Rules For Greatness With Lewis Howes

Transcription

My guest today needs no introduction. You’ve probably seen him pretty much everywhere. His name is Lewis Howes, and I’m digging back into the archives again from a great interview we had about two years ago. This interview Lewis talked about or speaks to a greatness, how to become great. In this interview, Lewis is  going to walk you through his, six step process that he’s used, and he’s talked about in his podcast, in his book, The School of Greatness.

And if you know Lewis, he’s just such a caring, real human being. If you don’t know who Lewis is, just go to lewishowes.com.That’s L-E-W-I-S H-O-W-E-S.com.

He’s become one of the most prolific influencers, I guess, if you want to think of it that way. He’s someone who’s extremely well connected. His podcast, The School of Greatness is awesome. I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve been on the show twice. He’s had some amazing guests on the show, the really big movers and shakers in all sorts of aspects, of business, health, relationships, all sorts of great stuff.

And Lewis, who you see on the video, who you hear over the podcast is exactly who he is in real life. He’s one of the most authentic, genuine people you will ever meet. And I’m fortunate enough to know him and call him a friend. And to be able to bring back this interview to you, who may not have heard this the first time is the least I can do to pay homage to the work that he’s done, to the work that he continues to do, and for being such an impactful leader and really elevating people to the next level. So, I’m really, really excited to have this interview brought into the Healthprenur Podcast. Without any further ado, let’s bring Lewis on to the show.

Lewis Howes:                     Thanks, Yuri, appreciate it brother.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely, buddy. I’m excited man, ’cause you’ve done some amazing work online and obviously kind of a pseudo-celebrity if you will.

Lewis Howes:                     Oh, I appreciate it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Not because you live in LA, but because of all the amazing impact you’ve had for hundreds of thousands of people around the world who want to start their own business, who want to step into their greatness, and who’ve followed your podcast, The School of Greatness, and your other work. So, I just want to acknowledge you for all the amazing stuff you’ve done, and I’m excited to-

Lewis Howes:                     Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         … dig deep with you here.

Lewis Howes:                     Thank you. I thought you were going to say pseudo-celebrity because of my Facebook ads are everywhere.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well, yeah. That’s true. That’s the beautiful thing about online, right?

Lewis Howes:                     Right, exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So, you follow, you land on the website, or wherever, and then it’s like you follow it everywhere.

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         From retargeting. Beautiful.  I think a lot of people will obviously, will share your story. Really quickly, to start it off, we actually kind of share a similar background. We started off as pro athletes and then realized that there may be something greater.

Lewis Howes:                     Yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And during that journey for you, for me, I realized, I couldn’t stand the fact that as a pro athlete, I was an employee pretty much. And I realized that freedom was a really important value for me. For you, what has been the big shift from playing pro football to being an entrepreneur?

 

The challenges and adversity Lewis has faced during his journey

Lewis Howes:                     The big shift was the lifestyle, for me. I guess I would say the shift was going from being a pro athlete to not having anything and realizing, hey, I want to have that lifestyle still, where I get to essentially workout for a few hours, then have the rest of the day free to do the things that I want to do and to have fun, and not be confined to being an employee, excuse me, being an employee for eight to 10 hours a day somewhere and not being able to do the things I love to do.

In a lot of ways, it created this, okay, I want to continue to have this lifestyle where I can be free and have flexibility and just do the things that I love to do. I didn’t like the politics of it. And for me, the pay wasn’t that great, playing arena football. So, I didn’t like that, but I knew I wanted to have everything else where I felt like I was living my dream. I just wanted to have that feeling of living my dream.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. And you’ve openly disclosed that you were kind of broke at one point, living on your sister’s couch.

Lewis Howes:                     Yep.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And I want to ask you, in your business, ’cause a lot of times, especially on social media, we kind of portray what’s working. But what’s been a time in maybe the last couple years where there’s been, as you’ve built your business and your quote unquote fame, what has been a time where you’ve actually faced an uncomfortable challenge or maybe a moment where you didn’t think something was going to work out, or you were kind of in a bit of a moment of despair?

Lewis Howes:                     I’ll be honest with you, this probably is not the answer people want to hear, but in relationships, in intimate relationships that didn’t work out, I find that if I’m not able to be able to flow emotionally in relationships I’m in with my girlfriends, that it affects everything else in my life. And it affects my business, it affects my vision, it affects my health. I start, I don’t know, not taking care of the things I need to take care of. So, learning how to still be in the flow in relationships that aren’t working or that are dealing with some adversity in themselves, and not allowing it to consume the rest of my life.

