#290: Transform Your Struggles into Success: Learn from Erik Allen’s Radical Journey from Broken Home to Faith-Driven Entrepreneur

That is the theme of today's guest, Eric Allen.

Eric, he grew up in a broken home. He was addicted to drugs.

He was in jail by 18 years old, bankrupt by 21.

And yet, look where he is today. He turned it all around. And I want you to realize, so can you.

So no matter what you're going through in life, I want you to realize that there's always a path forward.

Sometimes you got to get a little creative. Sometimes you got to do the work, do the hard stuff.

And sometimes maybe you just need to hear how somebody else did it. You need to be inspired.

And then maybe you can put things into motion in your own story.

This is episode 290. This is the story of Eric Allen.

What's up, my friend, and welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 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.

And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you.

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, we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

I believe that one of the most difficult things that we'll ever do in this life is understanding what our true life's purpose is.

And equally so is truly understanding what is God's will for our life.

Today's prayer request is for somebody who's been struggling with that very question.

What is God's will for his life?

He's been out of work since December, 2023.

He sent out over 300 different applications and still it's like nothing will work.

He's still just hitting a brick wall and he's struggling to understand why.

Struggling to support his family, right?

And that's why he asked if we could say a prayer for him.

As I say, with any prayer requests on this podcast, they can be kept anonymous.

And that is the case with today's prayer request.

I just ask that you please help me in praying that God will not only let the perfect, most ideal job open up for him, but to also give him perfect clarity and understanding of exactly what God's will is for his life.

That is today's prayer request. It would be amazing to have you joining me in praying for this person right now.

Now, I want to remind you, if you have your own prayer request, I would love to feature it here on the podcast.

I have people listening to this podcast from all over the world, and I feel like what an amazing platform to get people praying for something that means something close to us.

So please send your prayer request via text message to 877-749-8178.

Again, that number is 877-749-8178. you can send your prayer request via text to that number.

I also have that listed inside of today's show notes in case that's easier for you to jot down that way.

And with that, my friend, I am beyond excited to welcome you to today's amazing interview with none other than Eric Allen.

I grew up in a place called Kennewick, Washington, Eastern Washington area.

And I grew up in what I thought was a typical household, man.

My mom and dad took us to church. I went to Sunday school.

And though I was the kid that would excuse myself to go to the bathroom and I'd have a pocket full of GI Joes and then just play with GI Joes in the bathroom.

And for some reason, no one ever came to find me. But a whole another story there. But we went to Sunday school. I played little league.

My dad would take my best friend, Dave, who I met in first grade and still my best friend.

He'd take us out to dumpsters behind big stores and literally throw us in and say, go find treasure.

And we just would venture into dumpsters and dump sites and see what we could go find.

And I had a good childhood up until my parents got divorced when I was 11 years old.

And then when that happened, my mom got together with a man who was physically abusive, emotionally abusive, almost immediately.

I remember there being times where, you know, I would be in the backyard and I'd be playing.

I'd hear them argue and I'd run over to the bedroom window and I'd look through and I'd see him hitting her with a cordless phone when those around and I'd call the police and they would show up and my mom would never press charts.

I never understood that. You know, it was like this rinse and repeat cycle for her over and over.

You know, we, we would constantly be calling the police. The neighbors would always be checking on us. Right.

And then they did the smart thing. They got pregnant. And in the middle of my eighth grade year, they decided to move us from Kennewick, Washington to Stevensville, Montana.

Now, when we moved there, it was a population of about 1200 people.

And we lived on the outskirts of town. So we're further away from any sort of police or anything like that should anything happen.

And they rented this house that was on five acres. It was a beautiful property, two big ponds right by the Bitterroot River, you know, lots of room to run around and, you know, shoot the BB gun and just get dirty.

And the problem though, was that house had three bedrooms. So it was one for them, it was one for my little brother who's come us old, and then one for my younger sister who's four years younger than me.

And they said, Eric, you get to live in the garage. So I literally had this tarp that separated the garage, my bedroom on half, and the truck was able to pull into the garage on the other half.

Now, luckily, my half had the fireplace that would keep me semi-warm in the middle of the negative degree nights of Montana in the winter.

But that's where I stayed. And there would be nights where once that fire would go out, 1, 2 a.m., I would be freezing.

Like I'd wake up and I could see my breath, right? You know, that cold out there. There was a moment, though, when I was about 13, 14 years old, that really changed the trajectory of my life.

I was home, brushed my teeth one night, and they came home arguing.

It wasn't anything different than any other night.

