From The Top With Celina Pompeani

Everybody, I'm Selena Pompeyany and this is another episode of From the Top,

presented by our meanest stone and I have Simon Areas with me today. I am so

excited Simon. Me too. I don't even I don't even need to introduce you because you

are everywhere. I know people know you if you don't know Simon you will now. So

he is the owner of Areas agencies. He has a fabulous podcast called The Grind

Cast. We will get into more details about The Grind Cast later. He's a

philanthropist, a motivational speaker and he has such an inspiring story. I

can't wait for you to share your story with everybody Simon. I look forward to it.

Yeah, so tell me all about you your business. The person you are today because

you have such an inspirational background story and you motivate so many

people so I can't wait for our listeners to hear this. Oh man, I really don't

like talking about myself much. I think there's more value in just trying to

get the whatever knowledge or wisdom that I have. So I'm gonna blow through I

blow through that as fast as I can like Reader's Digest version. You know I'm

from Youngstown, Ohio. I love it. You're repinit today. Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown

invented grit and my mom showed me grit. She had me at 19 years old. Single mom

and grew up on the east side of Youngstown. She sold the house my going into my

freshman year of high school for $11,000 and bought our first like house. That

was a hand me down from my great-grandmother who passed away and my mom bought

our home for $32,000. It was one bedroom, one bathroom. I lived in the attic.

And this ain't like I'm sad about it or sob story. There's so many people that

have it way worse. It's not like you know poor me. Just this is just the real

story. You know it explains a lot about why I'm so close with my mother and and

my mom was boy and and all of that stuff. You know I just was with Emory and I

had the chance to I'd do a trip with my mom once a year. Oh I love it. Where'd you go?

This is five years. We went to Sarasota. It was an accident and then I'm like I see

what God had in store because my friends were just spoiling me rotten. I got the

best Uber ever. I had Emory showed up in the black and yellow Lamborghini people thought

I was so important. I saw this on Instagram. I had a blend and Bobby

gave me his boat and I'm like man they probably thought I planned this. You

know I just it just happened that way but you know I have good friends but my mom

you know single mom had us you know early and when I went to high school

about the house for $32,000 and and I'm living like a double life you know I'm

playing sports and I got a great football player. I don't know about great but I

was good. Oh no I saw highlights. You were great. I was good so we won a state

championship and I was a captain. I went to college played football at Mercyhurst

University Division 2 football program in Erie. Started four years there at

Safety. Got in some trouble in high school a little bit. I was spent some time

in juvenile myself. My house was shot up you know when I was a kid and it's not

like they're just picked a random house. You know I was doing things that I you

know I look back on it I'm like man I don't even know how I'm how I'm here and

that's how the whole thing started with inspiring minds of you know once I had

the opportunity to take care of myself and know that it was going to be

something long term that would sustain in my life you know when I started out

in business and had some success I just had an overwhelming feeling of like I

got to go home and do something for these kids that I know exactly what they're

going through and I know I can relate you know to them and if we could just save

one person so that was like over seven years ago we did the inspiring minds

thing and I've been in the insurance industry for 16 years started right out of

college it was my first job started out in sales now we're in Pittsburgh got

24 offices 14 different states I'm happily married and been with my wife you

know going on seven years married now we've been together over a decade thank you

