In today's episode of the Becoming the Big Me Podcast your host Djemilah Birnie has the pleasure of interviewing Tony Whatley founder of the 365 driven community and the author of Side hustle Millionaire. Tony shares his journey about going from the corporate world to becoming an entrepreneur and building communities online.

To connect with Tony

365driven.com

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facebook.com/tony.whatley.1/

linkedin.com/in/tonywhatley/

Hi! I am your host, Djemilah Birnie, founder of Becoming the Big Me!

You can find me at www.becomingthebigme.com and www.djemilah.com

I have been building businesses online since the age of 17 and am obsessed with learning about the wonders of our minds.

I love to write and have published some books, some of them have even hit some charts 😲 You can check them out here Djemilah Birnie

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This book, in fact, actually wrote the book because it was a kind of a cowardly play. I say this I admit this. I knew this back then it's a cowardly way for me to get my knowledge out to.

Unknown Speaker 0:18

Hello, fellow Earthlings. Welcome to the becoming the big me podcast. I'm your host, Djemilah, Birnie. And together, we will be stepping into our highest potential, exploring all things Mind, body. And so with justice, major business, you're a spiritual badass solopreneur and a warrior for change. You're ready to expand your impact and leave your old self behind in order to raise your vibration so that you can positively influence your business, your community and ultimately, the world. Without further ado, let's dive right into it.

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Yeah, that's, that's really true. I mean, as a single mom, you know, with childcare and all of those other costs that that can add up very, very quickly. That's kind of the baseline these days just to get by. Yeah, absolutely. You got SUVs and pickup trucks out there that are 100,000

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dollars were when this was the original goal brand new vehicles were $3,000 perspectives. Right? So So you were going to school and you were taking just the route that you saw, right that you saw as the path to success?

Unknown Speaker 5:17

Yeah, absolutely. They, they always tell you, if you want to make $100,000 or more, you need to be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Well, I love cars. I've always been a car fanatic. And I said, Well, maybe there's something in engineering that applies to cars. Well, that is it's mechanical engineering. So anything that's got machinery or emotions or engines and things like that, that's mechanical engineering. So it's a cool, I can go get a degree and actually learn something, and something I have a lot of passion for. And it was hard for me I actually struggled, I was very average at math. And engineering is basically a math degree with a bunch of other science classes. So I had to learn how to study I was a straight A student in high school, because High School was really easy for me. But when you get into engineering school, all of the top 10% students are in there, now you become average. So I actually got my very first to see, in college, I thought my life was over it.

Unknown Speaker 6:11

And that's when you start to kind of understand real life. And something that you talk about a lot is like how the cream rises to the top, you know, in life, we're going to be thrown into all of these situations that are going to be hard for everyone. And some people might learn easier. And some people might learn harder, but at the end of the day, if you put in the work to figure out how you learn and apply those strategies, you can succeed, it might take you more work than somebody else, right? You know, that's where I say, it's like, you don't have to be the best at something you just have to outlast them. And most people just quit too soon, when it comes to doing anything, whether it's their fitness or starting a business or even this podcast stuff and, or maybe you want to start writing a book and things like that people start pretty, pretty energetic and they're jazzed up about starting something and average I've seen in my here, my career, and everything is probably about three months, people can go really hard for about three months. And then they don't get the reaction or the response or the revenue that they feel entitled to or they think that they deserve. And so they think they start having the negative thoughts in their mind, like maybe I'm just not cut out for this, maybe I'm not good for this. Or maybe I should do something else, maybe I should pivot, maybe I should go try something new. And that's what happens, they lose momentum. And they keep doing this, it's a repeat cycle, they just keep finding themselves in the situation of going really hard quitting going really hard quitting and going really hard and quitting and, and for me, I know that most people will quit, I would say that 80% of people quit, if I were going to put a number on that. So if I can just Outlast them, which to me is like 12 months minimum of going hard and putting in the effort for a minimum of 12 months, or I don't even start, then I can actually Outlast 80% of my competition, just knowing that that's a strategy. And that leaves me with a competition field with only 20% of the people who saw that time through. So it's actually a really unique strategy, if you can go really aggressive with your actions, but just be patient for the results. Well, no, that's, that's such a fantastic point, Tony. And part of the problem why people are in this mindset is because we're being sold a lie, we're being sold by all of these, you know, people on the internet who go out, and you know, rent these things, to create these flashy videos to shove in our face, and to tell us that you can, you know, make six figures in 30 seconds, you know, like telling us all of these things. And so then when that's not reality, you know, unless you're going to be going out there and getting that money in a weird way as well telling people that they can get money when you haven't even gotten money yet. And it turns into this weird pyramid of like,

