Creating Core Values with Ryan Stewman
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This is Wake Up To Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth. And now, here's your host, Brandon Brittingham.

Hey, what's up, everybody? I'm really, really excited today. Another episode of Wake Up to Wealth. I got one of my best friends, mentor, kingmaker, Ryan motherfucking Stuman in the building today. What's up, dog? Man, you know, we in the building. This is the building to be in. That's the truth. So if someone does not know you, if they live under a fucking rock, who are you? What do you do?

I'm a person of value. I am doing my best to be an example of what's possible no matter where you start in life. And, you know, I'm one of these guys that came up without the silver spoon, golden spoon, or hell, maybe even a wooden spoon and

Pretty much every mistake that you can make as a young man I made, I was adopted, which wasn't a mistake I made, but you can figure where the story goes from there. Dropped out of high school, sold drugs, went to prison, got out of prison, changed my life, went back to prison again, wasn't changed enough, got out and made a decision again.

And still took me another five or six years to get my shit together, you know, and it's funny that probably the biggest lie I've ever told myself is that, you know, I do have my shit together when I didn't, you know, but I'm also the person that's turned that all around. I'm a father of four, a husband of six years.

a, uh, a leader of, you know, thousands of people inside of our movement. You know, I'm a, an employer to, you know, close to 50 people at this point. So I guess more than anything, I'm a person with a lot of responsibility, Brandon. No doubt. Yeah, no doubt.

So one of the things you do is, you know, you run a group called Apex, which, you know, I've had the privilege of being a part of. And I've learned so much from you and learned so much being in the group. And one of the things that I always ask people on the show is, you know,

You know, wealth is determined by a lot of things, right? And I usually ask this at the end, but I wanted to ask it to you in the front because I know it'll just turn into a good conversation. You know, what is waking up to wealth mean to you? I mean, I know what I've learned from you, but what does it mean to you?

Well, wealth to me isn't probably what it is to everybody else in the sense of having money. Yeah. Right. My mentor and one of my best friends, Bobby Castro, he's a very wealthy guy and he's really reshaped my thought process on this from a financial standpoint. And then I'll tell you what really wealth means to me, but wealth,

Bobby is wealthy, not because he has money, but because he set up a system that he cannot fuck his money up. He can't. Bobby gets a drug addict. Bobby makes bad decisions. Bobby makes bad investments. Every month there's another 500 grand in his bank account. That's wealth. Wealth, if we were to look for synonyms, in my opinion, mean freedom. So first thing that you have to do to get wealth, in my opinion, is you got to get money.

I always make the joke that I'm living off of 2020 money in 2023. That's wealth. You know, I haven't cashed the checks metaphorically that are coming to me this year because I'm still living off of seeds I sowed in 2020 and in wealth again, synonymous with freedom. So first money buys you freedom, right? Like money is a, a lot of people look at money in exchange for goods and services. Money is an exchange for time.

You bought those goods and services so you didn't have to spend the time making them yourself. You bought that car so you can get somewhere quicker and you didn't have to manage and make the car yourself, right? So again, going back to wealth meaning freedom, first you got to get money so that you have money to be able to buy back your time and then be able to keep that. But then there's the other side of wealth. You know, my kids are my wealth. I have four children from ages two to almost 12. He'll be 12 here in a couple of weeks. And

and they're my wealth. I tell my kids every day, I'm their hero and I'm the cool dad, and I'm a lot of their kids that are their friend's hero too. We're like the cool house that they go over, but they're my assets. They're people that I'm building into examples to carry on this legacy of what I'm building. So a lot of people, they get focused on building wealth financially, and then they disregard their kids. Man, I see people all the time and

Maybe this keeps some parents from bringing their kids around me, but I can tell within meeting your kids within five minutes whether you're a good parent or not. And a lot of people claim to be good parents. I can tell they're not. It doesn't mean they don't love for your child doesn't make you a good parent. Being a disciplinarian, setting core values, setting a standard in your family, that's what makes you a good parent. It could be because your kids are reactive to that.

You know, I made a deal with, with my kids, even though they're young, I'm not going to lie to them. They can ask me anything. You know, two year old wants to know something that two year olds aren't supposed to know. If she's smart enough to ask, she's got questions. I'm gonna give her the real answer. Yeah. Cause my thought process is if I'm building these assets in my children and they find out that I'm a liar or I'm not who I say I am, or I've been doing them wrong or been holding out on them. That's why teenagers rebel. That's why I rebelled against my parents. Probably why you rebelled against your parents. Like what? These people aren't who I thought they are. They've been lying to me. They ain't been shooting me straight. You know,

And I don't want that for my kids. So I'm using the same strategy as I use with my employees, being transparent where the money goes, everything else with my kids, too. You know, one of my we were in Oklahoma recently and my oldest walks around the court. He goes, that smells like the same stuff Rick Ross was smoking at that concert, you know, because Rick Ross has performed for us a couple of years ago. And he goes, Dad, are you smoking weed?

