Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Failed Restaurants, Massive Debt, and an NBA Ring: Joel Steele's Unbelievable Comeback

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Failed Restaurants, Massive Debt, and an NBA Ring: Joel Steele's Unbelievable Comeback · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:05
  All right, Joel Steele, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 0:08
  Thanks for having me.
• 0:09
  I'm, I'm excited for this.
• 0:10
  It's been a long time coming.
• 0:11
  Yes, sir.
• 0:12
  We are excited to have you here.
• 0:14
  So, Joel, you've been an entrepreneur basically your whole career, and like many, you've had some high highs and low lows and maybe more dramatic than most.
• 0:26
  And we'll, we'll get into that.
• 0:28
  But you, you certainly have really found your stride and buil successful practice.
• 0:33
  You've got a new book that came out, and you even got an NBA championship ring, which is a crazy story in itself.
• 0:40
  So we'll get into all that.
• 0:41
  But just to set the stage for our listeners, can you talk about your backstory and how you became an entrepreneur?
• 0:47
  Yeah.
• 0:47
  Well, I always knew I wanted to be my own boss.
• 0:50
  I wanted to own my own business.
• 0:51
  I was fascinated at a young age of making money by selling some kind of good or service.
• 0:57
  And this went from selling bazooka bubblegum for 5 cents back in elementary school all the way up.
• 1:03
  And some of my businesses were not, not as smooth as that.
• 1:07
  Some of them were not as legal as that.
• 1:09
  But ultimately, I just knew that I'd be a terrible employee because I see things a certain way.
• 1:15
  I look for opportunity in everything.
• 1:17
  And if I think there's opportunity to be more efficient, I'm going to try to do it that way.
• 1:22
  And some companies, they don't want that.
• 1:24
  They want it to be done their way, even if it's the slow way.
• 1:27
  And so I just knew that I was going to be a terrible employee.
• 1:30
  So being an entrepreneur was the, really, the only path for me.
• 1:33
  Okay.
• 1:34
  All right.
• 1:34
  And we'll, we'll get into your first big venture, too, which I, I believe was a restaurant.
• 1:39
  But, but even prior.
• 1:40
  Right.
• 1:40
  You had some harrowing times even as a teen, kind of from hanging out with the wrong crowd and even got got held at gunpoint several times.
• 1:48
  Can, can you just talk about those early years and how you made the switch to, to get on the right path?
• 1:52
  Yeah.
• 1:53
  Well, it all worked up in a certain direction, but it was the wrong direction.
• 1:56
  So again, I was selling bubblegum then.
• 1:58
  I was selling, I was selling these, I guess, for a lack of a better term, like porn cards.
• 2:04
  They were like, you know, mostly naked women.
• 2:06
  I was selling those cards for a dollar a piece to my, my friends in middle school and high school, and I wasn't old enough to buy them, so I figured the next best thing would be just to steal
• 2:15
  them because I couldn't buy them.
• 2:17
  And Then I would sell them.
• 2:18
  So I was at 100 profit margin.
• 2:20
  And, and this was, you know, just terrible.
• 2:22
  I was just starting to go off the rails, just, you know, slowly and steadily.
• 2:26
  And then I worked up to other things.
• 2:28
  We started getting CDs.
• 2:30
  And remember when CD, you'd buy a CD and it long, like two or three foot case around it, plastic case, so you couldn't, you know, just grab it?
• 2:38
  Well, we would take those and shove them down our pants and walk out of the store and then sell those to, to friends and people who couldn't buy the explicit lyric CDs.
• 2:46
  So doing all that just worked my way up in the wrong direction.
• 2:50
  And then what happened was I was hanging out with people that were doing this too.
• 2:53
  And we were sort of having fun, sort of egging each other on.
• 2:57
  Next challenge.
• 2:57
  Next challenge.
• 2:58
  And ultimately these same people who we thought were having fun, we realized, hey, we, we're not good kids anymore.
• 3:03
  We're actually bad kids now.
