Host AJ: Seth, it's so great to have you on the show today. I've been really looking forward to our chat and learning more about your journey. To start, would you mind sharing a bit about your background and what led you to entrepreneurship?

Guest: Well, it's my honor, truly my honor to be with you. I have a heart for business, and we're gonna be talking about business today.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that question, because if we were to go back to my school days, in my teen years, I was not the most likely to become an entrepreneur. I would not have been voted most likely. I remember I've always had big dreams - I've always wanted to accomplish something.

I remember when I was in elementary school, there would be a fundraiser. Right, so you're in elementary school - I'm probably 12 years old, and in class they announce, Hey, there's going to be a fundraiser, and if you sell all of these chocolate bars or gift wrapping paper, if you sell so many units to the people that you know in your neighborhood, then there are these cool prizes. And I was thinking, Of course I saw those, and it was so awesome. I thought, 'Yes, I want to do that!'

But for whatever reason, like I didn't come pre-packaged with all of this confidence in my communication skills, or in my sales skills, or in my building skills. And I never realized any of those. I might have sold one roll of wrapping paper. And taking that kind of experience, and also taking the education that I had, looking at those around me, looking at my family, I really followed what you know, not just in the West, but in Eastern culture as well - go to school, get some education, get as much education as you can, get a good job, and then go to work. The normal, the normal path that really, and I think it's important to understand, that this is a current social construct that is not a historical thing as much. You know, it's kind of post-industrial revolution thinking. But that's what I did, and I got a good job.

Actually, in my teen years, I was able to work. I got in with a good company while I was going to high school and finishing out my education there. And I had a lot of opportunities at this growing company, a family-owned business that, when I started there in my early teens, they were just a kind of a startup business, and they'd had some success. They were local. One of the vice presidents happened to be a mentor in my life - he was about 10 or 15 years older than me, and he was one of the founders, one of the senior vice presidents of this very small company. And because of that, he lived in my neighborhood before they struck it rich. They were down in our neighborhood. And I got a job, and I loved it, and it was awesome. And I just saw him as a role model, and I thought, I'm just gonna continue on the path so that I can be a vice president of this company someday. I'm going to put in my 10 years, I'm going to put in whatever it takes, my 20 years. And I literally was with that company over the course of the next five to seven years. They went from $50 million, which is pretty successful, actually, to over $1 billion, U.S. dollars, listed on the New York Stock Exchange. And I loved the culture there.

And when friends would approach me, as maybe some of your listeners may have that experience from time to time, a friend calls you up and says, Hey, let's start a business, or Hey, I've just started a business, let's talk about what I'm doing. You know, they might call even to recruit you. Right? And I'll tell you, you know what? I was not. I had no ears, I had no ears, I had no heart for their message. I thought, I'm gonna stay here. I am a lifer. I'm gonna stay here all my life. And I turned him down. You know, I just, it did not resonate with me. And I think there are a couple of reasons. One, absolutely positively, I did not have the confidence in myself, I think, to go out on my own. Right? I found comfort in knowing that there was a building around me, there was a boss around me, there was somebody else responsible as well. You know, there was a structure, there was organization, and I had a title with the company. Right? I had a title and I had a budget to execute my responsibilities. I think I hid behind those because they were like my comfort zone. Absolutely, they were my comfort zone.

Now, fast forward, you know, 25, 30 years, I have compassion, I have empathy and understanding for people who don't see things like I do now. Like, I just, because I'm an entrepreneur now, hardcore, I am unemployable, not because I don't have skills, but because you can't hire me. Definitely, but not everybody's like that, or they're not that way right now. Timing is huge.

So I had some experiences in my life. We had, and know I was young and married. You know, if we fast forward to about my ninth and coming into nine and 10 years in the company, I'm in my early 20s, mid 20s, and we had a health crisis in our family. And I'll tell you, all that was really important to me, all that was important to me at that time, and what is absolutely still important to me, is I want to be a family man. Like, I'm a family man. I was a dad at 20, at 25, I had three children, and I just wanted to come home. I wanted to go to work, do my deal, be aggressive, be ambitious there, but then I want to turn it off, and I want to go home, and I want to spend an evening with my wife. I want to play with those kids. I had three boys at the time, three boys. I want to play with those kids, I want to be their hero, I want to be their best friend. You know, I want them, I want them to be my fishing buddy. I want to go out and teach them my loves and my passions - basketball, athletics, gardening. And I want to eat dinner with them. You know, I don't want to have to live that 24/7. That's how I felt. And I thought that my corporate job would allow me to do that, but we had a health crisis in our family, and I found myself being torn, just torn apart, having to go to the office every day where we had, you know, a family member.

Host AJ: You mentioned becoming deeply dissatisfied and hungry in your early 20s. What was it that made you realize the traditional path wasn't enough for you anymore? What was that pivotal turning point?

Guest: So when I'm going to work every day, I'm just in agony, because what I realized was I was balancing the responsibilities that I had in my role, in my family, as the breadwinner, and also as an emotional caregiver as well. Listen, dads need to be emotionally invested into their families. We're not just about, Show me what you're going to do for me, dad. Just take care of me, feed me, clothe me. Like, it goes way beyond that. And I wasn't able to meet those needs because I couldn't be in both places. And I have a super compassionate heart. Like, I, and that's why today - and I don't want to jump too far ahead, but that's why today, me and my wife Stephanie, we run a business and a movement and lead an organization worldwide of women, because I can connect with women, I can understand, I can have that empathy and that compassion. But anyway, I couldn't do that.

