Podcast is LIVE. Jamie MacDonald Interview: Transcript + Toolkit
Jamie MacDonald has battled domestic abuse, gambling and depression to build a powerful network of clients and mentors from Dean Graziosi to Lewis Howes. He's also a freestyle football celebrity and has built multiple streams of income at a very young age. Learn the tools Jamie learnt from Dean and Lewis and those he uses to upgrade his life and income - taking small incremental steps, hustling and being of service to others.
Full interview Transcript edited for readability.
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Question: Where were you born and what was your childhood like?
Jamie: I was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. So I'm actually from Northern Ireland. Not a lot of people know that to be honest, but I kind of grew up in a broken home. I had a very caring mom, but my dad was very violent and that meant that I moved to ten different places between birth to six years of age, just moving from pillar to post because of that. The only safe haven or place of love that I had was at my grandparents house. And because my dad was so violent, it meant that I could only see my grandparents once a year. So effectively I felt like they were ripped away from me. So as a child, I was pretty messed up. Moved from Northern Ireland down to Southern Ireland when I was maybe 4 years old. But I was a victim of racism. I was the only kid from Northern Ireland and kids don't know any better. They're pretty ruthless. I was obviously the odd one out, was usually smacked about and stuff like that. And I was always a caring kid and all these kids would sort of beat me around and I couldn't quite understand that and I remember saying like ‘I can handle this pain because I've been through a lot of bad things.’ I had seen my mum physically get beaten and blood going down her face and stuff like that were some of my first childhood memories. I remember these kids slapping me and I was thinking ‘I can handle this pain, but can you?’ And I don't know why that was going through my mind at such a young age but that's just how I was thinking. I didn't want to hurt anybody. Maybe because I'd seen so much violence myself. I knew what it felt like to be in pain. I didn't want to see anybody else in that pain. But long story short, my dad actually found us again in Dublin. So we evacuated. We got out of Dublin and moved to England which is how I have the accent, the English accent. I moved here when I was six. But something in me changed as a child when I moved to England. I kind of said, again so young, surprised that these things were going through my head, but I was like, I'm kind of the man of the house now because I've like gone off Northern Ireland and now I’m in England, like on my own two feet and my whole behavior changed. So I went from this nice, loving kid to this very stressed out and traumatized kid and basically I made a decision with myself at a very young age that I wasn't going to let anybody knock me around again, and I completely changed as a person. I created this body armor and decided to be incredibly competitive so that nobody could beat me whether that was academically or physically and I basically put this armor up where I was emotionless. So anything that dented my emotions and dented my armor, I'd quickly address it and then remove it from my life. So from childhood in England, if anybody got on the wrong side of me, I'm not saying I was a bully, I certainly wasn't that, but I had a short fuse and I didn't allow anybody to push me around and to give you an example of the armor I created, I decided to become the best footballer because that's what we used to do in primary school. We used to kick bottles of Coke around; anything that could move along the floor, we played football with. And I just made a decision that I was going to be the best at everything because being best meant the least likelihood that I was ever going to be bothered or traumatized. And to give you an example of something say denting the armor that I created, I was actually quite into singing in churches and we used to go around to old people's homes and sing and I remember standing next to my friend and I used to love it and I went to school one day and the guys in the class said, “Oh you like to sing. That's really gay.” And I didn't even know what a gay person was. I have no disrespect for gay people whatsoever. It was just a word that was thrown out there. It could have been any other word to be honest, but regardless that's the word they used and that hit the armor. So I quit on the spot. I quit singing. So just to give you an example of how much I changed; anything that dented the armor or anything that bothered me, I removed that out of my life or anything that somebody criticized me on, I got so good, to the point where people can't insult me for it and the same thing happened with my academic study. I became obsessed with maths and I was known as the best kid in Math to the point where they actually moved me up three years for Math and English. So I was in year three, but I was the kid that went to year six for Math and English. I actually excelled in Math in year six but when it came to English, I was completely out of my depth. So they were giving me assignments and so many fundamentals to English literature that I just completely missed and it made me shut down and the same sort of happened with my mathematics as well. Towards the end, especially with English, I shut down and instead of becoming an academic genius or a smart kid, I became the class clown. So I completely U-turned because I just froze and I had to find an alternative method and so the whole way through my school I went from being the ultra-competitive kid, I was still competitive, but I became more of the class clown, the comedy guy and my academic study was completely on hold. So I would say even up to the age of 16 when I left school I mean I went to college too, but I would say my English at the time in terms of written English was at the same level as a kid in year 3 because I completely froze.
