From Zero to Hero: Lessons on Rejection, Resilience, and Momentum

0:00I learned my lesson when I got kicked out of college. I got arrested and they took me down to jailhouse and I spent a few weeks in there. I came pretty close to some more serious charges and actually doing some prison time. That's when I really made that decision in my life when I was in that jail cell all alone. And I just made that line in the sand decision of I'm going to flip the script and people are going to be surprised. They're going to see what happens from here. Pretty much made a promise to myself that I'm going to just outwork everybody and I'm going to go all in all the time and I'm going to do whatever it is.

0:30takes to be successful and I'm going to do it legally. I talk about how I went from a broke college kid to a multimillionaire. It really boils down to just the age old success principles, but I kind of tailor it to like the millennial generation because a lot of young people, man, they don't want to listen to somebody with white hair. It is what it is. But to listen to a young guy with a Rolls Royce and some big houses and some jewelry, you kind of blind them with like, hey, this is what I have and this is what I've done. And then you give them real information that they can apply and actually change their life if they want to.

1:00Everybody, even the biggest rock stars in the world have imposter syndrome because even the biggest people that perform for years and years in front of millions of people would come backstage and they would be so nervous to go on and be interviewed and they would come backstage and they would say to me, did I do okay? Is that good enough? I'm like, dude, you're slash. Are you asking me if you were good enough? Are you kidding? So it was a really nice reminder to me that people are people are people. And like, every time I get nervous or I feel like an imposter or feel not good enough. Everybody experiences that.

1:28It's a human condition. When you're in a survival mode, you do what you've got to do to survive. And that means you're clutching and grasping and filling holes of worthiness and filling holes in yourself with whatever you can. And even though it's temporary, and even though the chemical lasts its half life, and then you got need more of it, or you crash and you're on this hamster wheel of trying to maintain, eventually you fall, you fall on your ass and you see that you've got to make a real pivot, a real change, something from the inside out. That's why I really believe success is an inside job.

1:57Ken Wentworth:A lot of times business owners are really good at the widget they produce or whatever service they're providing, but they're not really good on the business side of things. Increasing sales, increasing your net income, increasing the value of the company. Especially now you get a lot of baby boomers that are considering exiting and wanting to sell their company. How do I improve the value of my company? Most business advice is wrong, built on opinions echoed by people who've never done it. But the truth, it's simpler and harder. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it.

2:33Ken Wentworth:700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. Every success story has a beginning, and it's usually messy. Before the wins, the money, and the momentum, there was doubt, failure, and starting from zero. Today, we're breaking down the real journey to that first breakthrough. Featuring insights from Mike Sancho, Alex Morton, Jamil Damji, Jen Gottlieb, and Ken Wentworth. This is where the grind begins and everything changes.

3:42and they're selling the products on TV. I was trying to invent products at that point. And I would go to my mom and say, hey mom, can you help me get a patent? I was like trying to get patents with my mom's help at eight years old. Not many kids doing that. I had it early on. I just started to get into more and more businesses as a teenager. Not necessarily all of them legal businesses. I started selling a little weed as a kid. It's a common theme, I guess, in entrepreneurs. They take their business skills to a different kind of industry. That ended up getting me in a little bit of trouble. I ended up getting kicked out of high school because of it.

4:09Found my way into college after that and didn't learn my lesson the first time. I'm that guy who got expelled from high school. You were the true entrepreneur.

4:15Ken Wentworth:Yeah. Every friend I knew was either smoking or selling it or who knows what. I don't know. You had to make money somehow. But I can relate to that entrepreneur, Gene. I like that. I'm that guy that got expelled from high school and got expelled from college. As you can imagine, my family was wicked proud of me at that time. I had a.71 my first semester at Clemson. Is that even possible? 0.0. That's at F minus. My ass got yanked home first semester. It didn't go well. so I can relate to making the family proud. I think you were majoring in parties and girls instead of class. I think that was the exact line I used on a podcast once.

4:48Ken Wentworth:I was majoring in boobs, boobs, and beer. Hey, you got to go pro in something. I think I was a pro. You finally learned your lesson. I learned my lesson when I got kicked out of college. I got arrested. They took me down to jailhouse. I spent a few weeks in there. I came pretty close to some more serious charges and actually doing some prison time. That's when I really made that decision in my life When I was in that jail cell all alone, I just made that line in the sand decision of I'm going to flip the script. People are going to be surprised. They're going to see what happens from here. Pretty much made a promise to myself that I'm going to just outwork everybody.

