Do you ever question why things may happen to you? What do you do when adversity hits you? In this episode, Dr. Obom Bowen discusses how he went from suffering PTSD in combat, suicidal thoughts, divorce, and living homeless in his car for five years to making a decision. That decision has led him to be a millionaire today.

Key Takeaways:

• There's still a price to pay for everything we do.

• Want and desire are two different things. Want is a longing, a yearning you're not willing to do something for. A desire is what you, whatever it is, are yearning for.

• You don't get stuck. You refuse to move because it's painful to move forward.

• If you want to avoid going through it, pay somebody who went through it. That's going to do the word for you.

• It is the space that we need to move forward. It would be best if you had forward momentum.

• If you want to change, you'll have the opportunity to, but once that happens, you have to take action and do so.

Tweetable Moments:

1. "Success has non-negotiable terms."

2. "When you seek money, you don't get enough."

3. "Ignorant doesn't mean you're stupid. Ignorant means you lack information and are unwilling to find it."

4. "Whatever you focus on, expanse."

5. "Your environment is stronger than your willpower."

Connect with Dr. Obom Bowen at:

Website: theunderdogmillionaire.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/obombowen/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drobombowen/

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetjoejames

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/?hl=en

Joseph: Hey everyone, and welcome to another great show of purpose two Paint podcasts. I have a gentleman that's going to be talking about some amazing things today, how he went from being homeless, broke, abandoned, rejected to being a millionaire. In just a few years, and we're gonna dive deep into that. Welcome to the show, Dr. Obom Bowen. He has become a new, great friend of mine recently just met in the last couple months, but we have been diving deep into a lot of things that we're gonna share about today. Changing mindset, changing your approach to business and life relationships, I mean, you name it, this guy right here, and I don't even know how to explain him really, except for that, he is a prior service Marine, a former Marine, we never say X, but this man's in Cancun, you never know where this man's gonna be at, but…

Dr. Obom: Where in the world is Waldo?

Joseph: To hear this man's story, you guys need to stay tuned in today. So Dr. Obom, thank you so much and welcome to the show.

Dr. Obom: Thank you so much Joe. Thanks for having me on, brother. I appreciate you Joseph James the Marine extraordinary and the sexier version of the two of us, ‘cause you know, one of the things he's got here, but he didn't, I don't know if it's because he was hating on me a little bit or he just forgotten, didn't say it, but he didn't say I was sexy. He didn't say that, I'm like, Joe, why? Why? Man, that's messed up, you messing with my emotions right off the beginning.

Joseph: You were absolutely sexy. And if you weren't, I weren't taken, I'd come chasing after you brother.

Dr. Obom: Woo. You know, I was as sexy as you. But you know what happened? I started listening to Will Smith's daughter song, whip my hair back and forth, and mine fell off so, not listen to that thong anymore. Now I need to whip my hair front and back and see if it comes back, I don't know.

Joseph: Well, it's so funny that you say you're the, you know, you're sexy because, you know, years ago I had a big confidence issue on how I looked, you know, and how I felt about myself. And I literally had to start saying in the mirror, I'm handsome. It started off with that, and then it became to the point is I'm the sexiest man alive. The only downfall to all of that is GQ Magazine hasn't contacted me, and that's not my fault, that's theirs.

Dr. Obom: So, yeah, bro. The truth is, they know that if they put you on the front cover, you'll probably end up in a divorce. So they're trying to protect you, that's, you know, they're to protect their brand.

Joseph: There you go. I like that.

Dr. Obom: It's a brand issue, nothing against you.

Joseph: No, not at all. I like that. So Obama, we met a few months ago back in December, matter of fact, and it was at up in New York at a book launch. We were both launching books in Times Square, which was a great honor to be up there with you. And, but I got to hear little snippets of your story and then of course we got to connect even more just a few weeks later at a great friend of our event, JR. Spear with business Leaders Network, that's where it really took off from us. But it wasn't so much the fact of like, let's dive deep into the business, it was really, of course, what you are doing now, and we're gonna get into that, but how you got to the point of not only having, you know, being a millionaire, but doing the things that you do and the things that you've provided for your wife and daughter, but that all come, that all came with a price.

Dr. Obom: It does it, and it's still, there's still a price to pay for everything we do, right? Just sharing with a friend of mine, we were just talking, I told, we talked about, you know, whenever you step up to the counter of success, you always have to pay full retail, there's no shortcuts, there's no nothing, it doesn't matter as you know, I'm a very strong believer in my walk with Christ, and believing in God is like even Jesus have to pay full price, yight. I mean, and sometimes we take on like, man, it's too much, it's there and we try to negotiate, but the fact is, if you're going to have any level of success, you gotta be willing to pay the price, right? So for those, those of us who are familiar with the Bible, you read it, it talks about, you know, that part where Jesus sweated blood when he was in the garden of Yosemite, you have to understand, your body, like your endocrine system has to be under so much stress to start sweating blood, and that's a real thing, right? It's different state models that that happened to us. But what really was going on, it was he was in disbelief like that I did all this stuff you said I gotta do and now you're telling me like we're here. I'm, you said I'm coming home in three days, and now just so listen man, you have to act in spite of the fear and the faith, right? God revealed to Jesus listening, in about 72 hours they're gonna spare you prong, you put thorns on, you give you vine, gonna drink, beat you with cat, nine tails kill you, and then you're gonna come up. And so he was trying to negotiate back, like can you imagine if I'm paraphrasing he gonna look dad, we go back like, before you gotta help me out with this? And he's like, no son, if you wanna come.

