for about three weeks through the holidays it was a miserable time for me but once I surrendered and we got over the hump then our open rates were higher than they were at the other provider and were making even more money so then I look back and say God why did you put me through that and then I see oh you were trying to get me away from this provider because you knew that so maybe they weren't the most ethical in the way that they were doing a term and you wanted to push me to a company that we've been with for four and a half years now I have a great relationship with the CEO we're very good friends one of my very dear I would consider a very good friend he wanted introduced me over here but the only way to get me away from this was just cut it off right and then there's like why we're making this transition I'm gonna build some character yeah well yeah at the same time and teach some lessons about trusting me and that I know what I'm doing and then when that does work out you can look back and say yeah I should have trusted you the whole time and I should have just depended on you to show me the way instead of wondering why I was in the situation that I wish I never was in spinning in circles yeah right or even the fact that I'm like why why did this company make these dumb decisions that forced me to leave I just wish that never happened when I look back on it I'm grateful that it happened because now we're in a much better position we're making more money open rights are better were reaching more customers we're having greater impact and then with the Google thing it ended up being the same thing and and it didn't take me three weeks this time to realize even though the problem lasted almost as long I very quickly remembered that you know I need to surrender this and give this over to God and allow him to guide my path in fixing it and he did after I just stopped trying to fix in my own stop being frustrated and stopped calling all the people are Google stupid then he we networked our way to the right person they turn our account back on and then we're good to go so those are two situations this is coming from a guy who's making millions of dollars every year with the business that's you know hundreds of millions over 100 million dollars a year and people think that people who are running the that type of income earning this type of company that you got a made you know I probably chilling on a beach yeah I'm dealing with stress you know probably even more than I did when I was a teacher different types of problems you know call first world problems but there are problems on the lesson they can really affect you and this is the same reason how celebrities and other people of influence who other people look up to can be genuinely unhappy or they have a lot of stuff they're making a lot of money you think they know a lot of people everybody loves them but their personal life is a wreck because they don't understand how to tap it because everyone deals with setbacks and obstacles and problems and I think a lot of people don't understand how to deal with those situations when they come around because they don't have that faith background where they're just trying to in or it's all on them it's all on them yeah exactly and when it has been all on me it's been devastating and when I give it up that's when I get the breakthrough like almost like god is your spotter in a sense right yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a powerful man amen to that I love that so the two questions I have and these are much simpler but I love that last one is for people out there who are looking at you and what you've done you know the ups and the downs and the roller coasters and want to learn from you like what would you say to someone out there who really wants to start making their life work like what would you recommend that they do in their mindset like what what shift or like like what is it that if Joel had 60 seconds to bless the world with everything you've learned thus far what would you share with the world if you look into the camera and share your best 60 second piece of wisdom what would it be yeah and this goes to something that my good friend Beatrice Polian says and he says what would you do if you weren't being paid if you had everything all your expenses were taken care of you were good but you weren't getting any additional income from it you just had your needs met you have been a reasonable sized home you had your bills paid for you had food on the table clothes on your back what would you do in that situation now do that make an impact through your passion most people are doing things waking up every day doing things that they hate doing things that they do not enjoy doing things that they cannot ever have maximum impact doing because they're doing things that they're not passionate about so think about find your passion dig deep you may not you know they may seem a little abstract to you and you don't really know what you're passionate about but think about what you really love to do what would you do every day if you could wake up every day and do it know that your needs are being met but it wasn't a job it wasn't you you know you weren't in a rat race to make six figures a year or get promoted and all this well you be doing harness that start there and then explorers will explore ways how you can add value to the world and solve problems through that that passion through that gift that you have and then start finding ways to create and come out of that if you can do that if you start with your passion and there's a lot of resources out there about turning passion into profits and starting small businesses around things that you love I encourage people it's not saying that a regular job as an employee is not full you know is nobody should be doing that there's plenty of people who are passionate about their jobs there are plenty of people who are passionate about the team that they're on and the vision and supporting we have a lot of people in our company at biotrust who they're extremely passionate about the mission of biotrust and they love their jobs and if that's you let's awesome keep going but if you're one of these other people that omar was talking about if you're somebody who's struggling the roller coaster you're looking for direction start with what you would do if you weren't getting paid and take it from there when you harness that as the as the foundation of what you're moving forward to in your career you're never gonna steer yourself wrong because you're going to be following your passion you're going to be following and your passion are those things that God puts inside of your heart from you know as a teenager as a kid whatever and he even put those things in your heart those dreams and ambitions in your heart and that that that that love that you have for whatever it is that you're passionate about you didn't put that in in green into your DNA into who you are because you didn't want you to experience it at full throttle and experienced it in a way that can impact others so if you can start there realize that that's that that's God's direction on your life to chase after that