That has been a challenge actually in the last three and a half years as I’ve gone through two breakups now in the last three and a half years, where I was deeply in love with the women, and it just wasn’t working. I wasn’t able to really navigate through that experience of that well in my own life, and it kind of held me back from being clear and staying committed to my vision and taking action with focus. So, that’s something that I’ve continued to learn and grow is being in a relationship, intimate relationships, that aren’t working, and learning how to still make my life and my health work at the same time.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. You have a great new book out called The School of Greatness and you’ve got an entire chapter devoted to turning adversity into advantage.

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         How did you take that adversity, if you want to call it adversity, or those lessons from those relationships and turn them into a positive for your own growth or for your business growth?

Lewis Howes:                     You know, when I look back at them, I look at all the lessons I learned, excuse me, about myself during those months or however long a period is of the adversity, the challenges in these relationships. And I realized that, okay, here are some things that I still need to learn. I question myself, I’m like, “Okay, why did I get in that position? Why did it take that long to get out of that situation? Why did I do these certain things that didn’t serve me?” And so it’s a great reminder and feedback for myself in those moments to see, okay, what’s working, what’s not working? And how can I ensure that I learn from this moving forward? I look at everything as a great lesson.

All the challenges you’ve had, I’m sure the injuries, the things like that you went through are probably great lessons for you and great opportunities to look and see at what you want to create next for your life. And that’s the same for me with these relationships, or with any adversity, injuries, they’re great lessons. They’re great ways to reflect, to be more self-aware of, okay, what do I really want next? What didn’t work in this situation and how can I move forward?

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. What’s interesting is I have your book on my bookshelf and right beside it was a book by Norman Vincent Peale called You Can If You Think You Can. And the whole book is about how problems are opportunities. And it was so interesting that it came to mind as we’re talking about this because I think a lot of people, they’re looking to avoid problems. But in the book, he talks about how the more problems you have, the more alive you are.

Lewis Howes:                     Right. Yeah. What’s interesting is, I was having this conversation last night, is that it’s hard to be great at anything if your life is all easy. And if you grew up and you’re just automatically smart, everything comes naturally to you, you’re a pro at everything you touch within moments. You have no injuries, your family is complete and whole, happy, healthy, consistently throughout your life, that’s not an inspiring story. And no one great in any situation, athletics, business, leadership, they all face some type of adversity, and typically, multiple extreme adversities both internal and external throughout their life.

And if you ask them, “Would you take any of that back?” They would all say, “No because of the lessons I learned and who it’s made me today to be able to handle adverse moments and serve the world and serve my mission in a powerful way.” For me, it’s, Ryan Holiday says, “The obstacle is the way.” That’s the title of his book, and it’s really true. It’s like, we need to lean into these obstacles and this adversity and embrace it to make it our advantage, not hold us back from moving forward in what we want.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, no. That’s great gospel, my man.

Lewis Howes:                     Thanks. Thanks.

 

The top qualities of high performers

Yuri Elkaim:                         … good words of advice. With your business, so let’s talk about the podcast for a second, ’cause you’ve interviewed hundreds of awesome entrepreneurs and different influencers on The School of Greatness podcast, which by the way, if you’re listening to this and you haven’t listened or subscribed to Lewis’ show, you have to. School of Greatness, you can find it on iTunes. It’s one of the top podcasts. It’s awesome. What have you found to be a common trait or theme amongst a lot of the top performers or influencers that you’ve interviewed on the podcast?

Lewis Howes:                     Yeah. Well, I cover eight principles in the book, but maybe the top two that I see that all of them have is, the first one is vision. And it may sound so simple and basic, but they have very clear, powerful, intentional visions for their life or for their career, or for the next year, whatever they’re doing. Whatever they’ve done that’s great, they had a very clear vision about it. When I think about a Super Bowl competitor or someone in the World Cup in soccer, they didn’t just happen to show up in the World Cup or the Super Bowl, it was probably a dream they had when they were five years old as a kid, playing soccer or football in the backyard watching the Super Bowl or the World Cup and they said to themself, “That’s what I want to do when I grow up.” And so for the next two decades, they took massive action and went through extreme adversity to give themself the chance.

