Growing Up Completely Broke, Almost Going Bankrupt and Doing $30M A Year Coaching | Douglas James DSH #289

And while I was still in the Navy, I just remember the first coaching client that I ever got was a master chief.

He comes up to me in the hospital and he's like, hey, I'm 45 years old.

I've been in the Navy for 25 years.

Will you teach me what you're doing?

By the way, I'm willing to pay you for your time.

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And here's the episode.

All right, Douglas James in the building.

Got a lot of fun stuff we're going to talk about today.

We're going to talk AI trading, humble beginners, and his military background.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Yeah, absolutely, Sean.

It's a pleasure, man.

Yeah, so taking it from the start with the humble beginnings, growing up with a lot of financial struggles, right?

What was that like?

Oh, man.

So I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana, you know, small town.

Well, New Orleans is not small, but I grew up in the Mettery and Kenner area.

And my family eventually moved up to Covington.

So between Covington and New Orleans, there's this massive link.

It's actually the biggest lake, I think, in the world, maybe Lake Ponchatrain.

So it takes 30 minutes to drive across the lake.

Damn.

Yeah.

So we moved there.

And yeah, my mom, she's a respiratory therapist.

She's from Guatemala.

So she came to this country to, you know, find a degree.

And she eventually found my dad.

They met at a bar.

And

yeah, so growing up, you know, my mom, she did everything for us.

She worked 12-hour nights, made sure we were on the school bus, you know, cook for us, clean, did all that.

Whereas on the other side, my my dad kind of had struggles, you know, as a, as a, probably as a new husband, as a new father.

He was kind of gotten addicted to, you know, gotten alcohol, stuff like that.

Bless his heart.

But yeah, you know, my mom made all this money, yet it was kind of shadowed because my dad just had all these addictions, really, and like gambling.

So back, I think it was like 20, like 15, you know, probably a little bit before that,

because of all those addictions and gambling and stuff,

my family had to file for bankruptcy.

Wow.

Chapter 11, right?

Chapter 11.

I think that's right.

So,

yes, I mean, we were basically on the street if it wasn't for my grandparents and my uncle that kind of stepped in.

They helped, you know, take care of us, put us into an apartment, put food on the table, get us back on our feet.

And

to be honest, like, that was like the scariest thing.

Like, cause I don't know, I didn't know anything about money.

Right.

Like, you know, growing up as an adult now, he's like, it runs the world.

And people are like, you're not happy.

You know, money doesn't buy happiness.

Well, like, I mean, I've been broke.

Like, we've been on the street.

Like, I would rather be, you know, in a place that's comfortable taking care of my family instead of being in this really hardship situation.

Yeah.

So, yeah, man.

So, growing up, you know, I, you know, there was times where we didn't know if we were going to eat like McDonald's, maybe, maybe not.

And yeah, it was really tough, you know, but you know, now I have the abundance.

And today, and I look back and I'm like, so blessed.

And, you know, thank God no matter where I'm at in my life now.

So what age were you during that bankruptcy?

I was probably 14, 15 years old.

So, high school.

Pretty scary time.

Yeah, because you're around all these people that their families are doing fine and you're probably afraid to even speak up about it.

Oh, yeah.

To your friends and stuff.

Yeah, super like not proud and like didn't even really understand like you know what was going on.

You know, I see kids like showing up in the escalades, going saying they're playing sports on the weekend.

I'm like at home dealing with all this trauma.

You had to grow up quick.

I did.

I really did.

So, did you start working at an early age to get money for the family?

Well, yeah, so I got I, so it's funny.

One of my first side hustles ever, I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur.

When I was like 10 years old, I was buying like bags of Jolly Ranchers and Jawbreakers and hour laters for like five cents each and flipping them for 10 cents at school.

Classic.

So I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur, but like, yeah, I got a job as a...

as a buggy boy worked at Winn-Dixie, like a kind of like a popular grocery store.

And yeah, I was, I would help out my mom as much as I can, but I was also also trying to make the transition because around that time, 16 years old, I actually moved out of my parents' house.

And I moved in with my best friend's mom at the time.

And I really wanted to start kind of like my own thing and figure out my own way.

