ONLY 1% Of People Use This SECRET TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL! | Eric Thomas & Lewis Howes

you have a pretty inspiring story in my mind but i want to hear you just kind of share your story briefly about how you got into what you're doing now you just finished your uh phd right yesterday on the flight absolutely but i want to hear about how you kind of got to where you are now uh in your words man it's the american dream you know they say nowhere else you know but in america and i was it was funny i was uh just recently in an interview or had an opportunity to do a luncheon with warren buffett you know he was just saying that you know this is the greatest country to be born in this is the greatest time you know to be born you know in this particular uh country you know social media you know economics just opportunity so you know i'm the american dream um i represent you know what so many uh people from my community represent um you know mom who had me out of wedlock pregnant at 17 years old uh my grandmother kicked her out not because she didn't love her uh but my grandmother kicked her out because she had 14 kids and like a two three bedroom house one bathroom 14 kids and my grandmother was like you know i just can't afford to feed another mouth sure uh so moms was homeless so when i said the american dream you know you're talking about um not just my generation but my mother um you know trying to finish high school and you know getting a job in detroit working for ford motor companies so you know the journey started with my mom and i took it from you know my mom to an entrepreneur but you know i eventually dropped out of high school i was homeless for about two and a half years and you know through education uh i think is where you know i i got my turnaround i'm not saying degrees that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about you know going to school and really learning how to identify my craft how to hone in on my craft and how to sharpen that craft and so i started a gd program because i received my ged however you want you to i was about 19 when i got my ged she dropped out of high school yeah dropped out of high school with 16 17. a couple years off yeah a couple uh couple years old a couple years ago what was happening here those couple years um you know just trying to find myself you know didn't know who my biological father was at the time had never really excelled academically i was a good athlete but because i didn't keep my grades up you know i couldn't play regularly so i was just trying to find myself and i was fortunate enough you know to get in a good church with some good people who helped mentor me sent me to college started dating a young lady at the time who challenged me to go to school with her or she was going to break up with me you know so just some real good things happen at the right time end up going to college took me 12 long years and i think the challenge was i didn't know the code the rules you know i didn't know the language of academia and i really had to humble myself you know and really buckle down um and that's what i did i started working on my oratorical skills most people won't believe it but i got a c minus you know fundamentals of speech you know um you know but you know over time you always tell people i got average skill but i have phenomenal will you know and so i just had to buckle down and really ask myself what do i want to do with the rest of my life and so i think it was the ged program i did and this may sound real simple to people but i think the ged gave me purpose you know and in that purpose i found my passion like i finally found something that nobody had to force me to do uh something that i woke up to every day i loved it i loved studying the books i loved the information i love working with students you know i would spend the first five ten minutes reading a motivational piece and then kind of elaborating on that piece and i just fell in love with teaching i fell in love with that environment i found that i had a way to connect with people that was you know that was rare and so from there i went back to school took 12 years but got a degree in business then went to michigan state masters and phd in education and just really worked on my gift i realized that all of us are born with a gift but you got to hone it you know it's just not you're not gonna become great and we talk about the school of greatness you know we talk about um you know greatness is upon you and i realized that my gift wasn't going to create itself my gift wasn't going to nurture itself my gift wasn't going to perfect itself that was something i had to do and so man before you know it we did a video that went viral i think it's got over 50 million hits now and we turn our passion into on profit yeah we turn it man yeah i love it turn our passion in the process exactly if you just if you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe then you'll be successful absolutely yeah that's a good one that's been used you know the audio of that has been using like hundreds of videos that get you know 20 50 million views alone alone i love the football the football one yeah yeah yeah yeah he's a great little lady yeah yeah like put me back in school and come with us yeah but i was like maybe if i would have taken my shirt off it would have blew up earlier but i died seriously yeah hilarious man yeah so is it that would you say that one speech when was that speech on that speech was back in like 2008 2009 did you say that was a big game changer for you i mean i wouldn't say it the world has said it you know and you know what's so funny and this is why i tell people you know just do what you do you know so many people are uh what i call uh their their game watching their scoreboard watching like every play they're looking up to see where they are you know and i mean you can't you you can't scoreboard watch and play the game at the same time you got to play the game you know they're so worried about all right is this going to be my year is this going like they spend so much time concentrating on when the big one is going to happen that the big one never happens because you can't you can't chase two rabbits if you chase two rabbits you're not gonna catch either one so for us it was an accident we didn't we didn't plan on doing it i was in a room going off on a group of students because they had an opportunity of a lifetime and they weren't taking advantage of it some guy just happened to have a video camera just happened to put the mic on me just happened to use it for his thesis and let me say this he never ever used it for his thesis he never used it friend of mine's like yo what you do with that video you did two years ago he was like well i still have he's like okay give it to me i'm gonna put it up on youtube no way there and not youtube for the world youtube because that was a place to house your videos you know and i ended up leaving my job at michigan state i felt it was time to go do you know my own thing and i promise you two or three months after i left it went viral it was literally online for years and didn't have any real traction and then when i left my job and i said this is it i can't explain it but it began to go viral the one in the classroom and then a year or so later giovanni's also started to go viral and he told me giovanni said yeah the football guy said he just did it so scouts and the nfl could see it right and so somebody stole it from off of the internet and they put it up put the audio over yup put the uh and boom yeah is he playing in the league right now he didn't make it to the league so so hey what does that tell you about the league right this guy to me i thought he could play in the league he went to canada and played for a minute and uh but for whatever reason you know he hasn't given up on his dreams sure uh playing in the league but it just goes to show you that the league is one percent of the greatest talent in the world the greatest yeah yeah it's tough to get there yeah absolutely i was trying to get there they played arena ball but yeah yeah you know yeah that's a challenge that is so the video you shot it two years before it actually went viral and you were still just grinding and doing your thing that's it you weren't like hoping like i hope this thing gives me this viral hit and all these people learn about me you're just still consistently grinding and i think that's greatness i think what people get confused is you know they're grinding with a goal and i'm not saying you shouldn't have goals but you should be grinding for grinding sake you know you should grind because that's what you do you're passionate about what you do you know and so you're waking up every day with this concept of i have 24 hours and they're mine this 24 hours belongs to me right and whatever i do in this 24 hours will determine where i'll be tomorrow and the next day and i think that's what people need to focus on like get off of this i want to make six figures i want to drive this car i want to live in this house i think what people should be focusing on is i have 24 hours like oprah only has 24. bill gates only has 24. like warren buffett only has 24 hours and in that 24 hour period i can either break my life or make my life and i think and i'm not saying you shouldn't have goals don't don't that i just think that goals for people is too high on the priority list and i think what should be on the priority list is going to bed so you can wake up the next day and you can grind it out and i'm just a dude that believes you reap what you sow so if you're grinding on monday grinding on tuesday grinding on wednesday if you're grinding six seven days a week for for a span of five or six years something's got to come out of that sure but if you're only grinding you know on monday you fired up wednesday you're back you're sleeping in thursday you got it the funk of the world is on like i've heard people say i'm dead every day is hump day like what's wednesday is hot day like monday hump day tuesday or something like every day is hunt day and i think if we would spend more time on what's my goal you know meaning what do i need to accomplish in this day to live this lifestyle and you go after it then i think i think more people will be successful yeah but they spend too much time like scoreboard watching they spend too much time on there i want this car in this house to live this lifestyle no that's that's the wrong you can think about the goal and have that in your mind but then think okay i'm going to hustle every day to make it happen not just and not just hustle every day i mean you should be specific like look i've got to believe that millionaires do certain things i gotta believe that millionaires have a certain habit right i gotta believe that they sleep so many hours i gotta believe that they know their crap i gotta believe they're passionate that you know and so when i take my goal instead of looking at my goal and asking how much money can i make i've got to ask myself what things do i need to do every single like from eight to nine what should i be doing to be a millionaire from nine to ten what should i be doing from 10 to 10 15 like what should i be doing and that's why i wake up every morning at three o'clock because for me it's okay monday do this tuesday do this wednesday do that and if i do those things i'm guaranteed to be successful so tell me about your daily rituals and do you have a daily ritual i heard you get up at 3am is that true every day do you what is it what does your hour-to-hour look like walk us through your process now here's the challenge a lot of people ask me what time i wake up in the morning and i i think that so many young people just because they've never been exposed to greatness they're asking a good question the great question should be what time do you go to bed at night that's that's the question you should be asking the question is what time do you go to sleep and so every night i try to go to bed like like literally in the bed eight thirty nine o'clock sleep that's like 9 30 that's like some two-year-old stuff