Joseph: So you said Jesus, you know, God just told, show Jesus what all was gonna happen and then go from there.

Dr. Obom: Yeah. So he highlighted to him all that was going to happen, and he had to accept the fact that, listen, if you're gonna sit on the throne of the king on the right hand side, there is a set of things that you must do, it's non-negotiable. Success has non-negotiable terms for if you try to negotiate them, you're not gonna have success, you're gonna have something, but it ain't gonna be success. You're gonna have something, but it ain't gonna be success.

Joseph: I mean, you know, and I don't think, I mean, of course Jesus being not only man, but also the son of God, he knew what he was created for and of course we can sit there and say, I know what I'm created for. I'm created in the likeness and image of Christ, I'm created to do a lot of great things here on this earth, I'm created to fulfil what God had purposed us to do here on Earth, but yet we are not all knowing, and so I don't know to what degree the pain, the discomfort the price that I have to pay us as a father, as a man, as a brother, as a friend, as an entrepreneur, like, I don't know those things, there are things that people can warn you about, like going into business, have sleepless nights, there are those things, but yet you still can't fathom but I would've never known or understood, like I've really come to an understanding of my pain over the last three to four years, and that was from the death of my wife, from the death of my dad, and then un uncovering all the pain and trauma as a child now as an adult, right?

Dr. Obom: Yeah. You know? So you said that it just, man, it brought some memories to me right now. So you and I were both in the Marine Corp, together and, I don't know, I think you were in when they still had line training before you left, did they were you introduced to make map training?

Joseph: So here's the, here's the funny thing about that, I was the last group of instructors to go through line training instructor school, dismantled the program, and then when I was recalled back to active duty, I had to start going through make map.

Dr. Obom: Awesome, okay. So you understand it. So now, here's a piece and now we end then we can jump into the meat here, right. But I remember one of my mentors who came back while I was in the fleet and hard charger, you know, we were talking about so very, very rambunctious, I was, and I told him, I was like, man, he had just came back from the Black Belt Instructor Trainers course. So for those of you who don't know what that is, it's just like in any martial arts, you move from white belt to black belt? Well, for us it's the same, you go to black belt, but then the Marine Corps Black Belt Instructors course is to make you a black belt, to teach other people about the instructor trainer course is you can teach other people how to be black belts. So it's the hardest course that the Marine Corps ever created, it's the toughest one, and I told him that and he's like, boeing, I'm gonna tell you right now, he goes, I know you, you're toughest woodpecker lips, he said that because, when I went to school of infantry, basically learned to be an infantryman, he was my instructor, then we served to get in the fleet and then he finally, when our separate ways came back, matured in my career later, so he went through a private corporal, Lance corporal, right all the way up to sergeant, he came back, I was a sergeant and he goes, listen, I know your heart is woodpecker lips, Boeing, but let me tell you something about this program, I just left it, and he goes, you know me, and by that time, he'd already been to Desert Shield, Desert Storm. Dude was a war hero, he says, there's nothing that I've ever wanted to quit in my life, and he goes, there's gonna be a day if you go, I want you to know this right now, there's gonna be a day that's gonna come, I don't know when that day is for you, but there's gonna be a day that's gonna come if you go to this course that you're gonna wanna quit, and when that day come, I want you to remember this conversation and you pick your ass up and you finish. I'm like, okay, it was three and a half weeks into the course. That day did come for me, and here's how that day came, we were doing it part of the obstacle course, finishing out, and I fell and I broke my ankle invertedly. Now, if you had missed three training days, you're kicked out, from the court, you can't, for whatever, it doesn't matter, and I'm like, there's no, I man, and how, look, I got, look at that, I got the hair standing up on my head, on my just, just like straight up, right? My ankle broke and I'm sitting there and it's like, it needs at least five days to heal. And I said to myself, there's no way I'm quitting, it is not gonna happen, but there's nowhere they're gonna let me train. You know what's crazy? I'm like, okay, God just acted that same day, all of a sudden there was a freak like storm in Quantico in Virginia, five days everything was shut down. Five days, my foot got to get, I got to go to the doctor and said everything was hurricane everywhere, everything was nailed down that day, I made it into to the hospital, spent three and a half, getting fixed and reset, strapping my foot up after that five days, then we resumed back to the training day. It didn't heal, obviously, but I was able to pumble through, and then towards the, the second to last day, broke it again because it wasn't strapped, right? But the point is, in order to walk away and get that belt with that red stripe to teach other black belts, I have to pay the price.

