Mike Russin

Young's town oh

What's crack hey?

What's up gang welcome to another episode of the grind cast get ready

It's a new day and we got money Mike Russ and in the house. What's up Russ? What's up coach? Oh, man

Glad to have you back on the grind cast with the new studio. What do you think?

Versus the last and we had like a picnic table was dope. This is insane. This is a bread

Now look you like it. Oh, I love it. All right. This is crazy

I feel like I'm in a broadcasting studio right now. You are we about to broadcast this out to the world

Maybe so let's let's let's let's start out talking about

How important you think it is you know, I've you've overcome a lot of adversity and to us it can get old the

Conversation right but to the right person this is brand new and and they need to hear about it

When I look at you one of the reasons why I trust you in

Future business moves is because I've watched you overcome adversity. It's very

Difficult for me to trust a person that I haven't watched go through some stuff and persevere because I don't know what will happen if

There's a little bit of chaos or turbulence and the one thing that I've seen

In business or life period if you're going to level up a couple levels

There's always a little bit of turbulence just like a plane

You know just there's a and and I don't want to be riding with

Somebody that's controlling the plane. You know, maybe we can ride on the plane

But I don't want to be rolling with somebody that's controlling some of the plane if they can't make it through some some turbulence

And we've watched you overcome some some some turbulence and so why don't you start out and talk to us about

You know some of the turbulence some of the obstacles some of the things that you've went through adversities

How you've overcome it? What it looks like, you know right now and how young folks can learn from those mistakes to prevent those

mistakes

Also, you know because some of them, you know, we probably look at now

It's like these were preventable right, you know these these mistakes

So why don't you go through you know the obstacles and adversities and then where you're at now right so

The first one that sticks out to me is definitely school was getting was getting kicked out of school

You know that that was tough for me. I was the first college. Yeah. Yeah college

That was the first person in my family to actually go to college and that was that was a big deal

Allegheny. Yes, Allegheny College

And I made made some mistakes made some poor decisions and

They asked me to not come back, you know halfway through my seat

So I'm I'm one semester away from getting my degree and they asked me to not come back and

You know that was that was tough, you know thinking and and retro spec'd about that being the first person to go to school

And here I am setting an example for my little brother my little sister other people in the family

And I get kicked out

So that's when I found a I L and you know, instead of getting down and you know when I look back on that experience

I remember man. I was giving you more credit. I thought you dropped out and saw the vision

You got kicked out. I got yeah, I had no other choice

I don't tell people I don't tell people the real story too much

But now I'm I'm in a place where I feel comfortable sharing it

You know, yeah, I'm in a place where I feel comfortable sharing it so

But you know one of the things that stands out to me and talking about dealing with adversity is I look back

And I can remember I was born like a baby and my mom's arms like a like a little kid

The next day I woke up I went for a run and I started blasting my resume online

You know, I said screw this I consider around one day one day 12 hours maybe I'd I 12 hours

Um, and the next day I said instead of just sitting around and feeling bad for myself and crying and trying to get it

You know, I'm like screw them. I wanted to call the dean and bag them. I'm like screw them

So I put my resume online

Couple places called me a I L being one of them we went over last time how I started but I started with a I L and then

You know, right out of the gate with a I L I hit a bunch of adversity

I personally recruited a lot of people from my hometown

I lost a lot of them

A lot of people that started with me aren't here anymore, you know, just two of them that stick out

From like day one Ray salmon and and and Jeremiah Russ and my little brother still here still here after six years

I mean, there's others that we found along the way that have been here three four five years

But those were those were the two with me at the beginning and then

You know, we hit some adversity in business and you know, we're retention drop wasn't making money

We're just talking about this the other day. I can remember Travis my my dog runs king of Prussia

In eerie driving seven hours back and forth running both offices

You know him and I sit and when it when we were just in eerie sitting there like almost in tears like we can't even pay our bills

How are we supposed to run a business right? So I think the important lesson about that is

When we were going through all that adversity

To where we couldn't even pair our own car notes, you know mine got repote. I was behind rent three or four months

Behind closed doors we were busted up we were broken

But we were able to know wipe our eyes get excited go out and run team meetings

go out and run workshops go out and run agency meetings and get people fired up and get people excited and get people

bought into the vision so

Another important lesson so lesson number one from getting kicked out of college is respond to adversity quick