and you have beautiful children three three kids got a five-year-old daughter

three-year-old boy four-month-old boy and my 18-year-old adopted daughter Amaya

who graduated high school this year and so she she came with us in eighth

grade her dad was my best friend growing up he was murdered my freshman year of

college and so I had the opportunity to have a piece of him you know by

having her you know with me and she's really special so that's that's me in

the nutshell wow you're amazing you really are I mean the fact that you had a

really tough upbringing but you still had such a strong support system with

your family and your mom I mean I'm sure having that in your life is really

what helped you get through everything and even sports my dad always talks about

how sports really shape you they change your lives you learn these lessons

playing sports growing up and you carry them throughout your whole life and I

football I'm sure you remember things still to this day no doubt I think the

biggest lesson I got from playing football you know as you can see you know I'm

I'm not physically gifted with size you know I'm vertically challenged as they

say so I was you know I was five foot seven hundred and eighty pounds you know

playing college football and playing you know against people you know six three

six four beating people out to get on the field that were six two six three you

know D1 transfers and it and it happened through not being blessed with a

certain special athletic gift it was like all right we're gonna outground these

people like the only option I have is is I'm gonna come earlier I'm gonna stay

later I'm gonna go harder I'm gonna dive I'm gonna bleed I'm gonna do whatever

it requires to get a boost because I can't change the size but I can change the

grip of it and when I got out of college you know I went to high school that way

people thought I wouldn't play there I went to college nobody thought that I

would play there and then I come out and get into business and I realized that

it was all for my advantage that all the challenges of being a small

athlete was what you need in business in order to make it like it's not all

sunshine or rainbows it's before you see all the you know it's like the show is

from the top so sometimes people see you right now and they see you know

whatever looks great and you know even in your life you know it's like oh she

just must have always had it that way just you know from the top but you really

no matter where you come from you start from the bottom you know in order to

get to the top and that's the stuff that nobody ends up seeing and it's all

that grittiness in the middle of you know not quitting and outworking people to

stuff that's not sexy yeah you know that's the stuff that really it requires the

win I love it one of my favorite sayings has always been when when talent hard

work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard yeah I think that is such a

great-life motto it's so true and it's true to you too look at you it's amazing

so after I'm gonna go back to after your career your football career college

you graduated from college before you started your own thing and you know

you went off on your own with areas agencies where did you first begin again

Cleveland and you quickly rose to the top with these companies yeah yeah with

within my first year I went from you know sales killing it in sales to run

on my own office in Columbus and I opened it you know from scratch with me and

three other people you know within a one-year span so 12 months everything

happened really quickly but I was working seven days a week you know every

single day you know that you know hear people talk about balance you know

like I had no balance it was all out of balance and I think I was I was lucky

you know because I don't know if I would be able to do that today you know with

with with my family and other things that I got going on but it was the

perfect storm of being like I miss and nothing I don't have any kids I don't

have a wife or you know like that what else am I gonna do but get myself in

trouble and spend the money I'm gonna just I'm gonna just go to work yeah that's

smart yeah young eight it's so smart well I want to go back to you mentioned

briefly in the beginning inspiring minds I want to talk about that wonderful

organization and and you're rolling it how you started it because you are about

giving back to others yeah tell me more about inspiring so you know when that

transition happened of like all right I feel like I hate to say I made it you

know but it's like you feel like I'm well enough to where I can I owe it to

somebody else and I can and I can handle it you know it's not gonna affect my

lifestyle I have to start giving even more and so I said all right the first

place I'm gonna start is in my hometown area and I started looking for you

know kids in the demographic that just you know maybe in that poverty area or

you know not making a lot of money you know single parent you know that whole

market and I saw somebody in the town over from me Warren Ohio that I played

football against and he had a successful youth program and so I went there and

visited it and started to contribute to it financially and I fell in love with

it on accident so it was like you know when you fall in love it's almost like you

know sometimes it happens when you least expect it you know all of a sudden I'm

like all-in building this youth program like driving back to Youngstown for

five days a week with a pregnant wife running fun razors you know my wife up to

one o'clock in the morning would her belly out eight months pregnant you know

to mean just helping to do things for a fun razor to build this thing and we

were like all-in you know from from that point so then you know Youngstown's been

around now for about seven years and you know then I told myself all right you

know I've been in Pittsburgh now for 13 years and it's it's been a it's been a

second home to me you know truthfully I mean the people my friends the people

that that I'm surrounded by my wife my children the business that you know

the business success I've been able to have was all because of Pittsburgh and

people from Pittsburgh so I got this loyalty now that I had to Youngstown I got

that same love you know for for Pittsburgh so I start getting that same feeling

of like all right what did you do here buddy you like it's good you took care of

them but now you're here what have you done for Pittsburgh people you know so it's

like all right we need to bring this thing to to Pittsburgh and I got blessed

with a board and a team of people that are genuinely on that mission with no

other reason or agenda for doing it other than to help people that all get along

and love each other and are willing to do the frickin work there's a lot of

times you can get on a board and there's like not do anything you know one person

you know running for 300 yards of game and playing defense and doing everything

but when you get on a team like this there's our our board is just really really

special people and I value it more because I've seen other things now if this

was my first experience I wouldn't realize how good we really have it but

man to have people that really genuinely care they're passionate they're

they're giving up their time they're giving up their of their money they all

have influence and they're like hands on the board is like going hands on in the

trenches you know with with the kids you know all of that stuff and Emre he's on

the board Emre is he's the vice president of the board we really just listen

he's actually sitting over here right now we should tell him to come on he'll come

back on we'll get him next time but yeah he I know he's a huge part of my

I met Emre through his heart you know that that I had a golf outing in Youngstown

