Building self-confidence is one of the key attitudes an effective leader or team player must have. But if you cultivate this the wrong way, your arrogant self will be seen more. If you come across as cocky, people will see you as unlikeable. Curt Shewell is here to discuss how to get rid of your arrogance and connect with people while showcasing your authentic self, personal strength, and inspiring mindset. He explains why you always need to be seen by everyone else doing good and performing at your best to nurture lasting relationships. Curt also reflects on dealing with grief after the passing of his daughter due to brain cancer and how they built a memorial fund in her name.

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Making Yourself Likeable By Eliminating Your Arrogant Self With Curt Shewell

Let me tell you something. We got somebody that’s going to bring the fire and bring the energy. If you are a little down, if you are somebody that owns your own business, or if you are somebody that’s thinking about owning your own business, we have one of the top coaches and trainers in America with us now. He not only builds teams, but he builds people. He’s an incredible entrepreneur. He has over 3,000 real estate agents working with him in his organization.

I was fortunate enough to speak with this guy in Vegas, and we became best friends. I said, “I got to get you on.” His current statistics and current story, although impressive, in my opinion, aren’t near as impressive as the lessons, the antidotes, and the answers that he may give you about his past challenges and his past successes. We are going to get into a little conversation with the great Curt Shewell. Curt, welcome to the show.

How are you, buddy? Good to see you again.

I’m good. I had to watch our Colts give up 37 points, the biggest loss in history. It’s probably an attitude lesson there. I’m shipping a carton of my books to the Indianapolis Colts facility to help them.

They forgot that you got to play the whole game, and that’s what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs. We get excited because we have a little success at the beginning, and it’s important that you have success right away because success breeds success, and we learn success in these clues. We get all that stuff.

What happens is we get excited because we are having success, and we keep forgetting about why we are going after that success and start enjoying it. It’s not that we are not supposed to enjoy it. Always enjoy it, but they did the same thing. They played the first half and said, “We got this in a bag. We are all done,” The reality was they weren’t and needed to finish that game out. They only had to play this much more, and no one could have caught them. Unfortunately, they kept looking around and didn’t look at what was coming up behind them. You got to pay attention.

That’s true, and that’s the story of many entrepreneurs out to a fast start. All of a sudden, what happens when you have all that success is you start making mistakes? You start investing in the wrong things. You take your eye off the balls. You take your eye off the fundamentals, and things happen. Now, the team doesn’t do that. I watched them on Hard Knocks. Their coach is an absolute psycho, and he was not doing well, but you could tell his belief, passion, and clarity with what he has done with the Detroit Lions. It’s unstoppable. I know a lot of guys like that. I coached football for 25 years, and the Detroit Lions are having success, and there’s a lot of belief. Have you gotten to witness what he’s doing there in Detroit? What are your thoughts on him?

I’m a season ticket holder. I have sat through sixteen seasons. I sat through Barry quitting, the greatest running back in the history of the game. I don’t want to play anymore because I’m here. That’s a bad day. We have had our share of learning because we didn’t lose. We learned. Remember, anytime we lose, I got to ask that question on stage. You speak with this confidence, and you do these crazy things. Have you ever lost? You and I had this conversation in Vegas. No, I don’t think I have ever lost. I always say that the score might not have reflected that I won, but the reality was I ran out of time because if we kept playing, trust me, at some point, I would beat you because I would never quit. I’m going to keep coming, and I’m going to keep bringing it.

That’s the story of the Lions. This particular coach has done an amazing job from Hard Knocks to the show. You got to see his attitude. What he was able to do was to get believers, and this is what entrepreneurs need to know. You’ve got to get believers. You’ve got to get people that know that you are there for them, with them, and you’ll never leave them. Their job is to either decide that they can run with you or they can’t. It’s called proximity, and I will talk about that a little bit more.

It’s nearness in space, time, and relationship. The first thing you got to do is get in their space, but not with him. He needed them to run on his time, and they weren’t running on his time. You saw that on the show, and he needed to get them to believe in themselves. They believed in him, but they had to believe in themselves, and that’s the trick. You want people to follow you. They got to believe in themselves, but they know you are their leader and don’t have to be the boss. You need to be the leader. Best leaders are leaders. They are not bosses. The worst leaders are ones that think they are bosses.