He goes, have you been smoking weed this whole time? Like, cause he had dawned on him like dad chiefs, you know what I mean? Yeah. And I'm like, you know, I had a choice. I could have been like, oh no, son, it's a cigarillo or whatever. It's like,

Yeah, I am smoking weed. And he goes, well, why would you do drugs? I said, well, it's, it's legal here in Oklahoma as well. We don't do it in Texas. It's legal in Oklahoma. It's not a drug. It's, it's, it's just like alcohol. It's something that when you're 21 years old, you can make that decision in 21, you want to smoke a joint. I'll sit down and we'll see if that'll work for you or not. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe you won't. And we can make that decision then as opposed to lying, then finding out that I lied about it and then going, well, it must be good. Cause dad don't lie. And dad lied about it. And then them getting into it when they're 16. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

The third portion of wealth, there's four, there's four areas of wealth. The fourth, third version of wealth is your fitness. Yeah. You know, um, I was just watching a video of jelly roll and he goes, man, being fat's a struggle. He was talking to Theo Vaughn. He said, being fat's a struggle because like you, you're thin and in good shape and you, you miss deodorant. It's like, Oh, a little musty. He goes, if I miss wearing deodorant for the day, it sticks for life.

But he goes, I didn't want to get fat. Yeah. He goes, and I'm just now deciding that I wanted to stay alive. I didn't give a fuck for 20 years. That's why I got in this situation. Right. And if, if, if we're being honest, if everybody listening that may think they're out of shape, if you're being honest, you probably don't give a fuck either. That's why you've let yourself go. At least jelly roll was just being honest with us, you know? So wealth is your body as well. And,

And taking care of it because, man, I was talking to a guy just a few days ago. He's 51, just had a heart attack. Yeah. You know, like, I don't care how rich you are. If you have a heart attack and the doctor says it takes your last dollar to keep you alive, motherfuckers will spend it because life is more precious than money. Yeah.

And so why wouldn't we treat our body this morning? Me and Alex Corona, one of our Apex members, we're at a gym. It's 103 degrees inside this gym. There's no AC. There's fans, which feel like hair dryers. We're in there sweating, glistening. We're in Texas, by the way. Yes, we're in Texas. We're sweating in the glistening heat like a ham in the oven. You know what I mean? And that's important to me because...

um, I want to teach my kids. My kids go to the gym with me. I want to teach them that like having money is one thing, but then I don't want to be one of these guys that I'm rich and it's 60 years old. Maybe I retire or whatever. And then I can't even walk around Disney world with my kids. Cause I'm just so out of shape. You know, I want to be the one going, catch up, you little bastards. Let's go, you know, like leading the way. And the fourth is,

of wealth, the fourth thing that you got to have to be truly wealthy and free. Because listen, if I don't take medicine, I'm not on Xanax pro-lop. I'm not on gut shit. I'm not on diabetes medicine, heart medicine. I'm raw dog in life because of the work that I put in. That's wealthy. I'm free. I'm free from the medical burden. I'm free from having high insurance premiums. I'm free for paying hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars in medicine every month. I'm free, right? So I get the money, buy back my time. I get

be in great shape. I get to impart into my kids. And the fourth thing is the people you spend your time with. I feel wealthy just because of relationships that I have with folks like you. And it wouldn't matter if you were worth $2 or 200 million, Brandon, like the value you bring to my life is wealth. The conversations we've had, you know, we've traveled the country together, the conversations we've had, the things that we've done together, that brings wealth to me. My friends,

my life. Therefore, I feel wealth off of those relationships. You know, I had a

some drama a couple of weeks ago, guys were calling around asking about me. Nobody had anything bad to say. They might say something like he's an asshole and he'll fucking tell you what's on his mind, whether you want to hear it or not, but he don't owe me money. He never done me wrong. Right. And I love that motherfucker for his honesty, you know? Yeah. And, and I think when you can really start thinking about wealth, not just money, but thinking about it in the asset of your body, the asset of your family, the asset of the relationships you have and the assets of money to buy back your time and

that's true wealth. So many people, they fire on one or two of those cylinders and they wonder why they live a life of half ass because there's four cylinders and they're only firing on one or two of them. And they're like, man, you know, I make a whole bunch of money by cheat on my wife. Right. Well that you're blowing your wealth because divorce is one of the most expensive things out there. It's like, I make a lot of money, but I'm drinking and doing drugs. Well, at some point that's going to cost your heart, your liver, right? Like, and then you'll pay any amount of money to get that heart and liver back. Hearts and livers ain't cheap, bro. This ain't fishing bait.

You know what I'm saying? It's not cheap. And so, you know, people get so focused on the money side of it, but it's way bigger than that for me. Yeah. So the last thing you said, I mean, all obviously Jones, but the last thing you said is something that, that I want to talk about is the relationship side. And, uh, you know, when one of the, the, the early, uh,

conversations that we had that has stuck with me and has been so powerful for what I've been able to go and do in my life is, you know, it was, it was an early conversation that you and I had. And I don't know if you even remember this or not, but you were like, listen to man, what you have to do is the shit that I teach you and that you learn from me is

You have to take it and you have to be a king and queen maker. And I know you believe in the power of words, but no one had ever framed it to me like that. It was always like, man, you got to go change people's lives. You got to make people better. And it was like the same shit that you hear from everybody. Right. But that statement for me was a pattern interrupt because it was just it's powerful. Right.

