Episode 038: Jeremy Ryan Slate

Full Transcript

Rock Thomas: Hey, welcome to the #IAMMovement podcast.

Rock Thomas: We talked about the identity and the fact that the strongest force in the human psyche is this desire to remain consistent with how we describe ourselves.

Rock Thomas: And on my show. I talked to people about the labels. They’ve been given, and my guest today is a young Pepe very, very bold energetic individual

Rock Thomas: He defines himself as infinite. I’m someone that can create change on a massive scale and uniquely he’s got a double major. And he’s got

Rock Thomas: This experience with history. We’re going to go all the way back to the 13th century.

Rock Thomas: And we’re going to talk about the Roman Empire and a few other cool things like that. So if that’s in your lane, you’re going to be really, really fascinated by the intelligence of Jeremy Slate.

Rock Thomas: And he’s also an individual that has a podcast called command your brand. Very, very successful podcast. So you probably check that out as well.

Rock Thomas: And then in today’s very, very shortened Pepe podcasts. You get to see him and I like to talk quickly and he’s just going to dump a ton of wisdom and a short period of time. So, but on your seat belt and let’s get to Jeremy Slate.

Jeremy Slate: Hey rock I’m stoked to be here. Man, I’ve, you know, followed you for a long time and I’m APPRECIATE YOU WILLING TO HAVE ME ON TODAY.

Rock Thomas: Well you know you are in a unique position during adversity certain people rise to the occasion and whatever that adversity and you find yourself in a unique position today where you

Rock Thomas: Knew your flourishing. But that’s all. It hasn’t always been that way. Let’s talk a little bit about your road to where you are today. How did, how did that all begin

Jeremy Slate: So I actually have a double major in undergrad in Catholic theology and Torah.

Jeremy Slate: study literature at New College, Oxford and then got my masters in early Roman Empire propaganda, all these are not very applicable like life skills.

Jeremy Slate: And I thought I was going to be a college professor. I applied to one school which is NYU.

Jeremy Slate: Didn’t get in. So obviously I couldn’t have wanted to get it that bad, or I would have applied to more schools or worked harder to make that one except me.

Jeremy Slate: And I actually got out of the school in 2011 from undergrad, there was. It was a really bad economy. So I ended up

Jeremy Slate: Painting houses and managing a gym about 16 hours a day. So I was not really sleeping a whole lot doing that.

Jeremy Slate: Was at the time I was dating my current wife ended up then getting a job teaching high school for a couple years. It was a private school so I didn’t have a

Jeremy Slate: Ton of teaching experience. So every day I was absolutely miserable and then two years into that my mom ended up having a really, really bad stroke and

Jeremy Slate: It really just affected everything because my life. My family’s a very close knit unit.

Jeremy Slate: And to this day, my mom still doesn’t have use of our language skills. She can’t use the right side of her body. She hasn’t failed to work.

Jeremy Slate: Since 2012 so it has been kind of a rough road, but it kind of snapped me to look for something different to start with network marketing, which I wasn’t very good at. But I went from there to then

Jeremy Slate: selling life insurance, which I then ended up being pretty darn good at. I just didn’t like telling people that are going to die.

Jeremy Slate: And I sold products on Amazon, but ended up leaving my $1 promo code on my listing and losing all of my products and about 20 minutes and I got to the end of that and I just kind of was like, well, you know, screw it, I taught myself how to build websites from

Jeremy Slate: You know, watching YouTube videos and reading blogs and stuff and ended up working for our friends web design firm and

Jeremy Slate: About a few months into that I started a podcast as a hobby and took off in it so 10,000 listens. In his first 30 days which led to us, you know, starting our company and everything else we’re doing, man.

Jeremy Slate: Wow.

Jeremy Slate: That’s really

Rock Thomas: Nice nutshell.

Rock Thomas: So I’m curious, you know, from network marketing life insurance Amazon sales. It’s all sales oriented.

Rock Thomas: Yeah. Now I talked to people about, you know, we all want to do what we like to do, which is the fun stuff. So you could be a massage therapist or you can be a chiropractor. You could be

Rock Thomas: somebody owns a dry cleaner whatever half of its doing what you’re doing. But this is another half finding the clients.

Rock Thomas: He talked to me a little bit about that. What was, what did you learn in network marketing life insurance and Amazon sales about finding the client.

