241: Plot Twist: How To Turn Financial Ruin into a Blueprint for Wealth, Confidence, and Gratitude with Ed Mylett, Entrepreneur and Bestselling Author

In this special bite-sized episode of The Light Watkins Show, Light shares an inspiring moment from a previous conversation with ultra-successful entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and bestselling author Ed Mylett. Ed takes listeners back to one of the most pivotal moments in his life—a time when he was broke, in poor health, and feeling like a failure.

During this tough period, a shocking conversation with his doctor about his future health forced Ed to confront the hard truth that his lifestyle wasn’t just failing him financially, but also physically. In this vulnerable yet empowering episode, Ed shares how he completely transformed his life by shifting his identity, embracing gratitude, and changing his mindset. He talks about how his experiences of being humbled in the lowest moments gave him the strength and perspective to build the incredible success he enjoys today.

Listeners will gain valuable insights into how our self-image acts like a thermostat, keeping us stuck in a certain mindset—whether it’s with money, health, or relationships. Ed explains why raising that inner “thermostat” is crucial to achieving lasting change. His story offers an inspiring reminder that sometimes life’s toughest moments are detours leading us to our true path.

This episode is perfect for anyone feeling stuck or facing setbacks in life and seeking motivation to make a breakthrough. Ed’s journey shows that no matter where you are, it’s possible to change your story and find success, gratitude, and fulfillment on the other side.

And if you’re curious to hear the rest of his superhero origin story, click here.

Transcript

EM: "I went broke, and I lost my house, my wife's car got repossessed. And I lost power in our house, which is all bad. But if you've ever experienced this one, we had the water turned off even talking about it now is hard for me. We would have to get up in our apartment complex and climb down the stairs in the morning and go to the pool. And there's an outdoor shower there. And I will hold a towel up where my new bride would take her shower, so no one could see her outside, brush her teeth. Then we would switch and she'd hold the towel up and I'd shower and brush my teeth. And then we would walk back. I was so ashamed, completely emasculated. I felt like a fraud here. I am selling the dream every day in my business life and living a nightmare. And it was one of the most difficult times in my entire life. It was very humbling." 

[INTRODUCTION] 

Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins, and I have conversations with ordinary folks just like you and me. We've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. Today we've got a bite size plot twist episode for you.

A plot twist is a shorter clip from a past episode where the guest shares the story of the pivotal moment in their life trajectory where they found the gateway to their calling. And the idea behind sharing their plot twists is to inspire you to lean into those plot twists whenever they happen in your life, because usually when you get turned around from whatever you thought was your path in life, what's actually happening is you're being detoured toward your actual path. 

And sometimes that looks like losing all of your money or getting fired. Or in the case of today's guest at my let it's having your doctor tell you that at the current state of your health, you're not going to live long enough to walk your daughter down the aisle.

And my let is recognized today as an ultra successful entrepreneur, a renowned motivational speaker and a bestselling author.

But, during this part of Ed's backstory, he was broke, he was in poor health, and he lacked confidence. And this is how he changed after receiving that information from his doctor. Let's listen in.

[2:17] EM: Yeah, I went broke. I went broke. So, let me tell you why I went broke. I write about this in the book quite a bit. My identity wasn't a wealthy man. Your identity is the thermostat setting of your life. It's really your worth. It's the thoughts, concepts and beliefs you hold to be most true about yourself. What started to happen is my results started to exceed what I believed I was worth, and I turned the air conditioner on and cooled myself right back down to who I thought I was. We do this in every area of our life. We do it in love. We have a 75-degree love identity and we started meeting our dream person, you ever see that and then a year later you broke up and you're back alone. Or you have a 75-degree fitness identity, you lose the 20 pounds a year later, seems coincidental. It's a fluke, and you've gained the weight back. You will always get your thermostat setting.

