Building Wealth, Embracing Challenges, and Redefining Winning with JM Ryerson

The world is so abundant if you allow it to be, if you choose for it to be abundant or it's super scarce, and that's a choice as well. I believe winning is setting yourself up to win every single day. It's not about the wins or losses, not necessarily winning and going undefeated. You will have losses, but if you can get back up, to me that's winning. The only time you lose is if you quit or you don't learn from it.

The journey to wealth is a long walk and some may walk quicker than others, but what good is sprinting to the finish line if you pass out when you cross it? On Walk to Wealth, we enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and your first step starts right now. This is Walk to Wealth with your host, John Mendez.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Walk to Wealth podcast. If you're tuning in on YouTube or any of the podcast directories, make sure to do yourself one favor Make sure to give us a follow, not for me, but because I don't want you to have FOMO. I'm bringing on tons of amazing guests this year and I don't want you to miss out on any of them because we're bringing some heat. Let's get right into this episode Without further ado. Jm for anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to get to meet you yet, tell us your elevator pitch. You know who are you and what do you do.

Yeah, brother, thank you A for having me on the show. My name's JM Ryerson. Let's Go Win is my company. I've built this my fourth company I guess I've exited it out of a few in the financial service world. But what I'm passionate about, brother, is helping people with their performance, leadership and mindset, and that's what let's Go Win's all about. So I help people executives, athletes, teams on really how do they perform at their very highest level. And so, yeah, man, I'm blessed to do that. The let's Go Win podcast. Then written a couple books and working on a third right now. So, yeah, man, life is good.

Amazing. Let's go back in time machine a little bit. What was it like growing up, man? Where did this all come from? Where did this whole journey begin?

That's a good question. So I'm a simple kid from Montana is what I tell everybody. I'm literally like I grew up in an athlete. Everything in my life was all about playing sports and I was passionate about it Football, baseball, basketball, soccer, swimming. And you couldn't tell me I wasn't playing in the NBA. Even up to my last knee surgery. I was like, oh, you'll see me in the league. Well, it didn't end up happening that way. I did play ball in college, but after my third knee surgery, everything kind of stopped in that front and I ended up going to study abroad, and I think that's when I really fell in love with what I do today in terms of I read voraciously. I mean, I probably read 30 to 40 books a year, depending on the year. And it started on those trains in Europe. Man, I was living in the Netherlands, in a place called Honegan, and I just fell in love with this whole idea of learning, sharing and getting better. And so when I came back, I didn't expect it, man, to graduate, but somehow I graduated two degrees and I was like, all right, I guess it's time to go be in the world, got into the business world and ever since, man, just building companies and having a great time doing it.

Yeah, that's an amazing story and I kind of wanted to ask you. So. I grew up playing sports as well. I didn't play as many, but I did football, basketball, played baseball for a little bit. I sucked at hitting, but I was an amazing shortstop. I was elite at shortstop Couldn't hit to save my life, though, and I did a track and field my senior year. Let me ask you how did sports play a role in helping you develop into the man that you are today, Brother?

I mean it would be hard for me not to say every lesson I've learned has come from the athletic background, Because I think so much of the way you're tested in athletics, you get your butt kicked every single day. So failing for an athlete, that's just part of the course, man, that's fuel for you. Is like every time you fail you get that much better, Even though you're saying I wasn't a great hitter. But every time you're going up and you're giving it your best and going out in the field and performing as a shortstop. So I mean teamwork, to getting back up after failures, to feeling the highs, feeling the absolute lows. With my injuries, it just taught me, brother, that, A failing is a good thing. B you can always get up again, no matter what, even after knee surgery, man, where it was like you're done, Just worked my tail off because I wanted to be back so much in the field. And what's interesting, brother, is I look back. I think of all the amazing times, not when it was awesome and glorious and winning championships. I look back at the hard work and grinding with these people and that's why it's so applicable to business today. I don't look back at the sales of my companies and go, wow, that was the pinnacle. It's actually when we were really challenged and tough times were happening. Those are the times that you remember. So I think everything I've learned, probably from athletics or books, one or the other, I'm not sure.

