#124: Next Level Pros - A New Chapter Begins

There is always, always, always a next level. If you are not actively progressing and working towards the next level, you are either maintaining or dying, and that is the exact opposite of success.
The definition of success is, are you progressing? Which way are you turned? Are you working towards the next level? It's not what you did. It's not what you're gonna do, right? It's like, where am I trending? But whether you're a entrepreneur or an entrepreneur, we are the fabric of society that can actually push real change.
Yo, we got some exciting news. Welcome to another episode of what is currently called the Founder Podcast.
And when I say currently, that's part of the exciting news. We are rebranding.
Yes, we are. Let's go rebrand.
Let's go. So for those that have followed along on our journey on YouTube, we are launching a completely new YouTube channel.
What are we calling it, Daryl? We're calling it the Next Level Pros. Next Level Pros.
So everything that was formerly known as the founder podcast or the founder project is shifting over so we got next level pros podcast next level pros from our coaching and consulting and the different businesses that we own everything is is uh being wrapped underneath that umbrella let me give you a little background on why we decided to make the shift. So for us, we wanted to have something that was more meaningful, more about stood for what we believed in.
And you know, the founder podcast, cool, right? A lot of founders. Yeah.
A lot of founders out there and there's not a whole lot of meaning to it. And so the thing I love about next level, just the words in and of itself, it means that no matter where you're at on the path of success, whatever you've accomplished, whether family, spiritual, physical, financial, whatever it is, there is always, always, always a next level.
And in fact, one of the things that we always talk about is that if you are not actively progressing and working towards the next level, you are either maintaining or dying. And that is the exact opposite of success.
It's really like, I mean, literally you can have a billion dollars in your bank account, which on this graph is like way up here. But if you were trending down.
Yeah. I can't remember the book.
It says growing is exhilarating. Maintaining is exhausting.
And that applies to all aspects of your life, right?, I would add declining is terrifying, but a lot of times I think maintaining is a decline, right? It's really, really hard to, to stay flat for very long. Right.
And, you know, it's interesting. All of us, we, we change or we chase different emotions, right? Everything in life is attached to emotion.
The reason we want a good

body is for the emotion, either the emotion of like feeling good around other people looking good or just physically feeling good when we go for a run and the endorphins that come from it to the relationships and the feelings that we get from good relationships, the feeling of freedom that finances provide, just all these different feelings. And once again, the interesting thing is when you're on that decline, whether you're starting to gain weight or your bank account is declining or your spiritual progress or your connection with God is declining, like you start to feel like some level of like despair and like those feelings suck, right? Like that's, and so when we talk about success, in fact, I was talking with a group of teenagers the other night and I told them, I'm just like, the definition of success is, are you progressing? Which way are you turned? Are you working towards the next level? It's not what you did.
It's not what you're going to do, right? It's like, where am I trending? And yeah, so that's really what next level is all about. That is the name.
And with that, we created a new mission, a new direction with new core values. Everything that this podcast, everything that our community stands for, and we'd invite you to be a part of our community.
There's a lot of different ways to be a part of our community. There's free ways like listening to the podcast or being part of like our Facebook groups or just like, you know, following us on social media, right? Like those are great free ways we also have paid ways podcast or being part of our Facebook groups or just following us on social media.

Those are great free ways.

We also have paid ways to be a part of us,

like come and experience cool things like masterminds and workshops

and trainings and all this stuff.

But to really encompass it all so you guys understand

what Next Level is all about, what we believe in,

what our core values are. First of all we we went through an exercise of of designing designing that out design core values yep and this is actually something that we teach business owners we say look it's impossible to have great culture unless you have a mission a vision and values, right? Because the mission is like the overall reason why you're doing it.
The vision is what you're going to do. And the core values is the reason why you do everything you do, right? Like that is how you get it done.
And so So when we went through this the other day and we said, okay, we know what next level means, but like what is our mission? Like what do we want to accomplish? And we started wordsmithing. We used JGBT.
We kind of went through it all, came up with a few ideas.

