by Steve Wolf | Jun 12, 2013 | Business, Lifestyle, Mental
The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
–Dwight D. Eisenhower
These past couples of weeks have led up to a defining moment in my young adult life. Shortly upon my return to the U.S. after my trip to Bali I walked in to a shit storm. Unlike most working professionals, the industry I have worked in for the past 6 years of my life has a way of creeping in to ones personal life. The line between professional and personal life gets very blurry because in the Multi-Level-Marketing industry, it is a relationship business, and at the end of the day, people have gotten in to business with me because they respected me, and they trusted me not just in business, but also in a personal way because they saw how I lived my life.
This is me last week đ
Itâs sad how in desperate times, people who are the closest to you can hurt you the most. Not because that was their intention, but because when a person gets scared, they tend to do what is in the best interest for themselves and their family. In this past week, I watched the top guy (master distributor) in our company, someone who was a close friend and mentor of mine completely screw our mutual owner of our company and engage in the most below the belt tactics to get a group of distributors to follow him in to a different company.
The weekend leading up to this, I was in Las Vegas attending MFest with my buddy Cody. I had gotten news that a couple of groups in my organization had left to go to other companies. I had a feeling something bad was brewing and felt that I should get my ass to Salt Lake City to get to the bottom of it.
In my industry, when people start leaving, itâs because they have lost faith and feel that they cannot achieve their dream with our company. As a leader, when faced with this I have to ask myself some very hard questions, this is usually how they go:
- Was my distributor unwilling to take the necessary steps for him/herself to be successful?
- Did I fail as an âup-lineâ or leader because I didnât support them accordingly?
- Did they leave because the companyâs inability to offer value to this individual?
- Is our culture broken or not a culture that evokes growth and retention?
The distributors that I lost were not people who sucked, in fact they were very good friends of mine and some of the top people in my sales organization. Their departure sent me a clear message that they were done and fell in to one of the categories listed above. They explained that I didnât fail them, but the company and the culture did, and although that made me feel a little better, I still lost them.
In the weeks leading up to my trip to Salt Lake City I was waiting to hear back from our master distributor on a possible investment in to out company. He told me that there were some promising people who were looking at investing in to our company. Sick of waiting, and having been told all kinds of things before that didnât end up happening I decided to give him a deadline to come through on some of the promises that he was making.
The Deadline was on the Friday that I was on the way up to Vegas and the day after I suffered the loss of those two groups from my sales organization. After speaking with the Master Distributor, I felt as if he was bull-shitting me again, and buying time, something he is a master at. I took it upon myself to drive out to Utah and get to the bottom of it because I felt that I was just never going to get a straight answer over the phone. When I got there, I discovered that there were in fact NO investors and quickly realized that our master distributor and my friend and mentor Bryan was planning a strategic hostile takeover of the RevvNRG distributor base.
I was faced with the fear of my own loss, thinking to myself if this is successful and I end up on the wrong side of it, I’ll be broke and the 5 years I spent building this business will have gone to waste. I also thought about all of the relationships and promises I had made to people over the past 5 years and how my character and integrity would be questioned. I realized very quickly that I had to make a decision and do it fast as time was not on my side. Itâs times like these that can confuse a person what the ârightâ thing to do is. I mean, here I have my friend and mentor in one ear telling me that I should follow him using every single persuasive tactic in the book to get me to get behind him. I was conflicted because I had a feeling that our mutual owner had no idea what was happening. When I asked Bryan if he had gone to Scotty (Our owner) and told him what he was planning, Bryan tried to dodge the answer in his usual style answering with out a simple yes or no, but basically explained to me that he hadnât in fact discussed any of this with Scotty in a very eloquent way.
