In this evolutionary episode, Rodric Lenhart, President of Million Dollar Flipflops, shares how he failed in the pursuit of success, hit reset and built the business he loved multiple times over.
You will discover:
– Where to find the answers when you don’t even know who to ask
– How to get out of the job you’ve built for yourself and build a company you love
– One simple hack that will transform your schedule
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello Hello and welcome welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with an unbelievably high demand coach of very exciting guests and that is the one the only Rodric Lenhart. Now Roderic presents a transformative as a transformative guide to inspire individuals who are seeking to implement significant changes in their lives in million dollar football, his book, and in his coaching work as well now drawing from his own experiences from scientific research and the candidate stories of his colleagues worldwide. Roderic introduces to us the waves method, which we’ll dive into a little bit here a little bit later, which is a personalized system through which you can filter all your decisions, why are you making the decisions that you are, and it serves as a beacon for hope for anyone seeking guidance, inspiration and the reassurance that their decisions when made from a place of raw authenticity can lead to a life of fulfillment and happiness, and Roderic a lot of our folks here our founders and leaders are in the business world. And so this is real stuff for them. And I know you’ve got some work, you’ve done around five stages as well. So we’re gonna kind of weave all this together. But before we get to any of that, I’d love for you to just share a little bit of your story. Where did all of this come from? And how did it lead you to where you are today?
Rodric Lenhart
Yeah, man, that could fill 20-30 minutes on its own. But let me try and make it concise. And thank you for having me. This is a ton of fun. I’m a lifelong entrepreneur. I grew up you know, little one bath house in Michigan, we grew up with not much money. And I knew if I wanted a Nintendo or a bike or a cool pair of shoes for school, I was going to figure out how to hustle and get that myself. And so at a very young age, I figured out the art of sales talking to people doing candy drives, you know reselling candy at school, you know, the typical golf balls at the end of the street like to the golfers. It’s a public course. And, you know, that’s what kind of built my entrepreneurial drive. And by the time I went to the University of Toledo entrepreneurship family and small business program, I was the first graduate of that program at UT. But I had already started half a dozen businesses. By the time I was seven, I went to college when I was 70. And fast forward all of that I’ve moved to Charleston, South Carolina, with my then wife, and I took the bad word of the day, which is job to get job with a fortune 100 home builder at the time, and was wildly successful. I could buy anything I want do anything I want go anywhere I want. I was 23 years old, making more in a month, my parents made a year. And I woke up every day, hating my life. absolutely miserable. I was anxious, I was depressed. I often had suicidal thoughts. And I thought, what the ass is happening, I did all the things that I was taught my whole life were going to lead to this place of fulfillment. And I don’t feel that at all. What have I done wrong? Why am I wrong? What are all the bad things about me? Like what this isn’t supposed to be happening to me? And I quit that job, which everybody thought was absolute insanity. And I found myself in a very isolated and alone place where people don’t want to hear your first world problems. In fact, they want they think they want what you have. So well, you’re talking about how you’re sad. Because you’re making 300 grand a year when you’re 24. This it doesn’t compute for people, right? Yeah, I quit that job. I started another venture, which ended up turning into a quite a large construction company. It was an eight figure business. And I never looked back, I’ve been an entrepreneur again. So I had like a three year blip, where I went on the wrong path, and started multiple firms since then. And about 18 months ago, I exited my real estate company in Charlotte. And I was sitting on a beach man in Thailand. And I looked over at my partner, Nicole and I just