So, the key thing in life is to turn that identity thermostat higher and higher. And I talk extensively, as you know in the book about how to do that. Pretty heavy, actually. What happened was, I went broke, and lost my house, my wife's car got repossessed, and I lost the power in our house, which is all bad. But if you've ever experienced this one, we had the water turned off. Even talking about it now, it's hard for me. I mean, I've talked about it a lot. I haven't done it in a while. But we would have to get up in our apartment complex and climb down the stairs in the morning and go to the pool, and there's an outdoor shower there. I hold a towel up where my new bride would take her shower, so no one could see her outside, brush her teeth. Then we would switch and she'd hold the towel up, and I'd shower and brush my teeth and then we will walk back. We would walk back, I was so ashamed, completely emasculated. I felt like a fraud. Here I am selling the dream every day in my business life and living a nightmare, and it was one of the most difficult times in my entire life. It was very humbling, very humiliating. But it makes me grateful for what I have now.

I tell people often, it doesn't happen every morning. But I would say nowadays it happens maybe twice a week where I live in the ocean. So, when I wake up in the morn I'm looking at the Pacific Ocean, the waves crashing. When I leave here, I go to my island in Maine. I live at my own island. I look at the Atlantic Ocean. It's pretty cool. I'm very grateful for that. But not as grateful as some mornings when I turn the water faucet on in the shower and the water hits my face, and I literally have this flood of gratitude because of those moments back in the apartment. I literally just say, “Thank you, God. Thank you so much.” I'm more grateful for the water coming out of the shower, than I am the ocean I look at when I wake up. And the reason for that is those moments. So, thank God that I'm still grateful and sometimes our greatest pain will give us our greatest gratitude later, and I can tell you that that is very true for me.

[4:43] LW: Speaking of gratitude, and your wife, she called you out when you felt all emasculated. And then you had another buddy of yours that called you out at a restaurant. Can you talk a little bit about –

[4:53] EM: How in the world do you do this? It blows my mind. Yeah, my wife knew me. She knew the confident college guy me. She knew my background and the truth is I was down and I was getting up later and I was laying around the house and I was not being the guy I was capable of becoming, and she finally sat me down. She was working by the way. She was supporting us. She had the job. People see me now they're like, “Ah, Mr. Superman.” Not so much. Not at all. She basically called me out and said, “Hey, listen, this is it. You need to cut it out. This is not who you are. You were born to do something great with your life. You're not being the man that I grew up with. You're not the man that I know. You need to get your crap together because I'm getting up early and going to work every day. And every time I come home, you're sitting on the couch eating Cheetos, and not getting our life together.” So, she called me out and about the same time, another buddy of mine I work with is like we've just done a sales meeting, and he's like, “Who the heck was that guy?” And I go, “What do you mean? It was me.” He goes, “Bro, you seem so desperate, so unconfident and bro, you're the one who always says certainty is influence, the most certain person influences you. You've seen them least certain, it was pathetic. You got to wake up, man. You're better than this.”

I was so in this pattern of self-loathing, and down on myself and repeating the story. I was telling myself this story of I had a goal and I had it and I blew it and I had it. I was manifesting the story over and over again, because we really are the story we tell ourselves. And then finally, this buddy of mine, who doesn't even know nothing about nothing goes, I go, “Bro, I'm just so down on myself. Then this just sucks the situation I'm in. I'm broke. I owe everybody money.” And he goes to me, and he didn't even know what he's talking about. He goes, “What would you need to believe about this so that it would actually serve you?” We’re driving, I go, “I don't know.” He goes, “Well, no, no. What would you need to believe about this so that it could actually serve you?” I'm like thinking about it. I'm actually kind of pissed at him for calling me out. But I grew up with him. So, he's the best man at my wedding.

 I go, “Well, be a hell of a comeback story. One inspiring thing to tell people someday. I swear to you.” I said, “Man, would that be a heck of a story? I had no water. Now, I'm a multimillionaire.” Man, my wife's calling me out, my best friend's calling me out. Now, I'm successful. And here we are now, many, many years later, and exactly what I said is happening. So, I had to flip – it's not the conditions of our life. It's not even the events of our life. It's the meaning we take away from the event, which creates the emotion, which then generates the behavior. So, it's never the event. You and I, for example. You and I could roll up on a car accident, terrible situation, and a family is going to die, and we run up and the family's passing away. You and I would say, “This is tragic.” Mother Teresa would roll up to that same car accident, same exact event, take a totally different meaning from it. She would tell you when she was alive, this is the honor of my lifetime, to be present with a human being as their soul goes to heaven. Totally different meaning, completely different emotion, completely different behavior, same event.