Unknown Speaker 8:54

weird information being thrown around. And everybody is getting bought into this idea that success is instant. And it's just not if you truly want to be successful. It's those daily actions and it's not one foot in front of the other. And that's not attractive. That's, that's not sexy to sell. And people don't want to believe that they want to believe that it can be easy, they want to believe that they can just get everything instantaneously. And that's the dream that they're being sold unfortunately, and one thing that I'm very passionate about is the breaking that ideology that that's that's real. I mean, yeah, you can have short success quickly. That is something that can happen. I've experienced it myself as well. But then what you know, what's, what's next? Is there a foundation is it sustainable? Is it going to crumble? You know, I've been in that said, you know, I've been in that situation I've had massive success quickly and then you know, weird things with, you know, partnerships and different things and the foundations out there. So how have

You got about to really establish your foundation.

I think a lot of times we spend too much time trying to validate externally, we're trying to get people to approve of or give us some attaboys or added girls, in your case of doing the things we're doing. We're always looking external for validation. And the highest strength always comes from just focusing on what the objectives and the goals that you are, and just focusing on those internally. Like, you have to want things for yourself. You don't need to have the compliments and the accolades from external people, because let's face it, everybody's busy, everybody's got their own lives to deal with. And if you're seeking external validation all the time for these things, you're probably not going to get as much as you would like to receive because we would all love to have like a standing ovation every time you enter the room or have a bunch of paparazzi, taking our photos, that's just not realistic. So you got to start being thinking about what is it internal that's driving me and what is it that's going to deliver the results or the goals that I want to achieve? Regardless of what people say or thing because you know, you and I both know, because we both done things, we do things that are polarizing, because we have really strong beliefs and the things we we really forward and push on, on, on what we want to achieve in this world, we get that. And there's always going to be these naysayers and critics and people disagreeing with what we do and how we raise our kids or how we say things are. So you have to be really strong internally just be really focused on that and not worried about the good or the bad from people that honestly we wouldn't trade places with, or people we don't even haven't even earned our respect, why would we care about what their opinions are? Right? So it took me a long time to grow that kind of a thick skin and understand that I get to determine what my outcome is based on the actions I put in. And I also try to focus on really only the things that I can control. A lot of times people get really wrapped up in anxiety, and, and depression and all these things based on things that are beyond their control, you know, and the way it is, is things are gonna work out the way they're gonna work out, regardless of if you want to be sad or happy about it. Because those things are literally outside of your control. So might as well have you happy and take the happy side of those things and focus on the things that you can control. Because if you if you waste a lot of energy and emotion on things that are outside of your control, then it's not really a positive thing, it's going to help you out it doesn't help you. Yeah, because then you don't have energy for the things that you can control and that aren't gonna move you forward. You know, I really want to I really want to hear so for you. What was kind of the pivot point in your corporate career where you realize that you wanted something more? how did how did LS one tech? Like, how did that concept come to be? Well, most people think that entrepreneurs need to be inventors are highly creative. And I would label myself as an inventor and highly creative, but that's not the case when it comes to business. Okay. Most businesses are out there that you can think of any of the big name businesses, you understand, they're really a better version of something that already existed. Very few companies are brand new, breathtaking world dominating ideas that are always just a little bit of a tweak of something that annoys you about some existing product or service. How can I improve that. And if there's something that's continually annoying, you maybe you should pay attention that maybe I can make something that solves that. So for the case of LS, one tech, that's what it was. So I was a member of another larger community that was initially called Ls one.com. And we were one of the biggest, one of the biggest contributors on there, I was running links, how to articles and creating content. And being who I am all the time, right? I was doing this in 1998, the same thing. And the guy that was running that website wasn't paying his bills all the time, even though he had sponsors, and it was his side hustle as well. He just wasn't good at managing it as a business. So sometimes you would log into the website, and it wouldn't exist and just be like error 404 website not found. And the guy was really bad at backing up the data. So all that content that we'd be creating, the 1000s of us would be deleted, and he wouldn't have a backup of it. So after that happened about three times, we kind of approached him and said, Hey, we're your biggest supporters. We're creating all this articles and things like that for you to draw our audience here. How come you aren't paying your bills, because back then, if you didn't pay your bills, the server host would just delete your stuff. That's how they taught you a lesson, right? He didn't back it up or pay his bills. And instead of taking that as constructive feedback, he said, Well, if you think he could do a better job, why don't you go start your own website?