And then I eventually moved in with my grandparents and they were like, hey, you know, I graduated high school around this time.

And they were like, hey, you've been bartending for a year.

You've been, you know, partying, coming home at 4 a.m.

Like, you need to go to college.

You need to go to the military.

You're getting the F out of my house so yeah so i mean i graduated at 1.7 gpa no way i was i was the worst student actually i shouldn't have graduated high school i cheated off all the smart kids

um

and obviously i had to move on so i end up joining the navy so i was in the navy for 10 years after that wow shout out to the science of scaling podcast hosted by mark roberge it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals each week mark founding crow at hubspot cro and senior lecturer at harvard business school interviews some of the most successful sales leaders in tech to learn the secrets, strategies, and tactics to scaling company growth.

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Wow, 10 years.

Yeah, that's a long time.

It is a long time.

Did you leave by choice or what was the ending?

Like, was it abrupt?

So five years in, man,

I was on this journey in the the military where like I've always been very competitive.

I want to be number one.

You know, in anything I do, anything I touch, I've always seemed to make good things happen.

Now, am I perfect?

Do I always make the right decision?

No, I'm not, you know, I'm a human being.

But in the military, I was blessed with leaders early on.

I had a chief that groomed me to be an amazing sailor.

And back in 2009, he put me up for something called Sailor of the Quarter in Washington, D.C., and I ended up winning that.

Wow.

it's a very prestigious award, especially at the President's Hospital.

So that really set the tone for like the rest of my military career.

And fast forward over five years into my career, I actually end up making E6.

If anyone, if you don't know, E6 is kind of like a higher level supervisory position on active duty.

Like I can be in charge of hundreds of people.

Wow.

And I'm like this 24-year-old kid.

You're the youngest.

Young kid.

And it takes the average person 13 years to hit that.

Dang.

Yeah.

So I went on a deployment to Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and the Philippines as an E-5, and we did amazing things like build schools for kids.

We

built clinics in these

really third world parts of these islands.

And I got to tell you, some of that work was probably some of the most fulfilling work I've ever done in my life.

I just remember on our last day, I think it was in Rojas City in the Philippines.

I was a corpsman in the Navy.

So I was with the CBs, and the CBs are the construction battalion of the military.

So if they put a nail through their thumb or if they get hurt, I'm their medical aid, right?

We were walking up the hill.

We just had done two schools, basketball, court, soccer field, all this cool stuff.

We were walking boxes and crayons and books for the kids.

And right when we got up there, dude, there was like hundreds of kids.

They had a ceremony for us.

Wow.

And they just ran up to us.

I just remember, man, these kids hugging my leg, saying thank you, cheering.

And it was literally the most fulfilling thing I think I've ever done in my life.

So going forward, something with kids, building schools, like I love that stuff.

And I think I just, I got end up getting capped to E6 on that deployment just because I was out there doing all the stuff that no one wanted to do.

And same thing in life or in business, right?

There's, if there's somewhere you want to be, go do the work that people aren't willing to do.

Right.

Right.

So I did that in the military, man.

And at that point, when I got back from that deployment, I realized I think I've done all I can do here.

I can, I know the game of the military and how to make rake and make promotions and get awards, right?

I can continue to do that, be a chief or be an officer, maybe even a general one day.

But I was like, you know what?

I know this game so well that I'm bored.

I'm not being challenged enough.

And I realized that I mastered the art of marketing and sales.

So I was like, let me try to implement some of my skill sets.

to convince boards of people why I'm deserving all these promotions.

Let me try to do that on the outside and see what I can do.

So I was up one night and I was just Googling, like, how do I make money outside the military?

How do I fire my boss?

Like, probably stuff a lot of people Google search, right?

And I end up finding, you know, marketing, this guy, you know, showing you how to rank websites.

I got into that.

And after like, I think six months, I was already making my annual salary within a month.

Wow.

Doing that on the side.

That must have been a wake-up call for you.

Massive.

So I really realized my, my value at that point.

Yeah, because you weren't even aware that you could just make that much money on your own, probably, at that point.

No, not at all.

So as soon as that money hit my account, I'm like, okay, this is, I'm out.

I'm out.

