Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Lewis Howes, 6 Mindset Hacks to Conquer Doubt and Build Confidence | Leadership | YAPClassic
Fri, 10 Jan 2025
As a senior in college and an All-American athlete, Lewis Howes had it all, until he received some life-changing news. The night before a big football game, Lewis’s father got into a car accident that left him in a traumatic coma. When his dad could no longer guide him, Lewis started seeking new mentors. He began reaching out to highly accomplished people asking for the stories of their success. The people he met gave him a new direction, new inspiration, and new hope. In this episode, Lewis will talk about his book The Greatness Mindset and what he's learned from hundreds of conversations with some of the most inspiring and successful individuals on the planet. In this episode, Hala and Lewis will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:35) How to Heal From Past Trauma (04:29) How Lewis Leveraged LinkedIn to Get His Foot in the Door (06:22) Defining Your Meaningful Mission (08:24) How to Promote Multi-Channel Podcasts (11:14) Finding Your Sweet Spot for Success (17:52) What Sports Taught Lewis About Failure (19:29) Overcoming Fear of Failure and Judgment (27:32) Building a Future Self That Inspires You (34:19) Developing a Greatness Mindset (38:43) Why Gratitude Unlocks Abundance Lewis Howes is a New York Times bestselling author of the hit book, The School of Greatness. He is a lifestyle entrepreneur, high-performance business coach, and keynote speaker. A former professional football player and two-sport All-American, Lewis hosts a top 100 iTunes-ranked podcast, The School of Greatness. He was recognized by The White House and President Obama as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in the country under 30. Lewis is a contributing writer for Entrepreneur and has been featured on Ellen, The Today Show, The New York Times, People, Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Health, and other major media outlets. Resources Mentioned: Lewis’s Podcast, The School of Greatness: https://apple.co/4iUL4jB Lewis’s Book, The Greatness Mindset: Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today: https://amzn.to/41HLPGj Sponsored By: OpenPhone - Get 20% off 6 months at https://www.openphone.com/PROFITING Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new All Show Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Mental Health & Wellness Mental Health, Health, Psychology, Wellness, Biohacking, Motivation, Mindset, Manifestation, Productivity, Brain Health, Life Balance, Self Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Today's episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb, Open Phone, Shopify, Mercury, Built, Indeed, and Microsoft Teams. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals. What's up, young and profiters? It's time to talk about greatness. And who better to talk about that with than the host of the School of Greatness podcast, Lewis Howes.
Chapter 2: How can we heal from past trauma?
In this 2023 interview from episode 232, Lewis gave us a masterclass on how to develop a greatness mindset and the work it takes to get there. Once upon a time, as a senior in college and an all-American athlete, Lewis had it all. Then he received some life-changing news. The night before a big football game, Lewis's father got into a car accident that left him in a coma.
When his dad could no longer guide him, Lewis started seeking new mentors, and he began reaching out to highly accomplished people, asking them about their stories of success. In this conversation, we'll explore some of the key lessons Lewis has learned from his quest, uncovering how we can all embrace our own paths to greatness.
Whether you're seeking inspiration for your personal journey or looking to elevate your professional life, you are going to want to hear this. I'd love to talk to you about your story and your own journey towards greatness and what you've learned along the way.
And from my understanding, when I was doing my research, a major piece of your story occurred when you were sleeping on your sister's couch in Columbus, Ohio, at the age of 23. You had an injury that abruptly ended your professional football career. And your dad was recently in a car accident and was put in a coma. You were also pretty broke.
And it seemed like the walls of your world were basically caving in on you. So I'd love to understand what were the aha moments or the series of moments that got you off of your sister's couch?
I think I had something inside of me calling me for something more in a moment of, or in many moments, many months of breakdown and sadness and kind of grieving, grieving the loss of my dream of playing football, grieving my father who was in the hospital for many months in a coma, and just kind of grieving loss in general, emotional, mental, physical loss. and having a lack of certainty.