You don't tell people like me that because I've already learned how to build websites as a side business back then I taught myself HTML and Photoshop and photography and I was writing for magazines. I said, we don't want I've never hosted a server before but I'm pretty sure I can go find a server host. And I've never uploaded a software package for a community. But I'm sure I have instructions with the by the software license to go do that. So I just figured it out. And I started it up and I'm a little more cocky back

Thanks, I was in my house probably 2728 when I started that, and so I started it up. And he's like, well, when you get more followers than or more members in me, you could tell me how to run a website. And he had about 10,000 members at that time. So by the end of the year, I had 11,000 members, I made sure to email him and said, Hey, I didn't take my advice the first time or the second time. So I'm just gonna let you know that we're aware of the top of the market share. And the reason that we became successful journal is that we, we focused on this business as a legit business, even though it was a side business. I didn't treat it like a hobby, I may have initially thought it was going to be a hobby. But once it started, actually cash flowing, really big amounts, making 10,000 a profit a month, I said, Oh, crap. This is more than just a website for guys to talk about cars on it's actually a business, this is real money come in, it's more than my income. And so I created an LLC, and I got a business bank account and started doing things more legit at that point, which key point and that is that if you're listening to this, or watching this, understand that you don't have to have everything in place to start a business, you got to just take the actions to create the audience or create the revenue, create some kind of offering and product or service, and the money is going to start to come in. And then you can start to fill in the blocks and things that you're missing. Maybe you do the LLC a little later, maybe start to create the domain of custom web pages a little bit later, you don't have to have all these things. At first, a lot of people think you had to have all the answers all the tools, all the things like no, because entrepreneurs and you're younger than yourself, we learn a lot from our failures. And if you didn't have any failures, to me, I don't know if you're a good entrepreneur, because the best entrepreneurs I know, including me, we've had a lot of failures. And those are valuable lessons. And the best thing about that is when the company is really small, and he learned those lessons, it doesn't cost you a lot of time or dollars. Imagine learning those lessons later on when you build something that's worth millions of dollars. And then you get punched in the face. I'd rather learn a lot of those things at the beginning and take bigger risks at the beginning. Because it's easy to push the reset button, start something better and keep growing from there.

I love that. I mean, and that's totally what I did, Tony because you know, I didn't have any resources to to start anything. So I just kind of kept throwing stuff at the wall until something stuck. And then when something stuck, I ran with it. And and that's really, you know, a lot of times what it is you got to kind of test the market, see how people are going to respond to it. And then just check off the boxes like Tony saying, just check off the boxes as they come it doesn't have to be all at one time like this crazy thing like everything at one time. $10,000 instantly thing? No, it's a process. It is a step by step process. And it's a journey. And that's something that is very cool about your journey, Tony is because it really exemplifies that you going through you know, school, learning how you learn, learning how to succeed in that environment. And then following your passion, finding a problem, solving the problem, and then continue to grow from there. And then growing into you know what you have now speaking, writing books, you know, like, it's incredible what you can create, when you truly just dedicate to taking the next step each and every day. That's all it is the next step becoming the big me. It's a journey of becoming, and I'm sure you have so much more left to give and so much more that you're going to create. And that is so exciting. I would love to talk about kind of like your speaking career because I know that that was something that was difficult for you in the beginning. But was something that you knew that you had to overcome? How, like, how did you go about that, Tony? No, I avoided this for a very long time, my career, although I'd been a manager and I'd run teams of 75 to 100 people in a corporate setting. I've been a leader have made multiple six figures and high level project management managing hundreds of millions of dollars. And I always told myself, I was good at public speaking because I've given one hell of a slideshow presentation, right? I've given hundreds of slideshow presentations up stand on the construction vessels offshore did the pep rally the kickoff meeting for the project and 200 people on deck and I said I don't need public speaking lessons. I'm good at this. I'm good at this. That's ego talking because if you're the manager or CEO or whatever, if you're listening this and you think that you have the occasional courage to speak in front of people that that is public speaking, it's not true. The occasional courage to speak in front of other people is probably only 5% of what public speaking tactics and training actually are. So that's the easiest part. It may seem like it's the hardest part, but that's the easiest part. And so what happened is I discovered at a oil and gas conference, I was I was attending. And I was sitting in the front of the stage because the company I represented was a VIP and the guy was on the stage and he was asking for questions or ideas

