Lewis Howes: The Trauma That Fueled My Success, And How I Finally Healed | E183

21:01Lewis Howes:Is there anything you haven't forgiven yourself for yet? No, because at the end of the day, we are who we are because we've all made mistakes, right, and we learn from our mistakes. So, you know, one of my questions for you at the end is, what's your biggest regret in life? And when people ask me that, I don't have any because I wouldn't be the person that I am today without the mistakes that I made. The other thing about the Hoffman Institute, is they really help you identify negative patterns that you've had your whole life. And they call something negative love syndrome where there's 10 hours of homework to fill out this whole form beforehand.

21:42and there's part of it is having to relive childhood trauma that I just fucking buried for years, right? It's hard. Every, every, everyone. And so it's like, you know, you're writing these things and you're crying and say, God, fuck, I didn't want to, I didn't really want to talk about that. Yeah. And then I have to put it down and come back five hours later or two days later because it's just like so, it's intense.

22:06Lewis Howes:What was the thing you were most scared to talk about? Just, you know, being bullied as a kid, stuttering, people making fun of you. And then things that happened, just divorced parents. They didn't like each other very much. You're caught in the middle. You're in the middle. You know, and my mom married three times. And, you know, one day coming home and being an unhappy marriage to take us out of not a good financial situation and coming home and said, all right, I was 16 and says, pack everything up in garbage bags. We got an hour to leave and just moved to a small apartment. You were 16? Yeah.

22:39Holy shit.

22:40Lewis Howes:Oh, he left or your mom was like out? No, my mom left. Yeah. She talked to us before. You know, you're happy. My brother and I, we are not fucking happy. You and just one brother? Yeah, and one brother. You were never happy with your parents. That situation. Well, it was a stepdad and he had three kids. All merged together? Yeah. The honeymoon, the three kids made me fight my brother. Oh, my God. I don't know. I was like. What? Yeah, like seven, six years old. So it was just not a good situation. Oh, man. so but but it drove you it drove me all that pain drove you to be like i'm gonna prove you yeah i'm gonna prove all of you yeah i mean the bullying really helped two people call me retarded i mean we'll get into some of yours as well yeah special needs classes yeah stuff man it was not fun yeah but i said okay and my mom kept saying to me growing up she said all the popular kids are not be popular when you're older but you don't know that when you're there it seems like Coming home from school, crying every day.

23:36It's not fun. It's not fun, man. My mom, grandmother, who's my hero, who was hanging out. My mom was working two jobs as a legal secretary. My first memory as a kid is my mom not being able to pay rent. It's a brutal memory. It's your first memory. Yeah, it's not fun. Fucking brutal.

23:53Lewis Howes:It's not fun. No. So we'll get into money in a little bit. Just a couple questions. But you had a hard childhood. And whenever you get in trouble, you tell the principal, they want to kill yourself yeah yeah yeah like i don't want to be here i wish i was dead i would say that often you're like five seven nine you don't really know what that means but i was just i didn't feel accepted i didn't feel loved i didn't feel like i had friends i was like the bottom of my class special needs classes i was in tutoring all the way through college yeah as early as i can remember i had a tutor i had to go to tutor during recess like everyone else is going on playing and lunch breaks and i had to be with someone learning how to read I had a second grade reading level in eighth grade, and I still struggle reading today as a 42-year-old going on 43.

24:38Lewis Howes:It's like I still can't read that well, basic stuff, without messing it up when I speak. When I have to read ads, like for my podcast, I still have to reread them over and over again because I mess up, even though I've done it so often. It doesn't come naturally to me. I had a weird relationship with money because of kind of the way that I grew up. because you didn't have a lot growing up no I mean my dad was very supportive of us again it was just very very tough my mom didn't have a lot of money as I said she remarried to take us into a new situation but your brother as you said Chris 11 years older than you dealt drugs to an undercover couple he was in college facing a 6 to 25 year sentence you were 8 years old like you said and no one wanted to hang out with you And so you had no friends.

25:29I had no friends for a while too, you know, for different reasons. Didn't have a brother that went to prison. But tell us about the$5 club.

