From Rock Bottom to Transformation: Evans Putman's Journey of Faith, Forgiveness, & Motivational Impact

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe.

Twenty years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery only to find that I was left completely blind.

And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

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Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, well, consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Welcome to Grit Grace and Inspiration.

This is episode number 223.

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My friend, welcome back to the podcast.

I am excited to have you here today.

My name is Kevin Lowe, your host as well as transformational life coach.

And today I have the amazing opportunity to be introducing you to Evans Putman.

Evans is a guy who I've known for a while, but it wasn't until I actually got to sit down with him and hear his story that I really understood who Evans is.

And I feel like that is unfortunately our reality in today's world, is that we see people on social media and we think we've got them all figured out.

We think that everybody has it going on in life except for us.

We think that everybody's life is like a storybook, except for ours.

Because of course ours is just a chaotic mess behind the scenes.

But the fact of the matter is, is that we've all been through some stuff.

We've all gone through the ups and downs of life.

And so many times the people that you think have had it easy, think again, because most of the time they're the ones that you actually find out have had it worse than anyone else.

What I'm saying is that I was reminded that you never judge a book by the cover.

You take time to get to know your friends, to understand them, just like I did with Evans Putman.

Evans' story is powerful.

You're going to get to hear so many different aspects of his story that are going to leave an impact on your life.

If you open your mind, if you open your heart, and you truly listen to what Evans is talking about, I guarantee you that you're going to come away with something that is going to impact your life from this day moving forward.

We're talking about serious topics.

We're talking about things like following your intuition.

We're talking about the power of forgiveness.

We're talking about the power of transformation.

So many big, big topics are discussed inside of today's interview with Evan.

So I encourage you at this moment to turn up the volume, to lean a little bit closer, to get a little bit more excited, because we are about to experience an amazing conversation with amazing guys.

My friend, I introduced you to today's guest, Evan Py.

SPEAKER_00: Today I open up and I'm looking at the date.

And I look and there's this July 25th, 01 to 2001.

And it was one of my memories.

And I remembered specifically because it's a little bit of what happened before that, but the 25th just reminded me of this event.

Well, around that time, probably the beginning of July-ish, June, I was living in Charleston, South Carolina, where I live now, in another home.

And I was at a sort of a low point in my life.

I was a personal trainer at the time, but I was really burnt out on it.

I was burnt out.

For those of you listening, I'm sure there's many of you when you give and give and give, sometimes it can affect you, right?

Well, I was burnt out in many ways, Kevin.

And I would find myself waking up like it in the middle of the night in my lazy boy with a half empty glass of gym beam and water sitting next to me.

You know, I would pass out every night.

I was just not, I was not in a good place.

And I remember one day I go driving to visit my friend, and on the way back, I have this intuitive moment as I'm in my car getting ready to cross over the bridge from what is Sullivan's Island.

So I'm crossing the causeway.

And if I don't turn around right then, I have to continue going.

But something hit me, and it's like, turn around, go to Dunleavy's and get a burger.

Have you ever had the spirit talk to you that says, go to this Irish pub and get a burger?

Right.

And so I'm sitting here in my mind in my mind, because this is the way my mind always processed at that time.

I started thinking ahead, right?

All these thoughts, like, well, why would I do that?

I got food at home already cooked because I was a personal trainer.

I kept a lot of healthy foods like cooked and ready to go.

But I kept sort of fighting the urge.

And then finally, right at the last minute, before there was no other way I could just turn around without crossing the bridge.

And then I had to go like another half mile or so.

And at that point I was almost home.

So there was no way I was going back.

I turned around.

I turned around.

I go back to this Irish bar, and this is where things get a little bit crazy.

I'm sitting at the bar, I order my food, and there's a person next to me.

And I have a pretty good memory, Kevin.

And um, I don't remember this person at all.

I remember them being there.

I don't remember if they were a male or a female.

I just remember we had this long conversation and they kept talking to me about how they had been there for so long, waiting on their order, and for some reason they kept getting delayed.

But I mean, I I cannot remember this person, and it baffles me to this day.

For some reason, I just started talking about my life, how I hated getting out of bed in the morning.

I didn't like what I was doing.

I was sort of, I mean, I was drinking too much.

I was, you know, trying to cover up, medicate the bad feelings instead of dealing with them, you know, just not in a good place in my life.

And I'm sharing this with this stranger, which is like really odd for me because at that time I used to share anything, even with like my close friends.

And they just look at me and they're like, There's this book you need to read.

It's called The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Milman.

Have you ever heard of it?

And I'm like, no, I haven't.

And I was like, okay.

And they're like, well, you should read that.

And I was like, I will.

I will read that.

And so I get my food and I leave.

And it was almost like, I don't remember that person leaving.

I don't remember anything about them still, and it still baffles me.

It's like, I don't even remember saying goodbye to them, anything.

It was almost like I was sitting there.

I hope I wasn't talking to like an empty chair next to me, and people were looking at me like I was crazy.

So I go home, and this is, you know, 2001.

So we don't have, you know, there is no Amazon Prime at the time.

We had a Barnes in Noble, and you asked me this question.

It's like I'm giving you the long answer, but I hope it's I hope this is a good journey that we're going on.

So I go to the local Barnes in Noble, and I went, I think I could go online, but I didn't order from them because it was like, why would I order?

Because it'll take forever, and you know, it's right here in town.

But I could see what their inventory was.

Okay.

And according to the inventory, they had one copy of this book.

And I go in and I'm looking where the book should be.

I think it was like in personal development, spiritual, wherever that is, and it's not there.

I can't find it anywhere.

So I go ask the little person in the middle, kiosk there at Barnes and Noble, if they could help me.