Strike back quick quick fast. Don't spend too much time. So

Yeah feeling bad for yourself ain't gonna solve shit sitting around crying

The second lesson is especially if you're in leadership

You know, you need to learn even though it still hurts like you're still in pain

You need to learn how to put on the right face and act the right way for the people that look up to you in business and life

Or in sports like if I'm the captain of my football team and I get an f on a test

I can't go to practice crying and bitching and moaning and complaining people looking up to you

People are looking at elevating them exactly. So learning how to elevate yourself

And there's been a whole lot of other adversities, you know coming to Pittsburgh the first time

We failed in Pittsburgh because I wasn't I wasn't a good delegator

I was doing everything in my

My self in eerie so when I came to Pittsburgh eerie fell apart had to go back rebuild

Built it up to one of the other top satellite offices and our agency moved back to Pittsburgh and we blew up from there

You know in another little bit of adversity recently that just happened was uh

You know a good friend of mine

Overdose and you know his funerals today

And this was just a couple days ago at our leadership development school and

I wanted to set you know and I don't want to knock anybody else and how they deal with grief or adversity at all

That's that's not the point of this but I

Took took same thing as getting kicked out of college. I took some time. I stepped out of school

You took me for some ice cream. You said you can't feel bad if you got some ice cream and you right

We went we got ice cream. We came back into LDS

We rocked LDS next day executive council came back from executive council

Hopped right in the phone session with the team pump it people up meet with pipeline get pizza for everybody

Today doing the podcast funeral tonight and then tomorrow. I'm going out and I'm hitting the field so you know learning how to

I think the biggest lessons in dealing with adversity man it is

Have a have a quick turnaround. I'm not saying don't process the grief

I'm not saying don't push emotions down deal with them process them

But act quickly respond quickly and make sure that the people that are looking up to you

Because I've seen how you've dealt with adversity and that's what when I texted you all the things that were that I was doing

I wasn't doing it to build myself up

I was saying thank you for setting the example for us on how to deal with adversity push through and keep going

So there's there's a lot of lessons to be learned but when you look back at the career not being able to pay bills to

You know now being able blessed to to drive a mazerotti and put a big ass rock on Geneva's finger and you know looking at looking at houses and stuff like that

It's it's cool. How does Geneva she's 20 she's three years younger than me 24 24 years old yeah

She's driving in mazerottes and rocking the spikes on her shoes. She got the lubes. She got all kinds of lubatons

She's she's a big old rock on her finger

You know she's doing all right right and and I told her the other day, you know she bet on you

And she she was able to stay down and and and stay strong with her bet even when when when you were down right and that's a great thing to see and

More exciting to to know that you guys are getting ready to enjoy an unbelievable life together right you know

You made 50 G's last month and

And yeah, I don't know if you've worked it out yet, but you know September and October

Um, you know if we do what I think we're gonna do do you have any idea what you're gonna make those months

Total between the two months

probably worse case

150,000 that's what I yeah 150,000 over two months. Yeah over a 60 day period. Yeah plus renewals. Yeah and and at 27 and those just pop too

Yeah, so that's that's that's that's 80 grand 75,000 a month for the listener

You know if you do that for 12 months, you know you're you're talking about damn near a million dollars

At 27 years old, but how many people would have made it through that adversity?

You know out of a hundred people to go through the same adversity. There's maybe one that'll that'll that'll go through that

Uh, so I want to commend you you know on that and and uh appreciate it

What what have you learned in your ability now to develop people? You know, I think you've developed a lot of people

How would you suggest to others?

How to develop you know others and get them ready for the next level and uh and talk to us about building relationships because

Think everybody knows, you know, the the badgers have uh, you know, the badgers, you know, we call it the the money badgers

As Russins group so they got one of the best cultures, you know in the company

How do you build a culture? How do you build relationships and uh and stuff like that? So

Starting with developing other people and getting them to the next level these are probably my favorite topics to talk about

um, you know developing other people

I think it's dirt first starts with with yourself. So like I was saying before

How you how I've seen you handle the adversity deaths

adversity and business and just come back better stronger faster and and just more zoned in because of it that taught me how to handle it

You know, so I think number one is modeling the way for your people and showing your people what you want to see in them

You know because there's there's there's bosses you see the meme all the time there's bosses and then there's there's leaders