And that's amazing. I just want to ask you one more quick question before we kind of segue. You mentioned that you were a broad for quite some time. What was that like? Most people never get their horizons broadened and they're pretty unaware and ignorant as to the life outside of this small box that we call the US. What was that like going abroad at such an early age and pretty much being an adult exploring the world in a whole other country?

Yeah, it was amazing, and I tell anybody that has kids I'm like, look, push your kids to go study abroad because you learn so much about yourself, especially in a country where it's not. English is not their primary language, although Dutch people speak fantastic English, so we're clear. But to be away from your family, to be away from anything that you know, that requires growth. Anytime you're uncomfortable, you're growing. And 100% being on the other side of the world, away from everything that felt normal and comfortable, it wasn't there and to have your eyes open to, oh, people view vacations differently, to work differently, to education differently and, by the way, that's OK, and actually some of it may be better than what we know as being in the States. So I just anybody with you, get a chance, I don't care how far you go, go to another state, go to another place, any other culture, and just it opens your eyes to how big the world really is and how amazing every culture, from countries to ethnicities, to just name a different culture than yours, and you're going to learn something beautiful.

Yeah, it's one of those things where that's one of the reasons why I love going to public school so much. It's like you get to experience so many different people from so many different areas and walks of life and stuff like that and go into public college as well. And for me, it was one of those things where that helped me a ton in terms of becoming who I am, because it's just like you see all these things and you kind of just become the giant melting pot of all these different perspectives, all these different places and you kind of just form your own way of viewing a world that has its own unique flavor to it. Because you've been pretty much grab bits and pieces from here and there, let me ask you to segue a little bit now. So let's go in right. A lot of people in this world think it's a zero sum game. A lot of people think it's E or BE and a lot of people think if I don't have it, no one else can have it. A lot of people keep their cars close to their chest. A lot of people have this scarcity mindset. Your company is super simple let's go win. Tell us what is your idea of winning. What does that look like to you?

Yeah, so I? You're right. There are a lot of people that view it that way and I feel bad for them honestly, and it's not any judgment. I just the world is so abundant if you allow it to be, if you choose for it to be abundant, or it's super scarce, and that's a choice as well. And so, in terms of winning, to answer your question, what do I believe? Winning? This? I believe winning is setting yourself up to win every single day. It's not about the wins or losses, because here's the deal I lose all the time, I fail all the time and I get back up and I do it again, I do it again. I was literally watching Creed 2 last night with my wife and she's like why do you watch these all the time? I'm like because it's a story of somebody getting their ass kicked, getting back up, smiling, doing the work and, yes, does he come out on top? Yeah, sometimes, sometimes he doesn't. But to me, that's literally what winning is all about is not necessarily winning and going undefeated, because I don't know anyone in this world is undefeated. You will have losses, but if you can get back up, to me that's winning. The only time you lose is if you truly quit, put up your hands and say you know what, I can't do it. Because Henry Ford said a long time ago whether you think you can or can't, you're right. It's my favorite quote because it's so profound that simple words is whether you think you can or can't, you're right. So if you believe you can, it doesn't matter what, what outcome is showing up right now, you just keep at it and whatever your dreams are, you can do it, and that's having an abundant mindset.

Yeah, and a lot of the time this stuff goes over a lot of people's heads because it's not kind of like what it sounds kind of like oh, they're just motivation speaking but it's like it's the actual reality of how the world works and something that I've been when I'm gonna say myself, because I have so many victim cars that I could pull and it's like I mean I told you my story when I hopped on your show a little while, like it was last week, and it's like I have so many victim cars I could pull but I choose not to do to use any of them because, as you said, you could choose. I love the way you worded it, because you could choose to view the world as the abundant place that it is, or you could choose to view that scares, and now depends on which one you choose, which lens you choose to look at it through, and for me it's like for a while I was looking at it through a very scarce lens without realizing it. I was always a happy kid but I never understood abundance. I never know. I was just kind of like in the gray, which is kind of even worse because on the fence is the worst place you can be. If you're gonna choose something, you might, might as well go all in with whatever Side of this that you're doing right. There's nothing that's that's gained from being on the fence, but for me it's like I wasn't until I started that you're shifting my thoughts of similar to you, like getting into reading and things like that. That I was like, oh shoot, there's actually like a different world out there that I wasn't seeing at all. And let me flip the question on you a little bit now. So you just told us what winning is, what is losing. Well, how would you define a loss?