For the industry, this room was 1000 people big room. I'm not from that industry. I was an ad that was natural gas. I'm from offshore. And I had a good response to his question. So I raised my hand and he called me first and I was like, crap. So he was only like, 10 feet away. So I started to blurt out the answer just from my seat. And he's like, hold up a second. Let's get this gentleman on microphone so everyone in the room can hear him. And so I started to feel my temperature started to rise and I started to fill in the cotton mouth, I started to feel the sweaty palms and and it felt like the the moisture was sucked out of my mouth and was relocating to my armpits. And I was like the physiological signs of fear, I felt the sweat droplets starting to form on the top of my head, like a too spicy pepper. And I'm looking around for this dumb microphone is the lady on the other side of the hall, and she's walking really slowly, and it felt like an eternity. And she finally gets to me and I take that microphone with my cold, clammy hand, and I kind of start speaking and I noticed my voice is kind of trembling compared to normal. And like, it's weird, but nobody here knows me. So I'm just gonna roll with it. So I give the answers probably less than a minute, felt like a long time, but it wasn't. And everybody applauded. And I sat down and everybody at the table, I was sitting there like, Oh, that was great answer. And I started a blackout. I couldn't even hear them. I was like, I could see them saying things, and I could hear the audience. But I was just like, what the hell just happened to me? Like, what the hell was that. And I remember, like, sitting there sweating, and using the stupid cloth napkins, which don't really absorb anything. And I'm like, smearing it all over my face, cuz I'm trying to wipe it off. And it's not going away. So I realized, like, in that moment, like I actually have stage fright, because I was in a room of 1000 people that I didn't know. And I started thinking about why didn't I ever experienced this before, because the people that I spoke in front of before were my team. They called me boss, and they were a captive audience. And so if you want to really kick in the nuts to your ego, it's like, oh, crap, I was only confident in front of a captive audience who, you know, couldn't get up and go take a piss break because I was boring, or you couldn't surf Instagram, because I was not engaging them. So after that, I said, Okay, well, I have a new fear, obviously. And how do I get over that? I said, Okay, well, I'm gonna put that off a little bit, I'm just kind of knew that I needed to do something, right. And it wasn't until I started writing my book, and 2017 end of 2017, I wrote side hustle millionaire start writing it launched in May of 18, right before our date kicked off. And while I was writing this book, in fact, actually wrote the book because it was a kind of a cowardly play, I say this, I admit this, I knew this back, then it's a cowardly way. For me to get my knowledge out to 1000s of people, I say, 1000s, I want to impact 1000s of people. And I'm gonna write this book of my entrepreneurial knowledge and put it out there for people. And if it's good, it's good. If it's bad, it's bad, whatever, I did it, right. But it was never meant to be getting on TV or standing up on a stage or podcast, or any of that it was just I'm gonna read this book is I can still hide from people and put it out there. And so that's what I did. And as I'm writing this book, my editor is getting a chapter at a time and he's really pumping me up. He's like, Man, this is this can be a good book, I can already tell a lot of people are gonna love this book. And, and then one of those chapters, he said to me, because they might interview, they might want you to come on TV, or the radio or podcast. And there was, again, that fear that I was trying to avoid. I'm only a few years only, like, that was 2016 when I experienced that fear. So here was a year later, I'm being confronted with the same fear and said, Okay, I need to do something about this. I need to go prepare myself, to have the confidence and be able to do these interviews and get on there and public speak. So I joined Toastmasters, and I had anything I learned in that one week meeting, I would do videos every single day on social media just to practice the things that I learned. And I totally sucked the first few videos were awful, and I get it but it was the best I could do. I'll usually sit in my truck after the after the gig. And I would take 10 takes 10 takes and maybe one of those was good enough that was the best I was gonna get so I would just share that and I and I've forced myself to do this every single day for over a year and people started to see me improve and and honestly, I got better and I'm never gonna go delete these old videos because they were terrible they're very monotone like this. I was just doing a I called mild version of myself, mano Tony is one voice one speed. One volume. No no emotion, no energy like dude, dude talk the tough dude stock.