25:37Lewis Howes:Oh, man. Yeah, this was a tough one because I wanted friends so desperately. And friends came from school or the neighborhood at that time. There was no like, I guess I was in sports teams like t-ball and soccer, but it wasn't really like school teams yet. It was like outside stuff. And I remember everyone in the neighborhood had rollerblades, but I didn't have rollerblades. We couldn't afford rollerblades. And so I was playing roller hockey and sneakers, but I was the only kid just running, and everyone else was rolling around playing rollerblades in parking lots. And I remember I just wanted to have a couple friends.

26:15Lewis Howes:For whatever reason, these two guys said, hey, we have a club. I heard about they had this special club, and I was like, I want to be a part of the club. And they said, okay, there's two ways to get in. You can either answer questions or you can pay. And I was like, well, I don't have any money, so what are the questions? And they asked me the questions, and I didn't know the answers. So I felt dumb just by not knowing these answers. And they said, if you want to join, you have to pay$5. And I went back home, and I asked my mom for$5 to join this club. And she was kind of like, she was a little sad, but she was like, okay, let's figure this out.

26:51Lewis Howes:And she didn't have the money. So I was sad that she didn't have the money. And she said, let's go in the couch and open the cushion and see if we can find change. And she went to address her drawers and found some change. She put it together in a shoebox and gave me$5 worth of change, essentially, and said, here you go. And so then I ran back to this kid's house, and I brought them this money. And they said, OK, you're in the club. But that whole next whatever hour or something, we were in their basement. And they were hanging out by themselves kind of in the corner. and I was just left alone just to be there.

27:23Lewis Howes:And so even though I paid for friends, they still wanted to hang out with me. So I never went back after that to that club. And I just remember living with that shame. Again, it was like shame stacking. It was like day after day of why I wasn't good enough, why I wasn't lovable enough, why I wasn't smart enough, why I wasn't talented, whatever. And it's really hard. You know, my parents did their best, but it was like the evidence only reassured me that I wasn't enough. It didn't assure me that I was going to be better than or going to improve. It just confirmed that I was stupid, essentially.

27:57Lewis Howes:And I didn't have the tools on how to develop and grow at that point. So there's just like another thing, another reason why I wasn't supposed to be here. If I can't even pay for friends and have them hang out with me, then how am I going to survive in this life? And when you're 7, 8, 9, like you can't think beyond, well, in 20 years you're going to be like okay. Like I wasn't able to rationalize that because all you have is in your little world. So it's just another thing that made it challenging. We have a lot of similarities in our background in general. One of them was getting picked last for dodgeball.

28:34Yeah. Did you get picked last for dodgeball? Lasted everything. Really? So, you know, floor hockey draft and, you know, I mean everything, everything.

28:41Lewis Howes:Yeah. So how did being picked last? The teachers picked the captains. The captains picked you last. You're just sitting there. Well, here's the thing. They didn't pick me last. They didn't even pick me. So it's like the two boy captains who were like the cool kids in the class, they chose all the boy kids first. Then I thought, okay, I'm going to be the last boy picked. Then they start picking all the girls one by one. Then by default, I was on the team that just had the last pick. but they didn't even say, okay, Lewis, you're with me. It was just, all right, we're done with all the men and all the women.

29:16Lewis Howes:Okay, now Lewis, like, I guess you just go over here. I remember having so much anger, so much rage. And I was just like, I'm gonna destroy these kids. You know, I was just like throwing the ball everywhere, catching everything. I was just like a machine. And for whatever reason, something sparked inside of me that day. I was like, I'll never be picked last again, never. And it probably something with you where you were like, I'm gonna make so much money. I'm gonna become so successful that no one's ever gonna make fun of me again. I'm gonna be able to laugh at them if I want to. Whatever drive that you had early on that drove you to be creative and have this passion and have this commitment to excellence, like doing whatever it took to excel at everything you've done, to prepare so intently that people are gonna know your name.

30:00Lewis Howes:Like whatever it was, you had that fire in you just like I've had it in me. And probably through the Hoffman Institute, I'm not going to interpret what happened for you. But for me, when I was 30, I realized that that fire drove me to succeed, but it didn't give me fulfillment. It drove me to accomplish, to make money. I didn't make as much as you, but I made more than I had growing up. And I was like, okay, I made my first million. And I felt more financially secure, at least. And I was able to accomplish great things in sports and business and platform and all these things. and I still wasn't happy.