I have been alive long enough to know that if I act without integrity, I may get away with it for a while, but eventually the lies and deceit will catch up to me. This is why I live so rigorously honest today. Doing the right thing, especially when no one is looking is a matter of life and death for me personally. When I got sober almost 13 years ago, I was a liar, cheat, and a thief. It took me years to get honest with myself and to make all of the amends to clear the wreckage of my past. Eventually, after yearâs sobriety, hard work, dedication and rigorous honesty with my fellows, and myself, I achieved what few people in life ever do; I was even with the world. I had paid back all the money, made all of the apologies and lived my life in a way where I would work carefully at all my endeavors as to not create new wreckage, and when I did make mistakes, I would correct them immediately preventing those shortcomings from festering and eating away at my soul.
I watched many men fail to do the right thing ultimately leading them to drink again, wind up in jail or just live a miserable existence filled with guilt, anger, and shame. I vowed a long time ago to NEVER end up like this. My mentors were gleaming examples of the type of life you get to live by always acting with integrity.
They led by example and would always tell me that serenity wonât come from a pile of money but from the respect of your peers. Perry P would always say, âyou canât be one guy in one area, and another guy in another area, a scum bag is a scum bag even if the guy does some good things too.â Perry always made it black and white, heâd say âYou either tell the truth or you donât kid, thereâs no in between.â My other mentor Mike W. used to tell me that by standing aside and doing nothing when I could bring someone or something to justice by telling the truth was just as bad as the guy lying about it to begin with.
The bottom line is that I was in a position where I had knowledge of something happening that if brought to the right people, the lies would be exposed and something potentially harmful and hurtful could be stopped. I called a couple close friends who were long time Multi Level Marketing guys and sought some council with close friends. Just as my mentors would have advised, told me go forward and expose the lies.
I broke the story to our owner Scotty and called my team to action to help me prepare a conference call the field explaining and trying to prime them for what was about to ensue.
I began to get attacked from all angles and the shit storm commenced. I began to see how much or how little influence I had on the group as a whole. Even with factual empirical evidence people still believed what they wanted too. It was as if I was telling them the sky was blue and they still didnât believe me even though they could walk outside and see it with their own eyes.
As each day went by I kept finding out more and more bad stuff about my former mentor and master distributor Bryan. Turns out that he had quite a few back door deals, and that his current financial situation didn’t seem to add up to what he would have me believe. Allegedly, there were large sums of money MISSING, and outstanding debts from prior lawsuits that were being paid off. Money given to him as an investment that was meant for opening international markets for RevvNRG never made it to the intended recipient.
After watching this drama unfold I couldnât help but feel relieved that I made the right decision, but I felt remorseful towards Bryanâs wife and kids who I had come to know over the years and probably had little to no knowledge of what was happening. I also began to feel really bad for all of the distributors that were caught in the middle of this and made a quick decision based out of fear because they felt they were going to lose something or not achieve their dreams without Bryan.
I spent the next week on the phone with our owner Scotty trying to come up with a solution that would save the company. A couple of days after the siege, Scotty and his wife sue were feeling the pressure and it was time to stand up and make some tough decisions.
Within days of the fallout, the sides were divided and the people left on our side quickly got to work on a solution. Within days we put our heads together and aligned ourselves with the right people coming to a solution that would not only fix the current situation, but in one fail swoop eliminate and take care of some future and past problems that we had as well.
The moral of the story was that truth, and doing the right eventually paid off as it always has. There is no such thing as a short cut, or luck, you make your own way, and if you do it dishonestly or burning bridges along the way, eventually there will be nowhere or no one left to work with or help you out in a time of need. The RevvNRG brand lives on and is about to be 10 times bigger and in 11 new countries đ hint hint!!
As I finish writing this it is close to midnight and is technically my birthday. I’ll be turning 29 years old today, and even though Iâm far from home and have been stressed out over the past couple of weeks, Iâm going to sleep well tonight knowing that I have a clear conscious, a bright future and a hell of a lot of people who love and respect me. Thatâs a whole lot of things to be grateful for.
I am excited to see how the next couple of weeks unfold, my prediction, EPIC!!!!!!