And the bosses in the back telling people to go forward and the leaders actually out front doing it themselves

So I feel like if you want to properly develop other people you have to show them

The way number one model the way for them uh number one uh number two

Is I think this is so critical. I know this is important to you as well is one on one development time

Where you schedule into your schedule and sit down with people whether it's one on one or small groups

In develop them. So if you want to develop a leader teaching them max well teaching them the five levels the 21 laws

reading books together and analyzing books together and and talking about how it applies to business

Having them sit down so like let's say we got to have a difficult conversation with one of our employees

Sitting down with the future leader in the room and saying hey watch me have this conversation with this person

And then next time you're gonna have the conversation with this person

And I'm gonna critique you on how you handled it and how and and what we could do to get better

So I think number one modeling the way uh number two one on one development time and then number three is you got to learn

How to let go and this is where I failed in eerie the first time was I was not a good delegator

I I could do everything better than everybody else, but that meant I had to do everything right

I'm doing the first the thirds the group the this to that and running all the meetings and shit

So

What happens is is it completely stunts your growth because the whole organization

The failure of the organization is completely dependent on your

Performance as a leader. So with me. I think true leadership is you know

How you perform how your team performs in crunch time, but also how your team performs when you're not there

So if we take you out of the equation

How does your team perform? I know you take me out of the equation my team's gonna grow

Because they've been delegated to they've been duplicated into so you got to learn how to give up a little bit of control

And a lot of it how much uh how much of that not for you, but for others

How much of that do you think is is ego?

Uh that people wish you know, they don't want the team to do better if you pull them out

You know the main of that office or of that situation

That's so hard for me to relate to um because you don't think that I don't I've never

Ever but I would say that with the vast majority of the people let's say others that you've seen

Have a hard time developing or delegating the people

What would be their top two or three reasons why I got the two of them right off number one would be the ego and then number two is the fear

The fear of they're not gonna do it right as they're not gonna do it right

You know in the dis in the discomfort of having to sit there and watch somebody butcher

Something that you could do with your eyes closed in your arms tied behind your back

And just watching them obliterate it in front of your face and then being able to have a nago afterwards and say

You did this in this and this really well, but we got to work on these four or five things

So I think ego number one is they're they don't want their people to be better than them

Because they're afraid they'll promote people they'll promote themselves out of their own position

Which is what you should want, but they're afraid that they're gonna get passed up

Dude if you're gonna get passed up, you're just not working. You know what I mean like hey man

You're just not working. I we got this girl Renee who you met at the gym. You knew she was a stud-rate off rep

She is challenged me to work harder because her her results between her personal recruiting

and her business right now is challenging me

to I told her the other day.

Yeah, I told her the other day.

I'm like, you're challenging me to work harder

because I'm seeing what you're accomplishing in the business.

You know, so I think the ego for sure

and then like I said, the fear, you know, the fear of

if I delegate out too much,

I mean, you gotta be smart with your delegation.

Don't be lazy and just give shit to everybody and not work.

But I think it's the fear of your people won't

won't perform well.

Right.

Talk to us about building culture.

Building culture.

Building culture and relationships.

So, you know, building culture is,

you have to identify number one,

what do you want in your culture?

It's like building a vision.

You have to know where you're going,

why you wanna be there, why it's important to everybody.

It's the same thing with culture.

I think that a lot of people don't know

what they want their culture to look like.

So they have no culture.

You have to have a clear picture in your mind

of what you want your culture to look like.

I know what I want in my culture to look like.

I wanted it to be young and when I say young,

I don't mean age, I mean in spirit.

You know what I mean?

I wanted it to be young in spirit to where we have fun,

where it's energetic.

And I think most importantly, I wanted loyalty.

You know what I mean?

I wanted to have a family to where it's not just business.

Like we're a family.

Like something happens in one of our people's lives,

everybody's there.

Like they swarmed to the ball with that.

You know, if somebody has an adversity in their life

or a break up.

So that's something you teach?

Yeah, for sure.

Cause again, modeling the way, you know,

my people know if anything ever happens to them personally,

professionally, I'm gonna be the first one there for you.

And what I saw happening is that started being duplicated

into the leaders directly underneath me

and then they duplicated that into their people.

Now the whole team is anytime something goes wrong,

they're all over it.

