Myke Metzger is the author of “Credibility Method“, a highly sought after speaker, and a digital marketing consultant featured in Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, NBC and more. Myke and his digital marketing agency have successfully run the digital marketing for high level influencers, celebrities and businesses. He has shared the stage with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, including one of my personal favorites, Grant Cardone, and Ryan Stewman.

In today’s episode we will touch on how to overcome your biggest adversities, how to focus on improving yourself and blocking out the noise of others, and how to let go of friends that are holding you back from who you want to be. We get really deep in this episode and hear some personal stories from Myke along his journey! A lot to learn from in this episode!

Myke’s website: http://www.mykemetzger.com
Myke’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mykemetzger
Myke’s Twitter: www.twitter.com/mykemetzger
Myke’s Facebook: www.facebook.com/mykemetzgerofficial
Myke’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/mykemetzger

SPECIAL DISCOUNT FOR MONUMENTAL LISTENERS: 30% off Myke’s new book at http://www.CredibilityMethod.com with coupon code ‘PODCAST’

Books mentioned by Myke:
The Power: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Secret-Rhonda-Byrne/dp/1439181780/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=WXDZMZ4F7EVE37K6N2W4
The Secret: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Rhonda-Byrne/dp/1582701709

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Intro/Outro Music by The Pass:
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/the-pass/tracks
sonaBLAST! Records: http://www.sonablast.com/

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Read Full Transcript

Evan Holladay: Welcome to Monumental. I'm your host, Evan Holladay and today we have Myke Metzger. Myke is the author of Credibilidy Method, he's a highly sought after speaker and a digital marketing consultant and he's been featured in Yahoo Finance, Market Watch, NBC and more. Myke and his digital marketing agency have successfully run the digital marketing for high level influencers, celebrities and even some really big businesses. Mike has shared the stage with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, including one of my personal favorites, Grant Cardone and Ryan Stewman. In today's episode, we will touch on how to overcome your biggest adversities and Myke shares a lot of his personal story and his biggest adversities. How to focus on improving yourself and blocking out the noise of others, and how to let go of friends that are holding you back from who you want to be. We get really deep in this episode and you're going to hear some really personal stories from Myke along his personal journey. You've really a lot to learn from this episode, I'm really excited for you guys to hear it. Before we jump in with our talk with Myke, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to everyone listening now, you currently listening and everyone leaving us reviews on iTunes. Here's a 5 star review that we got from Brie recently: "Great podcast, very insightful and entertaining. Great job, Evan." Thank you, Brie, and everyone leaving reviews. Thank you again for your great feedback. Also, stick around to the end of the podcast, Myke has given all of our listeners a special discount code to his new book, Credibility Method. Alright, let's get started.

Myke, welcome to the show.

Myke Metzger: Thank you so much for having me, man. It's great to be here and great to meet you.

Evan Holladay: Likewise. Can you give us a brief walk-through of what you do for listeners who may not know you?

Myke Metzger: Yeah, of course. I'm 29, I live in Richmond, Virginia and I run a digital marketing agency. We provide advertising services, AI services, we provide web development, SEO, things like that for small local businesses and also big, national businesses. That's my company and then aside from that, I somewhat have more of a personal consulting gig. I'm a speaker and an author, I just published my brand new book called Credibility Method and that has a lot of people that are more like influencers and single entrepreneurs that are working on making their journey a reality and we also provide some marketing services for them. There's these two different angles, I have my business and my agency and then my personal stuff and my personal brand a little bit. For the most part, I'm in the marketing space. Everything we do is more on the tech side of marketing and advertising.

Evan Holladay: How did you get into this space? What got you to this point?

Myke Metzger: When I was in high school, I wasn't the guy who took Spanish class or workshop, I was always taking the more artsy and creative classes. Instead of Spanish, I took photography. Instead of physical education, I took art class. Instead of workshop, I took computer programming. I've always had the benefit of being pretty tech savvy. Personally, I'm not a developer or anything, I don't know any coding languages but I've just been really good. If you put a computer in front of me, I can figure out pretty much anything. At a young age I always really enjoyed computers and video games, anything that had to do with technology, even music. Just music and listening to music all the time, being in that state of mind of just technology and I've always liked it a lot from the time I was an early teenager. By the time I was a junior or senior in high school, Myspace was around. Do you remember Myspace?

Evan Holladay: Oh, yeah. [Laughs]

Myke Metzger: I actually started building Myspace layouts for my friends and my friends that had a band. I was really into music as a kid and when I was a teenager, and a lot of my friends were in bands and I was also in a band. Being as tech savvy as I was, I started making these Myspace layouts for my friends and I would charge $100 or $200 and they would PayPal me. As a teenager, I got pretty familiar with the idea of using my talents in the internet tech world to make a little bit of money, and I think that's really how I ultimately landed in a marketing position as a marketing consultant and running a marketing agency. That's where it all started. In the middle I kind of lost my way pretty seriously. Once I got out of high school, I lost my way quite a bit but that's how I got into everything. It all started with Myspace which is just... 

Evan Holladay: [Laughs] that's awesome. Where is Myspace now?

Myke Metzger: I don't know.

Evan Holladay: Walk us through a little bit. You had mentioned right after high school just having that losing your way or not really knowing where you're going, and I saw you did touch on that on a video I watched on your website. I'd love to dive into that a little bit more.