But I remember as I was brushing my teeth, I felt God say, dude, you've got to look around the corner to see what's going on.

And as I peek around the corner, my view was down the hall was to the kitchen, to the pantry, to the garage door where my bedroom was at.

And as I peeked around the corner in the pantry area, this man is on top of my mom. Boom, boom, boom.

And I had 20 seconds of courage in that moment. I walked up and I grabbed a cast iron pan out of the cupboard and I swung as hard as I could and I split the back of his head open.

And he turned around and he said, what? And as he did that, I smacked him again in the forehead.

Again, splitting his forehead open. And blood coming down his face.

I swung so hard the second time I had fallen over.

And I remember him standing up over me yelling. my mom jumps up like mama bear, punches him five, six times. There's blood splat in the wall.

I mean, this is a crazy movie scene.

The police finally show up, take him to jail. My mom doesn't press charges, rinse and repeat.

And I actually thought I was the hero in that moment, but it wasn't much longer after that, that with three months left in my freshman year of high school, I got kicked out.

I had to go stay with my buddy Forrest and finished the year of my freshman year there at Forrest House and moved back to Kennewick to live with my dad.

Now, my dad, he rented a house for him and I, and he put 20 bucks in the cup.

That was my lunch money for the week, put hunger man meals in the freezer, cereal milk in the house so that I could eat. And then he would go stay with his girlfriend.

So I would see my dad in passing maybe two or three times a month.

That led me to get into whatever I wanted because I knew that I couldn't get in trouble.

Basically, I was getting stoned before school, after school, during lunch, me and my group of buddies, we were what you would call the stoner kids, right?

So we were taking acid and mushrooms and Robitussin, DM, whatever we could get our hands on.

And when I was 18 years old, as a senior, I actually got arrested for having a bong, which is really funny now looking back, it's now legal to have a bong in Kennewick.

But in 1998, it was not. And I had to go stay the night in jail.

And I was still a senior in high school. I literally wrote a note to my dad saying, hey, stay in Danny's house, right?

And just left and went and checked myself into jail because I knew he wouldn't call Danny.

So I checked myself in on Friday, got out on Saturday. But this was an old school jail. This is black and white chain gang outfit on bright orange slipper type of jail.

This was when they would bring the food out. You could see it hot steaming off, but you couldn't reach it until it got cold. Then they'd slide it into your cell.

That was an old school jail, right? And then two weeks after I graduated high school, I woke up to a post-it note on the bathroom mirror.

And it said, you can't comply with house rules. You have 48 hours to get out.

And so from there, between the age of 18 and 21, I would move 21 times, living off of couches here, couches there, basically homeless at that point.

And one of those moves was to Seattle, Washington. I had $100 in my pocket and ended up living with a guy who went by the name of Mr.

Sexy. He was a regional wrestler. It was the funnest thing ever to live with Mr. Sexy, still a good friend of mine today.

But it was during that time that I was partying and by the time I was 21, I was $28,000 in debt and I had. to file bankruptcy.

I would end up landing a job with Universal Records, which was a dream job of mine to work in the music industry.

I lied to get the job because I had to be in college.

I wasn't in college. I just went and paid for a course, took my receipt to Universal, said, yeah, I'm in college.

And I got in, but I got in the door and I was just the mailroom guy.

I was tracking sales, all this stuff and posters, you know, being involved as much as I could.

But that gave me free concerts two to three nights a week and had an open tab.

So I got to live a rock star lifestyle without being a rock star, hanging out backstage.

And then my one year anniversary came and I got laid off because of a thing called Napster. If people remember Napster, it absolutely killed the music industry.

Yup. And I was the guy at the bottom of the totem pole along with 15 other people in that office that all got laid off at that time.

And I started working at Starbucks as a night manager. And one night, you know, basically as that night manager, I was basically getting off work.

I'd go to the grocery store, grab a six pack of beer, go to Hollywood video, grab my favorite movie on a DVD, go back to my ghetto apartment there and rent in Washington across the street from where Jimi Hendrix is buried.

And I would drink myself to sleep every night. It was rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

And then one night though, while working at Starbucks, a girl walked in and said, Hey, we've got a cool college age about night down there at church. Would you want to go?

Now I'm depressed. I have no friends. And she was absolutely gorgeous.

Yep. What time do I need to be there?

And I went to that church event and it was at that event that I realized that God had been protecting me my entire life.

All the stupid things that I'd done that should have killed me.

I was still alive. I'm 44 today. I've never had a stitch. I've never broken a bone.

I've been protected by God, but I wasn't ready to give up my worldly desires.

