(bright music)
- Hi, and welcome to SmartFem and Friends.
I'm your host, Lea Woodford.
And with me is the "Sidehustle Millionaire", Tony Whatley.
Hey Tony, how are you?
- Hey, Lea, good to see you
and really enjoyed your event this weekend.
And I can't wait to really catch up
and share some value with your audience.
- I'm excited about that because I know you guys
are asking, what is a Sidehustle Millionaire?
So, Tony, I know your story, but let's talk about your story
for my audience.
- The "Sidehustle Millionaire" is the title of my book,
but it was actually a character that was derived
by my editor of my book that I wasn't initially
familiar with or comfortable with using.
But it's all fact.
So my background is that I worked 20 years in corporate
and, while I was working in this oil and gas profession,
my love for cars drove me to create automotive businesses.
And I built communities that grew to 300,000 members
and then I grew another one that grew to 220,000 members.
And I sold those for a couple million a few years later.
So while I was working full time,
my side businesses earned millions of dollars.
- Wow, but let's unpack that, because I loved your story.
You're an engineer.
Let's talk about how the evolution,
and you were also in the gas and oil.
Can we talk about that?
- Absolutely.
I grew up lower middle-class,
two hardworking blue-collar parents.
And we were always on that quest of six figure income.
Right? - Right.
- Most people hear about that and they give you
a few choices.
They say, "Be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer."
- Right.
- I said, well, I don't really wanna be a lawyer,
and I definitely don't like the medical profession.
So I guess I'll do something in engineering
and there's my love of cars.
So it's like, well, is there anything
related to cars and engineering?
Well, mechanical engineering.
I actually learned all the systems about cars
and everything about moving and machinery.
And it's like, okay, I'll go do that.
And I was actually very average at math.
I had to struggle through school.
- Oh, I don't do math in public.
- Yeah, yeah, it was tough.
I had really good grades in high school,
but then I go to engineering school and I was very average,
because in engineering school, that's all the top level
students and the whole average just basically goes down.
And I really struggled because I was working full time,
as you said, for seven years.
I was working in the chemical refineries
at age 18, working outside in the Houston area.
And on the weekends, I would wait tables
and I would also be a mechanic and work on cars.
And I would just go to school at nighttime,
taking two or three classes per semester.
And that's why it really took me so long,
but I never changed majors and I really wanted
to see it through and I was sleep deprived and anxious
and broke and all these things that you think about.
So whenever I hear people talking about college experience
was super awesome and like, "Oh my God, my great years!"
I'm thinking, you didn't have it very hard.
'Cause it was my worst time of my life.
- I can relate.
I can totally relate!
So, but Tony, because you were only taking a couple
of classes, it was like six years to get your degree.
- Yeah.
- Now, how difficult was it for you to leave that degree
and that cushy job, to become an entrepreneur,
to go from paycheck player to an entrepreneur.
- That's tough, you know, it's what we call
the sunk cost fallacy, Lea.
We hold on to things that we've attained
or we've accomplished.
And we think that if we're not utilizing those
and we just put those to the side,
that we're going to lose that.
So if that's education or experience,
most people think that if they stop at some point,
all that goes away, but that's really what we call
a sunk cost fallacy, because you've already got that
education or that experience and nobody can ever
take that away from you, if you've got that knowledge.
So you can put it on hold.
You can hang that degree on the wall,
let dust collect on the frame, just like mine now.
And understand that the worst case scenario is
that you have to go back into the workforce
and maybe get another job,
if you've tried to be an entrepreneur.
I get it, because me being a business owner for 20 years,
working alongside people in the corporate
who had never owned a business,
I got to see the different mentalities and mindset
of entrepreneurship and employees.
And what always fascinated me was that
people in the employee side we're always looking
for the next paycheck, the next promotion.
They're always looking for the next company
to take care of them.
They're always thinking about, "What's in it for me?"
"How am I gonna get paid?"
And entrepreneurs are a little bit different.
As you know, we think about, "What are the problems
"I need to solve?"
"What are the things that we can create impact
"in this world?"