And so here's the point of the story, AJ. At some point, at that point, I realized that the path I was on, the traditional path, could not meet my needs. And at that moment, a blessing, a huge revelation came into my life - a friend. And isn't that so awesome how our friends sometimes, it might be a friend, sometime it might be a family member, sometimes it might just be an acquaintance or a colleague? I will say, somebody from your network. Wow, network, it's one of my favorite words in the entire business career. It is one of the absolute seminal influencing factors on why I'm here today and where I'm going, is because of my network. Within my network, a friend, actually, that lived one, two, three, four, I think five doors down - isn't there a song, Five Doors Down? Anyway, five doors down, and he said to me, Seth, have you read this book? You need to check it out. And I, and you asked me if I read a book, are you kidding me? I'm going to be out on the basketball court, I'm gonna be out on the football field. I hated reading. Like, no, like, don't, I did not. When I was growing up in school, I would do anything to get out of reading. I did not love it. And in fact, I would get bad grades and bad marks in school because I would be putting off all of my reading assignments, you know, for months, literally weeks and months, until the very last day. And then I try to read 20 pages, and you can guess how that turned out for me.

So when he said, Read a book, I'm thinking, Yeah, but I had a need. I had a financial need. And I read that book, and you're probably familiar with that book. This is around 1999, I read a book by Robert Kiyosaki, entitled Rich Dad Poor Dad, and the followup book, The Cashflow Quadrant, which I actually loved even more than Rich Dad Poor Dad. And that was a revelation to me. It literally parted the financial and business and entrepreneurial heavens, and I saw the light, and I said, Wow, I am not staying here at this company. I love this company, I'm grateful for everything they've done for me, they've truly been a huge impact in my life and a training ground. I'm going to go do something on my own. And so that was the spark that led me to entrepreneurship. I started then going back to my entrepreneurial friends and saying, Tell me what you got, show me what you got, what are you doing? You're ahead of me. Like, no ego, dropped the ego. I was just absolutely hungry to learn. It's like an individual who's been fasting. If any of you fast religiously, right, like we fast regularly, and you know, after you've been fasting, you are just completely weak, but you are so grateful for that food. That's how I was. I was just searching, searching for an. I was looking in magazines for entrepreneurial businesses and franchises and mini-franchises, and talking to people about real estate and just business startup, because I saw entrepreneurialism as a path, as a way of living, a rainbow. There was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, not just a paycheck. And that's what I wanted.

You gotta be hungry, you gotta be hungry, you gotta be hungry. You know, I heard a sermon, a church sermon, years ago, decades ago, and it was talking about youth, young, you know, young people in their teens. And these young people were at a conference, and on their shirt, I think the motto of the conference was one big long word - Yana. You gotta wanna. You got to want to. You gotta wantan it. You got to want it. You've gotta wanna do it. You gotta want to get up. You gotta wan to take the no's. I tell you, I have been, I don't like being told no. And I remember that little kid who couldn't, who couldn't sell chocolate bars and who couldn't sell the gift wrapping paper because he didn't like being told no. But today, as an entrepreneur, today in our successful business, which last year, our sales organizations and health products teams around the world did in excess of $55 or $60 million annual revenue, thank you, thank you, we're proud to work with these teams. It's them, truly it's them. But we got to want to show up and recruit and train and lead and travel.

I will say that I just lost my train of thought. I what I was going to say, but anyway, you have to want it. You have to be willing to go for it. And oh, being told no, even today, as successful as I, as we might be, and I think of myself really, I do not, AJ, I do not ever again, because I have been want to be seduced by success.

That's, do you want in our marketplace? I mean, it's a big marketplace in the direct selling industry around the world. And in the companies that I've helped grow, and certainly within those specific companies, some people will come up to me and say, Wow, Seth, love your training, love your coaching, so appreciate you, you're amazing, you've, you know, you've impacted my life. And I'm super, I'm grateful for that, because that's, I'm here to serve. If you're not here to serve, then don't go into leadership. But people are often surprised, AJ, when they get to know you or when you reveal what you do on a daily basis, and they say, Wow, I had no idea that you suffered like I am. I had no idea that, you know, when you make sales calls or recruiting calls, you get told no. I had no idea that you were, you have been curled up in the fetal position and not want to get out of bed because you're getting your butt kicked. And that, I've just been told no so much on this journey, but I'm okay with it. I don't enjoy it, but listen, there is no magic secret wand, Abracadabra, and you're just going to fall in front of me and say yes. You know, it doesn't work like that. It's just a lot of darn hard work and discipline.

Well, and you and I talked about being a big fish, and I know you have another question. And I'm just so appreciative to be here, and I love what you're doing. I'm tracking you, I'm watching, I'm listening to the podcast. I have a huge heart for international business, because you know, much of my business career has been spent internationally. Also have, you know, my wife and I are starting a love affair with the beautiful continent of Africa as well, and some of the work that we are doing there. But I was talking about you gotta wna, so I don't want to be a big fish in a small pond, right? And so you talk about being seduced by success, like I'm never going to forget where I came from. I'm never going to forget, like I said at the very beginning, I'm empathetic with people who don't see things the way I do, who don't want to be entrepreneurs. Like, I'm no better than them. They're, like, God is no respecter of persons, right? He doesn't care if you're an entrepreneur. What He does care is that you utilize the talents that you've been given, whether you do that working for somebody else or building something. But I'll tell you right now, my wife Stephanie and I, we're in, you know, we're in the big ocean as now small fish, right, and figuring out that next stage, that reinvention, specifically for us - how do we reach more people, how do we reach more women and women entrepreneurs and women who want to become entrepreneurial? They don't have to want to start a billion-dollar company. It's not about that. It's to entrepreneurs solve problems and deal hope. That's it, we solve problems and deal hope, and we get paid for it. Right? And so we're working to figure out just what you're doing here in creating a media company. This is the AJ Media Company, and I get to be a little part of your Channel today, and I'm super honored. But, man, you know, we're no big fish. We are, we're a vessel in a big ocean. And you know what, we're super hungry, and I think that bodes well for us. I think that's good for us when you think you know everything, and you, when you ask when you give more answers than the number of questions that you ask, then you may be too comfortable, and you need to get into a bigger pool.

Host AJ: You spoke so powerfully about the difference between the banquet table of abundance versus just settling for the pellet. How have you been able to recapture and maintain that driving sense of hunger?