oh man that's like some baby stuff right there you know what i'm saying that's my kitty car like that and and i and i do that routinely now i tell people of course i travel the world so of course i'm not going to bed every day at 9 30 but but here's the deal when i can what happens is i create this habit that my body believes that all right 9 30 all right you wake up at three which means i'm getting five to six hours of sleep which is pretty good right but here's the trick when i came to california my body still woke up at three something because it's accustomed to going to bed at a certain time my body doesn't really know what time it is like my body's not it's not knowledgeable of time zones right my body just knows that this is the time we normally wake up so i go to bed consistently early i wake up early now this is why i wake up now if you're listening to me you're an entrepreneur you have to hear this there are people who graduated magna laude i didn't there are people who were born into wealth there are people who were born into a certain network i wasn't but here's the trick even though i don't have what they have i can outwork you so if i'm getting up at three o'clock in the morning and as sweet as you are networks parents wealth opportunities and you're getting up at hey i've got a five-hour jump start on you like i don't care who you are if if if if we're traveling to the same city and i take off five hours before you nine out of ten i'm gonna get there before you get there so my trick is i get up at three o'clock in the morning because i didn't know who my biological father was it took me 12 years to get a degree so i wake up earlier because that guy who is deeper than i am who has more advantages or opportunities than i have when we get our contract to that same company when my contract gets to that guy that ceo reads my contract at 3 30 in the morning he's like this dude is serious wow so i know this guy graduated mine and kunladi but he he sent me his contract at nine eric sent his at 3 30. like you've got to give me a shot you got to give me at least an interview right right for the 3 30 you've got to give me an interview so what i'm trying to explain to people is my ritual is i'm gonna beat you to the spot i'm gonna beat you to the spot that's what it's all about right for those of us who play basketball or those of us who play football sometimes it's not about being the the greatest talent it's about beating a person to the spot so if i beat you to the spot and i got an open shot it doesn't mean i'm the greatest but i beat you to the spot right i created my own shot i created my own space that's what the crossover is about the crossover is about creating your own shot creating your own space and the way i have become a millionaire and the way i've become one of the top motivational speakers in the world nobody knew who i was six seven years ago is i've created space i've created space i've i've given myself an advantage that others don't have and is it hard no not really if you just wake up earlier you can take naps during the day right so it doesn't mean you have to stay up the entire day but it does mean you have to get to the spot before everybody else so it kind of looks like the first hour um i'm really a dude of faith so the first hour i really spend you know um read my bible praying after that i work out for about a good hour i've got accountability group that i talk to for an hour spend time with my wife every morning accountability group every morning accountability group hour two hours we're kind of just talking about our day what we're gonna do spend time with my wife my wife is they say iron sharpens iron but my wife is like titanium titanium you know uh and my wife is constantly telling me you need to improve in this area you need to do better in this area um and then eight o'clock in the morning cj and i get on the phone and we spend the rest of the day going after it wow so we've got a list of call australia a list of you got four videos two voice-overs um and let me say this to my entrepreneurs i have a ritual where even if you're my closest friend i have boundaries so just because it's my company it doesn't mean i can take calls all day right i have boundaries so you can't call me at a certain time why i'm working so if i'm on the phone all day and i'm saying this to entrepreneurs because one of the gaps and we'll talk about this later in the show but you got to find the gaps and one of the gaps with entrepreneurs is that they feel like because they own their day they can spend it like they want you cannot spend it like you want to you so if you were working for ibm or you're working for for whoever you're working for you couldn't be on the phone all day at a major corporation talking on the ball so so why do you allow yourself to talk on the phone in your business matter of fact it's yours you should probably you should make sure there's no phone calls going on because it's your business so one of my rituals is when i get started there are no interruptions when i get started i don't care if it's my wife my children they know that from a certain time frame i'm going all in and i can't go all in answering the phone i can't go all in watching tv that's right i can't go in with the distraction and so some entrepreneurs are like why am i not blowing up because you don't you're not in abstraction you don't have that that that moment of your day i don't care if it's two hours four hours where you shut the entire world out no twitter no facebook no nothing no instagram instagram we love that instagram so but just for two hours i'm going in and then once i come out then we can do instagram and i'll be honest your content probably would be stronger if you had that that time of isolation of solitude where you give yourself a chance to think you give yourself a chance to go in and when you go in you go 120 what's your dream here to change the world starting with the educational system i just feel like so many kids who are disadvantaged don't know the power of knowledge you know they don't get it you know like you you because you are knowledgeable you were able to write your story you were able to write your narrative and i just think because these kids don't understand the power of education they're not writing their own narrative and they're letting people write their narrative for you they're letting people just decide their fate and i just want to say look like learn read write like if you're not good at english okay go with math be an engineer but like take advantage and i want to help teachers like there's so many teachers i feel like they care but because they didn't grow up in certain neighborhoods and they're not familiar with the the language the rules of the codes they're not able to coach these kids like and this generation is different you just can't throw a book in their face because they don't they don't have that you know um that that desire for learning but you can still coach them like you can still get them ready so i just want to help teachers to go in the classroom like really empower really change and give them the tools that they need to do what they went to school for like everybody talks bad about teachers you think i i took a 50 000 cut like you think i went into education and not a doctor or lawyer engineer so that i can fail and teachers want to be successful too but i just don't think that they have the tools for this generation so man that's what i would love to do is change the educational system and just give more people man you know how it is flying you know the world you know how it is being able to eat you know what it's like to have choice you know you know what it's like to have freedom it's it's it's real nice man it's great man you know and i don't want people to think you know i'm on that but i walked in the hotel yesterday it was this long line and then there was the spg i think line i was like i'm in the sp yeah yeah and i went in and you know checked in quick i was like yo i like this i'm not against the long line but it's good to be you know a member you know and that's what i want for other people i i don't want just the heir can put his kids through school or eric can travel to australia like i want other kids to know what it's like to have ownership of their own life isn't that what america is about all men are created equal you know all men are created and i want them to enjoy the liberty and the fruit of being an american because if you really live the american dream it's it's unbelievable it's not like anything else it's amazing but it's just so few people who actually get that opportunity yeah so how are you gonna do that um well you saw houston man i'm just like three four schools a day this is what i love about et is he you really practice what you're preaching about your dream you're not just like i want to change the educational system and talk to a few leaders about it or something you are actually on the ground you'll speak to six kids 600 kids you'll speak to a classroom the whole school funny story if you don't mind my so my auntie invited me to her school so apparently she doesn't know i'm eating hip-hop preacher uh she invites me to her school and so she sends me this text and says okay should i invite um just my students or maybe a couple more and i said well auntie you know get more right i get there she got 10 people in the classroom like i'm speaking to 10 kids high school probably about 25 i'm speaking to 10 kids just so happens that the lady talk about the law of attraction the teacher next door has been following my stuff for years shows the kids every monday she's like intending my practice it's in our school with my eyes like e.t eric yeah so the lady brings her students over so i went from 10 to 29. yeah about 20 students that i'm going in on and the other teacher goes to the principal and says do you know who's in our building and so immediately after that period you know and i do like a um auditorium three hours in a row they fill up the auditorium right but my aunt's still looking like i didn't know she's like why they taking pictures with you and i'm like i teach i know i'm not a big deal to you but to a couple people right they really want to hear this so that's where we started i just believe start where you are with what you have for what you have is plenty and then just recently i was able to sit down with some a very powerful people in the education arena who are saying et we want to help uh you take this platform to another level you know we have uh the connections we're in the schools and we want to help you but i i just think uh lewis there are so many people who are waiting for the meeting there's so many people waiting for that meeting opportunity before they and i just say let's go create it so every city corporate brings me to the nfl the nba brings me to i say bring me in a day early and let me hit every school i can hit every detention center and if i keep doing this you reap what you sow eventually somebody's going to see what i'm doing and somebody oprah maybe michelle maybe somebody's going to see what people do make sure you book this guy to do something yes and when you're speaking at the schools are you doing most of it you know for free is it mostly kind of just going in and just k through 12 for the most part yeah yeah we just showed you college yeah they got out of the church they can write that check they got but you're getting paid to go out for something else absolutely corporate is bringing me in or nba nfl and then we're using that time you know to go back isn't it the american way like somebody has helped us and then we pay it forward you know like you were talking about in the beginning you know we can make all the money we want get the cars the jets or whatever and have the fancy things but when's enough enough like before you want to start making an impact and i feel like everything that i do and we do it's like if it's not giving back in some way then what's the point yeah if it's just for me just for us alone yeah and it's not to serve people in a bigger way like we're doing something wrong yeah let