Yeah, give it up. That's it. I mean literally, because I talk about failure and people like, why don't you talk about that? And I'm like because you're going to fail at things. But the only time you lose is if you quit or you don't learn from it, right, yeah, again going back to athletics, I learned way more from losses than any when I ever had, and it's not even close, by the way. So when you are down and you're like this is horrible, we are getting destroyed, that's the time to really look and be aware of like alright, what can I learn from this? That is truly Winning. And so if you don't learn from your mistakes and you quit, that's a loss and that's it I. I truly it's. Somebody asked me this, brother, and they're like why are you successful? Blah, blah, blah. And I, honestly, my answer is always kind of been the same because I don't know how to quit. I just keep going. And People are like what? You're stupid for this. That are, okay, cool, that's my life, though I'm choosing to go seek this. Like the first time I wrote my book, people would tell me why I shouldn't do it. Or blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, cool, that doesn't bother me, because I had my vision. Did it go seamlessly? No, it was horrible. There was all kinds of mistakes, but I did it and it's led to so many amazing things in my life. So yeah, man, losing is just stopping or quitting.

No, no, that's amazing, and I always said that losing there's nothing that to be lost if you could learn from it, and Everything is a growing opportunity. And let me ask you though because it's all easier said than done and it's also a lot easier to look at what you can learn after it happened how can one develop that skill set so that they could be in the loss, experiencing it in real time and Also analyzing, reflecting what's going on, because usually a lot of people have their emotions are higher, they're not in there anymore, they just give up and then, after they'll take, you know they'll watch the film. How could you get to this level where you can assess in real time while you're losing, so that you can Pivot and shift and you may not win, but at least not take as big of a loss?

Yeah, but I like the way you phrase that, because here's the deal when your emotions are high, it's hard to see it. So I'm not saying like, as I'm down 30 in a game, I'm like, oh cool. I'm like, no, I need to to your point. Slow down and really observe. Okay, what happened there? That's why film was so key and sports right, because you can go back and see shoot. That's why that guy was dominating me, because he did a crossover and went to his left and I was guarding the right, you know whatever. And so the whole idea is Slow down and ask yourself why did this go the way it did? What? What can I learn from it? What could I have done better? And so when I'm working with companies, I ask very simple questions. I'm like all right, so your goal is this what do we need to learn in order to get there? Okay. And then we start brainstorming. Get these ideas done, okay, cool. Now what do we need to believe in order to achieve that? Start brainstorming, start writing down. And the third question is what do we need to do to go hit that goal? And those three questions Answer almost anything that you want to achieve in life. What do I need to learn, what do I need to believe, what do I need to do? And if you can slow down and just stop and say, all right, what do, what do I need to learn from this? All right, oh man, I need to work on whatever it is Cool. What do I need to believe? That I truly am capable, or, you know, having abundance, my sir. Whatever I can do it, okay cool. Now what do I need to do? What's the work I got to put in? And I think that's the one that scares most people, but I don't know why, because work is fun, man. We as human beings like to be challenged. We don't like easy, and I'll prove it to anybody that's a gamer. If you Master a game, it gets boring and you don't want to do it anymore. So we love challenges as human beings. However, you got to just reframe the question.

Yeah, and not only that, but also reframe the risk. A lot of times people love video games is because they know worst-case scenario. They could just unplug a lot of people when it comes to their actual life. They get scared, they get on the fence because it's like oh, it's the same exact game, just this time there's actuals things at stake and a lot of people that. That scares them off. And so let me ask you, right, so what do you need to learn? What do you need to believe? What you need to do? Let's start off with question one. When you were first entering into the business realm You're coming off of, you got your degrees, you got a lot of sports, you know experience behind you for me, and all I knew coming in was the stuff that I learned from sports. So, for someone like me, back when I started, what would you tell them? What are some of the things they should focus on learning so that they could make it easier to acclimate and to get into the business world, whether as an entrepreneur, whether it's at a startup or whatever it may be?