And that chance only comes for a handful of people, but those people that got there, that’s what they were doing. They didn’t just say, “Oh, everything was easy, and I just happened to show up on the Super Bowl today, and I never dreamt of it, and I never had a vision.” All great leaders, we create a business from vision. We don’t just say, “Oh, this is happening, so let me just create it as I go.” It’s like, we have a vision, there’s usually something we want to do that’s fun for us or exciting, or there’s a problem we want to solve. We have this vision of what we want to create, and then it takes time and energy to build this momentum and overcome the obstacles to make it come to life. And that’s what all the great minds I’ve interviewed have is a very clear, powerful vision.

And I would say the second thing, which is the final principle that I talk about in the book that a lot of people have is this mentality and this, they want to live a life of service. Now, that may be inspiring people through living their dreams that may be giving of their time, of their money, that may be trying to solve problems to serve people in a bigger way. Whatever it may be, they’re constantly coming from, how can I serve people, and how can I give to other people? That may be in a big way, or just with the people that are around them, but they come from that place. And I think, I read a book one time, I think it was called The Richest Man in Babylon, I may be wrong.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I have that knapsack right now.

Lewis Howes:                     Do you? I wonder, tell me if this is the right story. It’s either this one or The Greatest Salesman in the World is the other book I’m thinking of. But in one of these books, the richest person, the person who accumulates the most wealth, he shares his secret to how he got it, and how he keeps it and how he grows it. And the secret is that he gives half of it away like every month, or something along those lines. Is that right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         … Yeah, I think it was about like 10%, but yeah.

Lewis Howes:                     Yes, yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         You’re on the path. Yeah.

Lewis Howes:                     I thought it was like 50%, but maybe it was only 10%. But essentially, he’s constantly looking for ways to give away his money, his time, his talent to the world. And he’s not just hoarding his gifts. The way I look at that, that metaphor is that really, whatever gifts we have, it’s our duty to give it away and serve people with those gifts to maximize our gifts, and then serve the world around us however we choose to do it. And that’s why the richest people are that rich in a lot of ways and the people that aren’t rich, but are rich in greatness become that way as well.

Marketing, webinars and Facebook ads

Yuri Elkaim:                         No, that’s great advice. Create a vision, be of service to others. Chapters one and eights in The School of Greatness book. Awesome. So, I want to shift gears a little bit to a little bit more of the marketing side of things with respect to what you’ve done online. So, you have recently eight million downloads on your podcast, which is amazing.

Lewis Howes:                     Almost nine million by the time this comes out.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Probably even more, who knows?

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So, how have you been able to take listeners from your podcasts to email subscribers, and then to customers? What is that flow, what does that funnel, what’s the one simple funnel that you’ve used to get that all done?

Lewis Howes:                     It’s interesting because when I go online now, and I ask people, “Where did you first hear about me?” A lot of people say, “The podcast.” And it just blows my mind how powerful this is. And I know with your podcast, you probably get the same thing. You have so many people that are listening, but it’s hard to really tell where they go to next. I send them all to, right now, I’ve been sending them all to a linked opt-in about my book. But before that, I would send them to the show notes for each show and there’d be opt-in forms there to get extra bonuses from that show, downloads. And so, I’m testing a lot of things. I’m testing sending them to a text, a message, or text a number so you can get opted in that way, and that’s worked really well. But it’s a constant evolution of testing.

But typically, I send them back to the show notes where they opt-in there, and then they just learn more about me and what I’m doing. And I’ll just announce things, I’ll announce the School of Greatness Academy, or something I’m launching on the podcast, and then people will go direct to that site and opt-in and sign up for my programs. But it’s been really powerful as a brand builder, as a connection point. When I’m in New York City, it’s crazy. Every time I go to New York City, at least a couple people come up to me and say, “Hey, I’m listening to your podcast right now. I love it.” And it just blows my mind that this medium can affect people and connect with people that well all around the world.

And I wish I had better advice on converting, but for me, it’s like I tell people to share it on social media, I tell them to follow me everywhere. And so I never know exactly which point of contact they come into on to social media or which email list they come on to for converting it into sales. But when I ask the question, so many people say they found me first on my podcast once they bought my course. That’s powerful.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And it’s a very intimate experience. And for me, I typically, I’ll walk my kids to school, and then I’ll take my dogs for a walk, and that’s when I’m listening to my podcasts. So, it’s a very in the moment experience. You’re not doing other things, you’re not distracted, and I think there’s a lot of value to that.

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s great. We also talked, really just kind of skimmed the surface of Facebook ads earlier. I know you’ve done within the last, quite some time, have really focused a lot more there with various webinars that you’ve done and stuff. So, what’s working well for you on Facebook ads?