fundraiser and one of my friends Josh Adamic yeah shot out to Josh and

I have it really state and and so he he was coming out there and he said he was

gonna support me and all of a sudden he comes in and he got Emre and he got Bobby

and they all you know they all showed up and and brought you know brought their

brought a couple nice cars brought some resources and I'm like man I I have

people that I grew up with in my own hometown that for whatever reason didn't

find a way to come support and I knew that they could and I wasn't bitter about

it but it just made me value people coming from a whole another city and a whole

another state that didn't even owe nothing to me to show that type of love and

loyalty because that's the way that I try to roll you know I'm a I'm a loyal

person to the bone you know that if I'm with you like we got to go without

24 you know if we got to go without sleep for a day whatever you need me there

tomorrow like I'm there you know whatever loyalty so when I see that coming back

I'm like why I know we got something special those people end up being the

people that we start the board with here in the whole program with in Pittsburgh

I love it that's the great thing about Pittsburgh too I think we're a really

special city in a special town because even you you are not from here but you

have grown to it's almost I'm sure it feels like your hometown now you've been

here for so many years and it's a tight-knit community there's good people in

Pittsburgh and you see it first time it's a bigger youngstown yeah there's still old

school values here and that's why I say I got lucky because when I built the

business areas agencies we're all over the place now we're even working on

getting into another country right now and the business was born with with

Pittsburgh people and when you look at like all right their grandparents their

parents they're all like come from this blue collar background if you look a

couple levels up of like their people that how they got to Pittsburgh and

their grandparents they got them old school values and loyalty and very similar to

youngstown so it was like a natural fit you know for me in big sports town you

know I love that about about the area even though I am I was just

Cleveland Browns fan I am a Cleveland Browns fan because of the loyalty it's a

weird relationship in my wife is a

I'll accept that.

You have half a hand.

How about the kids?

What are the kids?

They're split.

They're split.

They're split.

My wife doesn't.

She's not admitting it.

She's watching it happen right before her eyes every once

in a while.

My daughter will root in the middle with me.

But we'll see.

That's going to be interesting.

I got to fill in on the loose.

Because you're loyal.

Yeah, you are.

I think so.

Wow, speaking of your beautiful family,

I love your entire family.

Your wife is fantastic.

Your kids are gorgeous.

They look just like the two of you.

Beautiful family.

I absolutely love Sienna.

Your daughter, Sienna.

She is a star on Instagram.

And we should have brought her here today.

We're going to bring her back here.

I mean, tell me about her.

She's amazing.

She's a little ball of energy.

She likes to entertain.

She likes to entertain.

She does like flips and cartwheels and no handed

this and back springs all through the house.

She has such a great on-camera presence, I mean,

at a young age, how old is she?

She's five.

So she started.

I feel like that came from those pageants.

She started doing the pageants.

And she's made it to Nationals last year.

She was top five in the nation for kindergarteners.

I can't wait until she's misuniverse.

Me too.

Me too.

At first, I was like anti, though.

I was anti.

You know what I'm like?

Man, what are we doing?

Spending all this time?

She's going on this stage.

Like, I don't want her to think her beauty has to be in,

you know, presenting herself on stage in order to find value

in herself.

I mean, I had all these concerns about this.

And as I went through it for a couple of years,

and I watched her confidence to like walk in front

of a thousand people, you know, we did a show of fashion,

show in New York City during Fashion Week.

It was like, I had to break into place.

I had to sneak into place.

There was like, now I'm like, I'm the dad.

This ain't going down.

I went through the basement.

And if anybody's listening from there, it's too late now.

I slid into back dough.

And I had to.

It was sold out.

I mean, it was like huge.

And I got to why I sat by snuck second row.

And I got to watch her.

I'm like all the VIP people and stuff just faking it

till you make it.

I thought you got to be praying that nobody catches me, you know.

And she comes walking out in front of all these people

and lights going and all this stuff.

And I'm like, this is really amazing.

Like I would have myself would have been nervous.

And so now I'm watching what I do like about it

is the sense of confidence that it's built in the ability

to communicate, you know, with people.

Even I always look at these pageants.

I just watched Miss Universe.

I love it.

A lot of my friends have competed.

And I think it's so great at a young age

that she's involved with it because you even,

they teach you how to become a good communicator,

a good speaker on state.

I mean, what you learn in pageants,

it could carry you into so many different directions.

It's amazing.

And I already see that in her.

So I had to bring her up.

You got to follow her Instagram.

She's Instagram famous.

Princess Siena Capri.

I love it.

Princess Siena Capri.

Go follow her on Instagram.

