Latest / The Hannah Hammond Show / From Jail To Generational Wealth: Shawn Lynch Opens Up About The Pain That Nearly Destroyed His Life

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From Jail To Generational Wealth: Shawn Lynch Opens Up About The Pain That Nearly Destroyed His Life · The Hannah Hammond Show

• 0:00
  It was really tough and made me really lost as definitely like a
• 0:07
  17, you know, 18 year old as a young man, you're already lost.
• 0:11
  You kind of don't know what you want to do.
• 0:12
  What did that feel like to lose your father so young, especially
• 0:16
  who you were close with? It made me angry at the world
• 0:18
  for some reason, like I was just of course, when you're a young
• 0:22
  man trying to prove yourself. And so it for some reason, I
• 0:25
  gave myself the excuse to go party and drink and drugs and
• 0:29
  just do stupid things. And it, you know, became like,
• 0:34
  you know, very, very often. It's not like, oh, just on the
• 0:37
  weekends, like I was doing it all the time and just drinking
• 0:40
  every night, partying, going to jail, nothing bad, but like just
• 0:43
  for drinking and getting arrested for minor possessions
• 0:46
  and in my little small town and going to sit in jail.
• 0:48
  And so I think him passing probably made me.
• 0:53
  Have to grow up a lot faster, even though, you know, a couple
• 0:56
  years I made all those bad choices, you know, and it took a
• 0:59
  little while to get right on the right path, but I think it, it
• 1:02
  really made me open my eyes and realize that I couldn't do that
• 1:04
  forever. He taught me.
• 1:06
  You know, a lot of good qualities as far as I, you know,
• 1:09
  definitely hard work and, and loyalty and, you know, being a
• 1:13
  good person. And so it, it did make me, you
• 1:17
  know, want to be a good father at some point someday, because
• 1:21
  he was. All right, so I'm here with my
• 1:23
  good friend Shawn Lynch. He actually, him and his wife
• 1:26
  Gentry are absolutely amazing entrepreneurs and people and
• 1:29
  parents and friends and all the things.
• 1:31
  And they had me out in Houston on their show called the Success
• 1:35
  Formula Podcast, which you guys just recently launched a couple
• 1:38
  months back now, right? Probably about six months ago
• 1:41
  now, maybe. Oh my gosh, time goes fast, I
• 1:43
  know. Maybe 6?
• 1:43
  Or seven months. We've been, we, we've been doing
• 1:45
  it since March. We just didn't start releasing
• 1:48
  episodes until June. I think so.
• 1:51
  About six months now, yeah. Well, they did it right.
• 1:54
  I mean, like they fly their guests out there, they pick them
• 1:56
  up in a Rolls Royce, they put them in a nice hotel room, do
• 1:59
  dinner. It's like I can imagine a a Joe
• 2:01
  Rogan type experience. So we're trying to.
• 2:04
  Make it a little bit different than everybody else's that's out
• 2:06
  there. Yeah, you guys are awesome and
• 2:08
  I'm really grateful to be friends with you now.
• 2:10
  And Sean is just like an incredible person.
• 2:13
  And I know on my show, we talk a lot about reaching your highest
• 2:16
  human potential and business is a huge part of that.
• 2:19
  Building wealth is a huge part of that, but so is health, So is
• 2:22
  relationships. And you've seemed to just master
• 2:24
  all of it. And that's why I'm really
• 2:26
  excited to talk to you and share your insights with the audience
• 2:29
  because I mean, you're insanely good shape.
• 2:31
  You're a great looking guy. You're a great husband.
• 2:34
  You you're a great dad to your little kids.
• 2:36
  I love watching your stuff on Instagram.
• 2:38
  And Gentry's absolutely incredible too.
• 2:40
  You're just like this amazing power couple.
• 2:42
  You have multiple companies, you're a serial entrepreneur, a
• 2:46
  real estate investor that has a large portfolio of real estate.
• 2:49
  You and your business partner own and operate a oil and gas
• 2:53
  logistics company that has does around $170 million a year in
• 2:58
  revenue. I remember it was, we were
• 3:00
  talking at dinner and you're like, oh, about it does 170 and
• 3:03
  it was like like 170 thousand a month.
• 3:05
  You're like no 170 million a year, so.
• 3:07
  Fluctuates, you know, depending on the year in commodity.
• 3:09
  Prices. Between 130 and 170, you know,
• 3:13
  depending like in the last over the last seven or eight years.
• 3:15
  Yeah, yeah. And we'll talk a little bit
• 3:17
  about that or fluctuation, but and then you have an equipment
• 3:19
  rental company for oil and gas that you're looking to liquidate
• 3:22
  possibly that spits off a bunch of cash flow, obviously a ton of
• 3:26
  real estate and then you're getting into the compound
• 3:29
  pharmacy health space. Yeah, back to the health.
• 3:31
  Thing you know, I think you know when people talk about success,
• 3:37
  it's. Kind of why we named the podcast
• 3:38
  success formula because there's a bunch of different ways to
• 3:41
  actually reach success and, you know, business is one, but
• 3:44
  having a healthy lifestyle and, you know, a great family and all
• 3:48
  that works together, I think to actually get you, you know, to
• 3:51
  the. Highest level of success for
• 3:52
  sure. Yeah.
• 3:53
  And what is success look like to you now and how has that changed
• 3:58
  over the course of your entrepreneurial and life
• 4:01
  journey? You know, I think I've built the
• 4:04
  life that I wanted to live. I don't even like going on
• 4:06
  vacations. My wife kind of still does
• 4:08
  because I'm like, why would I leave and pay to go somewhere
• 4:11
  when I've already built the life that I want?
• 4:13
  And so, you know, my life now is probably.
• 4:17
  What? I see is like the highest level
• 4:19
  for me, not highest level in business, but as far as like
• 4:23
  just great family. My kids are great.
• 4:25
  My relationship with is with my wife is amazing.
• 4:30
  My health is never been better really.
• 4:32
  And so all that together, you know, I do feel like I've
• 4:37
  reached, I guess, a great level of success.
• 4:40
  You know, before when I was younger and really until the mid
• 4:43
  30s, I was like always chasing something and never felt like I
• 4:47
  was doing good enough. And so I was like, I need to
• 4:49
  have a bigger business and I need to do more and I need to
• 4:50
  buy more real estate. And I think finally now with my
• 4:55
  family and all those things I just mentioned, I feel like I'm
• 4:58
  finally not chasing anything. And I still want to grow the
• 5:01
  businesses and I still want to buy more real estate, but I feel
• 5:04
  somewhat. Satisfied a little bit.
• 5:07
  And it's definitely a very, very good spot to be in the last 3-4
• 5:11
  years I've I've never, you know, felt better and been in a better
• 5:15
  mindset for sure. I love that.
• 5:17
  And have you read the book Driven?
• 5:20
  I haven't. You should read it.
• 5:21
  I'm reading it right now. Member and genius Network wrote
• 5:23
  it. But it talks about people that
• 5:25
  have the driven gene, like the ADD the ADHDA, lot of the the
• 5:30
  great successful people in the world have this gene that
• 5:33
  they're born with. And but he talks about that as
• 5:35
  like so many of us with that gene, you know, are more prone
• 5:40
  to addiction or more prone to depression or more prone to
• 5:42
  anxiety and these things because we never really feel fulfilled.
• 5:46
  And it's always like just chasing the next hit of
• 5:48
  dopamine. And I talk a lot, a lot about
• 5:51
  that because it's such an empty life, you know, to end up in a
• 5:54
  spot where you built all these incredible things.
• 5:56
  But if you truly don't feel fulfilled inside and you're just
• 5:59
  seeking for more and more and more and more from a place of
• 6:01
  like scarcity and need, not a place of just creation and love
• 6:04
  of the game and love of life. So it's really amazing that
• 6:08
  you're actually somebody that's accomplished it and you, you
• 6:11
  know, for years were that person that wasn't.
• 6:15
  There you go. I've always felt that way.
• 6:16
  I didn't know what I was chasing really.
• 6:18
  I just felt like I was never doing good enough, never had
• 6:21
  enough real estate. Like if I was building that
• 6:23
  business or my business was never doing enough revenue, you
• 6:27
  know, trying to grow it. I never early on I would, you
• 6:30
  know, I wasn't focused as much on Net margin.
• 6:33
  And you know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs chase some
• 6:36
  fictitious numbers. It's like, oh, my company has to
• 6:37
  be doing 100 million or 10 million or 30 million, whatever
• 6:40
  the number is for somebody. You just like pull this
• 6:42
  fictitious number out of the air and you do anything in your
• 6:45
  power to go and try to hit that number.
• 6:47
  You know, the older you get, the more businesses you run you.
• 6:51
  Are. Definitely going to overtime
• 6:54
  start focusing on the Net margin.
• 6:55
  You're not going to care about your top line as much.
• 6:57
  Right, Yeah. And if you, you know, I know
• 6:58
  people that have billion dollar funds and their margins 1%, but
• 7:02
  you could be making just as much doing that with your own money
• 7:05
  and you know. Yeah, anything.
• 7:07
  And so that's definitely, you know, maybe part of being in a
• 7:10
  good place is, is, is part of that too.