And, you know, you spoke about it at MDM and it was just as powerful there as when I heard it the first time. But I never heard anybody say that until you said it. And then when you said it to me.

And it changed the way I thought about it, because you saying you have to be a king and queen maker. And you also said for you to be a king, you have to be a king maker. Right. And a queen maker. And for me, what what that did for me mentally is it reframed a responsibility. You know, you can say to someone, go change people's lives. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, people say that. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of gurus that have made a fuck ton of money saying that shit.

But you heard that a lot. And when you say you have to become a kingmaker and a queenmaker, to me, that's a different level of responsibility. Right. And that just really stuck with me. And that was a powerful that was a powerful statement. And for me, from a wealth standpoint, if I can look in my life and the people I'm surrounded with are kings and queens, I mean, that's fucking real wealth, you know.

Well, you know, uh, that came to me from pastor Keith in 2017 or 18. And he, he said, Hey man, you're not the hardcore closer. You're the King maker. Look at the Kings that you're making. And one thing I've learned, I've learned a lot from pastor Keith, but the, the one thing I've learned the most is to have a kingdom mentality and not just, you know, I've learned from him how that, that that's a biblical definition, but let me give you a worldly definition of that. Um,

You know, my kingdom is this office, my house, my real estate empire, my employees, the clients, right? That's a kingdom I'm building. So if you're a CEO of a company, you have employees, you raise a family, you have responsibility of clients, that's your kingdom. You know, we don't live in a, in a, we live in America, which isn't a monarch society, right? We are a, what is it? A, um, Republic,

It is a democratic Republic that we live in here. Right? I think that's the right term for it. And, but we don't have Kings and Queens here. Like maybe they do in London or the UK and Monaco and things like that. So a lot of people, they, they don't have the kingdom mindset because they didn't grow up in a monarchy that has that model. But if you look at the,

King of England right now, Charles King Charles, um, you know, his mother was the queen. Then he is picking that up. And then when he passes in a couple of decades or however long it takes, somebody else in that family will pick that up and they're grooming his sons with, uh,

whatever their names are. They're grooming them to be able to step up and be kings, right? And so we Americans, we don't look at that that way. We say, oh, they're royalty and blue blood. It's a scam. They're gypsies, whatever the case may be. But that's a biblical mindset, right? When David beat Goliath, he took over the kingdom. Solomon had the richest kingdom still to this day. Jesus was the king of kings. That's what he did. He had 12 disciples that turned into kings and leaders, right?

And so using that and understanding this, this philosophy of building a kingdom, it's my responsibility that I'm not going to be here one day. So I have to make other Kings that are going to keep this kingdom running. I have to have royalty coming through here that I'm, that I'm imparting with Royal wisdom so that they go and continue to build the kingdom. That's one of the reasons I pour into my family so much is because my kids, just like a regular kingdom, they're most likely to inherit the kingdom. Now on the business side, you have a kingdom.

And you're in my life. So it's my job to empower you to be the best king that you can be. And I'm not saying I'm the best king on the planet. I'm just the best king that Ryan can be. And it's my job to empower you with those same tools, knowledge, and wisdom and experience that I have benefited from to be able to make it a blessing to you to where you can build your kingdom. But most people look at it as a corporation, a business, a family, but altogether it's a kingdom.

And kingdoms get handed down generationally, right? So if I'm helping other kings, if I'm helping people become the king that they were made to become, then what's happening is I'm helping other people build generational changing assets in their family, their business, the way that they're doing life,

the way that they think about things, they start thinking about things, not will this benefit my company but hurt my family, but will this benefit my overall kingdom? A lot of the stuff you're doing, you'll stop doing because you see that it helps this one part of the kingdom, but not the whole kingdom, right? Me working all the time helps the money part, the business part of the kingdom, but it takes away from my family part of the kingdom, the people that are supposed to inherit this from me in the first place, right?

And so people don't have that mentality. So they miss out on things because a kingdom is everything, everything that is under the king's reign. It's not just the war. It's not just the soldiers. It's not just the gold. It's all of it that the king is responsible for. And so I feel called to lead other people to have a kingdom mindset and treat that accordingly. And again, it's a biblical principle. And if you follow any of the principles in the Bible, then you find favor with God. So when you start looking at yourself, not as a king that you're better than everybody else, but it is the king.

the King didn't mean that he was the best fighter. Didn't mean he was the best looking. Didn't mean that he was the smartest. What the King meant was he was the person with the most responsibility. Right. Right. So another thing that I've learned from you is, you know, I think it's this, um, the, this idea, not idea because it is, you live it and, and it's translated into your companies and I see it, but it's, um, your belief in core values. Right. And, um,

It's not words on the wall. It's not shit that you say, but it's something that you've instilled in the people around you, me being one of them. And I've gone and been able to instill it into, you know, my organizations. But like, you know, it's funny. Two days ago, I had Tiffany and Josh High on podcast and they talk about in their workshops, 90% of people don't believe in core values. And like, they're like, motherfucker, you can't build anything without it.

