The Grind-Cast “Q&A”

Count money, man.

Stacked riches.

I'm trying to told him I'm a beast, but...

What's up, gang?

Welcome to the Grindcast.

It's time for the areas here.

Get ready to do the new day.

New day.

What's up, gang?

Welcome back to another episode of The Grindcast.

Get ready as a new day.

We're going to talk about today.

A little while back we asked for anybody with any topics or questions.

And so we got a bunch of them.

So what we did is I think we have 15 questions that others have asked.

And what we're going to do is I'm going to try to keep these two averaging two minutes or less per question.

So we can get this done in less than 30 minutes or so.

So first one is how long have you been in this business?

And how long did it take for you personally to taste success?

So my definition of success has changed over the years.

So I could just give you what I mean by that.

I've been in this business for 14 years in the insurance business.

It's been great to me.

It was my number one source of everything, all the tools, all the knowledge, all the money.

That would eventually get invested into other things and wisdom would get put into other businesses.

After over 10 years in this business.

So I think I tasted success pretty quick.

Within my first 90 days I was making more money than I ever thought I would make in my whole life.

My goal was to if one day I could make six figures.

That was my goal coming out of college at young, you know, playing and growing up in Youngstown, Ohio.

I thought, man, maybe one day I'll be able to make six figures, 10, 20 years.

And within 90 days I was already making that with American income.

And so if my definition of success was that, it would be early now, like first couple months.

I was promoted to one of the highest levels of leadership when they weren't giving those positions out easily within seven months.

A level that took people five years to get to, I was promoted to a nine months.

So I feel like I had success quickly in this business, but true success probably took me a few years.

And what I mean by true success is when I really started to learn that we need to just make it all about others.

Let the money be a byproduct, but focus on, man, what could I do to just best serve all these people?

How can I just put my focus on making sure these people are okay?

And defining success is giving back to other people the way that I treat others eventually.

You know, I've never been more successful than when I was being married and having children and running a business and feeling like I'm not failing at any of them.

That's the ultimate success in starting a chapter of a youth program in Youngstown five years ago at the age of 30 years old.

You know, I think all of that is the real true success, but early on for the financial success.

Did you think that you would be where you're at today when you first started?

Did you see this type of success coming? No, no way.

I thought I thought big, but when I first started, I was scared to death.

First of all, I never thought that we would be where we're at in the first year or two.

I didn't learn how to think big enough. Nobody taught me how to think really big and how much our lives would be dictated just by our thoughts.

I had no clue on how to think or what words to speak and how that would determine my life.

Over time, I would learn that.

Did I see this type of success coming? No, that I think we would be where we're at today? No, no, not at all.

But I'm grateful that I got put around the people that I did.

I think mentorship and the people that you're influenced by makes a big difference.

Third one was, what are your personal strengths and what are your weaknesses?

Man, great question.

I think my personal strengths definitely at the top of the list would be my discipline.

Once I set my mind on something, I don't care how I feel or what's going on.

I'm going to do what's required to find a way to get it done and win and stick to that process.

I'm committed. I'm loyal to things and to people I don't give up very easily.

I think my heart, balance for a lot of people that are tough in nature, have a hard time balancing that and showing vulnerability

and being soft at the same time and loving on people.

I think that's a strength of mine being able to know that I can be soft and love on people the majority of the time.

But being able to turn into a beast when I absolutely have to and turning into fearless.

Those would be some of the things that I think are strengths.

I'd be more interested to hear what the people around me think are my strengths.

I think I motivate people.

I think my weaknesses.

I've gotten better at it, but patience.

Being more patient to not jump the gun on certain things because I get all excited and make fast decisions.

Sometimes they work out well, sometimes they don't.

I think my temper was on a scale of one to ten used to be an eight.

I'm at probably a four now, which is a big improvement.

But I think I still can get better in that area, I would say.

What other weaknesses would I say?

I'd probably fix things.

My wife, my mom, I'd like to ask what they think my weaknesses are.

I know my weaknesses is like I can't fix anything for the most part.

I can do some of the basic things like I could change the light bulb and stuff like that.

But as far as really being handy, not your guy.

So that would be a weakness.

Oh, I don't know if I'm super organized.

I think I'm organized because I hired people to help me be organized.

So I'm organized.

But I wasn't always that way.

Another weakness is technology.

I'm horrible with it.

I can't type.

