Turn Adversity into an Asset with Lewis Raymond Taylor: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation, JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by HighLevel, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. And on today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how to turn adversity into an asset and to drop these value bombs I brought to Lewis Raymond Taylor and to EO Fire Studios. Lewis is a Forbes featured entrepreneur and a$25 million business owner who overcame abuse, addiction, mental illness, and prison to transform his life and success. and today we talk about how at times you have to make ruthless decisions. We talk about how you need to see every setback of something that happened for you, not to you, a lesson you can use to help others and oh, so much more.

0:37John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Lewis and our sponsors. Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer and need more quality leads, Nexus Install is designed for you. We'll book you 8 to 20 qualified calls each month, then train you to run the system yourself. Email my team at john at eofire.com to learn more and see if Nexus is the right fit for you. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevellfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

1:17John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevellfire.com. Highlevellfire.com. Lewis, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up? What's up, guys? Something about becoming successful that most people disagree with. I have to find out if I disagree with it, but I think at times you have to be pretty ruthless with decisions. I think you need to take immediate action sometimes. Sometimes it can seem cold, emotionless. And on the outside in, I've been criticized before for maybe being a little bit harsh with people, maybe staff, maybe suppliers.

2:01But if you want to work fast and you want to get results quickly, sometimes you've got to be pretty ruthless. So that's a bit of a controversial one, but let's start with that on a bang.

2:12John Lee Dumas:Ruthless and Fire Nation. That's what we're talking about here today. In a way, we're talking about turning adversity into an asset. and you need a little ruthlessness to do just that. But before we dive into something, I want to go a little off topic just because every now and then I get a little hooked into shows. Now, being from England, are you into football at all? I'm not actually. I'm probably one of the rare 1 % that has never watched a football game. Hey, not everybody likes them. I was going to say, if you like football, there's a show called We Are Wrexham, which is actually in Wales, but it's about a Wales football club that gets bought by these two Americans and this is an actual real documentary, Ryan Reynolds and some other guy and they're actually trying to turn this team around and I was like, if you haven't watched it yet, you have to watch it He does everything, Ryan Reynolds, doesn't he?

3:08John Lee Dumas:Doesn't he do everything? That Deadpool guy I swear to God, Jin He's got advertising companies and influencers and fucking actors So he's a smart man. I need to learn from him. Yeah, he's got a lot of things going on. So we're talking about turning adversity into an asset. And I want to talk about your past life because you've had to use adversity to create a valuable asset. Talk about that. When I was a young boy, my dad was an alcoholic. He'd put me down a lot, call me a buffoon, tell me I never amount to anything, call me bad. And that stuck with me. And then I started to rebel. It's a pretty cliche story.

3:43but then I got involved with things like shoplifting and lighting fires and criminal damage and stuff like that and I was getting arrested from the age of 13. I was also actually missed out a stage. When I was 11 years old, I got into a bit of acting and was sexually abused by a guy there. 14, I had an antisocial behavior order, which is an ASBO in the UK. I don't know if you know what that is, but that's basically when you're banned from the local area as a kid for causing too much crime. 15 I was expelled from school 18 I was in a young offenders institution and by this point I was taking drink and well not just taking drink becoming an alcoholic cocaine addict and becoming very violent because of all the abuse that I'd suffered physical abuse from my dad as well always felt very powerless and when I got a bit older and a bit bigger and started drinking alcohol and taking a bit of cocaine, I suddenly felt like I had a bit of power.

4:43And there was this one night where I threw a punch for the first time and won the fight and just felt like a superhuman. And that took my life down the complete wrong path because I was always craving the love from my dad, which I didn't get. And I found that in kind of significance. I was looking for significance. I couldn't get it. So I found it kind of in fighting and I'm not talking about your criminal kind of gangster stuff I'm talking about you're going out drinking on a night out and you know getting into bar fights but I was doing it every week sometimes twice in one night you know there'd be times where I would uh get into a fight get my shirt ripped off and then go find a homeless guy but give him some money for his t-shirt so I can get back into the club and have another fight like things were chaotic during this time I was selling drugs I I had my jaw broken.