And, you know, the thing is, is, you know, you know, you come into your building, there's no trash. People push their chairs in. They don't leave any dishes in the kitchen. You know, it's a it's a belief system that you've instilled into people. And it's not just words on the wall. I don't think there's many people. There's not many companies. There's a few. There's not many companies until I met you that I saw do it like you guys did it. And I was able to take it and adopt it.

I don't know if you know this or not.

we have the customer core values in our business, but my core values in our company, we adopted the apex ones. You're the best. Because I mean, why reinvent the wheel? And it made sense and you can fit everything in there. And now, you know, if it, it, it doesn't give me any gray area. If I have to fire somebody, it's like, well, do they represent the core values or they don't, I don't give a shit what their production is. Do you know what I mean? Do they represent the core values or they don't. And we've been able to, to hire people,

fire, you know, run our company on that. Like when, when did that come to you? Like, how do you, where did that come from where you just got this just crazy belief system and you, you implemented and it fucking works. And then, I mean, look, we're, we're an apex together, right? We all, everybody here in apex recites core values. I mean, we do it, you know, almost every fucking meeting. I mean, people believe that shit and they're bought into it.

Yeah. You know, probably like everybody else, Brandon, I heard the term core values, Reddit books, you know, for years, probably the first success book. Well, the first success book I ever read was law of success, you know, which is where think and grow rich is an excerpt from. It's about a 1200 page book. And he talks about core values in there. And then they talk about them and how to win friends and Tony Robbins and all these people talk about them. It's like, if you ask people at an event, you go to an event.

And you say, Hey, Brandon, do you have core values? Yeah, of course I got core values. What are they? Well, they're, um, and they start just randomly rattling shit off. Right. And it's like, okay, well clearly you value those things, but those aren't your core values. Cause you, you have not established them. You're just rectally extracting answers for me. Right. Right. And I was kind of the same way, you know, I've been running a company for, you know, I became self-employed in 2005. So I've been doing this for almost 20 years, you know, and,

and first became self-employed in 2005, much like most entrepreneurs, several of those early ventures are no longer around, right? You got to fail forward in this business, but, but I didn't have core values. I thought I did, you know what I mean? Like, and I might've even written them down at some point, you know, but I wasn't living them. And, and they were a convenient thing when somebody called upon to, to re oh yeah, I go core values, loyalty, blah, blah, blah, you know, that kind of stuff.

But then I started going to this church in 2003 and pastor Keith talked about a lot, elevate life church and Frisco. And he's been mentoring me for, you know, almost 20 years. And I think 17 years either, you know, through the church or personal one-on-one relationship with them. And they talk about them. And I see the church, honestly, you know, living by the core values and the people that are serving there. But I'm like, that's a church, right. You know, but in 2020,

I flew from Dallas to LA and I did an event in LA and then Sean Whalen and I flew from LA, Sean Whalen and a few other people. And I flew from LA to St. Louis to go to a party at Andy Frisella's house. And matter of fact, Andy called me last Saturday and he said, uh, he said, man,

I just want to tell you, you've changed my, my thought process on things. And this is a guy that don't owe me money. I'm going to, doesn't owe me homage for shit. Right. It doesn't owe me anything. And we're not close friends or anything like that. It's just a guy that I know that I've been mentored and I've met a few times in person. I'm just being honest. Cause a lot of people are like, Oh, Andy's my best friend, blah, blah. And I don't want to lie to the world, but he's somebody I know I have his phone number. He has mine. He calls me and,

And he called me, texted me in Mexico and said, hey, can you talk? And it took me like a week and a half to be able to get free time to talk.

get on the phone with him. Cause I had just come back from vacation stuff. And he said, man, I'm just really calling to tell you, I wanted to, you know, give you your flowers and, and, you know, I see what you're doing and you can't fake that. I've watched it for three or four years, Ryan, and you, you can't fake that. You bring it to your apex people. You bring it online. Your content says what it is. I never heard. He goes, people ask me about you fucking daily and nobody had, they're trying to find bad. They're trying to poke a hole in your shit. And he goes, I can't poke it in there, man. So I just, I want to say, you know, you represent, and I told Andy, I said, I learned this from you.

He goes, he goes, what do you mean? And I said, well, you know, you, you talked about core values like everybody else. And it wasn't anything exciting to me when I went to the first, you know, uh, our team mastermind back in the day when they used to do that. And Andy was talking about core values and probably add to, and it was that same, you know, whatever your head. Yeah. But in 2020 in July, when, when Waylon and I went to, it was like Sean and

Sean Whalen, myself, Tommy Vex, a few other people. And we went to a private party at Andy's house after Summer Smash. But before we went there, we were at First Form HQ. They had just opened it. So not what now they've got three more buildings, but this was they just opened. And Andy was just as proud of it as I am here of Apex HQ. So he was showing us this place. Yeah, of course.