But that's, that's uh, that's how we had to go through it. We had to become the big me and my 40s right. And I'll tell you that the that unlocked a beast because once I started learning practice and practicing and doing the reps because there's no other way to improve. I actually joined the Toastmasters spring competition and I went I won three different events. So certainly

Winning at public speaking events, only six months after I started training for public speaking, that's how it shows you kind of the intensity that I get into when I want to do something. And that's what those videos really helped out with. And so I inspired 1000s of people, the book launch became a number one bestseller on Amazon sold 1000s of copies, the first week, it's sold 1000s, and 1000s, and 1000s since and so now I have impacted 1000s of people. But now as I am packing, I'm gonna impact millions of people because I've already done 1000s. So I had to evolve and become the right person to carry my story. So the book was good. But I still had to become the right person to stand on that stage or be on TV and the radio, all those things I had fear about, they all happened, I've done all that stuff. But I had to become the right person to do that. Oh, my goodness, Mic drop, you guys. That is so that is so spot on, we can dream up these visions of what we want for ourselves and what we want for our lives. But unless we are willing to actually become the person that has all of those things that we desire, we're not going to receive them. And Tony that just springs back, you know how 80% of people are going to fall off if you can just Outlast them just with your your speaking. If you if you how many people actually do that, like how many people are going to go to Toastmasters. And then of all the people that go to Toastmasters, how many of you think are going home then and then doing all of these videos every single day to perfect it? How many people I became the president, I became the president of that group I a year into it for over a year, I was a president. And I've helped hundreds of people in and out those doors, and not one that I can think of is ever done what I did.

That's absolutely incredible. I mean, most people, a lot of people chalk off Toastmasters as well. And I think that's silly. Because I love Toastmasters, I have been going, Tony actually is the one that inspired me to start going to Toastmasters, which really kind of inspired me just being more present online. And showing this, you know, being able to be comfortable doing this podcast, I did not go as hard as Tony into it. But it definitely helped me get more confidence and whatever I'm feeling like I need a refresher, I just pop into I'll just go to a local meeting, it's a great way to meet people, it's a great little networking opportunity as well. I think that's nice, and that you are humble enough to understand that, hey, I'm not yet the person that I need to be to have the things that I want. So I guess I'm gonna have to humble myself and go and learn from people that know a little bit more than me about this subject, you know that that is key, what you just said is key, right?

I find that the more established or successful that people are, the more unwilling, they tend to be about starting over and something that they just suck at, right? Let's say that you're a high level CEO, or you're somewhat famous, or you got some notoriety or just something like that, and you want to go do something completely new, that's a new skill set. If that's public speaking, or a sport or anything, I find a lot of people are just unwilling to go suck. It is unwilling to do that. They think it's a lateral move, they think, Hey, I'm a high level this. So I should just move right across and be high level that too, right? It's ego, it's ego that gets in their way. Because I'll tell you that some of the people that would join Toastmasters would come in their executive or C suite and some company and and they come and they're still got their tie on their jacket on because they came out after work and, and I said, Hey, Well, welcome here. How did you find us? Why are you here? And, oh, I've heard this response. I say something like,

Oh, I'm only here because the the board of directors recommended that I come here, but I'm an executive at this company. And I'm just here to you know, learn a little bit so that you can already see the ego in the door. They came in with a tie still on like you were in your car, bro, you could tie off. But but they they have that ego. And I think that since their CEO that they don't even public speaking that. So I mean, that was me in the past, right? But when I when I thought about that, and within two meetings, those people are severely humbled. They realize because we make them get up there and introduce themselves and they're

just not good. So you're like you're you're thinking one no shit, no wonder the board of directors told you to go get public speaking because you're the CEO. And they need you to be polished and be able to communicate effectively to move the company a little faster. So it's funny how people think that they're good at something until they get actual lessons and then they go, Oh, my gosh, I'm such a newbie, such a newbie,

the ego, the ego world, I mean, and the internet just kind of amplifies the ego to AI because people everyone's out there flashing their ego and all of their I'm the bestest ad

Everything, and it makes other people feel like that's how they have to be too. And you know, honestly, as a young entrepreneur, I've fallen into that as well, you know, when you're looking for guidance when you're looking for, you know, what's the way, and that's all that you see, from all of the media, all the people around you, it's very easy to start, you know, going down that line as well, I think it's very important to have people and experiences that will, will humble you. And I think that that's a big benefit. It's kind of weird to say, but a big benefit of having those failures as well having those failures and things that don't go exactly as planned, because it brings you back to the reality.