• 7:12
  You know, over time it's like, I don't care how much, you know,
• 7:14
  revenue, we do. But I, you know, I really focus
• 7:16
  on that margin because I do love business enough and I do love
• 7:20
  real estate, which, you know, is my purpose, you know, and, and
• 7:24
  makes me happy everyday to do all those things.
• 7:27
  And so Net margin, a high Net margin allows me to actually go
• 7:31
  do more of those things. So I really focus on that
• 7:33
  margin, you know, some of the top line revenue numbers.
• 7:36
  You know, people hear him and when you watch social media and
• 7:39
  when you watch YouTube, everybody says this is how I
• 7:43
  make $5,000,000 a year. But everybody's talking about
• 7:47
  99% of the videos are the revenue and a lot of people.
• 7:51
  See that? And they're like, golly, that
• 7:52
  guy's doing that guy's making 5 million a year.
• 7:54
  Well, no, probably not. He's probably.
• 7:56
  Making a couple 100 grand a year but his.
• 7:57
  Business does $5 million. And so, you know, it is very
• 8:01
  important for a young entrepreneur to always focus on
• 8:04
  the Net margin for sure, and just don't care as much about
• 8:07
  the top line. I know that's easier said than
• 8:09
  done, for sure. I was that way.
• 8:11
  But you're going to spend a lot of time and make a lot of
• 8:14
  probably riskier choices to try to hit that this fictitious
• 8:18
  number that you have in your head, 10 million, 20 million,
• 8:21
  whatever you're trying to get your business to.
• 8:22
  But you need to focus on the Net margin because at the end of the
• 8:25
  day, good people or what, what will get you to the?
• 8:29
  You know, 10-15, Twenty $100 million mark.
• 8:33
  And if you don't have good margin, you can't go hire those
• 8:35
  good people. And so it's super important for
• 8:38
  somebody to focus on that. And so that's where I'm at in my
• 8:41
  life. You know, fortunate that the
• 8:44
  businesses do do high revenue, but really focusing on the
• 8:47
  bottom line as much as we can for all the companies we do and
• 8:49
  the real estate, you know, on the cash flow side for sure.
• 8:53
  And so I want to go back in time to what inspired your
• 8:58
  entrepreneurial drive in the beginning and when that started
• 9:01
  for you and kind of like what your childhood experiences were
• 9:05
  like. And I know you went through a
• 9:07
  pretty traumatic event at 18 years old.
• 9:09
  So can you kind of share a little bit more in detail on on
• 9:12
  your story? Yeah, sure.
• 9:13
  You know, I was actually a pretty good student in school,
• 9:17
  you know, probably a lot of entrepreneurs, like I hated
• 9:19
  school early on. I, you know, I really enjoyed it
• 9:22
  always at the top of my class. And, you know, straight As
• 9:27
  probably about till the 8th grade when I got to junior high,
• 9:31
  I started becoming a little bit less interested and just like
• 9:34
  the traditional school model. I think my first little bit of
• 9:37
  entrepreneurial spirit came from I saw a bunch of kids, you know,
• 9:42
  buying candy and bringing it to school.
• 9:44
  And so I was like, man, a lot of people, you know, there's a
• 9:48
  demand for the product. And so I had my mom take me to
• 9:50
  Sam's and we bought like bulk candy and wholesale.
• 9:54
  And so I would go to school and like sell it out of the locker.
• 9:56
  And so I think early on it, you know, taught me a couple lessons
• 9:59
  of like just supply and demand and, and basic finance and, you
• 10:03
  know, how to buy something low and, you know, mark it up and
• 10:05
  sell it and make a profit. And so that was probably like my
• 10:09
  first little entrepreneurial deal.
• 10:12
  And then when I got into high school, we, I went to private
• 10:17
  school all the way up to the 8th grade.
• 10:19
  I played baseball with a lot of my friends, but you know, the
• 10:22
  private schools don't have as much sports where we were from,
• 10:24
  very small private school. It wasn't like some expensive
• 10:27
  top school in the country or anything, just a little small
• 10:30
  private school in our town. And I convinced my mom after the
• 10:33
  8th grade to let me go to this public school, which they had
• 10:37
  sports at all my friends were there.
• 10:40
  And you know, reluctantly she did.
• 10:43
  And we, that school had some of the lowest, I guess standardized
• 10:47
  testing scores in the state of Texas at the time.
• 10:49
  So we really didn't do anything for two 3-4 years that I was
• 10:54
  there. And I'd you really didn't have
• 10:56
  to go to school. I'd wake up, I'd go to school
• 10:58
  around right after lunch to win the PE class was, and then there
• 11:03
  was one class that you had to go to because there's only one
• 11:05
  teacher that made you go to class.
• 11:06
  As I remember, it was like a science class and you could walk
• 11:09
  into class. All the people had their desk
• 11:11
  pushed together, playing cards, watching Menace to Society on
• 11:14
  the TV, walk in with McDonald's, sit at my desk, eat lunch there
• 11:17
  in the class. Like that's literally how the
• 11:19
  whole high school was for four years.
• 11:21
  So, and I was already getting a little bit bored with school and
• 11:25
  then so when I was 16, a little bit more entrepreneurial spirit,
• 11:30
  I went to a party and everybody was smoking weed at the party
• 11:34
  and was looking around and I'm like, man, everything people are
• 11:37
  asking me for it and I don't even know where to get it.
• 11:38
  I've never smoked weed before. And so the next day I was like,
• 11:41
  everybody's looking for weed. So I started calling around
• 11:44
  somebody connected me to somebody and was able to sell me
• 11:47
  a quarter pound. And so I then started like
• 11:51
  rolling up weed and selling it to like go into some of those
• 11:54
  parties and selling it to everybody, which is not
• 11:58
  something recommended to do. But.
• 12:01
  Being from a small town and not having any mentors, not having
• 12:04
  the Internet, like I knew not one wealthy person in town.
• 12:08
  I didn't know anyone that knew anything about money.
• 12:10
  Like I had no idea. And so I didn't even think it
• 12:13
  was possible to go, you know, how do you do it?
• 12:16
  Go open a store somewhere. Like I didn't have any money.
• 12:18
  And so that was the first for some reason that was the first
• 12:20
  business that happened. Kept reinvesting my money, got
• 12:24
  up to buying a pound or two. We and then some people knocked
• 12:29
  on my door one day, some potential customers and I'm
• 12:32
  like, what are you doing here? I'm living with my mom.
• 12:35
  And so it's not like a weed house like.
• 12:38
  And so anyways, they knock on the door, they leave my mom's
• 12:40
  like. Who is that?
• 12:42
  She's like why are random people coming to the house now?
• 12:45
  I was like oh they wanted to buy a tape.
• 12:46
  This is back when there was tapes before CDs.
• 12:49
  And when I left that day to go hang out with my friends, they
• 12:52
  searched my room and found a weed, took everything, left my
• 12:55
  money. I don't know why.
• 12:58
  Super bad, super mad, super pretty disappointed, but never
• 13:01
  really harped on it. It didn't last a long time.
• 13:03
  Like they kind of let it go and that was kind of the end of that
• 13:06
  business. But it taught me that I wanted
• 13:10
  to open. I knew that I couldn't do that
• 13:13
  number one, because it sucks. The margins aren't as good as
• 13:15
  people think for the risk that you're taking.
• 13:17
  And then you can't scale that business.
• 13:19
  You can't advertise like you can't tell everybody what you're
• 13:21
  doing. So I knew then I needed to find
• 13:24
  something that, you know, I could go tell the world I was
• 13:27
  doing, be able to advertise, to be able to scale and then grow a
• 13:31
  big business. And so after that, you know,
• 13:39
  again, I think I ended up getting a job like a Co-op in
• 13:44
  high school. So then I could go only I'll go
• 13:46
  after lunch, go to the Co-op class and then leave to go to
• 13:48
  work. And so I did that for, you know,
• 13:50
  a year and then trying to figure out what I was going to do.
• 13:53
  I knew I didn't want to stay in that town.
• 13:55
  I didn't know who to talk to. I didn't know where to go, but I
• 13:59
  knew I just didn't belong there. And so I was trying to figure
• 14:03
  out what I was going to do with my life.
• 14:04
  And then right around the age of 18, when I was about to graduate
• 14:07
  high school, my father passed away, which at the time, I was
• 14:12
  really close with him. And so it was pretty sad and it
• 14:16
  made me, it made me angry at the world for some reason, like I
• 14:22
  was just of course, when you're a young man trying to prove
• 14:25
  yourself. And so it for some reason, I
• 14:27
  gave myself the excuse to go party and drink and drugs and
• 14:32
  just do stupid things. And it, you know, became like,
• 14:37
  you know, very, very often it's not like, oh, just on the
• 14:40
  weekends, like I was doing it all the time and just drinking
• 14:42
  every night, partying, going to jail, nothing bad, but like just
• 14:46
  for drinking and getting arrested for minor possessions
• 14:49
  and in my little small town and going to sit in jail.
• 14:51
  And so for some reason, it took me a long time to learn my
• 14:54
  lesson. And I did that for a couple
• 14:56
  years and what I didn't let it get in the way.