Well, I'm so happy to have you on our podcast.

But I want to know all about your podcast

because you've been doing it for a long time.

The grind cast.

Tell me about the grind.

Yeah, the grind cast.

So we either are giving business tips and advice,

motivation, or we're interviewing people

that we know will add value to people.

Either people that have had extreme success in business,

extreme success, and mixed martial arts, professionals,

because it's all the same mindset.

In order to make it to that level,

it's the same type of stuff it requires to make it at any level

to do anything great.

So we just try to expose any contacts and connections

that we have from professional athletes

to business owners and stuff like that.

Anybody that's making an impact that

can add value to other people, that's the grind cast.

And then I got my long time friends that grew up with me

in charge of it all.

So I got my friend Giovanni.

We grew up together.

He's the best.

He's back here now doing his thing.

What's funny is how he does all this.

What's funny, Selena, is not a shock that he's doing.

Well, even he's alive at its this whole thing.

I don't know how he doesn't.

He's been doing this since we were young kids.

He was the only one.

None of us knew anything about computers.

We used to tease him behind the computer.

And then he would put things together.

He would make a studio for people to wrap out of a closet

in an apartment building with limited resources.

And it would come out great.

He was always able to rig stuff.

You know what I mean?

When you hear stories of people doing stuff with hangers

and tin foil.

And he would just figure it out.

You know what I mean?

He was way too smart for me.

And so to have him behind the scenes doing everything

to watch it all come for full circle is cool and funny

at the same time.

Then I got big perm.

He's always on the grind cast.

He's the co-host now.

He's the co-host.

He's the co-host.

He's the co-host.

And on the grind cast.

And we also grew up together.

He was the first one to drive out of all of us.

We would all pitch in like a dollar and have him take us places

to them all when it was like four or five dollars

would get us around for the whole day.

So to have him with me to enjoy the fruits of the labor,

and to know the love and know the loyalty

and be able to complete each other sentences and stuff

like that, I was an only child.

So I didn't grow up with brothers or sisters.

You know what I mean?

So when I take to people, it's like,

those are like my brothers and sisters.

You know what I mean?

So I even look into themery and Andrea.

Like that's what we call each other, brother and sister.

That's how we roll.

And so yeah, I got big perm on the grind cast.

I love it.

And we keep looking at everybody because we do have a live audience.

We got everybody back here.

It's kind of cool.

We usually don't have many people in here.

I like it too.

I like it.

Well, I got the chance to visit your studio a couple months ago.

It's amazing.

It really is.

You have such a cool setup.

Yeah, I like it.

Jermani put it all together.

Oh, and that's what we were joking.

Like when he came back here, there's so much equipment

and so much that needs to be connected and plugged in.

And how he knew how to do it.

I mean, it's a gift.

I would have no clue.

Yep.

If Emory told me to run the podcast, well, we wouldn't have one.

If I had like 30 years experience back there,

believe me, believe me.

I'm the same, I'm the same exact way for sure.

Well, Simon, I love talking to you.

I could talk to you all day.

I really could.

I can't actually.

But you, I mean, you're so inspirational.

You have such a great success story.

And you worked so hard to get where you are today.

What would you say would be the keys to life and everything

in your career family character?

Yeah.

Think working on yourself first, the answers to everything

usually people think are out there somewhere.

Why can't I fix these people?

Why can't I fix this person?

Why can't I fix my wife?

Why can't I fix my husband?

Why can't I fix these people?

And if we just focus on fixing ourselves,

then the things that you look at and the way

that you look at them change and you start

to attract the right things into your life.

I don't want to get too crazy.

But that whole law of attraction thing, whatever you start

thinking about, whatever energy that you start giving out

starts coming back your way.

And so you got to learn to not even pay attention

to the negative energy, because the negative energy

is going to come when you're doing anything positive.

When you're really pushing, when you're really going forward,

the cliche saying of having haters is a real thing.

So anybody that's ever been at the top or climbed anything

knows that there's a certain level of hate that comes with it.

And I think that discourages people sometimes

on their climb because people are taking shots at them.

And I had somebody tell me one time,

imagine LeBron James, imagine Kobe Bryant,

imagine these professional athletes.

You don't think they go to away games and have people booing them

into stands and talking about their mother.

And they can't let it get in their head or go running up

into the stands trying to fight with the fans.

And you know what I mean?

Like be a professional.

And you got to expect for those things to come.

And you got to be able to do your job anyways and stay positive.

So I think it's hard to build a positive life

with the negative mindset.