One thing that I've always thought and stuck kind of with the whole management team is like,

whenever you have a mission, like starting with an action, something that's happening, right?

Like, so with SoulGen, we had building a brighter future for our people, right? And so we said, okay, what word really resonates with us that is something actively happening? Right. And the thing that we've always talked about with culture is culture is built by what? Design.
Culture is built by design. And so we said, okay, we like, we like that word, right? Like design, creation, building, like those are all really cool action verbs.
And so we kind of came up with a couple of things. We're like, dude, how can we implement design? And so we started like, okay, designing, right? Designing was the first word that we wanted to come up with.
And, you know, we talked about like how do we make our communities better, like kind overall mission that, like, we want to impact a lot of business owners. We want to change the world through entrepreneurship.
We want to help entrepreneurs see how important it is to impact their employees physically, economically, with their associations and their spirituality so that they can, in turn, do that for their communities, right? And so we kind of worked through through all that and i loved what daryl came up with like i was i was like ah you know designing so so initially it was like okay what if we went with like uh designing lives that in that built better communities or something right like that that was kind of where we started and like yeah like, yeah, we like where that's at. And then there was a couple other words that we decided to change.
What were the? Yeah, so we went, I think we were a community. And then I think there was a different word we were using.
But we just kept pushing and trying to figure out what resonated. And going through that process was fun because there was a little bit of agreeing, disagreeing, going back and forth, picking apart each other's ideas, which is never not always fun, but I think we came up with something that we all connected with and, and, and mean something.
Yeah. And so what we ultimately settled on was designing lives that impact the world.
And I think one thing with the next level with, uh, with admission statement, we, we have to choose, right? If you're trying to, if you're trying to design something, you have to like put an effort, you have to make a choice. And in today's world, there's kind of those who, who choose to design their lives, choose how they want to live.

And then there's those who just follow what's being told.

And there's so much being told to us these days that if you're not deliberate in designing your life, it's a scary place to be. but I think being deliberate

and choosing and designing

what you do for your health

and what you do for your

economic situation, for your family

for everything

is very empowering. Not always easy, but it's empowering.
So to kind of wrap it in, there's a scripture that comes from a book of scripture that I love that says to act or be acted upon. And when we design, we're choosing to act, right? To design it, to make it what our, or we're going to fit into somebody else's plan, right? We're going to be acted upon by the natural things of the world, other people that want to do with us what they want to do.

Right. And so, um, yeah, really the, the goal is just like, we've got to act, we've got to design, we've got to take action.
Right. And it's not just financial.
A lot of people look at success as only financial. It's not absolutely isn't.
Um, I love, love, love. If you guys have watched any of my my podcast i love the quote

by naval that uh so naval he's like kind of like a modern day philosopher and daryl shared this with me years ago and it just stuck with me and and the quote the quote is the best thing you can do is get rich as fast as possible for then you will realize that's what life is not about right and so like yes finances are absolutely imperative to be able to have the time energy and money to be able to do what you want but all the other aspects if you are if you have an empty relationship account if you have an empty spiritual account if you have if you weigh 500 pounds you know and just don't have the energy to be able to go and even do the things that you love to do dude that's miserable do you uh do you want the real quote what's what's the real So the real quote is if you want happiness, the first thing you need to do is get rich. So, you know, money has nothing to do with happiness.
Yeah. Love it.
And it is, it is true because as a kid, you know, not having a lot, you see people with a lot and I don't know what your mind does, but it kind of does this, this illusion that man, that's happiness. That's's yeah that's joy and i look back at my

childhood and like i loved my childhood like i didn't have a lot but it didn't impact my my joy and happiness didn't matter right like like you were happy and so for whatever reason we get in the rat race as adults that we chase the money now granted once again you do need money right Like you have to have the basics to be able.

