How Your Worst Struggles Become Your Greatest Strengths, with Jacob Emery

Dan Sullivan: Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. I'd like to welcome you to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast. Hi, everybody, it's Dan Sullivan, and this is today's episode of Multiplier Mindset. We have a whopping good story for you today, and this is Jacob Emery. Jacob's from Newark, Ohio, so good Ohio guy. I'm from Ohio.
 
Here's what Jacob's going to do. He's going to lay it out for you how to become a great entrepreneur. First of all, be a complete misfit. You have to be a misfit. You don't fit in anywhere. Nobody wants you in your club. The other thing is, you should have a really bad home life. If you're living with really easy circumstances, you should try to get yourself into a really bad home life. And then you should have learning disabilities. You shouldn't be any good in school. You don't really learn anything. But above all, as early as you can, start drinking a lot of alcohol. In other words, strive to be not just an occasional drinker, but be a complete alcoholic. And it would really help if you come from a broken home.
 
Yeah, this would be a really good setup for your entrepreneurial life. I mean, you wonder, you know, when you hear Jacob's story, you sit there and you hear the first minute and you say, whoa, about the incredible story he tells. A lot of the entrepreneur stories, you know, I was out, I had my own business by the time I was 10 years old. He was digging ditches for $9 an hour, you know. But the whole thing was that there's something inside Jacob that just wants to live. That's really what I got at, you know, you just get this total passion that he knows that there's something inside himself that really wants to grow, that really wants to be successful, that really wants to be significant.
 
Anybody who thinks they've had a bad life, they ought to have this on their iPhone. And I think I'll just watch Jacob for about 10 minutes. My life seems very, very easy. And then of him sticking with it and then gradually turning himself around, he's got obvious incredible leadership skills. So he's running the crew and knowing when he was working for $9 an hour that by the time he was 30, he was going to own the company.
 
So I have to tell you, I've been coaching for 51 years, and all the 51 years of work that I put in was worth it just to see Jacob. I mean, I'm rewarded. I feel totally rewarded. But I deeply, deeply appreciate his comments about what kind of community we've created here at Strategic Coach. On the one hand, I feel just totally honored. you know, about all the ways in which Strategic Coach turned out to just be the perfect community for a man like Jacob Emery. But I'm also proud that we've worked with thousands, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs that when Jacob needed this in his life, it was available, that Strategic Coach was available.
 
This is another one that I want this particular podcast, Multiplier Mindset, that it gets out to a million people because I think a million people will have their thinking, they'll have their direction in life transformed by just listening to Jacob's story.
 
Jacob Emery: Yes, my name is Jacob Emery. I own R&R Pipeline. We are an infrastructure company and we specialize in natural gas distribution. And actually, since joining Coach, it's been quite an incredible journey. I go into year five. I think actually this next quarter is year five. I started a podcast. I have a coaching business. I became a shareholder of a supplement company and helped start a CrossFit business gym. It's been such an incredible ride. That's just a little bit in a nutshell about what I do, but Strategic Coach allowed me to expand my thinking and become the true environment-based visionary entrepreneur that I truly am.
 
The environment in Coach is second to none because you are who you are and it's okay to be there and be who you are. You don't have to fit in a box. There is no bureaucratic box to be put in. Everybody is open and honest and truly cares about getting better. It's growth-minded. It's like-minded, visionary entrepreneurs. I thought that I was an outcast my whole life. I thought something was wrong with me. I didn't fit in. And now when I get to Coach, I just see this massive environment of growth-minded individuals who don't have a box at all in life. I think it's every industry, honestly. What it's done for me is it's allowed me to merge my two true passions.
 
From a young age, I enjoyed running heavy equipment. I enjoyed the power of the iron, tearing things down, moving earth. It was something I was passionate about, and I started doing that when I was like five years old. I actually have a video of me running the track at five years old that my feet can't hit the floorboard, I can barely reach the levers. And so it became an original passion of mine. And the other one was the fitness. So I had issues growing up and I was overweight and insecure. So I turned to the weights. Strategic Coach allowed me to merge the iron from the heavyweight and the heavy equipment.
 