said, you know, we got to give it all away. And she’s like, what? And I was, like most of your audience, I’m sure I retired for about a day and a half before I started having other ideas about what I wanted to do with my time in my life. And I always say I could have strapped on white velcro New Balance and you know, I build hot rods in my spare time from the ground up. That’s just what like my, what I do when I’m not doing this stuff. And I was like it’s really silly for everything I’ve learned to just go to waste and to just die inside of me. So that’s when I started writing the book. I started writing the book on that trip. And I was just writing it for me it was it was the things I wish I had along the way right and then it went on to hit number one in seven categories on Amazon and it turned into the podcast and into the journal comes out next week depending on when you’re listening to this comes out in middle of February. And I went to Brown got my ICF to be a professional coach because I had I had helped other business owners for a long time who just said man, how are you doing it? You know, because I not only that build these ventures I went to 60 countries on six continents. I’ve been a 46 states I’ve been to the World Series in the Super Bowl in the Daytona 500 You’ll go on down the list. I lived the life that I wanted to live while I built these ventures and we are taught to think that that’s possible. You’ve got a grind for 100 hours a week and then when you’re 65 you get the gold watch and you go to the Fun things, right? Yeah. So I didn’t want to live that way. And so I built businesses that supported my lifestyle, not the other way around. And you’re starting to see a little bit more of that now out in the market where you’re thinking about why you do these things. But ultimately, what I do for people what the book does, and what my any of the programs you do with me is, it’s about making conscious decisions. And it’s about business life integration, I think work life balance is a scam. I think when you’re wired this way, you’re going to work more than the guy down the street that works nine to five, but that’s okay. Because when you build something you enjoy, you not work. Although that makes sense. That was the shortest like, sure. It’s like a Vegas.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that. And so just real quick on the book, and we’ll dive into some of the concepts here. Here’s the book written for what questions are they asking right now? Where are they at in life where this is the right word for the right time?
Rodric Lenhart
Yeah, the, that’s honestly, where the five phases of the entrepreneur came from. And as you know, I wrote the book, and we’ll talk about who those are. But I wrote the book for the anxious philosopher, you know, the, the book is not for a brand new entrepreneur. And it’s not for somebody that thinks money is going to solve their problems. If you’re listening to this, and you’re miserable at 10,000 bucks, you’re gonna be miserable at 100,000. Until we fix that doesn’t matter how big you scale your business, you’re still going to be miserable. I know a lot of real unhappy millionaires and billionaires. You know, that’s, that’s who this book is for. It’s for building a decision making filter, that now everything you do from this day forward, turns you into the person you want to become. And you know why you’re making those decisions?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, the searcher. One of the things that I found a similar way of saying the same thing is for for opportunistic, vision led individuals in particular, we have a propensity to kind of put our joy and big parts of our life on hold until x, right, it’s until we get to there, we think, ah, there and and the the disillusioning that we almost invariably face is your business will get bigger, but it won’t really get better, right? Especially not in this these terms. And especially not without an intentional strategy for doing it. So know that walk us through this, folks that are listening, you know, we they like this idea stages, because we’ve got our lifecycle stages that organizations go through, I’ve got a similar book. But the thing that really struck me is just how personal these stages are just how how deep they go. So walk us through, there’s five phases, right for entrepreneurs walk us through these five phases. Phases are and where we tend to get stuck.