me tell you man last night you talking about dede and i've been married 26 years together 30 and we check in last night knowing what's going on today and just to be able to hold each other you know as for me i'm like no child you had education there's no child left behind and i'm sitting here like yo i'm with my high school sweetheart like we made it through everything and we're doing this thing together you know my son calls me this morning for worship you know he's like dad i just want to get the day started a couple players in the car and we're doing our thing and i'm like yo i didn't have to leave my wife and my kids behind like we're all together i'm with the team eating breakfast i'm like yo we didn't lose we didn't lose you know and then you're in the airport and there's somebody that's hugging you and crying i'm like yo we're hey but we we're taking everybody with us you know it's like the lebron commercial in cleveland when he's starting to work out and then before you see it like everybody's running before there's thousands of people with lebron i'm like that's how we feel nike hasn't asked us to do that particularly but that's what we're doing like it's people who are following us in every city now we've got breed university they're people all over the world they're on this movement of this being phenomenal so they're not forgotten they're on this they're on this for real the school of greatness like they're really about being great and it's not us alone it's it's all of us together man so it's just been sweet not getting to the top and like you're by yourself but i've gotten to the top and all these people are still coming with us so it's just it's what you say is money okay yeah you do need that you need resources but it's not about the money the money is a tool to help you accomplish that goal you're trying to accomplish and you didn't really have a lot of money growing up right no not at all so how did you learn from someone who never made money really to build wealth how was that for you did you learn from someone did you just kind of figure it out i'm in the books come on let's be real you got the the the napoleon hills yeah they can grow rich on the top that's my that's the one man you know um you know the richest man in babylon i got that in here yeah so you know all the classics man um uh um um the richest man that ever lived i mean it's just so many different classics isn't the richest man in babylon is that the one where he gives away fifty percent of everything yup and he puts the secrets to the scrolls right right the scrolls mark one and two are um well i'll tell you when i finished but i got that one the scroll walk one two but for me then i started meeting dan gilbert i started meeting bob proctor and i was saying like i don't want to meet get to check from these guys i want to sit down and learn from these guys so a lot of those guys have done and then we've been fortunate to have our own you know um financial guru now with josh you know being a part of the team you know so looking at things from a financial standpoint because i'll be honest i always look at stuff from a ministry standpoint you know and the ministry is good but it's not a business you know so now we have a business model you know and things are happening so i got around the right people man and and was honest enough you talk about ego was humble enough to say i don't know and i'm not gonna pretend like i know right you know cause sometimes you like i don't know you like you get these people around you and you try to act like you know you know people did you read that book i talked to people oh yeah i read that book oh yeah they never read a book a day like right i'm like no no like i don't know you know and we need your help so i've just surrounded myself with the with the people who know i do well at what i do well at and i let the people who do well or what they do i give them free reign to do what they do yeah you know well cj not necessarily doesn't give us all free reign i get free right i get it i get it free right i like it what would you say is your greatest gift in the world service nobody's going nobody's gonna serve like i serve you know i'm gonna preach and then i'm gonna mop the floors i'm gonna cook i'm gonna cut the potatoes i'm gonna skin them cut them boil them like nobody's gonna out serve me you know i'm gonna serve in the morning i'm gonna serve at night everybody leaves i'm gonna cut the light off you know so for real people have different gifts people are intelligent people right you know people are athletic people are fast you know interview whatever i i am the best servant in the world i am i've read something and i knew i you know just stuff just hit you but i'll never forget reading that the greatest among you should be a servant and i was like oh that's my leg the greatest among you would be a servant i'm like i can do that i can i can wash feet you know i don't have a problem with that whatever you need me to do i can do that you know so uh that's my greatest gift people think of speaking speaking is the platform that gets the attention but once i get your attention and you come in my life you i you yeah i'll certainly like you won't want to leave this relationship sure like that you won't want to leave me how did you learn to to speak the way you do um paying attention you know i think a lot of speakers that i watched they would come into a building and have a message and i don't care who was in the room they do the message i'm like nobody's listening like everybody sleep but my man is so into himself like he didn't even realize that everybody's knocked out i'm like that sleep like it's not working he's not looking at people's eyes he don't care what's going on he just got his eight uh his eight speech powerpoint he's going through a hundred slides nobody's clapping yeah and i realized like that's not working you know and um when i start like talking to people it's weird people say you know how do you do what you do i just go and ask people like what what what be your take away if you were listening like what would you want to hear and i just go up and say what they said so i spend time with the people i talk to the custodial worker and i ask him like yo i know the principal's perspective but my man he's got a lot of paperwork going on he's behind the desk like you're a custodial worker like you see the kids you hear things that nobody else hears what's going on with these kids with this parents is divorced and this kid you know is from a foster care and a lot of our kids i'll probably get more uh thorough information from the custodial worker like right i mean like believe it or not very wise and and very tapped in sometimes the principal's not tapped into the post you know they think that you know what they're doing but they don't know what's going on talk to the teachers is that true once i get that all i have to do is go up and say what you told me but just keep it creative that's so true and loud i figured the loud thing to help get your attention yeah i mean it's so true i mean i that's something that i like to do as well i was i was in uh giving a speech in illinois the other day and i asked them beforehand you know a week before you know what do you want me to cover what do you want to talk about and they said a few things and i was like that just doesn't feel right i just don't think this audience wants that so we get there early and i'm in the back of the room talking to people just saying hey what's what are you getting out of today what do you want to get out of this you know they don't even know i'm speaking i'm just like what's the big what's the big thing what's the big challenge in your life and i love that you do that as well because i don't think a lot of speakers do that because they they're full of themselves yeah they think and that's what i tell young speakers i don't like going to a restaurant where the food is sitting under that that that red light i like to go where i can order and it's made fresh so as a presenter i'm not gonna give you the the the red beam light i'm gonna give you you can order fresh like what do you want so when i come in my stuff is gone i may have made the order it's made to order and even carl has a hard time sometimes cause it's like yo carl hey i don't know what he's like i don't know just start and he'll go okay well all right and i'll talk and he'll just kind of fill me up like okay i think this is next i think that but although it puts more work on us it guarantees that it's organic and that the people are going to walk out refreshed so that's i'm about being organic man yeah that's all i'm about [Music] why is accountability so important for you and so many other people why does it why is the game changer for you you know i learned this from dan gilbert um and quicken loans he has like 19 isms that you know his company lives by and and the one i love the most says innovation is rewarded execution is worshipped so what i learned of being around dan gilbert is like your money changes when you execute i i i realized i didn't know i didn't have a right concept of success now i understand success is accomplishing what you say you're going to accomplish it's getting done what you say you're going to get done and let's be honest if you were to sit back and do a percentage on what you said you were going to do in a time span like how would you grade yourself if you're saying 70 you're a c if you're saying 80 you're b 90 you're an a 100 and so i said if i could execute every single time so as i began to look at my life i realized and this is for eric thomas if i say i'm going to work out 21 days in a row and nobody knows about it nobody knows i'm gonna work out for 21 days i can kind of sneak away i'll do 30. but when i call somebody and say hey workout for 21 days i need you to hold me accountable a part of my working out has absolutely nothing to do with working out it has absolutely nothing to do with my health it has absolutely nothing to do with me caring about my body it has everything to do with i told you i was going to do it and i don't want you to call me and ask me did i do it and i have to tell you i didn't do it so i realized that every man is where he is because when he says he's going to do something not only does he do it but he does it in a certain time frame and with a certain quality and if i have a group of people who can call me every day and say to me that you you say you're gonna do that you say you're gonna do that listen to me i my first book took me 10 years to finish and i did not finish my book into a good friend of mine kageya within a span of about a year or two kept calling me every week and say did you finish yet what chapter you want what okay how did you what part did you all right when is it gonna be done and i want to be honest he got on my last nerves and i think just the whole disappointing him i just was like i'm tired and so i finished that book and i finished the second book before he could ask me about a second wow and sent him the second book when it was finished like shut up like don't call me don't ask me about it same thing with school you know i have finished all my coursework didn't start the dissertation and i would be on the road and people say e.t you said three years ago on one of your tgims that you was gonna get your phd how's the phd coming i got tired of people asking me when is the phd when are you gonna finish are you finished yet when are you gonna finish you know and so a part of my success has been being brave enough to say it and i'm not saying it because i thought i could actually do it but saying it so i could be held accountable and then once people start holding me accountable boom i started i just didn't want to seem like a liar i didn't want to let people down so if you're an entrepreneur i challenge you to get out of the dark corners the dark spaces you know having these goals and dreams that nobody knows about and i challenge you to take your dreams and goals and share now here's the other part for me that's critical i always think about if i don't execute how is that going to hurt my family