Jeremy Slate: Well, you know, it’s funny because I found that the thing I actually struggled with early on with network marketing is I ended up being really good at it. But the problem I ran into is

Jeremy Slate: You have this opportunity right you’re selling this opportunity and I ended up trying to find a place in every person’s life for my opportunity which

Jeremy Slate: Eventually kind of ruins a lot of your social interactions and things like that. So it really came down to

Jeremy Slate: You know, a willingness to find people that are actually looking for something. So it was going to the right, networking events. It was attending the right events. It was speaking in the right places. So I actually did a lot more speaking, then

Jeremy Slate: I started using local media and local press and getting involved there. And I found out when I started building a following on a local level.

Jeremy Slate: You know the right people. I needed to connect and ended up being in my space. So it really, it’s interesting because I think a lot of people don’t think of building a personal brand on a local level.

Jeremy Slate: But I had become very good at it. I was speaking at the Rotary Club and they actually sent me for two months to Peru to actually represent New Jersey and Peru.

Jeremy Slate: And speak at 30 different rotary clubs down there. And it got me in, you know, local newspapers, all these different things. So I had become somebody that was known, so the right people sort of found me. I was actually like attracting the correct people to me.

Rock Thomas: What were you speaking on

Jeremy Slate: I was speaking on personal development, a lot because for me. I was somebody that I came from a small town five eighths of my own size.

Jeremy Slate: And my dad was a former professional baseball player that, you know, got hurt, you know, early in his career.

Jeremy Slate: So I was always somebody that I felt like I was never going to be good enough because I was always a decent athlete but I wasn’t great. I was somebody that you know

Jeremy Slate: Always kind of quit right before I got there.

Jeremy Slate: And I had managed to, you know, push myself just through grit to do a lot of things that my small town, which was five eighths of the mile and size didn’t see happening. And a lot of people didn’t go to college that went there.

Jeremy Slate: So people were just interested to hear how me as a normal everyday guy had managed to make a lot of things go right for myself.

Rock Thomas: And what would you say were some of the differentiators because a lot of people have the same identity you have. Is there, like, I’m not good enough. I came from a small town. I came from a big family. I didn’t have any financial education, you have a huge, huge education.

Rock Thomas: Obviously are a hungry student, but what were some of the things that allowed you to break out of the small town.

Jeremy Slate: So this is gonna sound weird, but the thing that’s worked really well for me is, you know, I have a huge background of fitness as a competitive powerlifter for a number of years.

Jeremy Slate: I’ve had a huge background in history. I’ve had, you know, I traveled a lot, and I’ve actually found that

Jeremy Slate: Having this background and all these different things I don’t claim to be an expert and really got anything, but I know a lot about. I know a little bit about a lot of things.

Jeremy Slate: And that’s allowed me to connect to make human connections with a lot of different people where

Jeremy Slate: Other people just wouldn’t do that because somebody can talk about something and I know enough about it to continue a conversation on that.

Jeremy Slate: Or somebody will bring up a topic and I’m aware of that in history, and I can continue that conversation.

Jeremy Slate: So because I’ve known enough about people. I’ve been able to care more and show up more and, you know, create those commonalities. We’re just a lot of people haven’t and it’s

Jeremy Slate: It seems so weird and simple but it’s really just being willing to be there for that person and connect with that person on a human level.

Rock Thomas: So your confidence when it came to re enter interactions with people was pretty pretty strong it or it became strong

Jeremy Slate: It became a shrine. Initially it was kind of bad, it was really bad actually. I remember my first public speech. I didn’t know what to do. So I put together this talk. And it was like 180 IDs.

Jeremy Slate: And about three minutes into it. I could see the eyes glazing over it. All the people staring at me. So it was one of those things that initially

Jeremy Slate: I didn’t know what I was doing. The more books I read the more education. I saw it, the more I did the better at got

Jeremy Slate: But I find and you’ve probably seen this as well. Rock. I find somebody who will do nothing, because they think everything has to be perfect out of the gate, and it was talking to more people continuing more conversations getting better and that’s what the improvement was, yeah.

Rock Thomas: perfect is the enemy of done. And a lot of people don’t realize that they’re so fearful of looking back at being embarrassed being shamed.

Rock Thomas: That they can’t really get their head around taking action. So let’s talk about what, what, how would you define failure.

Jeremy Slate: Failure is an opportunity to learn man because I screwed up a lot. I, I failed so much on the way here. But then, you know, looking at each one of those things like

Jeremy Slate: I’ve learned something from every single one of them like you know network marketing was my biggest breakout to personal development because it taught me to look for something more. It taught me to read a lot of books that I hadn’t typically been exposed to.

Jeremy Slate: You know, I was remember being younger and I didn’t know what an entrepreneur was and I know a friend that

Jeremy Slate: Had said he wanted to be one. I’m like, oh, that means you want to be lazy, right, because I came from a very hardworking background. I just didn’t, it didn’t compute. To me it didn’t make sense.