So, it is true that it is not the events of our lives that define us. That's why in some cases, you can take two children raised by an alcoholic father, and one goes down a spiral of repeating the entire debacle, and the other one becomes a mega achiever or happier person. Same event, different meaning, different emotion, different behavior.

[8:03] LW: Do you remember what your idea of success was back in those days when you were having those conversations with your wife and your friend?

[8:10] EM: Yeah, I think it was more shallow. I think candidly, when I was younger, because we didn't have things, but I lived near people who did. So, I lived in a neighborhood like the down on the hill, like in the bottom of a hill. And all the rich people lived up on this hill, right? And then me and my wife would come down ironically, to the very beach that I live on right now, and we would walk on the beach. I'd see these people own these beach houses, and I'd go, “Babe, someday I'm going to get us one of those oceanfront houses.” And I had no idea. I said, “Who do you think these people are? They must be like Martians or something. Who lives on the ocean?”

My original dreams were financial and that's okay. That's okay. I found out – you know what I found out, by the way, about rich families, or happy families, that at some point in their lineage way, way, way, way back, they weren't. They weren't happy, or they weren't successful financially, and then the power of one shows up in the book. The second chapter is called The Matrix, I teach you about your reticular activating system. As you know, I go very deep on programming your RES, the prefrontal cortex of your brain to find the things you want. But I use Neo in the Matrix as an example, because what is Neo in the Matrix called? The One. And in emery family, eventually, the one shows up. The one who changes their total trajectory. It could be their emotional trajectory, their viewpoint on the world, their wealth, their abundance, or spirituality. But in every family, eventually, the one shows up.

In my family, I'm the one. I'm the one. I didn't do it just because I wanted it, I fought for it. I battled for it. I wanted it badly. What I didn't know was that what I was really changing wasn't our financial status, because that's great. But I have changed the way my family thinks. I've changed our viewpoint on life. I’ve changed how much we want to help other people. We actually do dream as a family. As you know, in the book, and then I'll come up for air, I say there's two types of people in life. Those that operate out of their history and their memory. They just keep repeating their history and their memory, and they operate out of it all the time. Then there's happy and successful people. They operate out of their imagination, and their vision. When we're children, the reason we're happier, I honestly believe is our imaginations are flourishing. And as we get older, we get into the world and we sort of get put in our box and our imagination gets suppressed, our dreams get suppressed, and dreams and imagination are a little bit different, and our vision gets suppressed, and we just start to operate out of history, out of memory, and every day is like the other one.

By the way, even when the external conditions change, the internal emotions are still the same history, the same memory, and so we change the external but inside we still feel the same sadness, the same anxiety, the same worry, the same frustration, the same depression. But if you can begin to imagine a different emotion, dream about the different emotions, and instead of just getting intentional about your goals, what have you started to get intentional about the emotions you want to experience in your life? Because all the goals you have, you only want them because you think they'll make you feel something. Why not shortcut it and get consistent and congruent about what you want to feel? What you'll find is if you can feel those things, you'll actually get the goals faster.

[11:10] LW: What's interesting about your story, in particular, is I think, we live in this society today where people want to know what the habit, what your morning habit – “Oh, Ed jumps into cold water. I need to jump into cold water and then I'll be successful.” Or, “Ed does this or that and I'll be successful by doing that.” What they oftentimes miss is that actually, if you really look deeply at the story, Ed found his mindset in the unlikeliest of places, in this McKinley home for disadvantaged boys and that's where everything came together. Because you realize that your dad, your alcoholic father, had been inadvertently preparing you to not only have the impact that you have with those boys, but also to see like differently, to shift away from that shallow understanding of success to something completely different. To just talk a little bit about that transformation.

[12:02] EM: This may be my favorite interview ever. I'm not kidding. So again, everything happens for us and not to us. I think every thought leader says this now, but I can prove it to you. So, my dad's first AA meeting again, my dad's drinking my dad's first AA meeting, he comes back goes, “I got you a job.” And I'm at home, flunked out of baseball, graduated from college. I'm living in the same bedroom I grew up in, same teddy bear on the bed, same poster on the wall, eating out of his fridge. I said, “Okay, well, what's the job?” He goes, “Dude, you don't get to decide. You're eating out of my fridge. Get your butt down there tomorrow and take this job.” I go, “You really don't know what this is because I have no idea what it is.” And I show up there and it's an orphanage. Hundreds of boys. I was in cottage eight, my boys were eight to 10 years old. I am completely unqualified. I'm not a psychologist. I don't have children of my own. I’m flunked out of college. I don't even feel good about myself and I walk into cottage eight at 6:30 in the morning. And immediately, when I walk in all these boys turn and look at me, all these precious little boys.