I mean, I can, but it's funny to watch.

I'm going to just throw it out there.

I can type with two fingers.

I peck.

And not like I still can't use all these fingers.

So I'm not good with typing.

I'm not good with technology.

Stuff like that.

How do you stay so motivated daily?

I think motivation comes from the word motive.

So what is your motive is going to determine your motivation.

So when my motive is helping kids, it's hard for me not to be motivated.

To make sacrifices required to help them.

When my motive is to be a better husband and a better father,

it's hard to not want to do things to make yourself better for people that you love so much.

When your motive is to win and change the world and you compare yourself to...

I never compare myself to the people I'm beating.

I'm only comparing myself to the people I'm losing to.

I only compare myself to what I can be not to who I am right now.

I try to find great men and great people that I look at is so much better than me in every aspect of my life.

When I look at somebody better than me physically or better than me at being a dad or a husband or better than me at marriage or better than me at whatever,

I try to look at those things and close the gap and focus on what I can do to get better versus patting myself on the back on how well that I've done.

And so that helps to keep me motivated as well as knowing how many people's lives are in my hands.

I use the game to keep me motivated because I know it will help me make the right decisions for people when it comes to my business.

I think they say life is one of the only ways to prove life and show life is by growth at times.

I focus on growing, focus on doing more than what people think is possible from a number standpoint on accident.

It ends up kicking out more money, but I know I just need to grow business if I want to give other people an opportunity if I want their lives to grow and not sit back and just be comfortable.

I think people that get comfortable, especially in a position of leadership, is selfish.

Once you start to take on other people's lives in your hands, if you're not motivated, you're hurting all these other people, if you really care about them, you understand it's your duty to provide the best opportunity for these people that you can.

I'm blessed to lead some quality people that make me feel like I always have to earn that and get better for them every day.

Who is your number one all-time motivator and why him or her?

I think in life my mom, my mom is my biggest motivator.

She was my biggest motivation growing this thing because I wanted to provide better for her, but I also wanted my life to be a reward because I watched her, my grandmother, and people sacrificing struggle to just give me a glimpse of an opportunity at times.

I felt like the payoff and a reward for them would be for me to do something with it.

My motivation became those people and still is my biggest drive and biggest motivation.

My mom always believed in me, my grandmother, people that were like that to me, always taught me that I could do anything that I wanted to do, even when nobody else believed they would believe in me.

That person, that belief was motivational to me.

Nowadays people that I look to for motivation, I look to TD Jakes is super influential in my life for motivation.

John Maxwell, Steve Fertic, Ray Ray Lewis motivates me in God.

I feel like rejuvenates and renews my spirit when I need it the most.

What was the number one factor that made you turn your life around?

Man, I think mentorship.

The company that you keep, birds of a feather flock together show me your circle, I'll show you your future.

Getting around people that were growing and responsible in their personal lives and the way that they handled themselves, such as my mentor Marcus Smith, Jim Sarace, Mike Basu, Nick SanGuardi, all people that I'm shooting out that were Pat Mendoor.

Just people that earlier in my career hung out around a lot and they turned out now all those people are just great individuals and great people.

I feel like I got lucky just to be around those people but smart enough to trust my gut instinct that even though people were saying, oh it's commission, you shouldn't do this job and you're an hour and a half away from home and you didn't need a college degree.

My gut instinct told me these people were the frickin real deal and they were.

So I think the number one factor that helped me to turn my life around was the people that I surrounded myself with.

What was your best moment in life versus your worst moment in life?

My best moment in life, I think was having my kids by far.

I think those were my best moments in life.

Winning a state championship is up there, winning some business awards is up there but not in the top three or four that come to the top of my mind.

Worst moments in life, man early on being locked up in juvenile, having friends murdered, you know that were close to me.

Losing friends, due to drugs or due to murder.

Those are some of my lowest moments in life.

Do they outweigh each other or do you need both of them?

Man I would give a lot of this stuff back to have some of these people back.

But when I look at what some of the bad things happening to me did for me,

it's almost like it was preparing me for a better moment.

Being poor at one point of my life helped me to relate and understand other people's issues.

Being around violence helped me to learn, being small, how to handle myself in any city in America, but also at the same time people taught me humility.

So I look at some of these things and to have different perspectives, not having a dad caused me to grow up quicker, which caused me to make certain decisions, which ended up making me better in life.