5:34I tore my gullet. My teeth knocked out. I mean, slashed with a knife. The story goes on and on and on. I was having epileptic seizures. I was then diagnosed with three different mental health diagnoses. One was antisocial personality disorder, which is a psychopath, which is an interesting topic, given the thing that I mentioned at the beginning. Bipolar type 2, an emotionally unstable personality disorder. And they described me with antipsychotic medication. anyway things got worse my dad got cancer I walked in found him dead and I think that's about as bad as it got until I was 24 years old and at this point I was a complete drug addict complete alcoholic spending three four days in a row without eating or sleeping or drinking water and just taking drugs in a dingy flat which is an apartment in America so it's just got translated for you guys and um i i hit a guy in a taxi queue and to this day when i think about that guy all i can see and this is an excuse but this is the honest truth all i can see is my dad's face because i know this guy triggered me he was pointing in my face shouting and and i punched him and he hit his head on the curb and i was in a coma for three days and i was sentenced to prison for the third time but this time for gbh and which is called grievous bodily harm uh in the uk i don't think in america but it's uh one down from basically attempted murder or manslaughter or so i spent time in prison and had this realization that uh well i'd say i mean we have got yeah we've got time for i'll quickly tell you the the turnaround

7:15John Lee Dumas:moments no we love the turnaround moments let's hear that brother yeah so i spoke to uh my mom on the phone and I said you know what people said about me what's going on you know I spoke to her on the prison you know pay phone and she said oh you're in the front page of the paper a few different ones one for being a thug one for being boorish and violent didn't even know what boorish meant but apparently they were referring to me as a pig um but they said oh your friend posted a picture of you uh the day that you were sentenced outside the courtroom but there was another picture next to it of you outside the same courtroom seven years before so it was two pictures side by side of me looking exactly the same the same court but seven years apart and above it he'd written the caption nothing changes and that was what it was that's what got me i was like you know what it's actually right nothing has changed in those seven years like and i went back to my prison cell and as cliche as it sounds i literally looked at myself in the mirror which was actually a scratched off piece of metal they didn't have mirrors in prison it's a scratchy metal that you can just about see your reflection in and um i realized for the first time i needed to stop blaming everything and everyone around me for why my life was so difficult and start to take responsibility and and realize that if i needed my life to change i needed to change myself now i know of course for everybody watching this year entrepreneurs you're into mindset, that is, of course, obvious to you.

8:43But for some reason, I'd never got that. I tried to change maybe a few things around me, but I'd never once looked at myself and thought, hang on a minute, maybe you're to blame for this. Maybe it's your responsibility. Maybe you're the problem, but also at the same time, maybe you're the solution to this. And yeah, that was the breakthrough moment. And I can tell you what went on from there, but I'm sure you're dying to say something at this point because I've been there talking for quite a bit now.

9:08John Lee Dumas:I just love that you had that realization that like you, yes, were the problem, but you also had the power to be the solution. And that fire nation is such a huge takeaway here. And I think that's what a lot of people can relate to because everybody that's listening right now, they've all had struggles in their life. You've had struggles. I mean, they were different kinds of struggles, Lewis, but other people have had other types of struggles. So you can't like discount and weigh heavier or lighter other people's struggles and your own struggles against each other. I mean, we've all gone through our stuff.

9:39John Lee Dumas:But guess what? You're here, you're listening to Entrepreneurs on Fire right now, Fire Nation. So you are down that path of saying, I'm looking for solutions at the very least. So what I want to talk about, Lewis, is your transformation. Now that you had that aha moment, you had that revelation, talk about the transformation process. Yeah. So I was lucky, lucky and unlucky, because I was an addict through and through. Like I was addicted to drugs, alcohol, violence, gambling, sex, anything that you can become, anything that can give me that little edge, you know, to make me feel a little bit better.

10:13Because obviously I was in a bit quite a dark place, you know, I would latch on to. So I was very addictive. And luckily I became addicted to changing my life. I became quite obsessive with the thought of it and took it quite, you know, seriously. So first of all, it started small. I was actually in prison. I started to engage with counselors. I went into maths and English department, started my education from scratch because I was expelled from school. I got my level two, my level one and two functional skills, which is the equivalent of a 10 year old education. But it got me started, went to the gym and then I enrolled into this wrapped program, which is rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust.

10:54It was only six weeks, but it was basically an opportunity to start sharing, being in a room of people that kind of have similar scenarios and listening to some personal development bits. And I heard some of it and I was like, oh, my God, there's some truth in this. You know, before I thought it was a load of mumbo jumbo. I'm not sure if you heard the expression or not, but I thought it was a little rubbish or garbage, as you may say. but I just thought it was like I don't know some magic spiritual you know woo woo stuff that never is not going to help someone like me that's for sure but I listened to it I thought that makes sense you know and then I started to notice little changes in myself and that kind of you know made me want to do more and more and more and I spoke to the um the tutor that was in prison and I said

11:41John Lee Dumas:to her do you ever think I could go to university and I'll never forget like the certainty and the conviction when she looked at me and she was just like of course you can and that was the first time anyone had ever believed in me you know and I needed someone to believe in me before I could believe in myself so I set myself this goal to go to uni but I knew that I couldn't do it in the situation I was in so I applied for a six months fully intensive rehabilitation outside of prison so I served my time in prison and they picked me up from the gates and they took me to rehab and I thought they were going to teach me how to not drink and not take drugs.