Guest: That's awesome, I love that. Well, you talk about pellets, and you talk about being at the banquet table, and I truly believe there is, no matter where you are today, listening to this show, there is abundance around you. And I have respect for wherever you are right now. You might be in a high-rise city with high crime and high poverty, and you might be on the other side of town. You might be on a dirt road, you might live on a dirt road near a shanty town. Okay, no matter where you go, there is always opportunity for those who want it, who are hungry, who are humble enough to learn. And if you are in that type of situation, then who connect themselves, again, this is a part of the banquet table, or maybe I should say your friends, your companions who are also eating at that banquet table, you need to invite yourself to the banquet table. You don't need to wait for an invitation. Like

You don't need to wait for an invitation. Like, if you live on this Earth, if you were a son or daughter of God, you got an invitation. Congratulations, you got an invitation to the banquet table. And speaking as one who, again, I have so much respect for my first company that I spent nearly a decade working and learning. But in a sense, in a sense, it wasn't their fault, wasn't my fault. It was just part of how the system works. I was kind of like tapping the little button and getting my pellet, right? Tapping the button and getting, you know, my salary or my wage. And like, if I wanted more, then I would tap more, and it me, I had to, I had to, I had to work more hours. This comes back to Rich Dad, Poor Dad and running around in that rat race, or as I always explain it, into that wheel. If you've ever seen that wheel, the little rat will get on a wheel, and then it'll just run and run and run and run and go. And as soon as you stop, you stop getting pellets, you stop being paid. And again, pellets were fine for me, man, they were fine for me, because I couldn't see out of where I was. Interestingly enough, my mentor was the entrepreneur who founded that billion-dollar company, right? But I couldn't see myself getting out, being worthy of, or being capable of, or envisioning myself in that situation. And I just said, Listen, there is a banquet table, there is an abundant banquet table, and it doesn't matter where you are right now, you can find that table. And maybe it means you're going to need to change who you spend your time with learning from, pardon me, asking questions. You know, there's the old adage that you are, you basically are going to be the average of the five people that you hang around with the most. Right? And I would put an additional space on it because you have so many facets of your life.

So, you know, sometimes I think people think, Well, so I've got to ditch my family, you know, because my family, my family maybe economically, they don't have desires, they're not hungry, they don't want to change, they're not ambitious. Does that mean I need to disown my family in order to go be an entrepreneur? And I'm gonna say, No, no, you don't need to. But you do need to make some changes. So, like, I think about it this way, you have various compartments of your life or various circles in your life, various inner circles. So, when it comes to business, if you're hanging around your family and they don't have the business mindset, then you need to create a circle, and you need to find people that you want to emulate, and they need to be in that circle, and you need to learn from them, you need to spend time with them. Now, maybe you don't even know them. Maybe you're going to spend time with them by reading their books or by following their YouTube channel or by stalking them on every piece of content that they put out in the social, right? That works as well, because you're bringing them into your circle. When it comes to your business mindset, well, you could do the same for your spiritual mindset, right? Like, not all of the people that I have respected in business over the years have been on a spiritual plane that I wanted to emulate, right? Like, they had certain gifts in business or in confidence or in speaking or in coaching or in startup, but maybe they weren't living the kind of life that I wanted to be. Guess what, you get to pick it. It's like a stained glass window, there are different colors and different parts, different panes of that window. Guess what you get when it comes to business? Put yourself, if you want to do something more financially, find those five people, follow those people that are in that section of your life. At the same time, you can find the section of spiritually-minded people that you want to emulate. And every once in a while, you know, or family relationship, right? And every once in a while, what you might find is there one of those people, like, has it together in so many of those areas, in multiple areas, right? Their spirituality and their health. Right? How many people are successful in business, but they sacrifice their health to get there, and then they can't enjoy the time and the freedom and the money? Like, I want to live the complete freedom life, AJ. I want the time, of course. I want the finances and the money, the resources. I want the health. I want the personal development and the growth, the who I am. And I want to keep and grow my family while I do all that. Like, I'm not willing to sacrifice any one of those, you know, for my family. So, find the people who are executing in those areas and learn from them, even if they don't do everything. They don't have to be a composite view of every single thing that you want.

Host AJ: Adaptability is key for any aspiring entrepreneur. You have to be willing to learn, grow, and evolve your approach over time. One powerful strategy is to carefully choose a few people you truly admire, whether successful founders, industry leaders, or mentors, rather than trying to emulate any single person exactly. Focus on effectively picking the values, skills, and mindsets that resonate most with you and your own vision. Like, if you have five role models you look up to, that means you have five different sources to draw inspiration and lessons from. Pick and choose the specific attributes that you feel would be most beneficial to cultivate in yourself. Maybe one person exemplifies an unrelenting drive and tenacity you want to emulate. Another might demonstrate a nurturing leadership style you admire. By curating the best qualities from multiple influencers, you can build a well-rounded set of competencies to support your entrepreneurial journey. The key is adaptability. Be discerning about what you absorb and make your own. Don't feel like you have to adopt someone's approach wholesale. Instead, thoughtfully select the elements that truly align with your personality, goals, and the unique path you want to carve out. That flexibility and self-awareness will serve you well as an entrepreneur navigating an ever-changing landscape.

Guest: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, we talk about five, the number five. You start adding up, Well, I need to go find five spiritual mentors and five business mentors and five... That's a lot. Start with one, right? Start with one. But what I can say is this: if you, wherever you are right now, and wherever I am right now, like Stephanie and I, again, we're just paying coaches right now, big-time money, because we're jumping into this media approach, right? We launch our own podcast, a self-care for women podcast, and we're really showing up, and we're putting together a media team to work on our social and to create videos and tell stories. Right? We've never had to do that before, frankly, in our business. And so we're learning, we're green again, but we're putting those types of people who are ahead of us in that game in our circle. And what you need to make sure is that you are getting more messages from that circle than you are from the negative side of things, do you know what I'm saying? It's like you can't get this little tiny message of I want to go be successful, and then come home or be in an environment where you're getting 500 times more messages saying, That's stupid, that's not good, you're not capable, you're not enough. Why would you do that? Our family's never done that, right? You have to be able to control the stage in your life. And so you may need, you get to write this script, like you're Shakespeare, right? You're Shakespeare, you're the bard, right? You're the creator of this story. And you may need to write the script so that some of those people in your life, right, it might be a spouse, even, you know, but it might be family that you truly love and want to help and bless, but you can't help and bless them to the full extent if you don't follow those passions and dreams that God put inside of you. So you might have to put them on the side of the stage, AJ, and bring in main actors, right? Financial advisor, financial coaches to write the play, the story, the epic hero's journey of your life.