So high energy, which again, you model yourself,

you know, enthusiasm, you model yourself.

And then, you know, it's funny.

Somebody said to me from another agency,

and I didn't take this as an insult.

I thought that this was a compliment.

You know, they said they were looking at my team

and they were like, man, you guys are like so goofy.

You're like not like misfits,

but like you guys are a little bit different

than everybody else.

I love that because to me,

it causes people to play with a chip on their shoulder.

You know what I'm saying?

I always wanted to be a little bit different

than everybody else.

I never wanted to 100% fit the mold

of what it should act, talk, walk, and sound like.

And I think that that's how our people are.

Like attracts like, and everybody knows that we're goofy

because I'm goofy.

So I attract goofy people, they attract more goofy people,

but that causes you to play with a chip on your shoulder

because it's almost like, you know,

you look at this team over here

and they all look like animals,

but we're fricking tripling you up every single month.

You know what I mean?

Because you use that to motivate people

to take their game to the next level.

So unique.

I want our culture to be unique to be different.

I think one of the things, you know,

a couple of things that stick out to me about you

is loyalty.

You know, you model loyalty yourself,

you know, so when you brought up loyalty,

you know, that was one of the things on my mind anyway,

you know, to talk about and coachability.

So I think two things that is not, that's rare.

You know, I have the shirts to say loyalty is.

Right.

Rare, right?

So, you know, it's rare where I've had an opportunity

to see the level of loyalty because we win a lot,

you know, we grow a lot.

And so, you know, I don't look forward to the moments

of when we're going to have adversity,

but I prepare for those things.

And out of those things allows us to see who is loyal

and who is not.

You know, it's just like, you know,

you probably didn't hope and pray to have the adversity

that you had in business,

but out of that, we knew Geneva's down.

Right.

You know what I'm saying?

So, you know, when we had some adversity,

we had other company, you know, years ago,

trying to, you know, do everything in their power

to take us out, you know, for no reason.

And, you know, I, I remember years,

even before I remember somebody posted something like

London Bridge is falling down.

You know, I'll never forget the thought that went on

in my head thinking like, do you have any idea

of who you're typing that about?

Right.

Like, we don't fall down.

You know what I mean?

We blow up for stuff like this.

And it's not, it's giving glory to God

in the relationship that we have with God,

not a personal thing, but because of the relationship

with God having the confidence of knowing that

there will be nothing, no weapon, you know,

formed against us that'll prosper.

Everything is gonna be done to elevate us.

And during that period, you know,

we had some people jump off the ship.

And when they jumped off the ship,

I don't see any of them steering any ships or yachts right now.

But what I do see is the ones that stay down

and you being number one that sticks out of my mind

because when that moment hit,

you weren't at the peak of your career,

you know, like you're at, right?

This isn't the peak of your career.

This isn't the peak of your career,

but right now it's like you're on the upswink.

You know what I'm saying?

You're rocking right now.

And I think it's gonna be a continuous trend.

But at the moment, you know,

you weren't at your highlight of your career.

Would have been an easy target.

And all I saw out of you was immediate,

just straight loyalty.

Like no questions asked, okay,

enemies firing at us.

I'm in, I'm all in.

You know what I mean?

I got you back.

It don't matter what's going on.

Like this is who I'm rocking with.

This is who we're rolling with.

It's not even an option.

Right.

And you know, I just want to say thank you,

you know, for your loyalty and that loyalty,

you know, is something that I think is so rare,

you know, nowadays that, you know,

good things come to people that are loyal, you know,

like that.

So how important do you think, you know,

loyalty is in business.

And you know, how do you find out when people are loyal?

How do you instill loyalty into a team?

Loyalty, I agree with you with thousand percent,

is probably the most important thing to me

because like you said before,

I haven't seen a single disloyal person jump ship

and rocket anywhere else, not one ever.

And I got to restrain my spirit because I am so loyal

that there are certain things like almost like a warning,

like bring it.

Like if that ever happens again,

watch us double triple quadruple,

it only makes us better.

Only makes us better.

Like we just blew up, like bring it.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm like, yeah, thank you.

Like thank you for that.

By the way, we appreciate you.

But what I want to talk about with loyalty is,

I think to get it, you got to give it.

You know what I mean?

And as the leader, I think that we expect immediately

our people to be loyal to us first.

I think it's the other way around.

