Rich Latimer: Hello, I’m Rich Latimer, and I’m falling in to a burning ring of EO Fire. JLD on a mission to inspire.

John: I love it. And Fire Nation, as you can tell, Rich is a musician and conscious entrepreneur from Australia. He started his business journey back in 2012 with a monthly income of $20.00, got himself three totally unique mentors to help him heal his hate of money, and proceeded to build a double six-figure passive income. Rich, take a minute, fill in some gaps from that intro and give us a little glimpse of your personal life.

Rich Latimer: Yeah, John, it’s a lot of gaps to fill in. I’ve sort of spent days kind of thinking about those gaps, and to bring it into a nutshell, it would be, like a lot of people, I went through lots of severe trauma when I was young in a range of different ways. And my, I guess, unique aspect was the kind of range of things that I experienced and went through. Violence and abuse and some hostage situations.

John: Whoa.

Rich Latimer: There was abandonment. There was a range of, yeah, some pretty heavy things. Some suicide in there. There was an attempt on my life at one point. And during this time, I was actually living in kind of like a dropout society, in a way, of people who were getting away from society, from structure, from money and those contexts, and often from the law. And so we were living in the forest. No electricity for the better part of it, and very out there. And while there was all that pain, there was the amazing thing of being in touch with nature. And most of all, there was music. Music was incredible. I was just in love with music, Cat Stevens, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, all that. And music was my guide, and nature, and the river and the sun, and being in the bush all the time really balanced it.

And even ironically, one of the people probably most responsible for my pain was also responsible for teaching me guitar. So it was a dualistic kind of journey that led me through to being a musician who is inspired, really inspired, to use music as a vehicle for change at a personal level. And that kind of brought me – I came back and went to uni, did my best even though I’d come out of an alternative society. And then struggled along there, really, to integrate with that world. And then ultimately, a range of events, but a cataclysmic event was actually one of my siblings having a drink driving crash, and I found myself in an ICU ward by his side singing to him, and praying and singing and watching amazing things happen when I sung to him, and seeing the effect that music had on someone who was certified as the brain’s not functioning.

And then hearing him speak about things afterwards that were only possible – well, it was not possible according to medical science. And he ended up coming forward and being kind of a miracle in a way. And it just flipped me. I just gathered every experience, all the traumas, all the journeys, all the songs that I’d written kind of in a self-counseling mode, really, and just went – at that time, I was actually in quite a successful rock band by then. We had video clips on, and were on radio, and were touring around as a rock musician. And that was amazing, but it was lacking something. And this was it.

So I came out of that experience in the ICU ward, and I put a little video up that I was going to look to go into high schools and sing in there. And then lo and behold, San Francisco. I got a message from a guy over there, and the next thing you know, I’m on a jet plane, and I’m making a reenactment movie. I’m singing to auditoriums of two-and-a-half thousand people at a time.

John: Wow.

Rich Latimer: And I’m performing in Berkeley’s Rehabilitation High School with an average age of 25. Young people that have killed people at 13 and 14. And I’m sitting up there with a guitar, somehow managing to sing to them in a way that brought them a different level of awareness in their heart. So that went on for four-and-a-half years, and then the almighty dollar just crushed me. I just ran out of everything. Ran out of – got inspired to do the high schools and touring around. There was no money in it. It was really difficult to monetize. I’d inspired people to help me, but they’d reached a point where it’s like, we’ve got to put food on the table. We love you, we love what you’re doing, but we’ve kids to feed.

And that just sort of sent me a bit down, a bit into a spiral, and I just went, the world’s a terrible place. It’s all run by money. If you don’t have it, you can’t do wonderful things in the world. And that was where I then, yeah, I went, that’s it. I’m gonna ask for some money. So I invited seven known millionaires in my region out for lunch, each independently, and I just sat them down and said, “I’d like you to give me a million dollars. This is what I do. This is what I’m able to do.” And I showed them the testimonies from the kids and the results we’d had with kids reaching out. And none of them gave me any money. One of them, though, said, “Look, I could easily give you a million. That’s not a problem. But I won’t. What I’ll do is I’ll teach you how to make it.” And that was when I got my first mentor.