• 15:01
  Of is I always. You know, would show up to work
• 15:06
  at the gym at the time and then after that I would always show
• 15:11
  up to work. I would always still have the
• 15:13
  entrepreneurial spirit. I bought my first house, you
• 15:16
  know, shortly after that. I was still doing some of that
• 15:18
  stuff when I bought the house. And when I bought the house, it
• 15:22
  finally I saved up $18,000 skipping over a couple things,
• 15:26
  but I saved up $18,000 living with my parents or living with
• 15:30
  my mom. And then that allowed me to go
• 15:32
  do a first time home buyers program on my very first house.
• 15:36
  And so still kind of partying, still doing, you know, bad
• 15:42
  making bad choices. And when I bought the house, I
• 15:45
  was still working. And when I did that, it I was
• 15:51
  like, I can't keep doing or having this lifestyle and be
• 15:54
  successful at some point. And so I would go to work all
• 15:59
  day, get off it, you know, maybe 6 O clock, and then I would work
• 16:02
  on the House. And so I did everything myself
• 16:05
  and did all the labor, all the sheetrock, all the paint.
• 16:10
  I hired a tile guy to show me how to do the tile.
• 16:13
  He's a friend of mine and he had a tile company.
• 16:15
  And so I helped him the whole time we did it.
• 16:16
  And then I end up doing the rest of the restrooms and everything
• 16:18
  else. And I was by myself.
• 16:20
  And so it working all day and all night, you know, blessing in
• 16:26
  disguise on, you know, helping me get out of that party mindset
• 16:30
  in, you know, making bad decisions and going to jail.
• 16:34
  And so you know that at that time of my life.
• 16:39
  I was like. I don't know what I'm chasing
• 16:41
  but you know, I need to do more of this.
• 16:44
  And so finished the house, sold the house or put it on the
• 16:49
  market, sold the house pretty quick and the net profit was
• 16:52
  around 30,000. And so I was able to get my, you
• 16:55
  know, 18 or 19,000 back out with my 30,000 had around 50,000 and
• 17:00
  was able to go do that again. And I bought 2 houses because
• 17:04
  there was, this is the day of pre 2008 no doc loans, literally
• 17:09
  called no doc like you just show up with your driver's license I
• 17:11
  think and they just give you a loan.
• 17:14
  And it's what got a lot of people in America in trouble.
• 17:17
  I actually use it to go make money.
• 17:18
  I wasn't buying like luxury houses.
• 17:20
  I was still buying the 100 to $150,000 houses.
• 17:23
  So put 5% down, you can just buy anything you want.
• 17:27
  And so I flipped a couple of those houses I was still living
• 17:29
  in one renovating one. And then I had enough money to
• 17:32
  go hire a crew and renovate another one.
• 17:35
  And so then that kind of got me on my journey of flipping
• 17:38
  houses. And so just kept flipping
• 17:40
  houses. That's how I started, you know,
• 17:42
  stacking money and making, making cash.
• 17:44
  And then the fitness center I worked out at the time, my, my
• 17:50
  owner became my friend or the owner of the gym became my
• 17:52
  friend. And I finally had enough cash
• 17:55
  and figured that I knew I didn't want to work for somebody
• 17:58
  anymore. So I went to him and I said,
• 18:00
  hey, I want to leave. I'm, you know, thinking about
• 18:02
  just want to go do my own thing. I don't know what that is yet.
• 18:04
  I'll probably just do more real estate and maybe open a
• 18:06
  business. And he's like, don't leave.
• 18:08
  I'll do some, let's do something together.
• 18:10
  So we bought a couple properties together and he sold me off the
• 18:12
  gym. And so I continued.
• 18:15
  Just to do real estate, you know.
• 18:18
  Owned half the gym and then kept buying single family homes. 2008
• 18:24
  hit had a bunch of houses on the ground, maybe 8 houses and of
• 18:29
  course you couldn't sell anything.
• 18:31
  Nobody's looking. I'm like I got all my money tied
• 18:33
  up in these houses. Thought I was going to go
• 18:34
  bankrupt and it's such a young age.
• 18:35
  I was like I'm going to have to start over.
• 18:37
  This is so crazy. And luckily I was like what am I
• 18:43
  going to do? Didn't know anything about
• 18:44
  rental, long term rental, short term rental.
• 18:46
  Put them on the market for rent. So I was like, I can at least
• 18:48
  try to cover my notes and not go bankrupt.
• 18:51
  They all rented within like the first 2-3 days of putting them
• 18:55
  on the market because nobody had a mortgage and everybody wanted
• 18:59
  a three bedroom, 2 bath house still.
• 19:02
  And so that got me into the mindset of long term hold.
• 19:06
  And then so I started building My Portfolio single family homes
• 19:10
  while I was still managing the gym, you know, now half owner
• 19:13
  Jim did good. It wasn't like a huge business,
• 19:15
  but it always did pretty, pretty well.
• 19:17
  And you know, my partner was selling, we sold like a had a
• 19:21
  little pro shop and sold supplements at the time that
• 19:25
  gave us idea or that gave me the idea to start early E com before
• 19:29
  like there was a lot of stuff around.
• 19:31
  I mean, there was a handful of message boards.
• 19:33
  Amazon was super early at that time.
• 19:35
  I think eBay was around. And so we started early in in E
• 19:39
  com and we're able to grow that business in the first three
• 19:42
  years to 10 million landed on the 500 fastest growing
• 19:46
  companies. That's crazy.
• 19:48
  Yeah and then started using cash from that business to then go
• 19:53
  buy more real estate, kept building My Portfolio.
• 19:56
  I think I got up to like 66 houses on the single family out
• 20:00
  and and still flipping some, but you know the long term hold
• 20:02
  stuff. I think I got up to 66 kept
• 20:05
  scaling the business. We did you know from that point
• 20:07
  I think we got it up at the highest point to about 30
• 20:09
  million and after that we so. Got it up to about 30 million
• 20:20
  the house the houses I was up to 66 and then after that we
• 20:28
  started opening retail stores. So I had a chain of retail
• 20:30
  stores plus the online business and still building, you know,
• 20:35
  lug started getting into luxury builds and you know, in about
• 20:39
  2012 or 13, the market, the oil market crashed in Houston.
• 20:45
  And in Houston back in the 70s that like destroyed the city
• 20:49
  because it was all oil and gas. And so I was in another
• 20:53
  situation again where I was like, I might go bankrupt
• 20:55
  because nobody's looking at any of my houses.
• 20:56
  I had $15 million worth of specs on the ground at the time.
• 21:00
  And so, and then our business needed money to grow.
• 21:02
  And so it was like a weird situation to where it's like,
• 21:04
  what am I going to do? So I started moving into the
• 21:07
  houses one by one. I was like, at least I'll just
• 21:09
  pay one note putting furniture in there.
• 21:12
  Slowly they started selling and was able to get myself out of
• 21:15
  that situation after about a year and a half or two years.
• 21:19
  And then we I the E com company started getting a little bit
• 21:27
  saturated because Amazon got big.
• 21:29
  They opened up two day Prime social media started taking off
• 21:33
  and people would buy from, you know one of their people, they
• 21:37
  follow one of the products they're recommending.
• 21:39
  They would buy from Amazon to they Prime, they buy from us.
• 21:42
  And so that business. Got very flat.
• 21:44
  It wasn't losing money. It wasn't like going downhill
• 21:46
  fast. It was just like, I could see
• 21:48
  that the market was changing and there was just kind of no way to
• 21:51
  compete with, you know, Amazon and everything was just getting
• 21:54
  so saturated and we didn't have any special sauce or anything.
• 22:00
  It was just price. It was like just probably very,
• 22:02
  very price driven. And that taught me that I don't
• 22:06
  ever want to be in a business that is, you know, only solely
• 22:08
  driven off price. Right, because it's a race to
• 22:10
  the bottom. Always.
• 22:12
  And so it, you know, all that stuff in your life and what I've
• 22:16
  learned is everything's really a lesson.
• 22:19
  When you look back on it at the time you're going through it,
• 22:21
  it's like, it doesn't seem like lessons, but you know, the
• 22:24
  house, the $15 million worth of specs that taught me a lesson
• 22:26
  of, you know, I used to invest everything that I had like all
• 22:31
  the time. So like I was like, I always got
• 22:33
  to grow, I always got to get bigger.
• 22:35
  But it taught me not my business has gotten so big, but I'm still
• 22:41
  operating off very low cash because I'm just still investing
• 22:44
  everything. And it taught me a lesson of
• 22:45
  just not getting over leveraged and keep enough cash around.
• 22:49
  I was still operating just like I was in the beginning with like
• 22:52
  starting everything, investing everything I had in houses and,
• 22:55
  you know, haven't really been through too many bad times.
• 22:58
  And so I just taught me a lesson.
• 23:00
  Don't get over leveraged, keep enough cash around for your
• 23:03
  businesses. And so, you know, that's what I
• 23:05
  did. And then we ended up selling the
• 23:06
  E com stuff, not a huge exit, but just pretty fair just to get
• 23:10
  out of it. And then that's when we bought
• 23:12
  into the I bought into the oil and gas company.
• 23:14
  OK. And then how did you when you
• 23:17
  bought in the oil and gas company, what was it added
• 23:19
  revenue and how did you grow that so quickly over?