That's a brilliant question. The first thing I would look at is who do you look up to in that world and Ask them to if you can take them to lunch? And most people probably like I don't have a dollar jam, I can't do it. Figure it out, go pack a lunch. People don't care. You're offering something of value and, literally, instead of saying, hey, can I pick your brain, so I'd like to take it a lunch, I Okay. Yeah, everybody needs to eat at some point, so you do. And that's your opportunity to ask questions, to find out what you don't know. Right, so often I see it happen both ways. People come into a, an occupation, and they have this chip on their shoulder and they're like I'm young, I know what I'm doing, I can't learn from that old dude, I'm gonna blow right by him. Well, no, actually, that old dude can teach you a lot. And, by the way, that old dude often looks at you, the young cat coming in. He's like what am I gonna learn from this millennial or whatever it is? Now you know every generation. Well, actually, old guy, you can learn a ton. And so what I actually work on is what's called reverse mentoring, where I'm like look, there's a reciprocal relationship with both. You guys Just talk, and so when you're coming in, brand new, open your eyes, observe, and when you see that person, that's who I would go talk to and just be open, regardless if you like them or you don't, cuz some of my best lessons are from people. I cannot stand, but I can learn a lot from them. So it's not the messenger, it's the message.

Yeah, and that's amazing and it kind of reminds me of like Uncle Drew, like Carrie Irwin used to dress up as an old guy and play basketball towards people in the court. And the reason I thought of that is because a lot of times and and I that is from my experience growing up playing sports my coaches were like secretly still in shape a lot of the times. So like growing up like you think, like man, there was there. Oh, that's why they're coaching now I, they just love the sports and it's like you have to check up with them or ever, sometimes, like back when I was in middle school, my coach used to like pad up and so like he used to pretty much like Sometimes play good as the, he would mop us like it was bad, and even in high school, because you don't have to be as athletic in high school, you just have to know how to move a little bit, know how to wiggle, and you could be 40, 45 years old and still play with you know High schoolers and you know our old coaches that they used to used to cook us back in practice back in the day when the coaches used, you know, strap up and play. So it was super fun. So I love that you mentioned that in that concept of a verse. Mentoring I want to take a quick pause. Sorry, I'm getting like city, cause my grandparent, my grandma, just went to the hospital, my sister went to the hospital and I'm not only one home. So give me one second. I'm so sorry about that. All right, no, false alarm, false alarm, nothing bad. All right, so let's get back into it. All right, so, never mean, I just really made me, you know, reflect back on my old coaches. So let me ask you right, so, reverse mentoring, how do we kind of break that stigma? Because a lot of the time, as you said, like people have that idea is like, hey, I can't learn something from this person, they're of a different time, they're of a different era and a lot of time, and us starting off it's one of those things which, like well, it's kind of can also be intimidating as well. But even if you think you can learn from something is like, well, they didn't know so much, they don't probably have the time of day for me, hey, so how does one go about initiating that initial interaction?

Yeah, even the way you frame the question. Look at who the person was putting the focus on. It was very eye-centered and the truth is you change it by saying what value can I bring to, let's just say, john? Let's say you were the old guy and you're 60 and you've been grinding it out, and you're the veteran and I'm the young guy. We're gonna switch roles first. Hey, hey, hey, I would look at. I'd be like what value can I bring to John's? Now? If I'm younger, typically I have a better be on. Like what's going on? Maybe technology wise, how can I increase John's sales? I'm looking at something John's doing. I'm like that's amazing. I could scale that. And John Doesn't even know it. And so the way it works is if you can get by and by Leading with hey, I want to bring value to you. I've never had one person say no to that. Or I say, hey, john, I want to bring value to your life, can I take you to lunch? I've never had one person say, nope, you can bring zero value to me, I don't want it. Literally never. And I've met billionaires where, okay, cool kid, give me a shot. And and sure enough, man, I've learned so much through these interactions by just being open to the fact that I can Provide value to them too, because here's the deal I have a different lens than than they have. Perhaps John is selling to people like me that I can help with, or Something. There's always something there. So there's a great book called mindset by Carol Dweck. Everyone should read it at some point in their life, because the whole idea of growth mindset, literally is what we're talking about. It's just being open to other people's ideas and the fact that we don't know it all, and how boring that would be if we did so. That's kind of how I've always tried to approach it that way.