Host AJ: Let's talk about the trifecta of 100% freedom - freedom of money, time, and health - something you've really emphasized as fundamental to entrepreneurial fulfillment. What is it about those three elements that you see as so crucial, and how have you personally worked to achieve that level of freedom in your own life?

That's a wonderful question, thanks for asking, because as soon as you mentioned the trifecta, I started getting, like, hot and sweaty, because it just motivates me. And in part, I think was because, again, I didn't come pre-packaged that way. I was willing just to accept kind of what was given to me or what was available or what I thought I deserved. So you go make a lot of money, and I know so many entrepreneurs. I have a dear friend who is a custom general contractor, builds projects, and he puts it this way: He put in 25, 30 years running their own company very successfully, and this is what it was able to provide him. He says, I was able to provide an incredible lifestyle for my wife and kids. In other words, he made great money, but he was up at 5:00 AM and home after dark. That's a sacrifice, and he was willing to make that sacrifice. You know, but what he realizes is, now looking back on that career, that, Hey, you know, I had a great career, but I didn't have time. I didn't have the freedom of time to go participate in those family activities. He didn't get to raise those kids as much as he would have liked to. Right? And he and I have known each other for almost a decade now, and we've worked with him and his wife, actually. We started with his wife, a woman entrepreneur, and they, in I think two years, they built a health, home health, not home health, but a home-based entrepreneurial business in the health and wellness field, that's where we have our expertise. And they were able to create a leveraged income, working this part-time as a side hustle and growing it, right? Start small, plant the seed, and take care of it every day and build it, you know, to speak in construction terms, brick by brick by brick, not wall by wall, not building by building, but brick by brick by brick. And in two years, they had a leveraged, like a residual income, like I'm all about passive income, residual income, recurring income. That's what I love about business. Right? They were able to build that in two years to be equivalent to more than the passive income that was coming from their retirement account after 30 years of running a successful general contractor business. But so now, guess what, he has the time. He has the time, and he's like, Wow, I'm now living and getting to invest in my grandchildren and have the type of lifestyle that my wife had for my entire career.

So I'm like, listen, if you want to go make a lot of money, like, I have zero desire, AJ, zero desire to get, you know, head-hunted. I told you I was unemployable. Like, you could not, you could not hire me right now and say, I want you to come run a $500 million, a billion-dollar company for me, a two-billion-dollar company, and we're gonna pay you, you know, $5 million a year in salary plus bonuses. You couldn't. I wouldn't do that, because here's what, AJ, I know that if you want to pay me to be your CEO, and you don't, even if you weren't going to pay me that much money, you know, most CEOs don't make $5 million, maybe you're gonna, I'm gonna make $150,000 or $200,000 or $300,000 a year. I know what you're going to require me to do. Like, you're not gonna let me work 40 hours a week to do that, right? You're not gonna let me be home every day and eat lunch with my two youngest daughters who are eight and six. Right? You're not going to let me walk out of my home office here, walk down to my horse, my horse barn in the middle of the day and ride horses. Like, I get to choose, right? You're not gonna let me hop in my Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, our motor home, and take off and do a road trip around the country for a month. Like, if I work for somebody else and I'm making money, and even most entrepreneurs fall into what they call the E-Myth. There's a great book from 25 years ago by Michael Gerber called the E-Myth. I read it more than three times now. Yes, love that, love that. But that was one of the, you know, I'll jump back to that story. You know, I said I hated reading after I read that first book, and I had, and I got hungry. I became a voracious, a voracious leader in the world of business, a reader, pardon me, the world of business, finance, history of finance, entrepreneurship, home business, you know, mindset. Like, I ate, I read everything, I gobbled up those books. But anyway, if you don't have that freedom, like, why are you making the money? It doesn't make sense to me. And then you have so many people who, you know, maybe they've created a business system, maybe they're making a lot of money, maybe they have free time. I generally find that entrepreneurs, unless they structure that, unless they go in with this mindset, they become slaves to their business. They're actually still on that rat, that hamster wheel, they're still running in the wheel, because they're the most important employee in their business.

And our message to entrepreneurs, and the women entrepreneurs, of course, that we work with around the world, is, What if you could build a business that was a wheel? Because if it's a business, you gotta have a wheel, the wheel's gotta turn, right? The flywheel, it's gotta turn. And as the business, as the wheel turns, money is made, people get paid, people get products, people get paid, people make money. Well, what if you could build a business where you didn't have to jump into the wheel and run to make that? That means that you have to build a system. Exactly, exactly. We call it, I call it, we're in the middle of a book project, I don't know when it's going to come out, I've been in the middle of this book project for like seven years, so I'm just gonna level you. Looking forward to, you'll need, you'll need to request this, I need to get this to you, and you can share it with your readers. I call it the three wheels, but it's a diagram of the rat race. You know, wheel number one is employee, running in the wheel, getting paid from somebody else. Wheel number two is you as a small business owner, running in the wheel, maybe making more money, but you can't get out of that wheel because if you do, the whole thing will crumble. Right? And wheel number three is, and it's a diagram, and the owner, you are not in the wheel. You got a little tool belt on, and your job is simply to build the wheel, right? To build the wheel. And that's what we teach women all around the world. I don't go, and this is what I love about my style of entrepreneurship, they're many styles to build a system, but I've had entrepreneurial businesses in the clothing and design industry, retail, wholesale, where we went out and hired employees, right? And they were part of the system, and that was great. But as we shifted more and more and more, and seeing what people really need, we said, Well, what if we could build that system again? Don't get in the wheel. I'm gonna send you this, I'm gonna send you this PDF, it's gonna be part, it's part of the book, okay? But this economic engine, your job is to build an economic engine. What if we could build an economic engine without hiring employees? What if our economic engine could be helping a thousand women entrepreneurs around the world who were also building their economic engine? Right? So there was a product or service that the end-line consumer was getting, there was value, but none of these women worked for me. I didn't have a payroll, I wasn't paying them as employees, because if I'm paying them as an employee, guess what can they get what I have? No. What if I could give them, offer them, as much freedom as I had? That, to me, that was the ultimate entrepreneurial offer. And what if you could, again, you'd had your time, and you could make the money that you needed, and everybody needs a different amount of money, too. Like, I love, you know, Gary V, Chuck, right? Gary V, and Gary V is always talking about it. I really appreciate it. He's like, Listen, you don't, maybe you don't need to go make a hundred million dollars and buy the New York Jets, the National Football League franchise. Right? He wants to buy the Jets franchise, that's a big goal of his. But he said this over and over and over, How many people get up, they go