So being positive, which how do you do that?

You hang around positive people.

You can't hang around people that aren't going

in the direction of where you're going.

And I think sometimes that's one of the,

you don't get to go up without giving up something.

You have to sacrifice.

And I've taught my daughter.

I have sacrifice tattooed on the back of my arm.

And we were in Marco Island this past week.

And she's asking me what everything is.

And so we get into sacrifice.

And I said, honey, I want you to explain

I want to explain to you what sacrifice is.

It's really more of an investment short term to get something

better long term.

Let me explain that you give up something that you kind of want.

For something bigger and better down the road

that you'll come back to you.

So if you give me one piece of your candy

and I give you a whole box of candy back,

that would be a temporary sacrifice

in order to get something bigger.

And so I think in order to go up,

you always got to give up something.

And part of the giving up is you got to give up people

that are negative for your life.

Whether it's a boyfriend, family members, friends,

people that you have this loyalty with,

you almost have to be careful in order to even help anybody else

or to help them.

Sometimes you just have to give that up

and you have to go, you know, cut that out

in order to go to the next level.

And I think just staying grateful.

That's a huge thing every day.

It's hard to be depressed and grateful at the same time.

You know, it's perspective of, is it really that bad?

What are all the blessings I have in my life

in order to encourage you to keep going?

Because in order to do something great,

you're gonna have to go through major,

you're gonna have to go through obstacles and adversity.

And the adversity is exactly what you need

in order to make you who it is

that you're supposed to be in this world

if you're supposed to do something big.

And I think too many times people quit

in the middle of that journey.

You know, I've never seen anybody quit their way to the top.

So if you wanna get to the top,

one of the things that's required is you can't quit.

And the reason why you can't quit

is because you're gonna wanna quit.

That's how you separate yourself from other people

of like can I just hang on through this moment?

And when you're going through these tough times

and these tough moments,

whether it's a relationship or a business,

people start to look at the season that they're in,

in their life and judge like this is gonna be the next 10 years.

You're just in a bad season.

You know what I mean, they're summer.

But there's also winter here in Pittsburgh.

And it's not like we think we're stuck for 12 months,

you know, with snow, it's like no,

this is winter, summer's coming.

You know what I mean?

And climate change is like,

looks like a real thing.

So we start getting a little bit longer summer

into like December.

So we know when we go through some crappy weather

that it's not gonna be forever.

And so I think people need to understand,

you know, whether you look at somebody

that built a successful marriage long term

or somebody that built a successful business long term,

the two things those people and things having common

is they could tell you about tough times

and the difference between them winning the losing

was they just didn't give up.

They just found a way to get through that moment

through that season.

And so I think that's a requirement

that people need to have in order to be successful.

You gotta be encouraged through those tough times

that it's not gonna last,

it's that whole, you know, tough times don't last.

Tough people do.

You know, that's the stuff.

Everything, I just, I can't wait to rewatch this back

and just listen to you again.

Because you really, I mean, what a great motivational speaker

you are.

Even I'm listening to some of your tips

and I'm like, when I'm feeling down or having,

you know, not such a positive day,

that's all you need to do.

Really, and wake up and be grateful.

I'm honored to be on here with you.

You're the best.

You're the best.

You're the best.

I remember when Emory was telling me how bad

he would just wanted you to be able to be the person,

whatever that hurt, like the face of the deal.

You know, I'm dropping out of the street.

I'm like, this is up there.

Oh, there she is over there.

She's everywhere.

You, my friend, are everywhere.

Seeing your face everywhere, which is, which is a great thing.

It's your beautiful inside now.

But I remember how excited he was about everything

and hoping, you know, and all.

And then to watch it, watch it come to fruition is,

is super cool.

It's been really cool.

It was in the works for a while

and we finally made it happen.

So it's great.

It was so great to have you on here.

You're amazing.

The grind cast, make sure to tune in, if you don't already,

and Simon, before you go, we are going to just sing a little bit.

You sing?

We're going to sing.

Yeah.

I'll do whatever everybody tells me to do.

All right.

All we're going to do, I'm not a big singer.

I'm not either.

I'm a terrible singer.

So every person that comes in here, they carry me.

So we're just going to do the jingle.

Ooh, our mean nice.

Oh, see, you're out.

I'm ready.

We got our practice and let's do it.

I like it.

Ooh, in the beginning.

We do a nice, and we're going to do it.

Oh, we're going to have her on next time.

OK, Simon.

Three, two, one.

Ooh, our mean nice tune.

Simon Arias, you are the best.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you.