Question: Your life took a U-turn again when you met Andrew Henderson and when you started listening to Les brown. Tell us a bit about that phase.
Jamie: With the whole ultra competitive,being really good at football thing, came some of the Kick Ups in the state or Kick Ups in the soccer school and all that stuff. So i became obsessed with Kick Ups in general because I wanted to be the best; stand out and all that stuff. And when I was younger there was a soccer camp and who could do the most Kick Ups, got selected and won the trophy. Long story short, because I was the kid who wasn’t from the area in Cornwall, Truro; I never got selected. The winning kid at the time did like 6 Kick Ups. So I asked my mum to give me a football that day. I stayed out till the sun came down and I did 14. So quite a bit more. That obsession spiraled throughout the years and when I was around 14, I was still known as that guy who could do the Kick Ups. But there's this other guy called Andrew Henderson, now the 5 time world champion in freestyle football, was doing tricks around the world which were completely alien to me. But people in the school connected the dots and said, “Hey Jamie’s really good at kick ups and Andrew is going around the world. You guys should meet each other.” We're in the same class in school. And he was really progressing. He really loved the sport. We also played table tennis in England School level up until the age of under 16. He loved freestyle a lot more than me but again reverting back to what I said about my childhood, the whole freestyle football and football ability was my armor. So I felt like I have to keep doing it. To be honest, Andrew liked it a lot more than me. I just kind of liked it but because I’d developed this armor, I couldn’t let anybody damage the armor. I couldn’t be a normal person. I couldn’t start something new because I was already good at something. I actually held on to freestyle a lot longer than I actually wanted to. In my late teens and early 20s, I actually held onto it because I was slightly worried that if I tried something different, it would be ‘How the mighty have fallen’ because there's a lot of pressure on my shoulders. And then I started traveling the world around 17 or 18. Fully traveling the world around 18, just bits and bobs at the age of 17.
Question: And how did you come across Les Brown?
Jamie: Whenever you're covering yourself up or you're blocking things out or doing things against the grain of what you want to do, ultimately you are going to get depressed because it's not true to your identity. Because you're not being true to yourself. And when I was 18 or 19, I was pretty depressed. I wasn't medically diagnosed as depressed. But for example when I was on YouTube, I was like Googling or Youtubing how to get energy because I just didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to do anything. I was a complete disaster. No enthusiasm and I was looking for answers and I went on YouTube and I found Les Brown and Tony Robbins. So I started watching Les Brown seminars from the 70s and the 80s and bits from Tony Robbins’ and I was watching content that none of my friends had ever seen before. Completely alien to them and they(Les and Tony) basically gave me the piece of rope to start pulling myself out. Because I was in such a bad place and through repetition of watching those guys or learning little bits, introducing daily gratitude and stuff like that I managed to pull myself out of a pretty dark place and I guess I’ve stuck with it to this day because ultimately if you don't constantly learn and work on areas of your life, you are going to fall back and I have to stand guard at the door of my mind because my mind can slip back quite quickly if I don't keep it in check.
Question: Do you have mentors in real life, or do you consider Tony and Les to be your mentors?
Jamie: Yeah, I call them my virtual mentors. In my early 20s, I was very aware that my friends and I mean no disrespect to them because I care about them to this day, but I knew that my friends had a very predictable future. So my friends were like painters and stuff like that and I could leave the country for five years and I can guarantee you my friends would still be painters. And I kind of had something within me. I really wanted to do more and because I've been through so much pain in my life, one of my driving forces is, I don't want anyone else to be in pain. So I really resonate with people like Tony and Les who have been through pain themselves and I decided in my early 20s, I wanted to change the world in terms of helping people and I still do, but I didn't have the belief. So you hear all the time about mentors saying, “You've got to believe, you’ve got to believe. There's nothing to fear.” But to internalize it in your gut, I just wasn't quite there with that. But yeah, I started calling them my virtual friends because I knew, you are who you hang around with. They say if you hang around with nine losers, chances are you'll be the 10th. That's something Les Brown says and my friends had a predictable future, so I decided to create virtual friends. So what I would do is I would listen to podcasts maybe two a day, even if I was just cleaning my room and I would kind of pretend like laughing at their jokes and nodding at their stuff, pretending they're my actual friends. That we’re all sitting around this table. And that's how I started upgrading my mind; by creating these virtual friends and that came in the forms of Impact Theory and Lewis Howes’ podcast and stuff like that.