Being around a lot of women that had to raise me helped me to learn and understand women better than most men would be able to be small.

I think was a huge positive for me.

If I could go back and change and say, man, don't you all want to be 65 to 50?

I look at my attitude and the way I played the game and think if I was 65 to 50 what would have happened?

And sometimes you wish that.

And then I look at them thinking, man, I'm just glad because it taught me to be an animal.

To train four times as hard as everybody else. I had to be early. I had to stay late. I had to make more plays. I had to watch more film.

Had to be more coachable. Had to be more tough. Had to do all these extra things because of my size.

When I got into the world outside of sports, I realized that the size did not matter anymore and that the things...

inside of you were the things that would produce the world outside of you and all those things

that were one time a disadvantage turned around and were my advantage.

Why do I think that people get comfortable in their situation even though it's a bad

one?

I think that they look at the, would it will take to get them out of their uncomfortable

situation and the discomfort of where they are because they're comfortable if it's

a bad situation but they're still really, they're not comfortable but they'd rather

stay in that discomfort because they're comfortable and used to it and because they

know how much work it's going to take to get out of that situation.

So it's like pick your uncomfortable.

You want to be uncomfortable in staying in the situation or get uncomfortable for a while

and get out of that situation and I think people just choose, man I'd rather keep this

discomfort than that discomfort because I don't want to do all that work or I don't

want to learn how to do this or I don't want to be around those people.

I'm just comfortable for where I'm at or fear.

Fear of change, fear of, I know all of these people, I know how to function here.

I'm going to have to relearn, I'm going to have to go back to being small where no one

knows me in order to grow.

If I'm used to living this life, I'm cool in this circle.

I know how to speak in this circle.

I'm going to have to learn how to speak a different language.

I'm going to have to humble myself.

Maybe I'm a big don't-diller over here but over here with these people and don't matter

it actually the way I talk is a disadvantage and I have to humble myself and be open to

learning from these people and not operating where everybody else stopped that I was greater

than one area.

I also think that they don't look at their vision.

What do you want for your family 20 years from today?

What do you want from your family 15 years from today?

I think people live short term, short-sighted that stay in their comfort because they just

know, man I'm okay.

I just want to stay here this week.

I feel better this month.

I feel better because they're not looking at where they want to be.

I've been here for three years from today to encourage them to get out of their comfort

zone.

Were you always a leader or is that something that you learned over time?

As long as I can remember, I think I was leading.

I think I remember leading in class, I remember leading in sports, young.

What I can say is that got developed over time, got better over time because of the coaches

and the people that were putting my life and the effort that got that went into leadership

development.

But yeah, I can remember, I learned a whole hell of a lot over time, absolutely got better.

I can remember early on having some of those qualities.

How do you get past the bad days?

Gratitude, first thing is when you look at your bad days, when people get real down, they

typically lose their gratitude.

If you had a bad day and you would look at how much worse other people's days could be

and how they would love to be in your shoes, somebody died last night gasping for air.

Would love to have whatever your problem is right now.

It's ironic that I have a friend of mine that lost her mom looks like yesterday.

Maybe her or her mom would wish she could have another week or month or year or whatever.

So you're all upset because somebody quit, you got a flat tire, you're behind on your

bills for two weeks.

Like what's really the real issue here, if you look at how grateful that you can be, that

you have four kids and there's people out there that don't have any kids.

You have two parents, there's people out there that have no parents.

Your business didn't rock the way you wanted it to this month or year but you have a business

too rock and other people don't.

So I think just going to gratitude on my bad days but I'm still not perfect.

I also have learned that after the rain comes sunshine and it may seem gloomy for a couple

days, the more you soak in that, the longer it seems that goes and the more you focus on

letting it pass and controlling what you can control.

A lot of times bad days are dictated by not only perspective and a lack of gratitude but

people trying to control shit they can't control.

The most stressful thing to do is when you try to focus on things you can't control.

Think of all the things that you can not control that you allow to steal your joy and remove

those and focus on what it is that you can't control.

Keep an attitude of gratitude.

For me to bad days I got to plug in some positivity into my head so I'm listening to some

positive audio books or people on YouTube and exercise.

I have to blow off steam, I have to get some exercise in to be at my best and to stay mentally

healthy.

How does negativity at home affect your day away from home?

I don't know if there's a bigger determining factor.

It's very difficult to be focused especially in an environment.

