Episode 11

Isaac Miller joined Sean Myers on his podcast, reflecting on how they met at the gym and grew together both personally and professionally. Isaac admired Sean's self-discipline and sought to add structure to his own life. Sean provided accountability and pushed Isaac to challenge himself. Isaac faced struggles with accountability and self-discipline, but felt empowered by Sean's guidance. Welcome to the show, Isaac Miller. What's up, man? Thanks for having me here. Absolutely, dude. How are you doing today? Terrific, bro. Well, man, I appreciate your time, energy, and effort in being here today. So, complete transparency, when did you hear about this episode? That you were going to be a guest on the episode? Oh, I heard this morning, bro. This morning? This morning, yeah. Good. I saw I had a text from you earlier, and I got started with all my meetings and stuff for the day, getting caught up with the crews and stuff, we just got back from vacation. And then I was in the office all morning, and then I literally just started cleaning out my truck, getting ready for the day, and I got a phone call from Sean. What's up, bro? Get over to mine, get over to mine. How fast can you be here, bro? Like, I will drop everything, man, where you need me. That's what you said, isn't it? Yes, sir. Why'd you say that? Bro, I always got your back, man. You've done nothing but improve and bring value to my life, and I hope to reciprocate and do the same for you. Yeah, I appreciate that, man. That means a lot to me. And you know that means a lot to me because that aligns with my temperament, which I share on like Episode 8 or 9, which aligns with loyalty. Yeah. So I feel like you're a loyal friend, and I just appreciate you being here. You got several kids, you got businesses, you got employees, you got friends. There's a million other things that you could be doing, but you chose to be here to get on Level Up with Sean Myers podcast. So I'm excited. Let's dive in. Yeah, I'm honored, man. So tell us a little bit about yourself. So I'm Isaac Miller. I grew up in Willis, Texas. I was part of a bigger family. I was the oldest of six, and I played sports, did Boy Scouts, led a normal kid life, I feel like. Had great parents, and yeah. What sports did you play? I played basketball, lots of basketball. Yeah, you got that 6'2". Yeah, man. I had that nasty cold shot from down low. I was a post. They'd always catch me boxing out, getting rebounds, and I'd surprise them and get a shot from down low. I feel like you're like that hybrid athlete. I know you work out when you can, but I feel like, and we'll get into that here in a second on how we met, but I've always looked at you as like you're the type of guy that if you didn't play basketball, if you didn't work out, if you didn't run track, you could still show up at those events and crush 90% of the people, whether it's running, exercising. Bro, yeah. You know what I mean? Yes, I'm very blessed to have that ability. I don't know what it is, but yeah. Just always been a very energy-filled, good-at-figuring-things-out-on-my-feet kind of person, and I definitely applied that to sports, and it was a blast. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is that there's a lot of genetics involved? Sure, I guess so, yeah. Yeah. Lots of good genetics, sure. Maybe Kobe Bryant's back in my genes somewhere. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you sharing that about your background and a little bit of where you came from. So how did we meet? Me and you. Bro, we met – it had to have been like 2014 or 2015 at Gold's Gym. I remember it like it was yesterday. Me and our friend Ezra, we had – it was the beginning of the year, New Year's resolution. We were going to start working out and doing all this stuff. We were going to go early, right? We were going to go before work. So we'd get there at like 6 in the morning or something, work out for like an hour, hour and a half, and then take showers and go to work at 8. And I remember seeing you and one of our other mutual friends there just busting butts doing these crazy, goofy workouts. We thought it was goofy. Little did we know we'd be in that mess. And we'd be running on the treadmill every morning watching you guys work out. And then one day, I don't know what clicked, but you approached us actually, and you were like, what's up, guys? Let's see how you're doing. You just kind of created some small talk. You were like, hey, man, you want to work out with us? We were like, sure, whatever. Let's do it. Looking back, you could clearly tell we were newbies. We didn't know what we were doing. But, man, it was just – that was like a pivotal turning point in my life, meeting Shawn Myers back then. Wait a minute. I approached you? You did, yeah. Yeah. I'm almost positive. You approached us after we got off the treadmills, like you do at the gym or anywhere we go, right? You just magnet people to you. Yeah. And we just started small talk conversations. And you started asking us about what we do in the mornings, why we work out early. And then you invited me to work out with – or me and Ezra worked out with you and Daryl at the time. Yeah. Oh, bro. Those workouts, man. We did not have any idea what we were getting into. They were brutal. What was brutal then? Dude, it was so funny. I was actually reminiscing with Ezra on this not too long ago. But, man, we would go there and you had no mercy on us. Even though we were new to the game, you just pushed us so hard. And it was so much fun. But we took it, bro. And then we had to go to work all day afterwards. Working outside. And Sean was going back to work at his office. And I'm like – Yeah. So, we had the office jobs. Yeah. You had the office jobs. Oh, my gosh, bro. It was brutal. I remember – I remember making comments saying – Yeah. We got to go to work all day, bro. What did I say? Yeah. And you were like, I don't know. I don't care. I don't care, man. And so – I probably said something along the lines of level up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Level up. You got this. Don't worry. He'll heal. So, that's interesting. What kept you coming back? Oh, man. I don't know, bro. Like, there was something about your personality that just magnetized me towards you. I loved your energy. I loved the – I loved – I don't know. You just seemed like