Joseph: Yeah. And just to interject for those that aren't familiar with the way the Marine Corps worked in this particular course, because I went through the old school one is if you dropped out, you didn't get a chance to go back in a second time, there was no, let's start this over in a couple months.

Dr. Obom: One and done son.

Joseph: It was it, and I mean talking about it because I had the same thing where, and I won't go into details, but I had somebody rake me from the middle of my two legs, where as well as a stacked vertebrae, cervical vertebraes in my neck. And it was, if you left, you know, and you're right, it all came to that point of, are you going to take the pain and things like that and that's a physical pain, but yet at the same time, it's still a mental pain because, and I love, one of my coaches talks about how the body, how the mind is really the body's indicator, but yet the body will tell the mind when to give up, the mind that makes the decision, and we do that every day in the gym, right? You go and you say, oh, I'm gonna do three sets of 10 reps instead, I'm just gonna go until my mind can't take it anymore.

Dr. Obom: And number 11, you're really tired.

Joseph: Right, without a doubt. You know, and it's, I don't think Obom, that we pay attention so much to the mind as we do the body, ‘cause there have been people that have overcome so much pain, physical pain, where they had to override it, in their mindset. But, in the mind itself, that's where we have to make the decision and a lot of times the decision is made prior, not always in the moment. Now, certain things do happen in the moment, don't get me wrong but ultimately it comes down to the mindset prior to it, wouldn't you agree?

Dr. Obom: Absolutely. Everything happens twice. First in the mind and then in the, you know, reality of the body and whatever it needs to be done, it's like whatever you seeing yourself as we're looking, talking business, someone becoming a millionaire, they'd have to see themselves there, you don't act. No one accidentally becomes a millionaire, right? No one accidentally becomes successful, they have to see it first and envision it, positive time, and then it's repeated over time, right? And then like you can't think about it today, like, oh, I'm gonna be a millionaire, and then you're a millionaire tomorrow, good luck, don't work it there. It might look that way with a nice theme song for two and a half to three minutes in the movies, but that's not how it is in real life.

Joseph: Right. And in talking about mindset, I just happened to hear something yesterday from a gentleman, you know, ultimately a lot of people, he said three things it takes to be a millionaire, and I really wanna just talk about one of them is a lot of people are held back from, and I'm just gonna be saying financially blessed, okay, or financially wealthy, not necessarily being a millionaire because, whether it's $5, a hundred thousand dollars or 5 million, this one thing is the same across the board. And the viewpoint of what we have about money, you know, we grew up, money doesn't grow on.

Dr. Obom: It's your relationship with him.

Joseph: Yeah. Money doesn't grow on trees, a lot of people say money is the root of evil, you know? And of course we know what the Bible says, it's the love of money, it's what, it's that being a servant or an idol to you, not necessarily God itself, you know? But it's the mindset behind those things and I remember over these last couple years, I remember always being living paycheck to paycheck, I mean, we did it in the Marine, you know, none of us are, none of us, there even be,

Dr. Obom: Yeah, it's crazy, two things you said, like the first one that, you know, cause my dad used said all the time, and then I got smarter and, you know, we used to have these healthy debates back and forth. I was like, money doesn't grow in trees, and then I got smarter ass. I'm like, listen dad, that, yeah, that's wrong, money does grow in trees as matter of fact, money comes from the papas tree that they turn into paper that they make and turn. So money does grow in trees and my dad's like, stop being a smart ass.

I'm like, where you want me to be a dumbass? I dunno, something like that, but then you know the other.

Joseph: And money does grow on trees, you can ask the state of Colorado

Dr. Obom: Ah, yes. Yes, you can. Anyways, I know you wanted to jump into some, some deep meaty stuff for to share some stuff for the good listeners here, while we're having too much fun, they're probably like, let two Marines don't ever get them back again, all they're doing is talking about the Marine Corps. No, you're right, but bad. We're gonna talk about the topic now.

Joseph: Yeah. So let's take us back to that time where ultimately your mind could have been destroyed.