For more information on the whatâs happening in my MLM business, stay tuned to this blog and my Facebook page as I will be posting videos and blogging about the big news coming!!!!
by Steve Wolf | May 20, 2013 | Business, Lifestyle, Mental
Do you ever think that you were meant for so much more than what you are currently doing?
Throughout my life I have found that most people have a large gap between what they want to be and
A Shit Sandwich
who they are. Most time, these people fall in to one of two categories of why they believe their life isnât where they want it to be:
1. They make excuses. They are simply unwilling to admit that the reason why they arenât where they want to be is due to some life circumstance, or some kind of outside force that is preventing them to achieve what they would like to do or accomplish.
2. They have become so ingrained in their daily routine and patterns that they have either forgotten their dreams all together or simply have accepted the fact that they may never come to fruition. Almost as if they missed it, or it wasnât in the cards for them in this life.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to hang out and learn from some incredible individuals. People whom at one point in my life I thought to be inaccessible by me. I used to be scared when I was in the presence of such greatness and success because I felt so below them, so far away from what they had accomplished in their lives. As time went on and I gained more confidence in myself personally and professionally, interacting with these people became easier. One day it clicked and I realized that no matter how famous or well put together the man or woman standing in front of me was, they, like me were human. They ate, slept, and put clothes on the same way that I did. At times in their careers, they too struggled and failed miserably. They experienced love, loss, sadness, victory and all of the other emotions that I too had felt.
I realized that no one, and I mean no one is untouchable or immune to life. The only difference that I experienced among the haves and have-nots was their reaction to what life threw at them.  When life hands you a shit sandwich, some people refuse to eat it, and avoid it at all costs even when it means that by not eating it, they will never realize their dreams. The shit sandwich is a metaphor that I have come to use when trying to explain the hardships of life. Successful people, eat the fucking sandwich, and they eat it quickly because they realize that if you are going to get anywhere in life that has some substantial value, that there is no way to avoid eating some shit sandwiches and the faster you just eat it and get it over with, the closer you are to where your going. Not to mention all the time and energy that is wasted complaining and dreading about doing some hard things one doesnât like to do. Bottom line is that a shit sandwich already sucks and is disgusting; now imagine waiting days, weeks or months to eat it, and how much more disgusting that sandwich is going to be when you finally come to the inevitable realization that in order to move forward, you must eat it.
Successful people are never victims, they take bad things happening in stride building the muscle of resilience knowing and having faith that no matter how bad things may seem, they will always get better if you are willing to work for it and persevere through bad times.
To win is a choice, to lose is a choice, and the outcome has nothing to do with circumstances, it comes down to who was more willing to set aside their circumstances and excuses to beat the person who chose to be a victim of those things.
To me, I feel like I have gotten so good at dealing with shit happening and tacking it up as just a standard and normal part of life itâs almost as if a shit sandwich doesnât even phase me. I look at it, I mentally prepare, and then I eat it quickly so I can get back to having fun. I refuse to let it ruin my day or waste any more time than it has too.
Mastering this skill has become one of my greatest strengths, without it, I would not be where I am at today. Anyone can be happy when everything is going well, but the people I respect and want to align myself with are the people who can keep calm and focused with a positive mental attitude when things a falling apart all around them and itâs raining shit sandwiches.
Hope you got something out of this J
-Steve
by Steve Wolf | May 3, 2013 | Lifestyle, Mental, Spiritual & Mental, Travel
Sipping Coconuts under Palm Trees in Thailand
After a little over a month in Bali, I am returning home. The beautiful sunsets, amazing surf, and sipping coconuts under palm trees while meditating about life are going to come to end.
A part of me is toying with the idea of just staying out here. I love it so much and there is everything I need out here to be happy. I know that I will return again and I have been looking in to just buying a place out here so I can just live out here a couple of months out of the year.
