Eric Cline
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
we jumped into the timeshare exit space.
First company we ever started, built it up to where I had over 150 W2 employees in my office.
We were doing 34 million a year.
We were netting 12 on that.
My wife and I own 67% of the business.
That's 8 million a year.
Now my dear friend, Don, he goes, have you ever thought about selling this thing?
No clue what he was talking about.
I didn't know you could sell a business.
And then we started getting offers in.
We had offers from 147 million to 92 million.
I'm like, how the hell did we build something?
I want to get closer to God.
It's always been something that has been very confusing to me without any shadow of a doubt.
A guy like me without something out there looking over me doesn't make it at this table.
It's comparable.
Of course.
Yeah, man.
It's fun, dude.
Awesome.
So I am in the real estate space, primarily the wholesale industry, real estate acquisitions.
I do flip homes.
I do have rental properties.
I don't talk a lot about that part of it because my partners handle all that.
Yeah.
And then I have a call center run at remote out of Pakistan, which is, I'd probably say, the biggest company I have right now.
We have over 500 employees in that office, 15,000 square feet.
We service the real estate industry, home services, and a couple –
like hard money lenders and an insurance guy, we offer VA services.
And it's that company here over the next 12, 24 months, we're really getting focused on growing and scaling that up.
I have had that company for just over two years.
Two years.
Yeah.
I was a year and a half out of treatment, went into treatment at 28 years old.
So I was 30, I'm 44.
So I've been writing my own check for 14 years.
I love that, dude.
And I've been through it, man.
In the 14 years, I've had some really high highs, and I've gotten kicked in the nuts hard.
With 2019, the very first company I ever started,
In 2019, after having it for about seven-ish years, we were getting ready to go through a pretty sizable exit, over $100 million, and ended up...
losing it all like literally overnight.
Yeah.
I mean, that's from going from the halfway house to that.
Obviously there's a lot to the story we can talk about, but it's like, I made the decision, me and my wife, uh, in 2000, the end of 2011, going into 2012, no, the end of 2011, we made the decision.
We were, we were going to be an entrepreneur and everyone in our family, at least a good portion of them thought we were nuts, uh,
My wife was eight months pregnant.
I had our daughter, which was nine.
We had maybe 10, 11,000, 12,000 bucks in the bank, renting a home in a fourth bedroom in a basement.
We were like, you know what, let's go give this thing a shot.
Like a lot of us go through the self-doubt, the people close to us just trying to protect us.
And we ended up saying, yeah.
And dude, it has been a hell of a run.
Like when I say it's been amazing, just building a life by design.
By design.
Not a lot of people can bet on themselves the way some of us do.
And build a life where...
You get to do what you want with who you want, when you want.
And it's just, man, I'm 44, and it keeps getting better.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
We have been together 16 years, and we have been married.
We'll be 14 years, man.
Phenomenal, dude.
Phenomenal.
Most people think a year is long now.
She's my day one.
She was with me before.
any amount of success, even a small level of it.
Three days before I was walking out of a treatment center, they would load us up in buses and bring us over to outside meetings.
And it was literally three days.
I was getting ready to get out.
I got put on a plane from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale.
I was in a treatment center for 60 days.
And three days before, she walks into this meeting
And she walks through the door and she had like this light around her.
No bullshit.
It's like, you got kids, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
You can't explain the love of a kid until you have a kid.
Right.
So I couldn't explain what I saw unless you were there and you saw it with me.
She walks through this door and she had a light, an aura around her.
And she came straight up to me.
And this was three days.
I was broke, broken, helpless, hopeless, desperate.
homeless, like literally everything.
And she walks up, sits down and we have a conversation.
I have $8 to my name, not knowing if I'm going to go back to Chicago or am I going to go into a halfway house?
How old were you?
I was 28.
28.
28 years old from 13 to 28, heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol.
Crack cocaine was the one that brought me to my knees.
Smoked crack for six years of that 13.