Dr. Obom: Yeah, well, you know, fortunately, and unfortunately we do have to go back to the Marine Corps again, so sorry listeners, but you know, it's how it's, cause that's where it all happened. So I'm gonna back up for a second. I was born the last of 13 kids, right? So 12 boys, one girl. So I was born with a football team, right. No football team, hey had one cheerleader, that's my sister, my only one sister, right? But the point of the whole story was I always had support, I always worked with a team, and when I joined the Marine Corps at 17, I got married at 19 to someone I probably should not have gotten married to my parents told me not to write, my mom told me not to my, my brother, my father, right? My favorite brother, my only sister, my bestfriend, and the pastor of the church, like they all knew something I didn't know, but they never told me what it was, they just like, trust me, I'm like, really? Now I'm 19 and I'm full of hormones. So I was thinking with the wrong head so that that's all that mattered, right? But my analysis of it was they were all jealous of what I had, ‘cause she was fine, she was. Anyways, long story short, 14 years later into this, right, we end up in a real bad divorce, and through that divorce, I basically lost everything, including my mind, I had just gotten injured in Iraq for the third time, I mean, I still, if you can see, blown up, I got some scar and stuff up here on my hands everywhere, whatever, right? There's still trapping on my back, I still suffer from, headaches, chronic PTSD, depression, suicide ideation, I ended up homeless, living in my car for a period of time. And I remember, you know, many times it was the anger for I was, I don't wanna say the word starts with a P, ends with a D. I was so mad at women, I thought they were the worst thing ‘cause like, how can I love somebody so much? And it just ripped my heart out, and at the time I'm going through mentally unstable. We ended up in court, I lost custody of my kids right, for a period of time, and it's over five years. So I was to say that I was down and out of my luck is an understatement, right? My thinking was plagued with all that was done wrong to me, and whose fault it was everybody else but my own, right. And it was blame, blame, blame, blame, blame and no responsibility. Now I know that's what it was, but back then it's like everybody was against me, right. Nothing was working out, life sucks, it's a mean old world out there, everybody. So I was on this mental cycle in this space and I remember what I called my day of discuss with like the whole, right? And it was a, I think it was like a Wednesday or Thursday, Herman, but I knew it was, it was in the middle of August, I was in California, I had lost everything, now all that I had was in a storage facility and I couldn't even, couldn't even afford, an air conditioned storage. So if you can imagine, a zinc building, a zinc building, no AC. I have nowhere to go. And I go into the storage and I'm sitting there on this box, right, and I'm crying, I'm mad, I'm upset at what's going on, and I'm ticked off at the world of God, not everyone blaming everything and I'm crying and I'm sweating, and I'm frustrated, I've been in there for hours, so the sweat's running down my back, sitting on the cardboard box, which eventually gave away ‘cause all the sweats started and get into it and melt, right? There's, that's how long been sitting there crying, like, whatever. And they said, you know, real men don't cry. Well, that's a lie, that's fake men, right? Real men do cry, I got feelings too, you know what I'm saying? So they were hurt pretty bad and there's like almost no way out, the crazy thing was so because of, I was 200 and, and I think like 18, 19 pounds around the time shift, you know, I was built like a brick house, but shows a box of books and the first book that fell out was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which I probably should have been reading in the first place, Joe, right? just saying. But I picked up the book and I started reading anyways. And I started reading about desire, right? And I started realizing like I didn't, at that time, I didn't have a desire in my heart for something to be like, I had a want and desire, two different things, want is a longing, is a yearning that you're not really willing to do something for. A desire is when you, whatever it is, you are yearning for. And I was yearning for a better life, right. Truth be told, I was yearning for a better wife, but I was mad at women then still, you know, I was mad. ‘Cause somebody done did me wrong, but, you know what made me got married 10 years ago was at the time when this happened, was almost 17 years ago, I realized at the time I was too young and too horny to remain that way. So it's like, Lord, we gonna have to change this. I need me a wife ‘cause I got needs too, you know, homeboy need to take care of some stuff. So I basically renegotiated that anger contract with God, so here's what's crazy. When the switch goes on from blame to responsibility, I stopped blaming, I took responsibility and realized, I was saying like, there, there's no opportunity for anything for me. And I realized someone had introduced me to a network marketing opportunity just previously, I had said no, it's like, oh man, that that's a scam stuff, just like any other ignorant person. Ignorant doesn't mean you're stupid, ignorant just means you lack information and you're not willing to go find it. So you remain ignorant to the fact of what is. But as I started reading this book, I started realizing there's opportunities out there that can be taken, and then I wasn't, I started anyways, and then I started doing things my way and I wasn't getting success as I needed, and my mentor gave me another book. How to win friends and influence people, I was like, oh, I should probably be learning on how to actually talk to people instead of just telling them of what I'm doing, which is what? What gives, like the direct sales or network marketing industry a bad name, someone's like, you should try this, and they're always just vomiting all over you, right? Instead of getting to know the person and seeing if your product or service is a fit for them, right? So then I decided, you know, because of the mental instability, right? The mental illness, the PTSD, the trauma, I'm gonna use business as my medication. So for 17 years I've been medicated positively using business and building business and building big businesses, right? First it was money as my motivation, then I got beyond the money because at a certain time it's like I couldn't get enough money ‘cause I started seeking money. But when you seek money, you don't get enough. And it didn't matter how much II was losing more. And then I heard a mentor of mine told me, it's like, Obom, you should focus more on becoming something better than you are, be a person of value, people like people of value. Yeah. They're like, oh, that's a what? A what? A novel. Since then to this day, all I've done is developed myself to be more valuable and help people identify their gifts and bring it to the world, right? It, but at that time, when I was going through it was tough. That was the price I had to pay. There were times, to be honest, I wasn't happy to pay it then, I like, to be honest with you, I was pissed off, Joe. It was matter of women, but then when, like 18 months later, no dating, no nothing, you know, needed to renegotiate with God, I was too horny, too young, needed to find something. So, I changed my focus on that, and now I'm happily married, that was too broke, didn't have money to none, I changed my focus on that, been working on that, and now that's not a problem Anymore, but during that time, during that pain, I had to go through the pain, if I try to take a shortcut, and here's what's a shortcut that that lengthens the period, sometime overmedicating drinking too much, right? Avoiding it, blaming either my ex or the military or whatever, those are the shortcuts, and not to deal with what's really going on with me, but then there was a time for about almost five. I focused on my mental instability and seek psychiatric help, and that's what started the repair, started fixing me. I had to deal with the stigma too, like, oh my gosh, you gonna see a psychiatrist right here? Here's the deal, I used to hear that stuff like, Hey man, no offense, you say, Hey bro, that's a white people man, black people don't do that stuff, man, I'm like, alright, whatever, I guess don't be the first black one that's seen a psychiatrist. ‘Cause I don't like what's going on up here, it's just chaotic in there, right. So, against the grain to become the person I am today.