how is that going to hurt my friends so so if i don't execute what type of christmas are we talking about like we can't come to cali if i'm not executed i'm saying like my son uh first year school i paid cash for him to go to school you can't pay cash tuition if you not execute you know if you're not getting engagements right so each one of my children have they have their own car to get to school you can't buy your kids vehicles when you're not executing my wife has a car just took her to hawaii she only works 12 hours a week she can't she can't do those things in mind she had we just uh it was diagnosed a year and a half ago she had a chronic illness of six to seven legions on her brain imagine if i wasn't an executive my wife would still have to work 40 hours there are women with the same disease that my wife has that have to work 40 hours why because their husband didn't execute so they got to get up and go to work even though medically it's not healthy they still got to get up and go to work my wife does not have to get up and go to work she wants to work so she does 12 hours why because i execute it and i realize now execution in business is like a heart beating as it relates to your body once that heart stops that's it for your body when you're not executing as a business person as an entrepreneur it's over for you today you're just talking you're spending hours you're talking about what you're going to do you're spending hours visualizing you're spending hot look and i'm not trying to be disrespectful but you i think you can appreciate that i don't even do lunch like i used to do with people anymore why because i realize a lot of people want to do lunch and just talk yeah like we just we just spent an hour talking 30 minutes driving that's two hours of i couldn't have been making money i could have been executed so i'm not against mentoring i'm not against meetings but a lot of the meetings that i attend it's a bunch of jargon yeah yeah it's wasted space wasted time and so i'm gonna say i guarantee you this year could be the best year of your life if you execute more i'm not saying you're not executing but i'm telling you if you were to execute 100 of the time you probably add another comma to your income another zero to your income just by executing executing within the time frame you say you're gonna do it and executing with excellence just do those three things and i guarantee you're gonna go to a whole new level yeah yeah and i think you know i know what you're talking about when it's saying mentorship you don't have lunch with people but really you want to do it on a broader scale you want to do it on a bigger scale and that's why you have your show that's why you do speaking so you can mentor hundreds of thousands of millions of people as opposed to spending two hours with one person or sitting here with you and doing almost millions exactly right exactly exactly here with you pulled out now exactly so what is your what's your why you're so passionate you're so committed yeah why are you so committed to excellence and greatness in your own life well you talk about family but i'm assuming that's part of it but why specifically but you know to me bigger than that because family is important but if you live in a third world country let's let's be honest you're limited to what you can do for your family so while family is important listen to me opportunity is the biggest thing like people ask me why did you wake up at three o'clock in the morning if i could be a millionaire in america and live wherever i want to live all i have to get up at three o'clock in the morning that's pretty sweet that's a sweet deal and i can go to bed whenever i want to go to bed and i can buy a good bed i got ratchets right that i can sleep in when i go to bed right so for me it's opportunity that in this great country and you know um this country has had you know uh it's dark past uh you know but i i'm not perfect yeah i'm fortunate enough not to live have lived in that dark past so there wasn't there was a time in this this is this country's history where eric thomas would not have had some of the opportunities that i have not so i have opportunities that dr martin king didn't have i have opportunities that just 50 60 years ago they didn't have so in my my generation it doesn't make a difference what your race is it doesn't make a difference what your ethnic background is i can be an entrepreneur like a hundred years ago somebody from my background couldn't have been an entrepreneur i i could be a ceo because i the two of us can get together you know and work together like i live the dream i have an opportunity to live dr martin luther king's dream you mean to tell me that i have that opportunity i'm not gonna take advantage of it yeah like that that's ignorant like there was a time where we couldn't go to school where if we were trying to get in school they bring the national guards they've got dogs and they're walking these kids in you know to a school where people don't want them i have an opportunity to go to school and be embraced by professors i have an opportunity to write books i have an opportunity to do conferences i have an opportunity to have a show on youtube you mean to tell me i have an opportunity to do that and get paid for it and i'm not going to take advantage of that like that's what i'm passionate about we flew first class last night my entire family right i have an opportunity to fly first class i have an opportunity to walk up to the street ontario airport and just get a vehicle like that's not something that happened two three hundred years ago and here i am living the dream and you need to tell me that the whole world is in front of you and you're not going to uh try to be a millionaire or a billionaire you're not going to write books you're not going to get degrees so for me opportunity and this is the biggest thing that listen to me that's ever happened in my life and i know we all have different goals different dreams to each his own but the greatest contribution of my life i dropped out my grandfather dropped out my father dropped out my son graduated from high school on time went to michigan state university he is a student at michigan state university a big ten institution works for tom izzo who is going to go down in the ncaa hall of fame as a basketball my son is working with one of the top coaches in the world as a general manager traveling the world um this was maybe about a month and a half ago i just met overwhelmed um the a.d and coach izzo had a big award ceremony gave him his letterman jacket you know i'm saying that's huge he has the ring when he went to the elite uh eight last year they won the big ten uh championship he's got the ring you know he's in school he's man that's my greatest that i broke the cycle so for me to have this opportunity and to set my children up now you know for this type of life that's my why that i have an opportunity but more importantly i can break the cycle i can change the trajectory of my family forever just by the decisions that i make so i say this a lot to entrepreneurs the stuff you're doing right now the decisions you're making right now warren buffett you know bill gates the stuff that the decisions that they made 20 30 years ago has set their children up for the rest of their lives and here i have an opportunity to do the exact same thing i told my son i will pay for you to get a degree i told my daughter i will cash i will pay for you to go to school that's my gift to you to give you one of the greatest started starts that you could ever have in america you know so that that's that's that's my why and then for all those kids out there who don't have their fathers who haven't had you know um exposure to certain role models uh certain opportunities you know every day when i do my videos i'm i'm trying to give them access you know to some of the greatest speakers i've heard i've been with les brown i've been with john maxwell i've been a bob proctor i've traveled the world i've met people like dan gilbert i've met uh you know just just you know people in this industry who are just i mean gurus and now i want to take that same knowledge and i want to give that to these kids so i can give them the same opportunities that i had who are your mentors right now and how important do you think it is for people to have mentors slash coaches throughout their entire journey of their life whether they're in school playing a sport running a business you know trying to be married you know how important is it to have key mentors and coaches and who are yours yeah i mean it's everything because you know my mother calls it triple darkness you don't know that you don't know that you don't know you know it's triple darkness for the kid that's grown up in a certain neighborhood without his father you know he hasn't had he's never left his city he's never been a 10 20 mile radius outside of his city they're kids in los angeles who've never been to a beach yeah you know it's unbelievable you know their kids in chicago who never been downtown at the pier or never walked the magnificent mile you know there are kids in san francisco who've never been to the golden gate bridge i mean can you imagine kids in huntsville alabama who've never gone to the space in rocket center you know so i think it's everything i'm not where i am because of who i am i am where i am because of the information that individuals gave me you know and so uh my mentors and we're fortunate in this generation through books uh through social media anybody could be your man anyone yeah you can follow whoever you want but of recent dan gilbert has been you know of course almost quick and long the cleveland cavaliers yeah you know he's been a mentor to me he shared with me you know the 19 principles that he uses um to revolutionize not only his company but bring back detroit and i think that's why my relationship uh with dan gilbert is so important bill emerson who's also with quicken loans tony knuckles is because i'm watching these guys build detroit back up yeah i get to see the the the the millionaires billionaires who are building the city back up i know them i get to call them i get to do lunch with them i get to ask them questions so dan gilbert is born tom izzo definitely you know having an opportunity he seems like an awesome guy oh awesome guy man i'm talking about hard-nosed school just lives by principles you know going to the practices having access to tom izzo you know another you know been another mentor uh coach d'antonio with the football team i get an opportunity to you know go up there on a regular basis and just watch how he operates i watch these guys in the film room i get to see these guys you know on the road on the plane you know how they're pouring into these kids and you know forcing these kids to get a degree and just the the exposure that they're giving to these kids and then through them you know just recently i was uh through dan gilbert i had a chance to sit down and do lunch with warren buffett that's not somebody that i would normally have exposure to sure so that's why i tell these kids when you get an opportunity to meet e.t you don't know who else you're meeting like right you know i work with the nfl i work with the nba you know their kids you you work with kyrie irving i'm like i work with these kind of guys on a regular basis you know i've learned from kyrie i've learned from just when i lecture him just seeing that that passion in his mind you know just seeing him listening and following him on twitter so i i would say that those are some of the you know the people now and of course cj even though cj works for me you know cj is a brilliant young man you know he really is is the brand genius of this company i've been doing this for years uh but c kind of came in with just just the the vision you know um that was just out of this world so c is definitely a mentor i'm learning a lot from cj um and uh i would i would say to young people you know if you're living in a community and the resources aren't there i challenge you to get on the bus and go to the library on the other side of