• 23:23
  It was it was doing about $30 million in revenue.
• 23:26
  At the time. It, it had been around for a
• 23:30
  while, but it was mainly a brokerage business with
• 23:34
  brokering, you know, trucks and not owning a lot of equipment.
• 23:38
  I mean there's a couple $1,000,000 in assets, but
• 23:39
  nothing you know substantial. And I bought my one of my
• 23:44
  friends business partners out. And so then you know, we both
• 23:48
  own the business and you know, it was it grew because we
• 23:55
  started becoming more of an asset based company and becoming
• 23:59
  a real player in the industry and not just like a brokerage
• 24:02
  company. And so we started buying a lot
• 24:04
  of our own equipment, a lot of our own trucks, and then we also
• 24:07
  just did a really good job. And so the operations were very,
• 24:12
  very good. Our company was really
• 24:14
  professional, an industry where there was a lot of mom and pops
• 24:17
  at the time. And I think that that's what
• 24:20
  helped us grow. And then also hiring the right
• 24:22
  people. And that was the first time in
• 24:24
  my life that I kind of didn't do everything myself.
• 24:28
  And the mistake I made in, you know.
• 24:29
  E com and. You know, managing all those
• 24:31
  houses myself was trying to do too many things myself and not
• 24:38
  hiring great people that were probably would do it way better
• 24:42
  than me. I'm doing everything like pretty
• 24:43
  much half assed. I mean, if you're doing that
• 24:45
  much stuff, it's a lot of things are very half assed.
• 24:48
  And so if I would give advice to someone that was younger or on
• 24:52
  their, you know, entrepreneurial rise, once you have enough, once
• 24:58
  you have proof of concept in a business and once you have
• 25:03
  enough revenue and Net margin to go hire some good key people.
• 25:07
  That you need to. Do it because.
• 25:09
  Most people aren't good at like 5 things, like I'm terrible at
• 25:13
  like accounting and bookkeeping and all that.
• 25:15
  So I hate it so much. And so I was doing everything.
• 25:18
  I was doing all that stuff and then.
• 25:19
  Part of customer. Service and every once in a
• 25:21
  while I'd pack orders and I'm managing taking all the phone
• 25:24
  calls for the 66 houses. It's terrible stupid yeah.
• 25:28
  And so. I can barely handle 4.
• 25:31
  It's bad. I wanted to pull my hair out and
• 25:32
  and that leads to burnout like people, even though I loved
• 25:35
  everything about business, which is probably what kept me going.
• 25:38
  I was getting a little burned out because I was doing a lot of
• 25:41
  things that I hated. And then I was doing a lot of
• 25:43
  things that I was normally good at very half assed because I'm
• 25:45
  trying to juggle all this stuff at one time.
• 25:47
  So huge lesson learned at that point in my life.
• 25:50
  It's like I don't ever need to do that again.
• 25:53
  And so the reason to answer your question, I think we did it
• 25:58
  because of great people. I think that that's how we
• 25:59
  scaled 250 and it's not, I think it's the and that is how we did.
• 26:04
  And now to this day, we still do have very, very key operations
• 26:11
  managers and executives and I'm not in the day-to-day.
• 26:15
  My business partner still is Aceo.
• 26:18
  He's a great leader and a really good visionary and he's a
• 26:22
  founder of the company. And so it still makes sense for
• 26:25
  you know him to be in the day-to-day.
• 26:28
  I'm not as much in the day-to-day, but we know, we
• 26:30
  still talk to all of our key people, you know, in
• 26:32
  communication with them. And so I learned to to leverage
• 26:37
  people and then that's when we were able to go make, you know,
• 26:40
  a lot of money instead of me doing 100 things, making decent
• 26:43
  money, but never able to scale past a certain point.
• 26:46
  It's impossible at some point. And so once I saw it working
• 26:51
  with this company, we then started applying it to pretty
• 26:55
  much everything in my life, you know, whether it's real estate,
• 26:57
  I have a construction project manager now on, on staff and you
• 27:01
  know, he runs all our projects. So now I'm not going to all the
• 27:04
  projects everyday. I'm not talking to all the
• 27:07
  trades. I have, you know, executive
• 27:08
  assistant and actually probably to, you know, Candace runs all
• 27:12
  the operation side on the podcast.
• 27:14
  And so when I go into something, I really try to hire the right
• 27:17
  people now, or if we're starting another startup, I have to have
• 27:22
  a person that I truly believe in that is going to run that
• 27:26
  company, you know, like I like, I believe they can.
• 27:30
  And you know, that's how we've seen our success and all the
• 27:34
  stuff we've invested in recently.
• 27:36
  It's how we've seen our success in the equipment rental company.
• 27:40
  Our president and CEO did such an amazing job and he earned his
• 27:43
  equity. And so it's it's it'll be really
• 27:46
  awesome to see him make millions of dollars.
• 27:48
  You know, he deserves it and every business we start now, I
• 27:51
  make sure that I have a really key partner.
• 27:53
  Same thing with the functional medicine clinics.
• 27:56
  Very, very key partner. I would have never started it
• 27:58
  without her. Like I would have never just go,
• 27:59
  I want to start this business. Let me go try to find somebody.
• 28:03
  I don't really know anything about the industry.
• 28:05
  Like that's a that's kind of a hard road.
• 28:07
  And so I usually try to find the expert in the industry that also
• 28:11
  has good people skills and try to hire that person.
• 28:15
  And that's how we start all of our businesses now, you know,
• 28:17
  whether we're starting it and then trying to scale it goes
• 28:22
  back to the people. And so, you know, I am now more
• 28:26
  of an advisor and in most of our companies and I still talk to
• 28:29
  all of our top people, but I don't run the day-to-day.
• 28:32
  And you know, I'm again, it goes back to like, I've never been in
• 28:36
  such a good place, but I love the game of business so much.
• 28:40
  You know, I can never give it up.
• 28:41
  I would never retire ever. I just don't want to be the CEO
• 28:45
  and I don't want to be putting out the fires like every single
• 28:47
  day. I don't mind, you know, helping
• 28:49
  steer the ship and given, you know, my 25 years of advice and
• 28:53
  and mistakes to try to keep them from making, but you know,
• 28:58
  that's it. You know, it's, it's about me
• 29:00
  pushing them to hire the right key people in really scaling,
• 29:03
  you know, any business that we invest in or start.
• 29:06
  Yeah, do what you do best and hire out the rest, right?
• 29:09
  It's. Really true.
• 29:10
  Yeah, Especially. When you have, you know you
• 29:13
  find. Out if you have product.
• 29:15
  You know, market fit or, you know, a service business that's
• 29:18
  starting to do really well, like you're never going to scale past
• 29:21
  a certain point without all the right people.
• 29:23
  Never. And that's where most people get
• 29:24
  stuck. Most of the business owners I
• 29:27
  know are in the same spot. It's like I did that.
• 29:29
  Don't do, you know, don't do that.
• 29:31
  And so it's just a hard mindset to get past when you're the
• 29:34
  founder, you're the it's like my baby.
• 29:36
  Nobody can do it as good as me. You know what?
• 29:38
  Probably not right, but. There is people that can do all
• 29:42
  5 jobs as good as you if not better.
• 29:44
  Yeah, yeah, Dan Martell says the rule is I think 70%, if they can
• 29:48
  do 70% as good as you, then it's worth it 'cause then you just
• 29:52
  delegate and scale. But that's where I'm at, you
• 29:54
  know, right now too. And IIA 100% know and believe in
• 29:58
  that people are everything and hire who you like.
• 30:01
  Hiring the A+ players is gonna get you to where you can scale
• 30:05
  pretty much infinitely to the point of your capacity in that
• 30:09
  industry. But it's hard to find the
• 30:11
  people. So like, how how do you I'm in
• 30:14
  that spot right now. I'm, I'm founder.
• 30:16
  I've always been a startup founder person 'cause I never
• 30:18
  had massive amounts of money to go buy.
• 30:20
  And then I'm just a visionary. I like, I like the startup
• 30:22
  process. Yeah.
• 30:25
  But how do you find those key partners or key employees that
• 30:30
  like, have you just like what? What has your strategy been?
• 30:33
  Have you used headhunters and recruiters?
• 30:35
  Have you used social media? Like, how have you really found
• 30:37
  and how do you vet those people before you get into bed with
• 30:40
  them to know that they're good for your company?
• 30:41
  Yeah, you know, I'm not going to say, you know, we're, I haven't
• 30:46
  hired some bad people too. They're we have you staffing
• 30:51
  companies, but you still have to do, you know, a heavy vetting
• 30:56
  process on your own to make sure they're right fit for your
• 30:58
  company. And so that's one way for sure.
• 31:03
  You know, spotting people is the reason that I think we've
• 31:08
  started some of the businesses we have like, I'll find someone
• 31:11
  and I'm like, they have like that grit and then also have
• 31:16
  what I think it takes to go manage a big company and manage
• 31:19
  people. Any experience in that industry?
• 31:21
  And that's the reason I start business a lot of times, like I
• 31:24
  know I can make it work with this person.