No, that's amazing advice in. It's just sad a little bit more. I think we're both podcasters. When I tell people is, if you want to get somebody, just say, hey, I, I'm starting a podcast, I would love to have you as my. You know, my first guess or something like that, and Because podcasting is like the next hot thing. So it's like if you have a show, if you have a platform, people like free publicity and so it's like people will be more willing to Now do it. Do so. And if you need to like interview a couple of your friends, just to say, you got a couple like Emphasos on your belt and then you know sending the raw files, sending everything. So it's like you get to pretty much Get access to one-on-one coaching almost with these podcast interviews, depending on how you use them. Let's move on to question number two, right? So what do we need to learn? Is we got that? We know how we get you know Reach out to people. We know how we could take that to lunch and how we can connect them. What do we need to believe? So let me ask you, as I said, and I'm gonna keep using this framework as a Coming out of, you know, school and athlete, because that's where I came out of, that wasn't. I didn't have business experience. I was too busy with school and sports. So coming out of school that we what are some of the beliefs that you know? Changes that you had to make to get into that business realm when you were first starting off.

Uh, man, there was a bunch, so I had to believe that I could Well. Let me give you my best example. When I first started into my first company, I was hired just like anybody else, and the guy that hired me said hey, bring your goals. And so I brought my goals, and how I did it is I looked at the top guys name was David, and David had done like 190,000, I think it was, and so I came with 180,000 as my goal for that year. And I'm sitting with a guy named Rich who is my business partner for three companies after this happens, and then a guy named Todd, and they literally looked at my goals. They put they laughed first off, put a big X through it and said why don't you come back with something realistic? And I was like all right. And so I went back and I started to. For a moment I started to lower my goals and then I got pissed. I was like yeah, I'm, so I am. And so I doubled it. I literally put 180 and I put it to 360. And I folded it. I gave it to him. I said you can open this at the end of the year. Well, sure enough, I hit 366. Now I don't tell you that, to brag, it was a national record. It was like, okay, cool. But literally they did something that I needed. I needed to believe in myself, and the one thing you should tell me is you can't do something. It's the first thing I'm going to do, and by them saying, why don't you go back with something more realistic? I went, it fired me up to say I'm going to double this, mother, blah, blah, and I'm going to double his goal. And sure enough, that's how ended up being he and I ended up being business partners, and so I think what he did is he. He made me believe that I can do be more than I was showing up as, and later he actually said that. But I'm like I don't know if he did or he didn't. Maybe he's brilliant, but I needed to know and believe in my heart that I could destroy David's record, and it wasn't about David, it was just really hitting these goals. And so, yeah, man, it's just knowing that you can do it.

Let me ask you a question have you ever got lost in the pursuit of goals Like what was it? What was that process?

like I'm laughing because, yes, often you definitely will get lost, and early in my career it would have been my second company. I was actually my wife and I, who have been married now 17 years, almost 18, we, we were literally separated for a year. So when you say get lost, yeah, man, I literally lost sight of the most important thing, which was my wife and my kids. And because I was so focused on building business and I was grinding brother and we were growing at about 15% a year, more zeros in my bank account than I ever thought was possible, and here's the truth of it my health was terrible, my relationships sucked and the really important things in my life were failing, but, yeah, my business was crushing it. So, yeah, I lost sight of it. And so having check-ins and having your goals in your mirror, being clear on hey, this is priority one, two, three, having that up there, is so important because life happens fast, man, and you know like I lost my dad last year and you get lost for a minute, and so you need things to bring you back to like all right, this is the goal, this is why I'm doing it, and and get rechecked in or re reengaged to those goals.