The only draw back is that out here is life is so slow and easy-going that I would imagine it would be hard for me to get things done. It is such a quality problem. When you live in paradise and you have everything you need, there is not a lot of motivation to work and strive for new things. Itâs like a never-ending vacation for those who live here, and thatâs the seduction of this place. Bali has a way of taking you out of your environment, and then slowing you down to the pace and way of life here. It is the only place on the planet that has been able to do that to me. I am an A-Type personality full of passion, motivation and an undying sense of urgency to get things done. After about a week out here, all I am motivated to do is Surf, read, write and meditate. With the occasional outings with friends and hitting a club here and there; a good time to me is sleeping in, surfing, reflecting, and then just enjoying a good conversation with some interesting people, and this place has no shortage of them.
People usually ask me what I miss about my country when I travel, I always have to stop and think about it because I have conditioned myself to live in the moment for so long I usually donât find myself ever missing a place, instead, I always end missing the people who I have met over the years throughout my adventures. California is my home though. I was born and raised there and it is a part of me. Itâs not a bad place to end up and compared to a lot of the places Iâve been to in the world, and I am extremely grateful to come home to San Diego where I reside currently.
The world is getting smaller. Technology allows me to stay connected with all of the people I have met all over the world and when you break it down, I can get anywhere I want to on this planet in about 2 days (unless your going to the middle of Siberia). Everything is a plane flight away. This makes me extremely grateful, because the ability for common people to travel to far corners of the earth has only been around for about 70 years. 100 years ago, if you wanted to go to Europe from America, you were going to have to take a carriage or car to a boat and then embark on a 1-2 month voyage just to get to some place. Only people who were rich were able to afford such a voyage. To be able to scale that amount of time down to just a couple of days and couple thousand bucks to leave for months at a time is fucking amazing to me. I mean I hop on a plane in LA, and 6 movies and 10 cranberry juices later, I am half way around the world immersed in a foreign land where everything is different, and to me that experience alone is one of the most exhilarating and fulfilling things I have ever experienced in this life. If you are a traveler, you know exactly what I am talking about, and if not, maybe itâs high time you spin a globe, pick a destination and get out of your comfort zone.
Paradise is defined as âa place or state of bliss, felicity or delight.â It is not necessarily attached to a location and although it can be, I believe that Paradise is found within ones soul. Buddhists call it Nirvana, Christians call it heaven, Jews call it Shamayim, but to me, it all means the same thing. Like I had mentioned before about living in the moment, I am not terribly concerned with what will happen to me in the after-life or even the future really. I have subscribed to the concept of living as if I were going to die tomorrow and planning as if I am going to live forever. Spending a massive amount of time pontificating about the unknown afterlife and future can be fun an enlightening at times, but the idea of dedicating a continual amount of time to this is both boring and unfulfilling to me.
The truth is that I am alive now. Time is made up, safety is an illusion, and although some humans claim it, I have never been 100% convinced that were going anywhere but 6-Feet under when we die, and we will die, the day will absolutely come so no need to fear that either. The hypothetical clock is ticking and has been for a long time. So, instead of worrying about all that noise, I just live every single day to the fullest seeking to find truth and experiencing every single person, place, thing or idea I can immerse myself in while my soul occupies this body.
My beliefs and principles are negotiable, and as a result of that I have been able to experience and do things that I donât think most people get to in their lifetime. I studied world religions for years, went to Israel, read the Koran, hung with Pastors and Spiritual Guruâs, traveled throughout South East Asia and was open to the idea of adopting any belief system that got me closer to my understanding of God. The funny thing is that after all that, my underlying spiritual belief remained the same. It was the simple belief in a Higher Power of my own understanding, a principal introduced to me at the age of 16 years old through a 12-Step program I came in to while getting sober from Alcohol and Drugs.
My path to spirituality has been long, vast and downright tedious at times, but I have approached it with the same enthusiasm and tenacity that I have with everything else in my life never getting to caught up on any one thing and being open to it all believing that all religions and people for that matter are basically good and mean well. To deny or discount anyoneâs beliefs would make me just like the people who are shut off, or unwilling to be open to a new understanding, and ultimately will not allow their belief system to be questioned or negotiated no matter how much sense logic makes in spite of what they believe. To me, those are some of the scariest people on Earth; they are the type of people who start wars over that kind of shit.