And Sean Whalen is walking through there and Andy's got a security guard named DJ. He's in his podcast. Most people know him. But Sean Whalen is walking through there and he has a bottle of water and he squeezed it too hard and just a little bit came out the top of it. You know, just the tip came out the top of it and spilled on the floor. Well, Sean just walked away.

And I watched DJ without bitching, saying a word, anything, go grab paper towels from down the way. Come back over there after Sean was out of the room. Cause I'm back there hitting the vape. So I'm waiting on them to walk it. But I watched DJ go over there and wipe that up and throw it away and not say nothing about it. This guy's the fucking security guard, right? He's not the janitor. Right. Okay. He's not Andy's bitch. Yeah. He's Andy's protector. Right. His job is it, but he picked up,

And then I, then I watched little nuances. Like somebody would work out in the first form gym and they would put the weights back with the number on the outside of how much it weighed and the perfect thing with the logo on top. And there were signs that were holding people accountable. We're watching you. If you put the weights back the wrong way, you cannot fucking work out here. We're watching you. If you leave the lid up on the toilet, you cannot work here. And I thought,

Huh. So I asked Andy, I said, what's the deal with that, man? I watched DJ do this, blah, blah. And he goes, our core values, we do the work. Yeah. He goes, and he spit off whatever the first form core value is. He goes, these people live by it. And I look around and I've been there a couple of times since then. And every time I looked around, I seen his people abiding by that. And I went,

Now that's what I want. It's one thing to say lip service, but it's another, cause that's how I am. When I run in the gym in the morning, I leave the building, I pick up trash and come back in. Like, so I'm running my 800 meter run or whatever. And I'll pick up a few pieces of trash. I'm just naturally like that. Right. And so, um,

I'm like, I want my people to be bought in to if how you do anything is how you do everything. Right. So if a person, no offense to Sean, but if a person will just leave water laying on the ground, then they'll probably leave some other stuff out. DJ wasn't leaving any holes open. Right. Right. And so I want to live my life that way. So I came back and I did what most people do. Brandon, I had a list of 50 fucking core values, which is a mistake. Yeah. I'm expecting everybody to remember 50. How come you don't know core value number 49? Right. Right. Well, what is it, boss? Well, fuck, I don't know either. You're supposed to know. Right. Right.

And so I talked to Andy about it and Andy's like, no, I mean, you got to make it something where they understand. Yeah. And then Keith has this thing called the thought behind the thought. So if he tells you something, then he tells you the thought behind the thought. And I thought, now I, I would need to match those two personalities for core values. I need a core value of responsibility, meaning we make no excuses. The core value of integrity, the thought behind the thought is we do what we say when we're saved, we're going to do it. The thought behind the thought service is the third one. The thought behind the thought is, is what's,

we go above and beyond. And then excellence is the last one. And I took that from Andy. We do the work, right? Yeah. And so I'm like, man, if I can give them the thought, the thought behind the thought, so they know what the meaning of that word is to us, right. In our insider lingo that could get my people bought in. And at first it was like,

it was those things, but they weren't in order. And we eventually reworded them to be rise, right? An acronym that made something. So everybody, the word rise means something, whether you're an apex, whether you work here, whether you work for phone sites, or if you know me period, you know, that rise means something. And,

I started driving that into my people. And you know, what's funny is first you got to lead the way. Cause if I'm spilling water on the ground and Kenny's having to pick it up, he's like, he says shit, but I'm his bitch cleaning this stuff up. Right. We have a joke here in the office. If, and it's usually you guys, not, not you, but it's usually visitors, right. They come here and they'll leave, you know, they'll wash your hands and it's normal to wash your hands in the bathroom and dry your hands off. And if there's water around the sink, who gives a fuck? Right. Yeah.

But again, seeing how Andy and them handle that, we wipe the sink when we're done. Like you said, there's no trash anywhere because if you can manage the little things,

and do them right, then the big things will take care of themselves. And so what I'm teaching these guys by cleaning the water up is responsibility. Responsibility. If you got a dirty, clean it up for the next person. Right. And so they'll, Drew B will get in the chat. If there's water in there, he goes, there must be a leak in the sink, man. We don't have to call the plumber. Right. So it's not which one of you motherfuckers left this, this water here. It's like, Hey, there must be a link. Maybe we need to call a plumber. Yeah. Somebody will sneak back in there and clean it up that, that left it that way. And,

And again, man, when you carry yourself to that standard and here's the biggest part of core values and, and, you know, the more, the more I dial into them, the more important they are because you in a corporation, it's really a culture, right?

And the culture has to have an insider lingo that they understand what that culture means. In hip hop culture, there's words, you know, trapping and twerking and shit like that. In country, there's words like, you know, you're Yeti and you're Benelli shotgun. You know, there's insider culture words that we use. Well, it's the same here.