But the goal, going back to what we were talking about, is how do we just get on that trajectory that is always up and to the right in everything, financially, in our fitness, right? Constantly improving, looking for the biohacks, looking for the things that give us more energy, that give us more meaning. I like Dana White.
He said, I'll never go to the doctor to figure out how to improve my health. It's like, that's not what doctors are for.
Doctors are great at trauma and at taking care of those types of situations. But to improve your health, it's what you do in your house.
It it's what you do in your extra time it's what you put into your mind right all those things matter way more than figuring out a prescription or a pill or something like that and those are all yes part of the recipe of getting to the next level yeah and so uh with that so that's that's the mission of our community, of what we're all about at Next Level Pros is designing lives that impact the world. Because we believe that the message that we share of the whole human approach, that as entrepreneurs, whether you're a wantrepreneur or an entrepreneur, like everybody should be one of those two.
If you got a job right now and you're listening to this podcast, you got to figure out some way that you can create value outside of your nine to five. OK, but whether you're a wantrepreneur or an entrepreneur, we are the fabric of society that can actually push real change because that whole myth of finances are going to solve my problems.
Everybody will come to us as an entrepreneur with the idea that if we pay them a paycheck, it's going to solve their problems. But if we can then in turn provide them so much more than just the economic we can actually help them be better physically better with their communities their relationships or spirituality like that will change the world faster than any politician faster than any type of drug or solution that's out there and so like that's that's what that's what this community is all about.
You know, I think it's interesting. How did we come here? How do we arrive at this, this destination where we've realized the importance of the whole picture, right? The whole life.
And, you know, I can't help but think like, obviously I think being raised the way we were raised was super important. Yep.
You know, having big families where you had to fight a lot to, to even be heard or, or you had to support others when you didn't want to, you know, all those things tie into it. And then I think about, you know, some of our failures and successes, you know, we've had failures in business where we're like, dude, we, we were doing good, but we don't enjoy this.
We don't enjoy what we're doing. And it seemed empty.
And then we go work for companies. You know, one great example is Vivint was a phenomenal company to work for.
They taught so many of these principles. Um, and then we take that.
And when we applied it into our business and when we added to it and we had all the things that we were trying to learn and grow from all of a sudden we realized man this impact thing is is way bigger can be and then and then we started saying hey well maybe entrepreneurs want this or need this and we didn't realize like everybody wants this right and yeah it's it is fun just to look back and see like the different times where it just like started to click like 2015 like i always knew that taking care of my body was super important but it wasn't until i entered a competition i lost 45 pounds of fat gained 20 pounds of muscle got down to 9.3 body fat oh my dude this impacts so much more than just my fitness but it's like you didn't realize you had the choice. Right.
Right. It's kind of, and I've experienced the same thing.
It's like you don't realize the choices you have. I don't know why they feel hidden, but they do.
Right. And then once you're aware of them, life can change so many things.
It's waking up to the world that we can be designers right that we can design our life which goes back to our mission right designing lives that impact the world and so guys we're just super excited to uh to share this community to share the new podcast the new direction with everybody and we would invite you to engage in some right? There's so many different ways that you can engage in community. If you're listening to this podcast right now, one of the ways you can engage, you can drop a review.
You can say, man, I love what these guys are about. I love the message that they're sharing.
I love the impact, the vision, the direction, right? Like that's one way that you can engage. You can share this podcast with somebody else.
You can subscribe to this podcast so that you get indications every time we share something, right? Like those are like some of the very basic levels that you can be involved in the community. You can interact with us on social media.
You can comment. You can like.
You can buy our products, you can come to our events. There's so, like I said, there is a hundred different ways, but what we would invite you more than anything is to be involved in some level.
Ask yourself, how do I, how do I sync up with this type of mission? Am I about it? Can I get behind designing lives that impact the world? Because frankly, Daryl and I and the rest of our team, we're not going to be able to do it on our own. Yeah.
Right? Like we can influence as much as we can our direct followership, but until this mission becomes bigger than us, bigger than our channel, bigger than our show, bigger than our immediate circle of influence, our mission will not be accomplished. And so we need you.
We need you guys to be a part of this. And once again, it doesn't cost you money.
It costs a little time, it costs a little energy, it costs a little effort, a little design, if you will. There you go.
And I think too, if you're sitting there thinking like, I don't buy into this, I don't understand that aspect, or I don't, I don't get why they would say that. Dude, let us know.
We, we would love feedback. We'd love to, to see where you're at, how you think through things, because you're not the only one.
Everybody, you'll find like wherever you're at, there's people around you thinking the same things. And so as you level up, there's people there too.
And, um, and so wherever you're at, like, let us know what's on your mind. That's, uh, that's super important for us to be able to share with our insight.
Yeah. Yeah.
Share, share with us the, the importance. And so with that, what we're doing is we're making a big shift to the way that the show is actually ran.
Right? So like, up until this point, the show has been me sharing a lot of things, some of my previous experiences, my story and those things, which is all very important. Those are important.
And then also, we've interviewed a lot of very, very successful entrepreneurs, right? Guys that have had $100 million exits worth a billion dollars. I think back to like a guy like Naveen Jain, who's literally had two different billion dollar exits, right? Like Grant Cardone, Alex or Mosey, some, so many just elite level entrepreneurs that have been a part of the founder podcast, right? They were founders.
They were great. They're great people.
The shift of the show is now going to be entrepreneurs that are striving to change the world and we help them live doing so. And this means diving in to their financials, diving into their sales strategies, their marketing strategies, their personal lives, their fitness, their spirituality, whatever is holding them back, whatever is the lid currently on their life that is keeping them from getting to the next level.
And on the show, we are going to be doing this live. And hopefully, as you guys tune in and listen to us solve these problems, the same things that we do at our workshops, the same things that we do at our masterminds, like live consultations, which literally we charge thousands of dollars for.
In fact, I just had a guy the other day pay me $10,000 for one hour of my time, right? One hour of my time, 10 grand. Like this is that, uh, that people pay for.
We are going to be