Jeremy Slate: So I’ve learned something from each thing I’ve done you know like how to run a great meeting, how to connect with the right people and how to market.

Jeremy Slate: The greatest single thing I’ve ever learned from life insurance is not to be afraid of the phone. Man, like I had to learn how to make 50 to 100 250 phone calls a day.

Jeremy Slate: With a lot of them hanging up on you, very angry because you’re bothering them so like I’ve learned a skill from every single thing I’ve done and even in terms of

Jeremy Slate: Everything I’ve learned about marketing. I’ve learned when trying to sell a product to Amazon and it’s everything I do, to this day, so

Jeremy Slate: Failure to me is our greatest teacher and our greatest ability to create something further in the future, if you look at it that way. But I think some people look at it as a stop. I look at it as an ability to, you know, learn something that let’s go on. The next thing, man.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Now, not everybody I get on my podcast is his story and like you are. So I want to dig into that a little bit because you’ve got, you know, Alexander the Great. Sam Walton, you’ve got

Rock Thomas: LR Ron Hubbard. These are people that some people never get to read their stuff.

Rock Thomas: Because they read the more current stuff like

Rock Thomas: That comes out from people writing today tell us some of the things you glean from anything you maybe saw in common commonality amongst some of these great people.

Jeremy Slate: Well, I like to study people that think of really big things like, for example, the gentleman that broke the Brooklyn Bridge.

Jeremy Slate: Like, that’s incredible like what they did in the late 1890s when Manhattan and Brooklyn, like we’re even connected

Jeremy Slate: So to see these big thoughts and people that put them into action is incredible. But I think also, as well. You mentioned Alexander the Great.

Jeremy Slate: I think him and Cesare Borgia are two really great people for us to learn from, from the viewpoint of they had really altruistic goals when they started out, you know, they

Jeremy Slate: Cesare Borgia wanted to unite all of Italy, because Italy was a bunch of small kingdoms at that point in time. This is a around the year 1300

Jeremy Slate: And then he had as well. Alexander the Great. You know, when he died in 323 he had conquered the known world.

Jeremy Slate: These guys had had an idea that they wanted to create this world where everybody was equal, they could do big things. They could

Jeremy Slate: You know, be connected, they could all learn and grow. But the thing that you find is when people are operating on a level like that. It’s a razors edge.

Jeremy Slate: And what happened with Alexander the Great. Is he went hungry for power and you know he killed one of his top generals, you know, he you know

Jeremy Slate: fractured. A lot of what he created and you look at Cesare Borgia the guy went nuts for power and, you know, that was what ended up being his, his downfall of Pope Julius

Jeremy Slate: So the lesson is, you know, think big and have really big goals to help other people, but at the same time, keep yourself in check and know where that ethical line is because, especially when you’re doing big things, man. It’s easy to cross that line. And I think that’s the best example, they’re

Rock Thomas: Beautiful. So what I’m hearing you say is that power is intoxicating and, you know, Freud said that

Rock Thomas: Sex isn’t about sex. Sex is about power. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s in the theme of what you just said.

Rock Thomas: How do you, how do you look at what we’re currently going through in the struggle for leadership in this pandemic and the struggle for

Rock Thomas: Power and decisions and all that sort of thing. How would you say you think history repeats itself? Are we going through something we’ve gone through before

Jeremy Slate: I think to a certain extent, we are because, you know, you look at just what some of our leaders are doing and it’s

Jeremy Slate: I don’t know how to say this. So, then they’re trying to measure their manliness against each other. And I guess womanliness in some way, like, oh, I have more power than you or you know

Jeremy Slate: Everybody, look at me. I did this for you. And it’s, it goes across the board. It’s republican it’s democrat it’s it’s independent

Jeremy Slate: It’s a power struggle and we’ve seen it happen again and again and again through history, you know, you look at the first. The First Triumvirate which was

Jeremy Slate: Which was Julius Caesar Marc Anthony and crisis, these three guys because they hated each other so much. It’s one of the main things that drove Rome from being a republic to being an empire.

Jeremy Slate: And I think these are the things we have to realize we have to keep our leaders in check.

Jeremy Slate: Because if we don’t, we’re going to run into these bad situations. So I think what would actually show us here.

Jeremy Slate: Is as a voting populace. And as people giving power to the people that represent us. We have to keep them in check and make sure they’re actually answering to us, the people. I think this is a huge lesson we can learn from history.

Rock Thomas: All right, I’m going to be risky here and talk

Rock Thomas: And if you don’t want to. That’s fine. But there’s parts of me that feel that what he’s doing right now is being very optimistic and trying to keep people reassured.