And so for, for me with these understanding, building this culture around these core values, therefore I have a valuable company because it's full of people that know their value. And what I mean by that is like Druby, for example, guy that works with me, he, he knows that these are things that the company finds valuable. So if he will value those things and become valuable in those areas, therefore he will increase his value. Therefore also increasing the value of the company. A lot of people, they,

They will tell you that they are a person of value or that they have core values and you ask them and they'll say, well, I value integrity and responsibility and loyalty. And you'll be like, well, look, man, you've had three jobs in six months, so you don't value loyalty. Right. That's why you're not getting paid what you want, because you don't value what you say you value. You've told me two things and went back to.

on them during this conversation. So you obviously don't value your words either because you're using them sparingly with and going back on them. Right. And so you wonder why you're not a person of values because you're not showing the things the world values. You're valuing disloyalty and dishonesty. And the world does not value that. Right. The world doesn't assign back. The world assigns value to people that can have responsibility and people that can have integrity. Right.

So a lot of people, they wonder why their company isn't valuable. They wonder why their employees aren't valuable because they've never told them what's valuable to them and then lived it. That's the important part. Because if Drew B saw me leaving water everywhere, he's like, what the fuck do I got to do it for? That's my leader, right? So everything rises and falls on leadership. So when I set these goals,

And it took me a while to work through all this. And like I said, you guys can take mine rise responsibility. We make no excuses, integrity. We do what we say we're going to do when we say we're going to do it service. We go above and beyond and excellence. We do the work. You can take those. You don't, they're, they're perfect core values. They fit in every category for everybody. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't even have to tell people you took them from me. They're not mine to keep myself in the first place. There are values that this world values that, that,

that you want to be a valuable person or valuable company. You value it too. Your clients, they value service going above and beyond, right? Your clients, they value you doing what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. That's one of the things people value about you. You typically pay people more than what they expect to get on their investment. You're doing what you said you're going to do when you said you're going to do it. People find value in that, right? You committed to doing the work. People find value in that. Therefore they give you their valuables, right?

To increase that value, because when you become a person of value, and I know I use that word a lot because it's an important word, but when you become a person of value, people will give you valuable things because to become a person of value, at least in our instance, you have to have responsibility. So if you're responsible with a little, he who's responsible with a little will be given a lot, you know, a hundred percent. Um,

Yeah. And, you know, to that point, I've had people invest with me that in other business ventures, I had a fallen out with them and I never treated them any different because they're still my investors. So, you know, it's my job to you give me your money. My job is to protect it more than I would protect my own. That's my responsibility when I take your money. That's that's my duty. Last question.

If someone is not where they feel they are on this path to waking up to wealth, just give them, you know, I know you think like this instead of why, you know, simple scales. What's one thing they should do every day to get there? You know, the most important, there's two, I can't give you one. Two's good. There's the two most important things in my life. And man, they're very simple and people discredit simplicity.

You know, people look for something difficult. I can sit here and give you some E equals MC squared equation and you go, man, that's the answer. But Ryan's way smarter than I am. I'm not smart enough to do that. And then when somebody gives you the real answer and it's very simply, oh, I can't.

It doesn't make sense. It's too simple. Dude, everybody should be doing that. Yeah. Here's the great thing. Everybody should be fucking going above the speed limit in the left lane on the freeway too, but they fucking don't. Right. You know what I'm saying? It's like common knowledge that lanes for crime motherfuckers, you know, but they don't. Right. So, so knowing something and doing something, two different things. Right. So number one, for me, the most important thing that I physically do mentally do every day is workout. Yeah. Yeah.

um we live a life where we sit behind the desk most of us i mean right now i own interest in several trades companies dude it's hard to hire people nobody's wanting to go into trash collecting business nobody's wanting to go in the construction cleanup business no one wants to go and work in a hundred and i mean in phoenix arizona right now it's been 110 degrees for 35 days in a row 110 or higher that's not heat index either god damn it that's the

They live in hell. So you got people, they still need to build houses and they still got to build them during the summer. Right. And so people are like, fuck this. I'm going to go work in the AC, sit behind a desk. Yeah. Well, God created us. And whether you believe in him or not, that's your problem. But God created us to go do works. And.

And work has evolved behind the desk, so we're not getting physically burning. What happens? We get fat. We get out of shape. We get heart problems. We get liver problems. We get diabetes and everything else because we're not out there exercising. The most important thing that I do every day is go work the body because you sit behind the desk. You're watching social media. You're reading emails. You're reacting. Your body's internalizing all this stuff.

right? People, their own fucking Xanax, their own Zoloft, all this shit because they, they say, Oh, instead of going to the gym, I'm going to take a fucking pill. You lazy fucks. I'm just saying. And if you, Oh, depression's a real thing. Yeah. Well, it wasn't until the medical community made it a real thing. You know, what's funny about that? I don't know the exact statistic, but it's like,

The gym, the fitness industry is whatever, a $3 billion industry. But the fat burning, I can sell you a pill is a 30. I don't know the exact. It's a trillion. Yeah, but it's a trillion dollar industry. It's a way bigger than, you know, I'll sell you a pill versus. The vitamin supplement pill is a $2 trillion per year industry. Yeah. And that, I mean, that just goes right to what you're saying. Yep. And so people would rather take a pill, but that pill doesn't release the anxiety.