And they're like, oh yeah, it shows we have it.

They go back there and look, it's not there.

They can't find it.

So we're giving up.

And as I'm walking out, I go walking past this other section, and there's this book like sticking out oddly, and the person stops.

It was like a totally in a different category in the wrong place.

And they're like, that's odd.

Here's that book right there.

And so he pulled it out and hands it to me.

So I go read this book.

And the reason I share all this is because this book sort of led me on a journey of thinking differently.

And it sort of helped guide me to get me out of that place I was in by starting to see things in a different way.

I don't know if you have you ever read the book, Kevin.

Well, you I don't.

That's what I was gonna ask you.

I haven't I don't know this book at all.

Oh my gosh, it's a it's an amazing book.

I recommend it to people all the time.

I've read it many times.

Dan Millman is the author, and he's got many other books too, but it that's the best one, in my opinion, to start with.

It's one of those books that you do, you meet someone and you're like, you should read this book.

So it sort of opened me up to possibilities.

It got me to start living in the moment, to start seeing things that were as they were done for me and not to me.

Right.

So it shifted my mindset so much.

Probably about three weeks after reading that book, you know, I was feeling better, but I was still like, you know, this is just isn't what I'm supposed to be doing.

I don't know what it is.

But I was happier.

I was focusing on the present moment, which is what mainly a lot of that book was about, right?

Living in the present moment.

As I'm doing this, one night I go to sleep.

I have this dream, and this is why it all goes back to 725, which I promise I'm gonna hit you in a second, what this means.

But I have this dream.

And in this dream, I'm on a basketball court, and I can't remember if I was playing or on the sideline, but my one of my old camp counselors and a mentor, and I would consider him a friend as I got a little bit older.

His name is Dick DeVinzio.

He was a basketball, he played basketball at Duke University, was a road scholar, really smart guy, great, great guy, totally different.

I don't I won't even get into like the whole different approach that he had to life and the way he did things.

It was not like going to a college basketball camp, I'll tell you that.

It was like going to hang out with, I don't know, it was like it was like a different world.

But in this dream, he's just doing his best to get a message across to me.

And I mean, it's like he's not yelling at me, but he's adamant about something.

I have no idea what it is, but I wake up the next morning.

It was one of the most intense dreams I ever had.

And at this point, I hadn't, I hadn't spoken to him or been to any of his camps probably in, I don't know, 15, 20 years.

It was back when I was probably a senior in high school, the last time I saw him at one of his camps when I was actually a counselor.

So I go online and I'm like, I'm gonna look him up.

And I find the website for the basketball camp, and there's an email address.

So I email and I'm like, hey, I was just thinking about you.

I had a dream last night, you were in it.

Just wanted to check in, see how things were going.

About two days later, I get an email back from his brother, who was also a counselor, but he was a couple years younger, and he emails me and he tells me, you know, I won't use his terminology because I don't know if this is, I don't want to get an explicit marking on the podcast, but he he shares with me, he's like, Dick is in the hospital, and he's got like basically like a week to live.

He was just amazed that I had that.

So we started this relationship.

Well, what came from it was is that Dick ended up passing away, and I ended up dropping everything, leaving my home behind, leaving my job behind, and going on the road that summer, starting on July 25th, to work with Dick, Dave's brother after he passed away, to continue the camps that were already in place that summer to help, because now all of a sudden, instead of Dick running the camps, Dave had taken it over and needed the help.

So it was really, really powerful.

So that's what 725 means to me.

But it really what it means to me is that I followed my intuition, probably for the first time in my life, that I can actually remember.

And I listened to it as a guide and I left everything behind and I went on this journey.

And I'm telling you, that summer, Kevin, I was healed by those kids that were mostly, I guess, middle school age, I think, you know, maybe middle school, freshman and high school at the oldest.

But I did multiple stops.

I just drove my car.

I packed everything up I had into my car and I drove around the country going to these camps.

And mind you, I was not getting paid.

I just did this because I was felt called to do it.

And it built a relationship with myself and Dave that we still have today.

He's, I think he's in his 70s now, but that giving of myself over that time, over that summer with those kids changed my life.

And I felt renewed and revived like a new person when I came out of that summer.

And I actually went on to go from that, instead of coming back to Charleston, I went back to Raleigh, North Carolina, coached high school basketball, coached one of the number, depending on who you asked.

He was either number one, two, or three player in the country in high school basketball.

He later went on to play at Duke University in the NBA.

Got to travel the country, and I got to go like play and meet some of these coaches and play in these arenas.

I got go to private practices at Duke University and Cameron Indoor Stadium.

I got to coach against the University of North Carolina JV team in the Dean Dome.

I got to do all these things that in this is this is the crazy part.

When I was a kid, I used to visualize when I shot basketball in my backyard that I was in those arenas playing basketball and doing these things.

And now I'm actually living that dream.

Not playing the game, but being in the arenas and actually going to these different things.

I sat in Madison Square Garden next to Mr.

Nick Bill Bradley to watch the McDonald's High School All-American game because my kid that I coached was playing in it against all these amazing players that were future NBA stars.

Like all from listening to my intuition, turning my Jeep around, getting a book that some mysterious stranger mentioned to me, having a crazy dream, leaving everything behind because of what that dream felt like it was pulling me towards.

And that all happened just and led to like a total different life.

So yeah.

So and it all happened today, 725 is the day that I left my home for the to take that trek across the the country to do those camps.

So yeah, imagine that happening today in that question you just asked me.

So it was a very powerful journey.

And I just incredible.

I think it still lives with me now because you know, I just I just got off of a with my client, and you know, I just started a new movement called the Servepreneur Movement.