• 3:04
  We're actually doing things that are illegal.
• 3:07
  And we found ourselves in places, in parts of the country in southern New Jersey, hanging out with other bad people.
• 3:14
  A lot of times these people were drinking and smoking and a lot of them had guns.
• 3:17
  And I had five separate occasions where someone had a gun pulled at me.
• 3:21
  And one of them was pulled right in my face.
• 3:23
  There was a gun in my face.
• 3:25
  I'm sitting in the front passenger seat of this car at 2am in Camden, New Jersey.
• 3:30
  I've got my friend sitting behind me and this guy just totally dead serious, serious.
• 3:34
  He's waving the gun back and forth and he says, which one should I put a hole in first?
• 3:39
  And I'm just looking down the barrel of this gun like I'm looking at my camera here, thinking, I don't know if he's going to shoot me.
• 3:45
  You know, it's a 50, 50 chance of surviving.
• 3:47
  Long story short, we got out of that.
• 3:49
  We survived.
• 3:49
  But I thought, you know what?
• 3:50
  I've got to stop pressing my luck.
• 3:52
  I have this drive, I'm an entrepreneur, but I'm taking it all in the wrong direction.
• 3:57
  So this was what I call a life switch moment.
• 3:59
  It was a spark of clarity, urgency, and energy, which really said, wake up, stop wasting your life, stop messing, and apply yourself and your, your talents, if you will, to something positive.
• 4:11
  And that's what I did.
• 4:12
  I thought, if I can get out of this without getting arrested or, or shot or, or, or jail for many years, I'm going to try to do something positive with my life.
• 4:21
  And then from that became the birth of, okay, what am I passionate about now?
• 4:25
  Being a business owner.
• 4:26
  Great, but in what?
• 4:28
  And that's when I said, well, I love working out.
• 4:30
  I love fitness and nutrition and eating healthy.
• 4:32
  And that's when I had this light switch moment of, hey, open up a healthy fast food rest.
• 4:38
  So these life switch moments that anybody can have really help give you a sense on what to do.
• 4:44
  It's like this bright light shines, but if you don't start doing something about it, then it fades.
• 4:49
  So I turned that negative into a positive.
• 4:52
  Going after my own business in an industry with something I was passionate about and became a certified personal trainer as well.
• 4:59
  And then that did well for a while, until it didn't.
• 5:03
  Hey, let me tell you about Max Capital Hub.
• 5:07
  If you're an entrepreneur trying to get funding but your credit's holding you back,.
• 5:12
  These are the people to call.
• 5:14
  They do business loans, business funding, and they'll actually help you clean up your credit so you qualify for more.
• 5:21
  They're not just handing you paperwork.
• 5:23
  Their team builds an actual strategy around your business.
• 5:27
  So if you've been stuck or the bank has told you no, give Max Capital Hub a call or book a free consultation@maxcapitalhub.com tell them I sent you.
• 5:40
  Okay.
• 5:41
  All right.
• 5:42
  So you have this spark of clarity to get on the right path.
• 5:46
  You're into fitness, you become a trainer, and you have this dream to open up a healthy fast food restaurant.
• 5:52
  And then it did well until it didn't.
• 5:55
  Right.
• 5:55
  Can you talk about, like, the trajectory and then how it all came.
• 6:00
  Fell apart?
• 6:01
  Yeah.
• 6:01
  You know, it's funny, it took 20 years for me to be able to talk about this.
• 6:05
  It was that traumatic.
• 6:07
  But what happened was this was 2003 is when it opened, and I started it as a project my senior year in college.
• 6:15
  I was, you know, taking business courses.
• 6:17
  And when I came up with this idea, I ended up adding a minor in hospitality management and, and use that as an opportunity to have this project be my actual business.
• 6:27
  And everyone laughed.
• 6:28
  They thought it was ridiculous.
• 6:29
  And I'm thinking, no, I'm going to open up this restaurant for sure.
• 6:33
  I was completely committed.
