Jon Andersen: How I Turned Struggles into 7-Figure Success | DSH #1538

Then they gave me this painkiller through my IV.

All my pain went away, all my nerves went away.

And of course, you're getting doctors are giving you painkiller like pills.

And so, unfortunately, I had multiple painkiller addictions.

It started off, you get hurt, you're using the stuff to deal with the pain.

You're feeling now, you're using it so you don't feel sick.

And then at that point, you just got to suffer.

Okay, guys, John Anderson here.

One of the biggest guests I've had on the show, I think.

Let's go, man.

You ready?

Let's go.

You've done a lot of different jobs, too.

You had business success before you got on the athlete side of things, right?

Yep.

What was that first company that crushed it?

So basically, my first, the first company that actually had real success was the painting company.

And I'd done it in college, just as kind of like as a college kid, just going door to door, you know.

And so I knew that because I had a, you know, I had some experience with that when I knew that I could do it.

I didn't want to have that company.

I wasn't, didn't want to be a painter by any means, but I knew that I could start the company, build it and sell it.

And that's what I did.

Damn, you sold it?

Yeah.

Wow.

Well done.

Yeah, it was in my late 20s.

Okay.

Yeah.

And this is at a time there's no internet.

So this is a very different time to build and sell a company.

Yeah.

Who'd you sell it to?

I sold it.

Actually, funny enough, he was a corporate guy, kind of a corporate raider that was sick of it and wanted to buy a business.

That's interesting.

I think blue collar is coming back, though.

Yeah, he was, he was really tired of all the shit in the white-collar world.

And he wanted to call his own shots really what it came down to.

And that's all I've ever known.

I've never had a job.

I've never had anybody call my shots.

So, you know, when he saw the ability to get in the driver's seat and make his own decisions, that just seemed really appealing to him.

Yeah.

So you never worked for anyone?

No.

Came right out of college.

My first ever business, as we were talking before we got cracking, was actually Beal Prep.

Maybe two decades too soon.

Actually, more than that now.

But it was, it was great.

It was one of those things to where before the internet it was really really tough to get off the ground and i was solving a problem for me and people like me there just wasn't enough of us around to support the success of the business so you know it was uh i can't say that it it got off the ground but there was no future sometimes when you're too early people just think you're crazy 100 that's exactly what it was well what do we need that for yeah and now there's multi-billion dollar meal prep companies ship around the country yeah literally i've ordered tons of them i mean it's convenient because like time is money, right?

100%.

You spend three hours cooking or whatever.

Yeah.

Yep.

It's a lot of money down the drain.

Yeah.

So I went from there.

I was like, okay, you know, I'm hungry.

I'm right out of college.

You know, I'm couch hopping.

I got a little car that doesn't have a second gear.

So I was like, I better, I better go start a business that I know I can actually make some money.

And that was painting.

And this, so I was like, okay, I know I don't want to do this.

So I need to.

create an exit strategy.

Five years, I'm out of here.

Smars, you came in with a with a plan.

You are just going day by day.

no i i knew i well i mean

nothing against people that own painting companies but that's not what the future was going to be i hate painting painting sucks when you're tall too you got to get low and stuff no i'm not i'm good on that

so your story though you you were really overweight growing up yeah i mean so basically i learned the whole thing spawns off a learning disability i had a hard time learning And because of that, you know, I was kind of easy kill for, you know, for made fun of.

And so what I did was I ran to food for comfort.

And the more that the, you know, it was just this downward spiral.

The more I got made fun of, the more I ran to food for comfort, the fatter I got.

And it wasn't like I was, you know, like the, you know, one of these kids that couldn't walk.

I was just a fat kid with a, you know, I was fat enough to be picked on.

And the fact that I had a learning disability made it that much easier, but it was my blessing, but at the time I didn't know.

I was basically, you know, one day you don't even really realize it until one day you find yourself in a meeting with your mom and your teacher and they're telling you that you need to leave that classroom and go into a different one and you don't really understand what they're saying until you get to that classroom and realize shit there's a lot of kids around here that don't get it i guess i'm one of them

so anyway so um

you know through that i had to i had to learn to do things my way because i wasn't able to you know keep up doing it the way they were teaching so i became a i started to develop you know, some skills in problem solving, didn't really understand it, had to work twice as hard because I was busting my butt to get back to the normal classes.

All I wanted to do was be par, you know?

And so the blessing was that I was told that I couldn't.

And I just, it became, it was on deaf ears after a while.

And the fact that I had to learn to work twice as hard as everybody else just to be even.

And the fact that I had to, I created this problem solving skill set that allowed me to figure out how to get things done, not like everybody else, which translated perfectly into real life.

Because otherwise, I would, if I was following the groove that everybody else did, I'd be sitting in a car going to, in traffic, going to a job I don't want to go to.

And I never, again, never had a job.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They told me I had ADHD in like elementary school.

Yeah.

Tried putting me on medication.

Yeah.

Well, see, in those days, they just said, oh, kid's slow.

We got to move him to the classroom where the slow kids are.

Yeah.

That was it.

There was no diagnosis.

The diagnosis was he's slow.

Wow.

So you just thought you were stupid.

I mean, you kind of take on that identity, you know, and that's why for me, I worked, I really, I didn't like that.

Yeah.

Down deep, of course, a lot of the kids, they just, they just kind of accept it.

Down deep, it was like really troubling to me.

That's why I was really working on, I was working extra hard.

And I was, again, it was, again, I was creating this, you know, set of skills for problem solving to get me back to par.