What this all means is that Paradise, to me at least; is being completely ok with everything exactly that way it is in this very moment. The more I realize that I cannot change anyone and the only real control I have over anything is how I react, and the example I set as a human being, the more easier my life gets. I do want to effect change and help those who want it to reach this kind of spiritual enlightenment, but you cannot force those who donât want it and to judge those people for not wanting it would be hypocritical, because I spent a large part of my life in that same place.
What ever you believe is totally cool. You donât have to conform to anyone or any religionâs or societiesâ belief system if you donât want to. You are free to do what you want; after all it is your life. If you are an atheist, agnostic, spiritually conflicted Catholic, or you simply donât know where you stand, I would urge to seek truth in places you never thought to look before. Thatâs where I found my faith, and my faith is in no way shape or form affiliated to any one religion, if anything I have taken the teachings and traditions from many religions and use what I like leaving the rest behind. This is how I have found my paradise, my state of Nirvana. I donât need to be in Bali, or some incredibly beautiful place to reach it either, it is in my soul. Besides, it has been my experience that in the darkest of times when I really needed to tap in to this place and ask my higher power for direction, Iâm usually not on vacation or in a place like Bali, Iâm in life, dealing with real shit, real problems that need solution. Thatâs when my faith has counted the most.
One final note, when I do die, which could be tomorrow or in 100 years, I have no fear going to where it is I will go next. To me, that is the ultimate adventure, the one true great unknown besides space. I have lived each and every day to the fullest, I have no beef with my fellow-men, there is no wreckage from my past that has not been cleaned up, there is nothing that I havenât done that I have wanted to do to this point. Everything I dream up I attempt it no matter how crazy it sounds, I never live with regret or say some bullshit like: âsomeday I willâ or âIll try,â I only dream and them get to turning that shit in to a reality for me as quickly as possible. This has allowed me to see and experience things I never could have imagined to be possible, and for that I am extremely grateful.
Never let fear dictate your life, if you can dream it, than itâs possible, so never give up hope and continue seeking truth.
See you back on the other side of the World âș
-Steve
Me at Angkor Wat in Cambodia
by Steve Wolf | Mar 27, 2013 | Business, Mental, Spiritual & Mental
No path to success is linear; in fact, itâs an incredulous journey of peaks and valleys that is painful at times and downrightunbearable at others. That is what my mentors taught me, and I have never forgotten it!
This Blog post is a little long, but I guarantee that reading it will immediately change your state, make you cry, and give you hope all at the same time. So donât quit on me and please re-post and comment if you like it!!!
Many people who have met me in this past year or two have met me while I am on a big up-swing in my life, and yes it has been a great year so far; but all to many times I meet people who have some kind of self limiting belief about themselves as it relates to me and my life; and how they donât believe that they themselves can achieve a level of success that I myself have achieved or any successful person for that matter.
I want you all to know, that the story you tell yourself is your reality. Change your story, and it will change your life.
Something happened to me this week that made me remember a painful time in my past that I havenât shared with most people. In fact there are probably only a couple people in my life who know about it. I want to share it now with you because I think that it is a very valuable story that will hopefully help some people who may be struggling with similar things in their own lifeâŠ
So here goes:
Back in the summer of 2008, I came back home from the trip of a lifetime. I had been vacationing with my girlfriend of 2 years in Western Europe. We were at the peak of the Real Estate boom; I owned a successful brokerage that was allowing me to pull down about 18k-25K of income per month. I had gone back to college for fun, bought my first house the year earlier for a half a million dollars and was at the top of my game. I WAS only 22 Years old!!!
In September of 2008, the Economy went to absolute shit, with the DOW dropping 477 points in a day and the housing market turning in to an absolute frenzy. It began a series of events that would change my life forever. Nothing could prepare me for what was about to happen in my life.