It was rough.
It was rough, man.
My journey has not been luck.
It's been hard work and not giving up and showing up every single day.
And just putting in the fucking work, dude.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She comes up to me.
We have a conversation.
And she's been with me ever since.
So I get let out of a treatment center.
The first date we ever go on, she comes and picks me up.
I have no license.
My license is revoked in two states.
By the time I was 22, 23 years old, I had four DUIs, driving on suspended.
Oh, you know, I was a train wreck.
And she saw something in me.
And I always say it's like she was the one person
that would look at me and say, you know what, there's there's more to your story.
Like, I believe in you.
And it was a first person that consistently told me that they believed in me.
And all I because I didn't believe in myself.
I'd let so many people down all my family members meet, like the one that really mattered was I let myself down for years.
And when she just continuously said, I believe in you, I believe in you, you can do this, you can do this.
It's like she brainwashed me to believe that.
Well, and I know she really believed in me.
But then it was like, damn, maybe if she believes in me, I'll start believing in myself.
And yeah, dude, it's been phenomenal.
It is.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I've been addicted to everything.
Like when I say I'm an addict, I'm an addict through and through.
But it's where do I focus my energy to make sure whatever I am going to be addicted to, it's not going to kill me.
It's not going to hurt my family.
It's not going to ruin my relationships.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I've been addicted to drugs, alcohol, porn, women, you name it.
I've been addicted to all of it.
Going and buying clothes, dude.
There's been times where I'll leave a mall after dropping $20,000, $30,000 on a shopping spree.
I see it, brother.
We're in Miami.
And I leave there like I just left the dope house.
So I've been addicted to everything.
But now...
I don't want to say I'm addicted to it, but I am on a – I'm now on this journey, dude.
I'm 44 years old.
I have cracked the code to where as long as I don't put drugs or alcohol in my system.
Correct.
I will never go broke again a day in my life.
I've cracked the code.
I understand enough about business, scaling, building teams, systems, to where I'm going to be okay as long as I don't put the sauce on my body again.
I guarantee it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I guarantee it.
I've proven it time and time again now.
Dude, it was, so I went from working in a call center, learn how to sell stuff over the phone.
Yeah.
And I realized you can sell just about anything over the phone.
You really can.
And I got really good at it.
So my wife and I went and any business we've ever had, someone's actually just brought the idea to us.
I didn't think of them.
Um, it's not like I've thought of all these amazing business models.
I love that.
Yeah.
Like someone was like, Hey, there's this really cool business model.
I'm like, who's in that industry.
Let me hear some recordings.
How much money are they making?
Cool.
I can go do that.
Yeah.
So every business I've ever had, I knew a guy that knew a guy that said, Hey, you'd probably be really good at this.
And I was like, all right, I'm gonna go do it.
Yeah.
So we jumped into the timeshare exit space, was in that industry for 10 years, built it up to where I had in Fort Lauderdale, had over 150 W2 employees in my office.
Over a hundred of them were on the phones.
We were doing 30, just north of 34 million a year.
We're netting 12 on that.
My wife and I own 67% of the business.
That's 8 million a year.
That was at the peak of it, right?
right when we were getting sued.
So my wife and I went to go buy a home in Fort Lauderdale in the Seven Isles.
We were getting ready to get a loan for the house, for a mortgage, $7 million.
And it's crazy.
I just went by that house yesterday, dude.
That thing's worth $15 million now.
What in the heck, bro?
If I would have held on to that one.
So we went to go get a mortgage and the banker, which is now my dear friend, Don, he was like, brother, what do you do for work?
And I'm like, I own a timeshare exit company.
Didn't think anything of it.
First company we ever started, you know, having a blast, thinking like life is amazing, which it was.
And he goes, have you ever thought about selling this thing?
I was like, I had no clue what he was talking about.
I didn't know you could sell a business.
I really didn't.
I was that naive to it.
I had no clue businesses sold.
I just moved.
Yeah.