town i challenge you to go um and learn that handles messiah i challenge you you know to pick up a piano or pick up a violin i challenge you to not accept the life that's been given to you you know just because somebody gave you that light that does not have to become your reality i challenge you to go outside of your immediate environment and i challenge you to explore you know i challenge you to discover because it's so much like if you live in america you never have to go out in this country now i'm not suggesting that you don't travel right but i'm just saying there's so many great gyms in this country i travel the kids who spend hundreds and thousand dollars on shoes to i challenge you to get a plane ticket and come to california you know i challenge you to go to miami i challenge you to go you know manhattan and new york i challenge you to see america and get out of your neighborhood get out of those four walls i challenge you to learn a second language yeah i challenge you to watch pbs you know npr radio like i challenge you to get out of just that world that you've been given i challenge you to read books you know to learn the history of this company like i challenge you to be bigger bolder and better five years from now 10 years from now i challenge you to get your high school diploma try college look if you don't like it you can leave but give it a year you know because so many people think it's just about school i met some of the greatest friendships some of the greatest people i met in college so i would say exposure is so important and some of the people that we admire are people who have been exposed to things that other people haven't been exposed to [Music] just this year alone you've been speaking a lot again hundreds and thousands of people that come out what's the biggest challenge that most of these individuals have what's the common challenge believe they don't believe man you know it's it's um it's all mental and people don't get it you know everybody wants to say okay well here go ten steps two okay lewis said do eight e.t said do nine you know this person says this to 12 steps and everybody's trying to get the steps without the mentality it's like okay maybe you don't need all nine or maybe you don't need all eight maybe you need four maybe you need 12. i don't know but i think sometimes they see what we do and say if i can if like if i can duplicate that just like exactly how he's done in the book exactly and it's like yo you have a story you know you you have a unique experience and so you're 12 are shaped by by not just your world but how your world has shaped your thinking and i think that's the part that mission was like guys you know if it was easy everybody could do it if it was a cookie cutter everybody would just follow it to the t but there's a mindset and when i looked at serena you know when i look at the michael jordans tom brady you know when you look at michael phelps like it is a mentality you know on our new album the resolution i talk about i got that dog and i'm not really referring to just this you know aggressiveness but it is a mindset i saw belichick said something where you know they were like how are you feeling about the suit boys like i'm gonna be honest with you we're five weeks behind you know what i'm saying he's like yo everybody else for next year next year everybody else is practicing training they lost you know they and so they're trying to get ready lifting weights they're reading books they're you know everybody that lost their studies he's like yeah we fi what type of mind says we're five weeks behind in the super bowl and they have super bowl so but again it's a mentality and i think a lot of people are missing that mentality and what's going to get them to develop that mentality and that belief i'd say for for me it was hitting rock bottom you know and so hopefully for them it's hitting rock bottom or not hitting their goals and and having this cycle of loss that they'll say like a lebron you saw lebron crying that was because cleveland had lost for so many years like they had never had a championship so so so he was just like yo we finally did it you know but it was year after year of losing that even when he left and one he came back because he remembered a loss and said yo this is a this is good but this isn't what i set out to do like i want to be a winner and i want this town to know what it feels like to win you know so i think that's it when you lose enough or you hit rock bottom and you just say like enough is enough just everything will snap and change because you're saying look the way i've been doing it it's not working so i have to do something different so i just think man you got to hit rock bottom here's the interesting thing i meet a lot of these people and this is like the deadliest person in my opinion when someone tells me you know louis i've got a really good job i'm making 130 grand a year i've been doing it for 20 years i got a you know really good life good kids good wife but just that something's missing and they got those like golden handcuffs right were they good life but it's not outstanding what do you say to those individuals who are like it's hard to really they don't want to hit rock bottom because they got a good life yeah but man it's really tough to break through that top level look man i just had this conversation with like my number one client in the world and that's my son you know we just had this thought and i said son you are probably at the most dangerous part of your life he's like dad i got three months and i graduate from college like i work with tom izzo you know i've won a a dad i wear an elite eight ring a final four ring dad i got a job offer of a lifetime and i was like that's the problem i'm like everything you've ever dreamed of you are three months away so what happens three months in one day like you have nothing son like i said so what you have to do for me is now i need you to start all over from scratch i need you to come up with what's the next four years look like what's the next grind i'm like is it getting the 800 credit score is it saving 250 000 is it finding the girl of your dream and getting married you know is it buying a house helping your mom pay for your sister to go to school i'm like son i don't care what it is but you don't understand this is dangerous because this is where people mess up they get comfortable they settle and they think yo i made it and like you said that's the worst place in the world so i told my son like yo just imagine in three months you're gonna wake up and every dream you've had since you were six or seven years old it's all like who graduates with the dream job you know who who lives in new york who who's he's in manhattan he's gonna be in manhattan times square you know so i said son this is a dangerous place so i say to those individuals yeah you're right you don't want to hit rock bottom but you have to create your own mental rock bottom so that you don't hit rock bottom yeah wow yeah it's kind of like the power broke right absolutely damon john talking about the power broke all the time he's even even if you're the richest guy in the world you got to act like you got you got to act like it because fruit what makes brady want to win a fifth what makes jordan 39 at 39 what makes jordan say okay i got four like it's not even a new season he said we're going by we got to get the fifth one what makes serena get 23 and still going like what makes venus who was sick and should have been gone now she's 36 years old what makes her fight to get to the australian open and i'm telling you it's it's not the money the network it's not you know the vision board it's i believe for those of us who are where we are it's something within you know and and you can't go buy that you know i can't give it to you lewis can't like you've got to go within and find that and pull that stuff out yeah what do you think's the best way to develop belief in oneself i just think man for me i mean a million ways but for me it's like you got to find out why you know it's like i couldn't imagine not getting up at three o'clock in the morning yeah because dede needs me you know imagine you know and i don't know ms like that and no nobody quote me or called lewis and say eric was wrong right but i do know the one thing that they know is stress causes it and and the way the legions grow is because of stress so my thing is i got to keep the stress off my wife and right now she's in a hotel you know in in la you know she's about to leave her job and she knows that still financially we're fine she has a car and we're taking care of so i'm thinking about my son who i don't want to have a student loan or my daughter whoever you know so for me it's like it's my why and i keep telling people okay yeah tom brady but he was doing it i believe roger goodell i believe his mom with cancer i believe he cried when he talked about his father his four super bowls he was crying about his father being his hero i'm like this is unbelievable i mean what more can you ask for so it's not the car the house or whatever it is that internal goal that internal why and so for me i just think that's it like that like you ah it's just it's something within it you gotta pull it out and so it's easy when you have a why a purpose i'm doing it for this i'm doing it for that it's easy to get up and get going but if it's just for a car what happens lewis when you get the car because you can buy it what happens when you get the house and you can buy the house what happens when you get the jet and you got but when it's for your son that's forever like my wife's ms the the span of her life it's gonna keep me like it's not okay i can get a house and it's over like that's gonna take me if she lives another 50 i'm gonna be grinding like this for 50 and what i try to explain to people you have seen this happen before i don't know if you know a person personally but you've got a guy whose wife they've been married 50 years and you know and she died and this guy dies two weeks later and it's like how did you get through like he got through cancer you know he made it through cancer but his wife dies and he dies a week or two later why did he get through cancer because he was doing it for her but once she died that was his whole reason for living his own reason for existing and when that why died he was like it's over for me you know or i don't remember carrie underwood i think was her name and her young lady from star wars what was her name yes i'm not sure okay so i think it's something like that but she said it again okay and her mother fisher passed and i think her mom passed like a week later yeah a week later the next day got some smart people here right the next day so so why did she die her baby that was her baby girl she was all these years that her daughter was struggling with addiction and going through whatever her challenges were moms was right there but once she died mom's everything died for mom so i just think that why louis is so important and if you're why is a car well you're talking 2015 gets old what in 2020 right so that's it like you know your house it depreciation value in what 10 20 years maybe so i think when you have that why that thing pushes you you're doing it for cancer for your mom tom brady's thinking in his mind and one of the players said hey remember you're doing this for your mom he said it like hey you're doing this for your mom i know we're down twenty five yeah yeah yeah we're down 25 points but you said your mom you know and so tom is like yup i told my mom my dad and i don't want to see my mom at the end of the game with a loss and then mom comes up with the scarf and you can see she's going through chemo and he did it for his mom so you got to have something within man yeah what's your wife dede you know jaylen jada you know carl cj their families you know i tell people all the time you know i'm not working just for me i promised these guys if they would rock with me you know that they would be rewarded so they have wives nine children now they have homes and cars and lifestyles and like what i do every interview every