Lewis Howes: Break Free From Fear, Shift Your Mindset, and Stop Sabotaging Success | Mental Health | YAPClassic

Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha: Entrepreneurship and Self-Improvement Podcast

Lewis Howes shares his transformative journey from sleeping on his sister's couch after a career-ending football injury to building a global

Key takeaways

Success without healing leads to emotional exhaustion and a sense of emptiness.
Gratitude is a powerful energetic force that attracts abundance and positive opportunities.

Main topics

Overcoming childhood trauma and fear
The role of gratitude in attracting abundance

Notable quotes

"You could build the business and make all the money... but if you are sick emotionally or unwell and you have yet to heal, then you're really living in a powerless state."

Conclusion

Lewis Howes emphasizes that true greatness comes not from external achievements alone,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) If the life you're building looks successful on the outside, but still feels heavy on the inside, this Yap Classic is for you. Today, we're bringing back my conversation with Lewis Howes, a self-made entrepreneur and the host of the hugely popular podcast, The School of Greatness. Lewis shares how he went from sleeping on his sister's couch to building a global personal development brand. But his biggest transformation wasn't external. It came from confronting the fear, shame, and past pain that kept him trapped in what he calls a powerless mindset. This conversation is honest, deep, and packed with timeless wisdom. Without further delay, here's my Yap Classic with Lewis Howes. Lewis, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Speaker 1 (0:42) Holla, holla. Thank you so much. I'm so excited for you to be here, Louis. Young Improfiters, we have self-made entrepreneur, bestselling author, and the host of hugely popular podcast, The School of Greatness, Louis Howes. In today's episode, we'll talk about Louis's new 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. And before we dive into your new book, Louis, I'd love to talk to you about your story and your own journey. towards greatness and what you've learned along the way. Speaker 1 (1:14) 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? couch. I think I had something inside of me calling me for something more. And 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. Speaker 1 (2:07) 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 like, how to be resourceful. I had to learn how to kind of fend for my own, really, and how to tap into a network. Speaker 1 (3:06) 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. 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 at the end of 2007, actually. I think there was only about 12 million people on the platform at the time. And I wrote a book about LinkedIn in 2009. There was one other book about it. Speaker 1 (3:58) 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. Speaker 1 (4:50) And I slowly got back on because I kind of got burnt out from LinkedIn because it just was it was so challenging to work with the platform and the team at LinkedIn wasn't responsive as they are now. But it was a launching pad in 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. But I wish I would have. I wish I would have. Speaker 1 (5:46) used it when I had my podcast launch because I actually didn't use LinkedIn that much when I launched the show. 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. Yeah. In 2012, I was going through a transition in my business at the time. I had an online marketing company. And I was kind of getting burnt out by what I was doing. And I just didn't feel like it was meaningful to me anymore. It was still like powerful. It was making money, but it wasn't like a deeper meaning, sense of purpose. And what I was doing though, is I was using LinkedIn before then to connect with coaches and mentors and leaders. And I would meet with a lot of them in person. Speaker 1 (6:37) And I was getting so much wisdom and knowledge from them when I would ask them questions. I was just like, I should probably record these. And I've heard of this thing called podcasting. No one really knows what it is at the time, 2012. But I was like, I feel like it might be big one day. And I said, all right, I'm going to, I called two friends that had a podcast. There was probably only 50 people at the time that had podcasts. And I called two of them. Speaker 1 (7:02) And they told me they loved it. They loved the experience. They loved the connection with the community. They felt like it was the most engaged type of content they were able to create with people in the community. So I said, I think I could do this. I have no clue what I'm doing. I've never done this before. I didn't go to school for this, but I feel like I can figure it out. Let me try it for one year. I'll do it once a week for a year as an experiment. And if it doesn't work out, then I'll stop. But I fell in love right away. And now... 10 years later 1400 plus episodes later almost a billion downloads later it's it's still going Speaker 1 (7:37) That is absolutely amazing. You've been crushing it on your podcast. And after I've looked at your story and learned more about like how you came up, I realized that you were an early adopter in so many things. So you were an early adopter in LinkedIn, then you were an early adopter in podcasting. And now on YouTube, you're crushing everybody in the podcast game because you were one of the first ones to take the full step in becoming a video podcast. So I'd love to understand from your- Yeah, it was- Almost eight years ago, after maybe it was two or three years into the podcast. Speaker 1 (8:10) I started to see probably the third year in, I was like, oh, okay, this is a thing. And there are lots of other people starting to jump in. I would say I was like the second wave of people that jumped into podcasting. If Joe Rogan was like two years before me, and then there was just like some underground tech podcast 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. Speaker 1 (8:53) in 2012, 2013. And so we were kind of like the second wave of people, you know, 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. But I remember around that time, I was just like, I don't know, I feel like this is just going to keep getting bigger. Speaker 1 (9:22) 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. 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. 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. Speaker 1 (10:15) 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. Speaker 1 (10:57) 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. And so I feel like it took like years, really, for me to get certain types of scale. Two years ago, I think we had a few hundred million downloads in one year. But it took many years for that to scale up. Speaker 1 (11:51) It it takes time and I think that's why I tell a lot of people like don't do a podcast unless you're committed to doing it without getting any downloads and any results for years If you think you're gonna make money and get millions of downloads right away, it's just not gonna happen So you got to do it because you really enjoy it You really love it. You feel like you're called to to share something in the world and in your unique perspective And so it took it took time And yeah, it was a struggle. But at the same time, 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. Speaker 1 (12:47) But now we get that in like a couple of days. Yeah, it's totally different now. But 10 years later, right? You spend a whole year. Yeah, exactly.