I like to this thing came into my mind today that giving is living, right?

And it's like it all, I think it all started from that one moment in time and that one decision.

And it just one other quick thing, and then I'll I'll let you jump back in because I know I've been sort of taking everybody on a long journey here, but I want people to think about this.

There was another when I went to do these camps, about the second stop, another former counselor, camp counselor showed up.

He had played basketball at Duke University, too, was a little bit older than me.

He was a partner in this prestigious law firm in Chicago, had argued cases in front of the Supreme Court, was absolutely miserable with his life.

The exact same night that I had that dream that Dick came to me, he had the same dream.

And he left everything behind to start getting back into basketball.

And now he runs basketball camps again, and I think in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, and he's one of the happiest guys in the world.

But when we had the conversation, it was like we both had the same experience, the same dream with the same, and it was the same type of dream where Dick was like trying to get a point across to us.

And I don't know if it was to, you know, to start living, to start following your dreams, to stop, you know, doing what didn't feel right.

I don't know what it was, but it it worked for us too.

It got us moving in the right direction.

So it was his last gift to me before he passed away.

SPEAKER_01: Wow, Evans, man, dude, you have started this off in the most crazy beautiful way possible, this conversation today.

I mean, this is powerful stuff.

Now, no, how long after you read this book did this dream occur?

SPEAKER_00: It was probably within like three weeks, three weeks to four weeks, somewhere in that range.

And believe me, when I read the book, Kevin, I didn't put it down.

It was one of those things where it was like, it just felt like, and I still like a lot of times when life throughout the years after that, when life would feel like it was getting a little out of control, I was sort of spiraling in the wrong direction, or whatever that feels like.

I'm sure many of you listeners have felt this before, you know, and um, you can feel that constraint and that stress building up, and maybe it's gonna take you to the to a dark place or whatever that looks like.

I still reach for that book and reread it, although it's not the original copy because I've actually handed it and passed it off.

Although now that we have Amazon Prime, I can just send it to people, which makes it much easier.

SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's very powerful.

Wow, wow, wow, wow, that's incredible.

Now, if you wouldn't mind, kind of back up for me because I'm kind of wondering what was life like that brought you to that point?

We're talking back, I think you had said 2001.

And in when you you described the lifestyle you were living, what brought you there?

I don't know exactly how old you were at that point, but I'm thinking, like, what was childhood like for you?

What were all those years growing up to bring you to that point?

SPEAKER_00: I can't complain about my life because I'd never lacked for anything when it came to, you know, a nice place to live, clothes I wanted, I wasn't given stuff.

I wasn't like a spoiled kid.

I was an only child.

So there was that part of it.

But the one thing that I would say that as I look back on it, that I didn't know growing up, because you don't know these things, right?

Is that my father, while he was there and he provided, he was very distant and very emotionally unattached.

And I never really had a bond of any type.

Um, and he had a lot of issues that I discovered as I got older, mental problems and things going on.

So it wasn't like I was abused in any way, but I think I lived in my well, I know.

Being an only child, I lived in my own space, in my own like world almost of imagination and creation, which I that was a gift because I still use that now.

I tap into it so much with what I do in my business and how I help my clients.

But I think that led to a lot of, you know, things as I got older that I dealt with a lot of probably anxiety and stress and things as I got older.

And instead of knowing how to deal with them, because in my family back in those times, it was always, it was almost like, you know, you didn't talk about things.

You sort of pushed them under the rug, put them in the carpet, whatever.

I mean, I'm from the South.

I think there's like always that stereotype of the southern families where you always got lots of bones hiding in the closet.

Yeah.

So as I got older, I coped a lot of it with drinking, drinking a lot.

I have to say I didn't do like crazy drugs and stuff.

I just smoked a lot of pie when I was younger.

And as I got older, so I didn't know how to cope.

I didn't know how to deal with things in a healthy way.

And it's funny because I was reading today in my morning routine.

Part of it is I read.

I actually read a few different things, but I was, I think this was in a Buddhist, like daily Buddhism type book with a little passage each day.

And it was talking about how you can compound, right?

When you compound the bad emotions and the bad, maybe the bad activities that you're doing, unhealthy activities.

We won't call them bad, just unhealthy.

But when you compound them over time, they continue to build up and build up and build up.

It's like you're filling the cup up with dirty water to will it till it overflows.

So I think that was my whole thing was just never knowing how to deal with this stuff.

And there was a lot of times that I got through it.

One reason I was doing personal training is because I turned to exercise.

And even though I was an athlete when I was younger, as I got older, I wasn't as much anymore.

But I turned to like working out and, you know, I started noticing the change and the self-esteem getting better, the stress getting better, all these things happening.

So that's why I went into personal training because when I experienced all this stuff, I was like, this is really cool.

I want to help others experience this as well.

So I wasn't there to like teach people, here's how to lose 20 pounds or how to build, you know, get a huge muscular body or whatever to look ready for the summer here at the beach.

But it was more of me wanting to give back a little bit of what I had received from the exercise, which was more in, you know, the the esteem and the feeling better and having more energy and just feeling healthier.

But there was still that underlying way of not knowing how to cope with stress and different things.

So I I always, you know, found myself sort of almost straddling two lines, right?

Yeah.

And sometimes the the wrong one would win.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.

Now, when you talk about your childhood and and you you mentioned that, I mean, it was good that you didn't lack for anything.

But I I I wanna though, I guess, kind of get to to one part of your childhood is the fact that there was a an incident, and I I want you to tell the story of between where things got really bad with your dad.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you and your mom had to leave.

Okay, so yes, and here's here's the thing, it didn't actually happen in my childhood.