doing that live on these shows. And we're opening this up to listeners and viewers.
If you are a listener and viewer and you were an entrepreneur or a entrepreneur, you have an idea for a business. And the reason we're targeting entrepreneurs once again, is that we believe that entrepreneurs shape society

and have more power

than any politician,

anybody else.

So,

if you currently have a job and don't have a side hustle, but you want to be an entrepreneur, you have something that you want to go, we'd invite you, we have an application. We're actually going to drop it in the show notes.
There's an application where you'll be able to come in, be in the studio. In fact, we're going to be reshaping this whole studio.
We're going a little bit more, shout out to my boy, Patrick Bed David, PBD. We're going to go a little PBD style where we're going to be desks and computers and notes and different things where it's going to be like a lot more interactive, right? And we're going to be sharing stuff on screens and Googling and chat GBT and just the same way that we workshop and the way that we actually work through problems, right? Not just off the top of the dome, which, you know, we got pretty good domes up here, but we're going to be doing all that.
And so if that sounds like something that you'd be interested in and you won't have to pay for, there's going to be an application link in the show notes. Go ahead and hit that and apply.
And you'll be able to come here, Pasco, Washington, Washington State, be able to come in. So initially, it would probably be a few more of the local business owners or whatnot.
But we would encourage anybody that's interested to fly out here. Once again, we charge thousands of dollars for this.
If you get selected for it, I would highly encourage you to come out, be on the show, be vulnerable. And so that's one of the things that we're going to be encouraging.
We're going to be encouraging just a ton of vulnerability, like openness. And in fact, we've already shot a couple of these, and it been really cool.
It's been awesome. Like, uh, we had, we had a guy that like totally, he's got pretty big influence online and he opened up like, this is it.
This is how I'm making money. This is where I suck.
This is where I'm great. And, and we dove in and we're like, dude, you can scale here.
This is how you can do it. This is your gross profit margin.
If you have this plus your sales and marketing, there's no reason why you shouldn't be hiring this, this, and this. Go and scale that up, test that out.
If it works, go and do this, this, and this. And so we had a very strategic session with some of these shows already, and you're going to continue to see this type of effort, this type of show.
And we just view it as one of the most valuable ways that we can impact the world, right? Like when we talk about designing lives that impact the world, sharing with you guys the way that we think through business, the way that we think through life, the way that we design business and life, and really getting you guys behind that whole mission so you can go and share it with the world. The other thing I wanted to talk about is as part of that wordsmithing of our mission, we also wordsmithed our core values, right? And we thought through what I've always liked and what we train our different businesses on is like, okay, if you can figure out how to fit your core values into a word that it stands.