You You know, so mentally I was checked out.

Yeah.

And it wasn't an easy transition, let me tell you, because I was already, I had four, four and a half years left on my contract before I could even get out.

Oh, so there's like a long contract when you're in the military.

It can be.

So I was stationed in Naples, Italy back in 2013, 14, before I went to San Diego.

And I was, I became a lab tech.

So I worked in a lab and there's not that many lab techs in the military.

So when it's time for you to re-enlist, like your contract's done and it's time to re-enlist, they, if you serve, if you sign up for like four six or eight years they'll give you something called a sign up a sign-on bonus or like a bonus god i think it's called an srb if i remember correctly and they hit me with like 30 grand like hey you sign up for six years you get a thirty thousand dollar paycheck i'm like dude as a 24 year old kid i'm like heck yeah yeah so i did it and immediately went to san diego went on deployment i'm like oh crap i don't want to do this for 20 years wow so i was stuck with my contract that must have been scary moment because what happens if you break it early like is there a penalty or something?

Well, I mean, it's really frowned upon.

You can potentially get dishonorably discharged.

You know, there's a lot of bad things that can happen.

And I got to tell you, when I started my business in the Navy, my superiors didn't really like that.

So they actually tried to put me up for Captain's Mask.

I had to go see the big man.

Really?

Yeah.

There was like this whole thing.

So I think when I was in the military back then, active duty entrepreneur was probably a new thing.

They didn't have official paperwork or how to treat these military people that wanted to be entrepreneurs or have businesses on the outside.

So whenever they found out I had a business, they tried to tell me to stop and I was like, no, I'm not stopping.

And then they were like, hey, route this paperwork and get approval.

So it's, I routed something called a moonlighting chip.

And on the moonlighting chip, it says, you sign in two spots, employer and employee.

So I signed on both spots to my company, right?

So I routed that up and they're like, hey, you've submitted the wrong paperwork.

Like, what's wrong with him?

Is he messing with us?

Like, why is he being like, he's trying to be an a-hole?

I'm like, no, this is the paperwork.

So they didn't like that.

They put me up

in front of a board of chiefs and kind of, you know, made me feel like crap for like two hours at attention, like kind of like in a room like this.

And then they put me up to the exo, and that's right before the CEO.

And the XO was like, hey, the UCMJ and our military instructions doesn't have any official way to treat active duty entrepreneurs.

And the paperwork you had this sailor submit.

is not is not accurate.

So I'm going to have to dismiss this case.

And he said, HM1, which was my rank, HM1, you're dismissed.

And I did an about face and walked out.

And oh my gosh, my chiefs, my superiors that were standing in that room, they just were so, they felt so defeated and pissed.

So after that, they couldn't mess with me.

I just did my time, man.

I finished out the best I could.

I got an honorable discharge.

And, you know, here I am.

It's crazy to see that sort of jealousy.

And it's from your fellow comrades as well.

It must have really hurt you at the time.

Well, you know, when you're an E6, the big push next is go to E7, especially in Navy, a chief.

That's like a big deal.

So they all wanted me, they were all chiefs.

They were like, that's the thing that you do.

Like, you don't get out as an E6 10 years in and like start a company.

Like, are you crazy?

So they just wanted me.

It's kind of like a Kool-Aid thing.

And look, we need our military.

We need, you know, our armed force 100%, dude.

I, there's, I miss being in the military.

There's things I love about it.

There's also things I don't like about it.

It's not for everyone, but we certainly need it, obviously, to protect our country.

But it's just when you're in, it's like anything political, you know.

They want you to drink their Kool-Aid to be a part of their, you know, their mafia, so to, so to speak.

Right.

In a sense.

Yeah.

Right.

And I just wasn't about that.

I wanted to do my own thing.

So.

Yeah.

Now you're even helping fellow military vets as well, right?

With the transition.

Yeah, man.

So, you know, I got into that.

So I started my agency.

I started doing SEO.

The SEO actually turned out to not be such a good idea because the way the person I was learning it from was teaching me black hat techniques.

So I woke up one day and Google had released this algorithm update called the penguin.

And 20 clients disappeared from page one of Google.

Damn.