A week after the Crash, my brokerage was shut down because our parent company closed the doors over night. I paid out my sales team from my own pocket ($50,000) and told them good luck. I brought the 28 deals we had left in the pipeline to another broker house but watched 2 out of those 28 deals actually get closed as the economy melted down and multiple banks and business shut their doors. Needless to say, it was over, my dry cleaning bill that month cost more than I took in.
I was hemorrhaging money and very quickly going in to debt as my overhead and lifestyle cost me 15k-20k per month. My investments lost substantial value, and my income was cmpletley gone. I was starting to get desperate.
Meanwhile, My sponsor/Mentor in AA (Alcoholics Anonymous)Â was diagnosed for the 4th time with Esophageal cancer. For those of you who donât know, Iâve been sober for since I was 16 years old (12 years now!!). (Check out my book The Rich Kid Syndrome if you are interested in hearing that whole story). A week after I got this news I found out my father was be federally indicted by the FBI for Medicaid fraud and was looking at some serious legal problems despite the fact he was innocent. To make matters even more bleak, my girlfriend who I was in love with decided to break her 3 years of sobriety and went from an incredibly beautiful and intelligent person who was Psych major attending Pepperdine University to a full blown alcoholic drug addict who would disappear for days at a time with no recollection what happened or what she did. The women that I knew and fell in love with had ceased to exist, and when I needed her the most, she checked out emotionally and I was forced to break it off.
I was 23 years old, and in my last year of College for my undergraduate degree in communications. I was scared, in over my head and every time I would try to cheer myself up and say something like, âit could be worse,â, it got even worse! My best friend at the time decided to move out with our mutual friend on very short notice skipping out on rent and leaving me in an even more desperate situation. Then my father on the advice of his attorney took a plea bargain with the federal government that was supposed to be a slap on the wrist type case, but resulted in him losing his medical license and being sent to federal prison for 5 months. Just when I thought this nightmare couldnât get any worse, all my credit lines were frozen and I couldnât find employment to generate some kind of income.
Within 6 moths, all of this happened and I was now $140,000 in debt. The house I bought 2 years before was worth $100,000 less than I bought it for. The two men who I looked up to in my life and went to for advice and guidance were hurting, one was terminally ill and dying and my father in Jail. The two closest people two me were gone, my best friend and the love of my life.
I was broke, lonely, depressed, and in the most pain I had ever been in my life.Â
The breaking point happened 1 month after all of this. I found a tenant to rent a room in my house to help cut my overhead cost down on the mortgage payment. He seemed to be a descent tenant, good credit and had good job. It turned out that he was actually a con artist. The job was fake. Social Security Number was someone elseâs, and he had people posing as his former employer and landlord to get passed the rental application process.
I came home from job searching one day and checked my accounts and realized that all of my money was GONE! I immediately called the bank and they told me that I had cleared checks pulling the money from my accounts. This guy ended up taking the last $10,000 that I had set aside so I could survive over the next couple of months. My cards stopped working and I couldnât even buy a $0.99 taco.
I went to the police frantically, but they sent me away saying that it was an identity theft case and because there was no immediate threat of danger they couldnât assign me a detective right away. Iâve never felt more angry and helpless in my life. My Bank couldnât help, the police couldnât help and I was so desperate that I just snapped.
The con-artist roommate of mine did not know that I had found all of this out and was due to come home in a couple hours. So I went home, I loaded my gun, and shut the lights off in the house waiting for him to come home. I decided I was just going to shoot him, maybe not kill him, but I was so angry and desperate at the time, I may have done so. I just snapped, I lost it and I wasnât thinking clear. All of the pain I had been feeling just got channeled and put on him, and I was determined to make him feel how I felt inside.