"What really annoys me that I need to fix
"with society or products that are missing
"or services that could help other people?"
So entrepreneurs tend to be the hunters,
going out looking for things to solve problems
that will compensate them well.
Where, employees really had no interest in that.
And I always tried to interject some of my
entrepreneurship thoughts in some of these
large corporations, major oil and gas companies.
They really had no interest in those kind of things
because they had that old fashioned way of thinking,
saying, "If it's not broke, don't fix it."
"This is the way we've always done it."
"Process, process, process."
And nobody ever wanted to stick their neck out
and actually make some actual changes
that could actually greatly improve the profits
of some of these companies we're working for.
They were bleeding money left and right.
And that's why we always have these cyclical downturns,
every seven to eight years, in oil and gas.
And after going through three of those in my own career,
I was like, "I'm done with this."
I was in my forties, and as I started to climb
to the multiple six figure income range,
those are the times you get laid off first,
because you're very expensive.
And when you're at that level,
there's fewer jobs to go after.
So you're unemployed for six to eight months sometimes.
- Wow.
Now, Tony, how difficult was it
for you to go from when you first started out, to change
that mindset from 9 to 5 paycheck player to entrepreneur?
Because, let's face it, it is anything but 9 to 5.
- Totally.
You know, there's a lot of times that people are
in professional roles that ego plays a lot of the reason
they stay in their job.
They basically have built some kind of a title
that's got maybe some prestige, or they work for a company,
like I worked for Chevron and it's a prestigious company,
that if you're in the oil and gas sector,
that's one of the top level jobs that everybody
dreams to have.
So you start to have these things in your mind of
the imposter syndrome and, who am I to walk away from
such a spectacular career that most people would never have?
Who am I to walk away from multiple six figure salaries?
Who am I to waste to my degree?
And these are all ego serving things,
because you have these business cards
and it looks good on LinkedIn.
And you start to think about, well is my ego really worth
me putting my dreams on the shelf
and not pursuing my purpose?
And the answer is no.
Like, I need to go do something different.
And I was in an automotive accident when I raced cars,
in 2015, and in that moment, I thought I was going
to pass away, in that very moment before impact.
And after that I said, "You know, I could've
"died last night, I could have died last night."
I started thinking about, who would I be
or how would I be remembered,
if I would've died last night?
And I started to think about, well who of my friends
have died recently and how are they remembered?
That's the easiest way to think about it.
It was always, nice guy and cool cars.
And it's like, well yeah, I'm a nice guy
and I got cool cars, but is that really
how I wanted to be remembered?
And it's very shallow when you think about that.
And I said, there's more available for me to do,
because I've impacted my friends and close circles
of friends for several years.
I've always been a leader and a mentor,
teaching them things and encouraging them.
But I knew that I could do this on a larger scale.
And that's when I decided to go out there
and write the book and become a speaker
and do podcasts and all these different things.
And it really took a near-death experience
for me to really think about how short life is
and that we shouldn't be wasting our time.
- Absolutely.
And I love your story in the book about how difficult it was
for you to be a speaker and doing your Facebook live.
Can we talk about that?
'Cause you know what, you really made the decision
and committed to being the best that you can be
and you have to do that to be an entrepreneur, right?
Can you share with our audience what that was like?
- It was tough.
I had stage fright about three years ago
and I knew that I didn't want to put myself on camera.
I was very good at taking photos and doing videos,
but I never wanted to be on the other side of the lens.
And the reason is because I had bullies when I was young.
And we learned that if you do things that stand out,
you get criticized and you get ridiculed
and I had a very comfortable life.
I already had a lot of money in the bank and a good career
and I had a family and everybody loved me.
I didn't really feel like I needed to go get the spotlight
and put myself out there.
But I realized that my purpose is to impact
the generational legacy of millions of people,
by teaching them business and confidence.
I couldn't just hide in the background
to do those kind of things.
And so, as I was writing the book,
that was gonna be the easiest way
for me to get my message out there.
And the thing about being an author is there's a lot
of bestselling authors that nobody even recognizes.