Myke Metzger: I'm sure a lot of people feel this way. You could make your story as compact as possible which is challenging or you could drag it out and make it this long thing. I always have the challenge of trying to wrap up my story in just a couple minutes, it is one of those tough things. To give it my best shot, I was a really angry, negative kid. That could be for a number of different reasons, my parents split when I was young, I'm sure a lot of people can resonate with that. I grew up lower middle class, was not familiar with the idea of success or positivity and because of my parents splitting up - and I think we can all agree that when a parent is going through that, their priority needs to be on themselves and their relationships and I'm sure it would be extremely challenging to try and manage a job and having kids and a personal relationship and trying to be happy all at the same time. Unfortunately, sometimes I think kids can get the brunt force of the downfall of that. I think that happened to me a little bit. Ultimately, those things became my strengths and thank goodness I was able to turn those things around and make them a positive. Leading up to high school, childhood just wasn't the greatest. I moved around a lot, I was really not good at school, never did good in school, during middle school I was in, not a detention facility but a private school for bad kids. That was how I grew up, always feeling like I wasn't good at stuff and like I wasn't doing things right, I was never really accepted. I grew up with a pretty severe skin condition, so I was always walking around with Band-Aids up, I was always banged up and bruised up and hurt and never really fit in with the people around me. I think it caused me to grow up mad at the world and just angry. As I got older, I resorted to lying about stuff. I think it hurt me for a really long time until I was about 24 years old. It would cause problems in my relationships with my parents, even in relationships with girls as I got into my older teens, relationship with my brother and my siblings and my family, really a bumpy road as a kid. After I did this whole music thing on the side, it definitely didn't solve all of those underlying issues but during high school I was able to branch out and find myself a little bit, figure out my personality and who I was and who I thought I wanted to be, which was this tattooed, rock-star music guy and the older I got, the more I realized that wasn't my thing. That was just what I thought I wanted. A lot of the people that I looked up to in my life were not the best role models and they were kind of these people like the Jackass guys. I would watch movies like that and I thought that was so... Because I thought that stuff was cool, that's what determined who my friends are. When I became friends with these people, that determined everything else in my life. It determined the amount of money I made, it determined me moving out after high school, never going to college, I don't think I could have gone to college if I even really wanted to. It would take me on and I had no desire to do that anyway. After high school I went on this weird journey, I was fired from every job I ever had, probably about 13, 14 different jobs. I worked different jobs from a car wash to actually an assistant for this big real estate guy. I know before we hopped on this interview we talked a little bit about real estate. I worked at Food Lion which was a local grocery store, got fired from there. I worked at Walgreen's, I got fired from there, I worked at strip clubs, I worked at bars and never could find my way, but there were two interesting things that happened. One was I worked for this real estate guy which I think taught me some organizational skills, a little bit about sales and how to answer the phone, that was interesting. Then I worked as a bartender and that was the only job that I ever really succeeded at. I think it was mainly because I just liked to drink, I liked girls, I liked to party, I liked to stay up late, so I was pretty good at bartending because I was good at that. I don't know that that's a good thing, I think it was a bad thing for me. It ruined my health, it turned me into a person who wasn't very good at staying loyal to a single woman and that's what happens when you get into that late night party crowd. It's very difficult to have solid personal principles. The reason I share that is because hopefully that paints a little bit of the picture of who I was and it's crazy to think back because I personally don't even relate to who that person was. I don't even feel like that was me. We're talking almost six years ago, which in the grand scheme of things isn't that long but through my experiences I feel like I've really been able to slow down time. If I think of my age of 21 through 24, I feel like it flew by, I barely remember it, but now if I think of the age of 25 to where I am now, 29, I feel like I've accomplished a lot. I feel like time has slowed down, I feel like I've gotten healthy and I'm sure a lot of what we'll talk about is that transition and how that happens. That's a little bit about my story and who I am at the core is this person who is really angry, really negative, didn't have a lot of understanding of how to be happy or how to accomplish anything and trying to figure this stuff out on my own. All that happened to me when I was 24 and I'm sure like many people that are listening to this right now, they may be hearing - or have already heard about - network marketing. Network marketing ended up not being my thing, it ended up being a gateway drug for me into bigger projects such as advertising, marketing, influencer marketing and things like this. At 24, I was living in this house that was falling apart and if you watch the video on my website, that's probably what you're talking about [Inaudible 12:25] people through this story. I found myself at 24 years old drinking every single day, working at the bar and I worked at this place where I would literally clock in at like 1 or 2 am and I wouldn't leave until the sun was coming up the next morning. Thinking about that now, I'm like, "How was I even doing that?" I was chugging out Monster energy drinks and stuff and walking around like a zombie. My friends were idiots, they didn't have money, I was in a really terrible, unhealthy relationship and the surroundings that I chose determined exactly who I was which was this unhealthy, unhappy, unproductive part of society. At 24 years old, I made this big switch. I guess we might as well dive into it. 

Evan Holladay: Yeah.