30:37Lewis Howes:I still wasn't fulfilled. I still had anger, shame, rage, insecurity, self-doubt inside of me. So I was like, what is wrong with me? If I've gone so hard, I've been willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish and I still don't feel enough, something is wrong. And that workshop and the process over the last 13 years of the journey of healing, which has been ongoing, has given me so much more peace than I ever had when I was growing up. Like I have an incredible amount of inner freedom that I never knew was possible in my life. And it's a constant journey of remembering how to create that and having the boundaries and the structure to create that.

31:20Lewis Howes:But the pain of being picked last, of being sexually abused, of being made fun of for being stupid, of my parents going through the divorce, my brother being in prison, all these different challenges. it gave me this fuel to succeed but that fuel eventually burned out it wasn't sustainable like it went a long time to get me started and build momentum and accomplish but it didn't bring me love fulfillment and peace and it wasn't until i started healing when i started to create more of a renewable energy that has been more sustainable that has created a a rich and beautiful life not just a successful life you're listening to part one of my incredible interview with Lewis Howes, one of the most successful podcasters ever.

32:03School of Greatness has had over a billion downloads. Lewis is a successful entrepreneur, coach, professional athlete. This is one of the best interviews I've ever done. Be sure to check out next week, part two of my interview with the incredible interview with Lewis. I think there's two kinds of motivation. When you're bullied, have no friends, ever making fun of you, call me r-r-r-tard or r-r-r-randy, and feeling so low. And there's the, I'm going to prove you wrong. Yep. I had that. So did you. There's negative motivation. And later on realizing, you know, I'm doing it for myself at the end of the day.

32:34Yeah, yeah. Which is a lot more healthier. Yeah, way healthier.

32:37Lewis Howes:Well, I learned that like I was doing everything for selfish reasons. I wanted to look good. I wanted to prove people wrong. I wanted to be picked first or whatever these things. I wanted to like impress as opposed to I want to serve. And when I turned 30 is when I realized, oh, I've been living a life, not a bad life. Like I've been doing good as well. I'm still like a good guy and like kind to people, but the motivation behind it was to prove people wrong. Even if I didn't say that inside of me, it was like, I don't want to prove everyone wrong. It's me versus the world mentality. That's just a big way to carry.

33:13Lewis Howes:It's exhausting and it can make you accomplish it. But I think it's hard to sustain long-term healthy love, healthy relationships, healthy mind and body. Like it's just hard to sustain it long-term. And I know maybe you can tell me at this season of your life, you're how old now? 57. 57, I'll be 43 in a couple months. And you've got a lot more wisdom and success and life lessons than I do. A lot more failures too. You've had more time to try stuff. Make them every day. But I just feel a sense of peace that I never had the ability to feel. And it's because I continually do the emotional healing work constantly.

33:54Lewis Howes:And it's not fun. It's not fun to constantly look in the mirror and say, what can I do to improve? Am I doing this out of ego or am I doing this out of service? Am I doing this because I want to improve a scenario or just because I want results for me and I want to look good? And it's a balance because I have goals and dreams that I want to accomplish. But when I turned 30, I said, if I'm only doing these to serve me, I shouldn't do it. But if I can do it in service of others as well, then that is more sustainable. And that's how I've been living my life for a while now. At the end of the day, we all want to make it on our own.

34:36So at 23 years old, I'm in law school in Northwestern. I had a girlfriend named Tracy, parents very wealthy, go to Aspen with them. And I didn't have money and she would bed a house in the south of France. and her mom said it was snowing outside, let's take a walk. All right, you want to take a walk? You're in Aspen? Yeah, with her. Tracy was not there. I don't even know where she was at the time. Okay, this is great. Your mom wants to take a walk. She said, Randy, how much is it going to take for you to stop dating my daughter? Shut up. She did not say this. She did say this. We're walking around the block and I didn't know, but I remember a day before there was a party at Red Mountain.

35:17So for those people who know it, these are huge mansions. in Aspen. I didn't have the right clothes. I remember going to a bedroom. There were no cell phones back then. I called my mom and said, gosh, I was basically crying. Louis says, I don't have the right clothes. I'm insecure. I'm in, you know, she said, go back out there. You know, you're highly educated. And it was interesting because we ran, I ran into somebody who was involved. This is arcane and most people have to look this up, but there was a econ class I took in high school my sophomore year, and we would study corporate merge, et cetera, et cetera.