Rodric Lenhart
Sure. So I would invite the listener to know if you’re even if you’re writing in your car, raise your hand and say to me, when, when this resonates with you. And I like to say you, you need the first two, you want the last two, but we get stuck in number three, and that’s anxious philosopher and we repeat the cycle again, impostor syndrome, shiny object syndrome, all the things that come along, when you start to self sabotage your business, but don’t know why. You just know you wake up every day and say, Is this all there is? Right? So the believer is where I call uninformed optimism, you know, they’ve got this thing, everybody’s going to want their thing, they just need to get eyeballs on it, and are going to be a billionaire in six months on a beach, right? We’ve all been there as business owners, or even the new careers, then you move to the showman. Some people actually do want this thing, you’re starting to get the Western metrics of success, you got the house, you got the SUV, you could take a vacation, but you don’t, because you’re working 25 hours a day, eight days a week. And you start to realize this is a lot harder than they made it out to be the people in front of the Lamborghini on Instagram, they left a lot of the pieces of this equation out for me, right? Then you move into anxious philosopher, you’ve at this point, you probably have a small team, you’re at least making plenty of money to where you’re profitable. And you start to get to that place where I was when I was 24, where you can buy anything, you can do anything, you can go anywhere, you have all the signs of success, but you don’t feel that way. And you don’t know why. And you don’t know who to ask. Because the guy at the bar or the ladies after Pilates, they don’t want to hear it, because they want what you have. And my goal is to get you through that phase, I like to say from from late stage showman into the fourth level, which is peaceful warrior. And that’s where you’ve done a lot of this work like the waves method in the book. And it’s a lot of you touched on it. It’s a lot of internal work. It’s understanding who do you want to be as a person? What do you want them to say about you at your funeral? He had a $10 million company is that really what you want to be known as? You want to be known that you were kind and you were caring and you gave back to others? And you know, what are the things you really want for your life? And then what do you want to experience? You know, for me, it was travel, I wanted to be able to go all over the world and do things not have stuff necessarily. For some people it might be stuff and that’s okay. But it’s important that you identify what that is and we start to make every decision moving forward. I’ve got two time hacks I want to give you like a time and a decision hack gonna give you towards the end but making those decisions on purpose and understanding who you are what you want and why, and then building a life that makes that happen. And then ultimately, it’s business Buddha, and you can infer what level five is, you know, all the decisions are right? Everything is bliss and fruitcake noodle salad. Right. So.
Scott Ritzheimer
So one of the questions that, that I get asked a lot about our models, and I want to ask for you is, can you skip stage three? Can you know, is it possible to avoid it? Can you do this work early? Do you have to go through it? Or is it something that everyone has to go through? At some point?
Rodric Lenhart
I would read, I would rephrase that. I mean, the short answer is no. But I would, I would say it’s the reason that I don’t work with people who think money will solve their problem. I don’t I have yet to maybe, you know, maybe you know, somebody who knows, I’ve yet to find a way to teach that to someone, if you think that more money will solve your whatever your problem is, and they vary greatly. If you think more money solves that problem beyond basic needs, I don’t know how to teach you that that’s not true. I think you have to experience that. And then that’s when you’re finally willing, you know, they say, when the teacher is ready, the students ready, the teacher appears, I’m sure you’ve heard that, you know, you you have to be ready to accept these principles before they’re gonna work. It’s not something you can just install.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And what would you say are some of the, you know, the one or two kind of big shifts that you need to make in this anxious philosopher phase?
Rodric Lenhart
Um, I would say the, the first one is understanding that you have control, you know, and that the decisions you’re making today, like, if you go through our legendary Living Program, that’s what it is about, it’s about making conscious decisions. It’s about business life integration, it’s about calendar control. And it’s about having that peace and power of knowing that the decisions you’re making right now are your life tomorrow. And the reason I other than I’ve been an entrepreneur, my whole life, the reason I work with entrepreneurs is because they are specifically talented, and able to change their situation moving forward, they can change the company tomorrow, you know, they go talk to the CEO, and the CEO is right there in his underwear, you know, it’s, you can make these changes, but it’s understanding that you have you have the power to do that. And there’s a lot of things that go with that, you know, sunk cost, and, you know, what if, what if I’m wrong? And, you know, those are the things those are the tools that we build inside of the program, so that, you know, your next decision was right, and on purpose.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And then kind of one more question on this space. And we’ll shift gears a little bit. But what, what are some of the hallmarks if someone’s sitting there, as in that anxious philosopher phase right now.
Rodric Lenhart
It’s, it’s that sinking feeling when you wake up, when you’re no longer excited about your business, and you’ve built yourself a job. And you, you should still have that same passion, you know, and it’s an overused word, but it’s overused for a reason, you should be excited about what you get to do every day. And if you’re not change it, you know, especially as an entrepreneur, you know, career people can change to or people can change to there’s very little stopping you from changing, it’s a decision you have to make. And most people aren’t afraid of change. They’re afraid of making the wrong change. And they don’t have the tools to know that the next step is going to be right.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And so how do you do that? How do you know what that next step is?