Myke Metzger: The past came back to bite me in the ass and I had to spend four weekends in jail for driving on a suspended license. I was always getting in trouble, as a kid I wanted to drive these nice, fast cars and I would borrow my friend's cars and I would get pulled over, rode a motorcycle without a license and get pulled over. I would always get in trouble for automotive related stuff and I kept getting tickets, and the more these tickets piled up, the more I couldn't pay them and I lost my license. I chose to keep driving and I got busted for that. After the third or fourth time getting pulled over without a license, I had to do these four weekends in jail and that time of my life changed everything for me. Really everything, and I don't know that I could even recreate that situation. I don't know how I got so lucky but there was these handful of things that all happened at the same time that were so perfect the way that they aligned. At that time in my life, I was dating this girl who ended up telling me that she was pregnant with somebody else's kid. That was one thing. The second thing was at the same time or shortly after I met Brook who I'm with today - and she's changed my life in a huge way - another thing was my friends, my guy friends that I was hanging out with. I started to realize that maybe they weren't the greatest people. At this point, it's funny thinking back because I don't even remember. It's probably petty stuff but I remember they were kind of screwing me over. Maybe they didn't have my best interest at heart and so that happened and then this jail thing happened. Between those handful of things, it caused me to sit back and rethink, "What the hell am I doing?" I was unhappy, I never had any money, I was living in this house that was falling apart, this girl that totally screwed me over - and not that I was the best boyfriend in the world back then, either. It's probably a pretty big case of karma that had come to me, but all this stuff happened at once and those weekends that I sat - and I wasn't in a cell by myself, I was in a community pod because that's how weekends in jail work. You're usually not in a caged cell, you're usually with a bunch of other people who have minor charges and you're hanging out. It's definitely not fun, but it was the first time in my life that I wasn't masking my issues with lying, with drinking, with my friends. All that stuff was stripped away, so it allowed me to isolate myself and my thoughts. I'd been alive for 24 years at that point and I'd never had that, I didn't know what meditation was. I never ever had the opportunity to sit and think through, "Who am I? Who do I want to be? What am I doing? Why am I here? How did this happen? What are my choices that I'm making?" That hit me.

Evan Holladay: Those were a lot of the things that you were thinking about while you were sitting there in the jail on the weekends? 

Myke Metzger: Yeah. During that time I met Brook, and she handed me a book called The Power which was written by Ronda Burn. She also wrote a book called The Secret and I actually read them backwards which is pretty interesting. I was able to bring this book in with me and I sat there and I read the book and I was convinced that everything I'd ever learned was a lie. I was reading this book and I'm like, "This is crazy" but I was able to fully immerse myself in the book and really just be open and read it and understand it. By the time I left, I was convinced. I was like, "Everything in the world is fake. Everything I've been taught is not real. What is going on?" So reading that book really changed a lot for me. It helped me make the decision to say, "These friends that I'm choosing, the place that I'm choosing to live in and my actions are what's causing a lot of my unhappiness and that in conjunction with meeting Brook who's been an amazing, positive light in my life convinced me to say, "I'm done lying, I'm done doing all of this stuff. I'm going to be willing to admit that maybe I'm not the best at these things but I'm going to start trying. I'm going to start trying to get my stuff together." I just happened to get introduced to network marketing in a weird way by an old high school friend. Like I said, I'm sure a lot of people deal with that. You know when it's coming to you, somebody messages you and says, "Hey, how are you doing?" and it's like, "I know a pitch is coming" but it ended up being a great thing. Network marketing has this way of introducing all this self-development stuff to you, I was really fortunate to have all these things happen within a three month time frame. I think that's what helped me change my trajectory in life because who knows? I really don't even know where I would be if I kept going down that path. That's a little bit of my story, that's my leading up to the change, the pivot point for me. That's really who I was, where I was and how things were for me before I decided to become an entrepreneur.

Evan Holladay: That's a really powerful story. Honestly, it seems crazy that so many things affect who we are and you had this idea, this belief that you had to be this bad boy rock star jackass, so you had that visualized in your head and that's who you became because you saw it. Then you really felt the huge negative pressures and negative side effects from that mentality and that idea of who you thought you should be. That's so powerful, and your ability to pick yourself up. The combination, there's so many takeaways from this story. Powerfulness of having a great, supportive, loving partner, the ability to educate yourself and willingness and openness, willing to be open with yourself and try new things and learn new things. I think that's so huge, I don't think enough people do that. Then also pushing for better, you're pushing yourself, you're saying, "I deserve better. My family, my partner, I deserve better. The world deserves better of me." I just think that's so powerful. 

Myke Metzger: Yeah, and it's tough to discover your own self-awareness. You can't force it to happen. Some of these things or all these things, they just have to happen to you and they'll happen whenever they do happen. I was fortunate to make that little tweak when these things happened to me to decide, "I should probably take a look at myself and figure this out." Before that, I never even considered that I was maybe a POS. I was lucky, because it motivated me to make a change.

Evan Holladay: I think you really did, it sounds like, hit rock bottom. That's where you realized, "I have to go up from here" but I think maybe another standpoint that a lot of people find themselves is they're in that medium rock bottom, the middle ground and it's not really rock bottom yet they're comfortable and they're happy, and they're like, "It's not bad, I got a job that pays the mortgage" but I think there's a lot of underlying thoughts in people's mind where they're like, "I deserve more of myself. I can do more, I can make a bigger impact." I think there's a lot to be said from your story that a lot of other people can take away from.