35:51So there was some Detroit company involved with Martin Marietta, and it was a conglomerate, and they sued one another. And randomly, the CEO of that company happened to be there at the party. You studied this him in high school or something? I knew everything about the case, and he said, you know, where do you know all this? I went from, wow, I felt like a loser, uneducated, I don't belong, to suddenly, wow, you know, you're very impressive. What are you doing? What's your name again? And that made me feel really good. So you just never know kind of how things can flip in one conversation. Wow.

36:23Did your mom see this? No. I mean, my mom's in Detroit. Did her mom see this?

36:28Lewis Howes:No. Tracy's mom. No, not, not, not. Never even told her about it, by the way. I told Tracy. Tracy was there. That would have been interesting if this guy, the CEO, was like, wow, this guy's incredible right after that conversation. That'd have been cool. So we never want to rub in. You know, we talk about doing things for ourselves. You don't have to rub in it, but he could have just organically. Wouldn't that have been amazing? I'm talking about rubbing it in when our company went public and had a$35 billion valuation. So that's what I thought. Did you ever call her back and say, hey? So Tracy and I are still friends to this day.

36:58No way. She's amazing. She changed my life in so many ways. She's just so optimistic and positive.

37:04Lewis Howes:When did you end it? In law school. So this was over 30, probably 32 years ago. But how did the conversation end? Did you say a million dollars? Well, no. I said 10 is my number. So we only have nine. Oh, my gosh. No, nothing happened that way. And I said to her, I'm not for sale. Wow. Okay, so our company goes public. This film dating her daughter part, you mean? This is, so it ends for whatever reason in law school. Tracy and I kept in touch. We're still friends to this day. Her mom was like, yes, when it ended. Right, I'm sure. I mean, she didn't call me or anything, but I'm sure she was very happy about that because I wasn't a Rockefeller.

37:43She mentioned all these names, and you're not good enough for my daughter. Oh, my gosh. But when our company went public, 30 years later? Our company went public in 1999. So this was, I graduated in 93. Probably six years later? Yeah. So six years later, I'd made something of myself. $35 billion valuation? Valuation. Yeah. I mean, my paper wealth is very high. And as we know, paper wealth is now real wealth. And you were the founder of the company? Four founders. Akamai Technologies. In six years, it went to$35 billion valuation? Well, it went to$35 billion 463 days after we started the company.

38:17Holy cow. With$3.2 million in revenue. Holy cow. It was crazy. We invented a new way to serve web traffic. But we can talk about that and the craziness of that and our stock dropping 99.8 % of value to going to a$99 million market cap and how good that feels. The high to the low. High to the low, yeah.

38:36Lewis Howes:Then you feel, oh, do I matter at all? I mean, everyone loves a winner, right? You got all these producers in Hollywood coming up to you and shaking your hand. And then I saw the same producer who came up to me at lunch. I'm like, oh, my fuck. Like, really? He's coming up to me to say hi? And then I'm in Aspen years later at the St. Regis getting in my car. I'm like, hey, Steve. Randy Kaplan, do you remember? Do I know you? Really? Because your evaluation wasn't up there anymore or whatever? No. It's like, yeah, everyone loves a winner right at the end of the day. Wow. But going back to Tracy's mom.

39:06Rubbing it in. And it's like if I ever wanted to do it, and I would never do it, by the way. It's just not classy. I was I pride myself on being a humble person and hopefully people consider me a humble person I didn't do it but Tracy knew about it so I talked to Tracy maybe because there was some press about it and this kid in Detroit grew up and there were a couple of features

39:31Lewis Howes:they heard about it yeah it was a thing back then having a unicorn and a billion dollar valuation was not a huge thing but to have a 30 billion dollar valuation was a huge thing yeah it was totally unheard of. So I said to Tracy a year later, I said, by the way, does your mom know about Akamai? And she said, yeah, you know, she knows about it. So ask her about the Rockefellers now. And so that was the end of that. But again, you know, it feels good to overcome our obstacles when we're bullied, when no one believes in us, except our parents. Yeah. And the four most important words, other than I love you, in the English language, I think are I believe in you.

40:21It's powerful. I think it's really powerful. Yeah.