• 31:26
  And so I'll usually go take them from another company when I do
• 31:29
  find that person. And then, you know, probably
• 31:32
  give them equity overtime. And so for anybody that's out
• 31:34
  there, the biggest mistake you can do is if you find a person
• 31:40
  that you like and you're going to start a business with them,
• 31:42
  no matter who it is, and you're like, you know, you're going to
• 31:44
  be doing all the work. I'll put up the money, I'll give
• 31:46
  you 25% equity, whatever the number is.
• 31:49
  Don't ever do that because a lot of times that person, you know,
• 31:53
  doesn't work out or you know, sometimes they don't and then
• 31:56
  they're stuck and they own company right out of the gate.
• 31:58
  And then you got to figure out you got to buy them out or you
• 32:01
  got to get them out of there because if they're not the right
• 32:02
  person to run it, then you got to bring somebody else in.
• 32:04
  So my suggestion and what we do is they earn their equity in,
• 32:09
  you know, we do give them a salary that's reasonable, but
• 32:12
  you know, they can earn their equity if they hit certain goals
• 32:14
  and milestones. And then you also have time to
• 32:16
  figure out if they're the right fit for the company.
• 32:18
  And so that's definitely been the secret to all of our
• 32:22
  startups recently. That's what we do.
• 32:24
  I usually I, I actually find the person when I have the feeling
• 32:28
  and I just notice all the character traits that are needed
• 32:32
  to take a company to 10 twenty $30 million.
• 32:35
  I usually go start a business around that person.
• 32:37
  Like that's kind of what's. Hard.
• 32:39
  To find Yeah. And so I, you know, I definitely
• 32:43
  won't jump into an industry now or buy a company that I don't
• 32:48
  have faith, like complete faith in the person that's going to
• 32:51
  run the run the company for us. You know, we're getting into
• 32:55
  some new industries on the healthcare side, but my partners
• 32:58
  in the, or my partners in the functional medicine clinic, 17
• 33:02
  years of experience is she's one of the most incredible people I
• 33:06
  know. And she was just scared to do
• 33:10
  something on her own and she didn't have, she was like, I
• 33:12
  don't know how you do it. I'm I'm just nervous.
• 33:14
  I was like, it'll work out. I promise I'll put up the money.
• 33:17
  She, you know, she owns 50% now and she crushes it.
• 33:22
  She's the best in town. She trains all the other nurses
• 33:25
  in town. I was like, we have to charge a
• 33:30
  premium price and we'll be the best company.
• 33:32
  I was like, you train everybody. It's like we're, we're the best.
• 33:35
  Like, don't be worried. It's going to work out.
• 33:36
  Like you have a book of business.
• 33:38
  And some people just can't see that vision.
• 33:40
  And so for me, that's what I'm good at is like, we can blow
• 33:43
  this up. I just need Someone Like You.
• 33:45
  And so usually that's what we'll do is we'll put up the money and
• 33:48
  we'll let somebody earn inequity.
• 33:50
  Over what period of time? It just depends on the industry,
• 33:52
  it depends on the goals we're trying to get hit.
• 33:55
  But I think we did the our last service equipment rental
• 34:00
  company, I think it was started at four years, but he started,
• 34:05
  yeah, yeah, no, every year he was investing in a little bit of
• 34:08
  equity, but it was also based on goals.
• 34:10
  And he hit everything so fast that I think he got all 10% in
• 34:14
  like a year and a half. Awesome.
• 34:15
  Yeah, So super cool to see. He deserves every penny of it.
• 34:20
  But going back to the key people thing, it's definitely the only
• 34:26
  way to get to the, you know, build a really big business and
• 34:30
  also not pull your hair out. And get burned out.
• 34:33
  And you just get stuck at a certain revenue for the rest of
• 34:36
  your life. Yeah, so I want to go back
• 34:40
  'cause I know you, you kind of glanced over the fact that you
• 34:44
  lost your father when you were 18 years old.
• 34:46
  And how did that shape your life and your drive for success?
• 34:50
  And you know what? What did that feel like to lose
• 34:53
  your father so young, especially who you are close with?
• 34:57
  You know, it was really strange at the time and I wouldn't say
• 35:03
  that I was depressed because I was never really like a
• 35:06
  depressive person. Definitely kind of always had
• 35:08
  anxiety since I was 15. I knew I wanted to be an
• 35:13
  entrepreneur before he passed away.
• 35:14
  So it wasn't, it wasn't that that triggered it.
• 35:19
  And then, you know, I did get really close to him when we
• 35:22
  were, you know, of course, everybody's kind of a jerk when
• 35:25
  they're like 1314 years old. There's like one or two years
• 35:27
  where you're kind of a jerk to your parents and then they
• 35:29
  become your best friends again. And, and then that's what my
• 35:32
  parents were. And so to lose him, it was
• 35:35
  really tough and made me really lost as definitely like a 17,
• 35:42
  you know, 18 year old as a young man, you're already lost.
• 35:46
  You kind of don't know what you want to do for the most part
• 35:49
  because you were not taught the right things in school.
• 35:51
  You don't have any skills. So it's like, how do you know
• 35:54
  what you want to do for the rest of your life?
• 35:55
  You don't like kind of had a 8th grade education.
• 35:57
  I don't really go to high school often and so I didn't really
• 36:01
  have any education pass 8th grade.
• 36:04
  You know, I think him passing probably made me have to grow up
• 36:11
  a lot faster, even though, you know, a couple years I made all
• 36:14
  those bad choices, you know, in it took a little while to get
• 36:19
  right on the right path, but I think it, it really made me open
• 36:22
  my eyes and realize that I couldn't do that forever.
• 36:25
  And so, and, you know, I had, my mom wasn't remarried at the
• 36:29
  time, so I, you know, I had to, I felt like I need to take care
• 36:32
  of her, although she was fine. And so it, it did make me, you
• 36:37
  know, want to be a good father at some point someday, because
• 36:41
  he was. And, you know, I, he taught me,
• 36:49
  you know, a lot of good qualities as far as I, you know,
• 36:52
  definitely hard work and, and loyalty and, you know, being a
• 36:56
  good person, but he just didn't know.
• 37:01
  It wasn't his fault, but he just never didn't know anything about
• 37:04
  money or finance or, or building wealth, you know, him nor my
• 37:08
  mom. And so for all those good
• 37:11
  qualities that he had, he just didn't have the one to be able
• 37:14
  to teach me about the money thing.
• 37:15
  And so I kind of had to go out and learn that on my own, you
• 37:19
  know, which was really tough. And there again, it goes back to
• 37:21
  the Internet thing, no access to information, nobody in my town,
• 37:25
  like I not one wealthy person that I could go ask even
• 37:28
  somebody, my friend's dad, I didn't even know anyone that was
• 37:30
  had any money. And so, you know, I had to just
• 37:33
  figure out stuff along the way. Just that over the years and
• 37:36
  years, just learning lessons and making mistakes, learning a
• 37:40
  lesson from it, make a mistake like just over and over and over
• 37:43
  again. And then, you know, I think that
• 37:45
  that's what ultimately, you know, instilled in my head that
• 37:48
  like, to drive success is like just learning from your
• 37:51
  mistakes, really. Have you ever had a rock bottom
• 37:55
  moment in your life? Probably that was probably it.
• 38:04
  I really do. I think so just, you know,
• 38:07
  living that lifestyle and, you know, not being where I wanted
• 38:11
  to be in life. That was probably, definitely
• 38:14
  the IT the rock bottom partying and going to jail.
• 38:16
  And like, I think I'm back on it.
• 38:18
  I'm like, I don't even feel like the same person.
• 38:20
  I kind of feel like it was a, it's not even the same life.
• 38:23
  I don't know, it's weird. Like I remember it, but it just
• 38:26
  feels like it wasn't even the same life that I that I started
• 38:29
  leading or I have now. Just feels like it was a distant
• 38:31
  past. I don't know, it's super weird.
• 38:32
  Yeah, now that makes sense. I mean, I've, I feel I can
• 38:37
  relate to that too 'cause just doing, you know, partying and
• 38:39
  being lost and not feeling connected and not knowing who
• 38:42
  you are or what you want or having this, this anxiety inside
• 38:46
  all the time. Do you still struggle from the
• 38:49
  anxiety and like anger or have you worked through a lot of
• 38:52
  that? You know, 0 anger like I for the
• 38:56
  older I got in going through as much stuff as you go through in
• 39:00
  business made me super calm all the time because like I don't
• 39:06
  get worked up over anything like that.
• 39:08
  Most problems are fixable and, you know, business has taught me
• 39:13
  to be very calm, level headed. So I, I, I have zero anger
• 39:17
  really. It's, it's so that that went
• 39:19
  away probably in my early 20s. It started just going away year
• 39:22
  by year, but the anxiety stayed, you know, a big portion of my
• 39:27
  life probably until I was in my 30s and got really into the
• 39:32
  health and fitness thing. I was getting headaches
• 39:34
  everyday, couldn't figure it out, going to a bunch of
• 39:36
  different doctors. And then I got referred to the
• 39:38
  functional medicine side of business or side of health.
• 39:42
  They did a bunch of testing that none of the other doctors did.