And now I have the podcast called the Iron Infrastructure Podcast, because iron built my personal and professional infrastructure. Without Coach, I would have never been able to visualize and manifest, make something a reality. The tools, the time management, everything that I had throughout my life was chaos. And now I have clarity. Coach supported me with the empowerment that I am worthy of achieving these things, and that I'm not nobody special, but I am somebody that can become something special because of the environment itself.
 
You know, told certain things my whole life, and I always went against the grain. And then getting into that place, and it was such an empowering thing. I didn't feel worthy of being there for my first year or two. And then there was a turning point. And I just remember walking in there, I'm like, I actually belong here. And so it built a profound confidence that had I never went to Strategic Coach, I would have never been able to have. And so that environment, the coaches, my coach, Steven Neuner, I have to shout out Steven Neuner. He is one of the most stand-up human beings I've ever met, a great friend of mine and a mentor that I have the utmost respect for him. His vulnerability and openness about life experience and how it's impacted him allowed me to do the same.
 
And so personally, professional growth has been 10x. And it just changed everything for me. It allowed me to empower myself to be worthy. And so I've been on this journey ever since. And I cannot thank everyone at Strategic Coach enough. Dead or in jail by 21 was my silliest success in high school. I was a troubled kid who was insecure and overweight. I just didn't fit in. And I remember feeling like something was always wrong with me. I didn't fit in anywhere. I struggled in school. And so my early weight insecurity compounded when I couldn't read and write very well. So I carried this insecurity for years.
 
And actually, if I'm being transparent, probably four or five years ago did I truly get rid of it. They held me back for so long, so I would fight. By the time I was 16, I was drinking heavy. I was probably really a full-fledged alcoholic by 16 to 20 years old. It was a very dark time. And my parents got divorced, and it compounded really bad. So I had the flexibility of time because I could get away with anything because of the divorce. So I acted out on it horribly. I barely survived high school, and I remember one day, I was 16 years old, I pulled out of the school that I went to, and as I'm pulling out, I go get my truck and I open up a beer after school.
 
So, at 16 years old, this paints the picture pretty well of who I was. I chug a beer, and as I'm chugging a beer, I leave the school that day, and R&R Pipeline was actually outside of the school digging in a gas line. And so, as I pass there, I have this really distinct gut twist that just says, you're going to own this company one day. So I said that I'm going to own this company one day. I'm going to own this company one day. And I graduated high school in 2007. So that moment happened a couple of years before I graduated. And it was so vivid and real. I'll never forget as long as I live.
 
So I graduated high school in 2007. And a couple of years into the workforce, I go to work at R&R Pipeline. A couple of years in, I'm going to absolutely nowhere. I'm still at $9 an hour. That's where I started at, $9 an hour with a shovel in my hand in 2007. And I fit in that environment of rugged construction worker, just wild and out of control. So the environment that I had just left actually compounded and got worse because now it's not kids doing it, it's adults doing it. So I just got sucked into that environment, and then enough was enough.
 
And I was laid off of work one winter, and I was at the old school gym, which is the gym that I train at every day now. And I'll never forget, one of my best friends, a mentor of mine, said, what the hell were you doing with your life? What the hell were you doing with your life? And I knew right in that moment, I'm not doing anything. Dead or in jail by 21 is more than likely my reality if I don't make a change. And that was about 20 years old. So from 20 to 22, I quit going to happy hour at Applebee's, and I went and walked on the treadmill, would listen to a podcast or a book, and developed me as a person.
 
So I changed my own environment. I went down that lonely road and became a different person. And by 22, 23 years old, I was running a crew of anywhere from 5 men, 10 men, to maybe 30 on bigger projects. So I went from the very bottom of the labor pool up to running crews, being one of the leaders of the company. And at that age, I just said, you know what? If I can do this in two years of dedicating myself, I'm going to buy the damn company by the time I'm 30. And so it was just that crazy, wild, visionary-type goal, and it was delusional. There was no rhyme or reason why it was even fathomable that it could be possible. And there was probably that 0.1% chance that it actually was possible, but that's all I needed.
 