I think that we have to show loyalty to our people first.

And that's why I was always loyal,

you know, to you a lot of different reasons.

But you know, I remember when I first reached out to you

on Facebook when I was barely an essay, you helped me.

You, I wasn't doing shit, you know what I'm saying?

But you helped me.

You reached it.

You took time out of your, and you've done that many, many times

in increasing capacities.

So you know, I think that again, to get the loyalty,

you got to give the loyalty to your people first

before you can expect it, you know?

I'm laughing at you.

I know.

I know you.

You loyal to that chest here.

I know that.

You got some chest hair, bro.

I'll see you.

You all grown man with that beard and that chest hair.

That's why I was smirking that.

But the, but yeah, you definitely got to give it to get it.

And then what you'll find is, you know, people are,

they got to be loyal to more than just the person.

You know, I like to think of our culture and our,

like we've created an entity to where there's loyalty.

Like ariest agencies is, it's an entity.

It's not just one or two or three or four or five people.

I think if it was that way, we wouldn't be going

to where we're going.

You know what I'm saying?

And on our team, we've created this entity to where it's like,

yeah, they're loyal to me.

They're loyal to Travis and Sam.

The other MGA's, Christie and all that.

But they're loyal to the, to the vision too.

And I think that people, number one,

have to receive loyalty from you.

They'll give it back to you.

But they also have to understand that at some point,

that that loyalty is going to be a payoff.

Yeah.

So painting that vision and creating that, listen,

stick it out.

No matter, I was posted in our group me this morning,

some of the income.

And I posted their income numbers.

And then right next to that,

I posted three or four trials and tribulations

they had been through in this business.

Oh wow.

So you look at Kelly Hoffman, who's a girl,

she's a GA here in Pittsburgh,

you know, on a half week at LDS half the week,

made $3,500.

And I said, what people don't see is a year ago,

she could, yes, without working at LDS,

hanging out, having drinks, listening to speakers,

taking notes, $3,500.

For one week, 25, 26 year old girl,

what they don't see is a year ago,

she couldn't pay for groceries.

You know, Aaron Oswiter, same thing.

Half a week of work made three grand.

What they don't see is a year ago,

he drove all the way from California on a, on a whim

to follow Sam Boyle and the leadership here.

Yeah.

You know, Travis, I could go on,

Carrie Maxson on her credit cards two years ago,

drives Alexis now, made four grand last week.

You know, so it's loyalty not only to the leader,

but it's loyalty to the vision.

And if the people, the reason why I bring up all their stories

is every leader in our deal has been through

so much adversity, so much adversity,

you know, Sam Boyle was sleeping on my futon a year ago,

two hours of what's seen as wife once a month.

Some people don't see their wife for three days

and their relationship falls apart.

Yeah.

You know, he was seeing it once a month.

That's the testimony to his wife, who's the shit?

She graces a beast, she is a animal loyal thought.

And you know what's funny?

When you look at the people and you look at the leaders

and you look at their spouses,

their spouses are just as down to ride too.

It infects not only the business and

but everybody's personal lives too.

So I think that having a vision that can bind everybody

together and everybody.

So important do you think that it is to have a supportive spouse

and how do you think that can affect things in business?

So supportive or so important rather to have a supportive spouse.

I mean, I think that's like, that's your life partner.

You know what I mean?

And I've seen how a lack of support from a spouse

can destroy careers, you know?

I mean, destroy them.

Some of the most talented people getting taken out of the game

because their spouse isn't on board.

And it's easy to just blame it on the spouse.

Like, oh, the husband's a jerk or the wife.

You know, she's terrible.

She's always on his bed.

What are you doing as the spouse?

Like if you're in business and your wife or husband

isn't on board, instead of just blaming it all on them,

you got to ask yourself, why is that?

And I think that the same way that vision and loyalty

is important in business.

I think that it's equally as important in a relationship

because when Geneva first met me,

I was still on the money, right?

Then everything went wrong to the point

where we're negative in the bank accounts.

We can't even buy groceries.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, Sundays like we weren't eating

because we didn't get paid till Monday.

I think that it's number one, it's loyalty.

It is part of her nature, but number two,

she understood the vision and she was bought in

into the vision and I had shown her loyalty

and she gave it back to me.

So the same things that we just talked about

about having loyalty and vision in business,

I think are equally as important in a relationship.