Rock Thomas: When there’s a lot of people that you know the old saying is a broken clock is right twice a day. Hey,

Rock Thomas: And all these pessimists are like, no, it’s because to be careful with this and that. And he’s like, Come on, guys, let’s get this thing going again. What is your like from a philosophical perspective, what do you think leaders should do?

Jeremy Slate: So the thing I like about what President Trump is done and and this is just coming from it from a business perspective is he’s

Jeremy Slate: Together groups of people to make decisions and advise him where he’s not trying to do every individual thing himself. So I think from a management perspective, it’s smart.

Jeremy Slate: Has he made some wrong move. Sure. But I think at the same time, entrepreneurship and business is going to be what saves this country and saves this planet.

Jeremy Slate: And if we’re not enabling entrepreneurs to do that, you know, by saddling with too many payroll taxes by, you know, not allowing them to operate their businesses and do these different things. We’re creating a huge problem here. So I think

Jeremy Slate: To that standpoint, we have to now enable business people to do something to move forward. But here’s the thing, right. We don’t need the Government’s position to move forward. We don’t

Jeremy Slate: And I look at the Great example that is the tale of two gyms, my wife goes to this yoga studio that’s been running online classes three to five times a day since they closed and they’re doing great. The gym I go to

Jeremy Slate: The owner was on Instagram. The other day, begging the government to send him money that’s not a great thing, man like you need to figure out how you are going to do something about it. Is it always perfect? No.

Jeremy Slate: But you need to find a way to make it happen. And you don’t need the Government’s position, you know, permission to do that, man. You can figure out an out of the box way to do it.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, I love it, one of your favorite quotes Fortune favors the bold, which kind of talks about that right pivot move on. You talk about also the fact that

Rock Thomas: Your infinite your I am statements. I’m infinite, I’m someone that creates change on a massive scale. Where was that born? Where do you remember that coming from

Jeremy Slate: It wasn’t something that I always thought was mine. You know what I mean. Because when I was younger, I felt like I was living a lot of other people’s goals because my parents always wanted to be teachers and they wanted to do a lot of those things. And I just kind of follow that path.

Jeremy Slate: Because it seemed like that was what was laid out before me and being a student was pretty easy for me. But it was once you know that moment hit when I realized like,

Jeremy Slate: You know, I could have lost my mom at 19 I actually received last rites myself.

Jeremy Slate: Because I had a pretty bad lung issue and I told my doctor. So, you know, told my parents. I wasn’t gonna make it.

Jeremy Slate: So four days after that I snapped through that it didn’t affect me until that happened with my mom and kind of all this stuff. Hit me at once.

Jeremy Slate: And I realized, Wow, is this the only impact. I’m going to make it. And when I realized that is when I really started looking at what can I do that’s bigger

Jeremy Slate: Doesn’t have to be perfect out of the gate. It’s not going to be man but you continue going, going, going, and

Jeremy Slate: I found even with our current business like you don’t know your goal, out of the gate, you know, your goal is to help people into make money and

Jeremy Slate: As you go, you know, gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and now I’m like I’m looking at. I’m like, the more people that are world class, we can help.

Jeremy Slate: The more people they touch the more people I touch the more success. We can have, but I didn’t know that at the gate. It’s just something that develops over time, but it was really hit by that single moment.

Rock Thomas: Very cool. You are obviously a reader, you must be reading something now.

Jeremy Slate: Right now I am reading. I was talking about the banking system reading the Confessions of an economic Hitman about, you know, the banking system, so I won’t go too far into that one. But that’s definitely a rabbit hole type book.

Rock Thomas: Definitely so you know to command your brand, who do you serve. And what exactly do you solve for those people?

Jeremy Slate: So we serve a lot of CEOs and founders and a lot of big visionaries in the health space and really what we’re helping them to do is to get the right positioning, get their message out and really communicate to their people.

Jeremy Slate: And we do that through the power of podcasting, because you know as much as I do, that podcasting is an incredible media for storytelling and connecting with the right people.

Jeremy Slate: So, you know, by getting them seeing what the right host and seeing the right places is. They’re positioning grows, which means they’re

Jeremy Slate: They’re basically their public standing their online footprint. A lot of these things, but also the people that need to help seem to hear them and that they can help.

Jeremy Slate: You know, are the ones that are being impacted because we have an ability in the podcast space to really grab exactly the public, you want to be in front of like we have no other medium. It’s pretty incredible. And it. If you look at Radio versus podcasts.