That's it.
Some directions were good.
Some directions were wrong, but I just kept moving.
You live and learn.
Yes.
You live and learn.
Yeah.
Lesson every time.
I love it.
So he says, hey, let me look at your model.
He looked at it, brought a M&A guy in.
They looked at it and they're like, holy smokes, you guys got a cash cow in your hands.
Super profitable.
And they're like, they start talking EBITDA and all this stuff.
And I was like.
what is even going on?
They had private equity firms flying in.
We were going out to dinner and me and my wife literally were like, how the hell did we get at these tables?
Like, is this real?
Are they messing with us?
The whole time, we almost didn't believe what was going on.
And then we started getting offers in.
And the very first offer that came in, we took the five best – the M&A company took the five best offers.
They flew them in.
They looked at our facility in Fort Lauderdale.
So we had offers from $147 million to $92 million for 100% of the business.
And again, I'm like, how the hell –
did we build something like this?
How did we get here?
Like literally pinching ourself,
So we structured the company, set up all these trusts and got all the paperwork ready.
It took about six months to get everything ready to sell.
Did you have a mentor at that time?
Don.
My good friend Don Weir, which is out of Fort Lauderdale.
Shout out, Don.
Yeah, he owns a wealth financial company.
He manages people money.
A lot of athletes he manages.
Got it, got it.
And very, very big entrepreneurs.
But he was helping us.
He put us in contact with a law firm that could structure trust because when you get all that kind of money, you need to be protected.
I don't know anything.
I can't talk about it today because I had people doing it for us because I didn't get it.
But lawyers were structuring the trusts.
They set up certain accounts for asset protection and all this stuff.
Because literally for us, I went from the crack house to a call center to saying I was going to be an entrepreneur.
And seven years later, which it went like that, we're talking about a massive exit.
And there was a wise man once told me, his name is...
Jordan Zimmerman, the first billionaire I ever knew.
Zimmerman Advertisement.
He's right off, I think, 95.
You can see his building.
He was like, Eric, he goes, things can come to an end.
Just be cautious on the way you spend money.
Because, again, dope house, penthouse, making millions.
When you make millions, you start spending like you're making millions.
And I never had anybody around me that talked about finances.
Not that my parents, they didn't have a ton of money.
They weren't dead broke.
But you were at a different level, dude.
Different level.
Different level.
Yeah.
Of course.
For sure.
Yeah, me too.
Yeah.
um and so we we structured everything uh we ended up going the the deal we ended up going with 147 they dropped out they thought there were going to be some lawsuits coming down the the pipe and they were like we don't we don't think this is an industry we want to be in so we were selling 51 of the company
We were retained in 49%.
We were selling 51% for $54 million.
I had to stay on for two years, and then we were going to do a second sale after the two years.
So it would ultimately have been a nine-figure exit.
That's why I always say nine-figure exit.
The first one was for $54 million, but I was still going to own almost 50% of the company.
which it was a cash cow at the time.
And they did all their due diligence.
Paperwork was all done.
We were waiting to close the deal.
And we ended up getting, which I can't name the two timeshare developers just because of my settlement.
But two of the largest timeshare developers in the world, publicly traded, multi-billion dollar companies.
We know they got a hold of our book when we sent it out to all the private equity firms and they knew we were going to be exiting.
They ended up suing us, my companies personally, and then me and my wife personally.
So they sued our companies and then me and my wife.
And we got some poor advice from a lawyer, paid him $150,000.
As soon as the first lawsuit came,
We panicked.
Of course.
We didn't know what to do.
Of course.
So we started literally just Googling bankruptcy attorneys because we were told by someone if you file a Chapter 11 on the company, no one else can sue you because we got one lawsuit.
Thirty days later, we got another lawsuit, and we're like, holy shit, this is scary.
We literally panicked.
Was it the first time you were getting sued?
Ever.
Ever.
Ever.
At this level.
At that level, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I've been sued by employees.