Rodric Lenhart
So the the waves and others is really what distills all that, and that’s in the book in the journal, anything you would do with me is going to involve the waves method, and that is your WHY authenticity, values exploration in the statement of purpose. And I don’t know much time we have, but I can explain what those what those are.
Scott Ritzheimer
Give us give us the one that most people miss.
Rodric Lenhart
Values sits at the middle for a very important reason. And it’s why you need somebody on the outside looking in your values ultimately build your why. And the question I would ask is your business probably has a mission statement, right? 100% of business first thing you do in business schools, first thing you do making a business plan. But do you have a statement of purpose? What is the point for you? Who are you trying to become and all of these tools build that statement of purpose, but where people go wrong, is you can’t see the label from inside the bottle or I say the best eye surgeon doesn’t perform his own eye surgery. You’re too close to your situation. And the your values that build those two things, your y your statement of purpose are clouded by who you want to become. They’re things you can’t see. The example I use is people that are moms or dads, they will put family as their number one value even though it may not be when you drill down. You realize that having that as your number one value doesn’t make you a better mom or dad. It’s who you are as a person that makes your kids better. And that’s where I coach, right or just somebody on the outside. And I always say your friends and family are the worst place for advice because they they people want you to do good but not better than them. And that’s just a basic human thing right here from tribal days.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. So we’ve covered a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time here. I’m wondering if you could synthesize some of this for us. There’s a question I like to ask all my guests. And it’s this. What is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing? If you could boil it down? What’s the one thing that you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Rodric Lenhart
I think we touched on already, it’s that you are in control. There’s an illusion that, that the the the circumstances of your life are what are creating your life and that that is not true?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier a time in the decision hack. So I’ve been dying to so it’s helped lift the head for us a little bit here tells us what we can do. So let’s go with the time hack first.
Rodric Lenhart
So the time hack is would you do it tomorrow, it’s that simple. And when you get asked to speak, or you get asked to be on a podcast like this, or you get asked for any kind of engagement, be on a sports league, it doesn’t matter what it is, we have a tendency to think our calendar is going to be more open in six weeks, or six months or next year. And it’s not going to be so if you look at your calendar tomorrow, and you couldn’t fit that thing in? The answer is no. Wow. And it frees up a ton of time. And that’s ultimately what you do the ways method, etc. You’re only making decisions that fit who you want to be right. So you end up with a lot more nose than yeses and byproduct you’re you know, happier. The decision making hack is the the 20 to 44 rules, whether they call it you know, when you look at a clock, it says 1111 or it says 111 or it says 333. There’s these synchronicities every time. And we build a triangle model in our method where you have this one big thing that your focus for the next six weeks. And when the clock says 22, or 44, is what you’re doing right now is me being on this show with you right now, pushing me further to or further away. That thing that I need to accomplish in the next six weeks, you have not changed what you’re doing.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that. I love it, would you do it tomorrow. And it’s one of the things that you’re bringing up here that I think is a challenge of this stage, I think you kind of introduced it in the showman phase is that we move from going to do what we have to do to create opportunities to moving to actually have to decline opportunities, you’re moving for what you have to do to survive to what you have to do to to thrive. And as as independent and confident as entrepreneurs are. We learn very quickly to make decisions based on what we have to do. But we can get ourselves crowds, that whole idea of you building a job that traps you if you don’t shift, whenever the environment around you Around You shifts if you don’t start to take control and agency over what you say yes to, that’s where all those great things will start to pile up and pile up and overwhelm you would you agree?