So it's actually one of those professions you can be
highly successful at and nobody would recognize you,
if you walked down the street.
So if you're an introvert like me,
it's like, that's a cool idea.
- Wait, you're an introvert?
- Yeah, definitely!
I can put my message out there and reach thousands,
if not millions of people, and they don't have to see me?
It's like, this is great!
But as I was writing the book, I was giving the chapter
to chapter to the editor and he was thinking,
man, this is gonna be a good book.
I've done a lot of books and this is gonna be a good book.
And I started thinking to myself, wow,
what if people wanted to interview me?
And what if I get asked to go on TV or the radio?
And what if I get asked to be on podcasts
or stand on the stage?
And I knew that I had that stage fright.
So about halfway through my writing process,
which was about five months, I started joining Toastmasters
and doing videos to just try to get better,
try to get ahead of that, just in case.
All that has worked out.
The book became a Number One Bestseller on Amazon.
- In a week!
- In a week. - In a week!
- Yeah, sold thousands of copies and I've been on radio,
I've been on TV, I've started a podcast.
I've been on over 200 other podcasts.
So all the things I had the fear about,
I had to prepare myself to become the right person
to carry my message vocally on a stage.
And even when I was taking the public speaking classes,
I never really thought that I would be a speaker.
I was just trying to prepare myself to be able
to be interviewed, right?
- Right.
- And as I started to do that and started to practice
and do those videos, like you talked about,
it was terrifying at first because I knew I wasn't any good,
but I knew that's the only way I could get better.
I'm an action taker and you do reps to get stronger,
just like at the gym.
And I said, I have to do these things,
because my purpose is ahead of my fear now.
So I would just sit in my truck, in my tie,
after a consulting job.
- I love that.
- And I would do my little videos.
And if somebody walked by, I'd put the phone down
and say, "Oh well, I wasn't doing anything."
And you know, they'd walk away.
And they couldn't hear me, the windows were up,
but it's like you're so self-conscious
about putting yourself out there.
It took me a lot of reps.
So I committed in 2015, 2017,
I was gonna do a bunch of videos and there was a whole year
I did one every single day, just learning little by little.
One to three minute videos, nothing like major.
And they started to get a little longer
and I started to get more confident.
I learned a little bit more skills and that's what it is.
And I still show that video today to my clients.
- You do, and I love that.
You know, you gotta embrace the suck
on anything you're learning, because nobody is perfect
going out of the gate.
But I love that you are so transparent that you share that
with your audience, which nobody, you know,
nobody likes to do that.
You know, we don't want people to see us sucking,
but I think it makes us more real.
- Yeah, if you can't encourage people and show them proof
that you've gone through it, they're not gonna believe it
for themselves, that they can do that.
And I'll never delete my old videos.
There's hundreds and hundreds of them out there
and they get better progressively.
But I'm not even the same person I was
when I started doing those videos.
I had the same knowledge, the same experience,
but being an effective communicator
and speaking with emotion and getting on a stage
and learning how to extract the emotion
and the energy from the audience.
These are all the tactics that I learned
from public speaking coaches and just doing a lot of reps
and standing at a lot of events.
But being an effective communicator is important.
If you have a message or a story you need to share
with the world, you need to learn how to speak it
and do that and that's just not a skill
that you're born with.
- You know, but one of the things I noticed about you
too, though, you're very calculating in your life,
you know, right down to your physique, through working out.
I mean, I see you and you're in the gym,
you're working out, and you're very methodical on things.
I mean, I kinda saw some of the old videos
before you really...
What inspired you to just, you know, go work out,
create this business, and commit to greatness.
- That's a good one because I'll say I sold my company
at age 34, and at 35, I started getting a little complacent
and I had, you know, I had all this money
that I'd never experienced before in my life.
And we upgraded houses and we were flying all over the world
doing these different things.
And I started to let my health fade,
and I used to write that off because I was surrounded
by people from my past life,
that would just make excuses for you.
And when you start to think about your mid-thirties,
it's not that old, like, you know we're a lot older
than that now.