5:20I'm going to go all in all the time. I'm going to do whatever it takes to be successful. And I'm going to do it legally. From there, I got out and went to Charleston, South Carolina. When I got out of jail and I was living with my parents, I had no money. I was in debt, probably one hundred thousand dollars from student loans, car loans, lawyer fees that I owed back to my parents. you name it i was in a big hole at 21 years old but your whole life was in front of you exactly

5:42Ken Wentworth:exactly but you didn't realize this at the time i'm sure you probably felt like you know life's over but i was motivated i was fired up actually that's good i was fired up most people get in those holes though and people need to hear that kind of reflection of knowing what was ahead of you you were just barely getting started even if it started a little bad yeah a little rocky when your back's against the wall and you're at rock bottom for me it was purifying i just felt free I was able to just clear out all the bullshit in my life. It's a fresh start. It's a clean slate. I went down the main strip, King Street in Charleston.

6:11I applied at every single restaurant, shop, whatever. I took the first two jobs that I could get. One was at Subway for$7.50 an hour. The other one was at a restaurant called 82 Queen washing dishes. I started working two jobs like a madman. The crazy thing is I decided to outwork everybody. And that's in everything because I said, how you do anything is how you do everything. So I came in at Subway. I started showing up 30 minutes early working before I even clocked in. I started going in, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning underneath the oven, straightening the chips. This is before I even clocked in and you're talking subway.

6:41I know you can imagine the work ethic that comes with that for a lot of the people there. Customer service through the roof. I was staying late, clocked out, still working, still helping, sweeping, taking shifts, being super helpful. Within six weeks, they made me the store manager at 21. Within another two months, they made me the general manager of five locations because I just outworked everybody. This is the ethic that I've kept with me since that point. I just kept it booming. I was grinding my ass off. I took that into everything and I started to take as much courses as I could, studying constantly about making money, all different types of industries, learning trading, crypto, e-commerce, real estate, course after course after course.

7:17There was no break. I shut the TV off. I just went all in. At that point, I tried to quit my jobs to go full-time into entrepreneurship, which was also a rocky road. The first thing I was doing was real estate investing. I was doing wholesaling. I started flipping properties, ultimately ended up going broke with that. I didn't have enough resources at the time. And pretty much I went on this cycle of quitting my jobs to go full-time into entrepreneurship, losing all my money, failing, and having to go back to work another job. I repeated that cycle for four times before I finally got fully.

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8:27Ken Wentworth:And as a parent, that's the part I care about. It's not about the shortcuts. It's about them actually learning the material. It's also just practical. You don't have to deal with scheduling a tutor or trying to find things that line up around sports and everything else. It's there whenever they need it. And it's a lot more affordable than traditional tutoring. Honestly, it just takes a lot of pressure off. Finals are coming up. Build your teen study plan now. It only takes minutes. Go to brainly.com backslash Ryan to get 50 % off your first Brainly subscription. With my code Ryan, that's B-R-A-I-N-L-Y.com slash Ryan.

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10:37Ken Wentworth:We're talking success engineering. We're talking to Alex Morton. What's up, brother? What's up, man? Happy to be here. I watched some of your speaking stuff. You're really dynamic. There's an authenticity to you, man, that really struck me. It wasn't overly produced, but it was still polished. It was authentic. That's probably had something to do with your success, if I had to guess. You can always tell someone that maybe made$100 ,000 one time in a month or even a year, and everything's got to be super formulated and organized, all this kind of stuff. And one of my good friends and mentors, Grant Cardone, which a lot of people know, I love the guy so much, not just because he's a good dude, but he's so raw and real.

11:15And he's like, I'm going to tell you the way it is because I've done it. And I feel at my age, are there people that have made more money than me? Absolutely. But being able to earn dozens of millions of dollars in your low thirties, you learn a lot of stuff. And I feel like I know how to just give people the truth. So why mess around with all the marshmallows and rainbows? Just tell people how it is. And if some people like you, love you or hate you, that's not even my business. My business is to give people the formula to go out there and win. And that's that.

