Jon Morrow: The Man Who Changed the Rules [From the Archive]

[00:00:01] This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show. Presenting the Archive. Classic episodes that remain timeless. The raw, unfiltered conversations from the early days in which people shared their failures and showed us exactly how they rebuilt everything from the ground up.

[00:00:36] One of the things that just happened recently is all of the adults with my disease formed a private Facebook group. And there aren't that many of us. Right, because you even mentioned in one of the articles that you're like one of the oldest people around. I'm one of the oldest with my type of my disease. And I'm the only one over 30 with my type that I think doesn't have a ventilator.

[00:01:00] So yeah, in part of my world, you know, I'm ancient. But yeah, it's really cool to be involved with them. And let me just ask, do you find most of the people in the 20s who are on this Facebook group a little bit scared? Yeah, you know, I'm actually not very popular amongst people with my disease. Because most people, they grew up in a world where everyone is treating them differently. Like they don't have any expectations

[00:01:28] for them. That's one of the greatest trials of having a disability is living in a world where people don't expect you to do anything. Where most people expect that, you know, you're just going to be at home watching TV, just trying to survive, you know, live out your days as best you can. And because of that,

[00:01:52] most people with disabilities don't have any expectations for themselves. In their world, that's not normal. It's not possible. I mean, do they get when you say that you're not very popular among them? Is it because you've achieved so much and you push them in part of, I think a survival strategy is to achieve? Yeah.

[00:02:18] Right. Because they say the two most dangerous days in a person's life are the day they're born or the year they're born and the year they retire. Yeah. Right. Those are when people are likely to die. Yeah. The two years of people are most likely to die. And you're basically saying, don't retire just because no matter how great the disability is, like there's always things to achieve and to do. And I should mention by introduction, John Morrow, you've written

[00:02:46] tons of blog posts that are so extremely valuable. You've built multi-million dollar businesses that we're going to talk about that, you know, but it's kind of in the context. It's almost bad that it has to be within this context, but it is what it is. Sure. You, it's in the context you were born with spinal muscular atrophy. Did I get that right? You got it right. And what does that mean? So what it means is, I'm going to get a little bit technical for a moment. Our bodies have two

[00:03:14] different types of nerves. We have motor nerves and we have sensory nerves. So your motor nerves are what allows your body to move. They're all over your body. Your sensory nerves are what allow you to feel. Okay. The motor nerves in my body, because of a genetic defect, they don't get enough protein to repair themselves. So over time, the motor nerves die all through my body.

[00:03:43] So when you were, when you were young, well, like let's say when you were a little boy, were you still kind of running around a little bit or was it fast? So my disease, I was actually diagnosed at six months old, which is really early. There are three different types of my disease in general, but so they have type one, type two, type three, and type one is the most severe. Type three is the least severe, right? They thought I had type one

[00:04:08] because I never walked. I never even crawled properly. The reason why my mother took me into the doctor, she noticed I was trying to crawl, but I was kind of like dragging my legs behind me. And it looked awkward and she was worried. So she took me into the doctor and that's when they, they did a muscle biopsy back then. Now they have genetic testing to where they can see exactly what's going on. But

[00:04:34] back then they did this muscle biopsy and they determined that I have spinal muscular atrophy and they thought that I had the most severe type. So they told her, you know, she went in, she brought me in and they said, you know, we've got bad news. And I mean, that's like the scariest words. I can't even imagine as a father of two daughters. And I mean, my mother's told me this story. She said, the doctor actually

[00:05:00] looked down at the ground and he couldn't say it at first, but he said, I'm sorry, you know, your son because of the type of muscular dystrophy. We think that he has the most severe type. He's probably going to die by the age of two is what they told her. And she said, you know, why? And said, well, you know, most kids get pneumonia and they just can't fight it, which is what kills the majority of people with my disease is pneumonia.

[00:05:29] Yeah. Because your lungs are also losing their motor neurons. Yes. So they'll be able to expel the whatever goes up there. Yep. So you can't cough hard enough. So they told her, you know, that I wouldn't be able to fight it, that it would happen. And I mean, I've got the most incredible mother in the world. The response that she gave the doctor, she said she cried for a minute or two. And then what she told the doctor is she said,

[00:05:57] he won't have to fight it. I'll fight it for him. And so, I mean, for my entire childhood, she was a warrior, you know, she fought for me the way only a mother can. I mean, she took me to all the best specialists, all the best doctors. She insisted that they allow me in the

[00:06:22] public school, even though they wanted to put me in the school for physically disabled and mentally retarded children. She wouldn't allow that. She actually went to the school board and fought to get me in public school. And she fought to keep me alive. Growing up, I had pneumonia 16 times. Oh my gosh. And I almost died multiple times. And probably the worst one, one of the ones that I mentioned in that,

[00:06:49] in the post on Unstoppable is to help me cough. She had to push on my ribs and sort of supply the force necessary to help me cough. And we did that so many times that my ribs cracked. And every time she did it, it was just horrible pain.

[00:07:16] Yeah. Because you're, as you mentioned, there's two types of neurons, motor and sensory. Your sensory neurons are fine. So you're feeling the pain. So I'm feeling the pain. I can feel everything. I just can't move. So yeah, I mean, she had to push. And she had to do, I mean, so many incredible things. Push on broken ribs. She had to stay awake all night. And what the other thing they do is this thing called chest percussion, where they,

[00:07:43] you pat on your chest to kind of loosen things up. And she would wake up every two hours and do that, you know, all night, all day. Because, and just, just for the listeners who are listening. So people listen mostly when they're, let's say, commuting to work or in a gym or whatever. John is sitting here and you're in a wheelchair and basically you're, you can't move from the neck down. Is that correct?

[00:08:10] Yeah. I can really only move my face and even, I mean, my face and everything is slowly getting weaker, but basically, yeah, all of the motor neurons in the majority of my body are, are gone. So I can't really move my arms, my legs, anything. I drive the chair with what's called the sip and puff. So the way it works is I blow or suck into a straw to make the chair drive. It took me, it's

[00:08:39] quite a bit of practice to learn how to do that. But, um... There should be like an Olympics for that or something. Like you probably could beat anybody in a race doing that. I've had lots of practice. I've been doing it for years now. I mean, at first, I had to go like in the parking lot because I was worried about running over somebody. So that's how I drive the chair. And I mean, the, the, the benefit to me is the reason why I'm still here

[00:09:05] partly is because number one, I, I had incredible parents, especially my mother, I've had access to all the best medicine, all the best technology. I get the brand, you know, the, the newest, coolest toys all the time that I can use. And, and that allows me to live an incredible life that most people with my disease can't even imagine. And the...