Joseph: Obom, why do you think people get stuck? Why do people get stuck in their not wanting to outta their pain?

Dr. Obom: Yeah. They, don't get stuck, you don't even have to finish that question. They don't get stuck, they just refuse to move.

Joseph: Okay, I can agree to that.

Dr. Obom: They just refuse to move. Because it's painful to move forward, right? For example, right now, let's say example, you're in financial debt, right? Moving forward, meaning one of three things, you're either gonna have to generate more money to pay off your debt, you're gonna be fixated on like, nobody wants to loan your money ‘cause number one, you've been a bad store and manager of managing what you have. So of course no bank or no one would want to give you a loan to pay it off, so it's a mean old world out there. And you're just gonna repeat the pattern, and most people think it's like, you know, I just need to get some more money, or need to earn some more money or whatever, come into some money and pay this debt off and get off of it. And that doesn't fix the problem, the problem is you're a poor manager and that means you need a new education.

Joseph: So is the pain, I now have to work towards growing and changing my mindset and everything that follows through with it for the pain of I've got to, something else has to happen, you know.

Dr. Obom: Yeah, no, no. You hit it right on the head. The pain is you, you gotta change, like I used to listen to Jim Ron a lot. He used to say, Jim Ron, quote Jim Ro for things that changed for you, you gotta change.

Joseph:Change.

Dr. Obom: You gotta change, right. The pain there or the problem is they don't want to become the better version of themselves, which means, for example, you cannot earn seven figures with a six figure education, you need to get the seven figure education.

Joseph: We both know that, without a doubt.

Dr. Obom: I was gonna say, you can't be an effective husband with a single mindset, you're do for divorce, like it's gonna happen.

Joseph: Yeah. So what would you say to encourage people, whether it's been the loss of a loved one growing up in a traumatic family or childhood trauma, or even in your situation, the divorce that led to homelessness and things like that. What would you, how would you encourage them to go to face the new but pain that's in a total different area than what they're experiencing.

Dr. Obom: Yeah. So first I have to understand what you're going through is a phase and you have to understand and embrace that phase. Let's say it was the loss of a wife, there's 14 stages of grief, you gotta go through them all, you have to embrace it all. And the best thing to do, because once you identify those 14, try to embrace it as fast as possible, the faster you go through, the faster you come through, there's only one way through, you can't go up, go round, go under, you gotta go through it. So the faster you're able to deal with it, the faster it'll be in the past. If you need to earn more income, it's not going to work two or three jobs, three jobs are for three people, it's being able to get your education, to give you the higher income, and I don't mean like necessarily go back to schools, they're having the right education, right? What makes it different that someone has, you know, earns millions in a day? That someone that's never earned millions in a lifetime, it's what they know, it's the right education, it's being able to understand like, there's so much that I've learned, I remember my wife, so we were having drinks the other night with a few friends, actually Lou and someone that, you know, Lou, right. And she was talking about, or talking about how I used to drag her to all these boring classes on financial, there's some financial that, and she's like, it's not only just classes we go to week long retreats, and she'd be sitting there for hours and hours and didn't get any of that stuff. And what's crazy is we've done it for almost 15 years together, but when we were talking about a few things and his wife asked a couple questions, my wife was just pouring off a few stuff and I'm just sitting there going like, it's so boring. She knows it all, right? Guess who manages right? Guess who manages the, like I know everything, but that's what she does, but it was so boring, she didn't wanna do it. This is what happens with most people, the new information, it's so boring. Ah, if it's so boring, here's another piece, if you don't wanna go through it, pay somebody who went through it that's gonna do the word for you. But the problem is they don't wanna go through it and they don't wanna pay somebody, so they end up stuck, they're refusing to move forward.