How many people get up, they go build a business, they make a ton of money, they wear their designer clothes, they drive, you know, an incredible car, they wreck their lives, they don't have health, and they're miserable? Right, that doesn't make sense, and they lose their health. Like, I, like, you have to have your health. If you don't, health is wealth. It is freedom of time, freedom of finance, money, and freedom of health. Wow, can you, can you imagine, can you imagine how fulfilling that type of life is?

Host AJ: Yeah, oh, that's such a powerful point you raise, Seth. The idea of having a well-designed engine at the core of your business that's absolutely crucial for true entrepreneurial freedom and scalability. When you look at so many entrepreneurs out there, they find themselves stuck in this endless loop where they can never truly step away from their business. The moment they try to take a step back, the whole thing starts to crumble because they haven't put the necessary systems and processes in place to keep things running smoothly without their constant direct involvement.

Host AJ: That speaks to a fundamental flaw in how they've structured their business model, where they've essentially become the main factor of success rather than having built something truly scalable. And as you mentioned, that's just not a sustainable or fulfilling path for an entrepreneur who's seeking true freedom. The most successful founders I know have prioritized developing that core engine - the operational framework, the team, the workflows, the automation - that allows their business to hum along even when they're not there. That's what gives them the ability to step away, whether it's to take a vacation, pursue a passion project, or work on higher-level strategy. Without that foundational engine in place, entrepreneurs end up perpetually trapped, unable to ever fully disengage from the day-to-day grind. And as you rightly pointed out, that severely limits the scalability and long-term potential of the business.

Host AJ: So I think your emphasis on cultivating that robust, self-sustaining engine is spot on. It's an essential mindset shift that every ambitious entrepreneur needs to embrace if they want to achieve true freedom - not just freedom of time and money, but the freedom to truly step away and let their business thrive without them.

Guest: That's right, and it again, that's the whole premise of the E-Myth, right? And that is the premise of our three wheels concept. You build an economic engine. Now, again, it's work, no mistaking, building that engine. It's like, think like you, it's greasy, you, you, you're hammering something, you, you break your finger, you know, you're painful, you're like, it is work. But I'm always communicating this to the entrepreneurial entrepreneur that we train around the world. I mean, in the last six months, we've been in, in, in the East, you know, all over the United States, in Nashville, um, in, uh, on the way, way East, us, in, uh, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We have been in, uh, in the Philippines, and in Japan, and in Thailand. Yeah, and I'm telling you, listen, it's going to be work. But can you imagine working on something? You build this engine.

I'm here today, and I tell, I'm here today with you in Tokyo, Japan, or I'm here with you today in Northern Thailand, or I'm here with you in Manila, Philippines, or in poverty-stricken, rural Philippines, where I was teaching business and entrepreneurial success principles, uh, to primarily women. And I said, But can you imagine, like, I'm not here, you're not paying me to be here, I don't charge you to be here. I'm here because I believe that you have the potential to build everything that I have. And so I'm here building my engine, and your part of my engine, but you don't work for me. But if you build your engine, which is just connected to my engine, I get paid, you get paid. And then you flip the switch, you flip the switch on that engine, the engine turns on, it generates power to the wheel, the wheel turns, and if the wheel turns, you get paid. And then, and everybody loves getting paid. But here's the point, what if the engine's running, and you step away from the engine, it keeps running? It's beautiful, it is so incredibly beautiful.

I personally am, I used to have this goal, and I think it was, it was, it was, I don't want to say ego-driven, you know, because it's not like I'm kind of like this bombastic, you know, kind of authoritarian leader, that's not my style. But I think it was driven, maybe, by the hurt part of my child, you know, my child ego, which was, I want to be important, right? I want to be respected. And so I had this idea in my early career of entrepreneurship, after I'd started having the trifecta in my life, it was great, I mean, it was awesome, right? Um, health and, uh, and finances to create wealth, financial wealth, and, um, and time, wow, so much time. I've been able to raise my kids, AJ, I'm just gonna tell you, there's no better thing as a father than to be able to be, to be a, be a present dad. My wife Stephanie and I have 11 kids, okay, 11 children that we get to call ours, and five grandchildren, number six is going to be born, a little girl, here in about six weeks. That's, that's payoff right there, right? But when you talk about success, what is success? Listen, I, if I had to choose, and again, don't limit yourself, stop imposing limits on yourself, think big, think bigger, sooner, right? But if I had to make a choice between my early entrepreneurial goal, I wanta, I want to be the CEO, I want to run a billion-dollar company, I don't want to run a billion-dollar company anymore, you kidding? You know how many headaches there are now? Now, I would be open to, to leading a billion-dollar independent group conglomeration of entrepreneurs who don't work for me, right? I would do that because I, because I get to retain my freedom. But if you had to choose between, say, making, making a, let's put out a nice, decent income, let's put out a hundred thousand dollars, that I mean, that's a high income for a lot of places in the world, so that's like a million dollars for a lot of people. But if I had the choice between making $2 million a year, running another company for somebody else, right, or for myself, and having no time, and, and not being fulfilled, and maybe hurting my health, like, $2 million, no, no, no, $10 million, $1 million a year, but I've got to work 80 to 100 hours a week to do that, or I can make $70,000, $70,000 every year for the next 30 years, because I have an economic engine that pays me, and I can be home. I will tell you, it is not even a choice for me, I don't even have to, I don't even have to think about it, because I would have enough, you know, maybe I wouldn't be buying a Lamborghini, right? I mean, I drive a truck, I drive a pickup truck, anyway, I'm a cowboy, okay? So, so, so maybe that's less than money than I want to make, but the point is this, I would take the whole package of freedom, because there's time freedom has a value, the financial income has a value, and your health has a value. So I have to think of all of those as my payment for my business, not just how much money somebody might pay me to run their company, right? I want the whole thing.