11:43Ken Wentworth:What defines success for Alex Morton? Well, it's changed, man. At 21, when I'm making no money a month and I see the possibility of making$40 ,000 a month, I wanted to party, have fun, spend money, cars, watches, clothes, all this kind of stuff. But now at 32, in my personal growth journey, obviously has extrapolated out. Money to me is just one of the spokes on the wheel. My biggest goal now is to be the best newly married, the best husband I could possibly be, be the best leader I could possibly be. I feel like money is a massive part of success, but it's really living on purpose, being fulfilled at the end of the day.

12:20And a lot of people say, I just want to go change people's lives and I want to help people. And to me, it's like, I want to make a ton of money, but I want to do it by helping a lot of people and making a difference. So that's where I kind of sit now on this idea of success. And I also believe it's a moving target. You have an entrepreneur get to a hundred grand a year, immediately they want 200 grand a year. It's

12:38Ken Wentworth:this progressive realization of what you really want. When we talk about this industry being in it 12 years, what exactly are we talking about? Network marketing. I'm one of the highest paid, probably the most money ever earned under 35. And that's not ego. I'm a very humble guy. It's just, that's what it is. But there's pros to our industry. There's cons. Some people love us. Some people despise the industry, but I've used this as the platform to build my name, my brand, and to also impact people in 75 countries around the world. So for me, it's been a great environment for growth. Network marketing comes with a stigma.

13:14Absolutely.

13:14Ken Wentworth:And I feel like you're breaking it daily. How do you define network marketing? It's the idea of instead of spending money on billboards, magazine ads, TV commercials, movie previews, YouTube ads, it's the idea of word of mouth. And obviously it works. It makes sense. Like you look at these companies like Amway, Arbon, Mary Kay, right? They're doing 5 billion, 7 billion a year and it works. I think network marketing, this is my opinion, doesn't mean it's fact. I think it's the best opportunity for someone that doesn't have a surplus of cash to go start a business. They can get started for 2, 3, 4,$500.

13:50It's not guaranteed, but they can get to 6, 7, and even 8 figures a year through hard work, learning, persistence. but there is a stigma because there's a lot of people in our profession that do it super bad, super wrong. They market it terrible. They say it's a get rich overnight thing. Dude, it's not a get rich quick. It takes time just like anything else. But yeah, network marketing has given me my shit. It's given me a lot, man. So

14:11Ken Wentworth:you obviously are pushing certain products, certain services. What have been the cash cows of the 12 years? Where I really hit my first home run was a healthy energy drink. Imagine I'm in college. I'm an Arizona state, number one party school in the country, right? And everybody's slamming rebel, rockstar, monster. And I'm like, dude, instead of drinking that, drink this, you're going to get paid for it. It went viral. I was like at Ohio state. I was at Michigan state. I was at ASU. I was at university of Texas and Austin. Tens of thousands of young people just going bonkers with this thing. And then I kind of grew up and I realized it's not even about really the product so much, the physical product so much.

14:48It's about freedom. I fell into a company where I've been now for six years and it's obviously been the grand slam of my career where it's real financial education. It's cryptocurrency, it's Forex, it's e-com and it's just education. We don't invest money, we don't make money on brokers, but we give people some of the education that if they grew up in the middle class America or in Ecuador or Peru or in poverty, their parents never taught them about how to make money, how to multiply money, how to save money on taxes. That's what I've been a part of and that's been the biggest catalyst financially for sure in my career.

15:19Ken Wentworth:Crypto and NFTs, anything and everything that's kind of falling out of digital currency. There's an education that you do and promote, and there's a network aspect, I guess, a layering of compensation for that education. We've got great traders and educators that teach people how to trade and multiply money and all that. And then there's people like me that are sales, marketing, leadership, momentum, because I've been a part of close to probably$2 billion now in team sales. So I go in there and help just explode the marketplaces and build the business. Talking to another media person, the famous woman.