They gotta know why are you going to bring it?

Spouse gotta see the vision.

Yeah, they gotta understand.

They gotta understand.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying?

I'm for them.

We're sending for the family.

Exactly, you know?

And if you can't sell your spouse,

you ain't gonna be able to sell the vision

to a team of 100 people.

No way.

And they're spouses.

No way.

So that's the first sale that I think a person needs to make.

Yeah, I woke up this morning and we had leadership school.

We had executive council, two executive councils.

Yeah.

And then got home, went right back to work.

I spent a couple hours with the kids who I missed,

went to gymnastics, went them hung out,

went them play with them for a little bit.

And I was gassed.

You know, I was filled a little bit under the weather

for the last week.

And I went up to sleep at eight o'clock and hit the sack

cause I know I had to get up at five today.

And Natalie came up and she was tired

and gave both kids baths.

You know, took care of both.

I mean, I don't even remember what happened.

I remember she was giving them a bath

and then I woke up this morning when my alarm clock went off.

Right.

And I shot her a text, you know, thanking her for doing that.

And I don't know if spouses are appreciative sometimes

to take time and stop and say thank you

for what this person does that you don't understand.

Sometimes we can get caught up

and I've been a victim of this, you know, in the past.

You know, I was raised in an environment

where it was more, you know, nobody was married,

you know, not a lot of people in my area were married

or stayed married.

Very, very male dominated society, you know,

where I was at, you know what I mean,

especially in the streets, right?

You know, it was like, you know, we ain't even gonna go there.

But so it was hard, you know, for me to grasp

and I had to learn from other men on real men, you know,

how to do this, which is what I try my best to model

for people, not just a business person,

but how to roll in life as an imperfect person,

but just how to rock as a husband and a father

and it don't mean that you gotta be a bitch, you know,

right to do it.

And you know, just having an attitude of gratitude,

understanding that.

without her doing that, I would not be rested today.

Right.

If she didn't, if I had to come home and she's like,

listen, bro, you've been gone all frickin' week.

Not your asses, tired dog, you give some baths,

you handle this stuff.

Right.

And I would've understood it.

You know what I mean?

Like, I feel you.

Right.

But she didn't do that.

Right.

And I woke up shot out of a cannon this morning.

And maybe it decreases the length of sickness and illness.

Maybe it gave me more energy today to serve others

and to do what we're doing right now,

which over time will elevate not only our family,

but other families in situation,

all because of that woman's sacrifice.

And I just like to shout out the support of,

a lot of times people talk about the unsupportive side

that it drains out and drowns out the graces.

You know what I mean?

And the, and the gnats and the tylers and the courtneys

and the, you know, the people that the Jess,

you know, the people that are supporting us in this deal

and that have supported people in the deal.

You know, we had a podcast recently with, you know,

with some fighters here.

And, you know, they're talking about,

and we started five o'clock in the morning

and, you know, we're going to nine o'clock at night.

You know what I'm saying?

So it don't matter what it is that you're trying

to be a champion at.

If you want to wear it a belt, understand that it ain't just

that company.

I don't care if it's arca, I'm talking about,

I don't care where you're at right now listening to this.

It ain't that company.

It ain't just that situation.

Like if you have a vision to be the champ,

to be the, the, the one, the number one to be at the top,

understand your grind is going to have to be different

than everybody else has grind.

You're, it's not going to be a nine to five immediately.

Now we can do some things if we choose to

and go to Napa Prime and have some, have some glasses of wine

and be it, be it, you know, happy hour

and happy as hell at happy hour.

Right.

You know what I mean?

And everybody knows you shaking hands like it's cheers,

you know what I mean?

But the price ain't cheers.

You know what I'm saying?

The price is five star.

And where they're multiple that, that times,

that times a week.

And that only happens from a grind,

from a supportive spouse, from putting in the hours

and stuff like that.

What do you think that it takes to build a business,

the way that it needs to be built?

And we're always in a building, you know, phase,

but things change.

What do you think it takes from an hour's standpoint?

You know, if somebody were to say, well Mike,

you know, tell me how many hours, you know,

it's going to take me a week to build something,

you know, special.

What does that look like?

But then also what is the return bin for you?

What does it look like?

What's it all worth it?

You know, I tell people all the time like,

man, I look at my first couple of years,

what I did, it was crazy.