Myke Metzger: There's always going to be somebody who's got it worse. Even my story, I probably sound like an entitled complainer to someone else that has an even harder journey. There's always going to be that person that had it worse. There are people that, maybe they do have a cushy job and they're trying to figure out their way out because they aren't happy. That doesn't mean that I have it harder than that person, it's the same. It's a parallel because those are still the surroundings that that person chose. Maybe they chose to have those things, that doesn't make it any harder to escape than mine and vice versa, it doesn't mean my trap that I was stuck in was harder to escape than theirs. It's just a different scenario, it doesn't mean that it's any harder or easier and I think there's always going to be that person that has it worse. I think by sharing my story, there are hopefully takeaways that people can relate to, even if they're people that are completely different. Some of my closest friends and some of the people that I share the stage with and that I've worked with, they're nothing like me and their stories are totally different. I think that it only makes the work that we do together more powerful, because there's two totally different perspectives. I've worked with people that their parents are extremely wealthy and at 18 years old they were coming out of high school with an 800 credit score and their parents bought their car and they were good to go, their parents used their connections and all of a sudden it's like boom, here they are. I think if I held a chip on my shoulder towards those people, it would only hurt me, it wouldn't hurt them. I always try to, and it's tough. It is tough because there's a part of me that says, "Damn, I wish it was that easy" but I think there's pieces of everybody's story that helps them come out stronger on the other side. When we talk about failure and things, everybody has failures that happen in different parts of their journey and I'm just fortunate that a lot of my failure came before I even started. It allows me to work harder and get through things that are tough now that a lot of people would think were devastating. To me, I've been able to look back and say, "I've been through a lot worse than what's going on now." There's takeaways at all levels and there are strengths that that person who maybe feels like they're stuck in a cubicle, there are strengths that that person has that I can't even compare to because they're different people that have a different journey, a different story, different talent. I think if you can take away a piece of everybody's story that's different and learn from it, that's how you can ultimately discover that self-awareness and be able to catapult yourself into a different direction or onto a different level.

Evan Holladay: Yeah, I really love that. I think we are all ourselves. You have to worry about yourself and yourself only because each of us are a different person and we come from a different background and a different story, and it's about owning that story and figuring out who you are. I like that line of, "You take a little piece of each person along the way and learn from that, and grow and figure out more about yourself." I know you mentioned when you were in the jail and you'd never been exposed to meditation. Could you talk a little bit more about changing your mindset and meditation and even if visualization played a process in any of that?

Myke Metzger: Absolutely. Two things happened to me during that time, I don't remember which weekend but I had to do four of them. The first time I went in, I had just met Brook and the reason she gave me the book was because I couldn't find a ride to the jail, actually. I'm telling you, this girl barely knew me and I didn't know who else to ask and I couldn't rely on my friends - most of them didn't have cars, they would ask me for gas money that I didn't have and I felt such positivity from this person. I'm so thankful we're still together, but long story short I asked her for a ride and she'd already been introduced to this, "power of positivity and law of attraction" type of world, she already lived in this space of positivity and she had this book in her car and she decided to give me a ride. She said, "You should really read this book." To me, the thought of reading a book was so foreign, I wasn't that person who was reading books, that wasn't me but I took it. My goal wasn't to get checked in for my weekend jail time and read the book, it was after hours of just sitting there so bored that I was like, "I'm going to read this book" so I opened it and read a couple pages and before I knew it, I was reading the whole book. It wasn't like I just read the book and all of a sudden I was a different person, but it invoked a couple of these different thoughts. What if I did look at things a little bit differently? And there was a couple things that happened to answer your question. I remember sitting there reading this book and I was like, "OK, let me let some of this sit for a minute, let me digest some of this." I remember I'm in this community pod and there's some hoodlums in there that are crazy. I'm sitting there and there's people arguing and debating and whatever, nobody's physically fighting but that's kind of the thing. People in there, they pick fights and talk their shit, if you would. I'm sitting there listening, my normal reaction would be to think, "This guy's kind of a jerk" and maybe I would use other choice words than jerk but you get my point. I remember the first time I really considered changing the way I thought about things was, "What if I thought about this guy and said maybe he's been through some stuff, maybe he's having a rough day, maybe I'll cut him a break and maybe he's not a jerk." That was it, it was a simple thought like that, that was how it started. "What if I thought he was kind of funny? What if I thought this guy was humorous" and I took it to face value and said, "Whatever, what is my right to judge this person or to think this person is a scummy guy? Why is that my choice to make, what does it even matter what I think about this person? Does that even matter?" That was the first thought. That was the first thing I can remember that I can identify as, "Maybe I'll think about this differently." The next thing that happened was when I actually checked out of the jail. I got my phone back and I remember back then I had this little 25 dollar boost mobile slider phone. 

Evan Holladay: I love it.

Myke Metzger: Yeah, it's crazy. It was dead, the battery was dead, I don't know how it died but I remember getting out and it had 2% on it and I decided to call Brook and see if she could pick me up, and she couldn't. She was asleep when I called her, it was like 6 in the morning, she was like, "No, I can't do that, I'm sorry." I was like, "Damn, OK. I don't know what I'm going to do but I guess I'm going to start walking." It was freezing cold out, it was like January, there was snow on the ground. I was in a long sleeved shirt and some jeans and I just started walking. I remember thinking, "I'm just going to put the thought out there. I don't know what's going to happen but something good is going to happen. I don't know, I'll get a ride out of nowhere." I don't think Uber was really a thing back then and not like I could even order one.

Evan Holladay: Yeah, on your 2% boost mobile.

Myke Metzger: Yeah. I just remember putting the thought out there. I was like, "I'm not going to worry about it, something good is going to happen." I started walking and I maybe made it like a half a mile, three quarters of a mile and this guy in this pickup truck pulls up, he pulls over and he's like, "Hey man, do you need a ride?" and my mind just went... I was, "The book, the book, it's crazy" and was thinking about how I needed a ride and this guy showed up and asked me if I needed a ride. I was like, "Holy crap, I can control the future."