You know, all these social media fake flexing Instagram gurus out there are one of the reasons I'd actually didn't start sooner doing what I did. Because I did not want to be lumped into the same categories. And because you mentioned it, there's a lot of fakes. There's a lot of people renting, Lamborghinis and pose always crack up because they pose with both doors open, but there's just one of them in the photo. So I'm actually made a post like that I went out to my driveway, and I opened up my jeep and open all four doors, and I sat on the tailgate like an Instagram guru. Hear me here, I am flexing with all my doors open. So it's like, why do they have the door open? is like, are they waiting there for their dog to jump in? Or did the passenger run away from them? Or why do you have both doors open and that mean muggin pose with your cell phone with maybe a stack of cash or you're looking at your watch or just something super lame, right? And said, I didn't ever want to be those people. So I bring a little humor to the things I've seen you seen the things I posed. And I'd like to jab at that because I think that's dissin genuine. And I think it's the wrong message. And like you said, it misleads a lot of people. And it really caused me to not even really want to be in the personal development space for a very long time. But eventually, my purpose became stronger than my fear of avoiding those things. And I realized that now that the industry needs me, industry needs me and other people that are like me that actually accomplish things to go actually share legitimate knowledge and empathy and love with these people, rather than trying to get in their wallet. And it's what happened, I just basically go in are very bold, and I'm vocal against the fakes. And you know, and the people that resonate with that they come hang out with me, and the fakes get driven out of my circle. And that's great. I love that I don't want those people around anyways. So thank you for bringing up that topic. It's a good one. I yeah, I love that. And that's really my focus right now is I've really chosen to humble myself and use my talents and my gifts to help elevate others who are building their legacies right now, you know, people who have spent, you know, 20 3040 years working in their given industry in their given field and are experts at what they do. And then using my gifts and my talents, to help them get their message to the world and to the internet. And because those are the people that need to be elevated, those are the voices that need to be hard. Those are the stories that young entrepreneurs and kids need to be hearing. Because that's, that's really what building a business, that's what building a legacy is truly about. And so I'm just super excited to be able to be like, kind of starting that journey with you know, clarity of who needs to be elevated into this world. And that's another reason why I'm having you know, having this show and having guests on is because I want to elevate the people that are out there in the world, impacting others lives doing real things, building real things, you guys, Tony built LS one time to a massive a massive community. That is a great accomplishment. In in addition to working

in, you know, you are working in what the oil and gas for, you know, most of your career, like, it's just so incredible. So as as your book started to expand as your book started to expand, you started to get more confident. I know RJ had a lot to do with you, you know, getting getting more confident and getting on more stages and all of that. What what like, what, what are you doing now? Like, what are you doing now with 365? What's going on?

Well, yeah, there was definitely some phases going through anything you're doing publicly because I've built those large companies and actually was able to duplicate that LS one tech two grew to 300,000 Plus, and also invented performance trucks dotnet, which nobody even talks about number two, right? Because that was number two, but that was 280,000 people. So almost the same size. Both of those are bigger than most existing membership websites ever. But it's kind of funny, that's a good example that people don't remember your best, right. And so I said, Well, what can I take from that knowledge of leadership core values, staff, picking