So my SEO, my 50 grand, whatever I was making literally disappeared overnight.

Yeah.

That's forced me to get into paid ads via Facebook ads and Google search ads.

So I was able to rebuild my agency back up.

And while I was still in the Navy, I just remember the first coaching client that I ever got was a Master Chief.

So this is an E9, really high-ranking individual.

He comes up to me in the hospital and he's like, hey, HM1, Doherty.

Doherty's my name is Douglas James.

My actual last name is Doherty.

James is my middle name.

I use Douglas James and trademarked it because it's way easier to introduce myself as.

But he comes up to me as HM1 Doherty.

I heard about you.

You know, I'm 20, I'm 45 years old.

I've been in the Navy for 25 years.

I'm getting out of the military next month and I don't want to sit in a classroom full of 19-year-olds.

Will you teach me what you do?

And by the way, I'm willing to pay you for your time.

So this is the first time, anyone's ever come up to me and said, hey, I'm willing to pay you for what you know.

And I was like, I can make this a business.

So that's immediately when I got into coaching.

I started working with a ton of veterans at that point.

Yeah, now you're doing 30 milli year coaching, right?

Which is insane.

So talk to me about the evolution of that.

Year one, was it profitable and how did it scale from there?

Yeah, so it started with me basically working with.

you know, veterans one-on-one, showing them how to build the systems, how to prospect, go out there, get the client, fulfill for the client, and scale the campaigns, manage the campaigns, all the things that comes with basically having an advertising agency.

That's what I was teaching them how to do one-on-one.

Then I was like, I need to get some of my time back because this is like a lot, you know, and I'm still serving active duty, mind you.

So I created a course and I went home and I just was like, let me just document this process A to Z.

So I filmed a bunch of videos and I uploaded them to Dropbox.

And then I just started charging 900 bucks for it.

It was like the crappiest like setup, dude.

It was just in Dropbox.

It wasn't in like a membership site or anything that we have today, but started selling it, man.

And it was selling like hotcakes and people were getting results.

And then people started to get on video with me and tell me about the clients and the money they're landing.

I'm like, wow, this is great.

And as time went on, they were like, hey, man, we want more access to you.

And I was like, I kind of got out of the one-on-one, but like, let's set up like an online college where I bring in a couple coaches and you guys get a class a week for like, I don't know, eight weeks.

And we'll just walk through the curriculum with you and you build it as you go.

Kind of like an accelerated,

you can sign up for

you know, online college, take an accelerated class and it's like eight weeks long.

Right.

Let me do it like that.

So I did that and it was a banger.

People loved it.

You know, it's my elite program.

And then they're like, hey, we want more access.

I was like, what more do you want?

They're like, we want you to do it for us.

Done for you.

Done for you.

So that's when I rolled out.

I went from the done with you to the done for you, which is my VIP currently.

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And basically, people work with veterans, entrepreneurs, anyone who really wants to start a business, especially in the Lead Gen marketing space, they work with our team for 90 days.

We build all the campaigns and assets for them and run it for them to help them get their first clients.

Wow.

And then from there, we went to a, they're like, hey, we want to see you in person.

I'm like, fuck, I'm never going to get out of this now.

Yeah.

So I took my VIP and all I did was added a two-day workshop on the front end where they come work with me and my team for two days.

And it's an accelerated process.

We build all their ads, shoot all their VSLs, all that good stuff.

They come to the penthouse, we hang out, wine and dine, I'm have a really great time, build connection, and still work with them for 90 days.

So those packages go from anywhere from four grand to currently 50 grand.

Nice.

That's incredible, man.

And from there, you got into the AI trading, right?

I want to dive into that and how it works.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, I mean, you know, for me, I've always been kind of like the marketing sales guru kind of guy.

Really got proficient at media buying and YouTube ads.

And I understand that world really well.

But I've started to kind of make a transition in my career and with my brand, more so in like wealth advisory, because

for me, I'm helping people make money.

They're making more money with me than they ever made, right?

And they're okay, like what's next?

Right.

Well,

what if you can invest it into it?

So I would always refer out, like, hey, go talk to this real estate syndication, go talk to this guy that has this trading thing.

And I'm like, you know what?