you had a lot of focus. You had tons of self-discipline, which I incredibly admired. Because I wanted more of that in my own life. And you just had – you gave me and Ezra really good accountability. I think that's probably one of the biggest things that I kept showing up for. My personality is – after going through all these tests and stuff or whatever – I'm a 7 on the Enneagram. I'm a yellow on the temperament. I'm an SI on the disc test. I don't like to let people down. And so, when I recognized that I only had so many chances at this time with you to show you that I was serious and wanted to work out with you guys and, like, hang with the big dogs that I felt like, I wasn't going to blow my shot. I wanted to show up, and I didn't care. I remember the first time I slept through my alarm or something, I got a phone call from you. And it was like, bro, where are you at? And I was like, I'm in bed. Get your butts in the gym, bro. We'll see you in 15 minutes. And I did, man. I raced there. Oh, my gosh. But I appreciated it because you didn't give up on trying to help me be better and challenge myself, and you didn't take no as an excuse. And you've always done that for me. Yeah, man. The feeling's mutual. And what's interesting is I've met a lot of people over the years and networked with a lot of people, and we started out with that relationship and working out, health and fitness, and we grew together on the business side of things as well. And so it's a glove fit. We've always kind of said that. Oh, yeah. So as far as our professional and personal life, we've grown together. So it's such a beautiful thing, and what I've always learned from mentors is once I find somebody like that, you know, that you fit with the temperaments and the behaviors and stuff like that and self-reflection, and, again, on top of that, what magnified it for me was, and I didn't know this until recently, was like loyal, you know, and you've always been loyal, a loyal friend. Yeah, yeah. Trust you, rely on you, and are you perfect? No, you're imperfect just like I am, but you understand that I have flaws, I understand you have flaws, and I think that just deepens the connection. Oh, yeah, man. And I think we both have something to give here, and even though I was maybe pursuing you because I wanted what looked like the life that I wanted and stuff, or one of the pieces of it. And what life is that? Man, like I said, I just admire the self-discipline, the control you had over your life. I've always loved a very messy life. Like my personality is not normally organized and decisive and stuff like that. It's very go-with-the-flow friendly. It makes me a very fun and easy person to get along with, but I crave more of that structure in my life because I know I can see the value that it would bring me along with my personality. So if I can add those things to my tool belt, I feel like I could be unstoppable, you know, and achieving whatever goals and dreams I want to achieve for my life, you know. Yeah, 100%. With that being said, so what struggles, challenges have you faced between when we met that day up until present day? Ooh, man. Because you said there was a lack of accountability. Yeah, those were probably two of the biggest ones I was struggling with at that time, and even to this day. Like I would still like to hold myself more accountable and be more self-disciplined. I was just being way too fluid and go-with-the-flow. You didn't let me be that, and it was cool. What do you mean by that? You would call me out on things. Don't be like that. You'd pat me on the shoulder. Don't let me walk all over you like that. And you would know when you were doing it, and you would call yourself out, which is, you know, it's just fun to answer and stuff like that, but it's like, man, he's right, bro. Like I shouldn't take crap from people like that. I'm tired of being walked over and stuff. I don't want to be too nice. Did you feel empowered? Yes, I felt empowered. That's the perfect way to say it. But yeah, that was definitely a big struggle at that time. And then the lack of focus. I had a lack of focus, which just really made me struggle in business and stuff like that. It was okay because I'm a very flexible person. I could deal with that with a little stress, but it wasn't okay as a business owner because I want to build a business that is structured and has a plan on where it's going and build something for myself and the team and something for us all to grow in. When I met you, I looked up to you. You were a mentor to me. I don't know if I ever told you that, but you inspired me. And what I mean by that is because I was a young entrepreneur. I didn't know it at the time. And I hear who this guy was running a landscape business. And this was the early stages of your business, the landscape business. Yeah, I think I was four or five years into it. Exactly. So I looked up to you. You inspired me because you were running this successful landscape business. And at the time, I was like, man, Isaac seems to have it all together. He's thriving. He's got employees. He's got equipment. He knows what he's talking about. He's confident. I looked up to that. And that inspired me on that journey. So yeah, it's not just a one-way street. Yeah, I know. It's cool hearing that. It was reflecting back and having this conversation. I looked up to you. I was like, because I came to you when I got off into the we built the landscape. I mean, I asked you. Oh, that was so fun, bro. That was so fun. It was like having cheat codes to a video game, right? You were like, hey, Isaac, I have these kind of yards. What kind of mower would you buy? And you just go straight out of the gate and buy it or whatever. It was so cool. Yeah, because you literally took like probably a five or six year gap of me figuring things out by myself and just like cutting it down to like a year. Literally build your business to a year when it took me like five or six years, which is incredible. And it really shows me and anybody listening the power of just having like mentors in your life and having the right people in place to help you get to where you need. Yeah. Early in business and stuff, I wasn't taught a lot about self-development or anything. I bought the company. It was a pre-existing company called Seven Acre Wood Landscaping. The owner, Mr. Carey, super