But a month later, it was Easter 2004. And I woke up after a night of partying, surrounded by 15 other dudes in my buddy's basement.

And they're all passed out. And I remember waking up going, man, I just felt God saying, dude, you're going to go down a path that's going to end your life real quick if you don't start making some changes.

And so in that moment, for me, I gave my life to Christ right then and there. And I quit.

Cold turkey, drugs, drinking cigarettes, everything in that moment.

And I called that girl up and I got her voicemail. I said, hey, happy Easter. Thanks for inviting me to church. Maybe I'll see you at the store sometime.

And 11 months later, we were married and we've been married for 19 years now.

Oh my gosh.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. So that is one heck of a story so far.

We might have to unpack some of those things, but I'm happy to go back to where we were.

I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like that was one heck of a cliff notes version.

Wow. Wow. Wow. So backing up with the whole thing with, with your mom, with the stepdad and stuff, was he ever abusive to any of you or the other like siblings? Yeah.

Great question. Never to me. I don't know if he was to siblings.

I'm not, I'm not sure. I never witnessed it myself.

I wouldn't put it past him, but for me, I never, I never saw it or, or he was not abusive to me.

Okay. Verbally abusive. Most definitely. Yes. I don't know about physically. Yes.

Understandable. Yeah. When when you had to leave and you went to live with your dad, did you like the way you made that sound?

I couldn't help but feel sorry for you. This kid who moved back with your dad and then your dad really wasn't around.

Yeah. Was it was that hard on you?

It was interesting because I think at the time, I didn't really see it as a bad thing because I was just so wanted to do my own thing.

I wanted to go out and party and get stoned all the time.

And that was our drug of choice, my group. We would just get stoned all the time. We had a shed in the back of the house that we rented.

And that became the Cheech and Chong smoke sack, basically.

We were always getting stoned in there. And so at the time, I didn't realize or think about it. Like, why is dad not here so much?

Like, I just knew that he was out. That was just normal life for me.

And I remember one time my dad asking me if I was on drugs or was doing drugs.

And I said, no, I was probably stoned at the time.

And never, it came up, it never came up again.

Never got asked, never got told about drugs. Never. I mean, I remember the DARE program in school, right?

But never by my parents, right? Right. And my dad, you know, he struggled with that stuff in earlier in my life as well, which I later found out.

But at that time, I believe that he was sober at the time. And but he just chose to, you know, spend time with his girlfriend over his kid.

Yeah. Wow. Now, during this time, I mean, you're a teenager, you're partying, you're doing drugs.

Did you still, though, continue to go to school?

I did. Yeah. So I never was one to skip school.

I got detention one time for being late too many times to class, but I never skipped school.

I had a photography class, which I loved because it was just super easy.

But I remember when a good album was going to drop, because I've always loved music.

When a good album would drop, I would skip that class like, oh, I'm going to go out and take pictures on the campus.

And then I would jump in my car and go grab, buy the CD at the store and then race back.

Right. That was the only time that I really missed school, you know, but yeah, I still went to school. I barely graduated. I had a 2.8 GPA.

I didn't really pay attention to too many classes except one.

And that one class I think has helped me throughout my entire life.

It was sports and entertainment marketing.

And the guy that was the teacher was an amazing man. And I took his class, sports entertainment one and two.

And then I took an entrepreneurship class that he taught my senior year.

And those, that was the only class I ever paid attention to.

We got to go on field trips and hang out backstage at like, you know, concerts and sporting events and learn how the marketing things work.

That was the only one I was excited about everything else. I was like, yeah, whatever, you know?

And so, yeah, I still went to school, but I just barely passed.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Very interesting. Those, the class that you just talked about that.

That's something that I've never heard of, of other, you know, schools offering and how perfect for you. Yeah.

Loved it. And it was, it was part of DECA, you know, it's kind of like FFA, but DECA was more, I don't even remember what it stands for now, but it was more like how to start a business and what things do you do on taxes and, and things like that. So I enjoyed that class.

I've just always been intrigued by that. And so it was fun to be a part of that and and you know talk about how much does the super bowl ads for the super bowl this year you know that year and you know things like that and looking back i like it was like a million dollars to do a super bowl ad now it's like you know 10 times much right.

Absolutely absolutely when you talked about being asked to by by that girl who would become your wife yeah when you when asked about going to church besides for the fact that it was a pretty girl. Yeah. Did you, did you, I mean, you said when you were a kid, you went to church, but do you feel like at that point, you really knew much about God at all?

My grandma, who turns 90 this year, this amazing woman of Christ, here she is at almost 90 trying to memorize over 100 verses.