Host AJ: I know many entrepreneurs struggle to find the right balance between being satisfied and grateful for what they have versus always striving for more. What advice would you give them for nurturing that healthy hunger without slipping into discontent or complacency?

Guest: Man, who, who you got right in these questions, man? This is, this is good questions, like, I, this is good stuff. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I, this, this is a humbling question, because I can remember early in my network marketing, pardon me, early my network marketing, direct selling entrepreneurial career, I was probably like, uh, five years in, you know, that's early, five years is early, folks, like if you've been doing this two or three years and you think, Man, I've put it up, no, you know, you're just getting started, right? Uh, I remember I got the biggest check I'd ever gotten to that point in my life, right? And uh, and I went to the bank and cashed this, this one, this check, this month, of over a hundred thousand, that's the most money I'd ever held in my hand, being paid, you know, somebody sent it to me this month, boom, you know, and next month I'm looking forward to another big check, right, um, not from somebody else's, is from my business. And, uh, like, I felt so good. Can you imagine, like, can you imagine this little kid who couldn't sell a chocolate bar to his neighbors, right, uh, you know, who grew up lower middle class, we were taken care of, we, we were always blessed, but, you know, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my hand, you know, I, I struggled with confidence, struggled with my self-identity, um, or, or, or accepting my identity, right? And so to have the success, to be really the first college graduate in my family, and to have this type of success, was tremendous. I was so proud of me, I, I am, I think you ought to be proud of you, you gotta, you have to have self-love. And it was just, it was this huge celebration as I drove and I had this big old smile on my face as I deposited and then my bank account. And do you know what that was like? One of the best days, best days of my entrepreneurial career. As a payoff, the very next day was like the worst day in my entrepreneurial career.

Now, I, I didn't lose the money, nobody stole the money, the bank didn't fail, the money was still there, like, I wait, wait, wait, what's my balance like, right? As soon as became about the money, as soon as, and really the thought was, Who am I? Like, how do I keep this? I went from abundance and you gotta wna, and I'm going to do it, I can, I will, I am, gratitude, hunger, putting in the time, you know, it's about other people serving. Yes, I always had financial goals, don't tell me, like, if I ever tell you, Did it for the money, yeah, I did it for the money, I did it for the money, because I needed the money, you, you needed the money in order to have that financial life, but it wasn't about the money. There's a difference there, there's a nuance. If it ever becomes solely about the money, about protecting the money, man, you lost. And that day was so bad because I had all this doubt and all these demons about, You know, how am I going to protect this, and what if I can't, what if I lose it? And today, I'm like, if I lost everything around me, that would, that would be terrible, by the way, like, that would not be fun. I'm not, I, I mean, you read the story of Job in the Old Testament, like, I do not, I'm not going to invite that into my life. If, you know, if God brings it to me, so be it, the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh, blessed be the name of the Lord.

So my solution, or my answer to you, is gratitude, being rooted in gratitude. Like, I am super ambitious, and I've been super blessed, but I also realize that I am not going to allow the limitations of my current mindset, because I'm AJ, like, I'm limited, like, when I started 24 years ago, I, I be, I quit that company 24 years ago, by the way, to start my first company, okay? So I've been an entrepreneur on my own for 24 years, haven't worked for anybody else. Again, my mindset before that, before that, was about this big, this is what I could see, and everything I experienced was within this mindset, my salary was within this mindset, my personal growth and development was within this mindset. As soon as I expanded my mindset, guess what also could expand my income, everything, right? The car that you drive, the income that you have, the person, the way that you treat people, right? And so I've expanded it, well, maybe I'm here right now, maybe I'm here right now, and you know what, I'm striving to do a couple of things. Number one, I get right with God every day, because He's, like, He's got no limits, okay? So I'm working on expanding my mind, expanding my limitations closer to His expanse. I also hang around people who are here, like, I hang around people, I learn from people, I get coaching from people who are here. And again, never think of myself as a big fish in a small pond, like, I'm just me, I'm a fish, and every single person that I come in contact with day, irrespective of how much money they make, irrespective of the size of their following, irrespective of their beliefs, like, they are equal in every sense to me, right? God is no respecter of persons, and I'm not going to be. So I guess my advice is, stay hungry, because as soon as you get full and you don't wanna, as soon as you stop the whole you gotta wanna, and you think you've arrived, like, there is no arrival, life gets better, but enjoy the ride.

Host AJ: When you face setbacks or difficult periods, what specific strategies or mindset shifts have you used to maintain that unrelenting entrepreneurial drive? How can others cultivate that resilience and determination?

Guest: Wow, uh, this, this is emotional, because I think back to, we've had many successes, but again, I've been told no more than I've ever been told yes, right? I've had experiences in the business world as a young entrepreneur. I remember starting our first successful company with three other partners, and we were in the clothing industry and design, and in the design industry, you know, you see a successful fashion, and so you copy it, right? You copy it, you modify it, but I mean, fashion, fashion is not something you necessarily patent, right? It's something that is fluid, but I remember getting a letter, I remember getting a letter from the CEO or the legal counsel of like one of the big companies in our profession. We were just a tiny little startup, we were nobody, right? We were hungry, and we had the you gotta wanna, and I remember we got this cease and desist legal letter, saying that you are infringing on our copyright fashion, and we're going to sue you, we're going to take you to court, right? And I just remember, I'm just this young entrepreneur, I'm like 25, 5 years old, and I'm thinking, Oh no, is the world crashing down? Right, are we going to be in business tomorrow? And I just think, you take a step back, no, step one, get some awareness and take a step back, because when you look at a problem and it's right in front of you, like that letter to me was literally right in front of my eye, and it's all that I could see, it became every, it became consuming. Number one, there's really are no problems that are consuming like that.