You think about getting people to believe in themselves, and as a leader, this answer’s going to be great. As somebody that’s maybe self-employed or an entrepreneur, are there certain steps you take? Are there questions that you ask? What is the process you go through with folks to help them with self-confidence? This is needed, and this has been asked to me on many different occasions. I’d love to know how you are helping people increase their self-confidence.

It’s two things. One, what you’ve got to do is you got to get them to understand that they need to be in the room, and this goes back to part three of proximity, nearness in space, time, and then in relationship. You want to get through the relationship, but you got to get in their space. What happens is people lack confidence. They fear going into the room, and they are going to say something foolish. Stop going in there to tell people who you are and what you are about.

They don’t care. The reality is people care about three people, “Me, myself, and I.” That’s what’s important to them. You’ve got to start coming at them. It’s not about you. It’s about them. When you come there, and you talk to a billionaire in a room, and you are like, “I’m talking to this billionaire. What am I going to say to this guy that’s going to wow this guy?”

You know what you are going to say to him that’s going to wow him? You are going to ask him about him. That’s going to wow him because nobody does. Everybody asks what they can get from him and what he can do for them. They want to tell him and beat their chest, and he’s looking at them, going, “Are you kidding me?” This is stuff I didn’t do in the third grade of my business. He’s way up here, and they are trying to impress him. Stop trying to impress them.

Impress upon them that you care about them. You want to get a big person that’s important, like a Glenn Bill to sit there and look your way and get their attention. You better either do something that gets him to go, “I want to talk to you.” When you do, what you better be doing is asking him about him because that’s what he cares about.

Do you know what’s easy for Glenn to talk about, or any big people, big players, and entrepreneurs? Them and what they have done. Ask them how they did it. Ask them what their passion was at the time and where they are now. That’s the stuff that fires them up. That’s what burns inside them. That gets them to go, “You follow, and you get me. You know where I’m going. This is what we want to do.” They are going to give you help, and guess what they are going to do? Put you in their space. You start running on their time. You are going to form that relationship, and they are going to open the next door and the next door. Your confidence comes with that. Be confident at asking questions. Stop talking and start asking. If you start doing that, you are going to have a lot more success.

I know you are a networker, and you understand this thing called proximity. Who is maybe the most influential, impressive, or well-known person you had to get in the room and have them talk about them and tell us a little bit about that story, and did it end up a success for you?

There are a couple of things, and I will give you one interesting people who I thought was funny. I’m in Vegas, and we are at a convention. We had this huge party out of the convention. It went on until 4:00 in the morning. I had a guy that I promised at the end of the week that I would meet before he left. He was going back to Costa Rica and wanted to open up his business there, and I said, “I will meet with you at 8:00 on that day.” I didn’t realize that’s the morning of the party, like after. This is so bad for me.

It has also fallen on my birthday, and my wife’s got this whole thing set up in my room, my birthday, and this whole big getup at 8:00. I talk to her, “I got this meeting at 8:00.” She’s like, “Are you kidding me?” I’m like, “No, I’m not kidding, sorry.” I go, “I’m going to be down there. I’m going to meet this guy.” I’m about 60 proofs still. I was still pretty lit when I woke up because we went to bed at about 5:30. It was 8:00, and I was running down to the Starbucks to meet the guy in the casino lobby.

I met and started talking to this guy, and I started going through my business plan with him of how we could do this. All of a sudden, Elena Cardone, Grant Cardone’s wife, comes over, and she’s like, “You are Curt Shewell. I want to talk to you and this other girl that you did this with and your business partners with this girl. She’s crazy. She’s getting this TV show, and I want to talk to her. You are the guy. I want to talk to you.”

She literally plops in, and she’s like, “Can I talk to you now?” I’m like, “I was in a meeting.” I got a baseball cap on. I’m in shorts and a t-shirt. It was a bad moment. I’m like, “I got to seize this opportunity.” This is the once in a lifetime. I got to take this shot here. I got to see what happens. We start talking. This guy is so blown away. He’s like, “You are Elena Cardone.”

I’m like, “Carlos is good with this from Costa Rica. Let’s work this.” I’m trying to do this with half brain power. We start talking and make it happen. She’s like, “This is amazing.” I go through this presentation stuff. She then says, “Grant has got to see this.” I’m like, “We can set that up. Give me a week. I’m going to fly to Miami, and we’ll meet or do something.” She’s like, “Right now.” I’m like, “Right now it is in your villa.” I got to go down to her villa and grab my laptop off the table. Literally from Starbucks, we walked all the way down. They are in the villas, and it’s this cool little place, and we went there.