video you know every presentation if i don't get better they don't get better you know and so when i have these other guys saying you know we're going to catch you eat we're going to be a better speaker i'm like well you better have 100 people you working for because you're not about to beat me cause i've got people who are relying like counting on me when i'm on the treadmill i'm on a treadmill not because i need to look a certain way my wife's been in she got she got beat so she's been in for the long haul i'm fat small whatever she's with me she's not going nowhere so i'm not doing it for her i'm not doing it my mom's not gonna love me no more if i weigh 155 pounds versus 260. my mom's gonna love me but if but if my health lasts for another 30 and i can keep this energy well i'm doing three four gigs a day if i can keep this energy for another 20 years financially you know where the team is gonna be but if i allow myself to get sick you know because i'm not taking care of my body and i can't go speak or i i can't consult then then the guys are gonna suffer their families are gonna suffer so i so man i'm telling you waking up for them you know and eating right for them that's my why man and then all those people who see me in the airport who are crying or those people who see me and say hey you got me through prison or you got me through my exams i i can't afford louis to let those people out like i'm not an entertainer you know entertainers have the luxury of doing whatever they do you know uh on stage you know and then they can live whatever life they want to live like nobody holds them to you know a standard but eric thomas people hold me to like that's my pastor or that's my mentor that's my father like they're kids who are saying i don't have a father like you don't know it but you're my father people say like yo you're my business partner before i like you were my silent business partner for six years so if i fall off they fall off you know i've heard cj said before like i'm not trying to be funny and i hope it doesn't happen but if you got a divorce i don't i'm thinking like if if you couldn't make it i'm not going to be in a man i wake up thinking about that that was a conversation we had 10 years ago maybe but i wake up like e make sure you do what you're supposed to do because so much is riding on your speaking you know i'm not tired but i'm not speaking how do you uh yeah of course how do you not allow the pressure to overwhelm you or how do you reframe it in your mind not as pressure or something else yeah that's what i don't see it as yeah pressure for sure but i don't see pressure as negative you know like you probably i see pressure as it creates diamonds you know so without it no no one could be great so dd's ms you know and i tell people this all the time i know guys who literally left their wives when they were um diagnosed with maybe cancer or maybe ms you know i know a young lady specifically who husband left her after 20 years you know of of her being diagnosed with ms and i get it you know i get i do understand but i said in sickness and health i can't prove that i really love you without this pressure like this pressure proves like anybody can do it if everything was good i'm proving under stress brady brady was like fear without no fear god we got to score right now we got this okay now we just scored now we gotta score again yeah now it's overtime now we really have to score because if we don't score nine they score game is over so for me i don't see it as negative i see it as you know pressure is what separates the boys from the men this is what everybody says they're a great speaker they're great this pressure says okay we're gonna really see who's the champion and i'm not trying to i know it's a lot of falcon fans out there i'm not trying to be disrespectful to anybody you know but they were able to handle a certain amount of success first quarter second quarter third quarter almost multiple fourth quarter but when the pressure hit they weren't able to sustain the success they were having so once we get to overtime now all of a sudden it goes to the patriots and all of a sudden you stop them all this time but you couldn't stop them when it mattered because it was it was a pressure that a lot of those guys had probably never felt super bowl over time you know i'm saying they probably never felt we got to stop him now you know what i'm saying we got sag brady not like you were able to get a sack in the first quarter second quarter third quarter but when you needed to sack most under the most stressful time you weren't able to produce whereas brady was like yo i've been here yeah i've been here before so i got it so for me the pressure isn't negative i like the pressure because it's going to separate eta from all the other companies that say they're the best motivational service companies in the world sure and they might be it might be 12 of us i don't know but if it's 12 we will be among the 12 top yeah we'll be among the 12. and there's room for everyone yeah absolutely that can handle the pressure yeah of course yeah yeah that can handle the pressure of course and it can't be at the uh the cavs and the pistons the same time so you know um let's talk about ego and you know we have i would say similar kind of businesses where we're we're in the face right where the personalities were leading the charge and without us it probably wouldn't be as successful as it is right we're speaking we're doing the videos all that stuff how do you separate your personal ego from not getting in the way to being able to be the biggest service that you can in the world as opposed to it's all about you know me mentality but all about serving your audience how do you separate that from you it's the same way i look at the face you know the eye is very important but not without the nose you know and the nose has its significance but not without the ear so i don't know if the ear is sweeter than the nose you notice i don't know if the ear can say yo hey i'm the ear like come on i don't know if the eyes can say hey without us guys we couldn't see absolutely but see what you know so for me uh i think i don't have an ego problem because i understand i i play a a significant role you know in a in a phenomenal organization you know and without those other pieces the success that i'm having i wouldn't have you know so yeah i may be the face but i'm not the nose i'm not the eye i'm not the mom i'm not the ear so it's no success without those things so and and i had a long career without the people who work with me now and had a very good career and now i have a phenomenal career so i understand i can you know some people have like one group and it's like this happened with that group no i had a group and i have another group so i played with the cleveland cavs back in this time frame then i'm playing with the cleveland cavaliers at this time and i had success with the first cleveland i got contracts i got you know people knew who i was but with this one i'm winning we got hardware and now championships we win the championship so it's easy for me now because i realized hey without these guys i wouldn't have x y and z and so i don't see myself as okay i did these videos no if carl didn't record them and edit them nobody would even know who i am i would have just been that sweet dude in that room that one yeah yeah yeah those 50 people would have been like yo eat a man but with the videos you know where it sees uh strategic branding and saying okay it needs to be done this way this way this way i wouldn't make the money i'm making my kids wouldn't have the lifestyle my wife wouldn't have the lifestyle so for me it's not it's not an eager it's not my mother used to always tell us don't say you're humble because you have to have something to be humble my mother say say you're grounded you know so for me i'm grounded i know that i'm not that deep but i am one piece of a phenomenal puzzle yeah that's great man that's funny in the beginning of every one of my chapters in my book i talk about getting grounded yeah preparing yourself when you say get grounded [Music] what would you say are the three biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make that don't make them successful or three big mistakes that someone who's not an entrepreneur but someone just trying to get what they want what are those three big things that they do that that are mistakes yeah for me i think most people move without knowing you know no vision yeah i just think man you know for a lot of people um they have not literally sat down and thought through what will this take yeah you know okay so i want to be a real estate yeah okay real estate is great but have you spent months and years asking yourself what are the qualities of a great real estate you know um individual what are the great um books that we need to read what's the knowledge that you need to know like i think people get started from feelings they get started from these great ideas but they don't get started from facts yeah and i'm telling you one of the things warren buffett said that blew my mind when they asked him his routine he said he he spends the first well he didn't say first but he just said six hours a day he's reading wow and i'm like okay so just in case you missed that because i don't want you to go and just buy a whole bunch of books and start reading for six hours a day what i heard was his decision-making process is so much stronger than mines because it's based off of six hours of information wow that's incredible so you spent six hours so a lot of basketball players that i meet d1 ballers they spend more time playing the game than they do studying the game so they don't like watching film they don't like practicing and so i would say to the entrepreneur out there it's not about what you know that's going to create success in your life it's what you don't know it's the gaps that's going to break your company it's those little things that you don't do that you didn't know you were supposed to do that would break the back of your company that that would allow the other guy to get breaks that you don't get you know so for me i started this company and it was just little things that i just didn't know that going to conferences and meeting people like i did not know that eric whether you like meetings or not you need to have meetings and and not just have meetings for meeting sake there needs to be measurements there there needs to be accountability there there needs to be uh immediate goals and long-term goals there needs to be look at the threats look at the opportunity so the first thing i think is that most people are starting a business without truly being informed you may have 70 knowledge of 60 but you're not operating on 100 information and you're so eager and you're so you're so desperate to make money you're so desperate you know to to move forward that you haven't spent the quality time building a solid foundation right so number two i think the problem is once we are informed we don't have the design you know if and when i say design let me just say this you guys know i'm from detroit we call it recall in detroit so so a car industry would make a car but the design of that car is not thorough so they have to call it back something wrong with the brake system something wrong with the acceleration something's wrong with the ignition which could create depth sure right so it has for for many people it has so so what they have done is they have created a car but they the design was not of of greatness it was not excellent and so i would say to people number two after the knowledge make sure that your design the design of your company the strategy of your company the infrastructure of your company is sound because what we've discovered is that most companies don't make it past three years now i don't know the statistics but they're high i think it's over 60 of first-time businesses don't make it past three years why because they're building off of sand and they're not building off a solid foundation so number two make sure your infrastructure is silent now we're gonna be