The Grind-Cast “Special Guest Gregg Rudolph”

Count money, man.

Money back grits.

I'm trying to talk, trying to talk to my beast blood.

What's up gang?

Welcome to the grind cast.

Stop it, there he is here.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

New day.

All right.

What's up gang?

Welcome to another episode of The Grind cast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

And I have my friend, Greg Rudolph here in the house.

And Greg, today I think, first of all, thank you for joining us, brother.

I'm excited to be here.

And we're going to have some fun today.

Greg, maybe if you could start us off with a little bit of your journey in life.

And guys listening out there, guys and gals.

If you don't know Greg, Greg's from the Pittsburgh area.

Ended up being a business owner at an early age.

Hence the nickname eventually, he would get the lumberjack owned his own business.

Ended up becoming a professional fighter, did MMA and boxing, both of which he retired as of now undefeated.

And other than me seeing Gia beat him up sometimes, his daughter, was Gia 13.

Yeah, 13 years old.

13 years old.

And today, Gia is actually celebrating six years cancer-free, six years from her last chemo therapy.

Yeah, treatment.

Yeah.

Treatment, Greg's daughter recently in the last year.

My man had G2, little Greg.

So he has one boy, one girl.

I accidentally, we bumped into each other accidentally and he ended up being in the business with us and ended up being one of our top general managers here within a very short period of time.

He's been here less than a year and a half and has done very, very well for himself.

Was rookie of the year last year, co-rookie of the year with Steve Dell in our business who was also a division one football coach before he came to the organization.

So that's just a brief synopsis in summary of Greg.

Greg, why don't you just tell us a little bit more about yourself, your journey and sports and in business and I will go from there.

Cool, cool.

Yep.

So my journey, you know, started way back.

You know, I'm 37 years old now, so a little bit older.

But, you know, out of high school, you know, I always knew I wanted to own a business.

I love sports, you know, grew up playing basketball, football, baseball, wrestling, golf.

I mean, you name it, I did it.

I was really good at baseball, really good at wrestling, you know, really good at pretty much everything our sports related.

So I went to college, went to Clarean University, only did that for about a year and a half.

The college really wasn't for me.

Then, knew I didn't need, you know, a college education to really own a business.

You know, it's more self-motivation and, you know, drive there.

So I came home, age of, I guess, 20, and started my first business.

I got a loan for $75,000 that my parents had to coastline for.

So thanks, mom and dad.

So I started to buy some tree equipment.

So chippers, stump grinders, trucks, bucket trucks, pickup trucks, anything I get my hands on, a bunch of chainsaws, and I started cutting down trees.

And I ended up paying the $75,000 back, halfway through the first year.

Ended up grossing, I think almost a little over a quarter million dollars my first calendar year as 20 years old.

And then it just started growing from there.

I had a little girl.

You know, when she was three and a half, she was diagnosed with leukemia.

At this time, you know, I was doing really well.

And everything I put on hold, you know, the construction industry is different because it's really hands on.

You know what I mean?

If you're not there doing the work, it's hard to find people to do it and trust them with heavy equipment.

And you know, it's very dangerous.

You know, being up in the air, you know, saw it.

So you really can't trust anybody to do it.

So, you know, we lived in children's hospital for months at a time, months at a time.

Three, six months.

I mean, she lost the ability to walk from chemo treatments and things like that.

So it was pretty bad with strokes and things.

But fast forward, you know, six, nine months.

When you have a big business, you have a big nut to crack every month because you have loans.

You have equipment you're paying for quarter million dollar machines that are sitting in the woods, you know, things like that.

So, you know, it became to a point where it was just, it wasn't working.

I couldn't pay the bills and not work because I wouldn't leave her side.

So, make a long story short.

You know, during that process, I actually had an employee try suing me for like a half a million dollars because he fell out of a tree.

I'll jumped up on pills and God knows what else.

But I ended up beating that in court.

But I took almost a year of litigation and...

Stroyer fees.

Money.

And I just, you know, it was just time for me to hang that up and move on.

So, I filed chapter 11 on that business.

It was really hard to do because I loved doing it.

And I made a lot of money doing it.