She's been doing this for years, and she has 54 grandkids, great grandkids, and great grandkids that she prays for by name every day.

And I believe that her prayers for me since I was a kid has really kept me in the right place.

Even though I was lost for a long time, I always knew who God was.

I knew who Jesus was, but I hadn't really read the Bible.

I hadn't really gone to church and learned or paid attention since I was a kid.

And I just believe that God has always kind of been on my heart.

He's always been there to protect me, like I said.

And I think I had just gotten to a point of brokenness where I was at this point where I had fought for my dream to get in the music business. I got let let go.

I really had no friends. I really didn't think that I was even going to make it to age 40 at that point in my life. I was just going to party myself to death.

And so when she gave me that opportunity, and funny thing is, you know, that girl, she's my wife now, she was studying to be a youth pastor at that time.

And so she'd come in and study sometimes at the Starbucks that I've worked at.

And, but I just felt this draw to go to that event.

And it was interesting when I I went to that event that she invited me to, I ran into four or five guys that I had met five years earlier when I had a small attempt at college.

After I graduated, I went to school for like three out of the four quarters for the first year.

But I met them there on the other side of the state. And then they were at this church and I was like, man, what are you doing here?

And it was like this small thing that God was starting to put together.

Right. And so it was, I just started to realize, man, God's been, God's been so good, man.

He's been protecting me as much as I knew that at that point, I still fought that worldly desire to go out and party.

Yeah. Talk to me about the part that we kind of ended on when you talked about waking up that morning on Easter morning of all mornings.

Will you, will you talk to me a little bit more?

What, what was that morning? Like when you woke up, explain to me the feeling you had.

Man, it was like I had woke up after a night of partying on that night.

And surprisingly, I wasn't hung over, which usually I was, but I just felt this sense of emptiness.

Like I was broken mentally and spiritually at that point.

And I just felt God tugging on my heart to say, dude, look around.

Look, this is what you're doing.

You're 22 years old, 23 years old at that time.

And just felt like this is what your life's going to be every time if you don't start giving it up.

And so what I did was in that moment, I was like, God, I want to accept you into my life. I want to do what it takes.

I want to give you, surrender my life, and I just want you to take over.

And I believe that's why I had the power to stop everything, cold turkey.

Now, I tried quitting cigarettes many, many times before, of course, but never was able to stop. But it was an instant stop in that moment.

But here's the thing is people who struggle with drugs and alcohol, and I know it because I was there, I could not go back to that environment.

As much as I love those guys, I had to call them up and say, man, for me, I got to take a break. I got to mentally step away from the party scene for a bit and I got to get better for myself.

And those guys are still people that I connect with today.

But I had to take a break. And what I did was I replaced that environment with men that I found in the church that had great walks with Christ.

They were great. They had great marriages.

They were great dads. They had great jobs. They were great entrepreneurs.

And what I did was I would ask them to go out to Starbucks and have a coffee with me.

And this is way pre-podcast days, but I would basically interview them and say, man, man, how do I live the life that you're living? Because that's what I want.

I want to live in Christ's glory.

And I want to have a great marriage and I have great kids. I want to be a great dad.

How do I do that? And I just started interviewing them. And I just sponged up as much as I could. Any book they recommended, man, I was reading it.

I was so hungry to make a change in my life at that moment. And it wasn't like it was this gradual change. It was a sudden change for me.

And I was like, boom, I'm hooked. Let's do this. And through those conversations, I realized that my past and other people's opinions of me does not define my future.

And when I step into that, I can realize what my purpose is and start making an impact by sharing my story.

Wow, wow, wow, wow. So incredibly powerful.

So at that point then, kind of talk to me about kind of a new chapter of life.

Where does life start leading you at that point? We had an interesting, you know, my wife and I, we got married in, like I said, in 11 months after we went on our first date. We were married 11 months later.

It's just funny when we go on our honeymoon, we're on a cruise ship.

And this is back then before you had a passport.

So we had our birth certificates and we're standing in line to get on the boat.

And I remember looking down and going, oh, yeah, I was born.

I go, hey, babe, what time are you born? She goes, 1.41 p.m.

I go, wait a second. So me and her, we're both born at 1.41 p.m.

Wow. Different days, different years. it's not a world record.

I submitted it to Guinness. They said, that's not a world record, but thanks for the plug.

So yeah, we were both born at the exact same minute. So I just, all right, God, isn't that, isn't that funny, man?

It was basically at that point where I was like, okay, I got to start making some money. But the first year that we were married, I was still working at Starbucks and I had to be at work at 4am.