Right.

It was crazy.

People have, they still tell stories about it.

You know, me falling asleep in my car

and if driving a parking lot and, you know,

I would go back and do it all again.

Right.

Especially now, then I had no idea.

I thought I knew, I had a vision,

but I didn't know what it tasted like.

You know what I mean?

Now I know what it tastes like.

If I would do it again and hurt me if I had to,

I don't feel like there was mistakes in the grind.

Right.

I would re-grind again.

You know what I mean?

To have what we have right now.

Talk to us about what you think it takes

from how important a sacrifice,

what do people need to sacrifice that whole process

and what's the payoff?

Okay.

Love this and real quick before I jump into that.

I want to touch on something that I noticed

and learn from you and that I noticed

and I learned from the people the best relate,

because I think this is so important.

I can't, we can't, I gotta get this out.

No.

If you gotta back to the spouse is real quick

before I jump into that.

If you have to lose time with what,

you center a Texas morning, whatever area you're lacking

in terms of the grind,

like so if you're grinding 100 hours a week,

which means that you can't spend that time with your spouse,

you need to overcompensate in other areas.

Do something creative.

This is what I tell my people.

If you've never sent flowers before, send flowers.

Leave a note when you wake up early.

Leave a note, shoot or attack, overcompensate.

If you take her to dinner, put your phone down

and don't be on Facebook while you're supposed

to be spending time together.

Overcompensate in other areas to make up.

But anyways to answer your quote,

I thought that that was so important.

That's a huge lesson for people to learn.

But in terms of what does it take to build a business

and what level of sacrifice does it take?

By answer to that question would be everything.

Everything.

You got a sacrifice in terms of time.

I don't know, I never counted hours.

Because to me it's not the hours you work,

it's what you put into the hours.

But I could talk about same thing.

You sleep in a parking lot.

I remember running a point.

This is one of my favorite stories to tell.

I was driving a 2001 B. W.I.L.S.A.B.

and I was running appointments one night.

And it was my first week released

and I was at like 5,000.

So I knew I had a $2,000, $2,500 paycheck coming

but I hadn't been paid yet.

So I was out of gas and I was driving an hour and a half

every single day back and forth to the office.

So I was the first one to the office

driving an hour and a half.

People 15 minutes away.

Making a note on this.

People 15 minutes away were coming in after me.

So I had an hour and a half drive back.

There was a blizzard out and I was almost out of gas.

So I pulled into the best fitness parking lot

in Eerie, about five minutes from the office

and I had less than a quarter of a quarter of a tank

and I fell asleep in the back of my car

and I used my gym bag and my P-coat to sleep inside of

and what I would do is when the car got too cold,

I'd wake up because I'd be freezing my ass off

and I'd turn the car back on, let it heat back up,

turn it back off so I didn't run out of gas,

woke up in the morning, went to the gym,

shout had to sneak into best fitness

because I didn't have a membership there yet.

Snuck into best fitness, took a shower,

first one in the office the next day.

So sacrificing, that's an extreme example.

I'm not telling you you're gonna have to freeze

the death in the back of a Buick and Eerie Pennsylvania

but there's gonna be sacrifices,

sacrificed relationships, friends that couldn't understand

my girlfriend at the time.

We were together five or six years.

She didn't understand the grind so I had to think about

my future family, what I wanted out of life.

It wasn't compatible at the time,

had to sacrifice that relationship.

Yes, you know, most people can't do that.

Had to sacrifice that relationship,

had to sacrifice friendships, had to say,

hey Mike, we're going out Friday,

my ass got to be up at five o'clock Saturday morning,

my territory's two hours to get two hours away.

I gotta remember Ray Samman and I drive into Frickin,

Ohio, Menor Ohio to run appointments on Sundays.

He's spending time away from his wife and his kids

and his family into the hours in the relationships,

the relationships that are worth it will stick it out.

Amen.

But the hours in the relationships you'll sacrifice,

the free time you'll sacrifice,

the comfort of sitting on your couch, you'll sacrifice.

But what happens is you get it all back

and I think what's so funny is people think like now,

like you can, I can work less now.

You can work less now.

But we don't.

And I think the reason is the results become

addicting and the grind becomes fun.

Amen.

It becomes fun.

Amen.

