132. Something From Less Than Nothing with Zack Lemear

This week’s guest, Zack Lemear, is a marketing and branding strategist who, on the surface, looks and sounds pretty much like any entrepreneur consultant.It makes sense he’s successful helping businesses with marketing and branding since his ticket in the birth lottery won him a blank slate to create and brand himself. Here on Fine is a 4-Letter Word, you may know my first question of every guest is to ask them what values they were raised with as they were growing up.Zack is probably the first guest to ever say he wasn’t raised with any values at all.Rather, he was surrounded by a dysfunctional family dynamic involving poverty, drug addiction, abuse, and systemic cycles repeated by generations of his family via their life choices.His mother was a con artist, from whom he learned sales skills, and who was constantly getting evicted. In one case, they got kicked out of an apartment and moved to another unit literally one floor above. How does that work?Because he moved around so much, he didn’t have the opportunity to keep friends long enough for them to have much influence on him.Attempting to trace his family lineage, he found 21 people with the last name Lemear, all of whom he knew somehow, but none he felt he could accurately organize into a family tree because the name had been handed around and relatives had had children without getting married.So, with no learned values or traceable family tree, he had an unprecedented opportunity to brand and create himself in any way he wanted, as well as break the systemic toxic family patterns.How did he do it?What enabled him to be the first in his family to finish high school, much less go to college?How did it influence his choices, including passing up a free ride to a state university to accept admission to an out-of-state school he couldn’t afford?What values has he instilled in his own children and how has he shielded them from the family patterns that still try to influence them?Zack’s hype song is "Something from Nothing" by the Foo Fighters.Resources:Zack Lemear’s website: https://www.pivotcreative.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharylemear/ Invitation from Lori:If, like Zack, you find yourself looking at your situation and seeing an opportunity to clear the slate and innovate yourself, the 5 Easy Ways to Start Living The Sabbatical Life guide is for you.Once you read it, you’ll ✅ Discover a counter-intuitive approach to making intentional changes in mindset and lifestyle.✅ Learn how to own your feelings and your struggles so you can address them.✅ Find out how to face fears, step out of your comfort zone, and rewire your beliefs.It’s only 7 pages, so it won’t take you long to get through. Especially if it feels like you’re creating something from less than nothing, this guide provides a framework to go about it in a systematic way that honors who you authentically are and, like Zack, design (or redesign) yourself.So, when you’re ready to say F*ck Being Fine, this guide is the place to start. It’s time to blaze your own trail and allow your curiosity to take you on a new quest!Go to https://zenrabbit.com right now to download it for free.Now, let’s meet Zack. I bet within the next few minutes, you’ll be amazed at how little you know about yourself - and how much you may be about to learn!