• 6:35
  So I had the funny thing dav, I had no experience.
• 6:38
  I never really had a real job, and I never worked in a restaurant yet.
• 6:42
  I was going to open up a restaurant business.
• 6:44
  And none of that slowed me down or gave me any kind of pause, just to give you a sense on how I think about possibility.
• 6:50
  But when I graduated college, I had an idea and a dream But I needed experience.
• 6:55
  So I went to work at Burger King.
• 6:57
  And for two and a half miserable months, I got up at five in the morning and I opened the stores and I just took diligent notes every single day and came home and when I was covered in grease,
• 7:09
  would take a shower, wash my clothes.
• 7:10
  But that was like my master's degree in hospitality management was working in a successful, at the time, successful chain of restaurants because I, my goal was a healthy fast food restaurant.
• 7:23
  So that's why I did that.
• 7:24
  Ended up opening this up after, I don't know, three years of two, two, almost three years of hard work.
• 7:30
  Every day, as hard as possible, every day.
• 7:32
  It was unbelievably difficult.
• 7:34
  Finally opened up.
• 7:35
  We got a lot of recognition, a lot of publicity and positive press.
• 7:39
  It was all looking great.
• 7:41
  Like, I mean, the trajectory looked like it was going to be a successful national chain of thousands of stores, which was my vision, that was my goal.
• 7:48
  But what happened was it was not that simple.
• 7:50
  And it started to fall apart.
• 7:52
  The foundation I had became extremely shaky.
• 7:55
  I had no money left.
• 7:56
  I had not only spent all the money that I had, I had leveraged myself with insane amounts of debt, which in today's dollars are close to about $850,000 that I had in debt as a 24 year old.
• 8:08
  And ended up shutting down all three of the stores I had opened because they just weren't making money.
• 8:14
  No matter what I did, I was losing money every day, so I had to stop the bleeding.
• 8:18
  Then what do you do when you're 24 and owe that kind of debt?
• 8:22
  You don't just call a friend and say, hey, can I borrow, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars?
• 8:26
  I'll pay you back.
• 8:27
  No, no one, no one was saying, hey, it's going to be okay.
• 8:31
  I mean, nobody was saying that, right?
• 8:33
  Usually something in your life happens and somebody, you know, a parent, a friend says, hey, it's going to be okay.
• 8:38
  Crickets, you know, nobody.
• 8:40
  And so I was like, oh my God, what do I do?
• 8:43
  I'm dead.
• 8:43
  My life is over.
• 8:44
  But I wasn't dead.
• 8:45
  I was still going.
• 8:46
  I had a heartbeat, I had a pulse.
• 8:48
  Stressed out of my mind, but what do you do?
• 8:51
  And it just was the realization that no matter how bad your life is, at any one moment, you've got to put one foot in front of the other.
• 8:58
  And that's what I slowly did.
• 9:00
  And in doing that, I would walk my way to the gym, work out, and started to regain my strength, started to rebuild the positivity that maybe anything is possible.
• 9:10
  If I'm ever going to do this, the time is now, and it's up to me.
• 9:13
  Nobody else, nobody else really cares.
• 9:15
  And so after walking around the city of Philadelphia where the restaurants were, I'd walk past homeless people, and I was jealous of these people laying there, thought, man, they have nothing to lose.
• 9:24
  I've got everything to lose.
• 9:25
  I've lost it.
• 9:26
  I'm embarrassed, you know, and it was just dragging myself forward and realizing, okay, if I try a different industry, maybe I have a chance to pay off this debt.
• 9:37
  10 years, 15 years.
• 9:39
  And that's what I did when I, When I transitioned to the financial industry.
• 9:43
  Okay, wow.
• 9:44
  So you've got this natural entrepreneurial drive, right?
• 9:47
  You go through this early period of, of working out your.
• 9:51
  Your morals and getting away from all those wrong people.
• 9:53
  You're so motivated by the health and the fitness and this healthy fast food.
• 9:57
  You put everything into it.