40:24Lewis Howes:Do you still believe in yourself? Oh, I believe in myself every day. That's good. Did you believe in yourself when you had the$35 billion valuation? You don't believe it. It's even happening. You know, I remember I was friends with a woman, Robin Newstein, who is the chief of staff at Goldman. and she was a female partner there. And we'd become friends in the tech world. She was involved. I was involved. We were co-investing together. And I said to her on the phone, when the lockup was there, I said, Robin, this doesn't even feel real. And she said to me, Randy, it's real. Wow. I was living in an apartment next to the Jack in the Box.

41:00And I remember going down to the dumpster one day to throw away the trash. And our company had gone public, so it was well known. and this guy in the apartment building said, hey, I just read about the thing and your company going public. And he said, what are you doing here?

41:16Lewis Howes:This apartment, yeah. Yeah, what are you doing here? And I said, oh, I'm still here. And I was building my dream house at the time, but obviously I'm not going to mention that. Ran into that guy a year ago, by the way, at some random bar. Really? Yeah. Is that a member date? Oh, yeah. 26 years later or something. Yeah. 25 years later. Yeah. It was crazy. Let's go back to school because you were having a hard time and you cheated on a lot of tests. Pretty much everything. Everything. I mean, there's probably, I don't know, years where I would cheat on homework, quizzes, tests in some way to survive.

41:54Lewis Howes:Like I just didn't know how, no matter how much I studied, no matter how much my mom would tutor me, we'd have tutors. I would just try to focus. I couldn't focus. And I couldn't remember and retain information. I would read a page, the first page of a book, and I just felt like I had to read it over and over for 15, 20 minutes. And then someone asked me what happened, and I couldn't tell them what happened. Just something was off. And I was like, man, I'm messed up, or something was wrong with me. And I just didn't learn and retain information well the way school was structured. You know, I'm sure there's a lot of good things about school, but the school system just wasn't structured to support me personally.

42:35Lewis Howes:And that's why I excelled very well in sports because I felt like I was able to retain information by movement, by visualizing something, by having someone empower me. So, but yeah, I cheated a lot on school. And I don't say that with like pride or something, but yeah, I got away with it until I didn't, you know, until I got caught and then I got suspended a few different times. And it was just like, but I didn't know how to get through the next grade without doing that. So I was like, what do I do? just sit behind and take, you know, get held back year after year or cheat to just get through.

43:11I didn't know. There's a lot of people listening today with learning disabilities and they have a tough time in school. You met some positive kids from St. Louis. Yes. And you went to boarding school. Yes. And you asked your parents, begged your parents to go. Begged. And they let you go. My dad sent me to a private school, Detroit Country Day, because I went to a public school, anti-Semitic, I believe. People called me, I'm not going to mention the word here. Sure. And I excelled academically and I wanted to be more challenged. So it was very generous. Yeah. It was a local school, but this school changed your life.

43:47Country Day is what it was? Yeah, Detroit Country Day.

43:49Lewis Howes:Yeah, yeah. It was a country day in St. Louis that I played sports against. Yeah. People think they're all connected, but they're not. I think just country day is just like, I don't know. It's like... It's not like Harvard where they're all connected. Yeah, no, it's not like that. Gotcha. So it changed your life. Changed my life. Yeah, I mean, it just was a different way of, like growing up in public school in Delaware, Ohio. Again, I had some good friends. There were some friends eventually in middle school, but it wasn't like empowering friends. They were good kids, but we were just doing stupid stuff.

44:21Lewis Howes:And then when I met these kids at a Christian science summer camp in Missouri, it was actually like Lake of the Ozarks area, And a few of them went to this school in St. Louis. And I was like, man, I just want to be around this energy. It was so positive. The mindset was about giving and generosity. It was about service. It was about all these things. And I was like, man, these kids are just nicer. And I want to be around them. So I begged them to send me there. And it really changed my life. I was in eighth grade. I was 13 when I went. I was in a dorm with like 15, 20 other eighth graders. And it was hard.

44:55Lewis Howes:It was challenging. It was not easy because academically it was more challenging. and I wasn't ready for it. And I was just, you know, high school I think is challenging in general. You know, even though they were more positive and empowering and there was less bullying there, I still had insecurity. I still had all the traumas of the past that no one knew about, that I was carrying, all that weight that I was carrying every single day. And I wore masks to try to fit in. You know, I tried to be cool and popular and whatever, funny, all these different things. You try to fit in and get friends to like you.