Lewis Howes:                     Man, what’s really working well? I started really diving into Facebook ads on a consistent basis in about January of 2015, so earlier this year. And what’s really working well for me right now, we spend close to $1,000 a day, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But we’re sending people right to automated webinars, free webinars. We run four a day with different times for people to opt-in whenever they’re free. And we’ve been doing that, what, over eight months now or something, and it’s working really well. The key is, you’ve got to stay on it and you’ve got to be consistent. We have a team now that’s running them all day and constantly finding new people to target, constantly changing in the ads, things like that, the images. So, you can’t just throw it up and have it running for months with one thing. You’ve got to have one person or a team of people on it for it to work from what I’ve found. But it works really well.

We’re building a big list from that. Our list has probably more than doubled this year just in doing Facebook ads, and it’s essentially running everything in my business from one webinar is paying for, I don’t know, 20 people. And it’s building my business and my brand on top of it. So not only is it bringing in an income every single day, it’s generating more leads to promote other products that I have.

It’s also, my face is everywhere, which is great brand recognition and building because you never know when someone’s going to buy. They may see a Facebook ad for a year and never buy that product, but then my book comes out and they’re like, “Oh, let me go buy this,” or another course, or something that they feel connects better to them. So for me, it gives me that as well. And it’s building my following, obviously. My Facebook page is growing because of it and I’m able to drive more traffic to my site because I have a bigger audience and reach now. So, there’s just so many great benefits to it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s great. And just so our audience knows, what software are you using for the automated webinars?

Lewis Howes:                     I use Stealth Seminar, and yeah. So, they’ll run multiple times with Stealth Seminar. I think it’s like 50 bucks a month or something like that. It’s great.

 

Greatness, finding your unique gift, and doing what you love

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. Nice. Excellent. So, I want to reverse the question to you ’cause I know you ask your interviewees this all the time in your podcasts. In your minds, what does greatness mean?

Lewis Howes:                     It changes all the time and it could be a different answer based on where we’re at in our lives. But for me, at this moment, greatness means discovering and maximizing our gifts. Figuring out what they are and making the most of those gifts to make the biggest impact on the maximum number of people in the world.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. That’s awesome. So, what does that mean for you? What is your unique gift and how do you maximize that on a daily basis?

Lewis Howes:                     Right now, my unique gift is teaching people how to make a full-time living doing the things they love. I think I’ve become really good at that, showing people how to get creative with their dreams. No matter what their dreams are or what the things they love doing the most, getting creative with it, so they can make a living around it and make income, and build a business around it or find a job that supports that ’cause not everyone wants to run a business.

But figuring out ways to make money doing something you love I feel like is the greatest gift that we can have and receive because what better way is there … I mean, I don’t know a better way to live life when you’re making money, making a full-time income and you get to do everything you want to do every single day around that. I feel like that’s pretty sweet. And have a good life, be around people you love, take care of your health, and I mean, there’s not really much more to that.

 

His optimal morning routine

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s pretty awesome. That’s great. I want to finish just talking about one of the things in the book. So, you have a whole chapter on practicing positive habits, which I think is huge, right? ‘Cause we are the result of our habits.

Lewis Howes:                     Yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So, you have, I guess a daily morning routine. Do you want to describe what that is for our listeners?

Lewis Howes:                     Yeah. And just to be-

Yuri Elkaim:                         And why it’s so powerful for you?

Lewis Howes:                     … Yeah. And just to be clear, my intention is to follow my habits and my routines every day, but there’s some days that I don’t, and I’m a human being, so it doesn’t have to perfect all the time. But when I am in that flow and I’m doing those habits on a consistent basis, I notice and I see results coming much easier and much better, and my health is better and all these different things. So, you just want to be aware of it and really do them with the most you can. For me, the morning starts with waking up in gratitude. I wake up with gratitude. I’ll either express it to the first person I see, I’ll write it down, or I’ll just take a mental note to myself. And for a minute, think about the things that I’m grateful for and appreciate another day because I have another day to live and that’s a gift. So, I look at that and I think about that in the morning.

Then, I do about a 12 or 13 minute guided meditation usually every morning and every night where I’ll just lay there in bed listening to this and wake up to it and visualize what I want to create for that day. Again, vision is one of the most powerful things we can have. Without a vision, we’re just wandering around aimlessly trying to just react to life, what throws at us. So, I try to really set clear what I’m going to create that day, recommit to who I am, my beliefs, my vision, what I want in the world. And I feel like that sets me up to win for the day.