And he looked at me and he said, “It’s great. You can sing; you want to help kids; you want to save the world, all the rest of it. That’s great. But anyway, what can you do that can make some money?” And I said, “Well,” and I had. I’d become exceptionally good at Facebook and, in particular, email marketing. We’re in an independent band. And those two tools were how I built our whole career and took us to the level of success that we had, with zero budget and just exceptional social media and email skills. And so that’s where, yeah, the digital marketing sort of Rich Training came in. And I went – I’m great at this, and I actually love it. I really, really love it.

John: That’s a good combo.

Rich Latimer: It is a good combo. And then that’s where the second mentor kind to come into my life. Me going, well, not just – I’m in the bush. I’m now living out in the middle of the bush again, funnily enough, but not in the big city, in the big smoke. And I connected with this guy, a business coach, very renowned in his field, Kurt, an incredible machine of a man. A consummate professional. Dedicated, diligent, and he kind of took me under his wing, and he put me through my paces. He said, “I can’t be referring people to you with your email marketing system and your digital marketing services unless it’s 100 percent results proven. I don’t want to hear nay talk about all of this. I just want to see you use those two tools to generate massive income for my clients, and then after that, we can talk.”

And so that’s the journey I’ve been on with him for nearly three years. And we’ve done that, and that led me to Facebook recognizing me in 2014 as one of the top Facebook marketers in the world, and the only one recognized in Australia. And that sort of took me to another level. And so Rich Training started to become a real thing. And all of a sudden, I’m like this guy with a laptop in my bedroom by myself with a dream of getting Awareness Shows going, and now I’ve got two people, three people. I’m touring around doing seminars as clients were setting up the systems and email systems, and I’m touring. And then all of a sudden, I’ve got 15 or 18 people in my team getting close to really launches Awareness Shows, and started again kind of, I don’t know, maybe you went through, I’m sure, entrepreneurs out there.

But basically, it’s like each time you go to another level, it’s kind of like a restart. For me it was. It was like, I can’t handle this. I don’t know if I’m eating properly at the right – I just don’t even know what’s going on. It’s kind of like, where was I? Where was my original thing? And that’s when I reached out and got another mentor. And this mentor was purely around self-compassion, self-love, relationship, obviously with my partner, my wife, the relationship to myself, my teams. And really coming from that place. And so this union of this kind of hard line money man, but I learned different from my first mentor, and then this amazing professional business coach with Kurt, and Martin.

And it’s taken me where we are now. And that is got nearly 18 people in Rich Training. Awareness Shows is back up. And then one day under a tree in the sun, I thought, you know what? I’ve been listening to this bloody awesome podcast. The guy is – he’s a fairly excited guy. I thought at least we can get a bit of fun, funny with the – he’s so excited. Everything is wow, wow, wow. And I was like, well, I really like this dude. And I’m gonna write him an email. The next thing you know, I’ve got 30 copies of the Freedom Journal, which I’ve been giving out everywhere and loving it. And I’m here talking to you. So that’s the gaps filled.

John: Well, those gaps are filled. And Fire Nation, I mean, this is three unique stories. These were three different mentors that found Rich at three very critical times in his life. And what was he? He was open to receiving these mentors at this time. He wasn’t closed off. He didn’t say, oh, you know, I got everything squared away because I have one mentor, and I figured things out. No, he was open when that second mentor approached him, and then the third. And that just has been able to – that’s allowed him to be able to create the business that he now has today, where now we’re chatting on EO Fire, and he’s gonna be dropping some value bombs.

So Rich, let’s kind of maybe take a step back and say, wow. You shared with us some really tough times in your life. But what would you say your worst entrepreneurial moment was to date? Since you started the business, what has been a really tough time that you experienced that you’ve battled through?