But again, at the point, I wasn't seeing greatness.

I just wanted to get back to the normal classes.

That was your level at the time.

Yeah.

I just wanted to go, I just wanted to be not going to the classes where everybody else wasn't going.

Right.

You know, it's funny when you're a kid, all you want to do is fit in.

But then as you get an adult, you're like, thank God, I'm not fitting in.

Facts.

No, straight facts, dude.

I tried so hard to fit in when I was a school.

I know.

I know.

It just wasn't meant to be.

Yeah.

And so, so basically, you know, when it comes down to it, I, I was really struggling.

But again, I developed this stuff and nothing had come along that I'd attached it to that made a difference.

And then it kind of happened one day.

I'd seen all, you know, lined up fairly, it was almost like the universe did it for me.

I saw Conan the Barbarian and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That was at a time when

he was like the only person that looked that way, you know, and just something inside me changed.

I was like, whoa, really affected me.

Shortly after that, you know, I played sports.

My mom kept me in sports because, you know, it was just part of what kept me.

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Busy.

And

so if you played football, you had to have weightlifting as your PE class.

That was the way it was the rules back then.

Well, I quickly realized I was better at lifting the weights than I was the sports I was playing.

That was lifting the weights to play.

And

I'm good at something.

Holy shit.

And next thing you know, I mean, I'm working twice as hard.

I'm figuring out how to do these lifts and not really being taught.

Like, I remember with a squat, I kind of learned, nobody taught me, but I learned that if I racked the bar a little further down my back, it shortened the lever of my back, which allowed me to squat more.

I just discovered this on my own, you know, like 15, which is now low bar squatting is like a advanced technique.

I somehow discovered this when I was young.

Long and short of it is junior year, I'm 16.

There's me and one other kid in the school who squatted four or five as max.

Jeez.

Yeah.

So.

The day before that happened, I'm walking down the hall and it's like a pin bomb.

I'm getting bumped around, you know, after that, people are stepping out of my way.

I was like,

whoa,

it was like,

that was like the turning point.

Yeah.

And then I've already, I've already figured out how to work twice as hard as everybody else.

I'm in love with lifting weights.

I'm totally moved by CNR Schwarzenegger.

And it just,

the joke I make is I got bit by the iron bug and I never look back.

That's got ah.

So it gave you that confidence, it sounds like.

Totally built my confidence.

And at that point, I knew what I wanted.

I knew what I wanted to be a big, strong dude.

Had no idea how I was going to make money doing it, but I didn't care because the first time I knew what I wanted.

You found yourself.

Yeah.

And so,

you know, I get through as high school went along, I really started to develop some confidence.

I wasn't a fat kid anymore.

And

college comes along.

And obviously I was having, I didn't really have the test scores or anything like the SAT, you know.

go to the SAT and I get the score.

My mom's like, oh, there must be something wrong.

I go again.

I do it again.

Same, same score.

I'm like,

that's it.

Four hours.

So anyway, so she basically,

I wasn't getting to the state schools.

I didn't meet the requirements.

But some of the smaller private schools, they didn't really care if you were going to pay their massive tuition.

So she put me into a small Catholic school.

And at that, I was really going to school because I just knew it was another, I told her I wanted to go five years because four years, the pace would have been too quick.

And she even understood that.

But I'm looking at this.

This is five years.

I get to keep lifting weights and find some time to figure out how I'm going to pull this off.

And so I went to college, graduated college with a major in theology, minor in philosophy from University of Portland.

And then

had no intention to get a job when I came out of school.

Not to mention, I have no idea.

Even if I did, I'd have no idea what job I would have gotten with that degree.

And so theology.

And so.

So that's what I went into right out of the gate, free enterprise, started a business.

That was where meal prep hit.

failed then went into painting did that sold it and then it was almost like again the universe is kind of lined up for me i'd sold this company you know for you know talking of this is like late 90s yeah you know half a million bucks is a lot for you know and in my you know i'm still i'm just a fat little boy in my mind yeah especially especially back then half a mill is probably over a million dollars oh yeah i don't know i mean it was it was inflation yeah oh god yeah so anyway at that point you know i've been training the whole time and i i started that business because I knew that I wanted to continue to chase my dreams.

And so I was big as a house and I had, I had basically gone and competed and I had turned pro all when this company sold.

Boom, next thing you know, I'm traveling the world as a pro strongman.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so I'd have my first business success before I turned pro as a strongman.

And because of the way I looked, I mean, I was big and I was jacked, meaning like most strongmen were fat.

I was, you know, I was petrified of being fat.

So I was always looking good.

So I ended up, this is kind of during the dot-com boom now.

So companies were just, they were just giving money away.

So, like, I had sponsors, like, I got an energy drink.

They never even got the product to market.

They just gave me t-shirts and four grand a month to wear the t-shirts when you go to the gym.

Done, you know.

And so, um, and then I had a Super Bowl commercial, I had an agent.

So I mean, I was living the dream, dude.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that's, that was a nice seven-year period of my life.

But during that period, now I've got this, just, you know, this capital.

So I actually started a real estate company.

So I'm flipping homes and I'm traveling a lot.

So I'm gone to Europe, but I'd come home.

I had a lot of connections from the payment company.

So, you know, there's, there's win number two.

So I'm crushing with the real estate, you know, doing my thing and pro strong man.

Real estate dries up, of course.

You know, that's just the way that, you know, markets work.

Oh, wait, right.

Yep.

Yep.

And then right about that time, I had a back surgery, You know, it be Strawman beat me up pretty good.

It was on the smaller side.