Evan Holladay: [Laughs] 

Myke Metzger: I just went crazy about it, I was like, "This is crazy" and I looked at the guy and I was like, "Yeah, I could use a ride." I got in and the guy is very religious so he's really positive, really friendly and he was like, "I was going by and you were walking in the snow and I could just tell you needed some help" and I started telling him because I was freaking out, I was like, "Dude, I just read this book" - and I had the book with me, so I was like - "I just read this book and you're here and this and that" and he's like, "Well, where can I take you?" I was like, "I need a phone charger." He's like, "OK. I'll take you to the mall so you can get a phone charger" and I didn't have any money but I didn't want to tell the guy that I didn't have any money so I was like, "OK, that's fine, take me to the mall." He's like, "None of the stores there are going to be open yet, but you can probably hang out for a little bit and they'll open and you can get a phone charger." I was like, "OK. Being at the mall is way better than standing out in the snow, so that would be great, thank you so much. How can I make it up to you?" and he's like, "Don't worry about it, what goes around, comes around" or some sort of saying like that. I was like, "He probably gets it, too, positivity and the law of attraction" and I was freaking out. I was like, "This is crazy." I just felt like, "I could just be happy all the time, this would probably work." I got to the mall and I remember thinking, "I need a phone charger" and I'm walking around and all the stores are closed. I'm walking around with my phone and it's dead and I walk by this kiosk in the middle and there's this girl setting up the kiosk and she's like, "Hey, how are you?" and I was like, "I'm good." She was like, "Do you need something, are you looking for something?" and I was like, "Oh my gosh, she knows, she knows I need a phone charger" and I'm like, "Yeah, actually I could really use a phone charger" and she's like, "Oh, OK. Wait one second." She takes the tarp off the kiosk and it's a phone kiosk, they sell phone chargers and stuff. It's funny because it's just small coincidences, but to me it was so much bigger than that. These weird little funny things really made me reconsider the way that I approach things and the way that I thought about things. That was the big shift from the jail thing, from that happening. A little bit was probably reading the book plus being fed up with my life combined with probably a little delirium from sitting in that jail cell for 48 hours which seems like forever. It seems like so long because there's nothing to do. The walls are white brick walls, there's nothing to do, it's terrible. Those things combined plus those weird little coincidences challenged everything I thought I knew and I'm so glad they happened. Looking back you can laugh about it, but there is a little bit of that positivity in affirmations in those occurrences that happened to me back then, because sure, that guy still would have drove by but what if I was still angry inside and I'd be like, "No, I'm fine." You close yourself off from opportunities without even knowing that you're doing it and I've lived my whole life purposely blocking opportunities but not knowing that I was doing it on purpose. That was the shift for me that came from spending that time in that community pod at the jail. It was huge for me.

Evan Holladay: That's awesome, and hearing it like immediately coming out of the jail and that's the first thing that happens is that. Going in from that transition and that hit you in the face, you're ready to take that step out of where you were and transform into the next part of your life, what is that like now running your businesses? Could you walk us through a day in the life of Myke Metzger?

Myke Metzger: To break it down simply, some of the biggest shifts that I've had to make was getting in the state of mind of how does a business run, the individual that drives the ship, what does that person do? That's kind of your question, but to me that was really hard to do, to try and turn into that person. There's a couple pieces. I shared with you that I was used to sleeping all day and being awake all night, that was a habit that took me honestly probably maybe longer than 4 years to break. When you live your entire - and what to me was so far of my entire adult life - was working late and staying up late and being unhealthy, making that shift is ungodly difficult. It was crazy, and just within maybe a year ago I finally felt like I'm getting up early and I feel good about it. That was the biggest shift, it was being able to get up early enough to begin with to even operate as a high performing individual and we're always improving, we're always getting better. I'm not at the top yet, I don't think anybody will ever reach what they think is the top because you'll get to the top and then you'll set the finish line higher.

Evan Holladay: Right.