No, dude.
It was scary.
Yeah.
They were bringing in, I mean, dude, I was on the Channel 5 News in Orlando.
The two developers were trying to make a big scene out of Sue.
Oh, so you were on the news for the lawsuit.
Dude, there was a lawyer with boards behind him with all my companies.
talking about me and my wife and we're taking down the timeshare exit Kings of the industry.
And we won't settle for them breaking or interfering with our contracts.
Like it was bad.
We didn't do anything wrong, but they were making a, they were making a statement with us.
Right.
So we will go and stroke a $150,000 check to a bankruptcy attorney.
He files a chapter 11.
And our attorneys that were fighting the case for us, they're like, you made a big mistake doing that.
They put a trustee, they appointed a trustee to the company.
I had to stand in front of 140, 150 employees in my cafeteria.
And with a stroke of a conversation, I had to let them off.
And it happened literally overnight.
And I went, we fought that lawsuit for two and a half years.
A lot of people are like, well, what'd you do wrong?
I didn't do anything wrong.
I could sue you right now and you would have to fight me.
Yeah.
You'd have to defend yourself against my claims.
A hundred percent.
That's how it works.
That's how it works.
So when you have- And it drains you.
And it drains you, dude.
Yeah, it drains you.
It drained our bank account.
It drained our revenue stream because that shut off overnight.
Of course.
It was robbing me of our family.
Like my family was being drugged through the mud.
Me and my wife were on the verge of getting a divorce.
I was either days, seconds, minutes away from going and using drugs again.
Didn't know what to do.
I was lost.
I was lost.
I was panicking.
In the last 30 days, and that was a two and a half year lawsuit, couldn't start another business up.
My legal bill for 30 days at the end was a half a million bucks for a month.
Wow.
And I told my wife, I'm like, they're going to get the money.
Whether they get it in the lawsuit or we settle, they're getting the money.
I said, so let's just settle this shit.
And we made the decision.
I told her, I said, let's settle it if we got to go back to zero.
And this is where I was like, all right, it's time to go do this again.
build another company.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We, we settled, it cost us, it was either six or 7 million, which is a shot in the nut.
Yeah.
And, uh,
No income stream.
I told my wife, and that's where I found the wholesale real estate industry.
And I didn't never look at it as real estate.
I looked at it at the model.
Real estate just so happens to be the conversation piece of the lead.
But I was looking at the actual model of it.
The service.
Yeah, yeah.
I told my wife, I said, give us a year and a half.
Let's settle this.
Let's get 100% of our attention back.
And I said, give me a year and a half, I'll get all this shit back for you.
And I literally put the blinders on, dude, and I went to war for a year and a half.
I'm just going to double down.
Yep.
Okay.
Someone...
Someone like you, a guy I knew, said, dude, there's this wholesale real estate industry.
It's just like what you were doing, except distressed timeshare owners.
Now it's distressed homeowners.
So he goes, you would crush this industry.
And I was like, cool.
Send me a couple recordings.
Let me hear the pitch.
He sent me three recordings.
I listened to two of them, called Shiloh, and I said, let's go run it up in this industry.
I said, we'll dominate it.
Got in.
Yeah.
and immediately hit the ground spreading.
First year, 2.6 million.
Next year, three point something.
Next year, three point something.
Ended up going to a lot of conferences and masterminds.
And I saw within the industry, a lot of the coaches, gurus, influencers, whatever you want to call them,
I was sitting in the crowd and I was there for a very specific reason.
One, I wanted to see how they were teaching it because I had my own way of doing it.
And I saw a massive opportunity for me in this space.
Never once did I ever talk about being a coach.
Never.
But after now 14 years of having a lot of success as an entrepreneur, made tens of millions, lost tens of millions, made it again, I was like,
I can come into this industry and teach virtual sales at a level I don't think anyone in this space can match.
100% over the phone.
If you're going to go door to door and walk in their house, I'm not teaching you how to do that.