But, you know, went for making tons of money a month, paying myself $20,000 a month as a salary.

And then going down to making zero.

Like literally zero.

And I didn't do anything for a couple months because I didn't have to.

I had the money put away.

But then after, you know, three, four, five months of still paying the mortgage, I still had a bunch of cars I was paying for taxes.

I mean, everything kept creeping up and like, oh shit, man.

My nest eggs going down.

So then I started to hit the panic button.

Then, you know, that was a rough time in my life because I was very angry.

And I got in a lot of trouble.

You know, and...

It's a lot going on in early 20s.

It is. You know, and I was a kid.

My relationship with...

Kid has... Yeah, it was just a nightmare for me.

Business. You know, that's a lot to handle early.

I was lost. I was lost.

And all this whole time, you know, we were going through the treatments and all this.

And I'm thinking, you know, this is so unfair.

And it's a helpless feeling because your kids, you don't want to...

You don't want anything to happen to your kids.

It's worse than happening to you.

Even other people's kids. It's worse than happening.

It's a big thing once I became a parent.

I'm looking at everything from that angle.

You know, anything like that.

But, you know, I actually got introduced.

At this time, I was getting a lot of trouble.

And I had a bunch of friends that were in the fighting industry.

Because I also owned a clothing line.

And we sponsored UFC fighters and local pros here in the circuit.

And the higher Valley region.

So I knew a lot of people that fought.

They'd always like, man, you got to come into the gym.

You're built like a brick shed house.

You know what I mean? You can fight.

I'm like, I don't want to go fight.

What are you talking about?

So then I had the opportunity to own a gym.

At this time, it was called Fight Club Pittsburgh.

It was owned by the name of a guy, Mick Marrow.

And Melissa.

Great people. Still great friends with them.

But Mick built one of the best MMA gyms.

In my opinion, in the tri-state area, even on this side of the country.

I mean, he has two custom built octagons in there.

Raised boxing ring.

Probably 3000 square foot of mat space, a fitness room.

And he has a successful business doing signs.

And this was kind of like his hobby.

And he approached me and said, you know,

would you want to take this gym over?

And I'm like, man, I don't know.

You know, it seems like a lot of work.

But literally, you know, gave it to me for a dollar.

Just took over the bills, took over the rent, took over the payroll.

All that great stuff.

So I'm like, fuck it. So I'll do it.

So I ended up doing it.

You know what I mean? I wasn't doing anything anyways.

Yep.

So we did that.

You know, a couple of my buddies were actually already working there.

I was training with. They're all professionals.

So then I started to, you know, maybe I can fight a little bit.

So then I took my first MMA fight after probably doing six to nine months of training

and actually working up the courage to actually actually do it in front of people.

You know, not in the gym.

Then I tore my bicep.

So then I had to wait another couple of months to fight.

Had a fight scheduled.

And I'm getting older.

You know, I'm in my late 20s now.

So I'm like, man, my time line's really running out here.

So I got my first fight.

I ended up knocking the dude out.

And like, I think 43 seconds.

I broke his jaw on the first round.

And it just took off from there.

I had that feeling.

Love it.

I was addicted.

Yeah. That's all I wanted to do was fight.

And once you get that adrenaline rusher, you don't sleep for three days.

And it was fun.

So I took that, you know, all the way up.

I had like six or seven amateur fights boxing in MMA.

And then decide I was going to turn pro and get paid to do it.

And then here I am now.

Three and I was a pro and accomplished more than I thought I ever would with that.

But I'm older in life.

And figuring it was time to hang up the town.

You keep me so busy here that I can't do both anyways.

No doubt.

No doubt.

You like it.

Yeah.

You like it more on your plane.

You got to concentrate on your strengths.

So let me, let's rewind back a little bit.

Something that you said early on stuck out to me was that you knew that, you know, college wasn't really something for you.

Right.

And so this is a big, I don't want to say debate, but this is a big conversation, especially right now in America.

And so I want to give my input on it and hear some of your input on it.

And so I've heard, you know, I think college is good for some folks.

And I think it's useless for others.

And you're talking, you know, as I say this, I went to college.

I graduated with a business degree from Mercyhurst University, played football there, started four years at defensive back.