But was that from wrestling?

Or that's when I went to wrestling.

So Strawman is, I had, I had a back surgery from Strawman.

And my agent said, look, he said,

surgeon says that if you go back on the straw man's surgery, you're going to be on this table getting another surgery really quickly.

So if we want to keep doing what we're doing, we're going to have to put you somewhere else.

So where are we going?

He goes, pro wrestling.

What?

So basically, he completely fraudulated a resume said that i knew what i was doing i we we sent me to a school and i learned how to do it because it's a dance you know and you got to learn how to do this stuff it's all predetermined but you got to learn how to not hurt the other person i was you know big as a house right so if i didn't learn how to do this i could have really hurt somebody anyway um you know i did a handful so i went from you know amphitheaters and you know regalatvia you know with 10 12 000 people screaming you know lifting atlast stones to high school gyms at the very bottom tier of wrestlings.

I needed to get some footage to send to Japan.

Well, next thing you know, I get a deal in Japan, my like seventh ever wrestling match was a pay-per-view in Sapporo Japan.

Wow.

But again, all of this stuff that's going on, it sounds like, you know, it sounds like, man, this is happening fast.

And, you know, people said you can't do this, but I've been hearing that my whole life.

You know, people say, you know, like when I, when I became a pro bodybuilder, oh, you know, I wrestled for seven years after that.

It was a great part of my life.

Um,

they released me, which happens.

I was 42.

I came home.

I said, I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a pro bodybuilder.

You're 42, you can't do that.

And I say, you might be right, but I'm gonna try anyway.

I've been told I couldn't my whole life.

So all that shit just went on deaf ears.

So then basically,

did my first contest, one

second contest, turned pro, third contest as a pro bodybuilder.

I mean, this is

most people that try never, ever get a pro card.

I got in two contests, which puts me in a really small school of people that have done that.

Wow.

But what I'm, see, the beauty of what I'm saying is I've kind of was, I was able to kind of traverse all these things and do them fairly quickly, making the change from one to the next because it was all goes back to the beginning.

My work ethic was twice as much.

My problem solving skills were sky high i hope you guys are enjoying the show please don't forget to like and subscribe it helps the show a lot with the algorithm thank you

and i wasn't afraid of what people told me i couldn't

it it's a simple formula you know and you know so then it business wise you know my current company is that's my second you could probably argue that my real estate company was a seven figure too but it was you know at that point it was you know it was like uh

you know when you're constantly buying and selling it's like at different points It's like, it's never just a seven-figure company, might be seven-figure different points.

But as to where my current company is boom, there's no, you can't argue it.

Yeah.

When I see people that have success in multiple industries, I'm really impressed with that.

Yeah.

Because there's a lot of skill involved in that.

Oh, yeah.

Well, and that's the thing is like what I teach in my coaching is: look,

these skill sets that we develop, they can go, they can go to your relationships.

They can go to your business.

They can go to your body.

They can go to your mind.

It's everywhere.

And if I always make the joke, if a man trained his brain like he trained his chest, he could have whatever he wanted.

I love that.

Everyone loves chest to.

I dude.

Isn't it the craziest thing?

I mean,

it's crazy.

So, but I mean, when it comes right down to it, you know, it's like the thing that I love now is now I'm teaching people how much power they have.

If they just get some of this shit out of the way, you got to stop worrying what other people say, or you got to stop worrying about what the wrong people people say.

Cause the right people, they're going to congratulate you for failing.

They're going to pick you up, dust you off, and say, great job, do it again.

Absolutely.

Because failure is a part of success.

Successful people understand that.

The people that are caught in the matrix, the ones that are driving to a job they really don't want to go to, you know, the ones that were following the rules of society, these are the people that don't understand that.

That's why they're stuck.

What are the problems you're seeing in young men that approach you for coaching or consulting or advice?

I think the biggest thing is, is they know what they want, but they're definitely afraid of what people are going to say.

I dealt with that.

Yeah.

When I was starting off, I was scared of the judgment.

100%.

And again, going back to, you know, the, my, as a, as a pathetic little bastard, as I called myself, it was a blessing because I was, I had to deal with that so much.

At some point, you just don't care.

You know, it's like you just, we've all been in a situation where something's got you so wound up and you just, it's almost like it just kind of lets go.

you can't do it anymore it's like you don't have the ability to care about you've cared so much it's over you know it's almost like we've all had our heart broken right well at some point that heartbreak goes away well at some point you can only worry about what people think for so long before you realize you know what i don't care anymore yeah so you get that out of the way that's a huge one that's a big one well and the crazy thing is it goes even further so People are, there's failure, right?

But when it comes down to it, people are more afraid of what people are going to say because they failed than the failure itself.

It's unbelievable because failure is a part of success.

You can't have the success and failure.

You can't split them.

A lot of times when I have new people come on board, I'll explain, look, we all know Michael Jordan.

He had the most game-winning shots as an NBA player when he's playing.

He might even still have that statistic.

I don't know.

But to get that, he had to achieve the most ever game losing shots.

So Michael clearly understood he had to fail more than everybody else to succeed more.

And people are like, whoa,

it clicks at that point.

Yeah.

And that's it.

You got to push a button in people's minds to help them see that they've been programmed improperly.

Right.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a saying that I love.

He says, and this was a major one for me too, moved me, right?

It says, break the rules.

Don't break the laws.

You go to jail.

But the rules of society, you don't have to follow those, but we follow them because we're afraid of what people are going to say.

You completely, you break the shackles at that point.

That's powerful.

Yeah, 100%.