But if you want to do this over the phone, I don't think there's anybody better in the space to teach you how to implement a sales process virtually that'll get you the results I can get you.
So I started that.
I started up Run It Remote.
I knew leads were what drove the business in this industry.
Got it.
So it services the wholesale industry, which is leads.
So what Run It Remote does is you hire our cold callers to go and generate motivated seller leads for you.
So you can be at home.
You can be at wherever you want.
It's virtual.
They're going to send you homeowners that have gotten a phone call.
They've spent three to five minutes on the phone with a call out of the blue.
And they've answered very specific questions.
Do you want to sell your home?
Yes.
Six months or less?
Yes.
What is...
what is your motivation?
They're going to give us their motivation.
They're going to give us their timeline.
They're going to tell us everything, three bed, two bath, 1500 square feet, 1980 build.
And here's the reason I want to sell.
And then we, so we qualify the lead for you.
Then we send it to you.
You got to go and convert that lead to a contract.
So that's what Run It Remote is, is we are a cold-calling VA company that does lead gen for companies.
Got it.
Yeah.
So we can go into any industry.
Okay.
Run It Remote is a company that ultimately we are going to build to exit.
It is a cash cow.
We control 100% of it.
Right now we have a 15, to answer your question, yes, we can help.
But we have a 15,000 square foot facility in Pakistan right now.
We're building out another 15,000 square feet.
Um, and a lot of our talent is coming directly.
Our team is coming directly out of college and they are teaching English now over in Pakistan, in the universities.
Like it is a, yeah, it's, it's, it's the, in the universities, it's the primary language that they're holding their studies with and all that stuff.
And within our office in Pakistan, we have four full-time English teachers.
Cause that's the first thing someone asks is how's the English?
Our English is really good.
I was shocked when my partner, Sean, Sean Serrani out of Atlanta, 22 years old, one of the most brilliant entrepreneurs at his age I've ever met.
He was our ties to Pakistan.
His father, born and raised in Pakistan.
Sean's born and raised here in the U.S., but his dad still spends six months out of the year there.
So that's how we were able to get to Pakistan, open a brick and mortar office and build out the team that we have.
I mean, we dumped 150, 160,000 just in the rehab of our building.
And over there, that's a lot of money to rehab in Pakistan.
So we have a beautiful facility and our goal is to ultimately pivot into other industries.
So like with what you are talking about,
Dude, me, you, and Sean just need to jump on a call, like honestly, and just test pilot what you want to do and take it from there.
Dude, let's do it.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I'm serious.
We do an affiliate model.
So I...
I only ever wanted to be... In the beginning, man, I just wanted to feel part of a family.
I was an outsider in my own family growing up for many, many years.
And a lot of people are like, oh, that's such a low-level surface.
Why?
Well, when you grew up the way I grew up and you had the internal demons you fought as long as I did, it's not a surface level.
I want to...
build the most amazing family and give my family the experiences, not spoil them, my kids, to where they don't understand hard work ethic and all that shit, right?
Because I think you can go to an extreme.
But dude, I want to show my family that no matter what the hell you go through in life,
My 13-year-old son's right outside the door here.
And dude, he's been overweight most of his life.
And this is answering the why, right?
My son's 13 years old.
He's been overweight most of his life.
And I can get in front of, I've helped thousands of people.
I really have.
change their life and get financial freedom and break the nine to five and motivate them to want to just go and light life on fire.
And my own son, I was failing to do that with.
He was 11 years old, 211, 12, 13, 14, 15 pounds.
He was obese.
And when I look at the pictures, it almost brings me to tears because that's a direct reflection of me as his father, the one that's supposed to be leading the pack.
And mom, you know what I mean?
I believe as parents we failed him.
We came out to Arizona, and he met Andy Elliott for the first time.
And Andy said something to him that triggered him, and he's never been the same since.
And he was wearing Elliott shirts for the longest time.
And his closet was full of Elliott shirts.