• 9:59
  You get some initial success, and then you're bleeding money.
• 10:02
  You can't make it profitable.
• 10:05
  You spend everything and you're deep, deep in debt.
• 10:08
  Right?
• 10:08
  Like, and you talked about kind of how you're feeling, I mean, just like, mentally and emotionally, like, what was the recovery process like?
• 10:18
  Because it's.
• 10:18
  And then, like, it's kind of shocking to even hear, right?
• 10:22
  You're in that deep of a hole financially, and then you go to become a financial planner.
• 10:27
  I mean, like, like, what's, what's it like?
• 10:30
  What was that process like, even getting started in that industry and just dealing with the realization of what happened to you?
• 10:35
  Yeah, yeah.
• 10:36
  It's funny though, as you say that, I'm laughing.
• 10:38
  Thinking back, it's like, my gosh, who would hire me to manage their money, you know, when I blew all mine?
• 10:44
  And it, you know, it makes you think twice next time you hire somebody.
• 10:47
  Right.
• 10:47
  Maybe they had the polar opposite experience.
• 10:49
  Maybe, But.
• 10:50
  But for me, the thing that happened when I was.
• 10:53
  When I'd become a bad kid, I'd mentioned earlier, I just felt so terrible, so rotten, like such a waste of potential that it totally flipped me around that I wanted to.
• 11:02
  With such urgency and passion.
• 11:05
  I wanted to help people.
• 11:06
  And so I wanted to help people eat healthier, work out.
• 11:09
  And so when that didn't work out, I wanted to help people with their money.
• 11:13
  And in the same time, if I help them with their planning, it would help me because I'd get paid.
• 11:19
  So I did insurance and different investments.
• 11:21
  Wasn't like I was taking their money and investing it.
• 11:24
  I was putting it in investments that Were, you know, like, like an S and P index and you know, basic investments and insurances that people needed.
• 11:31
  So I was helping people with their basic planning and I was getting paid and helping myself along the way.
• 11:37
  The business.
• 11:38
  You're totally commission based.
• 11:40
  So I started at zero every day and I thought that was the best news I'd heard in years because in my restaurant business I was bleeding about 20,000 month towards the end.
• 11:50
  So it's like the first every month I'm 20,000 in the hole between lease, the loan, the, the payroll, all that stuff.
• 11:58
  So to be at zero actually was really comforting for me to know because I couldn't, I couldn't go down, I could only go up.
• 12:04
  And I was excited to see how much I can go up from zero by could I make $1,000 in a day, could I make 5,000 in a week?
• 12:11
  Or, or any dollar amount, you know, and also seven days a week.
• 12:15
  I wasn't confined to store hours.
• 12:17
  I could work as much as I wanted to.
• 12:19
  And I started to call people on the west coast sometimes when it got late on the east coast to try to pitch them my services and things like that.
• 12:26
  So I was being entrepreneurial, I was helping people, but now with their money.
• 12:30
  And I was just trying to make enough money with enough activity and output.
• 12:34
  As much as I hated the rejection, being told no, every no bought me closer to a yes, which brought me closer to being able to afford to pay my restaurant debt each and every month.
• 12:44
  And I just struggled to deal with that for a handful of months until I strung them together and said, hey, this actually is showing signs of possibility that I could actually make a living out of this and pay
• 12:53
  down this debt over time.
• 12:55
  And the goal, Dave, was to be out of debt in about 10 years.
• 12:59
  Reality is I paid it off in less than two.
• 13:02
  And it was all about having that vision, having that mission, having that drive, and applying the things that I had working for me, which wasn't much, but applying them with a laser sharp focus into the most productive place
• 13:13
  I could put them in, which was a commission based business that was my own schedule.
• 13:17
  And so I just blew the, blew the doors off and, and kept going even after that.
• 13:22
  Wow, okay, so, and like, so you're, you're what, 25, 26 at this time?
• 13:27
  Something like that?
• 13:28
  25, yeah.
• 13:29
  Okay.