Yeah, malcolm, go with his brother. And, if you don't mind me asking because this is kind of I feel like it's so coincidental how how God works, because this is like a stage where I'm currently, in terms of the relationship part, I'm going to dive a little bit deeper into this part. So let me ask you you said your relationship sucks for a little while because your business was doing so well that it was kind of taking over a lot of other areas of your life, that seemed. How did you get your life back in order? What was that process like?

Well, I, when she did the full takeaway, when we were completely separated, I was about to lose my kids 50% of the time. Something hit me to say this isn't why I signed up for this. And that's when I dove into both therapy, more personal development stuff, and it made me really focus on what's important, and here's here's number one is my. My health is literally wealth. I say it all the time health is wealth and my health. At that time, I was probably 280, almost 280 pounds. I'm a big guy, I'm six five, so I knew that day might come. But I was like early thirties man, this is not real. And so when I checked in on health, my relationships and business and graded myself, it became very evident that business was like an A, health was like a D minus or an F, and my relationship was definitely an F. Well, are you winning? If you were to get that report card, you have one A and two F. So are you winning? No, man, you're flunking out of school. And so that's when I decided to really evaluate all of it. And the crazy part is, john, I actually started to work far less and made way more. We grew way faster when my relationships were whole when my health was whole. And now that's just common sense, but in that moment I didn't see it.

Yeah. So let me ask you what kind of boundaries can one start to put in place so that they don't get consumed by this entrepreneurship? It is a daked thing, especially so I'm also. I wasn't a professional gamer, but just like every young teenage guy, I was on Call of Duty like for days on end, pretty much growing up at 2K, madden, all the video games. So it's like what kind of boundaries can you put in place so that when there's a game of entrepreneurship you start to get too deep into it, you can kind of bounce back on track?

Well, that's a great question and it's actually really simple, but it's beautiful. Having an accountability partner is so incredibly important. I already told you, know, said to put your goals in your bathroom mirror, but having somebody actually hold you accountable to that. So, for instance, if you look at let's just take those three areas health, relationships and business they're kind of the three big ones for anyone and you say this is my goal for my business and you speak it out into the universe, you put your goals up in your mirror and you tell somebody about it. Now you have somebody as an accountability partner because you're giving them permission to say, hey, I want to check in with you to see how I'm doing. Cool, Now you put your health goal up there, you put your relationship goals up there, and the same thing, you have an accountability partner to say, hey, John, you said this was important to you, that your relationships, that you did a date night or whatever your thing is every week. How are you doing? Oh, shoot, I got busy with business, I forgot. And they're literally just checking in with you to say you told me to hold you accountable. You're not doing it. What's the deal? Because here's the deal we will lie to ourselves all day long, but to lie to another human being, especially someone that we trust enough to share these goals with. We don't want to let them down. So naturally, when they check you on it, you're going to be like all right, I got, I got to get reengaged with my relationship and make sure that's happening. So it's probably the easiest boundary to set up is just finding accountability partner, having your goals up in your mirror and letting them hold you accountable.

Now, what would you look for in like a good accountability partner? Especially at this age, I feel like a lot of people are still kind of lost, so it's like finding someone that's one is into that like entrepreneurship and personal development is pretty hard to begin with and, as relates to me personally, the circle that I actively spend communicating with now definitely shrunk a ton from when I was in high school and a ton from when I was in college, and so it's like what do you look for in a good accountability partner?

So you look for me anyway. I look for people that are driven, because I look at my cultural values, for instance. So courage, fun, love are like the three cultural values that I believe in. And so if you have those things that you like to have fun, okay cool. If you're wet blanket, we're not going to hang out, just the way it works. If you have the courage to really go after your dreams, then we're going to work. And if you're willing to truly show love, right, and maybe I would throw in like driven, competitive, whatever the cultural values that I really want. And that's what I'm searching out in that other person, because, if I let's say, drive is one of them and my best friend if he was listening right now, he is not driven at all. Man, this dude is the greatest man, but he's just doesn't really care about growing in, you know, entrepreneur, that's not even on his radar, and so he would be a bad accountability partner. Really good for fun, really good for fun. That's about it. He would be a bad accountability partner, but it's the some of the times it's people that they're not even necessarily like your homies, like somebody you want to spend time with, but they are driven. Those are the people that I want to be a part of and so I actually have on my bathroom here. Surround yourself with people that inspire you, and those are the accountability people I want, because they make me want to be better.