[00:09:35] Like what, like what's an example of a tool you got that you, you suddenly installed it and you're like, whoa, my life just got better. So one of the biggest life changers was there is a lip operated mouse that I use. So I actually move it around with my lips and it is called Tetra mouse now. But I, I,

[00:09:59] I ran into a guy online who asked me if I would like be a guinea pig for this Tetra mouse. So he, he'd send me different models that he was making in the mail and I use them and it just complete. And I would give him suggestions on how to improve it. And now he's got a model that he sells online. He just makes them in his garage for people who need them. I don't think he makes any profit on

[00:10:23] them. I think he's just like a retired engineer, but he made this lip operated mouse that I can use the mouse to just as well as anyone could use a mouse on the computer. Your lip operated, what does it mean? So it has two little knobs that go against your lips. One knob moves the mouse around and the other knob controls the clicks. You can wiggle the different ones with, I can wiggle either one with my lips

[00:10:53] and move the mouse around, click on things. It's got the ability to do drag and it actually has a total of five different mouse functions that it can use. So I've even got creative and like learned to use it to play video games and things. You know what? I was exactly picturing that I would use it to play video games. I've done that. I mean, I, I work so much. I don't have a ton of time to do it, but, but yeah,

[00:11:18] there are a lot of games that I can play solely with my lips. So I'm just sitting there playing it with my lips. You know, a couple of things. One is, and then I want to kind of get into sort of the heart of what that, what that blog post that went viral was about, like how you kind of took this adversity and, and pushed through it in various ways. And of course made money, but, but did other money's not everything you did other things. And, but you know, you, in the beginning of

[00:11:43] this, you mentioned that there's a Facebook group of people who have your disease. And I think in prior generations or decades or centuries, there never was a way for people to kind of aggregate into groups based on, this is not even a common interest, but like a common disinterest. Yep. It's, I mean, it's like, I was years ago, I was talking with Seth Godin and, you know,

[00:12:08] he has the whole tribes thing. And I said, it's the tribe you don't want to belong to, but you do. You're in the tribe. But you're in the tribe. And I actually wrote an article for him and everything that he put in a little companion book or whatever for tribes about that. Because yeah, sometimes you're a part of tribes that you'd rather not be, but you are. And it, it actually is amazing the amount of information that

[00:12:36] we can share in that group. And I tell doctors all the time, all the things that I've learned just from talking to other people that no one knew before. Because one of the consequences of being one of the oldest people with my disease and some of the other adults are running into the same thing. These are things doctors have never seen before because nobody lived long enough. So there are

[00:13:02] entirely new things that we're starting to deal with and we can brainstorm those things as a community. You know, I guess also there are things, you know, given the age and how new things will come up that never existed before, it reminds me a little, not totally the same, and I'm not trying to relate it, but my mother had polio as a little girl and had many problems. And now that she's much older,

[00:13:29] nobody before had ever lived this old with polio. So suddenly there's new things that are happening to the body that has never happened to a polio victim before, simply because polio victims never lived this long before. So you discover new things about, I don't know, this, you know, new things that could happen and how to survive them. But, but also what, another thing that you said that was interesting was this guy who's a retired engineer is developing this mouse. It's not making a

[00:13:56] profit on it. We always think of, okay, we need the government or universities to provide kind of the research to develop the science, develop the products that will help. But a lot of times it's community and people who care, who are really going to have the most passion to kind of develop the things that you need to make your life better. Yeah, you can absolutely do it. So, I mean, there are other examples. One of my upcoming projects is I'm going to make a portable lift

[00:14:25] that you can use on an airplane. Because right now, if you, if, if you're in a condition like me and you want to fly, if you're not mobile, the, the way that it works is they, number one, they won't pick you up because there are liability issues. You could get hurt and sue the airlines. So you have to pay for another ticket or multiple tickets for people to come with you to pick you up. And then they, they pick

[00:14:54] you up and they put you on this metal tiny chair and they strap you to it. It's like being strapped to a metal bar and they wheel you down the aisle. And then people have to pick you up out of that chair and put you into an airline seat. That's the process that they use. And it's extremely dangerous for everyone involved. Not only for, you know, like me, if I was getting picked up, but also for the backs

[00:15:23] and everything of people trying to do this in this extremely small space where you can't even stand up straight because, you know, there's luggage over top of you. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to invent a portable lift that will go through the airplane and allow people to make the experience much easier, much safer, much faster. So what we'll do, we'll, it will elevate out of the chair, move over and go down.

[00:15:51] Yep. I mean, because the other thing people don't know is there's not a plane in the world that you can fly in in your wheelchair. It's actually, even if you own the plane, the crazy thing is it's actually illegal to fly in your wheelchair. I didn't know that. It's against FAA regulations. Why can't I just, like I see your wheelchair? Why can't we just sort of strap it to the wall of the plane? The crazy thing is, and I've actually spoken to the FAA about this, it's against regulations because your wheelchair hasn't been

[00:16:20] crash tested. So it's not an approved seat. And I've had some discussions about them, with them about it. And I mean, they say maybe, you know, they might approve it and change the law if I ever buy a private plane. And they might let me ride in the wheelchair as sort of a test case. I had to get doctors to

[00:16:45] supply me a note that said, because my bones are so fragile, regardless of what chair I'm in, if the plane were to crash, I would probably die. Which is so silly because if the plane were to crash, a lot of people would probably die. Yeah, everyone would probably die. So, you know, I want to, part of what, I mean, there's a lot of things that make your story

[00:17:08] amazing, but I think it's your insistence that no matter what happens and no matter what condition your body is in, things can be achieved. There are steps that anyone can take. And I get the sense when you're writing that you're not writing about yourself, but you're writing for everyone. There are steps people could take to kind of make their lives better. And in particular, financially better, because a lot of what holds many people back is the feeling that

[00:17:36] they can't be financially free. And so you've talked about how you were encouraged not to make any money because you had to make less than a certain amount in order to stay on Medicaid or Medicare. I get them confused. But you figured out a way around that. You wanted to make money. You didn't want to just sit around and watch TV.