Joseph: Wow. You mentioned something earlier that, you know, I didn't, when I lost my dad and my wife, I didn't think about, you know, 14 stages of grief, you know, I just knew that, I knew I needed something different, I had to find myself, is what I kept on telling me, you know, and I originally, I wasn't necessarily against going to therapy, I didn't know where to go. So I'm like, I'll just figure this out on my own, and the only way I have figured out is keep moving forward, right? It's that Marine Corps mentality, just keep on moving forward, you know? And I just kept on and kept on and kept on, and people kept on asking me, he's like, Joseph, how have you faced so much adversity, but yet you keep on smiling, how are you able to smile through all of it? And of course my initial surface answer was God, because that was the truth. It was my faith that was allowing me to continue to move forward, but when you sit there and tell somebody, oh, it's my faith in God to somebody that doesn't have faith in God, they don't get it, you know? So I literally had to kind of like, alright, what exactly am I doing? And it was about 10 months later that I realized what I had been doing. You know, and one thing, and it was crazy because after I realized this, and I did a little video of it, Simon Sinek, for those that don't know, he's, I think he's a British guy, and he writes, books on the start of or you know, the power of why, things like that. But I heard him in a clip saying this one thing, and he was talking about alcoholics and he was talking about, how they have, I think it's either 11 or 12 step program, and they can go one through 11, but if they don't complete number 12, they'll always be an alcoholic, and when I heard this, I'm like, oh my God, I'm on the right track, and what it was is when I was sharing so much information about the loss of my wife and dad and just how I kept on updating people, I had people reaching out to me, and for prayers, for advice, right. You know, for all those things, and I'm like, in my first mind, I'm like, man, I'm not experiencing this. I'm no, I'm no doctor, I'm no therapist, but I realized that when I begin, and you said this earlier, when I begin to help other people, when the focus shifted off of me onto other people, then the when the focus went from being on myself to other people, then I really started the healing process. I wasn't concerned about my issues, my problems, my pain, my worries, and everything else, that followed it. I really began to focus on other people and what was so crazy, Dr. O, is this right here is when I would, things to other people and helping them, and I'm not even talking about people losing relationship or losing, a loved one, this was like people on drugs, people on alcohol, people on broken relationships. When I began to help with them, I was getting answers to my own problems and I didn't even realize it, and I think that is one thing, and you said it earlier, it's like when you made that shift of being on somebody else, focusing on how can I be a better help to other people in this world because, and I know you as an individual, and you know me, I know both of our mindset is not to have a to die with a full bank account, but it's to live a legacy.

Dr. Obom: Live, full, die, empty baby all day long.

Joseph: Yeah. I mean, it's to bless people, I mean, you g we'll get into this later, but you give out vacations to people. And I'm not talking about, listen listeners, this is why you really need to stay tuned, this man doesn't give out vacations to one or two people, I was in a room of 60 people with him speaking, we be speaking and he gave out a free vaca. And I'm not talking about like, you know, a trip to Orlando or a trip to, you know, New Orleans, I'm talking about Hawaii, Cancun, Dubai, you know, so I mean that has been developed in you by simply serving other people, it also, thanks brother, get you unstuck, making news decisions, you know, not staying where you're at, making that choice, and it's crazy that, you know, for both of us, we kind of just, we realized it.

Dr. Obom: Yep. You know, it is the space that we need in order to move forward, you need forward momentum, well forward momentum comes from action, right? So emotion creates motion, and continued motion leads into momentum, so most of us though, we just get caught up in the emotion and don't take motion, right? So we don't move, we're just caught up in the feel of the moment and we keep repeating that process over and over and going back to your statement of like, you know, man, they feel stuck, you know, it's not that they feel stuck, it's that the emotion has paralyzed them from, right, they've let the emotion become a paralytic and if you stay in, as they say, you wallow in your pity, you are gonna have a pity party all by yourself.

Joseph: Yeah, you know, and I'm glad you just said that because I found something so interesting the other day, and it was a pastor preaching, pastor Steven Ferdick out of Charlotte North, and he said this comment.

Dr. Obom: Fred's a bad dude, man.

Joseph: He is, he is, man. He is, he's a power puncher right there, he said this comment, and I'm like, oh my God, I didn't even think about this. You know, when we go through a breakup, all right? We broke up with our girlfriend, our you know, a significant other, we listen to or find things that speak to us in that moment, okay? Like a song, okay. And I remember, I can't never remember the name of the song at the moment, but I remember going through, through little breakups after I lost my wife when I was putting myself out there in the dating world again. And I would listen to this, I Miss You song, I can't even remember what it was, right? And it kept on.