Let me learn this game.

Because I was already investing into stocks, crypto, and a whole bunch of stuff.

So I ended up

meeting a man by the name of Howard Getson.

He was the CEO of an AI company for 33 years.

Damn, it's been around that long.

It's been around that long, dude.

Like 15 years ago, you walk into any airport.

and there's facial recognition software that knows who you are within 10 seconds.

Really?

Yeah.

I thought casinos did that.

I didn't know airports did that to that.

Absolutely.

Security, right?

So everyone, I think in the last year or two, right, we're finging out about ChatGPT and all that.

And it's amazing.

It's the first time that it's in our hands, but the government, I mean, putting people on the moon, like, did that happen?

Did it?

I don't know.

That's a whole other podcast.

That's a whole other conversation.

But anyway, yeah, AI has been around for a very long time.

So he sold his first

company for, I think, north of nine figures.

Wow.

And I partnered with him along with other people that have bought units of his company, and we've raised over $40 million invested into an AI autonomous algorithm that fully trades commodities.

So that's your oil, soybean, bales of hay, like all the stuff that's like never going to go away.

That's what we trade.

And I went through the process of

getting licensed and all that as a commodity pool operator as well.

Nice.

So I'm going to be kind of transitioning my brand more so in that.

And what he's been able to do with it, it's 10 years of data.

The first six years is something called synthetic data, where he basically

mimics the market and makes trades as if it's real.

But it's real live data that he's working with, but he's not using real money.

Got it.

It's just like paper money.

Exactly, basically.

But it's consistently gotten at least 27% or more a year.

And as time goes on, it gets better and better and better.

So the last few years, he's traded millions of dollars on it.

Yeah.

And it's been successful every time.

So now the fund is going public.

And that's what I'm currently raising for now.

Yeah.

So the way the company is positioned, really, we have a holding company at the top and then it has three arms from there.

It's got the fund that I just explained to you, but the other two arms is we're working with

entrepreneurs, business owners, people that have big companies and we're just coming in and building AI for them to create more efficiency.

So the company we're working with right now, it's a media company, they actually let go 40% of their staff and

move their margin from 25% to 70%.

Wow.

Just by using the AI.

And I'm not talking about, we have a staff of 20 PhDs, quant scientists, data illness, those types.

So these guys aren't like, you know, using ChatGPT or Midjourney.

They're creating AI to come in and create this efficiency.

And what we're doing in that arm is We're really trying to get them in better position for a bigger exit.

And obviously we take a share in that.

So, whatever AI we build, the third arm is the patent.

And so, we own the patents as well.

So, if the company sells, goes away or whatever, we still own the patents and can spin the company up again,

sell it again.

So, that's how the company's positioned right now.

So, currently, I'm raising for the

holding company and then also for the fun as well.

That's so cool.

27%

a year is unheard of, honestly.

That's incredible results.

I mean, if you put in a hundred K, that's twenty-seven K a year.

Yeah, that's really cool.

It gets better every year, too.

Wow.

Also, blockchain Web3.

You're doing some cool stuff there too, right?

Yeah.

So me and my partner

Nick Peterson, so we have a company that basically it has a few different arms.

One of them, we have the Guardian Academy.

So if anyone is like, what is crypto?

What is blockchain?

What is Web3?

What are all these things?

We have an entire academy that walks them through how to basically show up as

not as an a-hole.

Because most people that get into blockchain and crypto, they just want to buy like a moonshot.

Let me put in a hundred bucks and be a millionaire overnight.

It's like, no, there's different ways to show up and behavior and trade

using different techniques.

So in the Guardian Academy, we actually teach people how to understand and read blockchain, read contracts, things of that nature.

And we actually give them really great mindset, personal development, training to make more intelligent decisions that are not impulsive.

Because when someone sees a green candle, right, you want to put all your money in there.

And then boom, the people that are in there sells and you become exit liquidity.

Yeah.

So it's all about timing the market correctly and we talk a lot about that in there the other arm is the technology web through company and what we're doing is we are bringing on uh real world assets real estate syndication funds concerts things of that nature we just uh we actually uh just required ownership and this other company that acquired uh taylor swift and kanye west wow and so yeah so future concerts that they do our company and found guard foundation in the garden Academy will be building and managing all those NFTs with their concerts coming up.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

So we're doing massive stuff on that end.