I didn't have certainty. I didn't have clarity about my future. I didn't know what the point of all this was. And so it was just very confusing time. And I didn't have any resources. I didn't have any money. I was in debt from my college loans. This was in 2008, 2009, when the economy in the US was essentially tanking. The housing crisis was tanking and everything.
And I didn't have my father, who was kind of my backup bank account. If I needed money, he would give me like 50 bucks here and there. It was like a security blanket almost. Like, okay, go chase your dream. When you're done, you can come and I'll hire you for my company type of thing. So I didn't have that anymore. So I had to learn how to be resourceful.
I had to learn how to kind of fend for my own, really, and how to tap into a network of people that I didn't know, but I felt like I needed to know. So that's when I started reaching out to mentors, coaches, guides. I started consuming as much as I could in terms of resources and books, going to conferences, and just trying to meet people, learn from people, and take action.
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Chapter 3: How did Lewis leverage LinkedIn for career success?
So that was kind of that journey then.
So something that me and you both have in common is that we leveraged LinkedIn as a launchpad of our careers and our podcasts. So I did the same thing five years ago. You did it 10 years ago, right? And so I'd love to understand how you leveraged LinkedIn to get your foot in the door and start in the world of online business.
Yeah, I started on LinkedIn end of 2007, actually. I think there was only about 12 million people on the platform at the time. I wrote a book about LinkedIn in 2009. There was one other book about it, but I think there's probably hundreds of books about it now. But I was one of the first that wrote a book about LinkedIn.
And I became obsessed with it early on because a mentor said, why don't you check it out? Maybe you can find a job there. And I was just trying to network on there originally. LinkedIn was not as robust as it is now. And so after about five years, I kind of gave up on LinkedIn because it was so powerful in the beginning for me.
But then they weren't innovating like other social media platforms were. And they did not connect with creators, influencers. They didn't have any support. for someone like me back then. So I really felt like they neglected the community, in my opinion. And then I guess about five, six years ago, they started to innovate their platform and add more tools and resources for creators.
I slowly got back on because I kind of got burnt out from LinkedIn because it was so challenging to work with the platform. And the team at LinkedIn wasn't responsive as they are now. It was a launching pad in the sense of building powerful connections early on for me. And I met some incredible people that I networked with on the platform that I'm still friends with today back in 2007.
There's a friend of mine who is a mega billionaire now that I met in 2007 by just sending him a direct message on LinkedIn and us building a friendship over the years and going to events together and watching each other grow. And I just saw him a couple months ago. And it's like all because of LinkedIn, the power of connection. So it's been an amazing platform in general.
I wish I would have used it when I had my podcast launch because I actually didn't use LinkedIn that much when I launched the show.
Oh, wow. Interesting. And so I'd love to understand what gave you the genesis and the idea for starting your podcast, because you were pretty early on. 2013 at that time was still really early.
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Chapter 4: What is your meaningful mission?
If Joe Rogan was like two years before me, and then there was just like some underground tech podcasts, that was essentially it. There were no bigger shows. There were some big shows at that time in the small ecosystem, but it wasn't mainstream. Then there was guys like me and Pat Flynn and Rich Roll kind of all came in around the same time, maybe within a six month window in 2012, 2013.
And so we were kind of like the second wave of people jumping in and trying to figure it out. And then probably 2015, I think that was probably around the time when Serial came out and it became more mainstream podcasting. And then there was, that's kind of the third wave. And now it just keeps, the waves keep coming.
I remember around that time, I was just like, I don't know, I feel like this is just going to keep getting bigger. And it's hard to innovate audio, at least it was at the time. And I still think it is kind of hard to innovate audio at this time. It's not viral. It's not really shareable that well. It's You can only do so much with the editing. There's only so many things you can do.
So I was like, I feel like I need to film these and just put them up on YouTube and use it as a promotional tool to promote the audio. And so for five years, that's what I did. I put them on YouTube. I would cut up clips, put it on social media, but I never monetized the YouTube or the video until two years ago, two and a half years ago.