Myke Metzger: Waking up early was such a big thing to me and I think a lot of that had to do with my health. I'm not a fitness guru and I'm not the health coach, but that's one of those things that I don't talk about a lot that also changed a lot of things for me. I was the guy who was saving up quarters to go buy a hot dog at the gas station and that was what I would eat for lunch and I would chug down a Monster energy drink. I was not healthy. I looked OK, I've always been a thin guy but mentally there was just fog. I couldn't think straight, I couldn't get up early, I didn't have those habits. It was a very slow, long, gradual process and I say long in relation to my story because it felt long to me. With the success that I've had in the past 5, 6 years, 4 of that has been fixing my habits and to me that's a long time compared to how long I've been doing this. Other people have been hustling for 15, 20 years before they have their first big success so I am grateful and I am fortunate for that, but to me that was a long time. Just trying to get back to where normal people are at. Normal people are waking up at at least 9 am, people that are at least doing something for themselves even if they're not an entrepreneur. They got a job, they're waking up at 9, they're going to the yoga class a couple times a month. That's maybe average life, but I had to work so hard just to work my way back to the normal, the average, my habits had just messed me up big time. My day to day before was very heavily invested into improving and getting better. Just within the past year and a half, two years, I finally feel like I'm operating on a high level. I'm getting up early, I feel like I have a strong grasp of what it takes to run a successful business. When I was 26, I made my first 100 thousand dollars and I didn't feel like I was at the top. I feel like that's really important because I felt like I'm just getting started, I felt like I'm just catching my stride, I feel like there's so much more to do. It was really important because it allowed me to understand that money isn't everything and I'm not one of those guys who made a bulk or a boat load of money at once. It really was steady, gradual income that slowly climbed up and I'm so fortunate that that happened because ti allowed me to craft my daily habits and not get distracted. There was one summer where I just went crazy. I was like, "I've got the money, I feel healthy, I feel good" and I spent a boat load of money and I was like, "Cool, I got that out of my system" and it didn't cause any big failures in my life. The daily habits that have come out of this have been always understanding that there is no luck, you've got to work really hard every day and just become a machine, a producer and so that's what I focus on every day when it comes to my daily habit. What can I produce? What can I show up and produce today? How can I get up earlier than everybody else, get up earlier than my team, get up earlier than my staff, be here first, what can I work on before I even get to the agency? Before everybody shows up and we're working on stuff for the clients, what can I knock out before that happens? Then after we're done for the day and we close up shop, what can I continue to do? How can I show up for Brook? How can I show up in my relationship? How can I show up for my family? How can I show up at home? How can I produce things? I've always been the person - that's actually not true. I haven't always been that person but from that pivot point that we talked about, I don't know what switched in my brain. I don't know if it was from getting healthy, I don't know if it was from reading the books but something changed because I was the guy in high school that didn't pick up after myself. I didn't take out the trash, and all of a sudden I feel like that's so deeply ingrained into how I function, is I just need to do stuff and get it done. That allows me to move forward every single day. What can I accomplish? I'm the type of person that can't stand still for 10 minutes. If I'm waiting on someone, I'm like, "It's time to go, let's go, let's get out of here. We need to get moving." I can't wait and it's not something I have to think about, my habits have created that feeling all the time. There's pros and cons to that, sometimes it's a great thing, sometimes it's not a great thing. I don't know if that answers the question but health led into being able to think clearly, getting up earlier. I think time slowing down or feeling like time is slowing down for me has allowed me to try and fit more into every single day. I think being honest and focusing on becoming a better person has led to me being able to fit more fulfilling relationships into my life. When all those things are going on, you've now put yourself into a position where you've got no choice but to operate quickly and really show up and produce as quick as you can and as efficient as you can. If you can force yourself to almost act as if, if you wake up today and you feel like, "I don't have the apartment I want, I don't have the money in the bank that I want, I don't have the outwards appearance that I want" you've got to make the decision to feel inside and outwards that you are that person, because that's the only way that's going to happen. That has always been my #1 priority, even today. I wake up and I feel like I need to present myself as if I'm consistently and constantly moving forward. How can I present myself better? How can I speak better? How can I perform better? How can I produce better? If you consistently do that every day in everything that you do you'll never go backwards. You'll always keep moving forward. That's what I focus on every day is producing, showing up and presenting myself as if I'm already where I'm going. Those are the big things that I think about constantly.  

Evan Holladay: That's really great. Taking those steps daily, as far as I love you continually said, "Showing up on every part of your life and producing." I feel like we're a society of consumers and nobody except for the people that are creating their own success are producing content, are producing value for other people. I think that's really powerful. Before we run out of time, I wanted to touch on, you had mentioned Credibility Method, your new book. Let's talk about that a little bit.

Myke Metzger: To make it simple, we've kind of touched on those little hot points here but personally I feel that there are a lot of people that relate with my story. When I speak at these events and when I spoke with Grant just a couple of weeks ago there's so many people that come up and they're like, "Your presentation hit me the hardest." I think before I started speaking and sharing what I felt and my story, I didn't think that many people would take things away from it because I always felt like I have these unique issues and nobody understands me, because that's how I grew up feeling. I felt like nobody understood me and understood why I was angry which looking back seems kind of silly because everybody has those similar problems. Some people, like we talked about earlier, have it worse than me. To tie this to why I wrote the book, Credibility Method, is because I felt like every - I don't want to say mentor figure because I've never really had like, I've had virtual mentors and people where I'd read their books but I've never had a personal one-on-one coach. Someone who says, "I'm going to drag you up with me, let's do this", I've never had that. I had to just figure it all out on my own and I felt like every person that I connected with and finally felt I had a vibe with, the more I got to know them the more I would discover that they weren't like me. I'd finally meet somebody and be like, "This guy gets it" and there's like this saying of, "Never meet your idols" or, "Never meet your heroes" I don't know if I agree with that or not, it's not the point of what I'm talking about but the more I would meet these people I looked up to, the more I would realize there's not all that much I can learn from them - and there is. However, when it relates to my story, there's not a lot of synergy because they're just totally different, and I told you a lot of the people that I work with are just different. I was listening to some sort of podcast interview and these people that I look up to. Then I listen to a podcast interview and they start talking about their story and they're like, "My parents were great, they'd write notes on the mirror for me about how I was going to be successful" and I'm like, "Damn, I didn't have that." They're like, "I was at private school one day and I was asking my friends if they had any ideas of who could be a mentor and they were like, "I know somebody, I'll connect you with them"" and then again I'd find myself thinking, "Damn, there's no way I could have done that."

Evan Holladay: Yeah, unrelatable.