Question: And tell us the story of how you and Lewis became friends later on?
Jamie: Lewis Howes is a good friend of mine. We met around maybe 15 months back in London. So the story behind that was, Lewis was in London for an event. He was doing a speaking engagement and I basically connected Lewis with Andrew Henderson. So Andrew Henderson has a million followers of Instagram now and Lewis had a million at a time. So I was like, “Hey guys, you should connect. I think you guys could bounce off each other and create content. You can actually work together.” And Lewis got back to me and said, “Yeah, that sounds great.” And it was maybe fate. I don't know. I'm not a big believer in that but as if by chance, a freestyle job came up to me in London that same day Lewis and Andrew were to meet. So I caught the overnight sleeper train and just helped them out. So that's how we actually got connected, just kind of by chance, but it was me who engineered putting them together and that's kind of the whole thing that I am all about is kind of how could I be of service to these two guys and lift them?
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Question: Lewis must receive a lot of DMs. How were you able to convince him to come spend time with you?
Jamie: The way I messaged Lewis was I didn't make it about me at all and this is a good tip for anybody who's reading this. Nobody wants to hang around with a random 25 year old kid who wants to kick ball. But they have time if somebody is being of service to that person. So I knew that if I made it about him and him only or him and somebody else, something that can benefit him, there's a good chance that he'll listen to me. Whereas if I make it about me, there's a good chance he gets that all the time and he's not going to listen. So my intention with Lewis at the time, although I consider him a friend now was to be of service to him without expectation. So I was of service without expectation trying to add value to his experience in London and he got back to me because of that. So if you are going to reach out to somebody you consider a mentor, you have to be of service to that person without expectation because if you kind of gave him the fanboy approach, they'll acknowledge you and they'll appreciate you but they might not respect you in terms of meeting up with you and spending the day with you. But if you're constantly of service to this person without expectation and you're doing a good job; the motivation guys in particular, they have these inner circle moments where they will gather around and discuss how they can take each other to the next level. If you're over delivering without expectation, there's a good chance they're going to say "Hey Lewis, how did you get so successful over on TikTok?" And Lewis might say to these guys confidentially "Oh this guy Jamie did everything." "Who's this Jamie guy? Put me in touch." And you know, that's when you start getting work from other people that are on the higher level that you want to be at.
Question: Yeah, I think, as far as I remember, that is how Dean Graziosi got in touch with you?
Jamie: So the story with Dean was, I saw Dean had a TikTok account, and had around 140 followers. But he wasn't presenting or his marketing team, although they were doing a great job in terms of the content, the framing was 16 by 9, which is a big no no on TikTok and there's just a few things going on with the way it was presented. And again, I just wanted to be of genuine service to Lewis and his friend as I just said. So I told Lewis, "Hey look, this account can improve. If they require any assistance with anything, please do not hesitate to ask." And that was it. I didn't want a job. I was just trying to help them. I was just going to consult them and that was the end of it. But a week later, they actually ended up hiring me and I became the social media manager for Dean.
Question: I want to go back to your high school days. Once you completed your high school, did you go to college or you were busy with your side hustles?
Jamie: I did go to college and I did Sports Coaching and Fitness. It was meant to be for two years but I dropped the whole core module because I was offered the opportunity to do football skills with the now football manager for Manchester United, Ole Gunnar Solskjær. So I actually dropped the whole core module in a sports massage and taught Ole Gunnar Solskjær some skills which, obviously, I didn't know at the time, was a good thing or a bad thing. But I took a chance and ultimately I'm not in this sports coaching space right now. So I guess it was a good decision. I don't recommend it for everybody to do that to be fair. I was a pretty naive kid at the time. I think I was 17 at the time but that particular thing did work out because ultimately you can leverage anything you ever achieved to achieve something else. And in my early twenties I became the ultimate yes man.Tony Robbins calls it, turn your shoulds into your musts and I was becoming a bit of a Yes Man and whenever I had a deadline with a client I’d turn my shoulds into my musts. So like, I should go do the freestyle job in London. No, I've confirmed this thing with 4 clients in London and I must deliver on this. And I just said yes to loads of things that I wasn't even qualified to do. Like I had no qualifications in events management or attending freestyle events in other places in the country or internationally, but I said yes anyway and I turned my shoulds into my musts.
Question: And when you built your website ukfreestyler.com, did you have any experience with websites at the time?