And I had my own brand.
I had my own shirts.
And it was one of those things I was like, aha moment.
I was like, wait a minute, dude.
Why aren't you wearing my name?
My son.
Which I'm grateful.
And I tell the story to Andy all the time.
I'm like, brother, I love you.
Yeah.
But...
I don't want my son wearing your shirts more than mine.
Yeah.
You know, it internally, it was eating me alive.
Right.
Cause I'm like a complete stranger to Kai 60 days ago.
Yeah.
And now he idolizes this guy.
Yeah.
So I'm like, what, where did I go wrong?
to where my shirts aren't filling his closet.
So it's like, all right, I got to process how I'm fathering my son, how I'm leading my son.
And now today, dude, when I tell you me and Kai are up at four in the morning, Monday through Friday together, going to the gym, he wears my shirt all the time.
It like literally gives me goosebumps.
Because without Andy, without having that fire, watching another man lead his family the way I was not leading my family, there's levels to this shit, dude.
Of course.
Just when you think you are doing it right.
And it's not the comparison game.
But you're like, damn, bro, I thought I was doing okay.
No, I'm not.
Yes, I was inspired.
Another level.
Let's unlock the chamber.
Yeah, that's how you grow.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the only way to grow.
Yeah.
So I want to be an amazing leader, one, to my family.
First and foremost, I want to get closer to God.
It's always been something that has been very confusing to me, even though without any shadow of a doubt,
For me to be sitting here talking to you with everything that I've been through and we've only heard a small fraction of it, a guy like me without something out there looking over me doesn't make it at this table.
It doesn't.
I know there's a bigger purpose for me.
I attract the misfits, the underdogs, the counted outs, the black sheeps, the –
Any race, it doesn't matter because I'm very open and vulnerable with my story.
So I attract them all.
You're real.
I'm real.
I have nothing to hide, like literally zero.
And my goal is to help the 28-year-old Eric.
Whether you're male or female, I want to be the one that can be – I want to be their Shiloh where she said, I believe in you.
and that's all it took was one person to say it multiple times, I believe in you, I believe in you.
I want to be that person for people.
I'm going to be okay in my life.
Like I've hit a point where
Eric's going to be okay.
Again, as long as I don't put the drugs and alcohol in my system.
There's a lot of me's out there where I can relate to everything.
When somebody says something, I'm like, man, you think you're alone, but you're not.
I've been in your shoes before.
Much, much worse.
And when I can go and tell them my story and then...
Just give them a little glimpse of hope and then just say, I believe in you.
Like, dude, not everyone's going to get it.
But the ones that are out there where the pain's great enough and they've hit their bottom and they're ready to change, it would be super selfish of me to not go and get as many of those people as I can and bring them with.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
Really good question.
From my understanding, I don't have any facts to back this up, 95% of people that try to jump in the space, there's a 95% fallout rate of people that try to get in and give up before they get their first deal.
That's high.
That's a high fallout rate.
So I believe they think they're jumping into the real estate game.
They're not.
It is 100% lead gen and sales.
And then obviously you have to know how to underwrite the deal in order for the numbers to make sense on the lead in order to assign it and make any money.
So I would say for anybody that's getting in, it is a contact sport.
The deals don't find us, we find them.
You cannot get around the money making activities that are gonna give you success in the industry.
That's picking up a phone, making hundreds of freaking dials and getting hours upon hours of talk time on the phones.
They believe you can skip that and get consistent deals.
It does not happen.
And trust me, I've had thousands of people, thousands pay to understand how to play this game.
And the common denominator around all of them that have success and the ones that do not is
is the ones that have success, they immediately get to work just picking up a phone, taking a script that I give them, reading the script, calling as many homeowners as they can, and just making offers.
And then the ones that don't have success,
They'll do it for a little bit and then they just stop.
Or they'll make 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 offers and they have not heard a yes yet.
And they're like, oh, that was bullshit.
This don't work.
Wow.