That's amazing advice, man, and something that, as I said, it's so coincidental. Everything works. This is like where the stage of life where I'm at right now and so let me ask you, right, so we're kind of we're going off a little bit of a tangent, but this brings things back a little bit. Now to question number three right, what do we need to do to start, you know, becoming successful, start achieving the goal that we want to? What can we do now, today, in terms of? So we already learned, let's say we want to start a business. Right, we learn what we got to do, we learn who we got to meet and we figured out what we got to believe. What identity shifts we have to make Now, like, what can we do to start actually getting this going? Because a lot of times, there's so many different avenues to go down, there's so much different advice that you can pretty much go after and follow and with information accessible to everyone, there's almost too much information now to try to decipher. So, what are, like, the basic, the fundamentals, the you know no BS things that someone needs to do to get into starting a business?

Yeah, man. So truly set expectations, proper expectations, and then the outcome who's responsible for what and by when? I'll give you a quick example that happened last night inside my family. My wife asked the kids to put their clothes away and she was frustrated because they didn't do it. And I said well, when are they supposed to put them away? She's like when I tell them to. I said, well, if you were to tell me the same, I would do it when I felt like it. So if you don't put a clear timeline, like this is what you're responsible for. So hey, TJ is my son's name. Tj, put your clothes away right now. Okay, Now there's a clear expectation of when it's supposed to be done. But if you leave that vague, that's just the way the world works, that you'll do it on your own time. Same thing applies in business. Set your expectations, who's responsible for what and by what time, and when you do that, now everybody's on the same page to say hey, John, I told you you needed to set up the LLC by April 1st. How you doing, man? Any need for support, Anything that I can do to help you? No, man, I got it. It will be good to go. Cool, and it's just an easy check-in for you to do, and you can do it with yourself by simply writing these things down. Now, if you missed that timeline, that's okay, reset it. But be clear on why did I miss it that I miss it because I was lazy. I was playing Call of Duty. Whatever my thing was okay. Well, how important is this business to me? It's the most important thing in the world to me. Okay, cool. So next time I'm going to choose not to do Call of Duty, but rather to set up that LLC. So it's funny how these little tips will make the greatest difference to you growing a business or it never getting off the ground.

That's amazing. It's one of the things where the deadlines it's almost something that could be a double edged sword and people who know how to hack deadlines because I forget what the rule is called, but it's pretty much why people always procrastinate because they like the adrenaline rush that comes with having deadlines and there's a lot of people that are not a lot. There's like a small group of people that learn how to hack deadlines so that they can become almost infinitely more productive just because they intentionally set deadlines so that they could trick their brains into working in overdrive and get stuff done. And they work at such a high speed and they're so efficient with their time. There's one YouTube video I was watching about time management and how the most successful people manage their time. Some of these people manage it in five minute increments, which is insane to think of, but they get so much done and they're one day is like a regular person's one month of work because they're so intentional, they're so focused. They put every single minute that they're awake and breathing to use, and it's insane to even get to. But it's all a progression, right, and it comes at all due time. Let me ask you right now. We got the three questions. Now, let's say we start getting some wins under our belt. What does it look like? What do we need to look out for once we start winning, as I said, so that we can prevent getting consumed, so that we can prevent getting a win and getting airheaded, so that we can prevent some of the things that may steer us off course, because winning does feel good and sometimes it's not the day that. What is it? It's the day after success or the day after a win is where you truly find out who's a winner and who's not. Because so many people take the days off, and I think this past World Cup that just happened not too long ago. It was at last year, I believe. I think it was last year. Time is flying, but the past World Cup I think it was messy or something like that went into a vacation or something like that, and then Ronaldo and some other people, they got right back to work. Two, I think, like four days right after World Cup, they were back in the lab cooking up, working hard. So what are some things that we need to look out for once we start winning, so that we don't pretty much win and then pretty much fall right back down the ground zero.