• 13:30
  And where, like given the trauma you went through, right, like where's that, where's that mindset come from where once you saw signs of life, you just locked in and, and put everything for, and to to pay off that
• 13:43
  amount of debt in two years as a, as a young kid.
• 13:46
  Right?
• 13:46
  I mean, that incredible.
• 13:49
  Yeah.
• 13:49
  Look, it's like if you're, if you played football, right, don't to be an NFL player, but if you played football and you're a running back, you look for the hole, and when you see that hole, you hit that
• 13:57
  hole as hard as you can.
• 13:58
  And that's what I was doing.
• 14:00
  I was seeing this opportunity and I was just hitting it as hard as possible.
• 14:04
  And I treated every day like its own game.
• 14:06
  If I had a successful day on, let's say Tuesday, and everyone said yes, I woke up Wednesday at zero, we're going to do this again, and then Thursday, we're going to do it again.
• 14:15
  And when you realize that each day is 24 hours and it is much, much input, you're going to get it based on your output, you become driven and just have this hunger to see what you can do.
• 14:25
  And in that kind of a business, it's all about outbound phone calls.
• 14:28
  But the more of those calls you make, the more you're going to get some trickling in of inbound phone calls.
• 14:33
  So, like, I just wanted to have, you know, kind of like a typhoon of inbound calls.
• 14:37
  So I needed to make a ridiculous amount of outbound calls.
• 14:40
  And so you don't really think about the pain, the torture, the suffering, the dead.
• 14:43
  You just like, okay, here's what I have to do.
• 14:46
  I'm going to do it.
• 14:47
  That's it.
• 14:48
  Like, that's the simple math.
• 14:49
  Step one, figure out what you need to do.
• 14:51
  Step two is go out and do it.
• 14:52
  And that's for anybody at any point in their life.
• 14:54
  Like, most people probably know what they need to do, but are they willing to do it?
• 14:58
  And for me, I was.
• 14:59
  Because at 25, I'm like, I'm.
• 15:01
  I can't quit on my life.
• 15:03
  I mean, there's, you know, I'm only done maybe a quarter of it, plus or minus.
• 15:07
  So you know what I'm saying?
• 15:08
  Like, you have to put.
• 15:09
  Put yourself in that driver's seat and realize if anyone's gonna hit the gas and steer through this thing, it's gonna be you, Nobody else.
• 15:16
  Love that.
• 15:18
  So you really lock in and you start to find success and build momentum.
• 15:22
  You get the debt paid off in two years and you start rolling with this financial practice.
• 15:27
  And then what happens next?
• 15:29
  So for the next number of years, I just built the practice with efficiencies, got better, continued to become educated, got more designations, more licenses, just really tried to become the best advisor I could be.
• 15:42
  There's, there's a, there's a million advisors out there.
• 15:45
  So I really wanted to become a really, really good one, like the best one I could be for me and be trustworthy and honest and do exactly what I said I was going to do and, and be all
• 15:54
  these things that, that people aren't in this business.
• 15:56
  Right?
• 15:57
  There's so many people that are bad apples in any industry.
• 15:59
  You know, they're just selling, you know, they're maximizing their commission.
• 16:03
  I wanted to really help people and have people rely on me to be a good, quality, trusted person because again, I had that period of being a rotten person.
• 16:12
  I needed that.
• 16:13
  It was almost like breathing.
• 16:14
  I needed to help people to feel good about myself, but I was helping them at the same time, so it was really working.
• 16:21
  So I built this up and it was going really, really well.
• 16:24
  Again, the debt had been paid off, but what happened was around the 10 or so year mark in my career now, I had amassed a good amount of money.
• 16:33
  And even though I was making more money than ever, I'd saved a lot of money.
• 16:38
  I'd saved seven figures at this point, which was really cool being so deep in debt.
• 16:42
  But the fulfillment was really dropping as a financial advisor because I kind of was like, I, I got in this business to, to win the game of paying off the debt, and when I did that, it was like
• 16:54
  running through a finish line and then you just keep going for an indefinite amount of time.