And then I turned monetization on because I didn't want guys who were running ads to be in front of my content. selling their Ferrari courses or whatever it was. So for me, I just wanted to add value and serve and just give for free. So I invested for five years, a videographer, an editor, to do it without monetizing it at all.
And it was probably one of the best decisions I did because now we have over a thousand videos on YouTube that are constantly searchable and shareable and adding value to people.
Yeah, that's amazing. You're doing amazing things on YouTube. And you may not know this, but I have a podcast network. So I represent like 20 different self-improvement and business shows. And I just presented at the IAB Upfronts. And my whole presentation was about the fact that podcasts are not audio only. They're multi-channel now. You shouldn't focus audio first, even for your ads.
You should be promoting across YouTube. podcasts, live streams, even paid live events, which I know that you also do as well. So really cool to see you pioneering once again in the podcast space. So I'd love to understand, when did you first start getting traction with your podcast? Like how long did it take you to get traction with your podcast?
My first year going all in, promoting every single week on every channel of marketing efforts that I had, I got only 750,000 downloads total in my first year. And that was every day promoting everywhere. Second year, I had a million and a half downloads. Third year, I think it was like three and a half or four million or something like that.
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Chapter 5: What is the greatness mindset?
Chapter 6: How can gratitude unlock abundance?
there was traction in the sense that the community loved it and they were talking about it and they were raving about it. So there was a small community that was really growing. It just wasn't this mass scale for years.
Yeah. I mean, $750,000 in the first year is still in today's standards now is really good. So it sounds like you were doing good from the start.
But now we get that in like a couple of days, you know, so.
Yeah, it's totally different now, but 10 years later, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so like you said, your podcast reaches hundreds of millions of people now every single month. And you've had a lot of inspiring individuals. We've had a lot of crossover and guests. Your guests are even bigger than mine. And you launched a third book recently where you included some of the learnings that you got from these guests. It's called The Greatness Mindset.
And so now that you're 10 years in to your journey or more, you know, in terms of being an entrepreneur and a podcaster, what is your working definition of greatness?
It's really discovering the unique gifts and talents that are within you. And in that discovery, pursuing your dreams and goals. In that pursuit, making an impact on the people around you. That's for me what it is. It's like, what's the unique talents and gifts we have? Figure those out over our journey. Try to help as many people as possible on the pursuit of our dreams and goals.
And I know a big key point in your book is finding a meaningful mission. And so I'd love to understand what your meaningful mission is and how you went about developing it.
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Chapter 7: What are the fears that hold us back from success?
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That's shopify.com slash profiting. So I want to talk about identity for a minute. So you talk about this idea of establishing an identity. I think we've both interviewed Benjamin Hardy, and he talks about this idea of future self. And that was one of my favorite conversations that I've had all year. You're not your past self. You're not your future self.
You just have this current moment to take action and close that gap between who you are now to who you want to be, your future self. So talk to us about this idea of identity that you bring up in your book and what your
Yeah, just last night I was doing a session with my therapist and the conversation was, what do I want my 50 and 60 year old self, 90 and 100 year old self to say to me right now about the decisions I've been making on a daily basis? Because I've been very focused on my health. and almost making it a full-time job.
Not in the sense of I'm spending 10 hours a day on my health, but I'm thinking and intending it to be optimized in a level that I've never fully done in the last 10 years.
Now, I've also been a professional athlete, and I've trained hard and all these things, but just being very intentional about nutrition, sleep, recovery, working out, and tracking and measuring it in a different way than I have before. And I was having a conversation with my, I'm 40 now, and I was having a conversation with myself as my 50-year-old.
So I don't know if you can go stay with me for a moment, but I was in the future having a conversation with my current self at 50 today. Then I went in the future at 60 and had a conversation with myself today. Then I went to 90 and 100. And I told myself,
And I imagine the feeling that I had as a 50, 60, 90, and 100, and the appreciation I was telling myself today for how I was taking care of my health. Because at 50, at 60, I'm still able to work out like a 30-year-old. and I'm flexible, and I'm strong, and I'm running marathons, and I'm lifting heavy weights, and I've got muscle, and I'm flexible, and all these things.
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