Rich Latimer: It was at the very beginning. It was leaving that cafe with that first mentor so excited. Kind of semi-disappointed that he didn’t just put a million dollars in my bank account, I will admit. But pretty excited that I’m gonna have access to this, and I’m gonna try. So I walk out from my first mentor meeting. I am just excited. I’ve got my notes, my pad there ready for notes. I’ve already thought about some ideas for the business model and all my skills, and even some testimonials, and I’m just really pumped to look at, okay, how are we gonna get in and do this, and what’s the mentor gonna do to help me? And just that real beautiful, innocent, passionate excitement. And I sat down, and he just sat there in silence and just didn’t say anything, just looked. And then he just calmly reached into his pocket, and he pulled out $1,000.00 worth of cash that was inside a platinum clip, and it had a gold kind of MasterCard looking thing on it. And he just put it on his leg and just started rubbing it.

And I’m sitting there kind of looking at that going – and looking at the money, thinking to myself; it takes me a month to save up $1,000.00 just to get my car back on the road. And I’m sitting there, and I’m starting to feel emotions coming up. I’m starting to feel churning in my belly, a bit of burning in my body, some uncomfortable feelings. And my face is getting a bit red. And he’s looking at me, just rubbing this money. And then he just says, “I keep $1,000.00 cash on me at all times, plus this” what he called the access to world card, which I guess is some mega credit card, “just reminding me how close I am to my money and to abundance.” And I sort of just absorbed that for a second. And then he just said, “Look, and I can’t help you make any money. You’ll never be financially successful, sorry. Your name might be Rich, but I’m the one with all the money in my bank account and not you.”

John: Ooh.

Rich Latimer: And I just felt like I got a left hook, then an uppercut. And I’m kind of sitting there thinking, whoa. The thing was, the thing that made me more angry than anything, was that he was right. And I thought he was right. I actually felt, he’s kind of right. It was a dream to me to ever have any money, really. And I didn’t think it would even be possible. And he was kind of hitting on that core of me. But I managed to sort of humble myself and drop the anger, and I said, “Well, how can I love money when I see all this?” And I started to realize that I really did hate money. I hated the way that it saved people, the things I saw it do. I hated aspects of inequality that I observed.

I grew up in the forest, man. It was a different world. And I just – yeah, I couldn’t quite connect with this thing. And he was seeing that, and he was just going, here’s your wound, and I’ll just put some salt in it. And then I kind of just realized he was correct, and I asked him, “How can I, when I see all this in the world?” And then he said, “Okay. That’ll take us to our first lesson. Gratitude.” And he hit me with gratitude, and said, “You might not have gratitude around financial abundance and money yet, but let’s practice gratitude so perfectly in every single tiny aspect of your existence that money and finance, you will find your way to find the gratitude within it.” And so this was lesson one, which I’m thinking, okay, I’ll get into that. And I design all my own practices. I design all my own tools. And it took me nine months to pass the first lesson. Nine months to achieve an optimum state of pure gratitude across everything and actually start to feel the gratitude around money and financial abundance. Yeah.

And I did it. I did the work. And I returned to him, and each time, no, no, you haven’t got it yet. No, no, you haven’t got it yet. He could tell through my words, my actions, my body language. And eventually I got it and dropped into a pure state of gratitude. No judgment, no perception, no comparison, just gratitude for everything, including the fact that I was soon to become a millionaire.

John: So let’s talk about one of your greatest aha moments that you’ve had to date. Tell us that story.

Rich Latimer: The greatest aha moment for me – again, like the worst moment, yes, there was an aha out of the back of it. But the greatest one when I scoured everything was only a couple of months ago. And it was the official relaunch of Awareness Shows. It was sitting on an airplane with six of my team, flying 10 people down to a show, completely paying for all the kids to attend. The school was just so grateful. Playing this incredible concert for six or seven hundred students, creating massive connections and reachouts from kids in trauma, and doing the work that I originally started doing, and knowing that I had no stresses. Everything was paid for. We had a beautiful house on the beach. I had wonderful food for the team. I had a team, for start. I wasn’t by myself.