• 16:58
  It's like the Forrest Gump movie when he just stops after everyone's following him and he says, I just didn't feel like running anymore.
• 17:03
  Like, I feel like I didn't feel like running anymore in the financial business because I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish.
• 17:10
  And so I started to really ask myself, you know, hey, like, what, what gets you charged up?
• 17:15
  And I was like, well, helping people.
• 17:16
  Okay, I'm doing that with financial services, but I'm kind of one dimensional.
• 17:20
  And that's when I started thinking about helping other younger people, helping people, not just with finances.
• 17:25
  And so I started devoting more time to my family, devoting more time to other business endeavors like basketball and soccer, helping, you know, some of those people, getting involved with youth sports a bit, which was fulfilling.
• 17:37
  And then really starting to think about taking all the things I went through, putting it into a book and sharing that with the world so they can hopefully benefit from my entertaining experiences and live the best version of
• 17:50
  their life.
• 17:51
  And so fast forward to these days.
• 17:53
  The Book is that platform and the keynote speaking I do, it's talking about all these things and more, trying to get people to realize that they may not be living the best version of their life.
• 18:04
  There may be a parallel, better version that's out there that they don't know about, haven't thought about, or aren't sure how to get there.
• 18:11
  And so that's my goal, is to help people live the version of their life that I'm living today, which is fully on maximum fulfillment.
• 18:18
  Wow.
• 18:18
  Okay, so you get, you really have a drastic turnaround and you've almost won what you set out to do.
• 18:25
  And it's almost, for lack of a better term, you're almost kind of bored with the same old thing, didn't feel like running anymore.
• 18:31
  So then you really find out what's going to fulfill you.
• 18:34
  You come up with writing this book, you get that done, you do speaking engagements and you're doing all these other things to help others.
• 18:41
  And like, what do you, what would you say is the most important thing you learned through that whole process?
• 18:46
  Through the book process and speaking?
• 18:49
  I realize that it's a crowded space, there's a lot of people.
• 18:52
  But you know, I, I believe that the reason why I enjoy it so much is because my story is very real.
• 18:59
  You know, I don't have the ability to do a lot with my hands.
• 19:03
  You know, I, I always, as a kid I, I was frustrated that I had never artistic or athletic talents.
• 19:10
  I wasn't the best student.
• 19:11
  I got B's and C's in midd in early high school.
• 19:15
  And it just bothered me that I just didn't have anything to say.
• 19:18
  Wow, that guy's a winner.
• 19:18
  You know, that guy's that guy.
• 19:20
  And you know, you look at these fitness magazines, these people would be in great shape with the, you know, eight pack abs.
• 19:26
  And I worked out all the time and like you couldn't even tell.
• 19:29
  And so it was almost like being average for so long got me to just get so frustrated, to say I want to become above average in everything I do and, and writing the book, being a keynote speaker, financial
• 19:40
  advisor, you name it, it just drove me to want to be more than I can be.
• 19:45
  And it worked every aspect of my life.
• 19:47
  And that's where I thought, well, okay, I can just keep this bottled up and enjoy it, or I can share this formula with other people so they could do the same thing.
• 19:55
  That's what drives me.
• 19:56
  I know that every room I'm in, every conversation I have, every book that gets read, that I have somebody is going to wake up, have that life switch moment and realize, yeah, I can do more.
• 20:05
  I do have more potential and I'm going to start to go after it, starting today.
• 20:08
  Okay.
• 20:09
  All right.
• 20:10
  And based on the book too.
• 20:11
  Right.
• 20:12
  But give our audience just maybe some.
• 20:17
  Some insight into it and meaning maybe they're at a point where they have that life switch moment and they want to know how to get started or where to go from there.
• 20:25
  Give us some insights from the book on that.
• 20:26
  Yeah, well, I talk in the book about the 3Ps and 3Ps in life switch are potential passion and purpose.