Myke Metzger: Yeah. I was like, "There's so many people out there that don't relate to a lot of these coaches or gurus and my goal is not to be a guru or anybody's specific coach but I do feel like sharing my story can help people that don't relate to those types of stories. There's amazing entrepreneurs out there that have worked their way from the bottom up, but the more books I read, the more videos I watch, I don't really find a lot of them that I can relate to. My goal was to write a book about how I started because nobody respected me, nobody looked up to me, I didn't have money to run ads and create my own first impression. People can run ads for whatever they want today and say, "This is who I am, this is what I've done." I didn't know how to do that and I didn't have the budget to do it, I had no money. I didn't have the right circle of influence, I didn't have the resources, I was focused on daily necessities, on where was I going to eat and where was I going to live. The last thing I could figure out was, "How can I establish myself in this industry of marketers?" It's been unbelievable so my book is focused on how did I start like that and then I break down in method that I've created called the TREK method, and TREK Method stands for Tear down, Reinvent, Establish and Kick ass. This book walks you through the TREK method that I've followed and it breaks down my process of the past five years. How did I go from this couch surfing bum that didn't have a license, didn't have a car, was in this terrible relationship, was unhealthy, sleeping all day, staying up all night, living in this house that was falling apart, how did that person shift into today being a published author speaking with Grant Cardone and Ryan Stewman and Alex Morton to making hundreds of thousands of dollars, running my own business? Some of the biggest influencers in the industry come to me to ask me for help with their marketing. I've worked with unbelievable people. I've worked with Casey Adams who we talked about earlier, 17 year old entrepreneur. They guy's got a reach of millions of people through his podcast. Ryan Stewman, Theresa Depasquale, she's a huge fitness influencer. These are the types of people that are coming to me asking me for help. Everyone has a question like, "How did you do that?" and there's no way that I can answer that question in a 30 minute podcast interview. There's no way that I could answer it in 45 minutes on stage, so I chose to write a book and that's what the book is about. Inside the book it actually doesn't really talk that much about my story, it talks more about the principles of how someone else can basically replicate what I've done and that talks about these principles that you can take away from my story and then also within the book I link back to all these free resources. I provide things like a media kit, a free media kit for somebody to download and use for themselves. All the tools that I feel like I could have used back then but I didn't know about. I break down the method and I provide the resources for free in the book, that's what it's all for. The book isn't even really to make money. To be honest, we talked about a little bit earlier, I wrote the book because it answers a lot of the questions that I get all the time. I also wrote the book because I feel like, to be honest, having the title of author on that resume is just a great thing so I feel like if I could knock out two birds with one stone and establish myself as an author in this space as well and help people while I'm doing it, then why not? That's what the Credibility Method is all about. It's how people can establish their credibility and increase their legitimacy regardless of what industry they're in. It's not just about marketing, it's not just about social media, it could be for somebody that's in a career and working their way up the ladder in their full time 9 to 5 career. Maybe they work in Manhattan and they work in a big high rise and they're trying to work their way up the ladder to that executive office, this book will help them and it will also help the individual entrepreneur that's just trying to figure it out.

Evan Holladay: Alright, it's going top of my book list now.

Myke Metzger: Yeah, shoot me your address and I'd love to send you a copy.

Evan Holladay: That book sounds really good, I'm impressed.

Myke Metzger: Thank you.

Evan Holladay: It's great to be able to take your story and like you said, you can't boil it down in a podcast, you can't boil it down on stage. If it's going to help others and they can take that same model and replicate it but applied to their life or their story, that's powerful. Like you said, being able to also now brand yourself as an author. I appreciate the honesty in that in saying, "That's part of who I'm trying to become" and that also helps you grow your brand and your audience to help more people.

Myke Metzger: I feel like being honest is the best thing in the world. You just have to, because people will like you more, they'll trust you more, you don't have to worry about, "Did I tell someone this?" You can just do business freely and when you're just honest and open with people, it's cool. If other people aren't willing to say, "I published a book just to get verified on social media", why wouldn't you say that? That's not a bad thing. 

Evan Holladay: Just be truthful.

Myke Metzger: Right. The other thing is I'm the first person to say that you should focus on yourself and you should put yourself first above other people because if you can't improve yourself and you can't develop yourself, you're not going to help anybody else anyway. I've always focused on putting myself first, let me get the credentials and experience that I need and when I do that for myself, then I can utilize those tools and those talents to help other people. I always try to accomplish things for myself before I tell other people I can help them do it and I would hope and think that other people would do that too, and that's now always the case but all I can do is set that example and that's really what the book is all about. Hopefully people follow that process and maybe discover that they do need to be more honest or maybe they do need to cut out some of the people in their life. A lot of the things that I talk about in the book are some of the hardest things that most people will ever have to do. Cutting out my friends and ignoring people, it wasn't fun and it sucked but I look back and I sure am glad that I did it.

Evan Holladay: Exactly. I love it. Let's jump into the Monumental Questions. I feel like we could go on for like five more episodes.

Myke Metzger: I know.

Evan Holladay: Alright, what does success mean to you?