This happened in so so 2001, right?

So we talked, we just talked about seven 725 2001.

I go on this journey, I go coach.

So I don't remember the exact year, but it was in my mind, if I remember correctly, it was probably 2003.

So a couple years later.

Okay.

So it's a couple years later, I decide I'm coming back to Charleston.

I'm gonna move back.

I'd been living in Raleigh, I'd started personal training again, doing some different things.

I actually at this time I had started shifting into the online space, which I am now.

So even that long ago, right?

2020, 2002, 2003.

So I was like, you know, I I want to move back to Charleston.

Cause I mean, once you come to Charleston, it's hard to.

I've left a couple of times.

It's hard not to come back because it's such a beautiful area to live.

The beach, you got history, you got restaurants, you got it's just amazing.

It's like a big city in a small town, but you just happen to live by the beach with all these beautiful islands all around.

So great place to live.

So I come, I'm coming back.

I'm deciding I'm gonna make a stop at where my parents live now, which now is where my mother still lives.

They had left our hometown in upstate South Carolina and decided to move down.

Well, my mom was already, they already had a house there.

I actually learned to walk at the beach in North Carolina.

So she was there and my father was living there at the time.

So I'm going down and I'm staying there.

And I just remember, you know, I'm waiting because what I was doing at the time, Kevin, I was waiting, I was buying a new house.

So there was like a lag time between me being able to move into the clothes on the house and move into it.

So I'm like, hey, I'll just go stay at my parents, spend some time with them, get, you know, enjoy the time together before I move on down because it's only like two hours away south on the coast.

So I'm like, okay, I'm there.

And I noticed like my father's like acting really strange in many different ways.

You know, like I remember him talking to me about people being on top of the roof doing stuff.

And like it's like, well, yeah, it's the air conditioning people, but in his mind, they were like, it was like some sort of like secretive bad thing happening.

They weren't the air conditioning people, right?

So he's having like, but then he's like normal, and then he's like not normal, and then he's normal again, but he was very distant, he was very secretive, very weird acting.

And I think it was the day, if I remember correctly, it was like the day before I remember now because the closing got delayed a little bit because the people needed a couple extra days before they could move.

So we signed some papers, allowed them to do it.

So I ended up staying at my parents' house a couple extra days.

Well, it was during that time, those extra days, what you're talking about.

I remember going to bed one night and it's the middle of the morning, and I hear this blood-curdling scream, right?

And at first, it's like it's this scream that I can still remember it now.

As you and I are talking, I can feel it almost like my hair is actually starting to stand up a little bit.

But I hear this scream coming from, I didn't know where it was.

At first, I thought it was a dream, right?

Because you're in that moment of sort of sleep and awake where you don't know either one.

Then I hear it again, and the screen, it's my name being yelled in this way that I've never heard it before.

And I recognize it was my mom.

So I jump up and I run down the steps, and she's standing there, like shaking and white as I'm looking at my AirPod case right now, and she was as white as this AirPod case, like all the blood had flushed out of her.

And she's just looking at me, and you know, I just saying stuff, and I can't figure out what she's saying, and she's looking down at the ground.

I look over, and there's this claw hammer laying on the ground by the stairs, and my dad's nowhere to be found.

Well, what happened was, and you know, basically my mother pretty much saved my life and her life as she's sitting at the table having breakfast.

And I guess my father walked up behind her and was standing there and had that hammer in his hand, and she like turned around and looked at him, and she said, just matter-of-factly, with no emotion, no anything, he just looked at her and he said, I'm gonna kill you with this hammer.

And he had it held up.

He was like, Gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit you and kill you with this hammer, and then I'm going up to kill our son, and then I'm gonna kill the cat.

Why the cat?

I have no idea.

But with my mom yelling, it was like it almost the second time she yelled my name, she said it was like it sort of startled him, and he threw down the the hammer and ran down the steps and disappeared.

So yeah, it was a it was a crazy experience that luckily, you know, I think there was obviously something at play that kept me there for an extra day to be there with my mom because she was like, if you wouldn't have been here, I don't know if I would have what would have happened, because it was like when he realized you were coming down the stairs is when he left.

So there was some reason that I was there an extra day.

And the thing that happened through that, and I won't go through everything that happened after that, but it, you know, ended up some bad stuff started happening.

I mean, he got arrested, got put into a in the mental hospital for evaluation, and they let him out without even warning us that they were letting him back out, didn't even warn the victim, my mom, tell us anything.

We were actually up there waiting because we were supposed to see a judge to speak to him to talk about what was going on.

And they're like, oh, sorry, they already released him to his brother.

And um, like a couple days later, he evidently stole his brother's gun and was driving around that he got picked up by the police again down in the beach where my mom lived, with driving around with that gun under his seat.

So, you know, of course he said he wasn't there to do anything, but I mean, you put two and two together.

It's like, what else?

And then at that point, my mom, I mean, she's much older at this point, you know, like she's probably in her 70s and she's getting divorced.

So, but it brought us two together in a way that we had never been together before.

It like actually, it sort of flipped a switch in me that I became much more responsible.

I became a much better person because I started thinking about her instead of always thinking about me much of the time.

Right.

So I started stepping up more and we bonded much more.

We grew much closer together.

I actually have I have a portrait of my mother tattooed on my forearm from when she was 21 that the guy hand tattooed it, didn't even put a whatever you call it, didn't trace it, didn't do that or anything, just sort of did it by eye, looking at the picture, and it's amazing.

But we grew close together, and then later my father passed away, and you know, at that point he had just gone down to the depths of just mental despair.

And amazingly, amazingly, Kevin.

Here's it's totally amazing because I think about it.