Was a captain at a great experience.

But when I look back on it, what it helped me do is I matured a little bit.

Yeah.

And if I wasn't on scholarship, I'm thinking, man, for $150,000, that's a hell of a maturity lesson.

Right.

And the majority of the experience, true business experience that I've gotten has been from on the job.

And from mentors and books in self development.

Right.

And the, the right books that you could buy, you know, I think if I gave you 20 books and you dug into them all,

and you could sell yourself five months to dig into 20 books, I could give you 20 books that probably would cost you $400 total.

And that would be the best degree that you could possibly get if you could mix that with a little bit of experience.

I agree.

And so, and then having the right mentors, you know, so for me, you know, when I get into this and people ask me my opinion,

it depends on the individual.

It depends on what the person is.

But if you show me somebody that is an entrepreneur by nature, you know, you're 20 years old and there's even behind the scene things,

maybe we'll go Joe Rogan on them and talk about it one time and you, but, but you have this entrepreneurial spirit as did I.

And, and so when I see that in people, you know, I'm thinking, man, if you're not going on scholarship or you're not going to play a sport,

I understand and I'm going for the experience, but the experience is going to cost me 150 grand.

Yeah.

I mean, I could send you on a great experience for 20, right?

Right.

But, but when I see somebody doing that or asking me, should I not do that?

Here's the things that I go to.

If this person has a business mind and they want to be a business owner in an entrepreneur,

and I told a kid the other day that's young, I said, I think you're going to be a great leader in a hell of an entrepreneur,

but I think you'd be a horrible employee.

I don't think you'd be a very good employee at all, man, just, just got that, I got to be running stuff,

I got to be leading stuff.

You have that in you.

I had that in me.

And so when I find somebody like that, the way I look at it is, if somebody comes out at 18 years old,

and they have four years to work like Tristan, okay?

So he don't have no debt so he doesn't go into the hole at all.

He gets four years of on the job experience.

That's another thing.

A lot of people out there trying to tell somebody what to do in business,

haven't ever wrought any major businesses.

I'd rather learn basketball from Jordan.

I take advice from someone that you wouldn't rather trade places.

Trade places, what do you want to mean?

Right.

So we got this person that goes four years, they get experience for four years.

They learn from people that are doing the job.

And let's say Tristan will make 150 grand at 20 years old this year.

But let's say they're not Tristan and they make 35, 40.

And they go 40 grand for four years.

You went up 160.

You would have went down 160.

So now you're at 320.

You gained 320.

You went up 160.

But you could have went into hole 160.

So somebody that went into hole 160, you're up 160.

There's a $320,000 gap.

Now they're going to come out and get experience.

At this point you're already running stuff.

You're already leading stuff.

What's your thought process on that whole experience?

Because I have two kids, you have two kids.

One day they're going to be given an opportunity to possibly go to college.

My take on it is I got to see what their skill sets are, what they like, what they believe in.

Right.

But I won't be forcing them.

I'll support them if they want to.

Absolutely.

100%.

But I won't be forcing.

And I won't be the parent that's like, you're a failure.

You don't go to college.

I mean, personally, I'm going to force my son to do a few sports that I think will get him further in life just because of the discipline aspect.

What are those sports wrestling to Jitsu?

I think wrestling is probably the number one sport to teach your kid discipline.

Were you in here when I taped the last podcast?

Were you listening in?

That's exactly what I said.

And I didn't wrestle in high school.

I believe.

into it later on in life. That's the first thing I said.

Wrestling in high school is no joke.

I mean, your football's great.

I mean, I love football.

Yeah, the more of a team camaraderie and you could be the,

you know what I mean? Like the big captain quarterback

and all that all that fun shit.

But you know, when I was in high school,

football players weren't there at 5.30 in the morning

running the streets of Pittsburgh.

It's a grind and then running after.

Yeah.

That school cut and wait. I mean, it's no joke.

And I mean, and it's, it's hand-to-hand combat.

Yeah.

Whether you look at it like that or not,

you're the best starting point to start from.

Right. It's one on one.

You have a team, you have a wrestling team,

you have a coach, but at the end of the day,

you're out there alone.