[00:17:56] I did. So I was in my twenties. This was 2010. I was on Medicaid. They were paying for about 40 hours a week for nurses to come in and stay with me. And they also paid all of my doctor bills and everything. I mean, in total, it was probably over a hundred thousand dollars a year that they were paying, but I was limited to $700 a month. You couldn't make more than $700 a month.

[00:18:23] The way it worked, so every state is a little bit different in the way that they handled this. The way it worked in North Carolina, if I made more than $700 a month, I had to give them all of the excess. That's crazy. So if I made five grand, I'd have to write them a check for 4,300. So it sort of just doesn't make sense to work when you're in that situation.

[00:18:48] So most people with severe disabilities, they don't work because you're sort of incentivized not to work. And to some extent, a lot of people who don't have disabilities think that's the dream, to not work and to have benefits around that. I'm not being political here. Sure. I'm just saying a lot of people just don't like their jobs and they'd rather watch TV all day or do something else all day.

[00:19:15] But you figured out a way to kind of, A, get through this loophole, but B, do things you enjoy and love that is quite lucrative. Yeah, well, the terrible thing is one of the things I've noticed talking to a lot of people that are trapped in that situation. I mean, in some ways it does sound like a dream because you get taken care of for free. You don't have to do anything.

[00:19:37] The downside is you go through your life feeling entirely useless and people's sense of self-worth and their confidence just goes to the floor. Which affects health. It affects health. And a lot of people, you know, they basically give up and die. I've seen multiple people with my disease that they just basically one day decide to refuse treatment and they die.

[00:20:07] And it's because they're, obviously they're depressed. Yep. Which is why they refuse the treatment. Maybe their caregivers passed away or are no longer around or they never had. And now they're out in society without kind of the buffers they had before. And they just, how do you, before we get into kind of how you sort of, you know, started doing your many achievements, how did you kind of overcome initial depression?

[00:20:38] So, one of the things is just the way I was raised. I mean, I was very lucky. It was funny. My mother never told me I had a disability when I was growing up. I didn't find out in kindergarten even what the word disabled meant or just the idea of a disability. It was when I got into kindergarten, another kid called me disabled and I said, what does that mean?

[00:21:06] And he started laughing. And the kindergarten teacher came over and said, you don't know what that means? And I said, no. And she said, well, I think you need to ask your mother, right? So, I went through the entire day, first day of kindergarten, just being baffled and confused about what this whole disability thing was.

[00:21:30] And I went out and I asked my mother, when I got out of school, I said, what does it mean? And she thought about it for a minute. And she said, it means you can't do something as well as someone else can. And I said, so, you know, other kids can walk around and I can't do that as well. She said, that's right.

[00:22:00] She said, but it also goes the other way. She said, you're really smart. You can do things with your brain that other people can't do too. And she said, everyone in the world can't do something as well as someone else. So, everyone, in a sense, is disabled. So, kind of the flip side of that is you kind of take an inventory of what you maybe can do better than others.

[00:22:29] Do you think everybody has something they can do better than others? I think so. I think everyone has something. And the key is to find that something. And my entire life, my mother, my teachers, I had tremendous teachers, developed my sense of, here are all of the things I can do with my brain. I can program computers. I can write stories.

[00:22:57] I can do all of these incredible things. And so, when I grew up, I had a sense of self-worth and confidence. I knew that I could contribute something to the world. And so, I wasn't depressed. I was frustrated because I knew I could contribute, but I was trapped. I actually got job offers. When I graduated college, so I went to UNC Charlotte. What did you major in?

[00:23:26] I majored in English literature. When I graduated, I had actually 12 job offers. From where? From different places. Everywhere from the Food Lion, which is a grocery store chain. They wanted me to be a manager to a radio station because I managed a radio station in college. To two top real estate firms because my father was a real estate developer. And he taught me a lot about real estate.

[00:23:56] So, they offered me jobs. And my father also offered me a job. And I couldn't accept any of them. And some of the jobs from the real estate firms, they were six-figure job offers right out of college. Why do you feel you couldn't accept any of them? Because if I did, I would lose all of my medical benefits. Unless you wrote the check. Unless I wrote the check.

[00:24:21] And it wasn't quite enough money to be able to pay for everything myself. And at the time, I couldn't get insurance. This was before Obamacare. So, you know, it's a pre-existing condition. If I went and asked for insurance, they would just laugh at me, you know. So, yeah, I was trapped and frustrated.

[00:24:43] So, what I started doing was writing articles for free for different blogs on the web. So, what would you write about? What were some of your first blogs? So, I was writing about... At first, I started with personal finance. Because my father taught me a lot. And I even worked for my father for two years totally free of charge. The deal that we made was he would basically pay all of my bills and everything. And I would come work for him.

[00:25:13] So, it was a way to get around the problem. And... What did you do for him? I raised money for him. So, he's a real estate developer. And he needed investors. And one of the things that I learned... So, being in a wheelchair has certain advantages. Okay? That most people never exploit. But I do. So, I mean, you really shouldn't feel sorry for people in wheelchairs.

[00:25:42] I mean, when I go to the DMV, they let me to the front of the line. People give me discounts on things all the time. Even though I don't ask for them. And one of the other things I learned growing up was that if I tried to ask people for something, they almost never said no. So, let's say your dad was... He had an idea to develop some land into a shopping complex or whatever. And he needed investors.

[00:26:08] You would make the appointment and you would go to the person's office. Okay? Someone would help you, presumably. You get to the person's office. Yep. And you're there and you're pitching the dream. And what would their reactions be? So, I would cold call on different investors. I'd show up at their office. Number one, they're not going to throw you out. You're in a wheelchair. People would feel terrible about that.

[00:26:35] I would sit there and talk to the secretaries until they could find a moment to squeeze me in. And I would go in and I would talk to them about whatever their development was. And the only thing I would ask them to do is if they were interested just to go see it. I wouldn't ask them for money. I would just say, you know, do you want to take a trip out to the site?

[00:27:02] And going in there and talking to them like that, I had almost a 100% close rate. Almost nobody said no. No to the visit or no to eventual money? No to the visit. And we ended up constructing the visits to where we would bring 10 people out at a time. And my father would get like the mayor to show up and talk to them about it. Do this whole show.