And so I went on that journey, and my now business partner, Cody, came back from the military in 2014 and 2015. I told him about the dream and the vision and we partnered up. I figured out I'm a partnership person. I know that I can expedite the journey for myself and for the team of people that I care about by being that partnership person. So we became business partners. We're committed to that dream at that point. May 24th of 2019, 407 days after starting the journey, we bought the company. And so that was like my win for the first time in my life. I won my whole life. I had lost. I had been the person that everybody else said I would be. And everybody was right about me 99% of the time. But that day I was a hundred percent right. And they were 0% right.
 
‘Cause it just took one time for me to win, to become the person that I knew I could be. So that was at 30 years old. I set that goal to buy by 30. I did that. And then I realized two days afterward, I'm not happy. I said this would make me happy. I feel nothing. Why do I not feel this accolade? It was supposed to be the accolade of ownership that made me up on top of this mountain. So it was hard to feel that because what was the most painful journey of 407 days, the most pressure, quite literally everything on the line. So my net worth was $37,000 and we bought a multi-million dollar company, just under eight figures. It was hard and that journey, it was a 1% chance at best that we actually could do it.
 
And when we did, I thought that was going to be everything. And I realized that it wasn't. What I didn't realize, though, is the person I became internally that was able to purchase that company and was willing to go through the adversity that fought that hard to get what he wanted. So I didn't appreciate it because I didn't enjoy the climb up the mountain. Two days after, I realized, I am on top of this mountain, and I'm looking out over the view of this mountain that's so high. Mount Everest is right here in front of me. And then reality hit in. And I realized that I'm not on top of the mountain. This is just a ledge. And the cloud cover moves by, and I'm standing up there, and I look up, and it's just another mountain to climb.
 
And so I didn't enjoy that climb, and I didn't enjoy the view as much. So now after that, I realized it's a day-to-day process of fulfillment because of who I became that wants to accomplish these things. So now I enjoy the climb every day. The view is so much better, and I have so much more fulfillment in life. And then I also realized with being a partnership person that I always had a different way of viewing the world, and I thought I was always wrong for this. When I read Who Not How, it hit me so hard and validated a lot for me that I thought I was crazy for.
 
Growing up, I would be called lazy for not changing my own oil in my truck. I remember going to an oil shop and getting it changed for $20, and it would cost me $18 to get the stuff and do it myself. I would go pay 20 bucks, I would read a book for an hour while they were doing it, and then it was a pretty much break-even for the cost, but the investment in myself for that hour of time was massive. I've had a Who Not How mentality from a young age, and I didn't realize that it wasn't a bad thing until Strategic Coach. And then I think the Kolbe Index also, the Kolbe Index was one that just was so eye opening because at the time I was the only Quick Start in our company.
 
So I was a Quick Start. I'm a 5283. And I remember when I first took that and I was like, I wonder who else is a Quick Start in here. And out of the 10 people that took the test, I think there was a 4 was the highest, second to mine. So I was in this environment of parachutes, that's what I like to say. And you see everyone is a high Fact Finder. It's all red and I'm green. I'm always the go person. And so it was like this environment is so restrictive, I didn't realize it. It wasn't a bad thing. It just was what it was. And now I understood it. And it just, when I started to understand and have more self-awareness, the spark plug in the engine and everything just hit right like it should, it was just like a rocket ship, but I would have never been able to understand that until Strategic Coach.
 
So Who Not How is when a project comes up or anything comes up, don't look at how do I do this thing, but who can do this thing that's excellent at it and loves to do it. Yeah, a question that I love to ask other people is, what do you want out of your life? What's a perfect day look like? So if tomorrow you wake up and you have all the money in the world, you have all the time in the world, what do you do with your day? And that's the ultimate dream. So many people don't have clarity on that. What is your perfect day look like? When you understand what a perfect day looks like, then you understand what you desire in life, and then you just gotta go earn it, you gotta go get it.
 
