5: The Day I Stole...

Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Secret MLM Radio. And I have a question for you. We had to admit, but have you ever stolen anything before?   So, here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us, who didn't cheat and only bug family members and friends, who want to grow a profitable home business, how do we recruit A-players into our down lines and create extra incomes? Yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives. That's the blaring question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Secrete MLM Hacks Radio.   All right, that might be somewhat of a tender subject, and I'm sorry if it is. And it certainly is for me as well. Now, when my wife and I first got married, we had $1,000 to our name. We were moving to a new spot, we were moving to a new area, and we had nothing. I mean, we had absolutely nothing. And neither of us had a job, neither of us had ... And living bare bones. We had this new apartment, and it was a little more on the expensive side, but we couldn't find another apartment anywhere else. I was going to college, she had just graduated, but none of us had a job. And we're living in this apartment that was a little more expensive 'cause we couldn't find anything else, and we had no jobs. We had almost no cash, living bare bones. I mean, nothing. There's no ketchup on the hotdog, you know what I mean? There's nothing. There's not even a bun, you're just eating the hotdog. Super bare bones living, there's no glaze on life at all. Our expenses were still $1,100 a month. So we had $1,000, our expenses were $1,100. We could not even survive one month.   And times were dire. I'm not going to lie. That was one of the most stressful experiences of my entire life and still has shaped me to this day. What ended up happening is ... My wife had already graduated, and I was still in school, and I was working hard. But I also knew, holy crap. How do we get money? And she starts going and babysitting for $3 an hour. I mean, way, way, way too cheaply. You know what I mean? And she's doing all the stuff, and I'm feeling bad that I'm sitting in classes and not contributing to our family finances, and feeling like a failure because of it. And I go, and I notice she started spending a lot of time in bed. And I would wake up every morning, and she'd be in bed. And I'd come back, and she'd be in bed. And I was like, "Hey, feeling okay?" And the first day I was like, maybe she doesn't feel good. What's going on?   And then she did it the second day, and then the third day. And I was like, what's going on? And I started asking her ... Maybe there's some depression? Maybe there's ... What is it? Trying to be sensitive, but also trying to help. So this went on for a little while, and I'm already feeling super bad. And she very reluctantly ... In fact, I think she started crying. This is ... I'm being really open and vulnerable right now, okay guys? Just so you know. She leaned over to me and she told me that she had only been eating one meal a day for the last long time, and it was so that I ... So that we had enough food so that I could eat while I was in classes, and feel like I had enough energy to do well in my classes. And ...   You guys, if that does not hit you to the core, I don't know what would. My new bride I could not freakin' provide for, and I felt so much like a failure. And I started feeling some ... Fighting really bad feelings and just emotional state. Things got really intense. And I go, and I was like, "You know what? Student loans. Something. What can I do? We have almost nothing." And I go and I start going over to the financial aid place. And I find out I can get student loans, but they're not going to be there for another four to six weeks. And I was like, "Oh my gosh. We're going to die tomorrow." You know what I mean? That was the mentality. And I will never forget this, I ended up ... It was a huge humble pie I had to swallow. I had to swallow the pride pill and get rid of all the pride inside my body.   I had to call my dad. I said, "Dad, look ... " I was trying to keep from bawling, to be honest. I was like, "Dad, we have nothing." This is five and half, six years ago ... Five and a half now. Anyways, I said, "Dad, we got nothing." And I said, "Hey, we got student loans, they're coming. They're just going to be four to six weeks away. And you know what? I ... Could you just float me like three grand and I'll pay you back the moment it comes? It's coming, we know it's coming. It's just not here yet." And there was a long pause on the other side of the phone. Almost kind of awkward, long, long pause. And deep breath. My dad took a deep breath and he said, "Son, I love you, but the answer's no." And I was like, "Oh." And he said, "The reason why is because if I give you this money, you will not exhaust resources that you didn't know that you had."   And he started ... He was trying to hold back tears. And I later talked to him about that, he's like, "That was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in my life, also." And I was like, "Honestly, it shaped me." Because there was fire in the gut. I had a freakin' mission to provide. Get out of my way. I don't know how, but I'm going to figure out how to make this happen. And I started going ... I started doing real estate, and stocks and options. And I started doing all this stuff. I started with ferocious pace, going as fast as I could. Clawing for any answer, because I knew I couldn't really do well in my classes and work a minimum wage job. And so I was like, I need to be entrepreneurial here. I've always kind of wanted to be, but I'm being thrown into this. I literally am jumping out of the plane and I'm building the parachute while I'm falling.   And I've got to do that. And I don't really know how we figured it out, but we did, and we didn't die. But I just so love my dad that he said "no" to me. And I've got mad respect for him that he did that. And that's where a lot of the fire and the passion for me comes from. And I just was determined to figure out, to make it happen, whatever it was. And so when I ended up starting on MLM, emotionally, I was at this place like, "Gosh. I've already tried like 15 things, I feel like." That might actually been the actual number. And, "How's this going to be any different?" And I had to fight these feelings of, "This is going to be the same as the other things. This is going to be the same as all the other pieces. All the other things that I've tried and done before, why is this any different?"   And my buddy had to kind of talk me into it and I was writing an eBook at the time 'cause I was getting into eBooks, 'cause why not? And I didn't know the difference between marketing and sales. I didn't know the difference between products and offers. And I didn't know those things even really existed. I was just running with ferocious pace, barely sleeping, kind of killing myself to be honest, physically. Just working hard trying to make it happen. And definitely got my stripes, put my stripes during those first few years. And so when the MLM thing came around, like I said, I was kind of reluctant. I remember there was this time, I was trying to figure out ... We didn't really have hardly any money at all. And I remember, I started getting addicted to learning from these top people.   And it was exciting, and it felt good. It was cool to see what they were doing, and all the successes they were having, and all the things that they were doing. And wow, this guy says that about this. And wow, this other guy says something similar, but with a few tweaks. Interesting. And I, just with ferocious pace, started learning and consuming and reading and taking in all these things and doing courses and all this stuff. ...