But when you're in that moment, you have the shoulder pains
and the lower back pains and the knee pains from the sports
and the things that you were doing when you're younger.
And you would always write that off as like,
well, I guess I'm getting older.
And it's just a bunch of BS that we hear about all the time.
So I think about, I was actually gaining weight
and I was always an athlete when I was young.
I remember looking in the mirror and thinking like,
is this really what you wanna be like?
Is this really who you are?
Because inside I still felt like the athlete
that I was since high school and, looking in the mirror,
it's like, I'm the middle-aged dude with the belly.
And I'm just kind of fat.
My face was getting fat.
And I had like an extra chin.
And I was like, this is not who I am.
And my wife, Lisa, she's always younger than me.
And she's always going to the gym and she's encouraging me.
She never like ridiculed me, but she'd go,
"Hey, I'm going to the gym, do you wanna go?
And I would always say no, because I had the back pains
and shoulder pains.
And when I hit 40, it was a pivotal milestone for everybody.
And I said, you know what?
I don't wanna go like this.
I don't wanna be out of shape.
And I don't wanna be just the average middle-aged dude
walking around with the gut hanging out.
And I was like, I need to get back in shape.
And what do you do?
You just go to the gym.
And honestly, that first two months of that sucked,
like you said, 'cause when you let yourself go
for four to five years, it really is tough to get back
on that saddle because you feel like you're below zero
and you feel like you're gonna have to struggle super hard
just to get back to zero, which is average.
And then you can start making gains on top of that.
So I was willing to go, just go put in the work,
little by little, didn't kill myself right away,
and just kind of stepped it up.
And now we go to the gym six days a week.
We just take one day off and that's the results.
That became the lifestyle.
So I'm almost 48 now
and it's been eight years of doing that.
- So, can we talk about lifestyle integration?
Because being an entrepreneur is not a 9 to 5.
- No.
- And you're never an overnight success,
despite what people say.
So, for somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur
for the first time, what advice would you give them?
- Somebody wants to be an entrepreneur for the first time,
I would say, you need to start taking action.
You need to start doing the things you need to do
and learn from people who have achieved the things
that you would like to achieve.
So there's endless amounts of books and podcasts
and YouTube videos.
That information is accessible nowadays.
When you and I were younger, that wasn't accessible.
We had to know somebody.
And a lot of times they guarded those secrets,
unless you're willing to pay them.
And honestly, that's the problem I also see
with a lot of people that are new to entrepreneurship.
They consume all this material, but they don't apply it.
They never take the chance.
And the number one regret for everybody that I've known
that started a business is, they didn't start sooner.
So if you know that's the number one regret,
not starting sooner, don't be that same person.
And just do something and understand that you don't
have to have all the answers.
Understand that you will improve as an entrepreneur
and as an individual, as you go.
You're gonna get punched in the face a few times.
You're gonna trip.
You're gonna learn expensive lessons.
You're gonna be betrayed.
You're gonna have critics.
You're gonna have naysayers.
These are all things that are part of the game
and you have to be willing to accept that.
And I actually teach my clients
to go look for your first hater.
You know, a lot of people wanna be nice
and be avoiding all these things.
And it's like, go find your first hater.
Because until you're doing things that are worth noticing
and you're actually getting attention,
you're not gonna have any critics.
And a lot of people give themselves a pat on the back
because, well everybody likes me,
and you know, we get along with everybody.
I say, no, you're just not doing anything
worth noticing right now, and that's the hard truth.
Because the people that change the world,
the people that create all the impacts,
that invent all the things, and do all the things.
They are usually bold and they stand out.
You know, they're SmartFem.
They just do things.
(laughing)
They're the alphas, they go do things.
And they're relentless about it.
They're not worried about what critics are gonna say.
And so in our group, we actually celebrate
when someone gets a hater.
It's like, hey, screenshot it, come back to the group.
We'll all go support you on that post.
But we'll also cheer, because we don't want you to feel bad.
And we've seen this over and over and over.
And it's so empowering when people realize that.
- Especially social media.
- Oh yeah.
- You know, you get more critics because you there's,
I don't know, you're not really anonymous,
but there is a feeling of being anonymous.