I sat in her villa for a couple of hours with her and Grant. She calls a billionaire Glenn Sanford. She calls him on the phone, “Glenn, you got to get down to our villa. You got to meet this guy.” It’s funny. I worked with Glenn. Glenn Sanford is part of our company. He comes in for this big moment. He’s going to meet this person she’s going crazy about. He walks in there. He looks at me, and I’m like, “How are you doing?” He’s like, “Hey, Curt.” She’s like, “You two know each other? This is going to be so great.”

It was a funny moment, and everybody was like, “What was it like you were in there with Grant?” Grant is working on a business deal on the phone, and we are all doing this stuff. It was a pretty cool event. From there, I got so many people who asked me the story, “How did you get into Grant Cardone’s villa? How do you do that? How are you sitting on the couch with this guy?” That was a cool story.

As our GAPers read this story, the bottom line is this, 1) If you have a commitment, no matter how bad you feel, you stick with that commitment. 2) No matter how bad you feel and how little sleep you have, if there’s an opportunity that presents itself, you grab it by the throat and persist no matter how and you don’t try to reschedule. 3) Have the ability to pivot to do things that you are not able or that are unplanned.

Sometimes the real gold, real money, and the real opportunity come in unplanned circumstances. Kudos to you for that. To all of our GAPers who are reading, have you ever faced a time where maybe you didn’t answer the call as Curt did? This is why we have Curt here on our show. Tell me what attitude means to you. How would you define attitude? What do you look for in people you are either partnering with or when you go, “That guy got attitude?” What does it mean to you, and what do you look for? How do you know someone has attitude?

The first thing you got to do is you got to start paying attention. Many of us walk through the world where there’s so much going on in our minds and heads that we are inward-focused. What’s happening is there are things going around us, and we are not paying attention to it. You’ve got to pay attention to it, and you will start to see the people who have it. You’ll feel something. It’s the same as when I met you. You and I hadn’t known each other, and the next thing, we were on stage together. That’s an interesting thing. You get a couple of alphas on a stage, and you are not sure where this is going to go.

They asked us to do something, and I looked at you and said, “Why don’t we do this?” I could feel your energy and attitude. I could see you carried it. You can see that people have confidence versus cockiness. That’s the piece. You are young and excited. You get cocky. You have a little success, and you get a little cocky. You are making some money, and you get real cocky.

Remember, money only makes you more of who you are, so be careful with that. The same thing I taught all my kids, “Always confident, never cocky.” Bring your confidence to the table. People will see it, and they will know you’ve got attitude. When I watched you come on that stage, I watched how you walked up that stage and went, “I introed this guy, and he is got some attitude. I can see it.”

You looked at me with that little smile going like, “We are going to do fine.” We started going, and we had another gal on this stage with us, but we went and forgot that she was on this stage because we started working the audience. We had about 1,000 people in a room. You and I are on this stage, and I said, “You want to go live with it? Let’s take him. Challenge him one on one.” You are like, “You were speaking my language. Let’s go.” That attitude was like, “He’s a monster. We can do this,” and then I could play off of that, and you played off of it as well. It was symbiotic, really quick and easy because we came with the same attitude, and I thought that was the thing.

You can feel it. If you are paying attention, you got to be in the moment. We talk about that a lot of times. You are taking notes. Stop that for a second. Be in the moment. Stay here with me. You can take your notes afterward. Remember, no one’s going to remember everything you say to them, but they are going to remember every bit of how you made them feel.

If you bring that attitude, it exudes confidence. People are drawn to this. It’s magnetic and attractive. Others are going to notice you, and that’s how that’s going to happen. Attitude to me is more of a feeling, but if you are paying attention, you have to see it. You got to notice it. The attitude is there. You got to be able to pick it up.

Who would you say was your earliest or first attitude coach? Who made Curt Shewell the Curt Shewell he is? Where you did stand and take notice and go, “I need to change the way I’m thinking?” Who was that person?

A guy named Neal Feldman. I was maybe 21 or 22 years old. I was working at an appliance store, back in the big days of the appliance chains. You are working on commission. You are hustling. I worked for Highland Appliance back then when they were in business, and Neal Feldman was the guy’s name. He was my supervisor. Neal liked me, and I liked him a lot. He was a sharp guy. He knew his stuff, and he kept challenging me. I would talk to him, but I always talk to him more like a buddy and a friend than I did as, “This guy is three layers up to the top here. This guy makes decisions of who runs what.”