And as soon as you stop following the rules, you start separating yourself so fast.

Yeah.

Unbelievable.

That's why entrepreneurship is such a good like self-development

for people.

Oh, yeah.

And brother, I've had gyms and and there's other other business we didn't even talk about because i'm not afraid to start something you know because i understand if it fails i'm going to learn right that learns that learn is going to give me a lesson that lesson will help me do better at starting again or doing something different yeah i like it because it forces you to take accountability forces you to look at the mirror like if you fail in entrepreneurship a lot of that's on you and you're gonna fail just accept it it's like i always make the joke when we're doing something new guess what we're supposed to suck.

That's perfect.

I sucked at this at first.

I mean, we all sucked that.

I mean, you, you first time you do something, you suck.

Second time, suck a little less.

Third time, a little less.

Pretty soon, you don't suck.

But when you just accept the fact that, hey, I'm going to suck and it's okay.

But most people are, they're afraid of the judgment because they're going to not do well at something.

That's the way it's supposed to be.

Yeah.

That was my mindset.

That's why I put lifting so like, because I was a skinny kid and I got intimidated lifting in the gym.

So I just kept pushing it back and back because I sucked at lifting.

And that's what, you know, that's what we do.

You know, the things that, that intimidate us or, you know, the things that are difficult or that we're afraid we're going to be judged, we just find reasons to justify why we don't do them.

But in actuality,

it's the work we're avoiding.

It's basically.

camouflaging our success

because it's the shit that we don't want to do.

That's where the real gain is.

That's where the growth is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What was that for you?

What were you avoiding when you look back at it?

Oh, man.

You know, I think when it came down to it,

and you know what, it's funny enough, I say it once a fat kid, always a fat kid.

It's like I'm a food addict.

I'm a sugar addict.

Like I got three kids, right?

And they would always, three girls, they would always like, they're eating a candy or something.

Oh, daddy, have a bite.

Look,

you know, if I have a bite of yours, I'm eat all the rest of yours, your sisters, your mom's, then I'm going to go to 7-Eleven, I'm going to eat all theirs.

And so, so it was like, I'm a foodie, a sugar addict, whatever you want to call it.

And it's, so it's like, once a fat kid, always a fat kid, a sugar addict, you're always an addict.

Whatever you're addicted to, you're either someone's in the addict or not.

You never really recover.

You manage, so to speak.

Recovery is management.

So

what really kind of, I mean, I actively worked on it, but I really didn't get a grip on like dealing with my sugar addiction until later in life.

Really?

It haunted me.

I mean, even when I was a success,

early entrepreneurship, if things somehow were going wrong, right?

Because my business is doing well.

I could disappear for a few days and nothing would change.

And something would mount up on me.

Who knows what?

Maybe it was personal.

Maybe it was.

I would literally, I can remember this.

I would go to the grocery store

and I would take, you know, it was like a big brown bag.

And I would fill that thing up with the worst sugary treats you can think of.

And the worst part was, I'm walking through the store.

I'm eating them as I'm going through.

By the time I get up to pay, I got this full bag.

I already feel sick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's wild.

Yeah, but I would buy it and I would go home and I would disappear sometimes for days, almost like a drug addict.

But I would be eating.

You love sugar.

Oh, yeah.

I was in it.

And that haunted me for a long time.

I mean, I got that binge eating away.

That was the first step was to cut the binging.

But I, that right there, that addiction really, really plagued me.

And it's, it's, of course, it's just food.

You can make whatever argument you want, but an addictive behavior pattern that's not managed is detrimental to your life.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and I used to go hard on Halloween as a kid.

I'd get the pillowcase.

Oh, dude.

Dude, I'd get 10 to 15 pounds of candy.

We would change costumes.

I would go three times.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, and I'd have to hide because I would have like, you know, the amount of candy I would acquire, my parents would never let me keep yeah yeah i hid mine too yeah we actually donated half of mine to the orthodontist for like some graces or whatever yeah yeah and so that's something that had i been a little bit more honest with myself about that and i'd gotten a bigger grip on that early because realistically what happened it was not just the food it was not the sugar it was an addiction because that addiction I ended up having some pretty massive painkiller addictions

going through, yeah, I mean, and when it comes to surgery, yeah, that's how it starts.

But then, you know, it starts because you get hurt.

You know, when a doctor gives you something, it feels okay.

You know, I remember it, I can remember in

competing in Eastern Europe, you know,

it's televised and, you know,

you do an event, you got 90 minutes, so you got to get back.

And I remember I, I thought it was a squat.

It was a car squat, strained a groin.

Jeez.

Well, I had to go out and do a basically a truck pull after that.

Oh my gosh.

You can't pull out?

No.

Well, I mean, you could, but the thing is, you can't, once you get there, it's like, if, if you're not going to deal with it, they'll find someone who will.

So it could have, but it would have also, I wouldn't have been invited to contest.

Right.

You know?

And so, anyway, I remember being in the, in the, in the, what is it like?

The ambulance, right?

The medic.

And they gave me an IV, right?

And because that's the first thing I would do, give me an hydrate you, you know, but then they gave me this painkiller through my IV.

And I remember it was just like,

what was that?

All my pain went away.

All my nerves went away.

Wow.

And then your doctor gives it to you.

So it kind of opens up the well, it's from a doctor, you know, and then of course you're getting doctors are giving you painkiller like pills.

That's in America, they're just dope, you know, doling that shit out like candy.

And so unfortunately, I had multiple, you know, painkiller addictions.