You have to perform.

You know, in football, you have a team.

Also, you're out there on a field with them.

You have somebody setting a block for you.

You have somebody throwing you a ball.

You have somebody helping you out.

Of course, there's a lot of,

if you don't perform, you're not gonna play.

Play, but I mean, wrestling, it's one on one.

If the spotlight's on you,

it's a lot of discipline.

It teaches you a lot.

Where I started talking about that,

when I recently taped was, I told people that,

sometimes people will come out and say,

well, I don't want to get into sales.

Yeah.

When you, man, the example and analogy I gave

is, man, for my son, if there's anywhere close to an inkling

that he's aggressive, which he's already biting and poking

out of, you know, to make any two,

he's gonna start off wrestling too.

I think that's a good base, you know,

on the ground, starting on the ground,

starting out a rest of that,

that's a great base for things.

I think there's, you know, gymnastics and things

that kids can do for their feet.

Balance.

And stuff.

In business and in life,

I feel like more than half the time,

probably 75% of the time, if you show me anything running,

I'm gonna show you somebody that needs to sell.

For example, a lawyer, an attorney,

they need to sell their case.

And they need to sell people to do something with them.

Car practice.

It's one thing to know how to do the deal.

It's another thing to sell people to get them to believe

in you and to run a business.

I think the majority of, you know, even a youth program,

you know, that I'm doing Friday,

what are we doing Friday?

We're going to cocktail party, yeah.

We got a fundraiser.

So you know, two weeks later, I got another fundraiser

for two vans with Jim Tressel and all,

and then a month, couple months down the road,

I got another one.

I'm always selling people on trying to invest into our youth

and invest into our future,

so I'm back to sales again.

Even if you want to run a youth program,

you're gonna be selling.

Yeah, if you're gonna run a gym,

you're gonna be selling people on the membership,

selling people.

The great base, you know, for me,

if my kid wants to do something different than that,

I would want them to get two years of sales experience

under the bill.

It's because you're gonna need it.

You're married, you're gonna need it.

You're gonna need it.

You're always selling.

What do you think about that?

Oh, absolutely.

100%.

I mean, if you can sell, you can do anything.

Literally anything.

I think it's a good toll to, it's a vehicle

to get you to the next place, you know,

just like anything else.

What things stick out to you that help you

or would help someone in sports

that translates into business?

It doesn't necessarily have to be specifically

the business that we're in together,

but in business in general,

because you own a supplement, you know, company,

anybody looking for some supplements out there,

by the way, American Warrior Nutrition,

we got pre-workout, we got protein,

we got all that, tons of stuff.

You could look up Greg's company,

but what things in sports would you think

translate over into this field or in business

in general that you've learned?

I'd say discipline and scheduling, you know,

with anything you're gonna have to have discipline.

So going to practice at six,

three in the morning or going after school,

you know, training, you know,

if you're training two, three times a day,

your schedule is gonna come into a conflict, right?

You have to schedule everybody that works for me here,

you know, that works with us.

I'm, first thing I wanna see is I wanna see

their schedule mastered.

When are you gonna eat?

When are you gonna cook?

When are you gonna do your laundry?

When are you gonna spend time with your kids,

your wife, date nights?

When are you gonna go out in a field?

I mean, you have to have everything scheduled, right?

Once you have your schedule down, now you can go to work.

Now you know what you're doing.

So, you know, that relates to sports as well.

Gotta have a schedule down.

When are you gonna train?

You know, I remember playing football

and coming out to practice.

And from two to two, 10 we had this.

From two, 10 to two, 30 we had this.

From two, 30 to three we had.

Everything was scheduled in that practice

to make the most out of that time.

And then being in college, you have to skip,

you got your classes, you got practice,

you got this, you got that.

100% scheduling and discipline.

Oh, for sure.

Discipline, you know, when you say getting up early,

doing those things, typically discipline,

is probably doing the things that you don't wanna do.

You don't wanna do.

That you know that needs to happen.

That's when you grow.

That's when, you know, I realized,

when I don't wanna be in here doing this,

this is when I improve the most.

So, you're completely fatigued, right?