Jeremy Slate: The way they actually find statistics and the radio space is they take a survey of 1000 people and

Jeremy Slate: And multiply that by the population and they guess this has how many people that’s listening to them and podcasts. We have a really good idea based on charts based on metrics like who’s actually listening. So you’re actually going to have an incredible bang for your buck.

Rock Thomas: That’s amazing. Um, tell me a little bit about what you’re most excited about going forward.

Jeremy Slate: I’m honestly most excited about how we’ve been pushed by some, you know, bad things happening right now to do a lot more online. So it’s really kind of pushed us to show

Jeremy Slate: The business we built how resilient, it is you know people like yourself and what you’ve done, how resilient. It is so I’m excited for the future on

Jeremy Slate: I feel like we’re going to go less towards the traditional corporate business model and more towards people that are working from home that are traveling more that are able to control their own con economy and a lot of ways. So I think

Jeremy Slate: I see a bright future. I see a world in which we can control our own economy because really, when you look at it, man. You’re only securities in yourself businesses change economies change, but you’re only securities in yourself and what you can create

Rock Thomas: It doesn’t sound like that bodes well for hotels in the airline business.

Jeremy Slate: I don’t know, though, because I think that ‘s the hotel business. I think that is a business that does need to pivot quite a bit for the airline business.

Jeremy Slate: You know, if they’re willing to play a game and figure out some ways to cheap flights and things like that for people. People are gonna have a lot more ability to travel. If they’re not stuck in an office all the time as well.

Rock Thomas: True, true. And then there’s still holidays and vacation and stuff like that and events. So what’s the best way for people to be able to get a hold of you if they want to learn more from you?

Jeremy Slate: Absolutely. So the best way is over at our site, which is command your brand calm or if they want to check out anything on the personal brand side it’s over at Jeremy Ryan Slate com

Rock Thomas: Amazing. Amazing. So your energy is great. You’ve got a mom who’s had a physical situation and it happens. What do you do to keep yourself kind of like on track and really steady and strong, in spite of the university.

Jeremy Slate: I’ll tell you what, man. A lot of it comes back from fitness. Fitness has been one of my biggest things since I was like 13 or 14 because I shot. I was a wrestler in school and I struggle with an eating disorder from that.

Jeremy Slate: And the thing that actually set me straight was, you know, getting in the gym and actually getting into competitive powerlifting, so I want one time to pull an 80,000 pound army tank which is pretty fun.

Jeremy Slate: But for me, I start my day off with my workout. First, you know, a good breakfast, a cold shower which resets your body in the right way, some personal development reading and moving on.

Jeremy Slate: And if I’m handling my fitness and handling my morning right the rest of my day is going to be great. So for me that if I can control that I can control a lot

Rock Thomas: How do you get yourself to do that because a lot of people know what to do? But they don’t do what they know.

Rock Thomas: How have you been able to consistently. I know you grew up with it. So you’re familiar with it, your body’s condition to it. But there are people that are like, Yeah, I’ll work out tomorrow, what would you recommend for something like that.

Jeremy Slate: It’s consistency man because like I said, I’ve been doing this since I was 14 I’ll be 33 next month. So it’s like I’ve been doing this for

Jeremy Slate: I think, been doing it more years. And actually, was alive when I started doing it. So, you know, looking at it that way. Like, it’s a gradient scale, right. I think a lot of people look at it, they look at the extreme of this is where I want to be.

Jeremy Slate: Anybody that wants to get strong gets in shape. I call it

Jeremy Slate: You know, it’s, it’s, if you can get five pounds stronger each week that’s high bench for 55

Jeremy Slate: You know, if you can get five pounds stronger each week. That’s how I squatted 705 pounds. It’s linear progression, man. It’s change after change, week after week. It took me years to get there.

Jeremy Slate: But you know that consistency and that willingness to just go a little bit more each week. That’s what did it.

Rock Thomas: The success of what you think will be a switch, but it’s really a dial.

Jeremy Slate: It’s, yeah, it’s a dial and its consistency man small steps, day after day after day and they pile up

Rock Thomas: Yeah, I love it. Well, I really appreciate you coming on here with your beautiful energy, your great smile and your charisma and such a kangaroo as an individual, you know, I think a lot of people talk about success, but it flows out of you. So I appreciate that about you very much.

Jeremy Slate: Hey, thank you so much for having me rock and I also appreciate you being the 700 episode of my show.

Rock Thomas: God, thank you very much. Jeremy and, you know, during any adversity. This particular situation or any other ones.

Rock Thomas: I think what we talked about today stands true for everybody. So I hope that you take the wisdom that Jeremy shared with you. And if you want to connect with him will have all his information in the show notes as well. So thanks again to me and appreciate you, brother.

Jeremy Slate: Absolutely, for having me.