My boys, their parents were dead, incarcerated or had actually molested them. These little boys looked at me with these eyes. I recognize those eyes, because I have them. Any child that grew up with any dysfunction, we have different eyes, in our eyes, or they say something very specific. And I want you to all hear me on this. Those eyes were telling me and I didn't know I had it because I wasn't prepared. Love me, care about me. Here's a big one. Believe in me, please. Show me how to live better. Love, care, believe and show me how to live better. It altered my life because I take them to school. I was there on Halloween when we trick or treated. I was there when they opened their one present on Christmas. I was there when the girl didn't go out with him at a dance and it changed my life because I fell in love with helping other people. All of a sudden, it wasn't about this ego old baseball player about, “Oh, I miss”, it was, “Oh, my gosh, this isn't shallow. I was born to help people. This is my calling.” I don't know if it's always going to be with children. But it's my calling. It's while I worked there that I started my business career.

I entered business very differently than almost anybody that I knew, because this was so deeply in my heart now from being with my boys all day long. I'd be with them from six in the morning to sometimes two days in a row, and then I'd leave and go work in my business and come back. What I found about every adult I've ever met, people say, “How do you coach these people that run countries or entertainers or athletes?” I'm blessed to coach some of the most successful people on the planet privately. Because here's the deal, those boys aren't unique. Every human, every human, the most successful person you can think of want someone to truly love them, care about them, believe in them, and just show them how to do something better. If you can get intentional about believing that and serving people that way, you'll be a better parent, you'll be a better friend, you'll be a better business person, you'd be a better human. And that's why I love doing my show. We’re both talking about we both love doing our shows. I love people. You put me in an Uber, I can tell you right now, here's first thing I say, “Tell me your story.” I want to hear their story. And by the time I get out of that car, if it's 10 minutes or 15 minutes, they're going to go this guy loves me and he cares about me and believes me.

Yesterday, I get into an Uber. I got to tell you this, because humans are the gift, you have to open them. Humans are the gift, open them. I get into this Uber yesterday, like, “Oh, he's doing my wife always laughs. Here we go.” I say, “Tell me your story.” This man was from Lebanon, he's driving an Uber, you would easily judge him. His car was not nice. It was a little bit dirty in the back. He wasn't dressed meticulously and he starts to talk to me about his journey to this country. Turns out, fast forward. This man has a daughter at Harvard, a son at Yale and another son at Stanford, and he drives an Uber to help supplement for their tuition in addition to their college loans. I thought what a magnificent man. This is a great man to erase – I said, “Tell me about your wife. You must have a remarkable wife for the two of you to”, and he tells me he's so proud of his wife and loves his wife so much. I learned a lot about Lebanon and whatnot.

You know what? It was just a little dose for 20 minutes of, “Hey, man, I love you. I care about you. I really do. Man, do I believe in you. I want to know the magic sauce of raising kids that go to those kinds of schools, man, that's impressive.” You know what, let me give you something, here's my podcast, I might help you live a little bit better and I gave him my podcast. So, that's how I try to live my life.

[16:12] LW: Where did you learn that? I mean, I feel like I've been that way as well, and then when I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, then I had language around it and I’d be much more intentional about it. Did you have a mentor or some book that you came across that gave you the keys to that?

[16:29] EM: Well, I learned it at McKinley. I felt it when I was at McKinley, when I was with my boys. And then the first time one of my salespeople in business, got up and talked, and he has since passed away. But he was much older than me. I was like 25, and he was like 65, and he got up and he won this award. He said, “I just want to thank my mentor.” 65-year-old man with a 25-year-old mentor. He goes, “You might think what does a 25-year-old man have to give me”, because it's what we all think. What do I have to give? What do I have? And he said to me and got very emotional. And he goes, “That young man over there is the first man in my life to really believe in me. He really believes in me.” He was a religious person and he said, “He sees Jesus in me. He sees my gifts. He sees what I'm great at. He loves me. And you know what, I've learned a lot about him how to do this business better.” I went, “Wait a minute. That's what I was doing with Raul at McKinley. Same thing. This works with every human being in the world.” That's sort of became my own vernacular, my own language.