I I drove back up to my hometown where he was staying at the time.

His brothers were supposedly taking care of him, but they had just stuck him in a hotel room to let him rot away and die.

Then we ended up having a big family fight over the will, because the will was magically changed at some point, even when he was mentally incapable of doing this.

So I ended up having a lawsuit against my own family, that side of the family.

It was just a crazy experience.

But it, you know, when I look back on it, one of the one of the things that stands out is that I actually drove up to that hometown one time to meet with somebody who we were doing like a partnership, a business partnership.

And I have no idea how this happened.

I don't know if someone was following me or what, but three and a half hours away, where my dad's living at the time, somehow I met with this other person at Barnes and Noble.

I come working out of Barnes and Noble, and there's my father.

And we just sort of talked.

And, you know, by the end of it, I can't remember what happened.

It was crazy.

I can't remember the whole conversation, but I just looked at him and I was like, you know, I said, Dad, you know, you're my father.

I love you.

I said, but we can't be around each other because you won't admit what happened.

And he never would have, he never would admit it.

He acted like it never happened, like it was all just fabricated, you know, just one of those things back to let's just put it under the let's put it in the closet.

Yeah.

As if it didn't happen.

It's like, no, that's a pretty big thing that we're not pushing this one in the closet.

But I told him, I was like, you know, and and the funny thing is that's probably one of the one or two times I ever told him I loved him in the first place.

And it you imagine after all that I'd gone through and everything I went through, that to say it then, you know, it was one of those things.

And it was just it, I can't even explain how it changed me, but it changed me immensely.

So when I look back at it now, it's one of those things that I often tell people, I'm like, you know, I know it's cliche to say it, but it was done for me, not to me.

It really was, because I would not be the person I am today.

I would not be the father I am today, which is really important to me.

Top of the list of importances.

And it wouldn't be, I wouldn't be anybody, the person at all that I am today if it wasn't for that experience.

And in a good way, in a really, really good way, it shifted my life.

So, you know, it's one of those things where we're given gifts even in the strangest wrappings sometimes.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

I I believe that wholeheartedly.

And when you talk about meeting your father afterwards and you told him I love you, would I assume that to get to that point there had to be some massive level of forgiveness in your heart that happened?

SPEAKER_00: Well, that didn't really come till much later.

Later, really, okay.

That didn't come till later when I actually worked on it.

But yeah, there was a point where I don't know what it was.

It was almost like I can't explain, like seeing him in the state that he was in when I saw him there and talking to him.

And it was almost as if he was a total different person.

It was almost weird.

It was like I felt like I just needed, like he needed to be told that because I knew the next step was he was not going to be with us much longer.

And so even though he went out on his deathbed by basically taking me out of the will, not even putting me in the obituary as only son, as if I never existed, I shared with him that I loved him.

So I was able to walk away from that with no regrets.

But it really wasn't until later at one point, and we can we can jump ahead or I can I can wait to fill that folks in on that.

But yeah, it was it was a time that I had to I had to like really sit down and realize I need to go through this, I need to forgive him.

That's powerful.

SPEAKER_01: Now, I would really love to get to that part, but but first what I have to just kind of draw focus to is 2001, two years later, roughly 2003, you had some two massive things happen in your life.

Massive, massive things that are are truly life-changing.

How did life then go after that point?

I mean, you've had 2001 was was like this just glorious amazingness that happened, and then 2003 had this horrific event occur, and yet you still found blessings out of it.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

2003, and it went like he didn't pass away until late November, I think.

So it pretty much went through the rest of that year.

Well, here's what happened.

Like over the next few years, I continued, I was at this point, I was starting to focus a little bit more on what I do now.

I was actually moving into the online space.

I had created two of my first businesses and ended up selling both of those businesses.

They were online.

Now I'm not talking about like a major exit where I could go live on an island or anything, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But when I look back on it, I like to celebrate because, like, look, I actually built something from scratch, had it making money, lived off of it for a while, and then somebody wanted it when I was done with it.

So it was a it was a win.

But at the same time, I was still just probably not, I was not taking care of myself.

I wasn't dealing with what I had just gone through in 2003.

I didn't deal with it for a while.

I just sort of survived it and then did a lot of probably over drinking and things like that.

But enjoy, you know, I had a good, I had a good run and some fun during those times.

I enjoyed life, but and here's the thing that I'll share this too, because I don't want to come across as cold, Kevin.

You know me.

I'm not a cold-hearted person at all.

But I wasn't upset when he when he died.

It almost was like it it opened up a door for a new me.

It brought me more relief than anything.

It was like a new person emerged, and I can't even explain it, but it was it was almost like there was a bigger dark cloud over my entire life that I never really knew existed until I started reflecting and I started talking to some people that knew him, and I started learning a lot of things that I didn't know when I was younger, and I started realizing that no wonder I was having some of these beliefs and things that I was dealing with, because there was a almost like a shadow side

of him my entire life.

The next big shift, I would say, now this was probably so 15 years ago would have been what 2018.

What's with you in the map?

I mean 2008.

So yeah, I know.

So it's like 15, 16 years ago, 2008-ish, 2007-ish, it was when I met my wife, who I actually knew since high school.

Oh, but when we got together, it was almost like as we were dating and her just coming into my life, it was almost like that was the thing that was meant to sort of take me the next step on the journey, which was m leading me towards forgiveness.

Right.

And bringing me to a new world, right?

She she not only gave, you know, not only did we become a couple, but then she and I had our daughter.

And that's when it gave me the opportunity to be the father that I always wish I had.

So I look back at it and I'm like thankful that he was who he was and the experience I had, because if I never would have had that, I may not have the inclination to try to be the best father possible now.