• 20:33
  And the potential part is really important to understand that we're all capable of so much and often so much more than we think.
• 20:41
  And one of the exercises I do in my keynotes, I have everybody yell out as loud as they can.
• 20:46
  I say, yell as loud as you can.
• 20:48
  And they do.
• 20:48
  And it's usually like, you know, mid.
• 20:51
  And then I say stand up and I want you to yell as loud as you can.
• 20:54
  And it's usually like three times as loud.
• 20:56
  And it's an example that people say they're giving their all, might even think they're giving their all, but they're not giving their all.
• 21:02
  And so that's part one is that your potential is higher than you think it is.
• 21:06
  And once you start to realize that you can aim higher and achieve higher than what you've maybe already done so far.
• 21:12
  The second P for passion is you have to realize, like passion is similar to gps.
• 21:18
  If you don't have a destination of what makes you happy and fulfilled, how are you ever going to be happy and fulfilled?
• 21:23
  You don't know if you've arrived or not.
• 21:25
  Right.
• 21:25
  And so you have to understand what is it that makes you smile on the inside and outside, makes you laugh, giddy as a kid?
• 21:34
  It could be something simple, super simple, or it could be something bigger than that.
• 21:38
  But you have to figure out what you are passionate about because that's really your inner fuel that people are missing.
• 21:43
  Like a car.
• 21:44
  If your car doesn't have fuel, you're not getting anywhere.
• 21:47
  So if you don't have any passion, you know, you're not really going anywhere either.
• 21:50
  And then purpose wrapping that up is the mission, right?
• 21:54
  Why are you here on this earth?
• 21:56
  Not in your job, not watching today, not at home.
• 22:00
  But why are you on this earth?
• 22:02
  What's your mission every day?
• 22:03
  To get up and accomplish something.
• 22:04
  So when I became a financial advisor, my mission was to get out of debt, right?
• 22:08
  I focused on it like said, I bad out of hell.
• 22:10
  And it worked.
• 22:11
  And so whatever you decide to be your mission, have that mission down on paper.
• 22:15
  You know, tattoo it on your brain, etch it in your head, put it everywhere, and go after that every day.
• 22:21
  Because the question is, are you making progress or not towards your mission?
• 22:24
  Are you getting closer, warmer?
• 22:26
  Are you getting further away, getting colder from the purpose and reason why you're here?
• 22:31
  And you don't have to have that answer today, what your purpose is, but you really need to be trying to figure out what that is on a regular basis.
• 22:38
  Even if you don't figure it out, as long as you're looking for it, you're making progress in that pursuit.
• 22:43
  So Those are the three Ps, and those are, I think, are sort of the basic keys on how anybody can live the best, most fulfilling version of their lives.
• 22:50
  Okay, love that.
• 22:52
  All right, and one more quick thing for the audience because you told me a bit about this off camera talk about how you got an NBA championship ring.
• 23:01
  Yeah, sure.
• 23:02
  So that was totally unexpected.
• 23:03
  You know, if I shared with you my list of goals, that was not on there.
• 23:07
  That was not expecting that whatsoever.
• 23:10
  I did love basketball.
• 23:11
  I have a passion for it.
• 23:12
  I have a passion for all kinds of high level sports.
• 23:14
  But basketball is that thing that gets me fired up.
• 23:16
  I mean, I used to wear gym shorts underneath my outfit for the longest time, like through college.
• 23:22
  So if a pickup game broke out, I wanted to be able to play just, you know, rip off my, my pants and, and have my shorts on.
• 23:27
  And I always keep a pair of sneakers in, in the trunk.
• 23:30
  I just love basketball.
• 23:31
  I'm like a dog fetching a stick when I, when I hear a basketball bouncing.
• 23:36
  So I said, okay, now I'm in my 30s, getting into my 40s.
• 23:39
  I'm not going to have any chance of playing in the NBA or anything like that, but maybe I can be involved around high level basketball.
• 23:45
  So I just started to look again.