Now, I've read a bunch of books that talk about be present with people and love people and all that other stuff. But really, I learned it in those moments, when I started in McKinley, and I learned it in business. I have found in my life that the way that people know that you care of them, how do I get people to find their giftedness? Every single human is walking around with two or three beautiful gifts that are just special to them. It could be their beauty, their intellect, their humor, their problem solving, their kindness, their patience, right? Their resiliency, their intellect, whatever it might be. And if you tell somebody, “Hey, you know I love you so much? You know I believe in you so much? This, this and this.” It's something they already know to be true about themselves and then you link it to them doing something great, you're going to be on a list of less than one to three people in their entire life who have ever touched them like that.

For me, what I love when I meet, what I wasn't doing with the Uber guy was listening for the story, although I was, I was listening for his gifts, and then to be able to say, “I know why your children are so successful. It's because you love them so deeply and you're such a kind man, and you're willing to do anything for your family, anything. Even driving Uber after you worked the full day.” He just lit up. He went, “I do love my family.” Very emotional. “I would do anything for my children.” I said, “I think your wife would too.” He goes, “Oh, even more than me.” I think today, he's remembering that conversation because it was real and it's really true. And I started to think, am I that kind of father? Would I do what he's willing to do? What I've overcome what he's wanted to overcome?

So, I just think when you have a real love for people, and you go, “I want to open this gift up.” And when I open the gift, I'm going to try to uncover what their gifts are. And then just tell them, just tell them, you will see humans light up, and all the noise of the world, all the stress, all the conflict, all the this, that, left, right, south, north, for you to have those kinds of exchanges with human beings is the most beautiful thing you could possibly do. You know what, by the way, if you're in business, you probably make a fortune doing it. But that ought to not be here and reason for doing it. It ought to not be your intention. Your intention ought to be to just make a difference in someone else's life. And man, will you begin to light up. You won't have your confidence go through the roof? Walk around life like that. Link your confidence. I say this in the book, to your intentions. People keep linking their confidence to their abilities or their achievements. Well, you're going to chase that forever. What if your confidence came from, I'm a good man, I'm a good woman. My intent is to do good. My intent is to serve. My intent is to contribute. Man, will you light up with confidence when you know to say something true about yourself like that.

[20:10] LW: Yeah, it sounds like you got a lot of that from your dad too, because he didn't really care a lot about your material success. He would reemphasize that it's so important for you to be a good man and be there for other people and help people feel seen and heard. I feel like he's one of your guardian angels, man.

[20:26] EM: Yeah, I can honestly tell you that in my dad's case, I think he knows. My dad and I golf. We're both crappy golfers but we love to golf. And I would say, “Hey, Dad, let's jump on the jet. Let's fly to Maui and play some golf. I got a business meeting over there.” My dad never went on my airplane. My plane was parked. My dad could walk from my dad's house. Well, we'll have a long walk, but he can get to my plane in three minutes in a car. My father never went on my private jet. I've had five of them. I don't say that to brag. I say that to you that he had five opportunities, never went on it. I'm going to say, “Dad, let's go to Maui and play this great golf course in the ocean.” This is how beautiful and simple my family is. My dad would go, “Why would we do that? We could just go play El Prado and Chino, the Muni.” I said, “But Dad, it's crap.” He goes, “I don't care about the golf course. I get five hours with my son. I don't care about the golf.” This is a lesson. You want to know the power of one more, I take it from you. Then you understand how beautiful having one more chance is, one more decision. My dad died last year. I told you my favorite things to go. What do you think I would do right now what I would give for one more round of golf with my dad? I can’t say.

[21:28] LW: You're going to be crying in your book reading that part. I was like choking up.

[21:32] EM: Yeah. I have not said that out loud since I wrote it. It’s the first show I've said that on.

[21:36] LW: He died in October 2020. So, I'm not even sure if you could even be in the room when all of that was happening.