Like, this is when I knew that I would get to a next level

in boxing, okay?

I would work out.

I was so obsessed with not losing.

You know, I did not wanna lose in front of all my friends

and family and everybody's there

with a fucking picture phone,

just putting on YouTube,

waiting for you to get knocked out.

They love you, they hate you, whatever.

They wanna see something to get knocked out, right?

Then maybe they love you, maybe they wanna see you lose.

That was always in my head.

Like, I'm not gonna lose.

So, I would train in the morning.

I would go to work.

I would train at lunchtime.

I would go train after.

And then I would go, I would wake up in the middle of the night

and go run in the rain.

I didn't want to, but I was so scared that I would gas out.

And I'm like, when you have muscles in fighting,

they don't mix.

Like, the best fighters in life

are the dudes sitting across the bar

that look like just an average person,

with a beer belly, skinny arms, no, you know what I mean?

Maybe they cut some cauliflower.

That's when you stay the fuck away from them, you know what I mean?

But that's the type of person that's built to fight.

Like, someone like me or you,

we're husky, short, compact.

Yeah, we're hard to take down it and hard to wrestle with,

but we're gonna fatigue a hundred times faster

because when you got all these muscles,

all you're doing is building up lactic acid.

And when that lactic acid hits you, man,

you're just gonna gas out real quick.

So, I mean, try, you know what I think?

I'm talking about running in the rain.

You know, I just thought about that.

I think that's how we kinda started to get a little introduction.

You know, to each other, right?

Yeah.

Was that, I think you had somebody that was rocking

in our business and I saw on your feed somehow

that I saw before I ever met you.

I saw you running at the track at night.

Yeah, it was like midnight.

And you know, now knowing me, you know what I'm saying?

We're like this.

Yeah.

You know that's my style.

You know that's what I'll be doing.

Yeah, so I woke up.

I'm like, man, I don't feel like I'm ready for this fight.

I do not wanna go running the rain,

but I feel like I need to go sprint to stairs

and run five miles.

And then in my head, I'm like, I think I gained

this much wind tonight.

I'm that much more confident.

And I did.

I got better because of it because I got more prepared,

mentally, physically and spiritually.

I was ready.

And once you're ready in here,

I mean, it's all 80% mental, everything.

No doubt.

And I mean, 20%'s just gonna be what you're doing.

No doubt.

And physically.

And you pinpoint anything in business

and then maybe if anything coincides with, you know,

owning a gym or people that you've trained with,

anything stick out to you in the form of, all right.

The people in business that have these attributes,

they typically win the people that don't,

they typically lose.

These are the people that I train with that stick out to me

that they won.

Those people were good.

These people that have these things,

probably anything stick out to you

as far as success habits or one word, consistency.

So the people that win over a long period of time

is because they have consistency.

That's what I've seen.

People may have a good week, a good month.

But what are they doing the next week?

What are they doing the next month?

And I mean, I would see people come in there every day,

get their, get their ass beat.

Bust their, you know, bust their ass,

running, I still have friends that do it, you know,

very, very competitively.

They're consistent and they're great.

They're doing great.

People in this business, consistency's 100% the key.

Like let's just take our business, for example.

You have a team that does real good for a month, right?

They're doing great.

Everybody's making money.

And then everybody takes a week off

because their belly is full.

They made all that money, right?

Yep.

So then the next week it shows in the report,

all right, this team's down because they took a week off.

Can't take any days off.

You gotta go, you just gotta work.

You gotta be consistent, right?

I think consistency is the number one key to anything.

And if you do it long enough,

you'll get out what you put in.

No doubt.

I mean, I think, you know, one of the things

that I've watched you get better at, you know,

I think I, in the beginning,

you know, I over talked about how much work

it was gonna be, how many hours it was gonna be

and you know, and all that stuff.

Cause I never wanted to, I don't wanna be able

to look at you and say, man, it's too light to be, you know what I mean?

So I was like, man, it's gonna be like,

we're going to boot camp, we're going to,

not much California in the sun, you know what I mean?