• 23:47
  I set this goal, how can I get involved with the NBA?
• 23:51
  And I started with my local team, the Sixers, and they were too expensive and not looking for anybody.
• 23:55
  And I worked my way around and I eventually found an opportunity with a team that was affiliated with the Denver Nuggets, which is the Grand Rapids Gold in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• 24:04
  And they were looking for small minority owners.
• 24:07
  And so I met with them.
• 24:08
  I love what they had to say.
• 24:10
  I love how they ran the team, both teams.
• 24:12
  And I signed myself up and it's been amazing.
• 24:15
  And one of these unexpected perks was if the Nuggets won the championship, I was informed that.
• 24:21
  That I'd get a championship ring as well.
• 24:23
  So I became a huge Nuggets fan, And back in 2023, they.
• 24:27
  They won.
• 24:28
  They.
• 24:28
  They won the whole thing.
• 24:29
  And a few months later, I got a ring shipped to my house, and I was in.
• 24:33
  I mean, I could not believe it.
• 24:34
  It was one of those coolest moments in my life.
• 24:36
  In my life when that happened.
• 24:38
  Had my name on it.
• 24:39
  It was mine.
• 24:40
  It was numbered.
• 24:41
  And I just immediately thought, this is such a great thing to use in my talks as a tangible symbol that anything is possible for anybody.
• 24:48
  You know, have a goal, set the vision, go after it.
• 24:51
  It may not work out exactly like you hope.
• 24:53
  It actually might work out better.
• 24:54
  Love that.
• 24:55
  Okay.
• 24:55
  Okay.
• 24:56
  All right.
• 24:56
  And, Joel, when you look back at your whole journey, right from the early m.
• 25:01
  You know, the early entrepreneurial tendencies to.
• 25:05
  You veered off track, and then you got this restaurant going that crashed and burned.
• 25:10
  You built the financial practice and.
• 25:12
  And dug yourself out of debt, experienced massive success, and.
• 25:16
  And then the.
• 25:17
  The.
• 25:17
  The book, the speaking, the NBA ring, looking at the whole journey.
• 25:21
  What's been the best part of it for you?
• 25:23
  This part is having the.
• 25:24
  The time and the resources to have built up from the financial practice.
• 25:29
  Right.
• 25:29
  I always appreciate that.
• 25:31
  That.
• 25:31
  That is the hand that feeds all these things.
• 25:33
  Don't get me wrong on that.
• 25:34
  It does get a little monotonous at times.
• 25:36
  But it's an incredible business.
• 25:37
  I have incredible clients.
• 25:39
  But that ability to have my own schedule, where I used to work like a madman, I now have my own schedule to make sure I'm at all the family events, spending time with my kids who are getting older,
• 25:50
  18 and 16, time with my wife, life.
• 25:52
  That's been the best part.
• 25:53
  It's been able to.
• 25:55
  Being able to be the person, the father to my kids, to my wife, the husband to my wife, that I didn't have.
• 26:02
  I really didn't have a father growing up, and I knew that I wanted to be a great father.
• 26:06
  And all the stuff I went through, as bad as it was, it helped set me up to allow me to be the best father, best husband I could be.
• 26:15
  Be there for them.
• 26:16
  That's been the best.
• 26:18
  And I involve my kids in all this stuff.
• 26:19
  They know about all the good and the bad.
• 26:21
  You know, my son was the first one to proofread my book for me.
• 26:24
  But that's been the best part of everything, is being there with them.
• 26:28
  Them realizing that their dad, in his own way, is a superhero.
• 26:32
  Because he's gone through.
• 26:34
  He's gone through heaven and hell, and.
• 26:36
  And I'm continuing to be here and help inspire other people to.
• 26:39
  To move forward, no matter how good or bad their life has been up to this point.
• 26:43
  Okay.
• 26:43
  All right.
• 26:44
  Well, Joel, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 26:50
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 26:51
  It.
• 26:51
  Thank you.
• 26:51
  It's been fun.