The more success that you're going to bring, the more problems that you're going to have

to solve, the more problems you have to solve, the more stressed that that brings, the

more you have to learn to stay calm.

If you have baggage going on in your head at home, it makes it definitely more difficult

to be successful out there in the world already taking on problems and stress.

Home needs to be a place of rest in security, but it doesn't always work out that way.

For me, having support at home and not arguing all the time and not having somebody nagging

all the time at me in my situation, I don't have somebody at home that's extremely

needy.

For me to go for two or three days on the grind, not getting harassed or made to feel bad,

but I'll show also let me know if I'm taking it too far and it helps me to be better

as a parent.

I don't know if there's anything that can affect me more than if there's issues going

on at home.

I think it's got to be up there as one of the top three things to do is get in your personal

life in order, get in your support system in order, get in your home life in order to

have a successful business life.

Your personal life will show symptoms in your business life.

Do you have any advice for a person with no vision, someone who cannot see success ever

happening to them?

Absolutely, I wouldn't say that I never saw success happening.

I felt like I would have some success, but I wouldn't say that I thought big enough

or had a big vision.

My advice would be to expose yourself to people that think big.

Don't be afraid to ask questions to people and ask somebody to help you create a vision

for yourself.

It takes humility.

How many people lack the humility to just ask somebody to help them?

The worst that can happen is they'll say no.

Most people won't.

You ask somebody can you help me create a vision?

Get around people that think big.

Read books, audio books, of people that are where you want to be.

It'll help you to create your vision because you realize how human these people are.

People listen to their story and you'll hear adversity and obstacles and that it's okay

to have these things happen.

So many times people have adversity happen in their life and obstacles happen in their

life.

They think that means they shouldn't have success or that it's not meant to be or they're

never going to make it.

So they stop.

It couldn't be further from the truth.

It's an illusion.

It's not true.

If it was, they call it an obstacle because it's something you can get around or over.

Otherwise they call it like a steel wall.

It's an obstacle.

And my friend James Keifer used to tell me it's an obstacle illusion.

It's an, you know, you're an obstacle illusion.

It's an illusion that you can't get past it but you actually can.

And imagine if you really want something bad enough, forget who said I was listening to

somebody's podcast and they were giving this example.

But let's say you had a kid that God forbid gotten a car accident.

You got a phone call at work and they said kids in the car accident and you went outside

and you saw your car had a flat tire.

Would you say it's just not meant to be for you to get to the hospital or would you find

a way around it?

So you borrow somebody's car, you go running down, all of a sudden you stop at a stoplight,

car breaks down.

Would you say you know what?

Probably not meant to be for me to get to the hospital to see my child or would you throw

somebody out of their car or beg and plea and find a way to get there.

And then you get to the hospital and your child is in the back and people come out and

they say here fill out all this paperwork sit here for an hour and we'll bring you back.

Would you be okay with that and think that it was just meant to be for you to not be

back there or would you plow past everybody and say I have to get back here.

So often people come up with obstacles and as these obstacles arise they think it's

a sign for them to not pursue what it is that they're supposed to pursue.

I think it's a frickin' choice man.

People are looking for this sign of who they're supposed to marry and what it ain't ever

going to be perfect.

It becomes a frickin' choice.

You're going to have obstacles.

You can choose to win or you can choose to make excuses and choosing to win means you

gotta get through adversity and not think that it's something that's meant to stop you.

How do sports and fitness help you so much in success?

It gives me a way to relieve stress and outlet.

It keeps me more patient.

It keeps me growing because I'm never where I want to be and there's always somebody better

than me.

I can give three days a week to martial arts and jujitsu and there's people that are given

seven days a week so I'm never where I want to be.

So it keeps me growing, it keeps me uncomfortable, it keeps me humble.

But probably the biggest thing is it keeps my mind right.

When I exercise and work out the way that my mind feels, the way that my mind thinks,

I don't get sick as much as everybody else.

I get sick like everybody else but not as much as everybody else.

I recover faster than everybody else I feel like because I'm in shape and I take health

and wellness seriously.

When people can't understand how are you getting home?

If I'm with somebody on a business trip and we have a three day grind as much as I believe

in six to eight hours of sleep, sometimes on my business grind a couple days ago and I

can't make that happen.

I got to go four to five or four to six hours of sleep and I'll be with a couple other

people and I'll watch them slow down by day two when I'm getting up to work out and they

can't do it.