12:19They didn't even mention that. They literally broke me down and taught me about who I am and rebuilt me and I walked out of that place a new man. And that's the first part of my transformation anyway.

12:30John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, sometimes it just takes that one person, that one person to believe in you. Or in your case, I kind of even look back to that one person who wasn't even necessarily meaning to do it, but he just posted some things never changed and that even flipped the light switch for you. So I mean, one person, one moment, you just never, never know. And we have so much more to talk about around all these topics when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom. That is where High Level comes in. High Level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform.

13:06John Lee Dumas:Website builder and hosting, funnel and landing pages, email marketing, automation and workflows, calendar booking, payments and subscriptions, even course and membership hosting. Everything works together seamlessly. Plus, award-winning 24-7 support so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack. A 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 50-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50-days-to-something execution roadmap, and more.

13:40John Lee Dumas:Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer, but you are not getting enough quality sales calls on the calendar, Nexus Install is exactly what you need. This is a custom LinkedIn client acquisition system built to help you connect with the right prospects, start real conversations, and turn those conversations into booked calls. Here is what makes it different. We do not just hand you a bunch of theory and tell you, good luck. We build the system with you. Dial in your audience, sharpen the messaging, run the outreach, and aim to book you 8 to 20 qualified calls each month.

14:21John Lee Dumas:Then, once the system is proven and installed, we train you on how to run it yourself so you are not dependent on another agency forever. If you have a strong offer, a clear result, and are ready for more quality conversations with real prospects, email my team at john at eofire.com. And then we'll set up a call to see if Nexus install is the right fit for you. Simple, focused and built for predictable, long-term quality lead flow. So Lewis, you really opened up. You talked to us about your past, about that transformation. I kind of want to talk about present day for a little bit here now, because you slog through it all.

14:57John Lee Dumas:You made it happen. And of course, for Fire Nation, that wants to learn even more details of what you have going on pre-interview, You and I were talking about this 14-hour process you were going through for your documentary. So we will talk about that. But what is your life like now? And what specifically have you achieved in business and lifestyle? Let's break down those achievements. Completed the rehab, and I went to drug and alcohol meetings. And there was a guy that came in, and he was fresh off the streets. And he asked me for help. And I thought, what are you asking me for help for? What do you think I can?

15:27You know, I'm a drug addict as well. You know, I can't help you. and then i thought all right okay hang on a minute there's some flyers on the table over there leaflets you can get a drink a cup of tea over there and you can have a cigarette break halfway through and then i thought hang on a minute yeah i'll just help that guy and then i had this realization that i could help people even though i wasn't like quite ready myself and it felt good so i i did this really weird thing where i just looked online for people that looked like they were depressed or miserable and i asked them to come meet me for coffee and i just started to share some of the things I learned in rehab and learned on my own personal journey of getting myself clean and sober and obviously you know reducing that violence and breaking down that trauma and all those things and I started to blow their their minds you know they would they were blown away with what I was sharing and then that created the epiphany of okay I could become a become a life coach I didn't even know what one was at the time but I googled it and found it and then to try and speed this up a little bit for some reason I realized that I had a bit of a gift for business because fast forward three years and we built a 25 million dollar coaching business and we have 80 staff covering 71 countries around the world uh we're investing into virtual reality and artificial intelligence and uh yeah things are going very very well i live in bali i'm about to get married next month oh my dreams in barcelona and thank you very much yeah we've been together three years we actually met she was one of my customers so it was a perfect scenario she paid me first then we then we ended up getting together but um we we met i was speaking at an event in barcelona she was from miami i was from england and uh she had a she was studying for a master's degree and she had a job and a family and i said don't you know i met her at this event and i said you know within three days i knew she was the girl for me i said stay with me i said let's travel the world together and it took a bit of persuading especially a south American family because she's from Venezuela, begging her to come home, absolutely crying their eyes out one by one over the phone, but managed to use my salesmanship to win this one over.

17:37And we traveled the world and we've been together ever since.

17:40John Lee Dumas:Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, that is such a fascinating story. And guess what? It started with one decision, with one decision that, hey, I am going to better myself in some way, somehow. And you've built a unique business, Lewis. Like that's one thing that I have to say about you. It's unique. Tell us about that uniqueness. So we're the world's first coaching academy to deliver things in virtual reality and artificial intelligence. So we've actually got an entire coaching galaxy, we call it, where you can have lecturers that are avatars. You can have an AI simulation avatar that can actually test your skills as a coach.

