Author Hour with Charlie Hoehn

Lonnie Ogulnick is the founder and CEO of Gordon Wealth. In this episode, he shares how he was able to pull himself out of a deep funk when he was in his 20s and how his morning routine kept his performance — and profits — up for the last two decades. If you’ve ever been in a dark place, this episode is a must listen. You can buy Lonnie’s book The Heart of a Beast on Amazon. You can check out Lonnie’s company at GordonWealth.net.   What is the #1 takeaway from your book?  If you’re getting up at 7:00 AM, then set your alarm clock for 6:00. Or like I do, at 5:15. The first thing I would tell anybody who’s stuck is to get out there and do some exercise for the first 30 to 60 minutes after you wake up. I go to a bootcamp at 6 o’clock in the morning and do an hour bootcamp, which is torture and hell. Then I go on a cold plunge, which is torture and hell. Then I have a little post-recovery workout at a spa where I live. When you work out an hour of hell, you get a bank of energy. Those are endorphins that are firing away. Boom. Boom. Boom. That wave of energy lasts you a good six hours. It doesn’t leave you. That’s the bank you want to fill up right out of the gates. Fill up that bank account. When you workout late at night, you can’t fall asleep. It’s almost like wasting money. If I’m going to use that early morning workout and take those endorphins to work, everybody I interact is going to feel that positive energy and that endorphin flow that I’m pushing out into the world. When you are feeling good and doing well, you’re going to impact the monetary bank account. You’re going to do well at work. Your boss is going to notice you. Other people may notice you. They want to partner with you. When did you discover that exercising early in the morning is the key to getting unstuck? When I got dumped and I had no job and I went back home. In college, I would go to the gym with my friend at 4 o’clock. It always made me feel better working out. This 6 a.m. workout happened more recently, when an injury forced me to work out to get my shoulder better. I went back to old school lifting weights. A buddy of mine said to me, “Hey Lonnie, you’re lifting weights like it’s 1990.” He’s like, “You got to come to one of my boot camps where you do a whole body workout.” I went two days a week for about a year. It was great. Then a friend told me about this fit shop, which was CrossFit Lite. You’re not just clean and jerking and all that. You’re doing rope climbs. You’re doing pull ups. You’re doing pushups. You’re doing burpees. You’re doing squats. You’re doing everything, but with actual dumbbells. You can go as light or as heavy as you want. It’s an excruciating, soul crushing workout. I went to that one on the other two days — Tuesdays and Thursdays, from six to seven. I felt amazing. When you sweat, I always tell that you’re beating up your red beast. It’s that fat little guy gnawing in the back of your head, telling you, “Stay in bed. Don’t workout. You don’t need to do it. You could take a day off.”You just want to crush that guy. Believe me. It doesn’t get easier the more you do it. They crush you. But people talk about it, and they love it. It’s the hardest class they have. You see 60-year old people,

Are you counting calories and exercising, but still not getting in shape? Jay Kim had the same problem, and after a lot of research, he found a way to get into the best shape of his life… while only spending three hours a week in the gym. In this episode, we talk about: * Jay’s personal journey * Why most exercise equipment is a complete waste of time * The simple formula to getting ripped You can buy Jay’s book Hack Your Fitness on Amazon. You can learn more at HackYour.Fitness.   What is the #1 take away from your book? Honesty. If you want to hack your fitness, you have to be honest with yourself on why. For the longest time, the only reason that I wanted to hack my fitness is because everyone else around me was doing it. I never actually thought about why I was going to the gym. It was just a career accessory. Everyone was going to the gym after work and then we’d all meet up for happy hour drinks afterward. It made no sense. There was no goal. I was just doing it because it was almost like peer pressure. I thought I had to do it. Everyone’s doing it. When you really drill down and you do that exercise where you ask yourself “why?” five times, and figure out really why do you want to be fit, only then will you realize what you need to hack your fitness. It’s different for everyone. For me, it was vanity. I wanted to look good. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on fitness. Once you actually figure out why you want to be fit then the rest of the stuff is actually quite simple. The education part is very simple. I was able to consolidate and distill all the education stuff in about 200 pages in the book. It’s very simple science. You just learn the simple science behind nutrition, diet, and then the lifts are actually even easier. The lifting part, it’s only one chapter where I go through all the lifts and that’s it.   Who is your book for?  People exactly like myself. I’m not a fitness guy. I spent a lot of time researching. I read a lot of articles and did a lot of my own research and spent a lot of time at the gym. At the end of the day, that’s not my life. My life isn’t just fitness. When I took an honest look at myself, my own was the main driver behind my fitness journey. A lot of people in life, I believe, if they take a look back, a step back, and really look at themselves, they might find a similar motivation. That’s one of the first things that I tell people to do is to take an honest look at themselves. If there’s one thing that people like to boast or brag about that’s not money, it’s fitness and how much they’re putting up in the gym or what triathlon they just did and what time. It was a metric. “Because I had to struggle with my fitness, I wrote it off as having a slow metabolism. It wasn’t that at all. I just wasn’t doing things right.” I was not doing things in the right order, in the right syntax, in the right amounts. That was my biggest issue, and that’s the issue for a lot of people. I would look at these people that I would call “genetic freaks” and they had it all, right? People that are super successful in their career, they have the perfect marriage, perfect life in their perfect house and the guy is perfectly ripped. He just always seems to have everything together. You look at this guy that’s perfect and you’re like “how does he do it?