And, you know, I watched you be able to handle the schedule

and evolve into a point where you're a husband, you're a dad,

I watch you holding onto your son,

I watch you throwing pitches to Gia

and you're getting a job done, you know,

over here as well and finding a way to do those things.

What advice would you give for people

that are running a business or getting into our business

that, you know, maybe in that situation

as a business owner or starting a business,

maybe they're starting a business

and it's not our business.

And, but they're starting a business

and starting a business is what it's starting a business is.

It ain't a nine to five.

It's a lot of work.

So, even if you're open nine to five, it ain't a nine to five.

You better go home and do something for five to nine.

Right.

But what advice would you give to them on how are you able

to do that?

You know, we're always trying to improve at it,

but what advice would you give for somebody that struggles

with, you know, finding a way to grow their business

but also doing what they need to do as a dad or as a husband?

Yeah, I'll bring up a quote from a mentor of mine.

You met him, the person that I was employed with before I came here,

Vic, all of, he would always say, you know, Greg,

the harder I work, the luckier I get.

And it always made sense.

I'm like, yeah, I'll do that hits home to me.

Like, oh, I love that, you know what I mean?

Cause it's true, it's true.

Right.

So, in any business that you're in, I think that obviously

you're gonna have to have put on a lot of work.

It's gonna be a lot of time.

But, you know, you have to develop other people.

Once you develop other people, you can start to delegate things.

Okay. So, I got lucky.

I found some really good managers here early on in my career

that I could start to delegate things to.

So, I picked, you know, three, four, five people,

I spent a lot of time with them at first.

Weeks and I, you know, how bad I hate going on the field.

Like, there's other things that I'd rather be doing.

Yep. Right.

But I will go out and feel with them for 10 hours,

two hours away.

And I mean, they're getting text messages from my wife

and my daughter and where you at.

I'm in slippery rock in a trailer, selling insurance.

Let's go.

You know, I'm training somebody, duplicating myself

into this person.

Now, I have, let's just take Mark, for example, Bernstorf.

Now, he has a team of seven people that he's training by himself.

I don't have to do anything.

Nothing.

I just have to tell him what to do.

And he goes and does it.

And all these people, this whole group of people,

he duplicated himself into.

So now, I'm just sitting back delegating like this.

Like, good for you.

Damn.

You know what I mean?

They're at my house last night, told midnight.

We're doing film review.

I don't even have to say anything.

He's doing everything.

I'm just chiming in.

And he's correcting me now.

So he's better than me.

Love it.

Because I'm not doing it consistently.

People that sticks out that has dissonance.

Yes.

Division 1 football player sports.

Again, this is first year out of school.

Yeah, he was a wide receiver for pit walk on a school.

And I mean, yeah, killing it.

Yeah, killing this business.

Who make 150 grand this year, 25 years old?

Right out of college.

And the thing that sticks out is discipline.

He's not real.

He's not allowed, not walking in a room.

The loud person.

He's not the loudest dresser.

He's just super competitive.

Competitive discipline.

Super competitive.

Consistent, yeah, coachable.

Yeah.

I had a tiger.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, when I tell him good job, he's number two.

He's like an A number one.

Right.

An A number one.

Yeah.

Love it, man.

Yeah, that's what sticks out to me.

So in closing, man, I would say, what did vice would you give

to somebody that, you know, because here's an area that I've

watched you grow in majorly.

And we still got a long way to go.

So do I.

But I think this sort of help people coach others at is people

say, well, you know, these people get so emotional.

First of all, you're coming into a business.

You don't know, but you know business.

You're going to be a little bit tense.

You're going to be a little bit emotional.

Just like when I train, you know, I can train Jiu-Jitsu.

I can roll right now for 10 minutes, and I'll be good.

Unless the person is of extreme high level, I have to,

I mean, just exert myself.

But somebody in their first four or five.