And so I that's why I say, you know, even though it's cliche, that I like to look at it as it was a gift that it was done for me.

So that's where it sort of shifted me then.

And it wasn't until I was a father.

And the beautiful thing about being a father and an online entrepreneur, and also my wife was working at the time too.

She was a general manager of a really nice restaurant.

So I spent a lot of time with my daughter from the time she was born, changing diapers, staying home with her when my wife was working.

So creating that bond.

It was something that obviously when my father, when I was younger, that wasn't anywhere in his agenda.

He was working all the time, but that's the way it was back then too.

unknown: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: But so it gave me that experience.

But it wasn't until probably, you know, we talk about we'll we'll shift towards the forgiveness, if that's okay, because it was when my when I made it through all that and having the, you know, having a daughter at home.

At this point, I had another successful business.

I was doing really well, but I was always stressed out.

I was working too much.

This is when she was really young, and it just wasn't, I wasn't happy with that kind of business, even though I was happy with what was happening with it.

And so it was with the podcast that I'd started with my well, my partner had started it, and we built a real estate sales training business out of it, you know, grew that thing to 150.

I was the guy, I was like the marketing and sales strategist.

I built the business and grew the podcast.

He was the voice, he was the expert.

But, you know, we grew that to 150,000 monthly listeners.

We turned it into a multi seven figure business, and it just wasn't here.

I'm at an event, this event.

Called Funnel Hacking Live, and I'm there with my business partner, and I have no idea what to expect.

I'm thinking it's like all these entrepreneurs are going to get up there and talk about how much money they're making, and you know, here's the tactics you should do to get that kind of money.

I have no idea.

And what I end up getting there and seeing on stage is all these people coming out about talking about the movements that they're creating, the lives that they're changing, the impact they're making.

And I heard it again.

I heard that sort of whisper, that sort of tap on the shoulder that was like, that's what you're supposed to do.

And so when we got back from that, I continued to work in the business because we actually joined a coaching program.

We grew the business.

We were doing that's how that was sort of the launch pad.

But even when we were launching and getting through all this success, I had this sort of feeling, this like you're supposed to do something else.

But what I didn't realize, and I'm glad I didn't jump ship, because one thing is that, you know, Pat did have a, he had a big purpose.

His purpose came from he used to be an overworked, overstressed real estate agent, barely making enough money to survive, had two daughters at home and a wife that he barely ever saw.

So he made a decision one day that he was only going to work like three and a half days a week so he could spend time with his family.

And when he did that, he ended up growing his business to having selling over a billion with a B dollars in real estate.

And so his purpose was to, and what we were building, the business we were building, was to help other real estate agents be able to live that kind of life too, right?

So they could have more freedom for their family and their loved ones.

So there was a purpose behind it.

And as we grew that and did that, I realized that I was learning how I could take this system that I developed.

And then when I left the business, after we had created this success, I could now take it and help other, you know, impact-driven entrepreneurs grow their business in the same way, but I can now expand my impact because now instead of just working with one person, I'm helping multiple people.

Right.

So there was that other pivotal moment of intuition that led me to that.

Well, when I made that decision, I was also feeling stressed.

And I think it was the it was the constraint of knowing I wasn't living up to my purpose.

I was still playing smaller than I needed to play.

I was the guy behind the curtain that nobody even knew about.

Right.

So I think a lot of that was causing the constraint and the stress.

So when I left that business, which was all good, Pat and I left it.

When I went to him, of course, I played all these scenarios in my head, like, oh my gosh, it's horrible.

This is the whole business is gonna fall apart.

He's gonna hate me.

Because at this point, I had built this up.

I had a team and all this stuff that I was managing.

And when we had the discussion, after I had I had that discussion in my head probably for two weeks, every day, every night, right?

When we finally had the discussion, and this it was in a Starbucks in downtown Charleston.

It was right after Thanksgiving holiday.

I just told him, you know, what I felt like I needed to do and that I had a bigger purpose and I wanted to take what we had done and go share it with the world and help others.

And he just looked at me and he's like, How can I help?

And I was like, that's not the conversation I had in my head.

It shared with me again one more time why I felt like when I met Pat, that was like a crazy story in itself, too.

The reason we were even working together is one more of these crazy intuitions, where um, you know, and I won't go into the story, but it was the same kind of process.

So what I've discovered over time is when you have that little voice and that little tap on the shoulder, pay attention, right?

It's important.

And we tend not to listen to it because we don't trust ourselves.

But guess what?

It's probably not you that's bringing you that, at least not in my mind.

It's not coming directly to me, it's coming through me from somebody that's got a different design for my life than maybe I can see.

So I took the next probably three to six months, I can't remember the exact timeline, off where I didn't take, I had many opportunities to jump into the next thing.

But I was like, you know what?

I just want to take it easy for a little bit.

I want to focus on me.

I got to work on me because me is not living up to the best me at home.

So that's when I started spending a lot of time every morning meditating, reading, watching and listening to things that were very positive, spiritual.

We're talking spirituality, personal development, mindset, all that, getting back into exercising regularly because I stopped doing that.

It was during that journey that I remember I went back again to another funnel hacking live, and there was a guy there, his name's I can't remember his last name, but he wrote a book called Chris Beats Cancer.

And he was talking all about his journey of being able to beat cancer through not following the medical advice, but by following his own heart, his own gut, his own intuition, eating healthy, meditating, doing all these things, forgiving.

This is the word that popped out to me when I'm sitting there watching him on stage with four or five thousand other people.

And he starts talking about forgiveness.

He's like the number one thing that I did was I had to forgive all these people that I had animosity towards because I had to get it out of me because I couldn't hold that if I was gonna heal myself.