While I was waiting in the dark for him to come home, my mentor Mike Watson called me out of the blue and asked me âhow I was doing.â I told him âhorribleâ and explained the story of what had just happened. Mike asked me what I was going to do about it, and I told mike âIâm going to shoot him.â
 Mike realized that I was not thinking clear and told me to go put my gun away and call him back. He didnât give me a choice. I hesitantly complied, and called him back. When we got back on the phone, Mike told me:
âSteve, I know youâre angry, and feel violated, but bad things happen to good people and the only thing that separates us is how we react back to the world when people do us wrong.â
Mike went on to tell me that unless I immediately forgave him, that I would carry this anger and obsess about it, that it would eat me alive unless I just dropped it and moved on. I couldnât imagine forgiving this person given the drastic nature of the situation, I mean come on, what would you do if someone stole your last penny in my same situation. Iâd been in full-blown fistfights over much less; I was planning on shooting the ass hole.
This was a dose of humility that I really didnât want to swallow.
Mike made me promise him that I would call the scumbag and forgive him immediately before the guy had a chance to come home and meet my wrath face to face where in that moment, I probably would have done something incredibly stupid out of sheer anger.
So I called him, after he tried to make some bullshit excuse of what happened with the money, I stopped him and said this:
âI know what you did, and itâs ok. I forgive you.â He replied, âhuh? What do you mean you forgive me, you donât just forgive someone for something like this.â I then explained thatâŠ
âYea, well I wasnât going to, in fact when you came home today I was planning on shooting you, but then something happened, I spoke to someone who loves me and he told me to let it go, and to forgive you. I realized after talking to this person who loves me, that guyâs like you who operate like this and are sick, and that even though you took 10 grand from me, I wouldnât trade 100 grand for the life and the people I have in my life. Guyâs like you live in a world where you look over your shoulder every day wondering if that will be the day you run in to me, or any of the people you have hurt before in the past. Guyâs like you end up getting shot in the back over 200 bucks. So yea, take the money, you will have to pay for it one way or another in the future, but donât ever come back here, because if I ever see you again I am going to hurt you real bad!â
I hung up the phone and I never heard from him again, that is until about a month ago. I will finish that little story at the end of this blog.
I went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning and drove to the beach. The beach always made me happy. So I went there and sat on the rocks and watched the waves break on the shore. I was fed up, and sick of being depressed and in pain. In that moment right then and there, I promised myself that I was going to live through this, and not only live through it, but that I was going to fucking knock it out of the park. I reminded myself that I was a survivor, and that it was not in my nature to quit or give up. I remembered everything that my mentors taught me, and all of the people who made sacrifices for me to get me as far in life as I had come. I stood up; I looked at the sky, and I declared to God that I was going to fight through this and come out shining or DIE trying.
 After this change of state and paradigm shifting moment of clarity, what I needed to do became clear. I went home, I organized my thoughts, set some crazy goals and got to work.
Over the next 3 years, I ate shit, trudged through very hard times and endured the storm. I kept reminding myself that what ever doesnât kill me makes me stronger, and that everything that I was going through was preparing me for something.
My dad went to prison for 5 months but then got out, I buried my sponsor and Mentor Mike Watson and spoke at his funeral, I finished my last year college strong with a 3.8 GPA and got my bachelors degree. I helped build RevvNRG (The Multi-Level-Marketing company I work with) to 20,000 + Distributors in less than 3 years hitting the top rank in company, I Settled and paid down $120,000 worth of the debt I owed with out a collection or a bankruptcy and to top it off, I published my latest book âThe Young Entrepreneurs Guide to Life.â
During this period in my life, I remained in a peak state. I found some of the best friends that I have in my life. I attribute that to the fact that the only energy I was putting out in the world was positive. I had no time for anyoneâs bullshit. Not only that, any negative people in my life went away very shortly after I made that declaration to the world, they had to go, I had nothing to give them, and if they werenât adding to my life I was in no position to waste any spiritual or motivational energy, I needed all the positivity I could get, and if they werenât with me on that, they had to go. My dreams and family became to important for me to risk failing on the count of mediocre people around me, after all, the people around me is one thing I actually have a lot control over.