• 39:44
  And you know, slowly over the next like 2-3 years, I started,
• 39:49
  the anxiety started going away. I started having, you know, more
• 39:54
  clear of a head. The fatigue started going away.
• 39:58
  So, you know, that I wish I would have found all that stuff
• 40:01
  20 years earlier because I do think a lot of it was physical
• 40:03
  and genetics and a lot of stuff that's fixable.
• 40:06
  But you know again. From 36 to now, just at a
• 40:11
  completely different place feel better than I've ever have, you
• 40:15
  know, almost no anxiety. Of course there's a little bit
• 40:17
  here and there just from having it my whole life, but you know,
• 40:20
  95% less than I've had it my whole life and then zero anger.
• 40:24
  So you know, you have to have you can't overreact and you
• 40:28
  can't get emotional in business. The partners that it work out
• 40:32
  well, the most that I've noticed in the past is the people that
• 40:35
  don't get emotional and every day there's going to be a
• 40:39
  problem. And so it's almost like a if you
• 40:41
  you can relate it to a marriage because if you're coming home
• 40:47
  and you're arguing every day and both of you are overreacting for
• 40:51
  probably really stupid things, you can't ever move forward and
• 40:56
  you can't ever make any progress.
• 40:58
  Business is the same way. If you have an emotional
• 41:00
  business partner and you show up and they're freaking out every
• 41:03
  day because every day some really bad stuff out.
• 41:05
  It's like a roller coaster every single day.
• 41:06
  Doesn't matter what business you're in, you have to learn how
• 41:10
  to deal with the ups and downs and, and having a, a very
• 41:14
  logical partner. If you're going to pick somebody
• 41:16
  to do business with, that's who you need to pick because that's
• 41:20
  what'll get you through all those bad times.
• 41:22
  And you just sit around and talk about it, try to make the best
• 41:25
  decision for the bad thing that happened that day or a strategic
• 41:29
  decision. And it's hard when people were
• 41:31
  fighting and yelling and, you know, treating your employees
• 41:34
  bad. And you know, that's one of the
• 41:36
  biggest things in business is just kind of stay level headed,
• 41:40
  try to stay calm and just work through problems.
• 41:42
  I mean, it's just problem solving every single day and and
• 41:46
  just trying to make things work out because the one thing in
• 41:49
  business is it'll probably make you tougher than anything.
• 41:55
  Else that you. Can do in your life it really
• 41:57
  will and it'll just give you a good level head on your
• 42:01
  shoulders because if you overreact every time something
• 42:03
  happens guy, you're probably going to have a heart attack
• 42:05
  when you're yeah 35 years old and.
• 42:07
  You're not gonna have the capacity to build anything
• 42:10
  great. Yeah, not over a long period of
• 42:12
  time. Yeah, 'cause when you're dealing
• 42:13
  with tons of people and employees and vendors and money
• 42:18
  coming in and out and market fluctuations and everything that
• 42:20
  you can't control. Like I think that emotional
• 42:23
  intelligence and your capacity to control your emotions is the
• 42:27
  most, number one most important thing in it being successful in
• 42:31
  anything in life, whether business, relationship, health,
• 42:34
  Wellness. I mean, I think so many people
• 42:38
  and we're not taught emotional intelligence in school or
• 42:41
  anything. And actually, I, I would love to
• 42:43
  dive into that. A little bit about the school
• 42:46
  system. I know I talk a lot with Robert
• 42:47
  Kiyosaki about it. And you, you have an issue with
• 42:50
  the public school system as well.
• 42:52
  Yeah. It's pretty much a joke Yeah,
• 42:53
  you know, definitely this day and age is so outdated, so bad,
• 43:02
  you know, in even a lot, even for a long time now it has been.
• 43:05
  But now more than ever, I mean the world is advanced so much.
• 43:08
  The technology is so crazy to access to information is so
• 43:12
  great. Like there is 0 need for the way
• 43:15
  they teach kids and either, you know, even, you know, past
• 43:18
  junior high, high school, college for sure.
• 43:22
  You know, I definitely think there needs to be a complete
• 43:24
  overhaul. You know, I'll, I'll probably
• 43:26
  pay my kid not to go to college if he's somehow has some itch to
• 43:29
  go do it. You know, I'm going to pull him
• 43:33
  out of school. He was a little bit of a late
• 43:34
  talker, so I left him in for a couple extra years.
• 43:36
  He's probably going to go till about the 1st grade and then
• 43:38
  I'll pull him out and, and develop my own curriculum for
• 43:41
  him. All you need is basic reading,
• 43:43
  writing, math. And then really?
• 43:46
  Communication is #1 which is always my weakest point.
• 43:50
  You know, I always joke with Gentry.
• 43:51
  If I was like, if I would have had your communication skills,
• 43:54
  just naturally I would have been a billionaire.
• 43:55
  Well, this time I was 30, but it's still the same person I am,
• 43:58
  but with those skills. So I have to work really hard at
• 44:00
  it. But, you know, basic reading,
• 44:04
  writing, math, communication, sales, which is kind of
• 44:08
  communication too, really. And learn how to negotiate with
• 44:11
  people, how to buy and sell something super important for
• 44:13
  almost any individual in the educational process.
• 44:17
  Basic finance, basic the way money works, you know, interest
• 44:22
  rates and all that stuff, very basic version of that.
• 44:27
  And then like you said, emotional intelligence, it is
• 44:30
  really the only thing you need to be successful.
• 44:31
  And so I'm going to build a program for him that will give
• 44:36
  him all those tools. I hope he'll be entrepreneur,
• 44:39
  but if he's not, it's not a big deal with all those tools, he'll
• 44:41
  be successful. And no matter what kind of path
• 44:43
  he's going to end up taking, like he'll, he'll crush it.
• 44:46
  And so you know. Not everybody has to be
• 44:49
  entrepreneur doesn't I'm, I'm not saying I, I kind of think
• 44:51
  you will, you know, giving all those tools to him, because then
• 44:56
  he's going to probably have a different outlook on life than
• 44:58
  you would have if you went to school and just sat in class and
• 45:02
  then got out from high school and was like, I don't really
• 45:04
  know what I want to do. The reason kids don't know what
• 45:06
  they want to do is because they have zero skills.
• 45:09
  Like imagine like if you have no skills, you don't, you're not
• 45:13
  going to have and you have to solve what you or pick what
• 45:15
  you're going to do for the rest of your life.
• 45:17
  How are you going to pick? That's why everybody's so lost
• 45:18
  when they're 18. It's like, I don't know what to
• 45:21
  do and my friends are just partying.
• 45:22
  I guess I'll go do that. I guess it's an excuse for me to
• 45:24
  kind of hang out and bullshit for a couple years and like you
• 45:27
  kind of give yourself with that excuse.
• 45:29
  But I think if kids were taught the right things, like, you
• 45:32
  know, even since junior high and you know, even before, you know,
• 45:35
  hopefully, but you know, if it was junior high and high school,
• 45:38
  I think they have a really good idea what they wanted to do in
• 45:40
  life or a way better idea instead of going from not
• 45:44
  knowing at all. I think you'd probably have a
• 45:46
  90% chance of like, really like, I'm really good at this.
• 45:49
  I really like doing this type of work or giving them all those
• 45:52
  skills really, really young will help them to decide what path
• 45:56
  they want to take. And so that's what I'm going to
• 45:58
  do for my son. And, you know, long term goal
• 46:01
  for, you know, the social media stuff and the the podcast was
• 46:05
  to, you know, hopefully I can disrupt that system someday, you
• 46:08
  know, down the road, probably be a long time, but you know, you
• 46:11
  definitely have need some influence to do that for sure.
• 46:13
  So. Yeah, I, I mean, that was me.
• 46:16
  I was lost in school and I didn't have entrepreneurial
• 46:18
  parents or anything like that. So it was whatever the counselor
• 46:21
  said. Oh, you could be a policeman or
• 46:23
  an engineer or a biologist or a veterinarian or a teacher, like
• 46:28
  whatever. And so it was, what job can you
• 46:33
  go get? And if I would have been
• 46:35
  thinking like, OK, what business can I go build or run or
• 46:38
  whatever, it would, it would have been a game changer.
• 46:41
  And honestly, I wish I I don't regret anything, but if I could
• 46:44
  have focused on business instead of focusing in engineering
• 46:47
  school, I probably would have advanced a lot faster.
• 46:50
  Yeah, I, you know, it's hard to regret stuff because a lot of
• 46:55
  stuff, a lot of things happen to make you who you are today,
• 46:58
  right? So I always think about that,
• 46:59
  but you know, I do if, if there's somebody out there
• 47:03
  that's young, you know, the partying thing and the waste in
• 47:06
  your life thing, that is probably the biggest regret I
• 47:08
  have. But I think I went through it
• 47:10
  for a reason, you know, I definitely have a passion of
• 47:12
  wanting to help, you know, definitely men that are, you
• 47:16
  know, 15 to 18 because you're just so lost, you know.
• 47:20
  So hopefully I can do that one day too, just because, you know,
• 47:23
  I feel like I can help them because I, I know how that
• 47:25
  feels. And honestly, the kids that are
• 47:28
  bad and doing, you know, stuff that's probably not normal that
• 47:33
  society thinks and ADHD and all this other stuff, they're
• 47:36
  probably going to make the best, they're probably going to kill
• 47:38
  it in life once they just get their life on track.