That pill suppresses the receptors of that anxiety, therefore internalizing it, actually making it worse. Yeah. And so let me tell you what, nobody's ever left the gym and left it all on the floor and been depressed when they get to their car. Never. In fucking possible. Nobody's ever crushed a fucking workout and then felt bad afterwards and felt depressed. Now you might be sore and tired. Those are natural feelings, right? I felt that this morning. Right. But,

I leave the gym with the clearest moments. Like you, you could frustrate me, charge me back, talk bad about me on social media. All that's internalized. And I go to the gym for an hour and just crush that shit. I leave it all out there. I'm not mad no more. I'm not anxious no more. I got that shit out of my system. And so many people don't realize the greatest drug you can get is working out. Yeah. That's the greatest. Your body tells you, Hey,

God rewards those that do the work. When your body starts doing the work, you get abs, you get chest, you get arms, you get veins, you get chicks, you get dudes, you get whatever you want. You know, the other side is, uh, I think one of the best compliments you can get is, man, you look healthy. Yeah. Look good. Look good. Yeah. I mean, like you look good. And I mean, that's a,

The ultimate confidence I think you can get as a human being is when you can look in the mirror and say, man, I'm healthy. I'm healthy and I look good. Do you know what I mean? And that's what the gym will do for you. Yep. And, you know, so first working out, you know, getting I call it exercising the demons because, you know, those the anxiety, the stress, all that. Those are demons inside of you and you're that sweats excreting those demons. You know what I mean?

And, uh, and, and, and that's a game changer for me. That's something that, that I can't live without. That's something that I can't go without. That's something that I got to do. Like, you know, even if I was telling Dante last week, my trainer, I have two trainers, but I was telling the one that's meaner of the two that I couldn't make it last Friday. Cause I had to fly somewhere. And I was like, I actually had, that was, that was a week for, I had a

I had a stomach bug and I said, I couldn't, I couldn't make it right. And I was like, man, I fucking hate missing workouts, you know? And, and it's bad, but I, I'm not going to be able to come because of my stomach is messed up. And he said, man, I know you hate missing workouts because you'll have a flight at 9.00 AM and be here at five 30 to make sure you get your exercise. And he said, you've been a client of mine for two years. You're the only client that, that if you have to miss a day, I never, I never second guess because you actually put in the work, you know? And, and,

I just, you know, that's, that's been a huge breakthrough for me in the gym. I've been working out every, I won't say every day, but I've been working out at least four days a week for well over 23 years now. Yeah. You know, and, and at 44 years old, people all the time, they're like, damn, you're 44 years old. Like, yes. Yeah. And my mentor is 64 years old and he is in better shape than me. So we can keep going. Ronnie Coleman once said he didn't even become peak strength until he was 38 years old. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. So people, you know, if you're in your twenties and you're ripped, congratulations, we all were right. Right. But then you think it's an excuse to have a dad bod or whatever the case may be when you get in your thirties and forties. And it's not, that just means you got weak and quit doing the work. Right. And so, so we got that the second, and this has been the biggest mental thing for me in,

in my entire life is in 2003, 2004, I was at a multi-level marketing home meetup, right? Somebody invites you to their home. Hey, come over to my house for dinner and you find out you're here for a fucking network. I'm in a pyramid pitch, son of a bitch, right? And I liked the guy. He was a guy from church. And at this dude's house, when I went to this pyramid pitch, there was a guy named Stephen K. Scott.

Stephen K. Scott was the first billionaire. And I don't know if he's a billionaire now, but back then he was a billionaire and he may be, maybe not. It's been a long time, but he was the first billionaire I ever met. So I put this dude on pedestal. Sure. Like, oh shit, you know, there's levels of this shit. He's very, you know, he wasn't dressed up fancy, you know, just like your regular billionaire. You know what I mean? He's dressed like me and you great guy. And Stephen K. Scott owns a,

or at least was the marketing rights to something called the total gym, Chuck Norris, Chris Brinkley. You know, you see it every weekend for fucking 30 years, bro. Every weekend. That is the ultimate infomercial is the most profitable, longest running infomercial in history. So he's considered by far the king of infomercials. Name another infomercial for 30 years, right? Maybe 40 years. Right. I mean, the total gym has been around my whole fucking life. Yeah.

So I meet this guy. I know the product that he sells. I know that it's legit. So when he's saying something, it's gospel. You know what I mean?

Well, see, in case God had written a book called The Richest Man to Ever Live at that time. And so when I pull them off to the side, I did what every rookie motherfucker does when they run into somebody that is levels above them. Hey, man, give me the secret. Yeah. You know, like that's what we're all looking for. Give me the pill. Right. I don't want to go to the gym. I want the pill. Right. Right. Right. And again, I'm sitting here admitting this because that's what I thought. Hey, this guy's got the pill. Let me go get the pill. And this is what he said to me. He goes, you know, the richest man to ever live was.

I don't know, man. It looks like Andrew Carnegie or Rockefeller or something like that. He goes, no, it's a guy named King Solomon from the Bible. Yeah. King Solomon had a multi-trillion dollar empire before money existed.