I can roll 10 minutes now you won't even I won't

gas right when I first started boxing

Two minutes you were like this

Gas I mean there's no tense don't care how tough inside I am or I was just gas

I couldn't relax couldn't loosen up and so you know, I tell people that you know people that are emotional

The good thing about people that are emotional because I'm one is that

When you can learn to control it that emotion attracts emotion that emotion creates emotion that

Emotion attracts other people that are high intensity high energy, you know things like that because very difficult to

Attract somebody if you're not like that person typically like attracts alike right and so one of the things that

I've watched you grow in you know I joke with you the other day

I said you went from a zero to like a five or a one to a five and I think you're probably

Went from like a one to a seven yeah in in in your being able to handle the emotions

You know, I think a lot like you're a baseball player, you know one out of three will put you in a hall of fame

You know in this business one out of three will put you in it put you in a really good spot

And in any given day we're having great days and in any given week

We're having a bad week and we're having a good week

What advice would you give to somebody out there that?

Has helped you to go from maybe not your biggest, you know, probably one of your weaknesses to something that's not a weakness really no more for you

Almost getting to be where it's where it's a strength turning that around emotionally. How would you

Coach somebody that's like you mm-hmm or like me, you know, somebody did it for me, you know 14 years ago

I looked a whole lot different. Yeah, then I do right now

There's several things and this is all

You know coming from mostly you

Because you can relate to me with with this, you know, we're same age got same things going on

You've been through it already. So I've been blessed to have that. So thank you

But I speak goofball. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, you do I'm a knee-and-a-thon. You always call me an I am

You know, I mean, but I have a lot of emotion like I have all right on

First thing I want to do I just want to get physical, you know what I mean like

But you can't do that with in sales

You know, it's an emotional roller coaster

You have a day where you can go out and make

five grand and then you have three days where you go out and you make nothing

So that day where you made five grand

your way up here

Emotional so excited and then you go way back down to like oh I suck. I'm a piece of shit like what am I doing?

so

You have to just stay even don't get too high not too low

just

You always I think everybody has to have a vice

You know, I mean, and I'm not talking about alcohol or drugs. I'm talking about

something physical like go run go to the gym

Whenever I'm stressed out. What do you tell me?

You're out of spirit. I'm out of spirit. So you got to read books

You know read scriptures. I was never never really into reading scriptures or spiritual stuff

You know, I believe in God and I went to Catholic school Catholic high school

I've been around my whole life, but I was never that spiritual

Now I'll get up in the morning and I'll I'll read scriptures on my way to the office or before I leave

I'll read a book audio books podcasts

That that's a vice

So if you don't go to the gym if that's not your thing pick up an audio book read you know read

You just have to have some sort of vice to stay even

Patients to you know, I'm horrible with patients. I want something done. I want to done now

I don't want I don't want to wait. Yeah, and I mean and that that's my other I tell you don't lose that down the way

You know, right? You want to have aggressive? Yeah, but aggressive patients

You know, you know Fred had died. I remember when we first I took you to top of his

Yeah, yeah, you know what the Boston accent when you say patients comes to my mind

He said he says if I wanted patients, I would have been a doctor

Yeah, I don't want to see either you guys want to see guy

That's it. We just got to be able to manage that and and so I think you know Greg for you know for

From from my end of things I was horrible at it. I mean horrendous with with all of that you know

all of that stuff and you know for me

I just learned to to stay calm and think about six months from today and

Taking care of yourself, you know my like an athlete. So an athlete this gets downplay you gave him the answer

But the the athlete that's out there that's a professional

They're not just working in the gym before they go to work they go to work before they get to the off before they get to the field before

They get to the to the gym they have to recover. They're recovering. They're rehabilitating. They're working up

They're warming up and stretching. They're doing all these other things. They're hydrating himself, right?

And so I think in business people lose that athlete in them

That's why we say business athlete right because you have to keep that athlete in you and transition it over to business

People show up to the field sometimes in business and this is why I think they pull themselves

They pull their spirit is they show up at business and if the kickoff or the gang

Or the fight is at eight or nine

They don't have a sweat going they're just showing up right the game starts at nine

We're just here. We go. We're ready. We put those over ready to rock and so instead what I've learned is

In order to help a lot of people the cool thing about helping a lot of people is is a byproduct of that

Did you end up making a shit ton of money?