• 47:41
  And so super, you know, that is a passion of mine.
• 47:44
  Hopefully that'll happen one day too.
• 47:46
  Kind of goes back to the whole online education piece.
• 47:48
  So hopefully that'll be a, a future project because I
• 47:52
  definitely, I think I went through that because one day I'd
• 47:54
  be able to help those kids. It's definitely a waste of time,
• 47:57
  a waste of life. I didn't learn any other lessons
• 48:00
  from that other than wasting my life and not I shouldn't have
• 48:04
  done that to waste those. Yours for sure.
• 48:06
  What's 1 belief that you had to let go of in your life that in
• 48:10
  order to get to where you've gotten?
• 48:15
  Well, to get to where I'm at now, it's the the belief of not
• 48:20
  doing everything, like having to do everything yourself.
• 48:24
  Again, you're entrepreneur and you start a company and you
• 48:29
  think it's like your it is, it's your baby, you've built it, you
• 48:32
  worked on it every day you're working 18 hours and it's hard
• 48:35
  to give things up. And it's like, I can do all this
• 48:37
  myself. I can manage 66 houses.
• 48:39
  I can do this. I'm a genius like you.
• 48:41
  You just like trick yourself into thinking you can you do all
• 48:44
  this stuff because you had a little bit of success.
• 48:46
  Like I'm like every house that, you know, touch turns to gold.
• 48:49
  And like in my back of my mind, I'm like, I could do anything.
• 48:53
  But you get really stuck at a point, really stressed out,
• 48:56
  really burned out, and you don't get to focus on the things you
• 49:00
  probably started the business for, the things you love to do.
• 49:03
  So that was one belief I had to let go.
• 49:04
  I can't do everything myself that I had for a long time, you
• 49:08
  know, just trying to force myself to, trying to, you know,
• 49:11
  convince myself I could. Definitely had to let that go to
• 49:16
  achieve what I've achieved, you know, at this point in my life,
• 49:19
  43 years old and all the stuff I'm doing now.
• 49:23
  And you guys decided to have kids later in life and to build
• 49:26
  your company and your, your wife is a boss babe too and has a
• 49:29
  cosmetic Gentry cosmetic line, which I have her makeup on right
• 49:33
  now. But yeah, So what like
• 49:37
  influenced that? Are you glad you made that
• 49:39
  decision? And, and you also, which I love
• 49:42
  that you guys actually gave me this idea 'cause I, I was always
• 49:45
  afraid of one, having kids when I was built busy building my
• 49:47
  businesses or sacrificing my life because I love my freedom
• 49:50
  and I want to do all these things.
• 49:52
  And I know the kids massive commitment and I don't want to
• 49:54
  resent my child like my parent, you know, I felt like my parents
• 49:57
  kind of did, did me at times. And, and then you and then she
• 50:00
  decided, or you both decided to on your second child to, to use
• 50:04
  a surrogate instead of so like, what was that experience like
• 50:07
  on, on those decision, those big, big decisions that you've
• 50:10
  made? And are you glad that you did
• 50:12
  both of those things? We are, you know we did.
• 50:18
  We were when I met Gentry. She goes, if you want kids, I'm
• 50:21
  not the girl for you. And I go, well, I don't really
• 50:24
  want kids right now. And then back of my mind, I'm
• 50:26
  like, she probably will when she gets older.
• 50:27
  Like we were 26. And so I wanted, I was focused
• 50:33
  on building my business. There is no way I wanted a kid
• 50:35
  at that time because I again, I did want to be a good father.
• 50:39
  And I would have been really torn because I love business so
• 50:42
  much. And it might have been one or
• 50:46
  the other at the time, because it is really hard when you're
• 50:49
  young, not as much money, you know, you're trying to support a
• 50:51
  kid, You're trying to still work 16 hours a day.
• 50:54
  Like I, I don't see how I could have done it.
• 50:57
  And, you know, hats off the people that, that are able to
• 50:59
  manage that. But I'm happy that we waited
• 51:01
  till later in life #1. I think that I'm at the best
• 51:09
  point of my life to be able to actually raise a son.
• 51:11
  You know, when I was 20, I was still figuring a bunch of stuff
• 51:13
  out. And so like, I couldn't have
• 51:14
  taught him all the things that I can teach him now.
• 51:17
  And, you know, luckily we were getting older.
• 51:21
  We were 35. And we go, she goes, hey, we
• 51:25
  should go freeze embryos because, you know, I know you
• 51:29
  want to have kids one day. Like I didn't want to.
• 51:31
  I knew I would regret when I got to 60 building all this stuff,
• 51:35
  not having kids. Like, so I knew that that would
• 51:37
  happen one day, but I also didn't want them at that time.
• 51:41
  We're still like just building everything.
• 51:43
  And she was getting to the point too.
• 51:45
  She's like, she was her idea. She goes, let's go, just might
• 51:47
  as well just go freeze embryos. So we don't like miss out if we
• 51:51
  down the road, if we don't do it, I'm like, I'm all for it.
• 51:54
  I'm like, OK, so we go to the IVF clinic.
• 51:57
  We did you do an egg retrieval. So kind of messes up the girl.
• 52:01
  I mean, it's it's very hard on the girl because you're like
• 52:02
  pumping them full of hormones. Yeah.
• 52:04
  So makes them over produce eggs. They pull those eggs out and of
• 52:09
  course they mix them, fertilize them with a sperm and then they
• 52:14
  grow them to about day 7-8, I don't remember the exact.
• 52:17
  And then they genetically test them.
• 52:20
  So they would pull out any like chromosome disorders, anything
• 52:23
  that would naturally miscarry. And then they also test the sex.
• 52:27
  So boys and girls. So we did one round of that.
• 52:31
  We got two boy and a girl and we put she goes, why are we going
• 52:39
  to wait? We did all this like might as
• 52:41
  well put one in. And I'm like, OK, so it's like
• 52:44
  no problem. We put the boy and the girl in.
• 52:48
  They started growing and then one had a heartbeat and then one
• 52:51
  didn't. So heartbeats up six days later
• 52:57
  they're like, oh, it's kind of slowing down.
• 52:59
  So the first two, she has a miscarriage and you know, kind
• 53:03
  of mess her up because you're like pumped full of hormones.
• 53:06
  Miscarriage, like the mental part of it, yeah, kind of mess
• 53:09
  her up a little bit. But anyways, we like, hey, let's
• 53:11
  go do 2 or more egg retrievals. The IVF clinic said if you do
• 53:15
  them back-to-back, usually get better results.
• 53:17
  And also we only got 2. So it's like if we want to have
• 53:21
  enough, if it, there's a chance that they don't work, we want to
• 53:24
  do it a couple times. And so we did the second one, we
• 53:28
  only got two more and we're like, Holly, that's it's like
• 53:31
  we're going to, you might not have any on the last one and
• 53:34
  only 6 fertilized on the last the third time, but all six were
• 53:38
  good. So yeah, from the first two, it
• 53:41
  was like very low results. And then for some reason that
• 53:43
  last time it was like all six. So we ended up with two boys and
• 53:48
  five girls that were, you know, genetically tested viable.
• 53:54
  And then she was like, well, let's just put one in this time.
• 53:57
  Maybe it was the two that did it.
• 53:59
  And they don't recommend doing that in IVF just because twins
• 54:02
  are a lot more high risk and there's just so many more
• 54:04
  problems. So we put a boy in and then that
• 54:07
  one stuck and had our son, Liam. And so he's 5 1/2 years old now.
• 54:15
  I think when he was about four years old is when we're like, we
• 54:18
  need to hurry up and have another one.
• 54:19
  And of course, she's 40, you know, 2 now.
• 54:23
  She's like, probably can't. I mean, the results would
• 54:25
  probably be really bad if she'd be trying to use our embryos on
• 54:27
  her. And she didn't want to mess up
• 54:28
  her body again, didn't want to do a bunch of hormones.
• 54:31
  So we, you know, chose to have a surrogate and we found an
• 54:36
  agency. They found a person.
• 54:38
  It took about six months, by the way.
• 54:42
  There's like a shortage of surrogates and we just thought
• 54:45
  you're going to walk in and like you open this book and you're
• 54:47
  like, we like her, we like her. They actually pick you big time
• 54:51
  wait list. And I don't remember the reason
• 54:55
  the first surrogate picked this. She was a little older.
• 54:57
  She was 35, you know, for I guess it's considered geriatric
• 55:02
  when you're giving like past 35 or something.
• 55:05
  But anyways, she was great. So we go, we do the first
• 55:10
  transfer. It didn't work out.
• 55:12
  We do the second transfer, she had another miscarriage or
• 55:15
  didn't stick one of the two. And then she said she emailed us
• 55:17
  and said, hey, you know, I'm probably not going to do another
• 55:19
  one. My doctor says have some medical
• 55:21
  issues too. So we're like, OK, we don't want
• 55:22
  to use any more if it's not going to work.
• 55:24
  Anyways, the agency found the second person worked the first
• 55:27
  time. And so she had our daughter,
• 55:31
  which is Lila, which was amazing experience.