And the interesting thing is my wife would get off work at like six at night and I was going to bed at seven.

So she'd get home for like 20 minutes. I'd see her and then I'd be out snoozing. Right.

And she was like sitting there going, man, man, this is what the first year of marriage is like. This is crazy because I'm like snoozing, right?

But I knew that I had to make more money. I wanted to support my family.

And so we went, I went and got a job in sales and started making pretty good money.

And, you know, my wife and I, we just wanted to get to know each other because we both came from broken homes.

We both knew what a bad marriage was like, but we didn't know, we knew exactly what we didn't want to bring to marriage, but we didn't know what a good marriage looked like.

And so we, you know, So we did premarital counseling.

It was okay. Right. But what we did was we spent the first five years just getting to know each other.

Man, what's the ins and outs of our history, our background?

Like, you know, cause we kind of, I would say rushed it. I'm going to tell my kids, we courted for 20 years and then got married.

But like, you know, like, you know, we're, we're fresh married for the first five years, just us.

We went on camping trips. We went down to Mexico twice to build homes.

Like we just got to experience life for the first five years of just her and I getting to know each other.

And then we a goal of mine to get my wife to be a stay-at-home mom.

And so when my daughter was a year and a half, I believe that around that time, I was able to get a job that allowed her to come home and I was able to pay the bills.

And my wife is an amazing woman. She's been home with our kids since.

And she just started homeschooling them last year.

And so it's just been this fun journey, man, where it's just been us four.

We moved to Idaho in 2014 and we didn't know anybody, but we knew we just kind of felt like God was leading us here.

And so here we are, man. And just to join us for.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. You know what? What I loved you talking about that with, with your wife was I've always heard they say, yeah, you gotta date your wife.

And you literally started dating your wife after going into getting married.

That's pretty remarkable. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I wish that we could get on more, you know, dates, but we definitely have time on one-on-one where we can just have great conversations.

And I'm still working on how to be a good communicator. It's funny, as much as I talk for a living, I still struggle in that communication area.

And so that's things that I'm still learning here. We are 19 years married, still trying to figure out how can I be a better communicator?

How can I be a better husband, better dad?

And I think that once we stop growing and learning, that's really the end of life, right? For me, I always want to grow, always want to learn and just, you know, spend time in prayer and asking God, man, hey, lead me in this, lead me in that.

Right. And so we are breaking the chains of divorce, abuse, addiction and rejection.

Yes. Yes. That leads me to my next question is coming from the childhood you did.

Yeah. What does it mean for you to get to be a dad now?

Oh, it's so special, man. Yeah. It's interesting being a first generation Christian.

My wife is is also first-generation Christian.

How do we raise second-generation Christians that didn't have to go through the adversity that we went through? And that's a journey that we're on.

We're building that strong foundation.

Like I said, my wife homeschools, and she spends the first hour of homeschool.

Just with them deep diving into the Bible.

And for me to be that dad, man, it's amazing.

And a couple things happened that really changed my mentality.

I don't think, for me personally, My wife, when she had our daughter, my wife was 36 hours in labor, had to have an emergency C-section, like crazy story.

But I remember when my wife was pregnant, I would always talk to my wife's belly.

This was with our daughter who's 14 now, but I would say, I'm your daddy.

I'm your daddy. And I would sit there and speak to her belly.

And I remember when she was born, she came out crying and I said her name.

And as soon as I said her name, man, she stopped crying.

It was like this moment where God said, man, you guys are connected.

And I think that was such a special moment for me. And I realized that, man, I needed to protect my family.

And I'll tell you, the scariest day of my life was driving home from the hospital with a brand new baby because I did not want to have anything happen.

Right. And so we lived about four miles from the hospital. So I get my wife in the car.

We put the baby in the car and I'm driving home and I'm coming up to an intersection that has a free right turn.

And a dude jumps the curb and almost hits my car. And I'm like, what the heck, dude?

Like I'm just trying to get home with my new baby, right? And no joke, about a mile down the road, there's this massive straightaway for about two miles.

And as I'm going down the straightaway, this dude on a motorcycle zips by me going like a hundred.

And I look at my rear view mirror and he starts wobbling and just bites it and shoots like a hundred feet down the concrete.

I'm going, this is the craziest drive home. I'm 10 minutes from home.

I'm not leaving my house ever. Like I was so much in protection mode at that point. I was like, we're never leaving the house, you know?

Oh, my gosh. Wow, wow, wow. That is hysterical.

Yeah, it's just fun, man. My daughter's 14, my son's 10, and I coach my son's baseball now, and I was a big baseball kid.