And just doing that and coming out of that experience. And then that night, we had a celebration dinner, and we all sat around. So it was Rich Training digital marketing team are also involved in the Awareness Shows, and they wear different hats. And so we’re all sitting there. And so I went around. I just said, “I just want to ask you to share what you feel now. Some of you have been with me for four years hearing about one day, one day, one day we’ll relaunch these Awareness Shows. And you’ve been on this Rich Training Facebook and email journey with me. How do you feel?” And they each just shared such beautiful things from their heart of how they saw all that day in and day out work that they do with me, not for me, within the digital marketing and all the rest of it, and how it all tied in, and the energy I was holding for Awareness Shows. And they saw what happened.

And the biggest thing, I think, was having my mentors physically there crying, weeping, and seeing what my unique gift is within the Awareness Shows, and seeing that I built this business to be able to refund it. And it finally got to my turn to speak at the table, at the dinner table as we went around. And my wife cooked a beautiful lasagna. And I just sat there, and that was my aha moment. I just looked around, and my whole body, just everything, the hairs on end. And I just started crying, man. I just couldn’t do much more. I was just crying. I’d shared a couple of stories, and just realized, it’s all happening. It’s actually happening. There’s a business there. It’s refunding it. The Awareness Shows are back up. There’s this incredible A team of people. I’ve got a beautiful new 18-month old daughter.

It was just pure present moment, pure. And so that’s been my aha moment, and that was a couple of months ago, as the official relaunch of Awareness Shows.

John: I mean, Fire Nation, how amazing is hearing that? I mean, this is a guy, Rich, that just came from where he came from, and didn’t even have that mindset of abundance or gratitude, but found those mentors, grew threw them, into now where he is today, just sharing this journey and the culmination of where it is. And to see where he’s even gonna go from here is even more exciting. Now, Rich, if you could just sum it up in one sentence. Let’s keep this real concise here. What’s your biggest weakness as an entrepreneur?

Rich Latimer: The biggest weakness for me has been impatience and trusting in others. And they’re two things that I’ve brought my awareness into really heavily lately. But they’re the two biggest ones, impatience and ability just to let go, let go and trust others.

John: What’s your biggest strength?

Rich Latimer: Biggest strength for me is dreaming and action combined to kind of manifest and create things. That’s my superpower there.

John: And what are you most fired up about today?

Rich Latimer: At the moment, I’m fired up about absolutely everything, really. It’s the fact that Rich Training’s going incredible. I’m now doing the speaking gigs and getting more clients. Awareness Shows obviously has relaunched, and we’re gonna look to come back to the States hopefully in the next year or two. My band, my rock band that I put on the shelf when I started doing the high schools, has just released last week a 15-track rock album, and I’m just – if I wasn’t in the band, I would love the band kind of thing. It’s called Hear the Heart. And so then I realized it on my birthday. And I think most of all is that I’ve kind of – I’ve got clarity now, John, around really everything now.

What’s my core unique gift, what I’m doing with the digital consultancy, what I’m doing with Awareness Shows, and creating a thing called, to bring it all together, and kind of inspired by you as well, man. I’m gonna use the Freedom Journal to do this, actually, so I’ll tell you now and the listeners that I’m making that commitment. It won’t be till 2017, but it’s called The Path of the Awaretrepreneur, a seven-step journey from head to heart-centered business. And I couldn’t believe it, but there’s no word, awaretrepreneur. Because for me, everything is about expanding my awareness. Every time I listen it one of your podcasts, it’s just a tiny bit more light of awareness gets switched on in me. And so I always seek these opportunities. And I feel that I’m an awaretrepreneur as opposed to – yeah, like that’s just a constantly expanding person in that way. And so, yeah.