• 55:33
  Gentry was actually loved her faster than she loved our son
• 55:38
  because the first time she was hormones, pain medication, just
• 55:41
  all whacked out and she just didn't have that like bond
• 55:44
  initially. And it took her months and
• 55:45
  months and months before she bonded with her son like like
• 55:48
  she thought she was supposed to. And then our daughter, she's
• 55:50
  like right out of the gate. She was just super excited, did
• 55:52
  the nursery like and then because I think she was just in
• 55:55
  a good mental place and she just showed up and we picked her up
• 55:57
  and just like we never had a surrogate.
• 56:00
  It was weird. And so now she's going to have
• 56:02
  another one for us. So in August of 2025 is when the
• 56:06
  doctors will clear her. So we have 2 girls left so we'll
• 56:10
  see what happens. That's so exciting.
• 56:12
  Yeah, so we and now when you see your kids, you go.
• 56:15
  I can't just leave 2 like frozen.
• 56:17
  What do you like? Yeah.
• 56:19
  So I think we're going to try to have two, two more.
• 56:22
  The odds of both of them working based on our past experience,
• 56:25
  you know, maybe we think one will work for sure.
• 56:28
  But if we have two, then we'd have 4 kids.
• 56:30
  It'll be a circus for sure. Science is amazing.
• 56:32
  It is. Yeah.
• 56:34
  It's incredible. I mean, I'm sure.
• 56:35
  But I would recommend that to people only because you never
• 56:38
  know. So if they're frozen, you can
• 56:40
  use them one day. If they're not, they just stay
• 56:41
  frozen. So we definitely, it helped us a
• 56:45
  lot. Great experience and we're super
• 56:47
  happy we did it. That's awesome.
• 56:50
  I love that. I definitely, I know I think
• 56:51
  about that because I've always been a no kids, no marriage, no
• 56:54
  anything person but it. That's how we that's how we were
• 56:57
  too definitely had that feeling and you know, we probably would
• 57:01
  have been just as happy. I guess I don't know because you
• 57:03
  don't, you know, don't know what you're missing if you don't ever
• 57:04
  have them. But you know, looking back at,
• 57:08
  you know, especially after you've achieved a bunch of
• 57:10
  things and you get to this high level and you know, at some
• 57:14
  point it's like you kind of want somebody to either pass either
• 57:18
  knowledge on to not necessarily the businesses.
• 57:21
  And it's just been great. It's great to have a family.
• 57:22
  They're just so great to come home to.
• 57:24
  And my son's personality is a little bit more like Gentry's,
• 57:29
  which is good because I'm sure he'll be super outgoing and
• 57:32
  super extrovert and a good salesman.
• 57:34
  And like, so he's kind of, he sounds seems to be following in
• 57:38
  her footsteps for sure. Yeah.
• 57:40
  So it'll be cool. That's cool and it'll be cool to
• 57:43
  see what the what your little girls like.
• 57:45
  Yeah, it'll be awesome. It's exciting.
• 57:47
  I don't have a lot of girls in my family, so it's super new to
• 57:50
  me. I've never had any sisters,
• 57:53
  didn't really. Have.
• 57:56
  Any I think I'd probably be a little too soft on her.
• 58:00
  Gentry won't. So it'll be a it'll be good to
• 58:02
  have her around having a little girl.
• 58:04
  Gentry will crack the lip for sure.
• 58:06
  Well, I know we're we're about to wrap up here, but just want
• 58:09
  to ask a few follow up like quick round questions.
• 58:14
  So if you could give one piece of advice to your 18 year old
• 58:17
  self, what would it be and why I.
• 58:19
  Think I just hit hit on that. Don't waste your life.
• 58:22
  The partying is drinking, partying, drugs, hanging around
• 58:26
  the wrong people. Biggest waste of time you could
• 58:30
  ever have in your entire life for anybody.
• 58:32
  Girl, guy whether you're 16171819 like it going through
• 58:37
  that phase you will regret it and you will not achieve what
• 58:43
  you could be achieving and may never do it.
• 58:46
  Some people don't ever get off that path.
• 58:48
  So I would recommend I would go back and tell myself don't be
• 58:51
  stupid, you know, don't make stupid decisions.
• 58:54
  It's not worth it and it's not going to get you anywhere.
• 58:58
  There's like there's no, there was 0 benefit.
• 59:00
  I didn't learn any lessons I learned like from it was just it
• 59:03
  was just a stupid time of my life.
• 59:05
  And that's what I would tell my 18 year old self for sure.
• 59:08
  What advice would you give to someone striving to balance
• 59:11
  building immense wealth with maintaining a healthy and
• 59:14
  balanced life? Exercise 100%.
• 59:18
  That's you have to start there. I actually exercise now, I think
• 59:22
  more for mental health than physical health.
• 59:24
  You know, it does make me feel good.
• 59:26
  I do have more energy, but literally if I don't work out,
• 59:29
  like I feel like I'm off and I'm not as sharp and I, you know, my
• 59:34
  mental health is definitely suffering.
• 59:36
  So, you know, exercise, you know, definitely healthy diet
• 59:39
  because all that is still going to affect your mental health
• 59:42
  too. And when you're running
• 59:44
  businesses trying to achieve a high level of success, you have
• 59:49
  to have all the energy and mental toughness that you can.
• 59:51
  So I'll definitely start there for sure.
• 59:53
  And I think goes back to the people thing.
• 59:56
  I think when you can get a business or a portfolio or
• 1:00:00
  anything in your life that you're trying to do to a certain
• 1:00:01
  point and you have the margin to go hire these key people, I
• 1:00:05
  would do that immediately to leave a balanced life to in, you
• 1:00:09
  know, I love it, but. It's funny because you start
• 1:00:12
  making more money and you're not, I wouldn't say doing less
• 1:00:15
  work. You're just not doing all the
• 1:00:16
  like the busy work that you, you think all that stuff is like,
• 1:00:19
  oh, I'm working hard, I'm 18 hours.
• 1:00:21
  But you're like doing all this stuff and it's not, not
• 1:00:23
  producing any results, not massive results.
• 1:00:26
  And so if you can get out of that mindset, you know, I guess
• 1:00:30
  now what I considered a balanced life is, you know, having all
• 1:00:34
  those key people, having good health, you know, having a bunch
• 1:00:37
  of energy, having a great family, Those are the things I
• 1:00:41
  think that, you know, probably matter the most.
• 1:00:43
  So live a good life and, you know, have that balance for
• 1:00:45
  sure. So how do you define true wealth
• 1:00:49
  and how is that definition changed over time as your
• 1:00:52
  success has grown? I think it goes back to exactly
• 1:00:56
  the same thing I just said. True wealth is, you know,
• 1:01:00
  definitely, you know, money, you know, people think are afraid to
• 1:01:03
  say it, but you know, money allows you to do a lot of
• 1:01:06
  things, allows you to have a lot of freedom, allows you to do
• 1:01:09
  what you enjoy doing. And I enjoy building more
• 1:01:13
  businesses. So I spend a lot of my money on
• 1:01:15
  that. Most of it.
• 1:01:17
  I enjoy real estate and I do that.
• 1:01:18
  But I think, you know, wealth to me is, you know, definitely
• 1:01:23
  financial, financially secure to do whatever you want to do, have
• 1:01:27
  the freedom to do what you want to do, being healthy, because
• 1:01:30
  there's a lot of people, especially when you get my age,
• 1:01:32
  you start knowing people that are dying, you start knowing
• 1:01:34
  people that are having really, really bad health issues.
• 1:01:37
  And so it really hits home. And so being healthy your whole
• 1:01:40
  life, you know, it's, you know, when you get older, it's not the
• 1:01:44
  end of your life when you're 60. My grandparents, that's what
• 1:01:46
  happened to them. They were tired, sat on the
• 1:01:48
  couch and just like slowly deteriorated and you don't have
• 1:01:50
  to do that anymore. And so I think wealth is, you
• 1:01:52
  know, you know, financial security with the freedom to do
• 1:01:56
  what you want to do and then health and then just always
• 1:01:59
  trying to grow as a person and, and learn because, you know,
• 1:02:03
  whether it's husband or, or a friend or even business owner,
• 1:02:08
  all those things are just going to make you a better person.
• 1:02:11
  So I think all those together, the continuous personal growth,
• 1:02:15
  the health and you know, financial freedom is, is
• 1:02:19
  definitely my version of wealth for sure.
• 1:02:22
  Awesome. Well, thank you, Sean.
• 1:02:24
  I appreciate you and I'm so glad to know you and Gentry.
• 1:02:27
  And then what's the best way for people to get a hold of you?
• 1:02:30
  We have a podcast called Success Formula, the official success
• 1:02:34
  formula Mine, Yep, is a handle on almost all platforms.
• 1:02:39
  Mine is official Sean Lynch on almost all platforms and
• 1:02:43
  Gentry's is Gentry Kelly, Gentry Kelly Cosmetics.
• 1:02:47
  So definitely follow the podcast.
• 1:02:49
  It is about a lot of things that we talked about today, health,
• 1:02:53
  success, business and real estate.
• 1:02:56
  So cool. Thanks Sean all.
• 1:02:57
  Right. Thank you.