around for a long time now a lot of people say you know we don't know we didn't know who eric thomas was before you know we never heard of this guy before the reason why you hadn't heard of me because i've been building the infrastructure like i am i can just study the hand when you look at the infrastructure underground of an ant they say it's like their highways and freeways they say it's like they're building rome their infrastructure is solid and so you haven't heard about eric thomas why because i've been getting the masters i've been getting a phd you know i've been meeting with um some of the best leaders in the world the john maxwell's you know the bob proctors the les browns like i've been i've been meeting with these individuals so i've been getting my infrastructure solid okay and so now that i'm out because this is what happens i don't know if you guys and i just i want to make sure that because this is radio that or the audio you're hearing us i want to give you the visual uh but there was a commercial years ago of a company you know that had made this this great brand and so they were looking for um one of these um um i guess you know like ups fedex these packaging companies to you know help support them and so when they started the very first day they opened they had like 300 sales and a thousand sales before you know they had like 3 000 sales and it overwhelmed them you know because they weren't ready for while the product was great they didn't they didn't have the shipping aspect great so it overwhelmed they had like 3 000 and you can see the numbers going up going up and they're sitting there like oh there's no way possible for us to get you know 3 000 of our um our designs out to the world because their infrastructure was not solid and the the last thing i think is the discipline i think where most people go wrong is that once they have the knowledge once they have the infrastructure in place they don't have the discipline that it takes to become successful by discipline i mean there are many opportunities that i've had to do tv there are opportunities that i've had to to work for specific companies but i had the discipline to say no it's not the time not right now you know no um i would love to be in tv but tv would take away you know from my ultimate goal and no i don't want to get up and go to class and no i don't want to work on a phd and no i don't feel like writing and no i don't feel like working out and so i find that most people aren't successful because they don't have the discipline it takes the discipline to say no when they should say no the discipline to say yes when they say yes and more importantly the discipline to wait and so for a lot of us we get broke in that waiting process you know and i found that a lot of companies that initially told me no and i would and i said no i can't do it for that price you know i can't i can't do it under these circumstances that three years later when my videos kept you know going up the numbers kept going up now they're like eric we want to work with you and they're willing to pay me what i feel my my product is valued at and why because i weighed it i i didn't i didn't say yes to everything i didn't i didn't fight at the first opportunity you know i wasn't desperate i knew i knew i knew my stuff i knew i had put in the time i knew i had made the investment and so now i'm considered one of the top motivational speakers in the world one of the top coaches uh in the world why because man i got the knowledge first i've been in this thing over 20 years i've built a strong infrastructure and i've had the discipline it takes to say no to some things say yes to some things and more importantly i've been able to wait i've been able to wait and now that i've waited i think uh i'm on the show with you so apparently i love it i love it i was speaking to a class yesterday a small class of students high school students and uh and they were in a leadership class talking about public speaking and a lot of them their biggest fear is speaking so how did you overcome the fear maybe it sounds like you never were afraid to speak in front of a group but how how was i still in how do people overcome that fear when you realize that you're not speaking so that people can critique you you're speaking to change their life so you have the opportunity i don't know if there's anything okay i'm sure there is but i don't know if there are more ways to change people than being up front and like literally speaking like that i don't know what the power is but there is a power you know when you sit down and you're letting somebody's like like control your thinking control like they're putting work and so i realized like yo this is a crazy responsibility but literally i have a chance when a kid is listening to me for 30 minutes he can walk on his life can be changed forever so when i shift the focus from how do i sound how do i look i want people to say nice things about me too i'm going to change your life forever the the i would say there's still some anxiety because i want to make sure i do it effectively but it takes the pressure off because it's not about me now it's about changing this kid's life making principles go back teachers go back parents go back uh with a a a vision or an excitement or or or you know a hunger that they didn't have prior to me being there so for me it's like i think if you're focused on where am i going to get a letter of recommendation are they going to bring me back or are they going to say positive things about me am i going to get more likes you know uh is my social media maybe you should be afraid but if you go in and say i'm going to change this kid's life forever i'ma change his life this marriage forever if you go in with that it kind of takes some of the edge yeah i love that and that's kind of like the michael jordan approach where he said you know every night i knew someone in the arena was coming to watch me and i had to show up to be to be a catalyst of possibilities or hope for them right yeah and it's funny because for years when i was speaking i i was always the other way i was always nervous about what are people going to say are they going to like me are they going to boo me am i going to forget my words or whatever and it was always about the ego like am i gonna look okay and then a couple of years ago i got some great teaching that from someone who said exactly what you said essentially about remove yourself from the situation and make it about the audience make about how can you be in service than the maximum waste so i love that you're teaching that and i'm sure the entire training is going to be more of those great things so make sure you guys go check it out and get it what um how do you prepare mentally before either a school of again six or a corporation of six thousand do you have the same mental preparation or ritual before you jump on stage or get in front of a room if so what is that i think it's every day that's why i'm in a school every day that's why i don't wait until i get a call that's why if there's a corporate company that i have a relationship with i just did something for five guys i'm staying in touch with the owners i'm staying in touch with the staff i'm going to five guys locally and say hey you guys were at the conference if anything i could help you with so i think that's the thing cj teaches us to stay ready you know that's the theme stay ready so a part of staying ready is you don't gotta get ready you don't have to get ready so the nfl players that i work with i'm constantly on the phone with those guys i'm on the phone with the coaches i'm constantly asking questions like i don't assume that i can wait for the call and then prepare myself in 30 40 minutes to be ready to to to so i create relationships with these individuals i create friendships with these individuals and i stay in touch with them on a regular basis adding value like how can i add value to your life and then they just keep me eat man you don't you don't realize you know what's going on in the nfl it's like we're watching the super bowl and then the day after we got to do this and then eat man it's like from january to april like mentally we just got at home and you know we we got friends that are trying to distract us and we don't want to and i'm like oh there we go all right carl let's put some videos together for that all right let's put a curriculum together for that and so i'm talking and talking talking so then when the team calls me and says you know the browns called me jack said e.t i want you to come and work with me well now when i get there i'm already i already know some of the things that he would need as a coach to help these young players and as much as i'm allowed to i'm i'm going to have that impact so i just stay in school stay in detention centers now my daughter is going to detention centers with me she wants to be a a social worker you know so i'm staying tapped in my son's a general manager so when i do stuff with teams i bring him along when he can come so just staying in the environment staying with the post because if you know the post it's all you man it's easy all you're doing is just rehearsing you know it's like you're doing you practice practice practice practice yeah you you just lay it out yeah it's nothing different there's nothing different doing it every day but if you do it once every month it could be it could be a child challenging yeah what do you think about before you go to bed how am i gonna wake up the next morning you know and if i don't what pieces do i need to put in place so that my wife is well as a matter of fact you know it's funny you asked me that i felt in my spirit you know how stuff just comes i said the other day because my daughter's 18 and you know she's starting to um she's probably been interested in dating just didn't share that with you absolutely careful i'll say that you know what to say my daughter just started no no she probably just felt comfortable telling me that she likes boys you know so um what i've been doing is i say you know what you need to do you need to sit down on this phone and you need to talk your daughter through a relationship just in case you don't make it you know you talk your son through his 20s just in case on one of these flights something you know was to happen and so that's what i've been thinking about lately is e how do you prepare them even in your death like how do you set up your family and structure in such a way that if you're not physically here that coaching is still here yeah your voice is still in their ear you know so that's what i've been thinking about and then more importantly like the mistakes i made that day e i always see it you know working with coach izzo one of the things i've learned from coach is he uses his timeouts wisely he uses half times wisely he's constantly trying to make adjustments you know during that time frame so for me going to bed is rest yeah and so prior to going to bed i'm like yo eat what adjustments you know do you need to make and then you know make those adjustments when i make i wake up that next morning what do you think your biggest weaknesses are man just wanting to do too much man you know um you know you want to do it all right yeah education i think about marriage i think about and all of them are you know equally important people get divorced you know you got kids who don't finish school you got kids who make terrible decisions and they're on the streets or prisons like i could just do prison or i can just do education so sometimes it's just like you know it's just like y'all want to save the world and you know i have to explain to my wife i can't help that i want to save the world i'm saying like i didn't wake up one day and say i want to say the world i didn't push a button and say all right save the world it's like i was born with it i was born to care i see people i'm trying to stop hug everybody before i get on my flight i don't carry money anymore because i always give it away it's like i didn't ask to be this guy and there's not a lot to say to the world people out you know what i'm saying so sometimes