You know, I would go, it start off, you get hurt, but then what happens is you're using the stuff to deal with the pain but then pretty soon the pain's gone now you're using it to feel normal and it goes from you're feeling now you're using it so you don't feel sick and now you're hooked damn yeah that's how they get you yeah and then at that point you just got to suffer to get out of it and and

you it because of discipline i'm like really disciplined i was able to get out of that but i have so many buddies who

weren't able to do it wow because you get to the top drug, which is obviously cotton, and it's crazy.

Were you on that one?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a quick story to get to illustrate how powerful that shit is.

And for that matter, anybody listening to me, if you have a problem with this, I am an open book.

I say, look, come on my social media.

I'm happy to talk to you about it because this is, you know, my purpose in life is to inspire people to be the best version of themselves.

And getting rid of a drug addiction or managing an addiction is going to be the first step in becoming the best version of yourself.

So you got an addiction, you find my social media, come chat with me.

But anyway,

so I'm not going to mention any names, but you guys would all know this name if I mentioned him.

Or in Japan, he runs out.

You know, when you're really addicted, you got to make sure you got enough to get home.

And he runs out a couple of days early, and he's withdrawn hard and he's on OxyContin.

He lands in Florida, gets off the plane, doesn't get his bag, goes to a pharmacy.

I want to say it was a CBS, takes his hand in his shirt, goes to the pharmacist and says, give me a bottle of OxyContin.

Right.

They give it to him.

He pulls his hand out and says, I'm sorry.

Call the police.

Tell him I'll be across the street in the bathroom,

basically snorting these pills.

So he's a good man.

Holy crap.

But he was that, he was in that bad a shape.

that that's what he did.

And of course the cops came and took him to jail and he went into jail and he detoxed.

But I mean, that's the kind of, that's,

that's what you're up against.

That's insane.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, when, when I was on that stuff, when my wife, you know, she had to really help me.

She had to hide these things and it caused a lot of problems between us, but we had to step me down because you, you get a, you do, if you're on a dose that's too much and you cold turkey that drug, it can give you seizures, seizures.

That's what happened to me with Xanax.

Really?

Yeah.

I had a seizure.

Did you really?

Yeah, ambulance, ER.

How much were you taking?

Well, they up your dosage every month.

So I just

yeah, and then I ran out and then I smoked some weed, got super high and just had a seizure.

So now I can't even smoke weed because I get flashbacks to that.

Well, it's probably better, dude.

Yeah, probably honestly.

I mean, all this shit, all these challenges happen to us now.

I want nothing to do with any of that stuff because looking back, it's so easy to realize, you know, how it could have wrecked my life if I didn't have, you know, my discipline, you know, and my problems.

I saw with my dad, too.

He had a seizure at one of my soccer games growing up.

They had to cancel the whole game because he was on Xanax and then quit cold turkey.

Yeah, that stuff's no joke.

The antidepressants.

Yeah.

Yeah, that shit's no joke.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty crazy when you get hooked on that stuff because then all of a sudden your whole life is about the pill.

Oh, I couldn't do anything without it.

Yeah.

It would be in my pocket.

Like if I had the slightest anxiety, I would just pop one.

Yeah, it was so bad.

Yeah.

And that's basically our becomes our coping mechanism.

When what we really need to do is develop the skill sets to deal with what's going on in our lives.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I couldn't even fly without it or anything, but now no, no anxiety, like barely any.

It'll come up here and there, but now I can deal with it.

Yeah.

Well,

and as the challenges that we go through allow us to develop the skills we need, because life never gets easier.

We just have to get better.

Facts.

You know what I mean?

People think it gets easier with money, but it doesn't.

It's a different set of problems.

That's all it is.

I would make the joke.

Look,

being broke is a bitch.

Being rich is a bitch.

You know, they're both hard.

Choose your hard.

Which hard do you want?

There's no easy.

So, and that's again, it's like

to help people understand that they have the choices to change their lives and then help them change their lives with mindset and habit creation and things like that.

That's my purpose in life.

I love it.

Do you get a lot of guys coming to you for weight loss advice too?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, because it started off with my, my current company started off with weight loss because I, I'd helped so many people lose weight just out of the goodness of my heart.

And it just, this company just turned itself into a business.

I didn't even try.

It was like the demand just shot up because I had helped so many people.

And it's like, you know, this worked really well for me here.

Let's try.

You can try.

And of course, as it developed, I really learned how to tweak it for the individual.

But when you have something that really works, people will find it you know a lot of people are wanting to take shortcuts when it comes to losing weight and take ozempic what are your thoughts on that i think basically all they're doing is delaying the inevitable if you don't change how you live if you don't change how you think you'll be right back there

yeah there's some wicked side effects with that one too oh god Well, I mean, basically, it's, it's what it's doing is it's allowing a person to not eat.

So they're slowly becoming malnourished.

Look at the side effects of malnourishment.

I mean, suicide rate shoots through the roof.

You know, I know some people with a paralyzed face right now from Mozambican.

It's, it's so wild, like celebrities.

Yeah.

Yeah, because a lot of celebrities push that one.

That's it.

I mean, when it comes down to it, if you want to make a change, you got to do the things in your daily life to make a change.

Because,

you know, we live this loop, as I call it.

It's like a 24-hour loop.

You got these 24

one-hour time slots.

What are you filling those time slots with?

You're going to sleep for eight.

You're going to, you know, all of these time slots get filled.

Well, are you filling these time slots with things that are helping you get better so your life will get better?

Are you filling your time slots with trying to figure out how to take shortcuts?