And so, you know, it's just fun to engage and see them grow and see them mature and see that they love God and their hearts are just people.

Man, I could just sit back with my wife and go, man, we're doing a pretty good job, you know? Yeah, yeah.

You know what, man, you, you're a prime example of the fact of our past does not have to define our future.

Yeah. You know, it's remarkable.

So, but the last thing, last thing I want to kind of touch on with what you've told us so far before we dive a little bit deeper into how you've gotten to where you are today with, with career wise.

Sure. Did you ever reconnect with your mom?

Yeah. So interesting story. I'm not actually in touch with my mom or my dad anymore, but they do live in Texas.

And my sister lives out there as well. And she's got a few kids and they are great.

But what I had to do is I knew that when we came to Idaho, there was going to have to be some separation.

And I think when you're going through struggles and you have a trauma past, you have to decide, do you want to allow toxic people into your life?

Or do you want to make something new for yourself?

And for my wife and I, we chose to step out on our own, trusting God that he would bring the right people in our lives. And I forgive my parents.

In fact, last year, I mean, this is, like I said, about a year ago, I started going through counseling because I was trying to figure out like, why am I so stressed out?

Anytime my mom, my dad would come over, I would stress out. And I didn't understand why.

And so I had to actually go through a process where I wrote them a letter and I said, man, I would need you to acknowledge that this is the things that actually were done to me.

But I want you to understand that I love Jesus and Jesus loves me and I forgive you.

But I need to take a break from us, from connecting for a bit.

I need to grow in my faith. I need to take care of my family.

I'm 44 years old. I don't need my mama. I don't need my daddy, right?

This is my time to grow my family. In a loving way, I basically had to break up that relationship and say, it's not over.

I forgive you, but I'm taking a break from us communicating right now.

And since I did that, it was this massive weight off my shoulders.

And I have felt like more connected to my wife, my kids since because I just don't stress out about them and I wish them the best.

But for me, I had to take a break from communicating with them.

I wanted them to know, hey, I forgive you, but I have to take a break from my family because my family is my number one priority right now.

And you know what, man? Talk about the utmost respect for that, because what you did was not easy.

Yeah. But the fact of you knew that you needed to do it for you and for your family.

And I think that's pretty, pretty darn amazing.

It's definitely tough. And I get it. People are, you know, want to hold on to that, but it's tough to step out and say, man, I need to protect.

I got to let go of mom and dad. Right.

I get it. But, and I struggled with that for a very long time.

Like I said, that's just last year that I, that actually did that.

But I think if we can do that, if we struggle with that stressing out moment, or we come from the toxic families.

We have to make that point where, you know what? We're an adult.

We have to protect our immediate family. My wife, my kids are my number one outside of Jesus, right? Jesus is number one, my wife, and then my kids, right?

Outside of that, man, I got to make sure that everything is lined up and they're protected and they're safe and I'm providing. Yeah, absolutely.

So here's the point in your story, as much as I know about your story that I'm still a little bit baffled. Okay.

Because so far we've heard about you, the family man, you going to church, believing God, you seem like a pretty darn good guy.

And then at some point though, MMA fighting? Yeah.

Where does that enter the picture? So funny. So I grew up, my dad, one of the things, the cool things he did is my dad would rent a, ninja movies that had no English as a kid.

And I would watch them all the time. And I just was infatuated with these movies, these ninjas, Kung Fu fighting Bruce Lee movies.

I loved it. I was a ninja for Halloween for like 15 years straight.

Like that's I was just like, I love fighting. Now I'm not a fighter.

I've trained in a little bit of boxing. And that's about it.

But I love watching it. I also grew up watching WWF when it was called that.

And my dad would take me to see the live events, Hulk and Macho Man and Jake the Snake and all those guys.

I've seen them all live. It was cool part of my childhood that I remember.

Then as I got older, I was introduced.

Actually, I don't want to say when I was older. My cousin and I, he lived in a small town in Washington.

Anytime I would stay with him for two weeks at a time or whatever during the summer, we would walk down to the video rental place and we would rent.

We discovered UFC 1 and UFC 2. And I was like, this is crazy. We got to watch this.

And so I just became this massive fan where I love to watch fighting.

And I love the aspect of it, though, because it's very much 99% of the time, it's very much respectful.

It's not like they're being dirty. They're actually in there.

They know what they're stepping into. So I became this fan. 2012, I started top rated MMA. It was an apparel company.

And we had shirts and we sponsored fighters and did really well for a bit.