Jamie: I was always a fan of websites when I was in my early teens. So I made a fun Yahoo website and I didn't know how to publish it. I actually didn't know anything about it. But I enjoyed the process. I love problem solving and creating things. So I had a Yahoo free football website, which nobody in the world saw. I started up with that but then it gave me enough tools under my belt to make a proper website. And again, it was just kind of a basic premade template. I made this website called UKfreestyler.com and it was free hosting and everything, but I paid £8.99 for the url. So my first website was with that eight ninety-nine pounds and what I would do is I'd go around to schools for free and I would say, "Hey, I do single freestyle football. Do you mind if I do a show for your kids and record the footage?" And I never got any kickbacks. I just went around school to school, updated all the stuff on our website, and then I got my first ever paid job in a nightclub, to do a show in an under-18s disco night. Luckily for me, a rapper from London, he was meant to do a show but canceled and they actually called me up and said "Hey Jamie, we have this show for you. We’ll give you 50 pounds. 50 pounds might as well be 5,000 pounds for me to be honest. And I took it and I did the show and that was the first sort of real belief that I knew I could make money from this job.
Question: So you were going to these schools and doing these events. Was there a built-in marketplace for such gigs or you were trying to educate the market?
Jamie: To some degree there was a market. There were maybe three or four people doing the circuit where they were doing really well and they had a job doing freestyle football. But to be honest, I didn't know anything about business at the time. I was just like, literally zero. I was the ultimate trial and error machine. So I could have potentially had a mentorship. I didn't know the people at the time and the freestylers at the time certainly wouldn't have wanted to help me because it's a bit of a rat race, you know, who can get the job first? So I was the ultimate trial and error machine. I heard there were agencies in London. I didn't even know how to send an invoice. Even with my workshop, when I pitched schools for workshops, I actually made the workshop up and then over time, I created the solid structure and plan where I'm doing Sports and Fitness related modules to actually execute that plan. But the market at that time wasn't big, certainly not the school workshop and things like that. But on the corporate scene or TV scene there were maybe two or three big players that were pulling all the strings.
Question: So you built that business on the go and most young entrepreneurs fall into this trap of trying to figure out everything before they even begin working on their idea. So how important is hustle?
Jamie: Lewis Howes basically says that if you're going to do a podcast, you've got to give it at least two years. A lot of people do a podcast and they give it six months because they say, “Hey nobody's watching this, etc etc etc.” Excuses creep up. But you have to give it time. Lewis says give it two years and it's also what kind of edge can you bring to a podcast? What questions can you ask? What can you extract from somebody else that another podcast isn't doing? And then that way you're making your podcast stand out and be a bit more unique. So you're going to have to be very very patient. A lot of people nowadays, and again, because they see the mentors and the motivational speakers, they think they can achieve success overnight. But it doesn't work like that. It takes a lot. The key is patience. Lewis Howes himself went to Toastmasters and he did a speech every week for 52 weeks. He did a speech every single week for a year. So to do something for a month and even to train for a month and think that you're even close to this guy; he did a speech every single week as well as the 10,000 hours in the past 10 years he’s put into it now. So these people do put in the work, they just make it look very easy. It's kind of like watching me with a football and going out and practicing for a month and saying, "Hey I did freestyle for a month. I can't do one of Jamie's tricks." It doesn't work like that. You've got to give it years. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes for these guys.
Question: You’ve got around 500k followers on social media. How did that come about? Which was the first social media platform you blew up on?
Jamie: The first platform I blew up on was Facebook. I'd got about 7,000 followers at the time but on other platforms I actually had like nothing. I had 400 subscribers on YouTube. I don't even have Instagram at the time. My first initial boost came when I picked up 20,000 followers on Instagram pretty quickly and I became a micro influencer. Again, I executed my strategy of giving without expectation to big pages of two to three million followers. So I would actually make an approach to these companies and pages and I would say, “Hey, this is the world’s first trick. This may go down really well with your community. If you want to use it, please do not hesitate to ask.” And people naturally give credit to the person who did something. So again, I presented something without expectation but it kind of came back my way and they featured me and then the other kind of clever thing I did at that point was, I would leverage the top guys off each other. So say you have a big football page called 433. They would share me. I would then go to the next big page called say Oral Designs and I'd say, “Hey Oral Designs, 433 shared my world's first. I actually didn't give them this one. Your community might really like this one. If you want to use it, please do not hesitate to ask.” I spent a little period knocking these guys off each other and before I knew it, I had twenty five thousand followers in about two months. I joined TikTok when it was called Musically. I got a tip-off from Andrew Henderson. He's the one who got me into it. He said, “Hey Jamie, this thing called Musically is going to be the next big thing.” And I went on it and I was like, “What's this? But I'm going to trust him here and I'm going to do some posts.” And it didn't quite work for Android at the time. It was mainly for iPhones but I tried anyway and picked up around 5900 followers. Over time It became more Android friendly and long story short, I was just consistent when people were doubting the app and were unsure. I was just constantly posting and posting and posting. Because I knew that every day they were doubting it was another opportunity for me to get one step ahead. I was seeing the followers. I was seeing the comments. I was seeing the engagement. So I just posted every day. I had no days off even when I transitioned to TikTok.