And he goes on to tell me all this stuff. And I'm like, oh, wow. You know, you think about the Bible. King Solomon wrote Proverbs in the Bible. You think about the Bible. You think of it as a bunch of hard to understand, boring stuff that you go to church for somebody to interpret for you, right? Especially the Old Testament, you know. The New Testament's kind of you can understand because Jesus is involved and there's red letters in the Bible and stuff like that. The Old Testament's a lot of begat and begone and, you know, kingdom and lineages, stuff like that. But in the middle of all that,

Uh, right after David kills Goliath in, uh, believe it's Chronicles, uh, it talks about him giving, taking over the land, giving birth to a son, son inherits everything. And the son is King Solomon and King Solomon. When he was, uh,

uh, approached by God and God approached him as if he was a genie and said, Hey man, I'll grant you because of your father. And because of your, who you are in the lineage of my kingdom, I will give you anything you want. What do you want? And I always jokingly say, he didn't ask for riches or bitches, you know, monies or honeys, you know, he asked for wisdom. And he said, if I can get wisdom, then I'll have the ability to get everything else. If I first get wisdom, I can get everything else.

King Solomon was granted wisdom by God, became the richest person. He wasn't the richest person prior to this, became the richest person in history to ever live. Nobody's beat his wealth at this point. Right. And I mean, it said that he was the guy that sold the stones to Egypt that built the pyramids. That's how fucking rich this guy was. Right. And so, uh,

Stephen K. Scott tells me about something like, dude, if people would have been talking to me about the Bible that like you telling me Rockefeller's got a chapter in the Bible. That's crazy. I'm reading that, you know? So I started reading it. This is what Stephen K. Scott said. He said, there's 31 books. There's 31 chapters in the book of Proverbs.

There's 31 days maximum in a month, every month, every day. If you read the proverb of the day, if it's the third day of the month, you read the third Proverbs, the seventh day of the month, you read the seventh proverb. If you'll read the proverb of the day,

Over time, you'll get the wisdom of Solomon and you'll understand how to make better decisions. And you too could be the richest person to ever live, not just financially, but in all those areas I was just talking about. And that's where I learned all that from. Since 2005, I have read the full book of Proverbs over 250 times, Brandon. Wow.

It's just as, and I would like to tell you, I read it every day, but I'm human. I go on vacation, make mistakes, forget shit happens. But I have been as consistent since 2005 of reading the book of Proverbs as I have working out, which means I'll give it at least solid four days a week.

that I hit this. I've read the book over 250 times. Every time I read it, it's something new in the way that Proverbs is written is it's written very metaphorically. So you get a new something from it every day. When I read it this morning, I was like, man, that's my takeaway for the day. And, and, and,

Those two things sounds crazy exercise and read the book of Proverbs, but you are taking care of your body and your mindset and you're getting the natural reaction of working your body and causing it to sweat and detox and get all the other stuff out, which makes you a better person, gives you more energy, makes you look good, feel good. Anti-depression, everything else, dopamine, serotonin, all this stuff released in your brain.

and I'm getting mentored by the richest dude to ever live with the words that he thought were so important that they belonged in the book, the best-selling book of all time written by people that followed the king of kings and the lineage that led up to somebody being king of kings. And when I was explained to it that way and stuck to it, I can tell you those two things are the cornerstone, the foundation to who I am today and the life that I have. And if you look at my life,

Man, maybe you're like, I'm not into cars or, but I've got everything, everything that a man could want. Like you want to be free and have your own ranch with your own food and everything else. I got that. You like tractors. I got them. You like jets. Fine. You like cars. Fine. You like whatever it is that you like. Like I most likely have that, but that's, that's not what this is about. I have it because of those two things.

the rest of the stuff comes from that. If I can go crush a workout, then I can have a hard conversation with an employee. If I can get the wisdom of Solomon, then I can have a deeper conversation with them to correct them and give them some direction to make the move in the right, right way that I want to. People read it.

My employees read it. They go to the gym. They live it. I'm seeing the change in their life, how they are, how they carry themselves. And it's undeniable. And again, maybe you're not even religious person. Okay, cool. You know what? When I started reading it, I wasn't really that religious either. And I'm not religious now. I'm just Ryan. You know what I mean? But, but take all that away and just know that the bestselling book in history, a chapter in that book was written by the richest person to ever live. That gives you the game on how to think. Yeah.

Powerful shit. Dude, we just should end it on that. I mean, that was powerful. Listen, man, I appreciate you taking the time with me today. I knew you would drop a shit ton of stuff.

and diamonds and wisdom. And I can't thank you enough for being on here with me today. Thank you, brother. Man, you know, while we're here, we got everybody. I just want to say I love you, man. And I appreciate you being an example and a king in our kingdom. I really do. Not a king for your own kingdom, but a king in our kingdom too, man. You know, when they call me the kingmaker, I don't take that lightly. And I don't presuppose that I made you a king, but I appreciate you being a king, sir. Absolutely, brother. Thank you. Yep.

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