That isn't unusually something you say to somebody's face.
It blows my mind.
- Yeah, absolutely.
If there's somebody out there with a profile that's got
like a cartoon or a dog or a cat and they don't use
their full name, guaranteed, they're talking trash
somewhere on the internet.
- (laughs) I love that.
You actually had somebody
that kind of hijacked your persona.
Can you talk about that a minute?
- I had a few of those where you log in or someone says,
"Hey did you start a new Instagram account
"or a new Facebook account?"
And one of them was really creepy.
He had the account, he called himself Whatley Tony,
instead of Tony Whatley.
And he had photos going back like eight months.
And he was like answering questions and just livin' life.
And the funny thing is, there was a show we saw,
a reality show, I can't remember what it was,
but I think it was on MTV.
And they went and busted the people
that were creating those fake accounts.
And it's really kind of sad to watch the show.
I watched a few episodes in a hotel room
on a trip one day.
And they were usually people from other countries
and they were in poverty and they just wanted to feel like
what it felt like to be, like recognized or famous.
And so they created these things and they would have
several different accounts that they were just pretending,
just because they were so lonely and felt like they were
so empty, that they had to feel like
what it must be like to be able to feel like that.
And I was like, man, that's rough.
- That is rough. - That's rough.
- We're blessed, aren't we?
- Yes, we are.
- You know, we are so lucky.
The U.S. isn't perfect, but man, it's better than
a lot of the alternatives, right?
- Absolutely.
- Tony, where can people find you and your podcast?
- My website is 365driven.com.,
and that's also the title of my podcast.
You can find that on Spotify and Apple
and all the major channels.
We've been on the show over two years now,
had hundreds of episodes, and you've been on the show.
- I've been on the show!
- We've had some amazing people, just inspiring people.
It's an entrepreneurship based show,
but we cover health, wealth, mindset, and relationships.
So we bring in the experts from all those different fields
and we have some amazing conversations.
- Before we go, that is one of the things that you always
talk about, which I think is so important, mindset.
Can you just give us some parting words
about your take on mindset?
'Cause we hear it, but really you embody that.
- I think with mindset, is something that
if you have a little self-doubt right now,
if you have anxiety, if you feel the fear
of putting yourself out there or taking that action;
whatever that action may be, whether that's
starting your company or going on that fitness journey,
or putting in a new friend circle.
These are the things that we all have.
We all start with that low point,
and to get the confidence going,
you just have to take actions.
And when you start taking these little baby steps,
leading towards a specific goal in your life,
you're gonna find that when you look back someday,
you've covered a lot of steps
and you've covered a lot of ground.
And that's the only way to get confidence
is just keep doing these little steps.
And every time you keep a promise to yourself
and keep a promise to other people, call your shots,
your confidence just increases little by little.
And that's how you get to where you have the mindset
that nobody can touch you.
And when you start to understand that,
we talk about the haters, the critics, the naysayers,
those are the things that most people fear
and it keeps them grounded and keeps them from doing things.
And what I like to say about that is that
those people that you're afraid of,
they're going to be out there.
Understand that about 1% of the people watching you
are going to be naysayers, critics, and haters.
So it's calculated, you understand that.
And the things that you're not doing,
because you're so worried about what those people say,
these are the people that are not gonna buy
anything from you.
These are the people that are not gonna
refer anything to you.
These are the people that are never going to support you.
They're never even gonna be at your funeral,
if you were to pass away this week.
So when you understand that these people that don't even
care about you are never going to buy anything,
never gonna refer to you are keeping you from doing
what you need to do for your life,
you needed to push those people away,
'cause they just don't matter.
And when you can find the power and the courage
just to push the people away that don't matter,
it's gonna open up a beautiful, beautiful opportunity
for you to go step in and do the things
that you should be doing.
- Wow, that is so powerful.
Tony, will you come back to the show?
- Absolutely.
Oh, thank you so much, my friend.
- Thank you for having me.
- This has been Lea Woodford, with SmartFem and Friends.
Thanks for watching.
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