And I mean, Web 3, I mean, this is the direction we're going.

We all know the financial system is changing banks and all that inflation.

So it's a great time to be positioned there.

Absolutely.

You talked about mindset earlier.

I want to dive into that.

I feel like that's an underrated part of people's success.

What development have you done in terms of mindset?

Yeah, for me, you know, when I first started doing all this, when I got into business, you know, obviously serving the Navy, I was very much drinking the Kool-Aid, right?

So

I was fortunate enough to realize what a leader, what a strong leader is and what a strong mentor is early on.

And those people were active duty individuals, right?

So when I made the transition to being a business owner or entrepreneur, starting my agency or whatever, I started to look around.

Well, who are the people are in that industry that I can potentially learn from?

So I started to look up to people that you probably heard of, like Grant Cardone, Robert Kiwasaki, you know, these guys guys reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you know, sell or be sold.

I read all these guys' books and I'm like, wow, they're speaking my language.

So I started to realize there is a world out there, not just in the military.

So in any industry that you're in, there's people that are doing what you want to do, right?

And probably way more than you could ever dream, right?

So it's best for you to get closer to them, right?

So I started to get really close to a lot of these guys that we probably know, right?

And it was one of the one of my main mentors that I talk to every week.

His name is Dr.

Jeff Spencer.

So Dr.

Jeff Spencer is a gold Olympian.

He was a bicyclist, and he's also trained 40 gold Olympians.

Wow.

So he's worked with people like Lance Armstrong.

He was there through all nine tours de Frances.

They won eight of them.

You know, Jim Quick, Richard Branson, probably a lot of people that you're with.

He even went to Nike and Hitachi and coached their entire executive suite.

Wow.

So this guy's like super legit, and I was very fortunate to have met him.

And he's really low-key,

a really low-key guy.

I worked with Tiger Woods as well.

But he taught me the difference between the champion mind and the human mind.

There's two different minds, right?

One is geared for a repeat winner, right?

And the other one is geared towards a one-act winner, mediocrity, right?

So what I've been able to learn from him is like, I've always been more calibrated to win and be competitive.

Like, I'm calibrated for gold.

Like, I don't silver, bronze, like, no.

What's the point, right?

Yeah.

What's the point?

I I mean, you're up there, you're like, yeah, but it's like, no, I didn't, I didn't win, you know?

So he's taught me some principles that I implement every day.

And one of the, a couple of the most important things, I think most people, when they're starting a business or getting a bunch of tasks done, they have like this huge list of stuff.

You could have 100 things on a list you got to knock out.

And people get stressed out.

They're like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to get all this stuff done.

Just focus on one or two things that matter, right?

Like if you got to make 100 calls that day, the first thing you got to do is pick up up the phone.

So why are you worried about the 100 calls when you haven't picked up the phone yet?

You know, so you just keep knocking one thing over and over again.

And that for me has worked, you know, complete wonders.

And it's really given me a clairvoyance to actually see what's coming because he talks about how life,

there's mind fields everywhere.

In life, you're walking through a mindfield.

There's minds everywhere on the ground, right?

And if he says the point is to get through life and minimize the scars.

He doesn't say no scars.

says, because you are going to make mistakes because we're humans, right?

But if you can get through life and avoid the mind feels and limit the amount of scars you get, the better off you're going to be.

And the only way you can do that is do the work and actually work on yourself and work on self-awareness.

And I think self-awareness, self-mastery is probably the biggest gift that you can give yourself that I think most people don't work on.

Yeah.

They just expect things, you know, everything come to me.

They have this victim mindset.

You ever heard of the Cartman's Triangle?

No, what is up?

So the Cartman's Triangle, basically you have the victim you got the savior and you got the persecutor the villain right so somebody says poor me I'm the villain you know they stole from me they scammed me they whatever right and some in some cases it's like okay it's pretty legit but most cases 99% of the time people have this victim mentality where they don't want to take accountability don't take don't want to take ownership of their stuff and so here comes the savior They're like, oh, you're down and hurt and out.