Because we all know a shortcut,

it backfire.

Doesn't work long term, man.

Yeah, 100%.

I'm sure when you were a bodybuilder, you saw a ton of guys trying to do that.

I mean, when it comes down to it, we call them flashing the pan because you know guys that come in they come in hot and fast but they didn't do it right

now exactly yeah flashing the pan hot and fast but they're here here boom it's you know it's like a quick grease fire yeah and you see that in every industry oh yeah 100 business basketball it doesn't matter 100 because if you don't have the again the loop you know your 24-hour loop if you have the things in there and you're repeating this process i mean i'm a repetitive machine it's like my ocd OCD.

You know, if I was as a kid, they would have diagnosed me with that.

It was, if I had known that, they said, you know, because repeating things feels really good to me.

Well, fuck lifting weights.

That's all we do is repeat.

You know, and so knowing that repeating things feels good to me, I know what my strengths are.

And I expose those strengths and the things that, okay, that don't fit into that.

Okay, I'm going to have somebody do that for me or I'm going to hire somebody to do it.

So you learn who you are and you, it's, I mean, it can be really really helpful smart you mean you you only really are going to call it a disability if you allowed to call it become a disability my my disability as an ocd is a strength if i didn't have that i wouldn't that piece of paper would have this poor bastard sits in traffic and goes to a job that he doesn't want to go to yeah oh that's facts that's what i say about adhd and autism too yeah when we were growing up people shunned you for having those but you can really lock in and use those to your advantage.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I don't know much about autism, but the little I do know, these dudes are tapping into like parts of their brain that the average person will never see.

A lot of the top CEOs have it.

Yeah.

A lot of them.

Yeah.

And ADHD and dyslexia and a bunch of shit.

Oh, dude.

I still like, I can be reading and like the word was, well, go to soft.

Oh, yeah.

Right in front of it.

It'll happen twice.

Holy crap.

I have it with numbers sometimes, but it's never words.

I get it with numbers too.

Like you get the code, you know, that comes through.

Yeah.

I got to be really careful.

Oh, yeah.

The sixth inch of code again Rebecca code.

God damn it.

Yeah, I'm double checking that one every time.

Yeah.

Well, if I learned how to copy and paste it, I'm like, okay, I'm good.

Oh, that's fine.

Yeah, I had to, I had to, I mean, I'm, I'm actually pretty good with numbers.

Like that was one of the things that remembering, because I had to really be good with remembering things.

Yeah.

But when I get tired, like if I'm, if I don't sleep well or maybe I'm just pushing myself too hard, that's when it really starts going.

So that's when I realized that, And I'm good at recognizing I'm on, or this is not the time to try to remember a number.

You're going to remember this thing backwards.

Yeah.

Sleep is so important.

Dude, I am when it comes to sleep, I mean, I have a set bedtime, a set wake-up time.

I almost always wake up before my alarm because I'm so rigid about when I go to bed.

I go to bed at eight o'clock, period.

8 p.m.

p.m.

Holy crap.

So when do you get up?

This morning, I was actually up at 2:30.

My alarm, my alarm said to go off at 3.

That's when people go to sleep my age.

Well, you know what happened was I learned, actually, as a young entrepreneur in my painting company, I kind of realized that, you know, I need to get up early because I'm getting up and I'm running this business.

And once the day gets started, I'm trying to grow this thing and managing 25 people is like, you know, you're a babysitter, you're a banker, you got everything, you know.

So once the day got started and these, you know, my company needed me, my time was, a lot of time was gone so i got up early got my time out of the way so that once the company's time started i was smart and that's where it started now granted i learned how to manage that better so i could actually have that my time in the afternoon also but in the beginning i was especially i was trying to grow it real fast yeah it was there was so much happening so quickly if i didn't get my training if i didn't get the things i needed for me early it might not happen.

That's smart.

And if I'm not getting better, my business is not getting better.

And that's the thing I tell people all the time.

Look, you're,

especially when it comes, and I've been a business owner my whole life.

It's all I've done is start and grow businesses.

My coaching, I really specialize in business owners because they run themselves ragged trying to be better at their businesses.

But really what they're doing is they're, they're focusing too much on their business and not on themselves.

You're building a business, but are you building yourself?

Your business is only going to be as good as you are.

And so when it comes down to it, helping someone understand, you know, mindset, habits, the whole thing, sleep, you know, mental focus.

I mean, attention

is probably one of the most important things that we have.

These days, especially because everyone's attention span is shocked.

100%.

Because your attention, where's your attention going or your focus is another way to put it.

If you can focus on something and only that, you will get so much done.

But we live in a time where

the distractions are everywhere.

And that's why for me, 3 a.m.

No distractions.

No one's texting you at that time, calling you.

No, I mean, I actually about 3:15,

I'll text my three daughters, my mom, my wife, every morning.

And then one of my friends, and I'm just sending them love.

And they're already awake or no, help.

No, help.

I don't, and I tell them, I don't, this is not for a response.

It don't feel like I'm doing this because I want you to respond.

I start my day with gratitude

and with sending love because it's part of what,

you know, when I get up, that time is to get me into my best shape.

So every day, I'm ready to rock.

Because if I know, if I get myself primed up, I'm going to make better decisions, you know, and decisions change our lives.

You know, it's kind of like, you know, you hear the terms,

you know, scarcity and abundance.

People don't understand that.

They just, they repeat it, but they don't really understand.

Because you can take it like a losing and a winning mindset.

People understand that better.

If you're in a losing mindset, that's scarcity.