Dr. Obom: I miss you talking to you baby.

Joseph: Kept on putting me in this somber mindset, because I was focusing on where I was at and was trying to find things to speak to me where I currently was, which was going, being sad and depression, anxiety, all those different things instead of looking to where I needed to go. And he was talking about that how algorithms, you know, our created design that way, that, let's say if I pull up an all for one song, you know what the Moon and the Stars, I can't remember the name of the song now.

Dr. Obom: I swear, A Moon and the Stars in the sky.

Joseph: You there, I'll be search that, if I search that because I'm feeling depressed and I wanna listen to music like that, then all that kind of music is gonna continue to pop up, and that's how social media, that's how Google platforms, you know, have been created to keep us in that, instead, imagine if I would've just pulled up, let's just say somebody like Bishop TD Jakes, or Jim Ron or Tony Robbins, and allows that to feed me, you know, so, ultimately it kind of goes back to is what are we feeding our mind in the midst of that pain. There's no doubt that we teach somebody, you go through a divorce, you the trauma from a home or things that you are being triggered by, there's no doubt that it's painful, the thing is we don't have to stay there, but the steps that we make initially can either keep us there longer or get us out of quicker, you know, and I'm guilty of both, I've done both.

Dr. Obom: Whatever you focus on Expanse, directly or indirectly. And that's how the marketing piece works, right? We call it the algorithm these days, it's tuned in, right? Because what they want you to understand with algorithms in social media is, man, this was meant to be. No, what they do is you say, or you mention something, this is why like Google's listening to everybody's listening, it goes into your profile and it says, oh, he or she's talking about this, let's find it and get it to them, and they, oh my God, she was supposed to be, right. That's the energy, that's how it works. If you really wanna change, you'll have the opportunity to, but once that happens, you do have to take the action and do so.

Joseph: Yeah. And you know, for those that are listening, I don't know why even going on this subject, but just when we were talking about searching things, for those that are familiar with AI or chatGPT, you know, get familiar with it, and it is literally as simple as, let's just say if I was going through grief, like if I would've suffered this loss, you know, today as I did four years ago, and knowing that we have the technology is simply looking at something like chatGPT or the AI saying, how can I get through X, Y, Z? And instead of it feeding you what you think you. It's going to give you the answers to what you really need, at least in the direction of that, you know, so we don't have to go on a tangent of that, but that's a whole nother subject.

Dr. Obom: No, especially being almost at the top of the hour, it's like, nope, that'll take us off, that'll take us down on spiral.

Joseph: Yeah, without a doubt. So, Obom, where are you at now in terms of your mindset, what you've been able to create by making the shifts and the changes going from where you are? The PTSD, the pain, the suicidal thoughts, living in a living in your car for several years. Where are you at now?

Dr. Obom: Ah, that's, well, first thing popped into my head was that you asked, where am I at now? Location, I'm in Mexico. But mentally, you know, that changes. I had, first I had to decide what I wanted, yeah, right. The word decide from, from its original Greek, meaning the word come out, like decide anything, like inside, suicide, homicide, it means to kill, cease, and desist all other options. So I have to decide what I wanted. And the life I'm living now was the life I decided to want, but decision has to have actions following behind them, and I decided to become this person, I also decided with my wife, 17 years ago, that we were going to attend a minimum of one relationship seminar a quarter, so four relationship retreats a year, and one minimum of one personal development event a month, that's 12 a year. We did that for 10 years straight, right. That's being tuned in and it, it helped me to learn and understand a very powerful phrase I use with people all the time, it says that your environment is stronger than your willpower, but you, which means simply this. Listen, if you hang around nine smokers, right, you're the 10th person that's probably gonna die from lung cancer. You don't even have to smoke, but it's gonna affect you, you hang around nine bro people, you're the 10th, you hang around nine drugs, well, you know you're gonna, right, so association, but by doing those things over and over and over and over and over, it became automatic. It took us through the four levels of competence and what that's taken me through, ‘cause sometimes when you say, you know, people say like, man, I went from this, earning millions doing this when hit the house, the cars, the bus, all that stuff is really, reflection of me choosing to develop myself personally, right. It's a reflection of personal development, which means I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my new education to have a new outcome. So when you ask, you know, where am I at? What took me from there to there? It's the renewing of the mine, right? I mean, Jesus, when he came his first public sermon, he was repent, which means renew your mind, and God wrote it in the Bible, be transformed from the renewing of your mind. So I have to have a new mind to have a new life. Most people wanna have a new life with the old mind, that's why they're stuck.

Joseph: That's good. That's good. That's good. Dr. Obom, you've written a couple books on this.

Dr. Obom: I have.

Joseph: Wanna share.