It's a contact sport.
Momentum is built.
It's not given to you.
So you got to build momentum.
So if you're going to get in, just understand it is real.
It's as real as rain.
But
You have to do the work in order to get the results.
That's with any industry, though.
You were overweight.
If you would have told me that, I never would have thought you'd been overweight.
Oh, yeah.
But you put in the work.
Oh, yeah.
It's like I didn't get in this seat.
I didn't skip the hard work.
I've been doing that for 15 years.
Still today, from talking to you to go to the next podcast, I'm probably going to make a sales call.
Because there's leads that are waiting to talk.
Like I haven't gotten too good to pick up a phone.
I'm still on the ground level.
I stay in the trenches with my team.
It's funny, you had said 2024, you had, it was like everything came crashing down.
Dude, 90 days ago for me, I made a really bad decision.
in my business.
And I always tell my team, when I make a decision, I'm going to make it.
I'm going to make it with confidence.
And then we're going to figure out whether or not it was the right one.
But I need to make sure I got the team that's willing to back me.
God forbid, because I'm human.
If I made the wrong one, please, please just help me make it right.
And I made a bad decision.
In 90 days, net money to the bank, I lost over 300 grand in 90 days.
And I pivoted real quick, corrected the mistake.
A lot of my team got up and walked out.
They were like, eh, I don't know, dude.
That wasn't too cool.
So I'm rebuilding again, dude.
It's constant.
He just knows how to do it.
I don't know.
I can't even talk about it.
I don't know nothing about it.
I was like, fuck no, dude.
No.
Bullshit, scam, not happening.
That's it.
Audit your circle.
like audit your circle and see who you're hanging out with.
Usually you are a product of your environment.
And again, take it as sounding cliche or whatever, but if you're trying to do big things and you're the only one in your circle that's thinking like that, you're going to have a really, really hard time.
I'm not saying cut them out, cut them off overnight.
But dude, I look back, if I look back 15 years ago, 14 years ago,
There's not a single, outside of my wife, there's not a single person in my life that was around then.
All new people.
So you really need to, you need to take a hard look at who you're hanging out with, where you're hanging out with them, and what you're doing when you're hanging out with them.
And if none of it's productive, there's a really good chance you don't have a circle, you have a cage.
Hmm.
And that cage, you'll stay caged up for as long as can.
And it could be the closest people to you in your immediate family.
Again, I love my mother to death.
Literally, she's one of my biggest cheerleaders.
She wasn't 15 years ago, but I've gained her respect.
Thank God.
Because if there's one thing I want to do, it was just make sure she didn't have to worry about me.
But if you're the only one in your circle that's aspiring to do big shit,
you more than likely need to find a new group to start hanging out with.
And, dude, I'll say this, and I don't even know if you offer coaching, right?
I do.
Or whatever it is.
Okay.
This is what I can say is –
Pay to get around people.
And when I say that, I mean that.
Oh, well, Eric, it's a fake relationship.
No, it's not.
It weeds out all the bullshit.
It weeds out all the bullshit.
So, and you might not be able to stroke a big one in the beginning.
Check.
But get into a group, a mastermind of people that have paid the same price to play and start networking with them.
Start getting new phone numbers.
Get out of your comfort zone.
All of my friends, all of my business partners have been met in those rooms.
Yeah.
You and I met in a room.
That was a fat check we shrugged.
It is.
To get in that room.
Over $100,000 to get in a room.
Yes.
And whether we ever do business together, we've exchanged numbers.
Who knows where it leads 12 months from now?
You never know.
But it weeds out the bullshit.
So audit your circle.
It means everything if you are trying to have a breakthrough in life and you're the only one out in your circle that's trying to have that breakthrough.
Eric, where can they find you?
Instagram, The Eric Klein.
The and then Eric, E-R-I-C and then C-L-I-N-E.
The Eric Klein.
YouTube, LinkedIn, anything else?
Yep.
YouTube is Eric Klein Official.