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Question: You manage Dean Graziosi, Lewis Howes, Matthew Hussey, to name a few on TikTok. What are the tips you’d give to anybody starting on TikTok right now?
Jamie: TikTok prefers full screen portraits. So that's basically holding your phone upright. So what it does is it recognizes pigments within the post and if there's any black dots or lack of color, it downgrades your post within the algorithm. So it is recommended to use the full framing and full screen portrait. Another thing to consider is audience retention. So whenever you post something, is your audience going to watch from the start until the end? Because again, the algorithm detects if somebody watches something right from the beginning to the end. The algorithm will say, “Hey, this is valuable because this person watched it”. And it will push it out to more people. Another thing to consider is, ‘Will the user push the share button?’ Because obviously more shares equals reaching more people and again, the algorithm will say, “Hey, somebody shared this or hundreds of people are sharing this, we're going to push this out for more people.” If I were starting today, I would consider those things but I would also create an avatar in my head. What does my end-user look like? And can I create content that will resonate with that particular end user? And a lot of people think that TikTok is for kids because they see their daughters dancing and going crazy. But trust me, your end user, even if they’re 40, 50, 60, whatever shape, size and anything, I assure you, they are on the platform. So you should be on there too. And don't listen to the polarized opinion because a lot of people aren't in the frame of TikTok yet. So they can't really judge it until they've had hundreds of posts of experience to see what's actually on the platform. Every single post is like money in the bank. It’s just compounding, compounding, compounding that interest. Your videos that are six months old can be seen by somebody who signs up today. So you need to keep being consistent with your uploads and you will see results eventually and you'll also see videos that are slow burners that pick up a 1000 views and are in the background for the whole year. So you're going to have to be patient with TikTok. And it's certainly a lot easier to grow from 100,000 followers to 200,000 followers than it is to go from 0 to 100,000. Because you know, once you get to say 100,000 followers, you've got instant validation. So the more followers you have the more validated you are the more chances you’re going to have even more followers. Especially in a world now with TikTok where there's not many people on, if you're actually doing your niche right now, whatever it is, business, marketing or whatever, you're really giving yourself a head start in the journey because the app is still growing and it hasn't plateaued like any of the other apps. So if you're going to start, start now and post regularly.
Question: What do you think about reading versus implementing or listening versus implementing? Because you can binge listen to podcasts just like Netflix and you can waste your time. So how important is taking action?
Jamie: I think people fall into the trap of thinking they're moving the needle in their life because they bought this new book. But buying the new book and feeling good because it's come in the post and maybe not reading it and sticking it on the shelf, you're not reading or applying anything. As a general rule if you're going to read anything, I would just go in with the outcome of what is the one thing I can take away or how can what I have taken today make me better than I was this day or the day before? So you try to make yourself better than yesterday or today. I think it's easy to overwhelm this up and write down 10 or 15 notes, but I think if you can just try and Implement one thing; the field that I like to read the most is mindset, so I set the bar really low because I want to be consistent every day, I actually want to be able to implement these things into my life. With the mind, you can learn 10 things, but it's kind of like going to the gym and doing 10 sets of weights when you have never been to the gym before. Your mind is a muscle too as well as your body. So I always set the bar really low. I always say “Okay, I've learned this one thing. I'm going to add it.” And even if it's something as simple as maybe a book says come up with 10 affirmations for yourself, I'll be like “I'm just gonna have one affirmation and then I’ll remember it every morning and I'm going to have two, then I'm going to go to the standard three to five and just gonna remember those.” I remember my daily gratitude and my affirmations by heart now and I have seven affirmations and three daily gratitudes. But if I set the bar at that, there's no way I was going to be able to do it. Just try to be better than you were yesterday. And then also with being overwhelmed it's good to set the bar low because you'll start implementing and then you start to want to implement these things. So when you start seeing the results of the little things, you start to want to input more and more things in your life, whereas if you try and implement this one big change you're going to be overwhelmed pretty quickly and are going to fade out and give up.