45:27Lewis Howes:But overall, it probably saved my life because I don't know where I'd be if I stayed in public school in Ohio. You graduate, barely. Barely. And then you go to Principia College, which everybody knows, in Ulsa, Illinois, 330 kids in the school. Yes. And you set the D3 record for a wide receiver, 17 catches for 413 yards. 418. 418 yards. Don't take that five yards away. Okay, okay. I think it's still a record. I mean, I looked before the show. Yeah, it is. So what was that like? I mean, we'll talk about trying out for professional football in a second. It was awesome, man. We lost the game, this game that I broke the NCAA record for, and I still have the D3 record.

46:11Lewis Howes:I had the all-division record for about 10 or 15 years. Someone broke that by like five yards recently, I think. But I had the – I didn't even know what was happening. I was having a great game, but at the very end we lost. by a few points. And I had a chance to go and score at the end, but I got tackled on a fourth down. So it was a turnover of downs and then we lost the game. So I just remember feeling I was the last person to leave the locker room. I was in the shower, kind of just like, I don't know, in there for like 30 to 40 minutes, just kind of like moping around. I was a bad loser. I didn't like to lose at anything, right?

46:46Lewis Howes:Because losing felt like I was a failure. And if I'm a failure, I'm not enough and I'm not gonna get value, right? And I'm not gonna have friends and I'm not going to be loved. And it was like the fear. So I wanted to win no matter what. And so I was kind of just in there moping around. I guess I'm 19 at this time. And I was in the locker room last, just kind of depressed. And it's funny because I'm like naked in the shower and our coach comes in. And I liked the coach a lot. So it wasn't a weird thing that he came in and just like peed his head in the shower. We're all in there showering. But he comes in and he said, hey, Lewis, he's kind of like down also because we lost, but he goes, hey, Lewis, like, I just wanted to let you know you just broke a world record for the most yards in a single game.

47:32Lewis Howes:I was like, really? And in my head, I knew I had a good game, but the failure, the loss, like stung so bad that I didn't know my stats. And he said, yeah, you had 17 catches for 418 yards. Let's go get them next week. And I was just like, I was so confused because I was like, my ego was kind of happy that I kind of broke this record that no one else had done, but we lost the game. So I was kind of sad at the same time. But that broke something inside of me in a good way. Because for many years, I was going to a small school and I didn't know what I was really capable of. And that kind of put me on a national stage because Sports Illustrated did a feature on it and like, okay, I'm getting local news and attention.

48:16Lewis Howes:And all of a sudden I'd done something that no one else in the history of college football had ever done. And we lost. Yes, it was a division three school and this and that, but it was like, okay, it was showing me what was possible at 19. I was like, man, I've worked really hard for many years to become better in sports. And now I break this record without even trying to. What's possible for me then? Maybe there's something possible that set me out kind of really taking on sports to the next level. I was a two-sport All-American later in my college career and then played arena football and played with the national team for USA Handball for many years.

48:52Lewis Howes:And now I'm pursuing the Olympics for the next two years as well. That's amazing. Yeah. So you went from Principia to Martin Luther College. I played against them in that game. We lost in that game to Martin Luther College. And I went to Capital University. I went to Southwest Minnesota State my first year. And it took you seven years to graduate college? Seven years to graduate, yeah. I left after five years to go trying to pursue arena football. The NFL didn't work. Arena football. And then went back and finally finished. So much has been written about whether college is necessary. We're going to talk about your LinkedIn education and going online today.

49:31And people are saying, well, do I really need to go to college? I think the average student today graduates with over$44 ,000 in student debt. And it takes over 20 years to pay it back. and now there's a big push by President Trump to start collecting on that debt. There's over a trillion dollars of student debt that people are not paying back. Is college necessary today?

49:49Lewis Howes:I think it's necessary at all. I think I had a great experience through sports. I don't think I could have gotten that sports and athletic experience playing for like club. There's no club football. There's no like club track really. Like I got the experience that was needed for my personal development. Now, I had to pay off student loans for like the next eight years or something, which wasn't fun. And I didn't use my degree to like build my business. So in that regard, I don't know what I would do with my kids. I don't think I would send them to school. I think hopefully I would create education for them, but maybe not send them to a school.