What do they call that?

Can you think of it?

Oh, my goodness.

A acronym.

Thank you.

It just came from the dome finally. Or maybe A acronym.
Thank you. It just came from the dome, finally.
Or maybe from God. Thank you.
So an acronym. If you can create some sort of acronym that's easy to remember, easy for your employees to be able to put to memory, you want to do that.
And so we said, okay, is there any way that we can fit our core values into the word next? so then what did we do we chat gbt'd and we went through and we said what's important to us and how can it fit into this and wherever it is and so um the four core values we uh we came up with first and foremost n network daryl why is network important to us?

Your net worth is your network.

Your network is your net worth.

Exactly.

You know,

that's,

that's definitely like kind of the thing that everybody thinks of.

And on top of that,

it's like we value relationships over here at next level.

Like,

like that is what we love doing.

Like if, if me and Darrell were doing what we love to every single day, it's out amongst the people, creating relationships, seeing how we can come together and change the lives, how we can impact the world. It kind of goes into that whole like you are like the five people you're on the most and the books you read or something like that.
And I think your network isn't all about

like making money off of people or business deals. It's about emulating the qualities, right? Impact, baby.
Yep. It's about the impact that they have in your life.
And so surround yourself by people that are at the next level is one of the biggest ways to change your life. Exactly.
So for us, we're like, man, that fits really good, right?