Myke Metzger: I'll keep these answers quick. I shared earlier that I was fortunate enough to slowly and gradually make most of my income. A lot of people identify success as things, but I bought a lot of things and it's never really made me feel like I was successful which is the contrary of what I first believed. I thought, "If I could not worry about money and I could finally read the food menu from left to right instead of right to left, then that would be success." But when that happened, I realized, "This isn't really success, I feel the same and now I've got a bunch of money." Things shifted for me three years ago when I said, "OK, now the stresses of everyday life are no longer prevalent in my life and I can be happy and not always be stressed about paying the bills." I accomplished that. That was when I started to think about, "What is success? What do I want to do with my life?" The funny thing was a lot of the money that I made was doing something that I didn't actually find very fun, which was mostly phone sales, by the way, for anybody who's curious. It was like webinars and phone sales. When I started to think about what do I want to do and who do I want to be and how does that describe success, it actually ties a lot into being a producer and showing up, and I found success to be waking up in the morning with that feeling. A lot of people say, "Having a purpose" but that's such a broad statement. You can't tell someone, "You need to have a purpose." I don't want to sound like that's what I'm saying, but in a sense it is. It's finding purpose in the journey. I went through this process like 2 years ago to where I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know that I was going to start a marketing agency, I was fortunate because that just willed itself into existence, it was never my original plan, it just happened and it turned out to be a great thing. In the meantime, to feel that I was successful what I did was I went all in and doubled down on the fact that I was successful because I was on the path to discovering my journey and I learned this from a guy who's name was Noah, I met him in San Diego. I was expressing my frustrations that I felt like I wasn't fulfilled, I felt like I didn't know what I wanted to do, I didn't know who I was because now I had solved the money problem but I didn't know how to be happy, how to be successful because success is not things. It's a state that you're in, it's just successful. You can be successful without having money, because you've got to identify what that thing was. What I did was I decided that if I wanted to be happy and I wanted to be successful, that when someone asks me, "What do you do?" or, "What is important in your life?" or, "What is your purpose?" my answer became that my purpose was to discover my journey and it was a way of being OK with not knowing what in the world I wanted to do, but at the same time knowing what I wanted to do. That became my mission, was to discover who I am and that became the thing. That became the thing instead of feeling like I was lost and being like, "What is success? What do I want to do?" I just doubled down and said, "I'm in that journey right now" and that is my purpose. That is my thing, is self-discovery, who do I want to be. I think that's what led to being able to speak on stage and writing this book. I discovered this thing, I have a powerful story and success is whatever you want it to be and I think it's that ongoing journey. If you listen to this and you feel like you don't know what success is to you, you don't even know what you want to do, you don't know who you want to be, I think the first thing that you can do is find success in right now and say you're successful now because most people never get the opportunity to even pursue any sort of journey towards success. They don't become aware of it, they don't get the opportunity, they just live life under a hood not knowing what's going on. If you're listening to this, #1 great job. #2 wherever you're at, find success in that moment because you'll look back and be like, "That's great." When I was making 2 grand a month, I felt more successful than the other people around me that were making 2 grand a month and that's because I found success in the journey. To cut the answer short, if people can find success, find happiness in the process of finding out what that journey is and what they want to do and who they want to be, that's what success is to me. I find so much joy even just thinking back about my journey, it makes me happy and I feel good about it. I think everybody should, even if there are rough times and hard times and failures, to look back at that. If you can find joy in that and understand that that is in my opinion, the essence of success, that is it, the pursuit is success in my opinion.

Evan Holladay: I like it. Discovering your journey and knowing and being OK with that is your purpose.

Myke Metzger: Yes.

Evan Holladay: Alright, so we talked about your daily habits before. Let's jump into your favorite book or book you're currently reading.

Myke Metzger: Cool. I am currently reading Profit First, it's not my favorite book because I'm not done with it yet, but I do like it. Basically the concept is when you're running a small business there's a lot more profit in the business than you think. That's what I've taken away from it so far. I'm reading that book called Profit First, it's pretty good so far. My favorite book is The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. When people ask me for advice, I give them my personal advice. When people ask me a question like what is my favorite book or what is the one thing that they can do, I tell them to read that book. My personal feelings towards that book is that if there was any document that told you how to become a millionaire, it is that book. You think about the world that we live in today with Facebook ads and people saying, "Here's the one trick to make 890 thousand dollars before the end of the day", that's crazy and that's not a real thing. However, Chet Holmes was a consultant for fortune 100 companies, unbelievably successful. Probably one of the best in the world as far as business and development and marketing growth for big companies and small companies alike. He actually partnered up with Tony Robbins for a little while and started teaching smaller startup companies and small entrepreneurs how to implement some of the stuff that he had learned throughout his career. That book is the A to Z on how to become successful, wildly wealthy and that's it. I could carry on about it but I'm not going to because it's just the best book. You've got to read it.

Evan Holladay: Alright. We keep adding to my book list here. 

Myke Metzger: You've got to take that book from the bottom and just put it right on the top and read it next because it's so good.

Evan Holladay: Done. Alright, in closing out, how can people follow you or reach out to you?

Myke Metzger: For the most part, my name is fairly unique. I spell Myke with a Y so it's M-Y-K-E and if you just search Myke or Myke Metzger, you can usually find me. My main website is mykemetzger.com and the book we talked about you can find at credibilitymethod.com. If you search my name, for the most part you'll find all of these resources. You're definitely welcome to shoot me an email, my email is info@mykemetzger.com. If you guys have questions or anything for the most part, I try to do everything I can to answer what I can and help people out. That's how people can find me, search me up, shoot me a message or visit my website.

Evan Holladay: Myke, thank you very much. This was a blast.

Myke Metzger: Likewise, I really appreciate you, I love what you're doing and I'm very grateful that you've had me on the podcast. Thanks again.

Evan Holladay: What did you all think? We really got deep in this episode and really just got into Myke's tough lessons learned and what he had to go through to get his success today. A lot to take away from this story. I promised a discount code, and Myke delivered to our listeners. Myke is offering a 30% discount off his book, Credibility Method, with a coupon code: podcast. Go check it out today, go check it out at his website credibilitymethod.com. If you liked today's episode, please let us know on social media by screenshotting the show on your phone as you're listening to it and posting it wherever you get on social media. Make sure to tag me, I want to know who's listening, I want to know what you guys think of the episode and I want to know you're enjoying our talks on Monumental. Share it with a friend today. With that, have a beautiful, Monumental day.

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