And so, it sounds so simple. It is that simple, though. Just figuring out what you love to do, who you love to spend time with, the amount of money that you need, and what fulfills you as a person with the relationships you have. It's the Four Freedoms. Everything that I set goals around today, my ultimate goal was to fully live within the Four Freedoms by 40. So four years from now. And so life is pretty simple. You just have to get clear, crystal clarity about what you want out of it. So anyone that's going through a pain point or a struggle, the thing that's gotten me out of so many hardships is I have survived every challenge I've ever faced in my life because I'm still standing today. So no matter how big or how small, how impactful, you survived all of them. If we're here talking today, you have survived every one.
 
I honestly find gratitude in being present. So I think being present is a gift. I think that's why they call gifts presents. But embrace the pressure, embrace the pain, because it only happens once. Every opportunity, this moment right now, as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, because it will never happen again. Even if we sit down and do an interview again, we will not be the same people in the same place at the same time. So every experience in life, whether good or bad, just embrace it. Take it all in, live it, feel it, don't try to mask it, and just embrace the whole entire thing.
 
My life changed when I realized that I had one bad day in my life. I call it my bad day perspective. And it was seven or eight years ago, my brother passed away, 21-year-old in a car accident. That was a bad day. It was a tragic event. It was unforeseen. That was my bad day. Every day before and every day after has been a good day. And so just keeping perspective on no matter what happens in life, if we're still here, we've faced a challenge and we survived it. So stay in charge of your thoughts, stay in charge of what you put your focus into, because what you focus on expands. If you focus on negative things, it will get bigger in the same with the positive.
 
Finding the right partner is very difficult. It truly is one of the most complicated things in business that I think that I've experienced. But, you know, I have five different business interests and multiple different business partners within the five. You have to trust the person. The values have to be the same. So from a value, a moral standpoint, you have to have that foundational trust and value there. That is the absolute key to me. And then you got to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. If you have two people that are partners that are exactly the same, it's going to be a dumpster fire.
 
Two wild, crazy, visionary entrepreneurs act and operate the same exact way. It probably won't work out very well. So having a complimentary mix of skill sets is crucial to me. And when I think about partnership, I think about acceleration. AI right now is an accelerator. You know, when I come to Coach, I can fly there on United 54 minutes. I could walk, it'd be 54 days. 54 minutes is a lot better. It's an accelerator. And so that's how a partnership is to me. And I always use the reference through the lens of a draft horse. A draft horse by itself can pull 8,000 pounds. So basic logic will tell you that 16,000 pounds would be two draft horses. But if you have two draft horses that are in sync, that are going the same direction, pulling together, they can pull up to 32,000 pounds. And that is how I look at partnerships.
 
I have five non-negotiables every day. My coaching program's “Unlocking Greatness with Jacob Emery.” I think everybody has greatness inside of them. And I have the standards of greatness that I follow every day and I have for a long time that allow me to do the things I need to do to be present. It's been a lifelong struggle for me and myself. I am so future-focused sometimes I don't even know what's right in front of me. And so my five standards are no snooze. You don't hit the snooze button. You wake up when you need to. So that is a mindset of you set a priority by setting an alarm clock. You get your ass out of bed and go do what you're supposed to do.
 
Physical output, mental input are two and three. So physical output of only 10 minutes, but every day. So momentum will stop if it's not in motion still, and you have to keep that thing in motion every day or else that momentum slows down. I used to be a five day a week, two weekend off on the weekends, and then start back on Monday. You lose so much momentum by stopping and not continuing to carry on every day, even if it's a minimal dose. So, 10 minutes a day of physical output and mental input. What you focus on expands, so you have to focus on good things to expand your mind in the way you want it to go. Because if you don't, it's really easy to get sucked into the media and the negativity in the world. So, 10 minutes of each, physical output, mental input.
 