From there, I go and usually do some type of a workout, and this depends on the season of my life what I’m doing, but I’ll do something where I’m sweating and feeling some type of physical pain. I feel like the more pain my body and mind can experience, the greater that I can take on adversity and be able to handle it with ease. And so, I train myself as often as possible to experience pain. That could be literally just running a mile and doing it to the point where my lungs hurt. It doesn’t have to be killing myself every single day, but doing something that’s uncomfortable every single day.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice.

Lewis Howes:                     Physically, I like to do, so that my mind can be trained to take on that type of challenge. From that, I’ll come back and do a little bit of light stretching, shower, clean. I always make my bed. That’s an important thing for me because-

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s so overlooked, it’s so important.

Lewis Howes:                     … Yeah. I mean, for years, I didn’t until a couple of years ago. I listened to some Navy SEAL talk about the importance of it and what it actually does for you. And I was like, “Wow, I’m actually going to try this.” And I’ve seen the results of it. I never did this as a kid, even though my mom always told me to make my bed, I never did it. And now finally, as a 32-year-old man, I’m making my bed. But it’s really powerful to clear the space, the space where you sleep. We spend a third of our life in bed, in the bedroom.

So, it’s important in my mind to have it clear and nice looking and clean, so that when you go back in there, you’re not just going into a messy space to sleep and dream, you’re going into a clean, clear space. I think that’s very important. And then from there, I have a green smoothie or a super fruit smoothie and some breakfast, kind of depending on what I’m doing with my workouts, and then I start the day.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s great, man. That’s awesome.

Lewis Howes:                     Thanks.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s a greatness routine.

Lewis Howes:                     There you go.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well, Lewis, thanks so much for taking the time to join us on the podcast here. So again, for all of you listening, the book is The School of Greatness. A real world guide to living bigger, loving deeper, and leaving a legacy. I’ve almost finished reading it. It’s awesome. It’s like 10, 15, 20 years of your life condensed into-

Lewis Howes:                     That’s it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         … That’s the beauty of a book, right? It’s like, why reinvent the wheel if you can just get everything in a book? It’s such an amazing medium to share knowledge and wisdom.

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. Thank you so much for writing this, it’s tremendous. I highly recommend you guys grab a copy of it. You can grab it on Amazon or pretty much any bookstore. I will have a link to it from the blog as well on this episode’s show notes over at smartermarketerproject.com. Lewis, thanks so much buddy. Any kind of final words of wisdom before we finish off today?

Lewis Howes:                     Yeah. I appreciate it, Yuri. And my final words of wisdom is, I would say, continue to listen to this podcast because the greatest gift you can give yourself is education and growth. And if you’re not growing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, then you’re slowly dying in my mind. So, continue to listen to Yuri’s podcast. Continue to take on the wisdom and try new things and challenge yourself on a daily basis to grow a little bit every single day, and that’s living a great life.

Yuri Elkaim:                         There you have it. From the man himself, Lewis Howes. New York Times bestselling author. All around amazing guy, and one of the most influential people in our world today. If you want to follow him on Instagram, just search @lewishowes. If you’re on Twitter, same idea, on Facebook, you know the drill. Once again guys, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.

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Yuri’s Take

Got some great stuff coming your way. We’ve got Mr. Todd Herman from The 90 Day Year coming up on the show. We’ve got Emily Rosen from the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We’ve got, who else? We’ve got some Kevin Rogers action. We’ve got some really great people coming up on the show, so do not go anywhere. Stay here every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We’ve got solo rounds, we’ve got our result coaches between the ear sessions on Wednesday, usually. We’ve got the interviews coming your way on Friday. And hey, we’re here to serve you. We’re here to help you take your business to the next level, to take your expertise and really impact more people.

So, if you’ve enjoyed this one, remember if you haven’t yet done so, then check out the free training over at healthprenurgroup.com/training, and let me walk you through our 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint. It’s our four step business model to help you attract your best clients on autopilot like clockwork pretty much on demand. And if that’s something you’re interested in, to really attract the best, highest paying clients, to really serve them at a very high level, then I’m going to show you exactly how to do so. And that’s exactly what you’ll discover in that 70 minute online training. It’s 100% free. Again, it’s over at healthprenurgroup.com/training.

Once again, thank you so much for joining me. Hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Continue to get out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you in our next episode.

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