[00:27:32] And we would spend time with them. It was all really impressive. We would show them all the numbers. And literally to those meetings, too, we never had anyone leave without writing a check. Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at altitra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

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[00:29:37] Run me through the economics of what a real estate project looks like. So let's say it's a shopping complex or I don't know, what kind of complex would it be? So the main thing he did was he would buy farmland from families and then he would get it rezoned and he would put in the utilities, you know, electricity, plumbing, all of those things. And then he would sell the land to other developers that would then build whatever he had zoned for.

[00:30:04] So it could be shopping centers, it could be neighborhoods, it could be whatever. But all he handled was basically the land part of the deal. I kind of feel like this is a clean business to go into. You don't have to deal with construction companies and all the architectural approvals and all this stuff. You kind of have to, you have incentivized sellers, like let's say families that are no longer into farming for various reasons.

[00:30:31] You buy their land, not cheap, but relative to what it is. Rezoning it involves building a relationship with the mayor and the town council. Like, hey, we're going to bring in more taxes. We're going to build out a suburb and it's going to bring in more money for the town. And then you simply flip. Exactly. That seems like a very good business model. It is. And my father made a ton of money. I mean, over the years, he's made millions and millions of dollars to win this.

[00:30:57] Because typically when you rezone the land, it doubles or triples in value immediately. And what he would do, and it's very clean, he would even get contracts with the other developers who were going to buy the land. And he would get the contracts contingent upon rezoning. Because their model is to build and then to make X amount more. They don't want to deal with the farmland and buying the initial land and dealing with the rezoning.

[00:31:25] So everybody's doing their kind of part of the, almost like the supply chain from farmland to office complex. Exactly. So, and what my father would do is he would get an option on the property. So he would pay them, he would say, okay, I'll give you $100,000. But I'm going to go in and get your land rezoned. And if it's rezoned, I'll buy it for X price. If it doesn't get rezoned, I'll walk away, but you keep the $100,000.

[00:31:55] So it was win-win for everyone. Yeah. So he would do that. And then once it got rezoned, he would have to pull together the money to buy the land. But he would already have contracts from developers who were agreeing to buy it. So I would go to investors, you know, here's the contract from the developer who's going to buy it. You know, here's the rezoning plan. Here's the mayor and everything they think. I mean, it was just... I feel like writing a new check right now. Yeah.

[00:32:24] How could anybody not write a check for that? Like the money was baked in. Yeah. So I would do that. And over two years, I raised $50 million for different land deals that we did. And it ended up becoming a pretty big company. And then the real estate crash happened.

[00:32:44] And all of the developers couldn't get financing to fulfill their contracts on the properties. So literally every contract on every property fell through in 2010. And my father lost $50 million. He lost everything. Did you... How did he react? Did you see him cry? What was his worst moment in this?

[00:33:12] He was very, very, very depressed. I would say borderline suicidal over it. Because he went from a man who... They treated him like a king in these little towns where he'd go buy the land. And, you know, he's spending millions and millions of dollars. And he went from that to fixing up cars in the garage and trying to flip them.

[00:33:41] And he would even clean out office buildings at night because he didn't want anyone to see him. So it's like a classic story of like real estate mogul to janitor. Yep. He lost everything. And in the process of losing everything, he also couldn't support me anymore. So I was on Medicaid and my father had been paying my rent, all of those things. I was on Medicaid.

[00:34:11] I couldn't make any money. The real estate was just in shambles in 2010. I needed to find another career. So for the past two years, I've been surrounded by millionaires raising money for all of these deals. And I learned a ton about personal finance. So I started blogging. And within two months, I got nominated for...

[00:34:38] It was like a Webby Award for the best new personal finance blog in the world. I started getting all this traffic. And I started getting offers from other big blogs to write for them. So I started saying yes. And some of them even offered to pay me. And I said, well, you can't pay me. But I'll tell you what. If you like the article, one day I'm going to ask you for a favor. And you can't say no.

[00:35:06] And so I started writing articles for these sites. I became one of the most, if not the most popular writer on most of the sites that I was writing for. What would be like a typical topic that would get really popular? Like what would be a typical article that would get really popular? So most of the things I was writing about for these different sites was marketing, blogging, writing. I'd always been a pretty good writer. So I wrote articles about how to be a better writer too.

[00:35:33] And some of them went mildly viral. You know, a few thousand shares. And then I started writing ones in 2009 and 2010 that went majorly viral. I mean, over a million page views viral. Like what's one of them? So one of them was a story that I told about my mother. It's called On Dying Mothers and Fighting for Your Ideas. I wrote it for Copyblogger.

[00:36:01] And that one went insanely viral. About a year later, I wrote one for the biggest blogging site at the time. It's ProBlogger. And it called, kind of quit your job, move to paradise and get paid to change the world. And that was after I'd moved to Mexico. That one went insanely viral. So let's focus on that one. So you went to Mexico to reduce your healthcare costs. And kind of, this was your loophole of getting around the Medicaid thing.

[00:36:31] This was my escape. So Medicaid was even, they were having a budget crisis. They were talking about reducing the amount of support they would give me. And my mother lost her job, got laid off all at the same time. During the recession, you know, everyone was having trouble. How did you, like, were you getting depressed? Have you ever, like, so your mom and dad now were depressed. And was this a weird situation where you kind of almost had to uplift them? So I ended up having to, for a few years.

[00:37:02] Yeah, I mean, I had to, I bought, like, when I finally got going in Mexico, I bought my father a car. You know, I did all different kinds of things. That must have felt good. It was to go from a guy who was on Medicaid, who couldn't support himself, to supporting myself, both of my parents, and everyone around me. Yeah. I mean, when I bought him the car, I cried.

[00:37:32] And he cried. And it was a beautiful thing. And, I mean, you know, he ended up turning everything around. He's doing fine now, all of that. But for several years there during the recession, it was really hard. And what I did was, so I was writing all of these articles for free. And I finally decided, all right, health care is cheaper in Mexico. I can get everything I need for $1,500 a month.

[00:37:58] Get round-the-clock care from registered nurses, all of these things down in Mexico. So, when my mother got laid off, we packed our minivan that's sitting outside your studio here with everything that we could fit into the minivan. We had my hospital bed on top of the van. And it was so loaded down, I mean, it was like almost scraping the ground.