The decisions you're going to make when you're in a losing mindset are very different than in a winning mindset, right?

We all know you lose, your confidence is low.

God, can I do it again?

You win, you're like, God, I can't wait to do it again.

Well,

our decisions are different.

So when you're making decisions in a losing or a scarcity mindset,

you're making decisions that are changing your life in

usually in a very not effective way.

You know, you're not leveling up, making decisions in a losing mindset most of the time.

Versus, if you're in an abundant or a winning mindset, those decisions are going to move you ahead pretty quickly.

Well,

that morning time for me, I am making sure that I am in that winning mindset because when my decisions are on point, my life is propelling forward at warp speed.

And that's part of what, that's part of what I teach.

I love that.

That's some of the best advice I've heard, honestly, because I've made important decisions in both mindsets.

Oh, yeah.

And looking back at it now, whenever it's a scarcity mindset, it's terrible to see.

I've done that so many times.

You know, it's especially, I mean, and that's the thing, too.

We could go back and look at all that shit.

It doesn't help us.

Yeah.

It doesn't.

So it's like, let that shit go and realize that the idea is not to do it again.

Yeah.

You're so correct.

The decisions you make in that losing mindset, they're not helping you move forward 99% of the time.

It's because you're going for quick money.

You're going for that quick thing.

Yeah.

And a lot of times you don't have the confidence to make the hard decision because hard decisions get us us ahead.

When you're in a winning mindset,

it might be a hard decision, but you've got the confidence to just blow through it.

You know, I explained to a lot of my clients, look, right now you look around and you see all the problems surrounding you.

Let's say, yeah, okay.

What if you looked around and you saw nothing but opportunity?

Wouldn't it be easy to run to those opportunities?

Of course it would be, they say.

Well, you see, the problem is just the speed bump in front of the opportunity, but you're in the mindset where you can't see past the problem.

So as soon as I get them reprogrammed and they look around and they see opportunities, life has totally changed.

That's some great advice.

Yeah, I mean, we get to see, we really get to kind of determine what we see.

Just most people have no idea how to maneuver our minds or our neuroplasticity so that it actually happens.

It goes back to the, what I said in the beginning, if.

If most men trained their brain like they did their chest, they'd have whatever they want.

You know?

Yeah.

Neuroplasticity.

It's a, and we all need that.

We all have our traumas and we all have our preconceived notions, right?

Oh, yeah, 100%.

And that won't get you to where you want to be most of the time.

Yeah.

I mean, you think you hear people say stuff like you control your thoughts, you control your life.

And it's really hard for people to understand that.

But realistically, those thoughts are determining your state, you know, abundant or scarcity, winning or losing, you know, because, you know, it's if you can control those thoughts and keep keep yourself in that winning mindset, that abundant mindset, you're altering your decisions, your decisions change your life.

Where do you coach people?

Is it online?

Is it in person?

Yeah, pretty much, you know, when I had my gym, I did more in-person stuff.

But the problem is, is, is I really look for the character in the person.

I don't, it's, it's, that's the biggest thing.

I know if I have the right character, I can do amazing things because I'm, I, we're teammates.

We're partners.

I can't do it alone.

He can't do it alone.

We have to do it together.

And so the problem with the local market was, you know, there's not as many of those people in a local space.

And so, and then funny enough, because it was kind of based out of the gym, people associated it with getting in shape.

Getting in shape is a positive side effect of changing your mindset and your habits.

You know,

why people have a hard time getting in shape and staying in shape?

Because they're focused on getting in shape.

Focus on your mindset and your habits.

You'll get in shape and you'll keep it.

Stay in shape.

Yeah, that's so true.

So when it was based out of a gym, it was almost like, it was like, almost like the wrong platform to start.

Yeah.

And so, and plus I realized, you know, we, I mean, the gym was great.

I actually had my wife.

I said, look, you, you run this thing, you know, because this other business, my, my mentoring business, was just, it was just kind of taking, it was just blowing up by itself.

And so.

I had her kind of take over and manage the managers and things like that.

So I could focus on this one.

And that's when I realized that going online gave me the ability to find the right people, find the right characters, the worldwide market.

My number one market is USA, number two, UK, number three,

Canada, number four, Australia.

Same with me for the podcast.

100%.

And so it's kind of like you have the ability, this huge worldwide market to find the right people so that if I have the right people, I love

what I do.

But somehow I I get the wrong person in and their character is not what I thought that was.

It's, it can be a, you know, it's, it's a bitch.

And I want to help everybody.

Yeah.

And sometimes I can tell when some's not the right character, I'll give them some free shit.

Hey, go work with this.

Come back.

But I like to make, I mean, I, I love what I do.

And I, when I'm, especially when I have the right people, it just, the love just keeps growing.

Yeah.

I mean, that famous saying, right, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him 100%.

That's so true.

So true.

That one really changed me because I used to try to force people to change a lot when I was younger.

Yep.

And I would get mad if they didn't.

But now I don't care.

And, brother, that's so true.

And that's one of the things that

when we're kind of figuring out if someone's the right character, you know, are you comfortable

getting uncomfortable?

I just, I just need to know that you're going to be okay stepping away from what you normally do because what you normally do has got you stuck.

And if you're not okay with stepping away from that, I need that first step.

And if you tell me you can, but you won't do it, we're going to have a lot of problems.

Yeah.

And it's like, you just like you said, you can't make someone change.

Someone has to want to change.

And all I need is for someone to have the character enough to take that first step because I know they take that first step, that little bit of momentum, I can get them to see the light.