18:18Because the main thing we do is we qualify and accredit coaches. So we actually help people become coaches. but we then help them build the business and we do it in four key areas on our app called coach app connect grow meet exchange going into a bit of a sales pitch here but oh well connect is our social media platform and we've got thousands of people from all over the world uh grow is our e-learning products and we have uh coach flicks which is our subscription just like netflix with coaching we've got our digital products but we've also got the virtual reality um meat is our co-working spaces that we have around the world our first one opened in bali where you can um co-work or you can go to a workshop or you can have dinner or cocktails and you can even get coach training there and we're about to open one in london and then miami and also chen mai in thailand and exchange is the final feature where we have a marketplace where coaches can actually you know sell their coaching services um and people can find a coach on that platform so yeah we're taking an ed tech approach to this and yeah really immersing ourself within the new technology that's available i mean it's insane we can put people we can program to put people in a room with their younger self or their older self or even put people at their funeral so they can contemplate how they want to be remembered in this world the technology that's available right now is revolutionizing the coaching industry.

19:46And we're very, very proud to be at the forefront of it.

19:49John Lee Dumas:And now on that note, you're actually focused specifically on a crowdfunding project at this time. Tell us more about that. Yeah. So very simply, we've, if you look at most crowdfunding platforms, um, you'll notice that, um, they're an idea. So they have this great idea and they need some money to get it off the ground. Whereas we are profitable. Um, we make millions of dollars per year and profitable, the infrastructure is in place and we're just looking for to grow and there's three things that we want to uh get money for traffic teams and technology traffic i.e more marketing spend we get an 8.28 times return on ad spend so we just need to put more money through the front end teams more team players strategic players like marketing director and chief tech technical officers and people that can really like take us to the next level and uh technology so really double downing uh double downing is that a word but doubling down on um on our app so that we can really you know enhance the vr and enhance the features and make it you know the world's best platform for coaching and we're crowdfunding so you can invest um on europe's leading crowdfunding platform um from as little as 10 pounds um all the way up to um as much as you like actually people some people put in 50 grand but we've got a link to register and all you do is you put your name and email in and then explain to you a little bit about what we do over some emails and then when the crowdfund goes live which isn't exactly yet um you'll get a notification and some people might want to invest some money based on uh you know the growth that we've had so yes a very exciting time where we can actually you know step out of hustle mode and step into real growth scale up stage and we want people to join us on that mission we've got 100 year on year growth so it's a good investment and looking for people to become some ambassadors for the company and become shareholders.

21:47John Lee Dumas:Lewis, you've come a long way in not that long of a period of time. And I know you're an inspiration for so many people, Fire Nation included. Take a step back real quick. Give us the one big takeaway that you would want our listeners to get from your life story. What is that one thing from what we've talked about here today that you really want to make sure our listeners remember? every bad thing that's ever happened to you try not to see it as happening to you see it's happening for you you know as good as you can handle it you know and these are lessons this is resilience these are skills that you can use to help other people i was somebody that i thought had no chance you know but i've been able to impact now millions of people's lives through the ripple effect of the work that i've done and all that all that was was a simple shift of perspective from, you know what, I'm not going to allow this stuff to hold me back.

22:39And I'm actually going to use it as leverage and use it as a resource to help other people. So if you're sitting there thinking you've got nothing to offer, think about all those hard times because they were lessons and use them. And if everybody did that, the world would be a better place.

22:54John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've hanging out with LRT and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com type Lewis in the search bar and the show notes page will pop up with links to everything. And Lewis, give us your final call to action. What do you want Fire Nation to do when they leave this interview as far as supporting your crowdfunding, connecting with you? What does that look like? Well, you know what, guys, come and check me out on Instagram, Lewis Raymond Taylor. That's L-E-W-I-S-R-A-Y-M-O-N-D-T-A-Y-L-O-R. And I'd love to just connect with new people.

23:32That's what I love. I always answer messages. I always reshare posts. Just let me know what you thought of this episode. I'd love to connect with people. But if you want to invest, even if it's 10 pounds, or even if it's$100 ,000, sorry, I forgot you guys are in the dollars. It's an international company. It's all good. Go to TCMcrowdfund.com. And that stands for the Coaching Masters. That's our company. and this is a short link that we've created to make it easy. That's www.tcm.com. That's tangocharlymikecrowdfund.com. Put your name and email in and watch a four-minute video that's on there and see what you think.

24:09And I'd love to connect with some of you and I'd even more love it if we could have some of you guys as our future business partners.

24:17John Lee Dumas:And hey, Lewis, we have a massive following in the UK. So I'm sure so many listeners right now are just thrilled peachy with all of these great UK terms you're using left and right. So thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. It's been a pleasure. Cheers, guys. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Lewis for sponsoring today's episode. Fire Nation, successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days.

24:55John Lee Dumas:And we're talking step by step. Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer and need more quality leads, Nexus Install is designed for you. We'll book you 8 to 20 qualified calls each month, then train you to run the system yourself. Email my team at john at eofire.com to learn more and see if Nexus is the right fit for you. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevellfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

25:37John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevellfire.com. Highlevellfire.com. Thank you.