If you want to get promoted, he’s your guy. I knew he liked me. We had a great relationship. He came in one time to start talking to me on a more serious level, but I kept talking to him like I would normally talk to him. I didn’t realize I was being interviewed. I assumed I was going to get this promotion, I’m going to be the next store manager, and this is how it’s going to go. We get done with this convo, and I saw that it went down that path, and I’m like, “Let’s make that happen. I’m your guy. You know me. I’m going to kill it. We are going to do this.” He said, “I don’t think you are ready.”

My jaw dropped, and I was like, “What? I’m your guy. What do you mean? I run through a brick wall for you. You are my guy.” He said, “You are way too immature right now. You got to grow up.” I was like, “I’m talking to you about stuff we talk about all the time.” He said, “I need you to be a guy that wants to be a manager who runs one of my multimillion-dollar stores. I don’t need the guy who’s this kid who wants to go party. You can party, get up tomorrow, and go to work. Prove that. I need somebody that’s more serious.”

That was the best smack in the face I could have gotten. It hurt my feelings because I had feelings. We have to put that away when we do business. Business is business. When your emotions get involved, you mess up. It was one of the best life lessons. I had to beg him to give me another shot, and he said, “Remember this, you are always being interviewed.” I was like, “I will never forget that.” It took me about 3 to 4 months later to get him and revisit that with me, and then he did eventually promote me and gave me that. I always respected him for that by telling me no and telling me you messed up. I love him for that, and I always remember it to this day.

That’s so good. Back to this confidence and arrogance thing that you were talking about, you might remember my quote, “The difference between confidence and arrogance.” Do you remember what it is? This is exactly what you were talking about with your kids and always being interviewed. The answer is likability.

I remember we were sitting at the bar talking about this.

For you to advance or have people that pull you up, and when you talk about being more mature, that whole likability quotient is big. We could do a whole show on this. Let me ask you this. If they don’t like it, you are done no matter what it is. What we always do in our source of sales that I do when I do my source of sales training is talk about how you know if somebody likes you. The answer is you like them. If you don’t like the people you are doing business with, guess what? They don’t like you either, but that’s a different thing than I do. I knew you would like that. I need to get up to Detroit and do source of sales with you guys. That would be a blast.

I got an event coming up. You are going to come, and we are going to do this. We are going to have some fun.

Let’s do it. We’d love to. I want to talk about the downtimes because there are people reading here, “Look at Curt. I have seen him. I have been around him. He is never down, but we are human.” People say the same things about us all the time. If you want to talk about the time when maybe you were at the lowest in your life, or if you don’t want to share that, hopefully, you will.

It’s okay. I will. I’m happy with that. It gave me a lot of strength.

Also, on how you overcome those negative thoughts and those negative things in your head. If you want to start with your story on what was tough for you and then how you overcame negativity.

I am living pretty good, married, and have five kids. It means I’m good at something, parenting. Some of my kids might not agree with that. At least, I know one of them probably would, but I’m doing my best to try to make that happen. What happened was I was in Corporate America. I had a corporate job as a VP of Sales for a giant company called Honeywell, which is a great company. I’m living the life, and we are doing pretty good.

My oldest daughter was eight years old at the time, the oldest of my three girls. She got sick. She had cancer, brain tumors and such like that. Ameloblastoma was what she had. After almost a three-year fight with it, she was a champion. She was amazing. She’s phenomenal. Her name is Stephanie, but she became our angel. She went to heaven.

That was a difficult haul. That’s a tough load. The easy part was being fixated on, “I’m going to do everything I can to try to find a miracle or cure.” The good news and bad news didn’t exist. It wasn’t for the lack of looking and trying. In doing so, I had to resign from my job. I got a six-month leave of absence that I resigned, and I had no money. You run out of money fast. I thought we were set. I had a kid in college. I won in high school. I had Stephanie and then two younger daughters, and we are living at a pretty nice clip and all of a sudden, you have no income.

You go broke fast. You run out of money. That adds so many other pressures. I talk about this a lot on stages. I used a poll of the crowd, “How many people in here have problems?” Everybody raises their hand. Everybody’s got problems, and then I ask them, “If you had enough money, does it make all those problems go away?” Most people are like, “If I had the money, they all go away.” They are not problems. They are financial issues. You don’t have enough money. If you need more money, you don’t need more money. You need more people in your life. It’s the old adage you heard, but it’s true. Your network is your net worth. That’s where that’s at.