And then number four is track and attack. You have to track your progress. If you don't track your progress, you can't manage what you can't measure, so you have to track everything that you do, that you're working toward a certain outcome. And then you got to attack every day, but not attack every day as in like a violent thing, but attack every day with purpose, with passion, be intentional about what you put your attention into. Because I used to try to have balance in my life. And I realized that I am so imbalanced in life, trying to get balance is not even feasible for me. So I don't focus on balance. I focus on attention. So I'm very intentional about what I put my attention into. And that allows me to be present in the moment, regardless of what I'm doing.
 
And to second on that, The Entrepreneur Time System. Absolutely game changing. The Free, Focus, Buffer Days allow me the structure that I need to be present in every moment and to have the cadence to say, yes, it's okay to have this Free Day, or it's okay that you're doing X or doing Y, but it allows me the framework to go about life the way that I need to for the outcome that I desire.
 
And then the last one is probably the simplest, but the most effective. I have gratitude and preparation. So every day, at the end of the day, I have a couple minutes of gratitude, whether it's thankful for whatever opportunities came up that day. Even in the bad times, it happened for me to learn. It happened for me to become an opportunity. And then you prepare for the next day.
 
So, it's like I'm a third grader sometimes, but I don't have to turn my brain on until 7 a.m. Every morning, Monday through Friday, I wake up at 3 a.m. By 3.30, 3.45, I'm at the gym, I'm training. From 4 to 6 a.m., I'm training my body physically for an hour, my mind physically for an hour. Before 7 a.m., I've already conquered the world, and I don't skip a beat, and I don't have to think about anything. My gym clothes are packed. My business clothes for the day are packed. Whatever I'm doing that day, I already have it in my head of exactly how I'm going to go about the day. I have my water ready. I have a jug of, you know, aminos or hydration, whatever I'm carrying that day. My lunch is prepared. I'm like a third grader. I'm ready to go to school. My backpack's set. I have everything good to go. I am completely prepared for the day.
 
And that 20 minutes, maybe 15 minutes at night might save you an hour and a half in the morning when you're foggy, you're in a rush. And starting the day off with the no snooze and then ending it with the gratitude preparation, it's been a life changing experience for me. And I didn't even realize how impactful it was because it's such a micro dose of actually doing anything.
 
My attorney, Jim Havens, I called him for a business development question one day, and I'll never forget, I was in my truck in the parking lot at Arnold Pipeline. And he's like, holy shit, Jake, you're ready for Strategic Coach already. And so I called him out a question. And he told me he was in one of Dan's original workshops 25 years ago. It was a very long time ago. And he had told us during the journey of buying R&R Pipeline, there's going to be a day in time, probably five years from now, I'm going to call you or you're going to call me and I'm going to tell you it's time to go to Strategic Coach. He's like, it's what you need as an entrepreneur to operate in life the right way and operate in life an accelerated way that's not academia-based.
 
So I didn't go to college, I had no organizational structure at all in my life, and no time management skills, no tools to think clearly, to visualize the world bigger, no environment of like-minded individuals. And so when he said that, we signed up for Coach, and it was in 2020, and the first couple sessions were virtual. So after going in person, I just could not believe the environment of like-minded individuals. I felt like out of everyone in the world, I'd never met a room of people in one setting at all in my life like that. We are not as good as we think we are a lot of time, but we're also not as bad. Coach allows you to understand exactly where you're at in the journey.
 
And it's empowering to know that I'm not all the way up here. I'm not all the way down here. I'm right here. And that's where I need to be right now. And this is what I have to do to get to the next level. And the environment of like-minded individuals—I've said this time and time again, I cannot be more thankful for that opportunity. I will be at Coach as long as I live, even if I don't have entrepreneurship anymore in my life, which that'll never happen, but I would pay the money to go to the workshops just to think bigger. It is that powerful. And the tools—the time management, the thinking about your thinking, the Impact Filters. It creates so much clarity in a brain like mine that is nothing but chaos.
 