You know, fast forward, by the way, we, we went just fine, it was really nothing, it was nothing. Fast forward, you know, 10 years, and I've just, I've just been on the fastest growth cycle of my business career, a 12, uh, an 18-month startup. I left, I walked away from all of my, I walked away from a business that I built that was paying me, uh, more money than I ever made, residually, residually, AJ, over and over and over. I walked away from, I made the decision in 24 hours, after having a new opportunity fall in my lap, everything lined up. It wasn't a shiny object, too many entrepreneurs, they start following shiny objects, right? You get in, you work hard, you start having some progress, you encounter some struggles, and then you think, How could I do it easier? And you take your eye off the goal, because you're going to go do something else. Yeah, don't do that, don't, you gotta, you gotta ride the horse, you gotta stay on the horse. But I, I built a company five years, and then I saw an opportunity to work with a billionaire closely, and to start a brand new, a brand new brand, and to work with the, the, the at that time, the most famous doctor in the world, and to brand a, a to brand a brand together. And again, I wasn't going to work with him, I was going to be an independent entrepreneur, so I had to go create everything, but I could leverage them.

And I walked away from my business. I literally met with my business partner, and in 24 hours, I said, I'm done. I gifted them the business, I was done, my paycheck was done, like I wasn't going to keep any of it. It was a hard cut. And then, and then I had to start from scratch to build a team, and I wasn't going to get any revenue for 90 days. And I built that for the next 18 - by the way, I built, I built that business in 18 months faster than what I had built in five years. Wow, wow. And then at the end of that 18 months, we hit a wall. We realized that, and without going into detail and to protect anonymity of the players, we realized that the people that I was working with weren't the right people. And if you're not working with the right people, then you got no future, right? And so the whole thing just blew up, it just blew up, lawsuits, you know, and billionaires sitting me down, saying, I'm going to sue you, I'm going to bury you. You know, I've done it before. And I mean, these are the kind of people that can do that. And I got, I got physically sick. Like, I wasn't, I wasn't unhealthy physically, but the emotional burden and the fear and the negativity literally put me into an emotional and physical depression where I was in bed. You look at me like I'm a healthy guy, AJ, right? Like, I mean, I was up this morning at 5:30, I hit the basketball gym for two hours and ran, I came home and I lifted weights and did leg day today, and I will do a yoga session today before I go to bed, because my physical, like, I'm a healthy guy, and I'm pretty much always been a healthy guy. I was physically incapacitated because of emotional burden.

And so the question is, like, what do you do? Number one, you take a big, deep breath, and you breathe, and you step back to evaluate the real situation with perspective. Sure, somebody might bury me, sure, I might lose this business, which I did, you know, eight, you know, after 18 months, I no longer had any revenue, that entire system I had built internationally was, I had to give up, right? Oh, and start over again. Um, that was 15 years ago, by the way. But I breathed, I got perspective, and I started over. And I'm just going to tell you, you have to be willing to do that. You know, you have to be willing to do. I'm on my fourth company now, I'm on my fourth company, and it's not because I hop from one to another, it's just because opportunities present themselves, and you upgrade, you upgrade, you know, from one to another. That's awesome. Then you make a choice to upgrade, and then you know something happens, and it disappears, and then you have to decide, like, what am I gonna do? And I'm gonna say, have some self-compassion, give yourself some grace, okay, because it, it was hard. And I say, breathe, take a step back, go to work. That's not just something you, like, you don't just snap your fingers and get over it, right? It's something you process, it's not an event, it's a process and a journey. But I never stopped doubting that I was worth it, and that what I was fighting for, what, what some people, what Ben Newsome, if you don't know who Ben Newsome is, one of the top five speakers in the world right now, one of the top five mindset coaches in the world, he's got a podcast called The Burn. But he said, Yeah, I Instagram, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was actually on with Ben, I got to talk with Ben just recently on a call, and talk about our podcast, and he's like, Seth, keep doing, like, he's in, how many episodes, six years into it, you know, he's like, Seth, you know, you just published, you know, episode number, you know, eight, dude, you're just starting, keep it going. But it was super encouraging, and that, and is you just keep going. But I will tell you, never, never let the fire go out. The burn, what burn, what is so important to me, what burns in this, in this heart of mine, is that I have a purpose here on this Earth, and some of the gifts that were given to me, and that burn inside, side of me, goes way beyond business. Business for me, AJ, is just a vehicle to accomplish those things. It is a means to the end, it is not the end, it is not the result, it is not the goal. I have a mission in this life to liberate the captive, to liberate the captive and freedom. Right? So that comes, that ties into freedom, that's what I do, that's what I'm passionate about, I'm passionate about coaching it, I'm passionate about building it, right? I'm going to build it, and then let's coach you together, and we're going to build it together, come rain or shine or drought or earthquake or famine, like that's not going to leave me. Like, you put me in a prison somewhere in Siberia, that desire to liberate is not going to leave me, and my chosen vehicle to liberate the captive is business, is the trifecta, and our business, our entrepreneurial business, is these three things: How do we help people build a business economic engine so they can have time? How can they have the money that they want, whatever they want? Like, not every woman entrepreneur wants to make a million dollars, in fact, I can tell you, very few do, most of them want a micro-business, and that's okay, like, that's great, that's awesome, that's 100% how they can fulfill the measure of their creation. And then, thirdly, health. Right? I'm here, and my wife Stephanie, we are here as entrepreneurs, as CEOs, to remind everybody else that you are the CEO of your business, you stoke that fire, and there will be hard times, but what this world needs is more entrepreneurs who have the burn, who want to liberate the captive. And guess what, I was a captive, like, I'm not the hero coming because I had all the answers, I was in prison, I was in prison mentally, and that's why I was willing to take the pellets instead of inviting myself to the banquet table.