And he healed himself 100% to where, you know, he's still cancer free and sharing this message with everybody.

But that, like out of everything he said, it was like forgiveness hit me, and I almost started breaking down sitting there.

Because I was like, I gotta forgive my father.

So I remember coming back and I just, you know, went through it and forgave him.

But you know what I realized, Kevin, too, is that because then I heard this message from somebody else, I can't remember who it was, but as things still weren't progressing the way I wanted to, there was somebody else I needed to forgive, and that was myself.

Right.

So I forgave him, and that was easy, but then I had to forgive myself for what maybe I had thought I had lost a lot of years doing the wrong thing, living the wrong way, not living up to my potential, all these things that I thought, I wasn't looking at them from the perspective of I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those things.

So I had to forgive myself too.

And I still remember the biggest, most pivotal moment of any of this is when I remember walking through the front door one day, and my daughter, who at this time she was probably five-ish, and she just looks at me, you know, five or six, and they just say the funniest stuff anyway.

But just out of the blue, like there's no conversation even happening.

I'm just walking the door.

I think I'd gone out for a walk, come walking in the front door.

She looks at me, you know, just out of the blue, just all casual.

She's like, you know what, dad?

Or daddy?

I was like, what?

She's like, Do you know why I like you?

Like, no.

I was like, would you tell me?

And she's like, because you don't yell anymore.

And I was like, oh, I was like, all this stuff that I've been doing that I didn't know if it was working, I was like, it's it's working.

Yeah.

Um, and so that was that was like the pivotal moment.

I knew that all that effort I'd put into focusing on myself was now starting to come to fruition, and I made the right decision to like really do the tough work because it's hard work, you know.

I mean, it's hard working on yourself.

It's easier.

I can coach and help other people 24-7 effortlessly, but when it comes to coaching and building myself up and working on myself, that's the tough work.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh, absolutely.

No, one thing that I wanted to ask you was, you know, when you when you talked about the business that you had with your partner and you guys were doing very successful from from financial standpoint, making impact.

What though was it in you, or what was the moment though, when you realized that you had to be doing something more?

SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, I think it was that I find I kept reflecting on that moment, which was probably 12 months earlier when I'd had that feeling at Funnel Hacking Live that I was meant for more.

And I think it I could just feel that I had hit the point where if it was time for me to step out from behind the curtains, right?

I heard Myron Golden, who's one of my coaches, he's an amazing entrepreneur, and he he has a way of speaking and sharing messages that just shift your beliefs unbelievably.

And he was talking about this, right?

He was talking about planting a seed, right?

If a seed's gonna grow into a tree or whatever it's gonna grow into, it first has to go underground, right?

It has to go down before it can go up.

But also, as the seed's in the ground, right, you have to go down first to be able to grow into what you're meant to be, but you also have to water and fertilize, have the right nutrients.

But what's the most important thing that most people miss is that in order for that seed to become what it's intended to be, the tree, the flower, the you know, the the whatever, the vegetable garden, it must cease being a seed.

And so I think I'd hit that point where my inner self, my higher self, whatever you want to call it, knew that I needed to cease being that person that was just the the helper behind the curtain, the guy that helped other people step to the front.

I needed to start stepping to the front myself to create a bigger impact.

And so I think it was more it was more feeling that constraint and stress of not fulfilling my authentic purpose that was causing problems than anything else.

Because you're right, the financial success was there, amazing person I was working with, had great people on our team that we were working with, even though I wasn't it wasn't like my favorite thing in the world to do to run a team, because I'm I'm more of the I need an operator to run the team.

I'm like the creative guy.

We had two creative people that were very high D's on the disc scale.

So we're both like, yes, no, give me the let's just take action, you know, all these things.

But the other thing, too, Kevin, is if I wouldn't have experienced that business, and not necessarily just the business, but the experience with my friend Pat because of who he was and the way he was and the permission he gave me to do things and fail without any sort of repercussion, right?

Because it was it wasn't failure, it was just part of the success journey.

He gave me a new way of looking at the world, a new way of seeing things.

He was a very giving person, and it was really, it was a time that I needed to be in that.

I would have never been able to do what I'm doing now if it wouldn't have been for that business.

So even though it didn't end with me like just exciting, joyful moment, it was more of like, oh, I gotta do this next thing, and it's paining me to go, but it's also painful, it's more painful to not go, kind of thing.

It wouldn't, I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for that either.

Yeah.

So, and it was funny because he never even really knew that.

And then I think it was like a year after it happened, after I'd gone through a lot of my personal development and journey, I actually reached out to him just uh one day.

I was like, I just wanted to tell you thank you, and sort of went through this stuff, and he's just like, I had no idea.

So, but we're we're still friends, you know, we hadn't seen each other in a while, but we live close by and it's nice to know.

And then he was able to actually the the beautiful thing about it was is that that business, because of the system that I put in place, that we were able to, you know, basically turn, he called it, he was like, it was like we turned the podcast into an ATM that, you know, just it was like it ran on autopilot, right?

It brought in an audience, the audience went from listeners to leads, they went from leads to buying, and we had this whole process in place that ran smoothly.

As a matter of fact, when I left thinking it was gonna blow up, it worked just fine.

So even though my ego was like thinking, oh man, I would, you know, I I was I was so important, but it was like I did a good job.

I created something that was able to run without me.

And as I left, he actually whittled the team down some.

And then I don't even know if it was like maybe six months later, he ended up selling the business, which was pretty amazing.

It went from it started as a podcast that was failing, that had no business attached to it.

I built this entire business around it, and he was later able to exit and sell it, and it's still out there now, running.

The system and the podcast and everything I built together is still out there running.