50:32Lewis Howes:I don't know. I don't think it's worth investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in something that you're going to have to take 40 years to pay off without a guarantee of getting a job to pay that off right after college. So what's the point of that investment? Right. You've done them all financially very well. We live in Los Angeles. Everyone says that education is the best investment we can make in our kids. I believe that. My dad believed in that. So I sent my kids to private school starting in kindergarten. in LA kindergarten that was, I think, $38 ,000. Today it's$52 ,000. Oh my gosh. And I remember being at their high school graduation.

51:08They went to Brentwood School on the west side of Los Angeles. And I remember one of the parents saying, you know, by the time we spend this money on our kids graduate college, and again, this is west side of LA. Things are very expensive. From five to 22, right? $1.3 million. Come on. Yeah. And I started doing the math and I said, gosh. Is that investment worth it? That's a lot of fucking money. How much money you have to make? $2 million to do this. And that includes, by the way, the support of the school that you're supposed to make as well. All the donations and all that stuff, yeah. There's a donation expectation.

51:43Lewis Howes:Of course. And so that - What if you put all that money every year into an index fund for them for 17 or 18 years, right? Until they were 22. Right. How much would they have with those 22 years if you're putting 50 grand a year or whatever, 100 grand a year into that? What would it be? after 20 years? I'm going to do the math because I have a spreadsheet. I advise people on this because no one beats the S &P 500. The average return over the last 25 years is basically 8.7%. Tax efficient, dividends reinvested. No one beats the index over the long term. What would it be in 20 years? In 20 years, I'll do the math.

52:19They're 25. Yeah, they're on five.

52:21Lewis Howes:You start and in 25, they get. Yeah, but don't forget, it's not all in at the same time. So you're stepping it up. So stacking it. You're stacking it. It compounds, but you're compounding. 50K a year. So 50K a year for 20 years. I mean, the numbers really get very, very high. When our company was doing really well and I had a billion dollars of paper wall for two days, I mean, it's crazy. Like, you don't believe it's happening. The interest you make on a day. I mean, you know, you're just walking, you know, please, car, don't run me over today. I mean, that's what you're thinking. It was just crazy.

52:53Let me enjoy this. Right. Right, and so I'm going all, I was looking at four private wealth managers, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, DLJ, and Merrill Lynch at the time. And so I was going back to meet all the CEOs of this firm. Everyone's kissing your ass, by the way. Of course. You know, five years before, six years before, had three legal jobs in eight months, was a loser lawyer, right? Things turn around. You were. Yeah, and now you're the guy. Well, I don't know if I'm the guy. I'm the guy until I wasn't the guy. But I remember meeting with the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and he said, do you get the value of compounding?

53:28I said, well, I kind of get it, yeah. I mean, that's how you create real wealth. So he said to me, you have a penny. On the first day of a 31-day month, it doubles every day how much money you have. Like, you know, trying to do it, and you kind of lose track. You know, 2048, you kind of, you know, thinking about it. And then, you know, you lose track quickly. So I probably said something like$600 ,000. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking, all right, I'm going to guess high because I know the answer is skewing high in the way he's answering the – asking the question. $10.6 million. Come on. Yeah.

54:01That's crazy. It's two to the 30th power. That's crazy. Yeah. Interview question, by the way, for those people interested in finance. Can they answer the question? Wow. All right. So that's a – Yeah.

54:11Lewis Howes:So what if you just said, I'm going to do my own private homeschooling and bring in a teacher or bring in teachers to do specialized classes. And I'm going to just put 50 grand a year into their index fund. And they can take it out at 25 or they can take it out at 45. And they won't have debt. Right? Why don't we just do that? Or is that a bad thing to think about? Well, we don't know. I mean, the issue is, and the same thing as college, do your kids lose out socially by not being in school with all these other kids? By not suffering in school and being made fun of and picked on and being picked last and being humiliated and sitting in line all day.

54:49Lewis Howes:And how much education are they really getting? Versus systematic structure building around what the system wants. As opposed to, why not hire the best teachers and come to your house and say, we're going to teach you a music class with the best teachers or this. I don't know. That's what I'm thinking with my three-month-olds. Right. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine this weekend who told me that she homeschools her daughter two days a week, so she gets kind of the best of both worlds. And the question is always, how do you know that you're learning the same things at home that you are in school?