[00:38:25] And we drove over 2,000 miles from Charlotte and North Carolina down to Mazatlan, Mexico. I'd managed to get a contract, or at least for six months, on this beautiful home and resort. What I did was, this is another little trick for everyone. If you want to rent a condo in a nice building, one thing you can do, I've done this multiple times,

[00:38:53] is I called every owner in the building and asked them, so it was like over 50 different owners that I called or emailed, and asked them if they wanted to rent to me for a year. And like eight of them said yes. And I basically told them, whoever gives me the lowest price, I'll rent your condo. How did you get their numbers, by the way? Because that's usually, it's not necessarily available information.

[00:39:23] So they had like a homeowner's association. I found their homeowner's association directory online with all of their contact information. And so yeah, I reached out to all of them and ended up getting a condo for way below market price. Because there's like this reverse auction, essentially, so they underbid each other. So I mean, they started out at like, so this is the nicest resort in Mazatlan, Mexico. It's a place where doctors can't afford to live,

[00:39:53] that live there. It starts at about $2,200 a month for a two-bedroom condo, right on the ocean. I mean, you could throw a rock into the waves. It was so close. Private resort, private restaurant, full-time concierge, private like grocery store where you could buy stuff. Just this amazing, I've never seen anything like it in the U.S. Traveled all over the U.S., nothing was as good as that resort that I lived in down in Mexico.

[00:40:21] And I negotiated it down from $2,200 a month to $1,500 a month. And I went down there and as soon as I arrived, I sent emails to all of the different sites and said, all right, now I'm going to cash in all of my favors that I've earned. And for a lot of them, I'd written the most popular articles on their site. I got into consular traffic.

[00:40:47] And I said, I want to start doing consulting with different people. And in particular, Brian Clark over at Copyblogger, I'd written a bunch of articles for them. I'd even edited articles for other people. I'd worked for Copyblogger over 40 hours a week for free for a couple of years. And he knew that one day I would ask for something.

[00:41:12] So I said, I want you to send an email to all of the Copyblogger readers and tell them that I'm accepting consulting clients. So I want to unpack that for one second, because I think people underestimate the power of free. So a lot of people say, well, I've got to work my full-time job. I can't, and then go home and raise my kids. I can't be doing work for free. But A, free is kind of how you build your skills

[00:41:42] without having to worry about deliverables in some sense, because it's free. A, and B, obviously you know this. You can always just point to you as an example. No matter what they say, you could say it also. Yep. So yeah, I mean, at Copyblogger, I'd become the most popular writer on the site. I was editing other people.

[00:42:08] And I trusted Brian to one day repay that to me. And he did. I mean, a hundred times over. So as soon as... He put out an article saying, you know, John's open for a business. This is the kind of consulting he had. What kind of consulting did you offer? At first I was offering, I'll critique your blog for 99 bucks. So I did that. And he put it out there. And I got 300 people within 24 hours. Wow.

[00:42:38] Who wanted me to do it. So that's like $30,000. Yep. So I started doing those consultations. People loved it so much. They said, can I pay you for another consultation next month? And people started asking me that. So I went over to PayPal. And I set up a recurring thing. To where they could pay me $99 a month to come take a look at their blog. So I ended up getting, I think, 30 people who did that.

[00:43:07] So that was an immediate $3,000 a month on autopilot. And the critique only took about 30 minutes that I would do. It's still 30 people times 30 minutes. All right. That's a 15-hour work week. Yep. And that was $3,000 a month. And over time, my reputation started expanding. I started getting more and more bigger, like companies starting to come to me. And I raised my rates up to $500 an hour.

[00:43:37] And I mean, this is all in the span of two or three months. After about three months, I was making over $100,000 a year in consulting revenue. And I was also building out my own product on the side where I would teach people how to write guest posts for these other blogs. So in the how to write guest posts, so it's a course, it's not only how to write and what topics are interesting and how to find topics

[00:44:06] and how to write about them, but also how to maybe pitch a guest post, what are the best blogs to pitch to. Yeah, I even gave them, you know, here are the 100 best blogs that you should go to, here are their email addresses, all of those things, how to pitch them, how to write your posts, what to do after your posts, all of those types of things. And I called in another favor from different people and asked them to promote it. Which was good for them because they wanted good guest posts on their blog. Exactly.

[00:44:36] So I asked those different blogs to do it. But several did it without anything in return. I put it on sale. It's like $35,000 in 24 hours. Wow. How much was the course cost? At the time, it was 200 or 300 bucks. I ended up raising the price over time to 600 bucks. And PayPal froze my account because I'd made, you know, so much money in 24 hours. Right, they flagged you.

[00:45:05] It was unusual behavior in your account. Yep. And it ended up taking me six months to get all of that money unlocked. But I finally did. Then I started selling the course more and more. And then I finally launched my own site. And it's called Smart Blogger now, smartblogger.com. At the time, the first domain name was Boost Blog Traffic, which I was sort of known for a guy that could get a lot of traffic. So I taught other people how to do that.

[00:45:36] And so I launched that site. I put up an opt-in page just for a pre-launch where people could put in their email address if they wanted to be emailed when the site opened. And within two months, just thanks to all of the people that I'd got to know by writing free articles for different things, I had 13,000 people on the pre-launch list just within two months. And so I started the site, I started writing articles,

[00:46:06] and I started creating more courses. And within nine months, I'd made like half a million dollars. And what was the biggest, was it the courses that were selling the most? The courses, I also created a high-end coaching program where I would coach someone for an entire year for $10,000 per person. I sold that out several times. I started selling more and more of the courses. And it just grew. And the traffic grew.

[00:46:37] And I mean, now, it's a seven-figure revenue business. Smartblogger.com. Yeah, smartblogger.com. The combination of courses, coaching, and are there other revenue items? Now it's mostly courses. I mean, over time, we've had 23,000 students go through our different courses. Has it worked for them? Like out of those 23,000, like how are they doing? We've had quite a few success stories.