I can come save you, right?

So they team up, the savior and the villain team up and they go after the villain.

Now, the person that could really break this is the savior.

The savior also doesn't have their together, basically, right?

So they're looking, they want to partner with the villain.

I'm sorry, they want to partner with the victim because they don't want to work on their own stuff.

The savior does?

Right.

Got it.

So they partner with the victim, they go after persecutor.

So

the best way to break that triangle is just to be accountable and just own your stuff.

So I've seen so many people

point the finger.

It's like

looking at a mirror versus looking through a window.

Like it's so easy to point the finger, look through the window, and say it's their fault instead of saying, look, let me look at myself in the mirror.

Let me look at my behavior and modify.

Let me try to modify my own behavior.

So these are a lot of things that I've personally worked on in the last two, three years that really allowed me to show up and actually build a culture in my companies for success.

Same, dude.

Past year or two, for me, I had a victim mentality for 25 years, honestly, and it was terrible.

And you just get so used to it that you don't even know you have it.

Yeah.

And I saw my parents have it.

And it's a vicious cycle.

It's tough to break.

You really got to dive into self-mastery and self-awareness.

Yeah, absolutely.

I want to close off with the charity and real estate stuff you're doing.

You said you're building schools, you're doing some charity work.

What are you doing there?

Yeah, man.

So two of the main organizations I'm part of, one is called Pencils of Promise.

So basically every 25 grand that we raise, we build a school in Mexico for kids.

And that really stemmed from my deployment to the Pacific, man.

Seeing those kids in the Philippines, I was like, that's what I want to do.

You know, so working with kids, building schools, it's just an amazing thing.

We're helping the next generation come up.

I love it.

Right.

And the other organization, because I work with so many veterans and I'm a veteran myself, RIP Medical is the name of the charity.

Every $1 we raise eradicates $10 in military veteran debt.

And

why that exists is because when you come out of the military,

I was just talking to your buddy actually right out there that was in the Army.

And they don't know the process to go through to get disability.

Like if you serve your country,

you probably deployed, you ran a physical fitness test twice

a year.

You were probably asked to do a lot of strenuous things mentally, physically, right?

So that messes with your body.

So when you're transitioning out of the military, you're supposed to go through all these medical appointments and tell all these professionals what's wrong with you, right?

And most people don't make the appointments.

They just, once they get their date, like I'm getting out of the military, they don't even think about trying to go for disability.

So

I went through that process for me personally, and I actually had a mentor that showed me what I needed to do because I went and presented like, these things are legitimately wrong with me.

I'm not crazy or completely disabled, but these are like small little things that kind of like added up, like my knee, my back, you know, stuff like that.

And I did deploy a little bit of PTSD that I had to actually go through trauma therapy to kind of get over, which I'm great now, right?

But, um,

I mean, who doesn't have a you know, I think we all have trauma, PTSD from something that happened in our life, right?

So, you got to work on that stuff, definitely from childhood stuff.

But, uh, yeah, I end up getting 100%.

You know, most people don't know that.

Wow.

And, you know, what happens is these veterans get out the military.

They don't go through that process or have a mentor to show them how to go through that process.

And they get out and they have, they're jacked up.

They have all these problems.

They need therapy.

They need, you know, surgery.

So they go get medical coverage.

They're racking up all these bills.

The VA is not paying for it.

And

RIP Medical basically just helps them pay for all that debt.

Wow.

You know, so every $1 is $10 eradicated.

Amazing.

I love those.

Those are the two main ones that I'm a part of.

Yeah.

Thanks so much for your time today.

Thanks so much for your service, man.

Anything you want to close off with?

Just do the right thing, brother.

Always do the right thing.

So I'll tell you guys this, if you want to learn more a little bit about me and what I have to offer the world, just look me on up on Instagram.

It's at the underscore Douglas James.

If you want to learn more, I guess, about like the lead generation space, how to start your lead gen business online, you could go to the thevipagency.net and look forward to seeing you and working with you.

Perfect.

We'll link it in the video.

Thanks so much for coming on, man.

Yeah, brother.

Thank you.

Thanks for watching, guys, as always, and I'll see you next time.