Question: You personally know Lewis Howes and Dean Graziosi. What are some of the habits of successful people that we can replicate?
Jamie: One that all successful people do is, they always wake up and they find something to be grateful for. They usually think of three things to be grateful for. So I always have three things I'm grateful for in the mornings that I’ve learnt from these guys and it's - I'm grateful for love in my life from family. I'm grateful for friends and I'm grateful for my ability to adapt and change. So I know that if I'm patient and disciplined I could become a runner. I'm not going to say I'm going to be an Olympic runner, but I could become a runner if I'm disciplined. I could go into marketing. I can do all these things. I'm just grateful for my ability to adapt and change. That's one of the things that I always do in the morning. Another thing I've learned from those guys: daily affirmations. So I always say life happens for me, not to me. I am powerful beyond belief. I’m unstoppable. I am loving. I do hard things. I have greatness within me. So that's another thing all the successful people do. Another thing that most successful people do is they don't look at their phones as soon as they wake up and they say it's because it's like playing Russian roulette. You put a bullet in the gun, you spin it - Is it going to be a bad email or your business lost loads of money? So it's really important to not look at your phone as soon as you wake up. You have to focus on winning your morning and Dean Graziosi says so you can play offense. You don't want anything that can lower your confidence by 5% because you never get anything done at 95% you get things done at a hundred percent. So you want to stay away from anything negative first thing in the morning and focus on gratitude. That's a very common pattern. Another common pattern with successful people is instead of setting goals, they set visions for themselves. So a goal is - I want to run a 5K in under 20 minutes. A vision is saying, “How do I want to feel a year from now? What does my relationship look like? What does my career look like? What does my home look like? How do I feel? That's a better version because a lot of the times when people set goals and they climb this mountain, but because they haven't got another goal set straight away, so you actually find yourself sliding down the other side and I've been a victim of that myself. So you have to have a compelling vision far in the future and then you put in the incremental goals and building blocks to support that vision instead of micro goals on the way up. So goals are looking forward and a vision is looking forward and then taking it backwards.
Question: Tell us something about these individuals that they have similar to us or the readers.
Jamie: Everybody has a story. A lot of successful people had adversities in their life. So to revert back to talking about Lewis, Lewis was living on his sister's couch after he broke his wrist playing American football. And then his dad was in a car accident. So Lewis was going through some difficult things and sometimes it takes, even in our own lives, sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom because the only way is up and a lot of these guys did actually hit rock bottom before they found success. It wasn't given to them on a silver spoon. And I know people do get it given to them that way but these guys they all faced adversities and they just found ways to upgrade their relationships or learn from somebody slightly more successful than them.
Question: At one point, you were deeply depressed and addicted to gambling. That can be a dark place to be in. How did you dig yourself out of that hole to get to where you are today?