the right people and apply it to a different thing. So I want to build a group of millions of people that's focused on entrepreneurship and personal development with that same set of core values and leadership that I used to build half a million people in different websites. So that's what I'm doing with 365 driven. It's an entrepreneurship community. I know you participate in there once in a while, too. So I see you and it's a, I wanted to build a really safe community for people to get the support they needed. have unlimited mentorship, I've got all my own podcast hosts and guests in there. And I've got a lot of the my personal friends that I've seeded, there's some multi multi millionaires in there, most people don't even know because they're not influenced or famous. But they're legit, you know, and they're built some eight 910 figure companies that hang out in my group. And, you know, they're not ever going to say how rich they are flex or put the fake Lambo doors up or things like that. So, but those are the people you want to be around other ones that have that growth mindset willing to help and answer questions and support people because I didn't have that when I grew the website. I learned everything I did from reading books, because you got to realize for context, I started that website in 2001. There wasn't a YouTube and there wasn't Facebook, and there was an Instagram, those came out 2008 2010. And so I actually built and sold a multiple million dollar company, before Facebook was even a thing that came Facebook came out a year out after I sold, you know, Tim Ferriss book, the four hour four hour workweek, that book came out two years after I made millions of dollars by building a business that was literally a four hour workweek. So I remember reading that book thinking like, Hey, this is pretty good stuff, I probably should have wrote that book, let's be honest, I was like, like, crap, that's what I did. That's what I did cool. I just validated the things already believed. So it's kind of funny how things just kind of work out like that. And, you know, when you build something that's large like that, you can do it in the shadows, especially in the tech, you don't know a lot of these founders and people that made millions and billions of dollars, you would never recognize them. But when you start to do things in public, like you and I do now, building your personal brand and your your your words, and your vocals in your content in your book, and you're gonna have a lot of criticism that's going to start to surface is because sometimes going to your family or friends. And for me going through that phase of trying to be liked by everybody initially, because I like to be liked, we all like to be liked.

That was how I started 2017, I was focused on just being light, because I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings or anything like that, right? I just wanted to be liked. And people were making fun of the stuff I did people I'd been on vacations with screenshot the stuff and text each other and make fun of the things I was doing and say, you know, what, if you want to be the next Tony Robbins, and kind of make jokes with me like that, and I know that the reason I'm doing this, because I actually want to help people, I want to I want to help millions of people and change their generational legacy. And if that means giving up my corporate job to be really focused on what I need to do in this world, that's what I had to do. And I got rid of those people, January 1 2019, my wife and I were in Colorado and on vacation, New Year's Day, we woke up and we said, hey, let's start this year, right? Let's make a list of the names of the toxic people, the negative people in our life that are in our Facebook or local circles, and just get rid of those people. So she made a list, I made a list, we combined the list and we basically got rid of primer on 2022 people that were just deemed as toxic and energy vampires or just people that were frenemies or friends that just really wanted some kind of, you know, they get something from me just hanging around you maybe discounts from your business or whatever, they're not really good as supporters, we just got rid of them. And you go, when you do that, you'll go through a mourning phase, because you lose these relationships. And we're hardwired as pack animals to keep relationships even if they're toxic, even though we know they're toxic, we try to maintain relationships or human nature. And for about a period of two months, you start to like, wonder if you did the right thing. And you know, you should have given him another chance. And the real reason is we've given these people a lot of chances, many, many chances and they keep letting us down. People show you who they truly are, you should be grateful for that whether it's good or bad. So you can move on a little faster. Because of the keep showing your negative they're taking energy, they're making passive aggressive comments, are you and not really supporting you never referring any business to you never even doing anything with you. They don't belong in your life. Right? And so that was a hard decision we made to go through and then after that, I said, Okay, I've cleared out the trash. Now I'm going to turn up the amplification on what my true messages what my real thoughts are. And you started to see that shift in 2019 when I started to be a little bit more polarizing instead of trying to be liked. So okay, they're gonna see the real me. I'm going to say the things I truly believe in and I know that my opinion can change tomorrow based on new revelations or evidence or data or experience and when you become a

free thinker, it means that you have the the courage to change your opinion and be equally bold tomorrow about your new opinion, then you have today about your old opinion, most weak people, which is the vast majority of people truly believe something different today than they did yesterday. But they're willing to say that they still believed in yesterday, because they don't want to be perceived as wishy washy or a flip flopper all these stupid societal things and say, Hey, or your friends, or you or your politics or your religion, you're going to find with experience and wisdom and data and new revelations and these things that your opinions change. But a true thought leader is willing to say, well, that's what I thought about yesterday, because this, this is what I think of today, because of this, most people will never get there, they'll they'll hold on to the old identity of themselves, just to pacify and fit in and not really want to shake, you know, rattle the cages or or rock the boat, they just want to just blend in and they don't they're afraid of losing those connections, again, even people that they don't even agree with anymore. So that's what I started to do. I was like, You know what, I don't believe in doing that anymore, I'm just going to be more vocal. And the beauty of that is that you push away the people you no longer want to serve, which is great. But then you greatly greatly greatly attract the people you do want to serve. So you're not playing in the middle of average, the warm fuzzy, I still see a lot of people out there trying to help in my group, they're still in that warm, fuzzy phase, that kind of butterflying around, they want to make everybody happy. And they want their message to be inspiring and motivating. And nobody's really loving them, they like them, but they're not loving them. They're not joining anything they launched, they're not buying the book that they write, they're not doing anything like that. It's all too mediocre, warm, fuzzy, you got to choose a side, choose a side, go all in on it. And you're gonna get a huge amount of audience that loves what you're saying. And you're going to push away the naysayers, the haters, and critics, which is what you want.