55:21And the question is also, are you as good of a teacher as a teacher in school, and are you going to retain and learn as much as well? And, you know, there's no way to A, B test that either.

55:30Lewis Howes:Gosh, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I didn't feel like we got socialized in school. Like, I struggled. You know, it's like it almost made me, like, fear people more. I had to learn how to undo that. I guess, like, in my early 20s, I had to do my own social experiments in life to feel comfortable in my own skin. But I don't know. It was different with boys and girls, too. I don't know. I mean, looking back, do you still keep in touch with friends from, you know, up until sixth grade? I think my closest friends are in high school and grad school. Yeah, yeah. Even college, I don't have. Yeah, college, high school, college, and grad school.

56:02Lewis Howes:I have one good friend that I'm still friends with, very close with, my best friend. But the rest are maybe a few guys I'll talk to once or twice every couple years, but it's not. I feel like my closest friends have come after school from the pursuits of my life and the service of my life and meeting people. I heard someone say one time, like, man, you haven't met some of your best friends yet at 40. You're still going to meet some of your favorite people after 40. If I take my kids to school or not, whatever I'm going to do, I don't know. But you're going to be around other school parents that you're probably like, oh, I'm around them every weekend because our kids are in class or they're going to sports.

56:40Lewis Howes:And you become good friends with them. You go on trips together. I'm sure you did that too, right? Yeah. I mean, that's who your friends become later. It's your kids' parents. Yeah. And the other thing too is I'm divorced now or getting one. And the therapist that I was saying is like, all right, what am I going to do now? My friends are all married. I really don't. My best friends don't live in Los Angeles, right? We're all doing different things, New York, Palm Beach, up north. Mexico. Well, yeah, Mexico. Shout out to Nauka and Nayarit. If anyone's buying a home there, please make me the referral source.

57:17Ellie Pacino, shout out to Ellie for getting me down there. But I'm talking to my therapist, and here I am, 57 years old, and who are my boys to go out with? And she said, it's very interesting, Randy, because I have a lot of clients in their 50s, successful men who don't have friends. It's very hard to make friends in your 50s. My friends were all of these couples' friends. Not that I'm not going to go out with them, but I work my ass off. I'm tired at the end of the day, and then I don't want to go out. I don't go out anymore also. I go home with my kids and my wife. Right. I'd rather stay home with my kids.

57:55I'd eat dinner. I'd put them to bed. I'd read to the kids, and I don't want to go out at 8 o 'clock.

57:59Lewis Howes:No. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. When you get up early and you train and you work hard all day. I mean, now I'm going out on these dates, Louis, and I think I had three in a row past three o 'clock in the morning. Really? Yeah. That's exhausting. I mean, you know, there's a cool place on the west side. It's fun for a while, but then it's like. Yeah. The Golden Bull is this really cool place on the west side of Los Angeles. And, you know, that place gets rocking at 11 o 'clock at night. Wow. Music's jamming and it's really fun. I couldn't stay up that late right now. It's too late. Yeah. Just for the people who are listening today, I mean, those were not all dates.

58:31Just want to clarify that with some friends. Don't want to get in any trouble here. So I think every boy who plays sports, even throwing in the backyard, wants to be a professional athlete. So here you are. He set the record. NFL is your dream. I mean, there's stories about people caught making all pro, and you look at Brock Birdie, the last person taking,

58:58Lewis Howes:making$50 million a year now. Yeah. Kurt Warner was a big inspiration of mine because he was playing for the St. Louis Rams. I was living in St. Louis, near St. Louis at this time. So hearing his story of playing arena football and then getting selected and winning a Super Bowl is like, wow, maybe that's possible. You're making$250 a week. Yeah. So you got the dream there. Yeah. And then – I was living the dream making – like$250 felt like I was rich though. So even though I was living in, you know, we had a, you know, apartment that they were paying for. And then we had food stamps for the week.

59:30Lewis Howes:$250, I was like, to catch a football and call myself a pro athlete, even though it was arena football, I was like, I'm still a professional athlete. This is the childhood dream. I was like, the inner child of me was so excited to go play every single day.

59:58You