Dr. Obom: A few sexy books you might add. So yeah, so the first book I wrote, the first book called The Philosophy of Success, and that was, you know, going through a lot of those same trainings, developments, all that stuff, I realized what ne what happened by the time we earned the first million, right? And the first million within a calendar year, it changed differently, I realized you needed a different philosophy to have different actions that give you different outcomes. It was a book written about how do you take simple disciplines and turn it into massive success, then I wrote, you know, passion 365. How to actually influence that change you're looking for in your relationship so that you can have passion 365 days a year, right. And I married me a Mexican, you know, we're pretty passionate every day anyways, leave that alone. The next book I wrote was a book called Today's the Day, which means that you can make the change, right, and implement these different strategies, there's 14 things that we do unconsciously to be successful. But when you do, consciously, you get there faster, and the most recent book I wrote dozens of books that are compilation books in shared book. The four that I wrote, that's directly for me, the last one that we're publishing, releasing in June of this year, it's called, this is Why Christians Are Broke. It answers the questions why Christians are broke, but it also gives the answers and how you can start to become wealthy, right. And it breaks down the action steps and skill sets you need to have, and we even have the training workshops and all that stuff, to do, which is one of the reasons why, you know, we've connected and, you know, this coming month, March 9th to the 12th, right, I'm excited to see you at the event, which by the way, you have to forgive me ‘cause I put up so excited celebrating your entry, and I put someone else's name on your stuff. So thanks for catching that and correcting me, we're fixing it as we go, but Joe, is coming to one of our masterminds, in Orlando, Florida, we're doing a whole Star Wars thing, we run into this mansion, it's gonna be awesome, right? So four days, it's five days with Joe, ‘cause he is part of our program. So it's only if you're, if you wanna be special, you can have five days too, but it's four days we're gonna meet a mansion, having a blast really teaching a lot of these principles to getting ingrained in short, we're positively brainwashing you for five days, so you can have a different mind to take different actions to have different results.

Joseph: Yeah. And I'll just jump in there for those that I've been a part of one of your other masterminds, you know the Minting Club, and it's helping me grow my business to, my speaking business, Alpha Leadership, and the Purpose Through Pain to seven figures and again, even though I have changed my mindset on my dog training business to do seven figures, and I've been able to accomplish that, I wasn't applying some of the same principles on doing that for my coaching, and it has been a huge game changer for me for those that are listening not only on my mindset, but my skillset, my confidence, you know, and just knowing and understanding how to excel where I am, and what I love so much, I'm gonna brag about you for a second. What I love so much is the fact that this is one of the very first programs I've ever done that truly feels like family.

Dr. Obom: Thank you brother

Joseph: I've had other great systems, other great support systems, but when you're family, it's a whole another. You know, and I'll say this for people to be like, oh my God, I hate my family, no, this is a different, this is a love family, this is a big love circle for us, you know, this isn't like, you know, dead fish, you gotta get rid of them after three days kind of thing, you know, um, this is, you know, just a powerful community, and group. And do you mind you got a second to talk about that?

Dr. Obom: Yeah, absolutely, literally a second. So we have what's called the Outcomes and Breakthrough Mastermind. And outcomes, people go to coaches or receive coaching so that they can have better outcomes in life, in business, in sports and finances, what have you. And they go to Mastermind so they can have huge breakthroughs. No one in the history of Planet Earth has ever really put the two together to give you, outcomes, breakthroughs, and then how to tie those together to actually produce the outcomes you're looking for and the action steps required to basically, in a sense, bridge the gap, right? So no one has ever really given you the routine or the discipline to get it, because discipline is a bridge between success and failure, and this weekend is really diving into those things, giving you the action steps that's required, the mindset that's necessary, and the community of people to help you do it and get there, right? So the, the family, like Joe said, the family is real and we love on each other, and we love helping each other achieve success to convergence, right? Which is bringing your future into the present by having collaborative behavior, networking, connecting, collaborate better to, as a group, I call it the finger to fist method, like we started talking to in the beginning, now that I'm promoting violence, but if Joseph and I got into fighting, I'm trying to break as Joe, I can't do it with a finger, I could do it with a fist. The corporation of these five fingers makes a really good fist.

Joseph: Love it brother. Where can people find you at? What's the best way they can get ahold of you?

Dr. Obom: Best the fastest way, if you're on Instagram, you can just go @drobombowen.com, same thing on Facebook, or you can go to the theunderdogmillionaire.com, cause there's a bunch of pretenders out there, but I'm the underdog millionaire, right? So you can go to the underdog millionaire.com and find me, let's have some fun.

Joseph: Love it. Dr. Obom, thank you so much for joining us and just can't wait to continue to do more successful things in partnering in our future, brother.

Dr. Obom: Pleasure, same here, brother. Looking forward to connecting with you. Love and appreciate you. We're gonna go fix that issue we had for you to make sure that we're not calling you out of your name. Love and appreciate you and thanks for having me on today, man.

Joseph: Love you, brother, talk soon.

Dr. Obom: Alright, talk soon.