It really is because I just take away the energy that you need to serve your people. And if you're if you have the same, I mean, new information is constantly coming towards you. That's the beautiful thing about the human experience. And and this journey of life that we're on is that it is fluid, guess what, I might get a new piece of information. And that's gonna completely change everything I believe my entire life. And for me, I think that's amazing. I think that's great to be able to be open to hearing other perspectives, and then using my mind to decipher what makes sense to me. And be like, you know what, actually, that makes more sense now. And I know I said this thing before, but guess what, now I'm realizing this. And that takes that's, I mean, it's hard, it's

hard. Because you literally could risk your current portfolio of friends. If you say the wrong thing. Now the wrong thing to them, not the wrong thing to you. So for example, you know, we just came off of a heart election year, and we saw all these different things in politics. And we always think about, you never hear about anybody really switching sides. You know, if you're Democrat or Republican, you never really hear anybody that vocally just switches sides. But I know several people who think completely opposite of what they voted, because they're so afraid of losing their status, or their friends. And they would be horrified if they voted for the other side. So they don't even believe in what they're voting for. But they're willing to just fit in like sheep in the herd. And that's terrible. To me, that's like living in a trap. Like, why do you even want to hang around with those people if you don't agree with them anymore? Because you're so worried about losing those connections. But the reality is, if you were vocal, you would go find the connections that you really want. And when you do start being vocal, and you start finding those people, I mean, you start finding your tribe, you start writing the people that you are meant to serve that you are here to influence and to impact and, and that's the only I mean, that's exactly what you said, when you watered down the message when you make it to just like my middle of the line. Again, another thing that I've you know, done in the past, and I'm changing now, I think you've probably noticed, I've been getting a little bit more polarizing and kind of sharing my true thoughts more, which has been really, really hard because I have a massive fear of confrontation. I don't like nobody loves that. Yeah.

It's necessary. It's kind of like growth occurs on the other side of discomfort, right? And if you want to just be comfortable all the time, you're gonna avoid confrontation, you're gonna avoid raising your voice, you're going to avoid standing up for yourself. Because you don't want to be in confrontation, but that's where the growth occurs. Right? Exactly. That's where that's where everything that is worth achieving happens is in that discomfort zone is in that area of you just feel like it

I don't know how to proceed, but you just do anyways, you might not know but you just keep on going keep putting one foot in front of the other. You guys, this has been an absolutely incredible interview here with Tony I'm so blessed that you were able to come on and share your talents and your gifts and your knowledge and your voice and your energy with us here today. I know that people are going to want to know how they can connect with you further. And you know, hear more about your book follow you on social media, how can people connect with you, Tony, thank you for the opportunity. My website is 365 driven.com so 365 driven, calm. And from there you'll find my best selling book, my podcast, everything that you'd love to know about me is all on one easy to find website. So thank you for that. Perfect and as always you guys, I will put Tony's link in the description down below so you can easily just pop on over there, click on over and check all of the amazing gifts that Tony has to offer the world again, Tony, I just wanted to thank you one last time for taking the time out of your day to spend with us on the becoming the big new podcast. Thank you so much.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of The becoming the big me podcasts. If you found value in today's episode, make sure to leave us a review and share this episode with someone who needs to hear this message. That's how our podcast grows. Are you curious about learning more about harnessing the power of your subconscious mind. then join the free rewire challenge where we dive deep into the subconscious mind how it works and give you some tangible action steps to began rewiring it to serve you go to bit.li slash rewire challenge that bit.li slash rewire challenge. Until next time. I'm your host Djemilah Birnie, signing out