Rodric Lenhart
100% agree, you know, and that’s what I what I why I say you need the first two, you want the last two, but you get stuck in the middle. But all of it starts with designing from the end in mind, you know, what do I want my life to look like? And I’m gonna build a business that’s going to support that, yeah, there’s gonna be a hustle and grit and grind in the beginning to your point. And you have to be the believer, because other people are going to tell you your ideas, stupid. All entrepreneurs go through that, you know, who would have who would buy a phone who would buy a Tesla, that’s a dumb idea, you know? So well go go go go down that rabbit hole, but you need those things. But as long as your eye is on that final prize, and you know, you’re building towards this ultimate reality, you’ll you won’t get stuck in the middle, you know, and you can make those shifts at any point along the way. But especially for people that are maybe starting a new venture, they’re thinking about a new career. Like, that’s, that’s a great time to be doing this work.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so good. Now, I want to turn it around on you a little bit that and say, what phase are you in now? And what does what does growth look like in that phase?
Rodric Lenhart
I do every bit of this because I love it. You know, when I sold the last business i i don’t have to do anything. I said I literally could just do out I love talking to people about their business. You know, I do these 20 minute triage calls with folks that sign up for the program to see if we’re a fit. And people are like, Well, you do end up doing these calls. And some people don’t work out. I said Yeah, but I love talking to people about their business. Like for me that’s not like you and me right now. You know, I love this. This is not work for me. It’s just talking to buddies about about entrepreneurship. So I get to do this every day. And if you know anything about us, we donate 100% of everything that we do anyway to our foundations and a student leader abroad. So
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s awesome. That is awesome. And and so what’s the next stage of growth look like? What’s the big, the big vision for you and your organization?
Rodric Lenhart
I have two monsters I’ve got I want to impact a million entrepreneurs. I can’t work with them individually. So the idea behind all these programs is that you can take these tools use them for the rest of your life but also empower other people to start thinking this way do now the other side of that is the foundation where I want to send a million kids abroad in my lifetime which they It is a $4 billion goal. So to give you some perspective, we’re partnered with EF tours and our first kids are going to start going at the end of this year. I’m super excited about that. And it is designed for young hustlers young entrepreneurs who might not otherwise have an opportunity to experience a trip, if you’re familiar with the F, they send kids abroad, like think middle school kids that get to go to your upgrade in summer. And we teach them the tools to earn some of that money. But ultimately, Scott, if they only earn five bucks, we pay the other $3,995 for him. So and the idea is that they go have a trip, they wouldn’t I was that kid, I was unable to afford that trip. They take that conversation back to a community that’s probably not talking about these things. And it’s the whole principle of no them. Only us, you know, and it’s kind of like the money thing. You can only get that when you experience it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So good. So I know, as you’re speaking, this is resonating with some folks, how can they find more? Where they where can they get the book? And how can they find more about the work that you do?
Rodric Lenhart
The book’s all over Amazon, Barnes and Noble. I mean, anywhere, anywhere you can find the book I am super easy to find @milliondollarflipflops on every channel or milliondollarflipflops.com. And you can take the quiz if you want to tell you what stage you’re in. It’s all free. milliondollarflipflops.com/quiz
Scott Ritzheimer
There you go. Head on over. I had a chance to take it earlier today. It’s fantastic. It’s super simple. And the results are awesome. There’s videos, there’s feedback. It’s just it’s a fantastic experience. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Well, Roderic, thank you so much for being here. It’s just such a privilege having you on the show what a fun conversation and for those of you watching listening, he know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Rodric Lenhart
Rodric Lenhart presents a transformative guide to inspire individuals who are seeking to implement significant changes in their lives in Million Dollar Flip Flops. Drawing from his own experiences, scientific research, and the candid stories of his colleagues worldwide, Lenhart introduces us to The WAVES Method, a personalized system through which you can filter all future decisions. Million Dollar Flip Flops serves as a beacon of hope for anyone seeking guidance, inspiration, and the reassurance that their decisions—when made from a place of raw authenticity—can lead to a life of fulfillment and happiness.
Want to learn more about Rodric’s work? Check out his website at https://milliondollarflipflops.com/ to get a copy of his book and take the free quiz to identify what stage you are in right now.
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