But I got bored with the apparel side of things. So if we flash forward to 2017, I still wanted to be involved in the MMA scene, but I didn't want to be at every event and trying to do apparel.

So I said, I want to actually interview MMA fighters and say, why the heck do you want to get in a cage and get punched in the face?

That was my only agenda for starting the podcast.

And I started at that point, didn't know what podcasting was.

Was, I just was gonna interview these people, and then I uploaded a video to YouTube, and I would share that link out to Facebook at the time and say, that's my podcast.

And I literally recorded about a hundred episodes of that show before someone said, well, how can I listen to it on Apple podcasts?

I'm like, what the heck is that? I had no idea.

So I started researching and I mean, didn't have a space to record a podcast.

I was in a walk-in closet, a hundred foot extension that wrapped around the bed and into the closet so I could plug in everything or, you know, bad lighting, bad microphone, didn't even look into the camera.

You know, it's really raw beginnings if we look back to the old, you know, and as I just did it more.

I got more comfortable behind the mic and I started asking better questions.

And then in 2018, I came across a guy named Ed Milet.

And I was like, man, I like that guy's values. Like he's talking some good stuff.

And so I started intriguing me about talking with entrepreneurs because as entrepreneurs, we also get punched in the face, but we keep going.

Right. And so how do we do that? And so I started the Eric Allen show or what is now the Eric Allen show.

I used to have a big, big, huge beard and it used to be called the bearded biz show when it started. And my idea about that was like, if I have the podcast called The Beard of Biz, I never have to shave the beard off.

That's not really a smart thing to do, but that's what I did.

So I started The Beard of Biz show and I just talked with entrepreneurs, success-minded people and world changers.

And I ran both podcasts up until 2021.

I stopped the MMA show in 2021, did 256 episodes of that show.

And early on, I won a contest on Instagram that landed me a phone call with Ed Milet. and I got to record that conversation.

And so episode 12 was Ed Milet on my brand new podcast and episode six or eight was Sean Whalen.

And then it just opened the door to massive entrepreneurs like John Gordon and David Meltzer and Jim the Rookie Morris, who's an awesome Christ follower and a man changing the world out there.

So I've loved that part of the story. And I've been doing all these podcasts.

Episode 260 of that show drops this week, actually.

So really excited about that. But the interesting thing is I've been doing this for a few years now, but God put it on my heart a couple months ago to actually change the format, which is really cool. I'm excited about it.

But rather than talking with what I call entrepreneur success minded people and world changers, I'm going to start talking with men of Christian faith and how do we balance following Jesus, having a family.

Keeping our faith, watching our finances. Maybe we're running a business, but on top of that, like how are we raising second generation Christians?

And I'm really excited about that. I've recorded a few of those episodes and that'll probably drop in the next couple of months, but that's going to be my format moving forward is just talk with Christian men.

Because I think me at 44, I was struggling when I hit 40, like I'm not where I want to be.

I'm not who I'm connected with. I don't have the money or the house that I wanted.

And those are things that I think most men go through when they hit that 40 age.

And so I want to try to target those guys and say, man, it's okay.

We can step into this. If we connect with each other, then we can help each other out. So that's the new format of my show. I'm going to drop here soon.

Yeah, dude, I love that so much.

Through the podcasting journey, and especially talking about all these big hitters, big names, and in all the others in between.

Do you feel like you grew as a person by just being involved with talking with all of these people?

Most definitely. Yeah, by far. Podcasting for me has been a massive game changer.

Not only is it great for collaborations and partnerships and trips and things like that.

Some of my best friends today are people that I had on my podcast and we've just connected and had this deep, great relationship and deep conversation.

But I look at podcasting even deeper than that. I look at it as a legacy.

Like I wish that I could go back three, four or five generations deep and hear my great-great-grandfather's voice and hear his story from him directly. And I can't.

But I can do that for future generations down my tribe.

Right? And so as I'm talking with these people on my show, I get to hear their story.

And then part of their legacy is I get to share their story.

And things that I've heard about, you know, having a better mindset and relying on God, those have changed me.

Podcasting, I interviewed a guy named Greg Reed. He wrote the book Three Feet from Gold, which was a follow-up to Think and Grow Rich.

And then he invited me to an event called Prosperity Camp at his house.

I didn't have the money. I scrounged up as much as I could. I flew on miles.

I stayed at the Motel Six, the cheapest one I could find.

And I go down to this event and there's only 50 people that are invited to this event.

49 of them are millionaires. I am not. I walk in there. I have no idea what I'm doing.

And I'm just connecting with people. And one of the guys that I met, there was a guy named Kelly Cardenas, dreadhead guy, looks like a surfer dude.