Network fits into next. It's right up there.
The second one, which I told Daryl, I will die on the hill to make sure that this is one of our core values, is the word excellence. And I'm just, for whatever reason, that's a word that I've just been passionate about for a long time i read the book the excellence dividend a long time ago um which really had an impact on me uh part of soul gents s-o-l-g-e-n the e was for excellence in my family we use the word remember and one of the e's is excellence so it's it's been a previous business my family's core values i'm like dude we've got to make this because you know excellence it's not about what you did or what you're gonna do it's what you're doing right now but i think even more important is excellence doesn't scream perfection it's the pursuit of perfection right Like Like there's only one perfect human being that's ever walked the earth.
And, you know, I want to emulate his excellence as much as possible. And so an excellence obviously can be just applied to everything, right? Like am I giving it my best effort effort in the moment like if i was judged off of this moment right now how would i be judged and so um that like like i like i said i i told i told everybody like like you i'm willing to change my mind on all the other ones but this is the one i'm gonna die on the hill so hill.
So that one's pretty exciting. So we have network, we have excellence, and then X.
I think this one probably screams a lot of what Daryl represents. I'm all about it too, but Daryl is probably this.
What does X stand for? X is experience, and I think life is all about your experience, right? You talked about your emotion. And you create emotions based off the experiences you have.
And so you can create wild experiences. You can create boring experiences.
You can create whatever you want. But I think life has a lot to offer if you're looking for the experiences.
Yeah, absolutely. And you experience life physically, spiritually, like all these, all these ways, like we get out part of what we do, like when we do masterminds, we always make sure there's like a physical experience, right? Whether we're, we're cold plunging or ziplining through jungles or swimming with manta rays or snowmobiling through mountains, right? Like it's cool when you're with a group of people and you have an experience, you share that.
You share the emotions. You share everything that was a part of that.
And that creates connection. Yeah, absolutely.
With that, I've always said, like, whenever I've moved into a new congregation in my church, I never connect with the people in my church until I've done something outside of church with them. Yeah.
Right. Until I've played basketball on a Wednesday night, gone and done a service project, went and did a camp out, something that is outside of the day to day.
Right. And I think that's like what's so important that what we stand for is like get outside of the norm.
Get outside, like that's what experience is about. Like sure, you can do your busy work and the boring work as Alex Ramosi talks about, but if you are not going out and getting on the boat and really building trust with your your family and your team and your community right like you are just missing yeah on the whole purpose of life even in business right it's not about you come to work you do your job you go home it's like how can you come to work have an experience take that and go home exactly and that experience is usually is built around culture.
It's built around improving yourself on other aspects. It's about doing your job with excellence.
Uh, yeah, those things really drive, which, which leads us into the, the last core value of, of next level pros, which is trust. And, you know, one thing that we have learned throughout our careers is that in business, there's no such thing as loyalty.
Loyalty is blind faith and typically what exists in a slave type mindset, right? Where somebody is owned by a business or whatnot. Where we've found the most success, the best culture is when there there is a mutual trust in every relationship, where I am paying and compensating you fairly, and in turn, you are bringing as much value as you possibly can, and that we are providing a roadmap, a direction of opportunity for each other, right? And it's a mutual trust and and uh i love what you know uh covey talks about trust it's trust is gain one drop in a bucket at a time and can be lost with the swift kick yeah right but the other thing is it can always be built back right and and but it takes time it's it is the foundation of team, right? We talk about the five dysfunctions of a team.
Number one dysfunction is lack of trust. So what is the number one function, best function of a team? It's trust.
I also like, um, so in my family statement, trust in the unknown is really important. Uh, and that's something I learned through some of these meditation conferences I've been to.
And what that means is trusting in God, but trusting in the unknown, right? Instead of us knowing, okay, if I do this, this workout this way, and I'll have that experience and this, this, this. Be open to like, hey, I don't have a clue how this is going to work, but I'm going to enter into this using our word with excellence.
I'm going to put everything I have into it and the outcome will be greater than I could imagine. And I feel like I made that little shift a few years ago and I feel like life is very different.
It's like, you know, it's, it's interesting. You talk about trust in the unknown.
I think it's, uh, we're able to take, uh, perform trust in the unknown when we have a history in that relationship right so like if i have a history of working with god right or working with daryl and history has always indicated that this guy's got my back he's got my best intentions in mind and everything else it's way easy to enter into the trust of unknown because i know that there's a there's a level there right alignment there's alignment and uh yeah the other thing i love about the word trust is like there's two types of trust there's trust in character and trust in ability right and it's up to us to have both right like ability is your knowledge like uh the easiest way to always understand this is like do you trust your grandma yes that's character do you trust your grandma doing open heart surgery on you no that's ability right and so um in a professional setting it is imperative that we have both that we provide trust in character and trust in ability. We're constantly upping our game in education and knowledge and putting ourselves in the right room so we can increase our ability and be able to do what we said we were going to do, right, fulfill on it, and then be a man or woman of character where a handshake means something, a word means something, where we can go.
And once again, the alignment has come from historical experience together. And so anyways, those are the four core values of the community.
We'd invite you to buy into those as well with our mission. So our mission of designing lives that impact the world with our network being excellent, creating experiences, and doing it at a level of trust that is beyond what you've been able to experience thus far in your relationships.
And so, man, guys, we are excited. Yeah, it's going to be fun.
Yeah, yeah, really excited. And one thing I will say for those that are watching this show or listening, I guess, as well, we are missing one of our key show homies.
He's in the hospital with his wife his wife right now levi ringo um you're gonna see him a lot you've probably seen him on a few of the shows up to date um myself um i will continue to be leading the show but you're definitely gonna see a lot more of daryl of levi uh participating even being hosts of of some of these events and whatnot. And so that will be the main leadership of what you'll be seeing.
But behind the scenes, there's a huge team. There's a community, which once again, we would invite you to be a part as we make the shift from the Founder Podcast and the Founder Project over to Next Level Pros.

And we help you strive to get to the next level.

Until next time.