I recommend it for anybody who has the altruistic spirit because I can guarantee anyone that's on that journey, especially at a young age, you're probably pretty chaotic in nature. What you think is accomplishment is really just a lot of activity. To me, action does not equal accomplishment. I've seen a lot of people do a lot of things, but they just ended up burning a hole in the ground because they were spinning in a circle. I always reference the bureaucratic hamster wheel. I don't know if Dan references that or how he says it, but the bureaucratic hamster wheel to me is what I used to be on. And that is showing up every day, being miserable with everything you do, going home, miserable with your home life, miserable before you go to bed, and it's not living your true dream.
 
Dreams are like fingerprints. They're individual to us all. No one else has the same dream. We all have unique dreams. You have to go after your dream. You have to chase it. And if you want to find it, I promise you, Strategic Coach will get you there. So there's a stage of life where it's kind of about you. You have to find your way. And you don't know what way that is. You don't know where you're going. For myself, I'm here to serve others now, and I'm proud to be able to say that. I'm humbled to be able to say that.
 
I told you earlier about the 16-year-old kid that said, that will be my company one day. I had a paradigm shattering moment probably a year and a half ago. So almost 20 years after that moment, I go back to the same school that I attended that day that I had that vision. I walk into the school to speak to an aspiring leaders class. So dead or in jail by 21 was 20 years ago. And to think that they would even invite me back to that school was kind of humbling in itself because I got in a lot of trouble and I wasn't a very good kid. I get the invite to go back to speak to the kids.
 
But as I'm sitting there, I'm walking into the school again, and I have the same stomach twist that I had at 16. I had no idea why. This was 20 years later, but I just felt like this gut-twisting moment. As I walk into the school, I relived all of my high school years in about 45 or 30 seconds. I go into the classroom to sit down and talk to the teacher. I wanted to talk about the curriculum, about what he wanted to speak on. I wanted to make sure that I prepared well for it because it was something that was personal for me.
 
As I sat down, I jolted out of the chair so hard that the teacher actually asked me, are you okay? And as I sat down, I just jolted really hard. I looked out the window and I had a flashback. I was sitting in the same seat that day at 16 years old that I had that vision at 35 years old, and that same seat that I was asleep in class that day. I was asleep in class, I get a drink of beer at 16 years old. That's going to be my company one day. 20 years later, I'm sitting there in that same seat, getting ready to speak to kids about leadership. And as I told my story, I told it in third person. And as I finished up the story, I smacked my hand on the desk, and I sat on top of the desk. That's where it all started. If I can do this, anybody can.
 
And that's the truth. If I can do this, if I can be here today, anybody can. $9 an hour with a shovel in my hand at 18 years old. 23% of my life at 18 was over. If you live to 77 and a half years old, which is the average lifespan today, 23% of it's done by 18. So just remember that at 18, you're a quarter of the way there, but you're really just starting. Anything is possible. You just have to believe it. And to figure out what you want, you have to be around people that empower you. That's what Strategic Coach did for me. It empowered me. It served me in a way that I could have never imagined.
 
Now, today, I want to help people unlock their greatness. That's why my coaching program is called Unlock Your Greatness. Greatness is inside of all of us. It is not reserved for a select few. We all have greatness. We just have to pull it out and know that we are worthy of showing it to the world. And when you unlock your greatness, you can live out your dream. And like I said earlier, dreams are like fingerprints. We all have our own. And in order for our dream to live, everyone else's dream, unfortunately, has to die for us. We have to live out our own dreams if you want fulfillment in life.
 
I want everyone to feel the way that I feel. I am so fulfilled in life. I want everybody to feel this way. Because of Strategic Coach, I've been able to take this journey on of facing my fears and my egos, becoming the person I am today. I am an open book now with vulnerability because I know it can serve others, because that's what I needed for all those years. So I would highly recommend to anybody, go to Strategic Coach, figure out how to unlock your greatness. JacobEmery.com—it has everything all there. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, it has all my different business interests linked, the podcast, you can sign up for the coaching, it's all there.