that's why you put it in your heart and you can start going after it and that be the focused in the foundation of what your your purpose in life your direction in life where you're going if you can go there and start there you're going to be well well ahead of other people and you're gonna be well on the path of of true happiness and find your direction and you purpose in life because it all starts with what God has already put inside of you and now you need to bring it to the rest of the world I love them longer than 60 seconds but worth every second overnight and then the last question before we play our game is looking back on your life and obviously you still have a long way to go and many ambitions and people you want to bless an impact you want to have what have you found to be the most important thing like obviously you know at first it was like you know money money money business business business now it's sort of matured to you know having an impact and God and making faith a part of your life so like looking back for somebody listening to this at any age what have you found to be the most important thing to always keep in mind in life like what is what is the most important thing to you is it family is it love is it God is it a culmination of all those things like what is truly you've been to the mountaintop so to speak yeah what have you found to be the most important thing in life for me it's 100 percent you see my Instagram profile God first family second in that order work as a distant third you know relationships probably you're in the third spot and then work after that no obviously you need to work to provide for your family and all those things but every single time that I have allowed God to fall out of that first spot the rest of everything else has suffered and every single time I put him in that first spot where I honor first where I made sure that I had time where I'm talking to God every single day that I'm regularly doing a charge to be spiritually fed that's when all the other things my family life this is gets so much better all the stuff would work like the business is flourishing I'm not having a lot of stress a lot of problems because I'm relying on God to fight my battles when the situation's when the tough times do come up but when I let him slip out of them I'll human strength to try to deal with all this stuff there's a lot of stress in family and raised into kids there's a lot of stress in a marriage there's a lot of stress and running that company in that business there's a lot of stress and other interpersonal relationships that we have and if I'm trying to do it myself and in my own strength I realize that I'm not very good at it you know and and I don't have the strength to deal with all these things that life is throwing at me all at one time but when I do keep God first and and it's been several years now where I made sure that he's in the first position I that doesn't mean nothing bad happens that doesn't mean that everything was smooth sailing it just means that when I do face those situations I have superhuman strength and I can fight those battles in a way that I wouldn't be able to as if I wasn't didn't have that strength that I'm pulling from a higher power I love that so now it's time for the game you ready yeah so the game is called first things first and basically play this with every guest at the end of every interview and how the game works is I'm gonna list off its 10 words or phrases and then you tell me the first word or phrase that comes to mind does that make sense yes so I'll say a word or phrase then you just tell me intuitively what comes quick the only rule is that you can't repeat yourself twice okay all right ready all right I'll do it all right some number one fitness Bill Phillips number two money Joel Marion number three what most people do wrong in life in business try to figure out things in their own strength failure can be overcome through perseverance rejection that's why I can't repeat myself huh embrace it it's gonna happen you use it to fuel you and not destroy you your wife kids and family most important thing to me outside of my relationship with the first god do number one thing impact my calling this is what I'm doing this is this is my future passion you have to be passionate in order to have impact the last one you ready Joel Marion's legacy I've answered this question several times the answer is always the same and it's that I want people I've ever met and remember me as a giver somebody who walks into a room tries to make every single person in that room better ever a relationship that I enter into I'm depositing into that good well bank account much more than I'm ever withdrawing from it and at the end of the day when people would say this was a generous dude he gave her this time he gave up his resources financially he supported the efforts that mattered he took care of his family he invested in his relationships with others in business relationships and he's somebody that I like to model my life after because he made everybody else better my man thank you so much for making the semester giving your energy brother thank you boom novels thank you guys for tuning into this episode that's a wrap and you can follow Joe Marion at the description below as well as follow his podcast born to impact on iTunes and all podcast platforms soon until next time we'll see you guys and thank you for being one of the passionate few oh and guys before you forget don't forget to check out the description below for access to merch links and upcoming courses we have to help you become one of the passion of you in your life and your business and maybe with your own show as well wishing you nothing of a passion profit and purpose my friends see you guys next if you guys enjoyed that video be sure to hit that subscribe button right now because every week you the very best inputs on the dominant content interviews and insights help inspire you to take your life in your dreams to make them a reality and also if you don't know how to look between guests same way I have you can check the link below for my top 3 secrets so if you have a podcast or a show or whatever is you want to collaborate with them if you click that link below I'll give you those top three secrets to help you get in touch with anybody and also don't forget the passionate view is available on the media platforms as well so you can subscribe to the podcast and until next time thank you for being one of the passionate to you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Omar Elattar

Views: 33,995

Keywords: joel marion story, joel marion interview, joel marion the passionate few, joel marion the passionate few interview, joel marion broke to $100 million, Broke to 100 million by age 30, joel marion podcast, born to impact, joel marion born to impact, joel marion, joel marion email marketing, bio trust nutrition, omar elattar, digital marketer, copywriter, business, marketing, digital marketing, omar elattar interview, the passionate few, from broke to millionaire, email marketing

Id: MrqWdj_vF_4

Length: 133min 2sec (7982 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 23 2018