We're down in Carlsbad, California.

And him and I just kicked it off. Like we just were like, man, this is like my brother from another mother right away.

And I remember, I remember reading down there and he goes, Eric, let's go watch the sunrise and read the Bible.

Come follow me. I'm down the, down the way. So I'm like, okay, I got up early. I walked from a hotel.

I go to the Carlsbad beach and we're sitting there and he brought chairs and we're sitting on the beach early watching sunrise.

And I remember him saying, Eric, what do you want to do? I said, man, I just want to be a full-time entrepreneur.

I don't want to work for anybody. And I go, all these people that were at Prosperity Camp, I want to be like them.

And he looked at me and he goes, Eric, all these people that are awesome, have great businesses.

They have, you know, lots of money. But how many of them have great marriages?

And man, it was like the stab to my heart because I realized in that moment that my priorities all screwed up.

And it was in that shift that I started going, man, I got to start changing things around and start putting my wife and my kids as a focus.

And if I become a full-time entrepreneur, great.

But if not, I have my family and God to help me through that.

And Kelly was just, and he still is today, just this man that speaks life into me and encouraged me and inspires me to be better.

And so, man, podcasting is just opens up so many doors, man.

Yeah, that is absolutely incredible. The power of a sunrise at a beach, the Bible. And yeah, that life changer moment for sure.

So how then from there, do you decide to start doing what you're doing today?

Yeah, I've continued to do podcasting. So like I said, the Eric Allen show, and I've tried to get better.

I am, I've improved over the years, but doing content creation for brands.

I had an account on Fiverr for like 10 years, but about five years ago, I kind of got more serious about, Hey, maybe I can work with brands and they'll send me their product. And I'm an older guy.

So I'm not like, you know, the, the Tik TOK superstar out there like that, but somehow I've been able to attract companies on Fiverr to send me their product.

And then I charge them a fee and I do a commercial form. I send them back the video and I love doing that. It's so much fun.

And sometimes I work with coffee companies and water bottle companies and bouncy ball companies, and I've done the whole range.

And so I do that. And then, Eric Almedia, I actually coach people on how to start, launch, and run podcasts.

I help them realize that, man, it's way easier to start a podcast than you think.

And this is how you promote your show. This is how you land those big guests.

This is how you can get ranked on Apple's chart. This is how you can continue to grow your show.

And I walk people through that. And I have a bunch of free resources on my website as well. But then I do those coaching.

And I want to help people realize that, man, podcasting is a legacy thing.

But it can be the best and cheapest thing that you can do for your brand to grow your brand or grow your website, your company, your business, man.

And so I'm so passionate about podcasting. So I just basically took what I what I know about podcasting said, let's put this into a course, let's help some people.

And, you know, I've been a W2 employee my entire life and love that.

It's totally fine. It fills the need for what I do.

I pay the bills, it keeps my wife home and we can be with kids.

And it's been a fun journey, man.

But I'm very passionate about podcasting and coaching people and really creating content for brands.

Like if I could do that, right, that's what I love doing.

And I recently wanted to step out in front of the mic. So I started in Toastmasters last year, helped me get better at speaking publicly.

And then I had my first big talk about a month ago, I spoke in front of 120 ish people for 25 minutes on mindset.

And man, it just fired me up to go do that some more. Yeah.

Eric, you, you are one of the most giving people that I've ever met.

Oh, thank you. And, and I say that not only just based on what you've told us today, but literally just the heart in your voice.

Thank you. It's truly, truly remarkable. Thank you so much, man, for just, for being here.

I'm just, you kind of leave me in awe, dude. I just, I love your spirit.

I love what you're doing. I love the fact that you've taken a childhood that wasn't great. And yet you turned it around.

You've got God at the center. You've got your family there. You got your priorities in check.

And man, I wish nothing but the best for you moving forward.

Kevin, thank you so much, man. I'll tell you, I have been a guest on probably close to 200 interviews or 200 podcasts since I started this thing.

And this by far was one of my favorite conversations, man. I really, truly appreciate it. You're an amazing host. You ask great questions. You keep the flow going.

Man, you're an absolute world changer. I appreciate you. Oh man, thank you so much, dude. That means the world to me.

For you listening today, my hope is always is that you heard something said today that didn't just leave you entertained, didn't just make you smile, but it truly made you think, you know what?

But if he could do it, maybe I can too.

So my friend, take this and make it mean something to you.

Put the lessons you learned into action, replay it again if you need to, and then take action.

My friend, I'm Kevin Lowe. This is Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Get out there and enjoy the day.