awesome guy, really looked up to him. He built a great business, moved away, inherited his family's business and offered me the ability to buy it, just owner financed it. And so for me, I think it was my ticket through college. Like, okay, cool. This will help me pay for college and get through all that. So I treated it like a job. He didn't tell me anything about, hey man, you need to like grow as a leader. You need to self-develop. You need to, you know, figure out what you don't know about business and marketing and all these things. So I literally ran this thing like a job for four or five years. And when you say job, what do you mean by that? Literally, I was a technician. I was out there every day. If you, you've read the e-myth, you know, Yeah. Three different levels. And I was the technician. What's the three different levels? There's the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician. Okay. And I was the technician. I love lawn care. I love doing it. I worked for him for three years, taking pride in my work and constantly trying to push him out of the company. And I felt like that made me a good business owner. I, you know, I'm trying to assume all the responsibility. No, it just made me a really good technician and turning into a manager. I could manage a couple of guys, you know, for Mr. Cary and as we're doing this company and stuff, but I ran it as a technician for years, bro. Just working in the company, like not learning more about estimating and not trying to figure out, you know, why we lose jobs or why we gain jobs. And just, it was a mess, bro. And what did that do to you over the years? Right now, maybe within the first three or four or five years, but there came a time and place where you're like, man, I'm feeling this way. This is what it's doing to my, my, you know, different areas of life. And you start noticing effect. I just noticed that I didn't feel like I had much control. I was just doing these jobs and making this money and nothing was getting better. If anything, it was getting worse. I was just floating on the momentum from the previous business owner. He built good enough systems and stuff that it worked for a good while. And we'd add jobs here and there, but it was never like substantial growth or anything. And what do you think? So when I got married and I went just full time, like, Hey, I love landscaping. I'm doing this company. I'm going to take off a year from school. I'm going to get married and like, just go all in on the business. That was when I met you guys, or that's when I met you. And we started working, you know, working out and all this stuff. And so, you know, God works in mysterious ways, but that was like a pivotal point, pivotal point in my life when I started learning about self development, like how to become a better business owner. Cause when I first met you, I had still been floating on the momentum of what Mr. Carey had built for me and sold to me. But I started getting into Dave Ramsey, started learning about like pit off all my debt of the business. And then I was like starting with a fresh slate whenever I had started working out with Ezra at the gym and then met you guys. And so from that point forward, like you started challenging me to like read books and look into podcasts and YouTube videos and, you know, just open in Pandora's box at self development. And it was just like a wild ride because I started substantially growing the business, even though it was messy, substantially growing the business and completely changing the game, which was awesome. And from a third party viewpoint, like, you know, looking from over here and just watching our friendship and our professional, our professional relationship grow. I've seen you grow tenfold here in the last six to 12 months. Oh my God. So that was shifting gears a little bit. Like that transition. I know it was messy. You started to be, Hey, I need to grow. Let's not mention you have several kids where you got a basketball team now. Yeah. We have four kids, four kids under six, four kids under six, a wife, an awesome wife. How long have you been married? We've been married seven years. Seven years. No, eight years. Yeah. In a thriving business. Yes. Right. Not to mention several hundreds of friends. Oh man. Yeah. I think I shared on, I talked about you on my last episode or one of my episodes before I have like two friends and you have like hundreds of friends. So you have two very deep connections. I have many, many, not a big connection, but you're working on that, right? Yes, of course. So transitioning started. Okay. Personal development. Hey, for things to change, I need to change. Right. Working on becoming the best version of yourself. And you've been doing that. And just from the last seven or eight months, I've seen you personally, and I know a lot of guys in our mastermind group has seen you exponentially grow within. Let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So I would almost call that one of the next pivotal points, pivotal points in my life. Um, is when we bought actually team and I'm on care from you guys. That's also when we started doing the, uh, the mastermind group. And that's when you started doing your coaching. I was actually your, your guinea pig. I was the first, the first coachee, which has been a lot of fun, bro. Watching. Yeah. It's been awesome watching you like develop your coaching skills dramatically in that period of time. And then, uh, and just helping me so much along the way, man, like I can't even tell you how much I appreciate how much you've helped me personally in so many different areas of my life, not just business, you know, but even just marriage and, um, personal development, self-discipline, like all these things, man, it's just literally life coach almost. Yeah. What, what has been those one or two moments reflecting back the last seven or eight, nine months? Um, something, something that was said, a podcast, a book, uh, maximize group. What is that? Like one or two, like one or two things like, Hey, this is, this is really working. And like, let me double down, triple down on that right now, man. Uh, are we, so are we talking about, uh, life in general, right? So we've talked a little bit about business and you're, you know, going through that. 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