But the more people that you help the more

People's lives that you're gonna be responsible for the more people's lives that are gonna that are gonna have problems

You know, so I mean today, you know, I'm starting out my day. I'm blessed to have 250 people

It comes up to me. I could already tell you within within a couple of hours

I'm talking about somebody that their mom has a severe illness. That's a top player for us

Somebody else that we know is going to surgery top player

Justin towards Achilles, you know, he's in surgery right now. Hope it J's okay. I'm trying to hoop you know

I built like a football player is trying to who you know, so I have all these things going on and

All these things are gonna happen by the time my game starts by the time the fight starts and the only way for me to

Balance myself that I've learned over the years is before I go to work

I got to go to work and so I got to take care of myself

spiritually

Mentally before I go and even if you're somebody that works out in the afternoon

Brush your brush you know you brush your teeth if you don't brush your teeth your breast aches

If you don't brush your spirit in your mind

Those things are gonna eventually stink too, right? And if you're if you're one person dealing with 10 people or something

It's gonna be a little bit less issues for you

But if you want to help a lot of people or you want to make a million dollars or millions of dollars

You're gonna have to deal with a lot of moving parts and a lot of people and that's why people start to get

Issues with drugs and you know things like that because they don't have an outlet

And so I just want to encourage you guys out there

You know that are listening because I know this is a big one that you could coach people on a lot of people in

You know this is probably 25 30% our company listens to this it's 70 80% others

but if I could talk specifically to people in our company, you know

You're a lot more relatable to people than even me because I'm 14 years in the game

Right in your 14 months in the game. Yeah, so you're closer to where they're at, you know right now

And and I think they can they can pull a lot

You know about how you're coming off

Let's just say for example not to get off track, but they'll be closed out

But let's say you're in charge of 250 people, you know

We have 400 people that are working here, but maybe 253 whatever are actually writing business, okay?

So let's say you come in this office and you're just an emotional wreck. You're stressed out

Real estate deals driving you crazy someone's suing you whatever and you're just miserable

Well, what do we always say you're either a thermometer or a thermostat, right?

So the thermostat sets the tone it sets the temperature of the whole entire place the thermometer

Just reads the temperature so if you're

100 degrees your team's gonna be 100 degrees they're gonna be all fired up, right?

If you're 50 degrees negative

You're just gonna start pulling down from them and it's just gonna start trickling down the chain so

God bless you and charge of all these people so you don't you're not allowed to be down

You're not allowed to come in here bring your problems. No way. I mean you have to be on point and

I mean you always are what professionals do. It's right didn't didn't happen naturally, right?

You know if you're a professional, you know, you know, uh

Tom Brady has an argument with his wife, you know, Jacelle

They before he don't get to come in and be negative during the championship game

You know to me. We got it. We got to come to play

Closing out Greg. I'll just say I have a lot of a lot of respect for you man

for what you've accomplished here and and just for your mindset

I think

You know if I could say one big thing that sticks out that's different in you than the majority of people would be I mean a lot of things but

You know good and good and funny

But the the the main thing is how many people would be able to transition at

35

Married with the child into into a business

That is you know solely depending on

How you perform and taking the risk to believe in yourself and believe in in us and believe in what we're doing

To give up, you know, it wasn't like he was failing

You know coming here he was making a hundred eighty five thousand, you know, Vixacool dude

I met Vic Vixac good dude you were working somewhere where people liked you wasn't like you know

You're you're we found you in a corner somewhere down on you luck

You know we showed up and met at the Capitol grill. We both look nice

You know and and so to have enough wisdom and

and foresight and vision and

guts to

Step into the ring all over again. It was a different walk to this ring

But that's still probably a very simple or feeling walking out there

and and and to have the guts and wisdom and

In vision to see what it is that that that we were that we're doing right now and what we're getting ready to do

You know in the future

It was hard. It wasn't easy. I didn't sleep for a month. Ask my wife. You quit your first day

Yeah, I did try to put your first day in Britain's office like crying like I can't do this shit. I'm coming back

And you know here we are 15 months later, you know, I'll probably I'll probably make 400 grand this year. Yep

God willing come on. Hopefully come on. You know, I'm proud of you. I appreciate you man

Thank you for the opportunity to have you on the ground. Thank you for the opportunity to

To be in your life, man. Yes, and I will hear from you again. Thank you. I appreciate it. Keep it up