John: That’s powerful. And being aware, being present, Fire Nation, is amazing. So don’t go anywhere. I want you to be present in the lightning round. We’re gonna take a quick minute first and thank our sponsors.

Rich, are you prepared for the lightning round?

Rich Latimer: I certainly am.

John: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Rich Latimer: It was lack of awareness and fear of finding success on the wrong path.

John: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Rich Latimer: Know that I am no better or worse than anyone, that at my core, I am love, I guess, and I have unique, priceless gifts to offer, and just to be comfortable with that.

John: What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?

Rich Latimer: For me, the one that I do most consistently, I realize, is each day, I do a little bit of kind of past healing of things, and a little bit of future dreaming. But I kind of walk in a connected present moment as much as possible. And I watch some of the things I’m healing fade away, and I watch some of the things that I’m dreaming about start to manifest or show up in my life.

John: Can you share an Internet resource like Evernotes with Fire Nation?

Rich Latimer: Yeah, sure. One of the tools that saved me was Weekly Plan. And I’ve become friends with the dude, actually, and it’s WeekPlan.net. And it’s an incredible tool for just simple tasks, where using the four quadrant method, and it’s just kept me so on track. And actually, because I’m friends with him, I can do it – he’s got a thing, WeekPlan.net/Rich for a discount for people who want to go and use it.

John: Very cool. If you could recommend just one book, what would it be and why?

Rich Latimer: This was so hard for me, this one I had Lord of the Rings up, and I had Illusions, by Richard Bach. And I realized they kind of [crosstalk] [00:21:03].

John: So now you’re cheating and you’re just saying them anyways.

Rich Latimer: No, because I can’t. That’s impossible. So Illusion, by Richard Bach, because for me, it was just that balance of the inner and outer world, the student and the mentor. That story really allowed me to realize you can master yourself, I guess. You can be both. You can rise, and that’s what that book really did for me.

John: All right, Rich. This is the last question, but it is a doozy. Imagine that you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world, identical to Earth, but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have. Your food and shelter’s taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500.00. What would you do in the next seven days?

Rich Latimer: I’d go in a gum tree and I’d find a guitar for under $250.00. I’d go out in the streets and probably give away a portion of the other $250.00 to the people on the streets. And then I’d start busking there, earn some money. I’d pay for a little bit of social media and email marketing. I’d use that to kind of promote a music program, doing my music in schools and helping people. I’d get a bit of momentum there, and then I’d start offering my social media and email abilities and my musician skills to create a bit more revenue in fees. And then off of those fees, yeah, I’d start growing the work I wanted to do with my music, and ultimately, yeah, share that with the world.

John: Rich, let’s end today on Fire, brother, with a parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you, and then we’ll say bye-bye.

Rich Latimer: All right. Well, parting piece of guidance for me is quite simply, we are here, here to love, love and learn, learn and serve, and all lift each other. That’s a chorus from one of my songs.

John: Oh my god, I love that.

Rich Latimer: Yeah, we hit a love, love and learn, learn and serve everyone, uplift everyone. Which is what you do, man, with your podcast and your work.

John: Thank you.

Rich Latimer: You’re a legend. And the way to connect with me, this freaked me out as well, because there’s this Rich Training, there’s the band, there’s my music, there’s Awareness Shows, all this stuff all over the place. There’s the dream of the awaretrepreneur program. So what it is, man, is just simply awaretrepreneur.com/fire. And that is an entry, a portal gateway to kind of everything, including a first release access for you guys and the Fire Nation people as this program, the Awaretrepreneur, the Path of the Awaretrepreneur gets built. So Awaretrepreneur.com/Fire.

John: Fire Nation, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I mean, hello, you’ve been hanging out with R.L. and J.L.D. today, so keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com. Just type Rich in the search bar. His show on this page will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about, best show notes in the biz, Fire Nation. Timestamps, links galore. And head directly to Awaretrepreneur.com/Fire, because Rich has some great stuff for you there. And Rich, I just wanted to thank you, brother, for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flip side.