Today’s episode is with JT McCormick, author of I Got There. We talk about what it was like to grow up as a poor mixed-race child and how he hustled his way out of poverty and became president of a multi-million dollar software company. JT shares some heartbreaking stories about how he grew up around criminals and racism and abuse. But he also shares a redemption story, where he achieves the American dream and becomes a self-made millionaire. Be sure to stick around until the end, because JT’s going to share how you can follow in his footsteps even if you’re starting out with nothing like he did. This is a life-changing episode that you do not want to miss. Without further ado, here is JT McCormick. What was it like to have a drug dealing pimp as your father? My dad had this red El Dorado Biarritz Cadillac in the 70s, and that was the black man’s car of choice. And he had ordered it custom, and he was the only person who had one. So he loved that car. He loved that car, I believe to this day, more than he loved his kids. When you rode in my dad’s car, you technically shouldn’t even breath. Don’t put your feet on the seat, don’t mess up anything. Sit there, be still. One day, we’re driving, we had just gone to Wendy’s and he’s got one of his prostitutes in the front with him, and they’re arguing. She pulls a burger out of the Wendy’s bag, and she hits my dad in the side of the head with it. He stopped in the middle of the highway, just consider major highway in any major city, stops in the middle of the highway, puts the car in park, walks around, pulls her out of the car, commences to beat her ass, and then pulls out her purse, dumps it on her, pulls out the food, dumps it on her, shuts the door, comes back around, puts the cark in park, we drive off, she’s laying in the middle of the highway beat to a pulp. He casually calmly turns around, looks at me and my brothers, and says, “Where do you guys want to go to eat?” When I first got to Houston with my dad, we were living in a weekly rent motel. My dad was running prostitutes in and out of our motel room. I’m nine years old, and it’s the summer right after my fourth grade year. It’s Houston. It’s humid. My six month old half sister is crying and crying, and I can not get her to stop. Her mother’s out on the corner trying to pick up a trick (i.e. customer), and my baby sister just won’t stop crying. I don’t know what to do. I’m picking her up. I’m bouncing her. I’m rocking her. I’m talking to her like she’s going to talk back to me. What do I do? I got so frustrated that I threw my six month old baby sister on the couch. Oh, the stress. It’s stressful right now to think about it. As soon as she left my arms, I immediately caught myself and I ran over, I picked her up, and I just plead with her: “I’m so sorry.” I’m holding my baby sister, and she’s crying even more now. Her mother shows up with this man, the trick, and tells me to leave the hotel room with my crying baby sister in nothing but a diaper. She takes the man in, and they go do their business. I’m walking around the parking lot of this weekly motel, in the scorching sun in Houston, in the middle of the summer, with no clue what to do. I just felt completely lost. No clue what to do. That was the most stressful thing that I’ve ever gone through.   When did you get yourself out of poverty? The last time I was in juvenile, I was in there for two and a half months for beating up a kid and putting him into a coma....