I'm up earlier than them, I'm going later than them, I'm still going their tired and I think

it reflects the physical conditioning and the health and the food and the nutrition that

like an athlete, you can go further in your journey, in your race than others and they

can't keep up with you in this race if you treat your body the right way.

Last two questions, why is grind such an important word to you?

Grind is defined as a repetitive task that somebody does over and over again to obtain a desired

result.

I think so many people desire greatness but they underestimate the amount of work that

it takes to put in.

My whole life has been aggrined from not having a ton of money to being the man in my house

to growing up in a rougher environment to being small in sports.

My whole life was aggrined and so I tell people I ain't grind and I am the grind and I feel

like that's how I've won my whole life and I think that's one of the characteristics

that I've seen from people that consistently win as they got to work ethic that's impeccable

and they're willing to grind and grind doesn't sound like something that is always cute

and sexy.

It sounds like something that has to happen in order to produce a desired result and it's

repetitive and it's redundant and it needs to happen.

It represents the process necessary and one word to get to where you want to be.

The last one is why do you think it is that people want nice things the fast way without

doing the work.

Why do I think that it is that people want nice things the fast way without doing the

work?

I think that most people want anybody, human would want nice things the fast way versus

putting in the work.

If you tell me I can get this done in a year versus five years why would I not want to do it

in a year?

I think the trap to this is nothing worth having lasts and nothing worth having is easy.

Things that are easy don't last and things that last are not easy.

So I think anybody that has achieved any sort of greatness is very weary about people.

that say this is gonna be really easy.

They're promising you 500,000 hours a year,

you're not gonna have to work very hard.

They're promising you, you're gonna get this,

and it doesn't add up to the amount of work

that you're gonna do.

Only fools buy into that stuff

because the real ones have already,

like when you've already been through the process,

what it costs, you understand is what it costs.

Like if somebody comes to me and shows up

with a nice new watch that I know is 10 grand,

they say this is a thousand dollars,

I'm already like, is this stolen?

Cause it can't be real, is it a knockoff?

Like this can't be legit.

I think people get fooled in the wanting the things

the easy way and they end up losing that thousand dollars

and buying the wrong watch or buying a knockoff

and getting hustle by hustling the system

and trying to shortcut it, you hustle yourself

and cut yourself short.

And I think people don't understand that.

They're not top that enough.

Not a lot of people obtain what it is

that a lot of these people want to obtain.

And so they don't understand that what they think is easy

is actually making their life harder.

And people that learn that they understand

the reason why they're doing the things that are hard

is cause they want to make their life easier.

And so people got to get that through your head,

is if you see somebody eating fish and vegetables

and juicing vegetables and taking vitamins,

it's not cause they like to do that.

They understand this short term thing

they don't feel like doing is gonna give them

a better result down the road.

If you see somebody putting in a lot of hours

and grinding and working on their business

or whatever it is, I know for me my motivation was

so down the road I have options in life.

Now I choose to grind.

I used to have to grind.

There's a difference.

And I am able to choose to grind because I did

what I had to do when I had to grind.

And I didn't always feel like doing it.

And so I think I wanna just encourage people out there

that the real short cut is the process.

And it's just like when you try to take a short cut

with directions and you make a wrong turn,

you end up taking longer to get to your destination

if you just would have took the route that you knew.

Eventually you're going to get there.

If you take a short cut and it's the wrong turn,

you're gonna cut yourself short

and you're gonna have to, it's gonna cost you more time.

But there really isn't a lot of short cuts in business

and in success.

The short cut is putting into work.

The short cut is doing the right thing.

And the faster that you get to work on doing the work,

the faster you're not gonna have to do the things

you don't feel like doing it.

At least you're gonna be where you wanna be.

The longer you delay doing the work that's necessary,

the longer it's gonna take for you to get to where you wanna be.

And here's what I've learned in Flation, babe.

The longer you wait, the more expensive that it gets.

The older that you are, the more expensive that the price gets.

And the earlier and the sooner you could pay the price,

the better your life is going to be.

So I would like to thank you guys one more time.

My fellow brothers and sisters out here on the grind.

Thanks for joining us on another episode

of the Grindcast. Get ready us a new day.

Count money, man.

Money that grits us.

I'm trying to told, I'm trying to told him I'm a beast, bud.