[00:47:07] So like Danny Innie, which is he's built a very large business, very large blog called Miracy. Jennifer Gresham from Everyday Bright. And there are even people. So like before we started the interview, Ryan Dice was talking about, you know, Russ Canterbury. He was that runs all of their editorial for their company. Tommy Walker, who runs content marketing for Shopify. So yeah, I mean,

[00:47:37] there are a lot of different people who have gone through the courses and gone on to do really, really big things. And that feels amazing. We actually catalog, we have a file that we call love letters. And every time we get a love letter from a student about all of the results they've gotten, we put it in that file. And it's become thousands of different love letters that we've gotten from people. That's incredible. And so do you also now still write every day?

[00:48:07] So that's one of the things I'm just starting to get back to. So one of the things I ended up getting, the business grew and I found myself switching morning tour into a managerial role because I hired all of these other people. And before I knew it, I wasn't writing anymore. Well, and also the high-end coaching, they're calling you and they expect $10,000 worth. Yep. That's a drag. It was. I ended up canceling.

[00:48:33] So I did three coaching groups like that. And I ended up just deciding it's not worth the $10,000. It takes too much of my time and attention. I got people spectacular results. But when I looked at it, I was actually earning less per hour on that than the company paid me in salary. Let me ask you a question.

[00:49:01] What if you charged a million dollars a year for coaching? And if you only got one client, that's good. Yeah, I could. But the thing is, I ended up deciding about six months ago or a year ago that what was most important to me is to write every day. And that was actually more important to me than money. And so I started reorganizing

[00:49:31] the business around that. And it's taken me a while. I just moved someone into a chief operating officer role, promoted my editorial director into that role. So he's now taken over basically managing the company. And instead of having seven people report to me, I have one person report to me that I thought to. Everyone else reports to him now. That's freed up a lot of my time. And...

[00:50:01] What do you like to write about now? So now I'm writing mostly for Unstoppable.me. Which is basically about... I mean, this is where I heard of you. Yep. Somebody, a good friend of mine sent me your article. And I actually forget which good friend now sent it to me. I know it was a good friend because normally I don't read anything sent to me. But I read your article and I'm like, this guy is amazing. I have to speak to him. So you mostly write about your own kind of story? Yep.

[00:50:30] So what I'm trying to do right now is most of the personal development community is what I call, I mean, pretty light and fluffy. I agree. And I think it's getting inundated and I don't know why. I don't really know why either. But I never identified with most of it because for me, getting to where I am has been an immense struggle with extraordinary pain.

[00:50:58] And it's been just like this fight to break out of poverty, to contribute something of value. Poverty and the prison of not being able to be as mobile as others. And, you know, we've been glossing over some of the story that you were in a major car accident at one point where you were like in and out of hospitals for how long? Like what happened? I was in and out of hospitals for about a year.

[00:51:28] I mean, the wheelchair was like on top of you. You were on the road. Yeah. It's like horrible the way you described it. It was awful. Yeah, I was drunk. So, I have a minivan. I sit in the passenger seat or I sit where the passenger seat would be in my wheelchair. We have it tied down. And I had a seat belt and also even a metal bar across my lap. And a guy was late to work at Wendy's and he decided to speed

[00:51:57] through an intersection going 80 miles an hour. And we were the first car he hit. He ended up totaling five cars before he came to a stop. But he came through and he pretty much ripped off the whole front end of the van when he hit it. And all I remember is lifting into the air and feeling my head hit something and just blacking out. Ugh. And it, my head actually had gone through the window.

[00:52:25] And the metal bar, the seat belt snapped. The metal bar snapped that was across my legs. I mean, it like broke a steel bar. I came out of the chair so fast. And it broke my leg too, my femur on my leg when that happened. And, yeah, I woke up underneath the chair with the chair laying on my legs. My legs were broken

[00:52:56] in a total of 17 places. My head was all cut up. I mean, I had blood pouring down my face because my head had gone through the window. Who was driving? My long-term caregiver. Okay. It called him Sarge. He was a guy. He was relatively okay. He was shaken up, bruised. When I woke up, it called him Sarge. His name was Ron Sargent. And I said, you know, Sarge. And he looked down and he saw me.

[00:53:26] And when he saw me, that's when he looked up and the whole front end of the van caught on fire. Oh my gosh. And, um, the fire, I looked up and all I could see through the blood, the fire was coming through the air conditioning vents that were in the front of the car. And, um, he ran around and there was a guy from a gas station that ran over. They pried the door open and they pulled me

[00:53:55] out of the car out from underneath the chair. He got burned on his head when he was pulling me out of the car. But he got me out before the fire got to me. And, I was just laying there on the sidewalk. And, my feet were turned around backwards my legs were just shattered and I couldn't feel anything yet though. I guess I was in shock or

[00:54:24] something. But I could look down at them and just realized this is really, really bad. And, the first ambulance arrived and he actually said I can't take you. Because the second person he was going so fast he went through the front end of our car plowed into another lady directly in the passenger door. Pushed the passenger door all the way to the driver's side amputated her right leg. And,

[00:54:54] she was bleeding out in the car. And, so the first ambulance had to take her. Finally, another ambulance came, took me. About 30 minutes later the pain started. And, so yeah, I mean, I went to the hospital. At first, I stayed a month in the hospital. They couldn't do surgery. Normally they would do surgery and put cans and metal plates and all of these things in. But because I've never walked,

[00:55:24] my bones weren't strong enough to support that. So they had to just do the best they could, setting the bones. They had to reset the bones twice, all 17 breaks while I was there, which is the most horrific experience of my life. But, for I don't know what reason, they didn't put me to sleep. So I'm sitting there, you know, while they're resetting. Didn't you beg them to put you to sleep? I did. I begged them. I yelled at them. I said everything imaginable.

[00:55:54] I get pulled to sleep if they want to pull a tooth out. I say, bring in the anesthesiologist. I'm going under. I mean, I was, I don't know if it was because I was on Medicaid. Maybe they were worried about my lung capacity if they put me to sleep. I don't know what the reason was, but I went through that twice awake, which was, I didn't even know it was possible to hurt that much. So I had to go through that for a month. I had internal bleeding too, and so they had to manage that.