Losing all the money adds so many problems that aren’t real problems or financial issues, so they become problems. We let this get into our lives. You can have no money and make money tomorrow, but you’ve got to know what you are focused on. You’ve got to be focused. My focus was her, and I’m letting down four other kids and my wife because I’m so hyper-focused here, but what do you do?

You go to these dark places because, like I said, the devil creeps in. He’s waiting for you. He can’t wait to talk to you, “I got you.” You are like, “You are nowhere in my world. I got to run right past you because we have got to get out of it.” Since the old adage, people have told you that you probably have the same landing. I know we have. People are like, “You step in a pile of crap and come up smelling like a rose.” It’s because we don’t like the wallowing crap. I’m not going to lie down in crap ever.

By stepping in, I’m getting a new pair of shoes. I’m not going to clean them. They are off. Give a new pair. I’m going because I’m not stopping. With her, we had to fight. We had to come to terms with our faith and where she’s at and be good with that because there’s good that comes with it. I got to see all the clichés of the world, like stopping and smelling the roses and living every moment. When she had her first brain surgery, half of her face never woke up. We always call her that she was our girl with a broken smile.

If you took a picture of her smiling, you could take and cover half of her face. It looks like a girl sitting there, and then you’d move that over to the other side, and you see her beaming. There are so many people who look at that picture and do not see the girls beaming and smiling. I saw that picture. I could see her lightening up. She was right-handed, and she had to learn how to write left-handed. That’s amazing.

I was so blown away by these things that she did without even thinking about it. She didn’t cry about it. She didn’t say, “I can’t do this.” She’s like, “I got to write left-handed now.” She’s writing left-handed and putting beads together and being able to do these things that her body and her brain wouldn’t let her do anymore. It was so amazing. I was so proud and happy to see these things.

I never forgot that the biggest struggles that people can have are the smallest little things, and it can make the biggest difference. If you pay attention, you’ll get that ride, and people are like, “I could never survive if that happened to my child.” I said, “It depends on how you want to look at it. If you want to look at it happening to your child, it’s happening to you.” People think it’s happening to them. It won’t happen to me. It’s happened to her. My job is to make this the best ride for her I could possibly make. Wherever that takes us, that takes us, but we are going to keep on going. We are going to be all right, and you got to keep pushing that way.

It’s about the experience. Even though she was going to heaven, the experience of that ride, I wanted to make sure we experienced that with her, and we get to be part of that. I believe part of me is in heaven. Maybe I don’t get to get the rest of me there, but I certainly got a piece of me there, and I feel pretty damn good about it. I will do everything I can to help everybody I can get there. I would believe with all my heart, and I didn’t believe this in my whole life, but I believe now that if you want everything you ever want, you better help a whole bunch of people get everything they want. That’s really the truth.

Great tribute to Stephanie. As a coach for 25 years, I have buried 15 of my players. What is going on with young America nowadays is insane. I get calls from the parents that say, “You are not going to believe what happened.” To experience the loss of a child is certainly one of the most stressful things you can do. For those who have kids who are close to passing that did pass, do you have 1 or 2 tips? How did you manage it? What could you tell those people that could maybe change things for them?

Remember, if they move on, make them proud. Do the things that would make them proud. It’s so easy to be that person that they died, and you die with them. You don’t die. There are others counting on you. You still have a job to do. I always tell people this. Whatever your faith is, God chose you. The first question everybody asks is, “Why me?” God chose you because your next-door neighbor couldn’t handle this, but you can. He’s never going to give you something you can’t handle. There are people that I know they do crazy things, and they do the wrong things because they give up. First, never give up because this is your challenge. This is your Neel Feldman telling you that you are not good enough yet. You got to earn it, and you got to get refocused.

The thing I would tell you is don’t stop because you have to live on for them. That’s your job. That’s your responsibility. You have this. Move on for them. Think of them, live for them, and be them. Don’t stop in place and be frozen in time. Don’t have the room. We did this. The first year is a very difficult year. I don’t want to downplay this. Anybody’s gone through this get it, the first of everything, like their first birthday, Christmas, anniversary, or the time they went to heaven. It’s all these things. Those dates matter and they freeze you. You can’t be frozen.