So at the beginning, you're suffering and you're like,

dude, there's no end in sight.

Like, like I'm working, I'm up at five,

I'm not going to bed until 11 or 12.

Yeah, understand, if you're doing it right,

the work that you put in isn't always going to

balance out and correlate to immediate pay

or immediate gratification right now.

It may be a, I feel like I'm putting in work

that I should be making a couple of hundred thousand

hours a year to the amount of work that I'm putting in right now.

Just like a fighter, just like somebody else,

like they may be putting in a ton of work right now

in the gym all day, but that don't mean

that they're necessarily getting that prize fight right now

where they're getting tons of money.

They end up getting tons of money

if they make it to that point because they grind it

at this point probably harder or as hard as they're grinding

at this point, that's just gratification

and encourages them to keep on grinding,

but they only got the prize pay off

because they were grinding for free.

And there's, and there's what's great is that

I almost think about that time and effort and energy

that you're putting in where you're not seeing

in an immediate payout.

There's interest building on that too.

You get it all back.

And then some in the interest rate is high

as shit, time and money, but the flip side

is the time that you take off and the time

that you don't sacrifice.

There's interest on that too and it's negative like alone.

And you end up paying up more later to whereas if people

just understood, if you don't see results,

you're one, two, three, four or five,

and you're six and seven, you're gonna live a life

that you couldn't even in your wildest dreams

even begin to imagine and fathom.

The, I mean, the other day I'm driving in my car

and by no means have we arrived and is by no means

as this is just the beginning, but I was thinking like

I can't believe life right now.

Can't believe it.

So thankful, so grateful.

And every ounce of it, every minute of pain,

every sacrifice, every hour, every minute,

every relationship, every adversity.

Like you said before, I do it, I do it three more times.

I do it again, company for some crazy reason,

life insurance is illegal tomorrow and all this other,

but who knows what happens in another world world.

I don't, I'd rebuild it again.

I do it again and again and again and again and again.

Because the reward is so much more gratifying.

So much more gratifying than the pain

once and the sacrifice was.

Amen.

So what would you tell people out there

that are in that ground phase, in that focus phase

where their pay off isn't here right now yet.

They're either going through some adversities

or they're going through the ground, the sacrifices,

but it's not here for them yet.

What encouragement could you give those people?

If they're not already encouraged,

which I'm sure they are, what would encouragement

would you give those people?

Just keep going.

Just, you know, it's gonna pay off number one,

I promise you it's gonna pay off.

There's no, whether you believe in God or karma

or any, it doesn't matter what you believe in.

Whatever you put in, you're gonna get back out at some point.

And it's like, you know, it's like the story

of the bamboo tree and just any tree, dude,

I can't plan an a corn out back and go out

and say, even six months later, where's my giant ass tree?

It takes time, you know?

But one a corn, think about how many a corn fall off one tree.

You know what I'm saying?

So you gotta wait for that and understand

that the returns and that's building interest,

you're gonna get the returns back

and just whatever your vision has to be compelling

and it has to, you gotta keep it.

I think where people lose focus is they start looking

too much at the adversity.

And they stop looking at their goals and their vision.

And what happens is when you're just in your heads

all in the adversity and in the pain of the process

and you're not reminding yourself of why you're doing it.

I'm talking about not once a week, not once a month.

I'm talking about daily, you need to look

at your goals in your vision.

So have that vision and then set benchmarks for yourself.

Little goals that you can achieve,

little action items that you can achieve in the process

that will provide you little spurts of encouragement

to where I know I'm not where I need to be yet.

And I know this is going on

but I got this and this, this and this,

this week, this is the number like maybe,

like, you know, maybe you're not a 50,000 a month producer

but you wrote 5,000 this week.

That's the first time you've written 5,000.

Let's go.

That's not where you wanna be yet.

But if you, you gotta have those little goals

and like I said, you gotta revisit your vision

and remind yourself of your why daily, daily, every day.

Love it.

Love it.

Well, thanks for everything that you do

for the agency.

You're reliable, you're trustworthy, you're dependable

and you got funny looking eyes that make me laugh

every time I start looking at you.

Russ, I appreciate you, brother.

Thanks for joining us on another episode of The Grindcast.

Get ready us a new day.

Let's go.

Count money, man.

Money that grits is fine.

Time told us, trying to told them I'm a beast, but...