you like a freak you know what i'm saying it's like when are you going to stop when are you going to quit when you go i'm like yo i want to stop but when i sleep i'm dreaming of people i got a person just recently who unfortunately um i was trying to coach and mentor and the relationship didn't work out i literally had a dream about those individuals hugging them and their family and you know i'm saying i hadn't talked to the person in 30 days but i'm still thinking about them like in my sleep i'm like i didn't ask to do that i didn't ask to care to that level like some people are like some people i know they're good like they can get rid of a person and like never think about that part like i i'm not wired like that like i can't abandon you because you did something i didn't like like i'm just wired to be a shepherd i'm wired to serve you know so um but sometimes it causes challenges because other people are like yeah well i'm focused i got to do this or i got to do that or my wife was like well what about our family cut that off and just us and i'm like okay i'm trying but i don't know what it is like i don't know where the switch is like you know i don't if if i found out where it was i would you know cut the circuit breaker off and then cut it back on three four hours later so i think that's probably my greatest weaknesses i do want to save the world and you got to be balanced like you got to take care of your family you got to take care of your staff and you got to know when to say no and when to say yes but it's still a challenge absolutely every school called why didn't you come to our school why are you coming to school eric's a big he think he's big time now like why he was in our town he went to these schools why didn't he come over to here does he only work with this group or does he only work with that group and it's just like i want to save everybody but it's 22 hours in a day so what's in the way what's in the gap for you for achieving your dreams a time you know um and just prioritizing and you know that's the beauty of having a team you talked about earlier yeah now as the team grows you can have more chick-fil-as him from the south now he's starting to see him in michigan and illinois and whatever so when you get that model and i think that's what you know having a cj and a josh right now what they're trying to do is say hey let's turn to e.t if you have a a program p70 speaker training then you're not hitting these two or three people here 10 people now you have this academy you can bring people and you can do more so for me that's not my thing but having a team of guys now who are saying hey let's make it a machine yeah you know and if it's a plane eat and we get you a 757 we could put three 400 people on we still can't do it the way you want to do it you still can't get a million people yeah yeah you can't create a machine for a million people eat but we can get you we can get 500 people on the plane for you and you can take care of those 500 you know so um i think that has been in a way it's no longer a challenge they're actually developing that as we speak and i think that's going that's that's going to help me feel better that i've saved a million this year right i still got to get to those those billions take the millions that we can get this year and who is the most influential person in your life growing up probably my mom you know biggest lesson she tell you what's that mom's like no excuse you know she had four my grandma had 14 kids my mom was the only one you know really to finish high school 14 14. holy cow and lost a set of twins so it should have been 16. in a like a three-bedroom house with two back with one bath you know um and i just saw it no chicago we're originally from chicago and i saw my mom my mom went back to my mom went to college at 48 and graduated at 52. so my mom is that dog you know i'm saying when i think about that that's my mom you know and even though i used to be upset with my mom because she lied about you know who my biological father was it was a plan you know mom's like the original olivia pope you know what i'm saying mom's like we go you know what i'm saying they're not gonna know who you are they not like how do you get uh two families not to say who your father is and i was with my biological father's family i was with my grandma my aunts and didn't know who he was so my mom had a straight like she had it planned out you know like yo this is what's gonna happen you're gonna go to school my mother would like sleep in tents so i can go to special schools you know because they had it's like you don't know the waiting list you know so she would live like in a tent really like you know i'm just like you know camp out if you will for me to get in so mom is you know she started as a photographer in 1819 turn that into microfilm you know for ford graduate uh uh finish four with a degree you know and put herself like one of the highest levels you could go so just seeing my mom grind all these years and not say well i didn't have my father in my life and i grew up in poverty on the south side of chicago i went mom didn't make any excuses mom said hey we'll do whatever it takes and so our mom is definitely man even though we had an estranged relationship you know for a couple of years i left and was immature but mom has definitely always been that that person that i you know because some of our challenges i wouldn't say that i have my mom's picture on the wall but we've always been emotionally attached you know we've always been very close you know and so mom has definitely been that person that i learned my grind from and we'll just say is the biggest lesson you learned from your father or the absence of your father um that you can fake it like you care but you can't fake it like you there you know and i think it's so weird man like when i work with the browns this year i didn't get to talk as much as i'm used to talking you know that wasn't the role um which was weird for me because i'm like yo i'm a talk but man i would literally come to the meetings or i would be on the field as they're coming out getting ready for the game and i remember god saying to me like yo i still can't believe you on the field e like y'all been watching you since i was in high school i cannot believe you standing here with you know with my team's t-shirt on like yo this is unreal and i would have guys from the other team like okay i know you with the brows either hey when i was with oregon or alabama you came to my school you know and just to see that the talking is good but being present and holding somebody and looking them in their eyes and saying like yo you could do this like after a loss in cleveland and just being there and they're like yo we lost 10 games you still here we lost 12 games like yo i'm here i'm not here win or lose like i'm not here i'm here for you and to be able to be there for people i'm realizing that's the best as a father i'm there for my children you know the staff as much as i can be i'm there for the staff like i'm not in my own world whatever we eat together we fly together you know we're in the same car i don't have well it might be hollywood i don't know i might need a chauffeur these days but i mean we still do everything together you know so for me i'm realizing the power of presence you don't have to always talk you don't have to give people gifts sometimes just being in people's life through the ups the downs the bad the ugly the snow to sleep people value and appreciate you just being present well i love hearing that a michigan guy is in ohio supporting my team no question we need to let the coach have you speak before every pre-k okay warm them up you hear this hugh let's go come on cleveland um a few more questions for you and i could i could talk with you all day i love this and um what are you most proud of that most people don't know about you man i don't know what am i most proud of um i don't know i don't know that i have any um like individual pride i think what i'm most proud of is that i've been able to get with a group of men and we've been able to become brothers and we haven't let egos get in the way and we've been able to change the world with little or nothing like when you look at our company you know we're from we're from last in michigan like that's where we started at last and we didn't have any support now i've got to change i should always say nobody gave us anything but a lady wrote me a check for a thousand dollars at the free program i do at michigan state so that's i can't say that yeah you know what i said but we haven't had a lot and like i said egos haven't gotten away it's not a thing of you know um you're bigger than me or i'm bigger than you you know um like for real financial records just everything we've shared everything and for us to be three young men from you know last in detroit barbados and to be able to change the world like you don't know what it feels like to just have people like i can't go anywhere anymore like people know who i am and people you know was at the nfl um experience and i remember we went to a restaurant and i saw a hip-hop artist that would walk in and nobody wouldn't say anything to them other than you know they go but people would walk up to me and hug me and start crying and say look guy i'm not i'm not a groupie like eric thomas do not get this twisted i don't take pictures with celebrities but you changed my life and this is bigger i just met a guy when we were at the when we came in last night to the hotel he said yo e i don't want to say anything to you but like i built my business because of you like you changed my life like i hear this every day and so for me it's like i'm proud of the fact that we were able to build something that helps people and not necessarily just to focus on us but but we meet people that say man i made 15 million dollars in the last three years watching you guys your free podcast your free dish your free that you know so for real man a group of guys coming together in a room and having a dream and a goal and having a blue collar forgive me but a blue collar we're not apple you know we're not microsoft and maybe you know we're not in the big magazines and like you know some of the you know most powerful people in the world may not necessarily be talking about but the everyday people who are struggling to get up and get at it are saying yo you help me and for me it's like yo we're contributing to america just like all these other great apple phones we're changing lives and to grow so that's what i'm probably you know most proud of of what we've done i can't think of any individual sure thing i've done it took me 14 years to get it you know 12 years get a four-year degree so i have anything like for real like i i was homeless high school dropout eating out of trash cans i don't know if i've ever had that thing that i did like i wasn't an athlete like i've never had that thing that i can hang my hat on as an individual you know what i'm saying but as a team i can truly say i can i can hang my hat on as eta we have like we would be magnum ladies or whatever that is like we would be up there with thai if you want more greatness in your life then you gotta check out this video right here he had a great quote that said rest at the end not in the middle and that's something i always live by you know i'm not going to rest i'm going to keep on pushing now there's a lot of answers that i don't have even questions that i don't have but i'm just going to keep going

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 13,926

Rating: 4.8964143 out of 5

Keywords: Eric thomas, Eric thomas interview, eric thomas speech, eric thomas motivation, eric thomas inspiration, lewis howes, lewis howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, inspiration, motivation, motivational video, inspirational video, success habits, sucess motivation, work hard motivation, laziness motivation, use you pain to grow, pain motivation, mindset motivation, growth mindset, success mindset, wealth, cash

Id: 49ZlHQW3_Vs

Length: 89min 19sec (5359 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020