15:58Ken Wentworth:She's a pretty lady, but she's a damn good business person. Talking to Jen Gottlieb, co-founder of Super Connector Media. What's up, Jen? What's up, Ryan? I'm super excited to be here. Media's changed so much. TV's changed and distractions and where media is on the smartphone and on social media. But reflect on those VH1 days. The VH1 thing really happened on accident. I was an actress. I studied musical theater in college, and then I dropped out of college. I moved to New York City to study musical theater at a two-year conservatory program. Immediately after studying at the school that I was at called the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, I booked my dream role in the Broadway national tour of The Wedding Singer.

16:36I played Linda the bitch that leaves Robbie Hart at the altar. In the show, she's this Lita Ford wannabe rock star. She looks like a combination of Joan Jett and 80s Madonna like a virgin. She's just this hilarious wannabe rock star chick. I was on the road playing this character for a year and I get back from doing that. And I see this audition for a sexy rocker chick. And I'm like, Oh, I could play that part. I could play that character. I know nothing about heavy metal music. I know nothing about rock and roll, but I'm like, this is a gig. I'm an actress. I can go get this. I'm going to go land this.

17:06I needed a job. The night before the audition, I Googled everything there was to know about heavy metal, learning all the band names. I go in pretty much I felt like I bombed the audition because I kind of forgot all the things that I was memorizing. They're like, what kind of music do you like? I like everything from Beyonce to Black Sabbath. They could probably tell that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. At the end of the audition, they're like, Oh Jen, I noticed at the bottom of your resume, it says that you do a great Britney Spears impersonation. So I'm like, yeah, okay, I do.

17:34They're like, can we see your Britney? And so I do my Britney Spears impersonation. They're all laughing hysterically. It's like an uproar. Everyone finally is alive after being kind of bored with me because I didn't know what I was talking about. They call me two weeks later and they're like, we want you to be Miss Box of Junk on that metal show. And I'm like, really? They're like, yes, you made everyone laugh. Your Britney Spears imitation got you the role. That was the first moment in time when I learned that being my most authentic self is always what's going to get people to lean in and pay attention.

18:04It wasn't that I knew everything about heavy metal music. It was when I finally let myself shine that actually got me the gig. I get this gig by being myself, ironically, but I immediately reverted to, I have to play this version of myself that wasn't me. I had to become heavy metal Jen. I wore super tight spandex pants and I cut up all these rocker shirts and I pretended I like heavy metal music, even though I didn't. And before I knew it, I had this big audience of all these metal guys that thought I was like this metal girl. I had built this brand that was a lie. I got to meet all these huge rock stars.

18:34One thing that I learned about people from this experience is that everybody, even the biggest rock stars in the world have imposter syndrome. Because even the biggest people that perform for years and years in front of millions of people would come backstage and they would be so nervous to go on and be interviewed. And they would come backstage and they would say to me, did I do okay? Was that good enough? I'm like, dude, you're slash. Are you asking me if you were good enough? Are you kidding? So it was a really nice reminder to me that people are people are people. And like every time I get nervous or I feel like an imposter or I feel not good enough, everybody experiences that.

19:06It's a human condition. I lost myself along the way because I was playing a fake version of myself that couldn't have been further from who I really was. And when the show ended, I had to reinvent myself and start showing the world who I am. And that was a big lesson in a lot of ways. But I'm really grateful for the time. It was fun. And it gives me a really amazing story to tell.

19:24Ken Wentworth:What framed your business perspective? You're a singer, actress, multi-talented, attractive. What do you feel like molded you as the business person? It was really a lot of getting heard. No, I think that one of the most powerful tools that a successful entrepreneur can have is resiliency and the ability to be persistent. Even when you're getting heard, no, when you're getting rejected, many people, the second that they hear no, or they get rejected or the thing that they want doesn't work, they stop or they just like, Oh, I guess this isn't for me. I'll go grocery shopping today and forget it.

19:54I'm not going to try anymore. Right. I'm going to go binge Netflix or do something else that makes me feel good because I don't want to be rejected. When I was an actress, I was a professional auditioner. I got rejected probably 10 times a day. Like no, no, no, no, no. So I got really, really, really good at hearing no. And no doesn't bother me anymore. As an entrepreneur, when I was building my business, I got heard no all the time. I got on sales calls that I didn't close all the time, but I was resilient and persistent. And I didn't stop until I got the yes. And I think that that was built inside of me from being an actress and hearing her no again and again and again, and being okay with that.