As things leveled out in my life I starting taking more time for myself. I wanted to keep the positivity going, so now that I had time and a little money, I took up skydiving, and fight training (Krav-Maga), got back in to my music, and started to travel again.
5 months ago, I took a trip to S.E. Asia. I started in Bali, and then went to Malaysia, Cambodia, Viet Nam and Thailand. I spent about 3 months on the trip booking a one-way ticket, selling all my stuff and left with a backpack and a surfboard. I spent my time surfing, trying new things and amercing myself in those cultures. I had plenty of time to reflect on the past years and I was in a constant state of gratitude. I had won; I defied all odds and handled my shit! I was so happy. I came home from that trip high on life with an even greater conviction to keep going.
I have come to some new realizations in my life lately. My time is my most valuable asset and I have reached a point in my life where I realize that I need to spend even more time then ever to give back!
I am sitting in Bali again presently as I write this blog. The week before I came here, I was invited to attend the Tony Robbins Seminar in Los Angeles with my Cousin Jordan Adler (A top producing MLMer in Send Out Cards and Author of the book Beach Money).
Remember that con artist roommate who stole the 10 grand from me. About a month ago, I received a call from the district attorney in San Diego telling me that they had caught him and he was trying to straiten his life out, this meant that he was willing to pay back the money he stole from me back in 2008.I honestly didnât believe that the guy was going to give me 10 gâs but the day before I left to meet my cousin for Tony Robbins, the lawyer called me and told me that he had a
$10,000 check for me. Astonished, I flew down to his office, grabbed the check and cashed it immediately! I couldnât believe it, the guy actually came through, and I just put 10,000 bucks in the bank that I never planned on ever seeing again 5 years earlier.
I got to the event up in L.A. and met up with my cousin who was with couple of his friends ranging from MLM industry leaders to formal American Idol finalists. Jordan has the coolest friends; they are always incredible people doing cool shit in their lives. Like-minds attract other like-minds.
I sat there listening to Tony do his thing and I was again overwhelmed with gratitude. Here I was sitting in the Diamond VIP section with Millionaires, great thinkers and successful people in all industries. I thought to myself wow, what a gift. I couldnât have even imagined that I would have been this far along 4 years prior. Not to mention, I was $10,000 richer and was leaving to go to Bali for a month the Sunday that the event finished.
As I met my friends at the Airport yesterday and started writing this blog post I was in a surreal space saying to myself âyes! This is your life Steve! You are not dreaming, you did it and guess what⊠youâre just getting started, so live it up, you deserve it kid.â
I imaged Watson looking down from heaven smiling, and saying, âthat-a-kid Stevie, I knew you could do it.â I imagined what all the other people in my life would have said who are no longer here. I thought of what might have happened to me if I ended up shooting that roommate of mine. I thought of the smiles that I bring to my parents faces when they think about how I came from almost dying on drugs when I was 16 years old to where I am at in my life now. The people Iâve helped, the places I have been and the things I have done are truly a testament to what happens to someone who never quits, and continues to do the right thing NO MATTER WHAT!
Life fills me up now. I am so rich, so blessed and so grateful to be alive. I wouldnât trade the past for anything; I love every part of my life good and bad.
As I watch the sunset tonight over the beach in Bali while drinking a coconut next to a palm tree, I am going to think about the future, and all the people I am going to get to be of service too! I am going to thank my higher power for this life and soak it all in. My hope is that who ever reads this does the sameâŠ
Live your dreams, donât just talk about them. Do what ever it takes to get what you want, then give back what was so freely given to you. Let go of your fears, they donât serve you, helping others and remembering where you came from does. It does not matter what happened in your past because it doesnât determine your futureâŠ
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You are strong, capable, and worthy of all the great things in life as long as you are willing to work for them.
Today is my Late Sponsor Mentor Mike Watsonâs Birthday; he would have been 60 years old today and almost 30 years sober.
Lots of Love from Bali Mike I love you and will never forget what you taught me, see you on the other side of the world.
-Steve