It's just under different ownership.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's absolutely powerful.

Now, talk to me about what business did you start?

What are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

So when I and thanks for asking, when I when I shifted from that, as you and I know, because this is how we met, I'm sure.

I started teaching other entrepreneurs that had podcasts how to do similar, right?

How to to basically turn their podcast into a sales machine, an engine that could run their business, because that's what we had done.

We we did no other marketing outside of that podcast.

That was it.

And some of that was through necessity because Pat was retired, he didn't need the money, he just wanted he wanted the easiest way, he just wanted to do the podcast part.

But I went out and started sharing other people how they could, whether they were a coach, a life coach, a business coach, a consultant, maybe they sold digital courses, they ran masterminds, whatever it was they were looking to do, how they could use that podcast in a way that was more efficient and attuned to their mission and their message and their business, and it would turn it into a machine for them.

So that's that was my next phase, and continued to do that for a few years.

And I still do that consulting-wise.

I'm actually getting ready to launch a new group just focused on that because I'm getting so many people that are reaching out to me that need it.

But from there, it was during that that time that I spent in the mornings meditating, where this next, once again, it's like it was delivered to me.

It was downloaded into me.

And the only way I can explain this is that it was so crazy because I'm in the middle of meditation and these four words sort of came to me, and I immediately felt the urge to jump up from outside on my porch and I ran inside to the whiteboard, pulled the whiteboard over, rolled it over, started writing out this entire business method on the whiteboard and teaching it to the blinds because there was nobody else there.

It was just the the window and the blinds.

It was almost like my room had turned into a stage.

I felt like I was in front of like 3,000 people teaching this.

It was so surreal and real at the same time.

It was amazing.

And that went on, that that is actually known as what I teach now.

It's called the infinite impact method.

And it came to me through meditation, like I said, and it's a it's a way that I'm I teach now, I'm moving that into a new sort of container, which is what you and I I think have discussed before.

And you're actually in the group, you just joined it.

I just opened up the group, the survepreneur movement, which is my my new trademark, is the survepreneur blueprint, which is my sort of I'm creating a movement, a new way of doing entrepreneurship that is leading from a place of service, and and it's nothing new, but it's just a new slant.

It's like pulling a lot of people that feel that the online marketing and coaching space is very disingenuous and doesn't feel authentic and doesn't feel aligned with them to create a different way of doing this where we focus more on collaboration versus competition.

We focus on wealth versus rich, right?

We focus because wealth is more, you know, wealth and time and freedom and family versus just making money, right?

We focus on putting that money back into the community, into the world, creating abundance versus holding it and keeping scarcity.

So it's just a new way of being an entrepreneur, which I call the surpreneur blueprint.

And within that, the infinite impact method is the sort of the path, the way to build your business, no matter if you're starting out or if you are just growing your business.

But if you feel like you have a purpose and a calling, you have some of your life's greatest work that's waiting to come out, that's what I'm creating as the container and the way to help people do that, to step into their purpose, shine their light, create a bigger impact on the world.

So it's not necessarily focused directly on the tactical podcasting method.

It's based more on a principle-based business model that can be used by anyone who feels like they have a purpose or a passion or they want to go out and create a business that's a force for good.

SPEAKER_01: That is some powerful stuff, man.

Oh my goodness.

Dude, Evans, man, you have such the journey, such this story of just transformation.

And I am just absolutely honored to have had the opportunity to get to hear your story, to get to share it with my audience.

It means the world to me, and and I just thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, thank you.

Um, you know, I appreciate you so much for having me on, Kevin, because one, I don't get a lot of opportunities to share this full story.

And full transparency, you and I talked before this, and I told you I couldn't wait to like talk a little bit more about the personal things, the things that have affected who I am now and helped me grow into that.

But I really think it's magical that it happened on 725.

And once again, right, it's like it happened today for a reason.

And I I mean, I literally looked at my phone this morning and was like, oh wow, this is when I put everything behind and followed a dream and an intuition and just went for it.

And I think that's sort of the message I'd like to leave with your listeners too.

And it's what I'd like to share with people is that you may feel like you're doing something now that is not serving you.

Maybe it is paying the bills, but you feel disconnected from life and unhappy.

If you really listen and take the time to quiet your mind and listen, you yourself know what you're meant to do.

And sometimes you just have to take that leap and go for it because it opens up an adventure that you would never regret.

I'm not saying it's gonna be easy because you pointed it out yourself, right?

How if it was looked like it was all going great, and then boom, that incident in 2003 happened, a big major, you know, slap.

So there's always gonna be ups and downs, but I feel like if you're following your true calling, you're doing your life's greatest work, if you're doing something that's serving others and helping other people, which when I look back on my life has always been a part, even though I didn't realize it, to me that that is well worth it.

And you just have to sometimes take that leap of faith, like I did on 725 2001.

And um, for all your listeners, you can do it too.

The support is there for you.

Doesn't have to be me, but you you know, there's support out there when you start to to go full into your purpose, the universe lines up and starts putting the right people and the right things in your path if you pay attention.

So yeah, I I just can't believe it happened today, which is just blows my mind once again.

But I guess it shouldn't surprise me at this point.

But I I'm just so grateful for the opportunity, Kevin.

And this has been a wonderful experience.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, well, Evans, thank you tremendously.

And I I couldn't agree more.

So for you listening today, my hope is that you've really listened, you've really paid attention to what Evans has told us about his story that can so easily relate to your own story.

And just here's the bottom line.

Sometimes you have to have the courage to turn the page.

Because if you don't ever turn the page, you'll never get to experience what the next chapter holds for you.

And the next chapter may very well be the best chapter yet.