Yeah, man, it's. So checking in is huge, and why am I doing it? So, for instance, you talked about Nessie taking the vacation. Maybe his why is to win the World Cup, and so he's going to soak that in, where Ronaldo's was the same to win the World Cup and they didn't. Therefore, I need to get back to work. For instance, kobe Bryant the day after he scored 60 some odd in the last game, you, that dude, should have been at the club hanging out having a good time. He was up at work at 8am working on his next business venture, which ended up being an Academy Award for a film, for a short film, or yeah, I think it was Academy Award. And the point is, his why was so strong? He knew that he wanted to fulfill this dream. Now, often we get lost in the shuffle because, oh right, things are going good and so now I'm just going to celebrate and that's great. But why did you start it to begin with? Well, for me, it's freedom. So the reason I get up and go the next day is because I want freedom of time, and the more that I just start to kind of become laissez-faire, I start to lose freedom, and so it's. It's funny man discipline actually grants us freedom. But often people see it the other way. They're like man, I want freedom. I don't want any of that discipline. I'm like well, in order to get that freedom, you have to be disciplined about some of this stuff, because it doesn't work without one, does not work without the other. So just be clear on your wise man. And when you are like, for instance, I have a picture of my kids and my wife and they're always next to my goals. So every time I think of, even for a moment, like sloughing off or doing something that's not supporting the business, I can look right there and be like all right, let's get back to work.

Yeah, and that's amazing advice. And, jim, you dropped a ton of valuable nuggets. You talked about the three questions you need to ask yourself. You talked about what to look for when you start winning, so that you don't take that winning and get off course. It's not about a lot of things, man. Where could people find out, find you, where could people connect with you if they want to learn more about what you got going on and they want to start winning themselves as well?

Yeah, brother, Thank you. Well, go to let's Go Win podcast because you get to hear John, this young dude. He drops some amazing knowledge and I told him as much on the show. I'm like I was not thinking like you at your age. That's amazing. So go check out let's Go Win podcast. And then let's Go Win 365. You know, I'm building a community in LinkedIn so you can do that. Or let's Go Win 365 on Instagram. I do a live every Wednesday and I just want to share all of the experience, just like we did today, brother, because I had mentors doing the same for me and I just want to share any of my experience to help others Amazing, and that was time for the famous five.

The question that asks every single podcast. Let's get into number one. I'm coming in swinging, so question number one what is the most impactful lesson you've learned in life? To?

be you to show up as you your authentic self.

What is the most admirable trait? A person can have Humility.

My lead is it's not about me. So that's like that's my definition of my philosophy. It's it's not about me, and that's not easy, but I didn't mean to expand, but humility is so key.

No, no way. I didn't know if you were going to like have that dramatic pause right after so that you could go right into expanding, or not. My fault, that's my, my apology. Let me ask you what is the? If you had to change someone's life with one book, which book would you?

recommend Mansearch for Meaning by Victor Frankel. It literally is a life altering book and I give it out like candy. Now it is a. It's a hard read in terms of not length of pages, but the content is really, really. It'll challenge you, but it will change your life.

What is the legacy that you're trying to leave behind?

That's such a big word. Let's go win. Is that legacy, brother? Because what's crazy if you were to ask me my grandparents, parents names? I don't know, and that's true for like 99% of the population. So legacy is one of those things where they may forget your name and what you did, but how did you make people feel while you were here? And that's what let's go wins all about. So that's my legacy brother.

That's amazing. And if for any money that wanted to embark on their walk to wealth today, what is the first step that you recommend they take?

Be clear on why you want wealth and what does that look like? That word is such an important word to be clear on. I lost that for a minute and I've seen so many executives. I actually have a guy that's a fringe billionaire right now and he has so much money wealth to some in the bank and this dude won't be around in five years if he doesn't seriously change his habits. So is he wealthy? I don't know, Financially he is, but Steve Jobs died with about $8 billion in the bank. He said he'd give it all back just for another day on this earth. So be clear on what wealth means to you and then go get it.

You've now finished taking the first step. Now let us help you take the next one. Subscribe to our newsletter at walktowealthcom. That's walk, the number two wealth dot com, so we can keep you moving on your journey. We'll see you on the next episode of Walk to Wealth with John Mendes.