What you have to do is you have to embrace them. You cry with them. I cry plenty. There’s a song that will pop on the radio, and I’m sitting here driving my car. I’m like, “What am I doing? Get it together. You got this.” I look at it. I look up, laugh, and talk to her all the time. I talk to her, I communicate, and I feel her. That’s why I still feel her, and you can keep going.

We had to get through that first year when her bedroom looked frozen in time. That’s a tough thing because you are fighting this adversity. I’d walk into a room to help box up some things because we got to put these things away. You can’t let it sit like she’s supposed to come home tomorrow. She’s not coming, and then we are going to be those people you see in a movie that, “The bedroom still looks like they live there,” and it’s twenty years later.

I got a padlock on the doors and stuff. You can’t do that. You are dying. Don’t do that. That’s not fair to them. It’s not fair to you. You’ve got to remember there are others that are counting on you. Be fair to them. You are not the only one going through this, but you feel it differently than others. I get that. I’ve been there. However, my wife would go in, try to do the same thing, and start crying and falling apart. We went in there together to do it and looked at each other. We’d start crying because everything your child last played with her favorite things are all sitting there.

Every time you pick one of these things up, 1,000 memories come. The thing that I worried about as it was coming to an end was I feared in my own mind that this is how small we think sometimes. It was like, “What happens if there’s a day I wake up and don’t think of her? Will I forget her?” You think crazy thoughts. That’s an insane thought, but you think about it and go through it. I honestly thought when we lay her out for her viewing next week when this is coming to an end at the very end there, I’m like, “Is she going to look right? Is she going to have the right dress on?” You are thinking these things. These are so silly, yet they are monumental to you, and you get frozen there.

What you have to do is you have to say, “We are going to go through the first of everything, and it’s okay.” This is a healing time. This is okay. We are mourning. Now, what do we got to do? What we did was we literally had to sell our house and move. Fortunately, I’m in real estate. That helped, so I get that part. We had to move because there was always going to be, “This is her couch, and that’s her nest where she sat in our section. That’s her seat at the table.” We need a new table and kitchen. I need a house she didn’t live in because we are not moving forward with that Steph’s room and Steph’s this and that. You are not moving forward. We had to do that, and that’s a big thing.

I help people, and I counsel people. Thanks for bringing it up. For the last several years, I have been counseling people in our charity in memory of our daughter. We have fundraisers and things, and then we help people who have kids with cancer, and that’s what we do. I help them in the way you are talking. Make a wish that will set them on a trip. Not that we don’t give them money and things we do. We give them a lot of things, but I help them in the way that they need it, especially when they have other siblings because the other siblings get lost in the shuffle.

You got to do the things that keep them relevant because they keep the parents going too. You’ve got to remember that this is where we are living, and we get to memorize this, memorialize this, and feel great about it. We don’t have to have a shrine, but we have to make sure that we are moving forward. By moving, it changed everything for us, and it allowed us to continue so we could go so I could teach my kids. We are going to learn from this. What do they learn from it? Remember, they see it differently than you do. When you start understanding them, not yourself, it changes everything just like your business.

We always say let’s do some good, and if you don’t think we did some good, you are crazy. We did some good right there. Tell us the website of the charity where we can find this.

It’s called the Stephanie Shewell Memorial Fund.

GAPers, let Curt know that we have been reading. Let’s do some good. Let’s send him some funds, and I will make sure that I do that too. Thank you so much for that story. I’m going to be at a funeral. I was sitting there going, “What’s the message I want to give?” You helped me with my messaging. You never know where God plants his energy.

What we are going to do and how we always close our stuff is called Knowledge Through The Decades. We’ll bring it up a little bit, and we are going to go through the life of Curt Shewell. You’ve had five kids. Whether you remember being born or not, what do you believe the attitude lesson is of childbirth or birth or new beginnings?

As you said, I don’t remember being born, but I remember when all my kids were. What’s a neat thing is, for everybody that’s got kids, you experienced a depth of love that you’ve never experienced before. You fall in love with somebody, and you give yourself to somebody. I get all that. “I’m infatuated with this person. I’m in love with this person.” When that baby comes out, you have a feeling so deep of love that you’ve never understood and can never even explain it to somebody until they have that. I know moms have it. They carry the baby. It’s a different experience. I could never even try to explain how they feel, and that would be remiss of me to do that.