Jamie: Whenever you're depressed, especially on that level, it kind of doesn't matter what anybody says to you. You're not going to act on it or you don't have the energy because you kind of just feel so sorry for yourself. It's helplessness and you may even feel so helpless that you don't want to ask for help. You feel like maybe you're the man of the house or you're the person that people talk to when they need help. So there's no way you can be like this and that's what happened to me and I've been there a few times now. How I pulled myself out is, I set the ultimate, ultimate micro goals against my routine of depression. I was so depressed, I used to enjoy sleeping more than just being alive, to give an example. So I'd sleep for like 12 to 14 hours a day because being asleep was more joyous than actually being alive. But what I would do is I would set the ultimate small goal - “So okay, Jamie you feel horrible. What's one little thing you can do to move the needle in your life to move out of this depression?” And it'd be super, super small. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to do one pushup. When you're depressed you cannot snap out of it. It will take you a week or two weeks to start seeing any results. So I'm just going to do one push-up or one time I listened to something Les Brown said “Write down three things you're grateful for.” I did that too. So I’d do one push-up and three things I'm grateful for. I did that every single day for five days, and I didn't feel anything but on day 6, I just started feeling a little bit better. I was thinking about the things that I'm grateful for and I just started feeling a little bit better. Then I added one other little thing and one other little thing, then I look at all the things that didn't serve me or what I was doing during the times I was depressed and I started to slowly eliminate them, whether it was eating a certain thing or drinking a certain thing and that's how I pulled myself out. Another thing in terms of the gambling, that was a real tough one. This is definitely something I never told Lewis before but I read Lewis Howes’ book called ‘The School of Greatness’ before I knew him and he had a thing called ‘A Certificate of Achievement’. And what you’d do is, you’d print your certificate out and you would award it to yourself with a date in the future with something that you've accomplished. So I basically gave myself a certificate of achievement - 90 days gamble free. And I wrote to myself “Jamie McDonald, 90 days gamble free” and then the date, 90 days from now. I put it on the side and it was awarded to me and I used that and that was enough for me to go the full 90 days and then continue from that. I did have like relapse in between but I’m clean now. It’s just, it's hard man. There's no sort of concrete way because everybody's slightly different. I would say universally I would say don't be afraid to ask for help and it's easy for people to say they're going to be there for you. They might actually not be there for you. And that's the harsh reality. You have to actually get yourself out of the situation because ultimately when you're depressed you're an energy drainer at that time. You're potentially going to drain and rub off badly on someone else. That's just the harsh reality. So you have to try and take some form of ownership and a lot of people have to find rock bottom before they find their way out. I would personally recommend trying to get hold of a counselor or just paying for a counselor if you really want to change because it's a neutral perspective, not in the frame and it takes away the pressure or potential burden that you may put on somebody else. It certainly helped me. I had attended counseling lessons as well. That pulled me out. I don't think it would have worked otherwise to be honest with you. The other point about setting small goals is to do something enough to the point where you actually want to start doing it. So I would set the bar really low at 1 on the off chance that maybe I'll actually do 10. So maybe the thought of doing 10 or 20 or 30 was overwhelming but if I set the bar at 1 at least I know I'm going to get on the floor and do 1. And then you’re like, ‘Come on, you can do 2.’ That’s the reason why the bar was always so low because it was a plan for momentum.
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Question: Earlier, you talked about travelling the world. But that didn’t come off easy. And I remember reading your book and you wrote that at one point you decided to face all your fears and that changed your life.
Jamie: I made a decision to face all of my demons, searching for true inner peace. During that phase there were quite a few things going on in my life. My dad actually found me through my freestyle football website. He actually called me up. I thought it was a football job but it was dad and he found me. So within 24 hours I basically flew to Belfast to meet him and confront him and it felt like a slight weight off my shoulders, but to be honest, I still felt a lot of burden. So I made a conscious effort to try and face any demon because I knew that whenever I face something in a show, I always feel euphoria at the end of it. So I did a show on ITV Saturday night TV on the Britain's Got Talent stage and everything and I was so scared and I didn't want to face it. I wanted to quit then. I didn’t want to do it. But when I faced it, I felt like I could take on the world. So I kind of took that approach with other areas of my life. I was also afraid of flying and a client said, “Hey, we need you out in Australia.” And I was like, “Oh man, if you're going to face a fear, might as well be the one to Australia, right?” So I flew to Australia and I had a crippling fear of flights and when the wheels left the ground I said, “Well you're going to Australia now.” And after that I’ve traveled to Australia three times, the USA three times, and met some amazing people throughout. Basically all of Europe and facing that one fear just opened up everything, even upgraded my relationship. It gave me the opportunity to seek people out who are successful. When I went to Australia to work in Australia, I took the longest route at times. So like I flew straight to Australia the first time but the second and the third time I kind of dotted my way along to Australia. I visited Thailand, Singapore and Bali. All these places for fun. But my end destination was work-related. I just kind of worked around it and clients didn't care where I went as long as I got there on time. Most of Europe and LA and all these places were work related for the game FIFA or like I was a product advisor for a company out of Australia, it was another football game.
Question:And how much were you making with these gigs?
Jamie: Every gig is kind of different so whenever I was like 18 or 19, this is quite funny, I was living in Truro, I used to get a job of about £200 at the time and to save money what I would do is because the trains were like a hundred and twenty pounds or something crazy, I would catch a national Express bus for 30 pounds at 9 p.m. I’d roll in from London, at six in the morning. I would coach kids from half eight to half three and I’d catch another nine and a half to 11 and a half hour coach back. And I’d come back with about 90 pounds. And I used to do that for years. And then if you get corporates, it might be like a thousand pounds and your adverts might be something like £5,000 range, but they are quite rare because it's kind of a rat race. I used to get other things on the side as well like influencer campaigns. I can't give you an exact figure but it ranges based on the event and the bottom tier is your grassroots kind of community stuff and your top tier is obviously your advertisements on TV or computer games.