[00:56:25] And eventually, I have a question about the legs. Like, given that you weren't going to walk, why did they bother fixing the legs? Does that sound like a stupid question? No, it was actually discussed, they talked about amputating one of my feet. It was actually considered. I mean, I didn't really need my legs. They could have just cut them off, and it probably would have accelerated my recovery if they had. I mean, ultimately, we decided that they thought

[00:56:54] they could keep them. it did cause me a lot more pain to keep them, but they ended up fixing me up relatively well. Even today, though, when they take x-rays, they can see all of the places where the bones were broken, where it wasn't totally healed. So even today, I have to wear braces on my legs to support the bones because they'll never heal all the way. Do you think there'll ever be, and I'm sure there will be at some point, so the question

[00:57:25] do you think there'll ever be like almost six million dollar man bionic legs where from your brain you could kind of control what your legs are doing and you would be able to walk around? Yeah, it's already been invented. Dr. Nicolayus at Duke University kicked off the World Cup two years ago with a guy that he'd built a brain machine interface where he'd created bionic legs for a guy that was paralyzed and he kicked the soccer ball to

[00:57:55] begin the World Cup. So, those types of things are coming. The major thing right now that's holding it back is they have to do brain surgery to install chips in your brain to be able to do that. Why can't, like, if I'm just conceiving this as an engineer, I would think, like, you know, kind of like how that lip mouse works, why don't we first do something which is externally controlled before we start fiddling around with brain surgery? So, if you're going to do a thought interface, I mean,

[00:58:25] they can do these things where they put these things on your head, but apparently because it's not enough direct contact with the brain that you can't control it as well. And like, what if I could just go like, move my head to the left and that means take a step with the left leg, move my head to the right, it means take a step with the right leg. Yeah, there are those kinds of things. And I'm even saying now, like, no amputation required, legs around your legs, and that's how you do it. Yep,

[00:58:55] it could be done. It could be done. I mean, in my case, it would still probably just the weight of gravity of standing up would probably break the bones in my body again. So you don't want to do that? No. For someone who is paralyzed though, who has relatively normal bones, something like that could definitely work. The reason why those things don't happen is for the most part, you know, people in those conditions don't have

[00:59:25] the money to experiment with them. For me, the most likely outcome for something like that, I mean, I think it's, it's, there's no question eventually I'll have a brain chip. And what will probably happen is I'll have mechanical arms attached to the wheelchair that I'll be able to move purely by thought. And so I'll basically be a guy with these extra arms that are attached. Seems like this is a

[00:59:55] topic you could also write about, like you could be a futurist around these ideas. Yeah, I'll probably talk to some about that. about it. I do and I constantly research it. And I've even talked to them about going on trials and being a test subject and all of that on those things. They don't have FDA approval yet to do those on a lot of people just because of the brain surgery that they have to do. Originally, they've taken a big step forward here recently. Originally, they had to

[01:00:25] put the chip in and still have a wire coming out of your head. So you actually had this thing that looked like this huge electrical socket in your head and they had to keep it open constantly. Because I guess they have to be able to turn it off just in case something bad happens. So yeah, there was a huge risk of infection. Now what they've done is figured out how to make the chips wireless to where they can put it in your brain and then they can control everything wirelessly. See, John, I knew none of this. This is like a hot topic.

[01:00:54] Like you should be writing about this too. Yeah, I probably will. I mean, the reality is, I guess the big takeaway for people is I believe any limitation can be overcome. It's not always easy. So what would you say to someone and I'm sorry to interrupt because I know I just interrupted a valuable thought so I really feel bad there. But someone sitting and listening to this and saying, well, I just can't. I love to do X but I can't. What's the

[01:01:24] first kind of ways or steps they should get out of that feeling? So the article I'm publishing is about this. It's called How to Accomplish Big Things Even When You Feel Small. And the first step is actually getting yourself to believe it's not only possible but that it's normal. And what you have to do is, I mean, what I call it is reconstructive reality. What I

[01:01:53] did before I launched my business is I was listening to keep myself from going crazy and also because I was surrounded just by, I mean, my father was losing all of his money, my mother lost her job, I was surrounded by all of these horrible things. I started listening to audiobooks and podcasts four to eight hours a day. Wow. And the reason why, and it was all, I mean, so I listened to things like,

[01:02:23] I mean, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Christopher Reeve, I listened to things of people who had dealt with disabilities that had accomplished incredible things. and I found any podcasts with inspirational stories. And my goal was to spend more time listening to those things than I spent actually in my own life. Why is that? Why was that your goal? The reason why that was my goal

[01:02:51] is I think that if you spend the majority of your time in worlds where people are accomplishing incredible things, all of a sudden, that started to seem normal to me. Because I had spent more time listening to people who had done incredible things than in my current life where it looked impossible. And it trained my brain to

[01:03:21] believe that it wasn't difficult. Because there were all of these other people who had already done it. And I spent so much time listening to it that it became normal. Did you actually feel like your thought patterns changed? Like once the word can't came up, you would instantly deflect into well, there was Frank and Delano Roosevelt became president. Yeah. Yeah. So, and it even became, I started to hold myself

[01:03:51] to their standards rather than the standards that a caseworker at Medicaid might hold me to. right? And their lives became so real to me that I mean, it's kind of like, you know, you marinate a piece of meat. I was marinating my mind in incredibly inspirational stuff. And I mean, there weren't as many podcasts in

[01:04:20] 2010. Now there are so many amazing podcasts like yours. So even the listeners listening to your podcast, if you're going through an extremely difficult time, try to spend more time listening to inspirational stories than you do dealing with negative stuff. And even if you're working, like when you're going to work, when you're at lunch, have earphones in your ears and be listening. Don't spend any time with negative people. Just sort

[01:04:50] of marinate your mind in these amazing things. And when you do that, your perspective will shift. things and you will start to believe that you can do some of those things. And I believe that's the first step to sort of getting yourself into the position to where then you can take those steps. Because if you don't believe it's possible for you, you'll never do it, right?

[01:05:19] So what I deliberately did when I got started is I brainwashed myself into believing that these things were normal, everyday, commonplace. What's the second step? So the second step is then to find out what the price is of what you want. So this is the other big thing that I realized. When I went and started a business I also listened to biographies of successful business people.

[01:05:49] And I mean at the time it was like Michael Dell, Richard Branson, people like that in 2010. And when I listened to their biographies I wasn't interested in their business strategies. What I was interested in is what was the price that they had to pay to get to where they are. It's interesting that you think in that way, right? So most people would be interested in their business strategies and they wouldn't. It's sort of an unusual thing to think of, well, what was Michael Dell's

[01:06:19] price? Nobody would even care about that, but you did. Why did you care about that? Because what I realized is, and I don't know where I learned this, but I learned it early on, that you can achieve anything you want, but there's always some sort of a price. And it's not always money. Usually it's some sort of sacrifice of your time. I mean, at the very least, you know, like starting a business, you're sacrificing years of your life investing in this business.