From a dad, what gets lost in that because it’s the mom’s connection to the baby, the dads instantly go into protective mode, and we have got to have attitude because no one is going to do anything wrong to this baby. I can promise you that. I am going to be the dad of the century because I’m going to help this baby learn everything and need to know about everything. I’m going to put 20 or 30 years of knowledge into this child, and we are going to hit the ground running. This is how a dad feels, and this is where dad’s chest gets big, and you feel great.

When you take this tiny, frail, and beautiful little creature that looks at you and relies on you for everything, you got to bring that attitude all day long that, “I got you. I’m going to love you like I never have.” What happens is you have another child, and you fear like, “Am I going to experience that same feeling I had before? How could you top that? That was something I never felt, and I could never believe I could feel.”

All of a sudden, it happens again, and you forget about all the rest because you are in that moment, and it’s the most incredible moment. This might sound a little hokey to some of your readers, but I believe that’s your connection to God. This is when God talks straight to you. He puts everybody else on hold for that eight seconds and says, “Here’s how you are going to do this.” You bring that in, and you harness that, and he gives you all the attitude you need. Step up and express it.

The attitude of protection is what it sounds like in the attitude of creation. I want you to think back to when you were ten years old, in 4th or 5th grade. What was the attitude lesson you learned at ten? Maybe you were bullied, maybe you were bullying, or maybe you had to move. If you can remember being ten, I’d love to know what your attitude lesson was at ten.

At eight years old, my parents got divorced. When I was right before I turned nine, I went and lived with my dad, and my sister and brother stayed with my mother. That was a messy situation. I’m living with my dad. My dad was with, at the time, his new girlfriend and became his wife, and became my stepmother for 40 years.

When that happened, I moved into a very low-income place from a very upper-middle-class place, and it was like, “This is some shelter shock here. This is crazy.” My dad taught me, “You got to stand up for yourself, son, or you are going to get run right out of here, and you want to talk about getting bullied.” That was a lesson for the ages there. I learned so much in that year of turning 9 to 10 because we lived for that year there, and I went to school there for fifth grade.

It was a very brutal ride. You take buses to school. We didn’t take buses to school. We walk to school. Not here. You don’t. You are lucky. They drop you here, and you get into your little court and your little low-income town I should live in. We went from a whole different culture shock for me to learn. I tried to remember back to when I was a teenager, but I think I got into 40 to 41 fights during that one year. That’s like every other day you are fighting with somebody. It’s like, “Why am I in these scraps?”

Sometimes I did okay, and a lot of times, I didn’t do so good. These kids don’t fight fair. They don’t fight one-on-one. You are the outsider, and it’s a culture shock thing. You got to learn how to carry yourself and learn that you got to do these things. When we moved the year after that back to a middle-class city where I was more accustomed to living in that environment, I thrived and had a paper route. I became the kid selling the flower seeds for $0.25 to all the neighbors so they could plant their flowers. I was hustling doing the paper routes, and then I had two paper routes. I bought my first car at sixteen from my paper route. That was my development at that time right there.

We both had that in common. I was a fighter. I fought daily and that was during bustings in the ‘70s, and kids were in integration and all that. We know, but it sounds like at age ten, you figured out maybe how to stand on your own and how grateful you were to be out of there in a year. Let’s talk. You are twenty years old. I want to know what college you were at twenty years old. What was your attitude lesson?

I went to Eastern Michigan University, and I got in. My parents couldn’t afford to pay for anything, so I got in under the premise that they were going to pay the bills. I had a roommate who was there on a scholarship, a buddy of mine. I happened to know a guy who went to a Catholic high school, and he got a scholarship to go there. We happened to be friends, coincidentally, and then we ended up being roommates. It worked out good for the first semester, and they kept chasing and trying to find me. The people from the administrative office didn’t know who he was or who I was. Every time they’d come, I kept telling them I was him. They kept coming for the money, and I didn’t have any money. I was working at Taco Bell because I needed to eat.

I worked at Taco Bell at night from 10:00 AM, and some of them would stay up until 4:00 in the morning. They would close at 2:00, and then you get to clean up, and you get out of there at about 3:00. I worked from 10:00 at night until 3:00 in the morning so I could get free food. That’s why I worked at Taco Bell because you can make a whole lot of different meals out of Taco Bell. That was always my thing. In the daytime, I had my school classes on certain days, and then I worked at Thom McAn shoe store selling shoes at the mall. I worked at the mall out there and was selling shoes until 9:00, left there and then headed to Taco Bell so I could eat because I’d be starving by then, and then worked through the night slinging tacos.