Question: What’s your daily routine?
Jamie: So my exact day tomorrow will be the same as all of my other ones which will be, I’ll wake up with three things I'm grateful for. Then I'll have my daily affirmations. My phone will be on flight mode from the night before. I actually don't set alarms because I kind of work on my own schedule. Then I would make my bed and after that I would listen to something positive and then after that I'd probably go get coffee and do my work for Lewis, Dean, Matthew Hussey, or whoever it may be, getting those social posts ready to go. I constantly love watching podcasts. I love learning. Right now, I'm into a lot of Jordan Pederson stuff. I think he's great. These posts I do for my clients could take five hours a day. So it's not like I’ll make a couple of posts and then I have nothing to do. Everyday I'm working. It is 7 days a week. Actually, I’ve worked seven days a week since October 5th with the exception of blackout tuesday. So I am pretty non-stop. I've got more people who want to work with me. So maybe I'll expand and create a successful team and I'm trying to push my socials as well, constantly trying to upgrade my relationships. So it's a process but it's going up and that's what matters I guess.
Question: What is the biggest challenge you’re facing right now?
Jamie: I would say the biggest challenge I'm facing right now is to be honest with you, I'm in very high demand with being people’s social media manager. So my biggest struggle right now is, again, because I look at virtual friends, I don't surround myself with people who are interested in Lewis Howes or Tony Robbins. So it's very hard for me at the moment to build a successful team that wants to actively learn and absorb this information with gratitude instead of judging these people which a lot of people do, in advance. So, right now, my biggest challenge is how do I clone myself? I need to clone myself and I can really make a big agency, but I think ultimately my passion is actually to dive into the podcasts and just try and help people as well as building this agency with all the successful motivators.
Question: And what has been your biggest breakthrough in the past 3 months?
Jamie: Around 80 days ago I did a thing called The Calendar Club, which was made byJesse Itzler. You run one mile per day every day for 30 days; plus 1 mile per day. So on day one you run one mile on day two you run two miles and day 3 you run 3 miles, all the way up to 30. So you're basically doing back-to-back marathons to finish and what I learned from that was, I always talk about momentum, but that was a true test of momentum paying off. So if I did The Calendar Club and I started on day 20 to 30, I can guarantee you I’d be broke in like three days in. But because I set the bar so small, I was actually a practitioner, you know, you hear all the time about how to take these small steps to improve, improve, improve, but unless you’re actually a practitioner of that advice, unless you’re actually doing it, you'll never understand it. And doing that challenge made me the ultimate practitioner of patience and discipline. So I would say because of that challenge, I felt that these habits resonate with me. It was probably the hardest thing I ever did in my life but setting the bar small initially got me going. Allowing my body that time to see it in increments instead of a big, big challenge is a lesson I'm definitely going to take forward in future challenges. Even with your physical fitness, if you find it intimidating to go to the gym then maybe the first step is to look at their website. then the second step is to go in and pick up a brochure. Third step is, sign-up for a one-day trial. Fourth step is, go in and do one rep on every machine and leave and you'll eventually get yourself to the point where you actually want to be there. That's the point. You have to be really patient in the process. So if something is overwhelming for you, what's the smallest thing you can do to make it slightly less overwhelming? And that's what I live by and it probably comes down to the days of being depressed. I knew that taking big action, I was physically drained. I didn't want to do anything. I knew that taking the smallest thing every day would pull me out and I recommend it for anybody, especially if you're going through a bad time right now. Set the bar really low, but know that setting the bar low isn't a bad thing against you. It’s a part of the process of pulling you out to become a better you.
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Books - Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, School of Greatness by Lewis Howes
Mentors - Les Brown, Tony Robbins. Dean Graziosi and Lewis Howes
Podcasts - Impact Theory, School of Greatness
Contact Jamie - He prefers DM on his Instagram or email your questions/appreciation to stealmymarketing@gmail.com and I’ll forward them to Jamie. At the end of the interview Jamie was eager to hear from you. Just yesterday, 25th Aug 2020, he gave a webinar on Social Media Marketing to Lewis Howes’ inner circle. Don’t miss an opportunity to pick his mind. :)
Listen to the entire interview here - Spotify Anchor Apple Podcasts