Host AJ: You mentioned how some people have had a taste of the banquet table before, but then fallen back to the pellet. What encouragement or advice would you offer to entrepreneurs who have lost that initial spark and hunger? How can they rediscover that fire within?

Guest: What, with the first, the first thing, and again, hard times, like there have been times, I'm, I'm all, I'm talking strong here today, and don't let, you know, keep the burn going, that doesn't mean I don't grieve, that doesn't mean I didn't grieve when I lost that business or I had to walk away from that business, that doesn't mean I don't grieve when I sit, when I sit for a year or two or five or seven, and I don't physically move the needle on our, you know, our top-line revenue, and I think, Wait a second, we got to be 10x, right, Grant Cardone, we got to be 10x in our business. I'm a failure because I'm just maintaining awesomeness, I'm not multiplying awesomeness, right? I'm maintaining a $50-60 million business, I haven't multiplied that, I haven't scaled it beyond that. Well, guess what that means, it just means that I've got more lessons to learn, right?

Now, there's a great, one of my favorite business books of all time is a book called Good to Great. Okay, Good to Great, and Ben Collins, okay, red cover. And I won't go through the premise of the book, but I will highlight that the base premise is, why did some of these public companies, that were in normal markets, go from average and mediocre to great, while other comparison companies in the same markets, with the same opportunities, never make the leap, or make the jump, but couldn't sustain it? That's what the book's about, it's a fascinating book, it's 20 years old, okay, 20-25 years old. But one of those has to do with leadership, and keep in mind, you're the CEO of your business, guess who's the leader? Like, you're the leader, like, the organization is going to follow your leadership, your culture, and you might be a solopreneur and you're the only one, but still, your organization is going to follow you.

And in this book, it talks about what they call level five leadership, but getting over your ego, being a servant leader, being an organizational leader. And I remember Darwin Smith, Darwin Smith was the CEO or became the CEO of Kimberly-Clark, which was a paper goods company, okay, back in the day, and this is, you know, back in the '80s and '90s. And he, he was, I think he was an attorney originally, and legal counsel, and then he worked his way up, you know, they groomed him and mentored him, and he was then appointed as CEO of this public company. And he was what you'd call a level five leader. And he said this, he was not your, your bravado, kind of like coming in like King Kong leader, he was not your Superman type of a leader, he was more of a kind of a traditional, plotting, planning leader, right, not your maybe your charismatic kind of a guy. He was about systems and about organization, and what leaders, leaders aren't the best talkers necessarily, just because you talk great doesn't make you a leader. Leaders are about empowering, I shouldn't say empowering, but because people already have the power, but they're about organizing so that people are empowered, right? And he said this, and I think this is what this is one of the best lines from this book, and it's really affected me over my career. He said, I never stopped trying to be capable of the role that I was asked to fill. I never stopped trying to be worthy of the business. Like, he was the CEO, and he didn't say, Listen, everybody, here's what we're gonna do. Right? It was like, he was always learning, always searching, always hungry to learn whatever he needed to learn to make that contribution.

And so I think that's my message for those of us who have been at the banquet table, and then maybe, maybe our chair broke, and we find all of a sudden our chair breaks, and we find ourselves flat on our behinds, with food all over our face or our clothes. Hey, never stop trying to be worthy of what you want to accomplish, right? In other words, you have big shoes to fill, and there's only one that, and the only way to do that is to grow into it. Keep that fire burning. If it didn't work out this last time, what, not why did this happen to me, but what am I going to learn from this? What am I going to do with this? We learn way more from our failures than we ever do from our successes. Our character is forged in the hot coals of adversity and the nos that we told, and the rejection, and the doubt, and the mockery, than it ever is in the ring. It is, it is, you know, as was it Muhammad Ali, or you one of the greats, said, You know, it's not champions are never created in the ring. Champions aren't created at the banquet table. Right, AJ? You weren't invited there because you, you're not at the banquet table, you're not created at the banquet table. It's what you did out in the world, in the arena, in the field, in the game, in the company, in the pitch. Your the banquet table was the reward. It has nothing to do with who you really are. Champions are made at 5:30 a.m. when you've got to get in and go to the training, because everybody else is actually asleep.

Host AJ: Well, there you have it, folks, an incredibly insightful and inspiring conversation with Seth. I'm truly grateful that he took the time to share his personal journey and the hard-earned wisdom he's gained as an entrepreneur.

Guest: I'm honored, I'm honored to be able to share a stage with you and to be invited here. I'm excited to watch your journey as you continue to create your media company, as you bless entrepreneurs and communicate as you know, you find your trifecta, and as you perfect that trifecta. And I'm happy to be a part of your journey. I'm honored to be part of your journey. Nobody does this alone.

And there are a million, a million onliners, there are a million little, little inputs that we have from people and from coaches and from mentors and from competitors and from colleagues and from supporters and cheerleaders. And every one of those, every episode matters, every person matters. So I just, I thank you for allowing me to share some of my heart, my belief, and put some of my passion, you know, some of my passion and my burn, and to transfer that to somebody else. It wasn't created, it was passed.

Host AJ: Seth's unwavering commitment to achieving that trifecta of freedom - financial, time, and health freedom - is so refreshing and motivating. I love how he emphasizes the importance of always maintaining that healthy hunger to reach for more, without slipping into discontent or complacency. It's a fine balance, but one that is so crucial for long-term entrepreneurial fulfillment.

Host AJ: And his advice on rediscovering your inner spark, even after facing setbacks, is just phenomenal. The idea of not just settling for the pellet when you know the banquet table of abundance is possible - that's the kind of mindset that I hope all of our listeners will take to heart.

Host AJ: Thank you again, Seth, for being so generous with your time and for sharing your entrepreneurial journey with such passion and authenticity. I have no doubt that your words will deeply resonate with and inspire our audience.

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watch the full Interview: YouTube