That’s what I was doing during that time, trying to get on my feet. They finally caught me and kicked me out of college. They said, “You can’t pay, so you can’t stay.” I got to stay in there with my buddy for a few more months, all until Christmas, and then they finally got me out. That’s how that went. I never finished college. I did go to Macomb Community College for another year and a half to get some courses, and then I got a job at the appliance store at Highland Appliance selling. I was making money. I made $32,000 at 21 years old.

I was like, “My dad made $50,000.” He’s like, “That’s where you got to be.” This is the early-’80s and mid-’80s. The next year, I made over $50,000 and more money than my father did. My dad is like, “You made it.” I’m like, “This is small potatoes. I got to get to the big leagues here.” I always chased the bucks. $100,000 was always my number, and it’s still now. People chased that $100,000 number. It took me a few more years to hit there. At 26, I did.

That was the cultivation of it. It takes so long to get to $100,000, but $100,000 to $200,000 happens quickly. It’s that proximity. You got to be in the space with these people. You got to run on their time, get the relationships and doors open, and your job becomes the next because somebody keeps opening doors for you. As you become more business-minded, it changes everything. That happened when I was 26.

What an unbelievable story and life. What lessons and bombs you have dropped on our GAPers. We still got a little time, and it’s going to be tough to cover twenty years. Let’s go to 30. A quick attitude lesson when you were 30.

Having kids and making sure that I was giving my life and my kids’ lives that I always hoped that I had from my parents if I could provide more. You become that, but I didn’t want to be that everybody gets a trophy person. I know I piss people off with that, but you got to earn that stuff. You know how many times we came in, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. In my high school, the scoreboard never said we won very often. I will put it that way, but I always knew I was a winner. I was never going to lose because I got to work out a plan. My 30s were when you become who you are going to be, and at that point, I still wasn’t in real estate yet. That happened because my daughter got sick.

When that happened without a job, I asked for a miracle job, and that’s how I got into real estate. That’s when I started meeting more people that opened the doors to a whole lot of other places, and that’s where I took off. I was 35, and I was in a whole different place and trying to get my head to another level. When I hit 38, I was in real estate, and everything changed. That took me into a whole other place.

We’ll skip 40 because I know that’s the same thing. I know you are in your 50s like me. When it’s all said and done, you’ve opened up your heart and mind. You’ve given us some great stuff. There are thousands of people all across the world now. We are so blessed and lucky with our audience. You will be getting a whole promo box of this show for you to share as well. What’s your message of hope for those who are trying to bridge the gap from where they are to where they want to be, from who they are to where they want to become? Give us the best Coach Shewell motivational speech to close the show.

Be visible. Make sure that you have the opportunity. When you are in a room, look people in the eye. Don’t look away. You smile when you look at people. Make people feel welcome. Remember, they won’t remember what you told them. They remember how you made them feel. Make them all feel good. Talk to them about them. That’s what matters to them. Keep working forward to helping others. Remember, when times are bad, the biggest opportunity to help somebody comes to fruition. It’s right there. The bigger the problem that you can solve, the more money you will make with it, and that will move you up into a whole other level or realm of people.

When you do it the right way, guess what happens? All the right people are watching. They are going to see you. That’s your visibility. Make sure that they see you doing the right things. Do it when no one’s looking. Act the right way when no one’s watching because they are always watching. You are always being judged. Don’t pretend this perfect little world that we are not judged. No, we are. We are judged all the time.

We are judged on how we look, how we dress, and how we act. How you act matters. Your words mean nothing. Your actions mean everything. Remember that. Back up what you say. Don’t give them a bunch of crap. Talk right and get visible. We reward behaviors. We don’t reward words. Make sure that your words match your actions, and your actions will speak way louder. That’s my best lesson for you right now.

Coach Curt, you are the man. He’s Curtis Shewell on Facebook. He’s got a TikTok account. Also, Curt Shewell on LinkedIn. Thank you so much for your honesty, caring, and genuine concern for our readers. It was great being with you, and we will see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much. I appreciate you.

Important Links

• Curt Shewell
• Stephanie Shewell Memorial Fund – Facebook
• Curtis Shewell – Facebook
• TikTok – Curtis Shewell
• Curt Shewell – LinkedIn
• https://Linktr.ee/curtshewell