[01:06:49] I mean, you're also, I mean, an entrepreneur too, what else are the sacrifices? I mean, a lot of people kind of call you a fool a lot of the times. They don't believe me. You get a lot of hate. You get a lot of hate. You also deal with, you know, especially when you start hiring employees, worrying about what happens if the business goes under, feeling responsible for everyone and everything all the time. Most entrepreneurs don't really sleep very well. people. So there were all of these sacrifices.

[01:07:19] And what I did in advance is I made a list of all of the sacrifices that I could see that they were making. And I asked myself, am I willing to go through that? When you do that, are you giving yourself or are you giving the listener an easy out? So automatically by default when you start a business or when you start doing a side business while you still have your job because you have to make a transition and it takes time, you're going to be sacrificing family and relationships a little bit, a tiny bit maybe, or a lot.

[01:07:49] So that's an easy excuse for someone to say, well, that's one non-negotiable for me is any family time. So what you have to do then is find a goal that doesn't require you to sacrifice your family time. You have to find a business that doesn't require you to sacrifice your family time. But there's always going to be a little bit of family time to sacrifice. There is. I mean, so that's the reason why people don't achieve anything is they're not willing to make the sacrifice. But maybe you could say, okay, I'm sacrificing a little bit of family time

[01:08:19] but I can make up for it in other ways. I can find something else to sacrifice more. Yep. I mean, so one of the things you could do is say, I'm not willing to sacrifice family time but I'm willing to sacrifice sleep. I had a friend that did that. I don't know if that's a wise choice. There's certainly a healthy thing that's not so healthy. Yep, but that was the choice that he made is he was still going to spend time with his family but he was going to sacrifice sleep. But the point is a lot of people are under the assumption that they can get whatever they want

[01:08:49] without trading something that they have. And that's just not the case. And I think whatever you want to achieve and this can be business or anything else, look at what you have to trade to get there. Decide in your mind, I'm willing to make that sacrifice. sacrifice. And there are even no guarantees. You could make that sacrifice and not get what you want. Okay? You have to realize that too.

[01:09:19] You may struggle and fail. A lot of people do. But to go into that realizing what the having a total completely realistic picture of what you're getting into. So, I mean, when I started my own business, I knew that if I wanted to grow rapidly, I was going to have to dedicate, myself to it, heart, mind, and soul, I knew that I probably wasn't going to sleep well. I knew that I was going to have a ton of stress. And I

[01:09:49] accepted that and I was willing to pay that price. And so, that's what allowed me to move forward without hesitation. And what would you say is step number three? So, step number three is to put a gun to your head. And this is the most difficult one. So, one of my favorite scenes of any movie of all time was Fight Club where Brad Pitt

[01:10:18] who's playing Tyler Durden got a guy out of a convenience store, put a gun to his head, said, what do you want to be in life? Says, veterinarian. He said, well, that requires a lot of schooling, right? He says, yeah, too much school, I couldn't do it. And he takes out his driver's license. Said, all right, I have your driver's license, I have your address. I'm going to come back in six weeks. If you're not going forward

[01:10:48] to become a veterinarian, you'll be dead. I'll kill you. And he says, all right, sir, run away. So, the guy ran away. And he said, tomorrow will be the best day of his life. And I think it's true. Now, it's a very extreme example. I'm not suggesting anyone put any guns to anyone's heads or threaten anyone's life. But one of the things that I'm a huge fan of, once you've decided what

[01:11:17] the price is, set up negative reinforcement to get yourself to do it. Like what? Like, for example, for me, the reason why I was able to achieve everything I achieved. If I failed, I was going into a nursing home. That was the scariest thing imaginable to me. That was the gun to your head. That was the gun to my head. I had to do it. I didn't have a choice. So, for many people, they could say, well, I could decide tomorrow, but they could do

[01:11:47] that for 40 years. But the gun to their head in this case is, if I wait till tomorrow, I'm going to get on that slippery slope that lasts 40 years, and that's my life. Yep. there are simple ways for things. So, one of the things I've heard of people doing, and this requires a lot of courage, and it sounds crazy, but I had a friend who took naked pictures of herself when she was trying to lose weight, gave them to

[01:12:16] a friend, and said, if I don't lose 20 pounds within the next six months, I want you to post all of these naked photos of me where I'm fat on Facebook. That kind of almost sounds like a business idea. Send us your fat naked photos with a timeline. There's a business called Stick, I think it is, I can't recall if it's stick.com, something like that. That is their business, is they called you accountable with these things. I mean, there are other ideas

[01:12:45] like, write an email residing from your job, and give it to a service that will automatically send it to your boss in six months. I mean, there are things like that, that will, it's terrifying, okay, those types of things, but it will give you more energy and motivation than anything in the world. So, for me, the, I mean, people ask, you know, how did you do this? How did you start this business? I was

[01:13:15] absolutely, totally terrified of ending up in a nursing home someday, and that gave me endless energy and motivation. I was able to work harder. I mean, I worked, like, literally, when I moved down to Mexico, I didn't go down to the beach, even though I lived on the beach, for six months. I just stayed in the condo, and I was working, nobody even knew I lived there. I just stayed in the condo, and I was working

[01:13:46] 16, 18, 20 hours a day. And what's your end goal? Would you like to sell the business? Nowadays, I mean, the type of business I run, it's so tied to my personality. It would be very difficult to sell. More than likely, I'll just continue growing it. I mean, it's already relatively, if I wanted to, I could quit today, and it would still generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in income to me

[01:14:15] personally. personally. I want to, my goal right now is less about money and more about helping as many people as I can. Well, and the site smartblogger.com has so many great articles, just free also, about blogging and so on, and there's their courses and so on, plus your unstoppable.me site. I really appreciate you. You came here to the studio and

[01:14:45] joined me on this podcast. I'm sure it's inspirational to so many people. Your story was inspirational to me, which is why I reached out to you. Well, John Morrow, smartblogger.com. Thank you so much for sharing your story, and I hope people listen to this and go to your site and apply your advice and learn from it. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

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