[21:42] EM: Yeah. I was with him when it happened. But you know what I would give for one more round of golf with my dad? Just to see him. “Hey, Dad, good putt.” Hey, I was pretty good, wasn't I, Eddie?” What would you give if you've lost somebody for one more conversation? How precious are people once you start understanding when I take the one more from you? And if you have people here that you still love, what if you started to approach that time when you walk in the room, what if this was the last one? What if I only had one more conversation? One more dinner, one more whatever it is with them? If they have passed away like my dad has, honor them with who you become with the one mores in your life. But I can tell you when you shrink it down, by the way, you're going to have one more day someday too. You're going to be my dad someday where you have one more day, one more hour, one more breath. So, the question –

[22:29] LW: Talk about what you witnessed your dad doing as a sponsor, as an AA sponsor, all the way up until the end.

[22:34] EM: Yeah, I didn't know this because my dad was in an anonymous program. But when he died, I found all these index cards with all these initials on it up in his Bureau and what they were where the – there are hundreds of them. They were the sobriety one day anniversary dates of their sobriety. My dad would call all these people, hundreds of them and say, “Hey, stay sober one more day, happy birthday.” And these were all people that my dad would help get sober. My dad would go to bars and pull people out of them. He would text message. He’d have early breakfast, late night conversations.

As he was passing away, his phone kept ringing and my dad had lung issues, and he would breathe. Breathe like that. Some breaths were three breaths a minute, some were 30, his phone kept ringing, and he says, my mom's name is Debbie, and my dad's going to pass away within the hour, within a few hours. “Debbie, who's calling?” And he's on morphine and my mom goes, “Ed, it doesn't matter who's calling. You're not taking the call.” There's no Instagram going to be on this. There's no nothing. My dad, “Who is it?” My mom says, “It's someone named Raul.” And my dad’s like, “Give me the phone.” My dad knew that Raul was probably about to go drink again and he took the call. And my mom held the phone up to my dad's ear as my dad was passing, and my dad talked to Raul for almost 20 minutes and said to him. He said, “Raul, just don't drink for one more day. One more day.” And Raul spoke at my dad's funeral and it was a guy who's incarcerated for 20 years. Incarcerated for manslaughter. My dad helped all kinds of different people and Raul said the words that I've heard many times myself because my dad had the same name as me said, “Ed Mylett changed my life.” Except it wasn't me, it was my dad. Because in life, we don't get anything except who we are. We don't even always get our goals. You know I say this in the book. We all get our standards. And my dad's standard was to always help one more person. So, he did it, even to the last hours of his life.

[END]

That was Ed Mylett, and to hear the rest of his superhero origin story, you can go to episode 106 and start around the 38-minute mark. And in addition to listening to the rest of Ed's episode, I also recommend following him on the socials @EdMylett, which is spelled M Y L E T T.

And if you connect it with this conversation, you also want to check out my interviews with Stephen Scoggins, which is episode 173. Stephen became an ultra successful entrepreneur after going through a lot of hardship and getting in his own way.

And you also want to hear Neil Pasricha's episode, which is episode 133. Neil overcame betrayal and heartbreak to create a blog on awesome things. And he became a prolific motivational speaker and author as well. 

And if you know anyone else who's making the world a better place and they had an incredible plot twist in their life, email me your guest suggestions at light@lightwatkins.com.

My other ask is that you take just a few seconds to leave a rating or review for the show. You hear hosts like me asking listeners like you for ratings all the time because that's how a lot of guests will determine whether they're going to come on to the podcast, so it does make a huge difference. It's absolutely free. All you do is look at your device. You click on the name of the show. You scroll down past those first few episodes. You'll see a space with five blank stars. Just tap the star all the way on the right and you've left a five star rating. If you want to go the extra mile. Write one line, just letting a potential listener know which episode they should consider starting with. And that can help go a long way as well.

Also, don't forget you can watch these plot twist episodes on my YouTube channel if you prefer to see what Ed Mylett looks like as he's sharing his plot twist. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube as well. 

Okay, I'll see you on Wednesday with the next long form conversation about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things to leave the world a better place. And until then, keep trusting your intuition. Keep following your heart. And keep leaning into those plot twists when they happen in your life. And if no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you and have a fantastic weekend.