And once they see the light, they never look back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That stubbornness is a tricky one because it's like a protective mechanism, but it can also harm you.

100%.

And it goes back to the way that our brains were designed.

You know, know, you go back far enough back in human history, you know,

our

literally all we wanted to do was live another day because it was our environment was so brutal.

So our brains were programmed to scan our surroundings and pick out the problems.

But because those problems are trying to eat us for lunch,

we don't live in that world anymore, but our brains haven't really, our, our environment is, has evolved, you know, thousand fold.

Our brains have barely evolved.

And so our brains seek comfort because that's what kept us alive.

Well, comfort in today's world keeps you in a job you don't want to be in.

Facts.

Keeps you sitting in traffic.

Yeah, comfort today is honestly a bad thing.

100%.

And that's the thing.

One of the things that I would say too is, you know, with, as I developed,

I became very, very clear that.

Me being uncomfortable is what made me comfortable.

If I'm comfortable, I get, I start getting weird.

Yeah, I get anxiety.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

100%.

Start itching.

You know, my wife says, you get yourself in trouble.

Yeah.

So, you know, always having something to chew on, something that if I get that little flutter in my stomach, you know, that's the thing that tells me

I'm on the scent.

You know, but the way our brains are wired, we have to really be intentional to understand that we're programmed to seek comfort.

And comfort is doing the exact opposite of what we want in our lives i mean assuming that you want something bigger and better yeah i mean there are plenty of people who they want that job listen they got a job with with great benefits and a retirement and that's all they want good for you if that's what you want more power to you most people are looking for a little more yeah and that guy that's looking for a little more

he's got to learn that comfort is not going to get him

such an interesting dynamic right yeah every entrepreneur I know that is balling or whatever and makes a ton of money, they're never content.

No,

they want more and more.

100%.

And you're always, and that's another thing, too.

You got to be like taking risks.

The average man doesn't like to take risks because it scares him.

Right.

Well, the entrepreneur realizes that risk is how he got there.

You know, you never stop taking risks.

Yep.

You know, when you fall on your face, I mean, you win some and you lose some, but the skill set that you have that allowed you to be successful, you don't lose that.

You just lose the shit.

You lose the physical things, you lose the money, you lose the houses, the cars, whatever you lose, but you don't lose your skills.

Yeah.

And every time you become more successful, you're because your skills are getting better, which means you'll get back that much easier.

And you just have to realize that's part of the equation.

Exactly.

Yeah, I'd rather try and fail than be on my deathbed and not have tried at all.

I got my ass kicked in 2008 when the real estate turned over, you know?

Thank God,

because it allowed me to see things differently.

At that point, I made a decision in my life.

I will never do something to earn a dollar unless I love it.

Probably one of the best changes of my life ever.

I was good at making money at shit that I really didn't love, but I was looking back, I was, you know, just a half a step above the guy that was going to a job he didn't really like.

But now it's like, I'm going to, I get goosebumps and and the like warmth in my chest when i do my job i love that yeah yeah and i'd rather be there than making more money but miserable and the crazy part is if you really love what you do you get so good the money will come oh yeah it flows yeah because the energy is aligned 100 but you have to realize that you can't do it for if you're always looking at the money you're never going to get to that spot Facts.

I was chasing money as my first priority, probably my first like six, seven years.

I think we all did.

Yeah.

I mean, that's how we're taught.

Yeah.

It's how we learn better.

Yeah.

You know, and then you hear, oh, you know, how many rich guys do you know that are miserable, blah, blah, blah.

And you think, well, I'll get there and figure it out.

Let me find out real quick.

But when it comes down to it,

everybody has to define.

That's even what I talk to my clients.

You have to define your success.

What does your definition of success look like?

My definition of success is to be financially free, constantly creating, changing lives,

you know, and constantly creating the big part.

And that's an entrepreneur, you know, I love to create business.

I love to grow business and businesses that make a difference.

That's that.

And then obviously I want to have amazing relationships with my kids, my wife, my friends.

You know, I want to have the freedom to do what I want.

I mean, my wife and her, we were all over the place.

Yeah.

You know, we have a house in California.

We got a place in Mexico.

We got a cabin in Tahoe.

We're just, we're just living our lives.

I love it.

Living our lives, changing lives.

And that's part of my definition.

Same.

It used to be just financial success for me, but as I've gotten older, it's more than that.

It's physical health.

It's financial success.

Oh, yeah.

100%.

100%.

Like we, we always make the joke, you know, if we're in one house too long, you're like, well, shit, you know,

being in one place too long, you know, we, we tend to want to move around.

That's how you get comfortable.

That's why people get locked into 30-year mortgages.

Yeah.

And it's, and it's like, we, it's like, so when it comes down to it, we all have our definition of success.

You got to get clear on what it is.

And then, you know, to get there, you're going to have to get uncomfortable.

Yep.

Yeah, there's no way you could get there without being uncomfortable.

Absolutely not.

Yeah.

Sean, this has been awesome, dude.

Where can people find you and everything?

I would say the best way to find me is my Instagram.

I'm always going to return messages there.

We've got a lot of different platforms, but that's the one I spend the most time in.

My Instagram,

my name is spelled different.

So it's J-O-N and Anderson is A-N-D-R-S-E-N.

And my handle is is at the John Anderson.

So go in there, send me a DM, and I'm happy.

The joke I make, you reach out to me, I'm going to help you somehow.

I give you something to go get better, or you want to work with me, business.

I love it.

Thanks for your time today, John.

Absolutely.

That was awesome.

Absolutely.

Check them out, guys.

See you next time.