How He Went From Homeless To $100 Million A Year!

Today Ray interviews Stephen Scoggins about how he went from homeless to millionaire and to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

If you want to see the full training click HERE or the image below…

Ray Higdon: This guy, he’s a best-selling author, he’s a speaker, and again, he went from homeless to owning a set of companies that generate over $100 million in one year. I mean, man, if that’s possible, then what else is possible? And so I’m honored. I’m speaking at his event later this month and he has just opened it up where you can actually attend the event, and he’s going to give you the details for $1 and he’s got some amazing speakers. I’m honored to be a part of it. And so please help me welcome the one and only Stephen Scoggins. Stephen, what’s going on?

Stephen: What’s going on, man? So good to see you, dude.

Ray Higdon: Yeah, good to see you. Did you enjoy your brief stint in Naples?

Stephen: Man, I loved my brief stint in Naples. I actually can’t wait to get back around you and Jess, man. It’s going to be amazing next time we connect for sure.

Ray Higdon: Yeah, man. All right, so I guess step one is, tell us about this story. Tell us how did you end up homeless? What was that? What led to that? I would love to hear that.

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s a pretty lengthy story, but just to suffice to say, I grew up in a broken home unfortunately. Father dealt a lot with alcohol. Mother dealt a lot with unfortunately, not necessarily mental illness, but instability. She was abused. I later discovered she was abused when she was a child, so they had a very difficult relationship, to say the least. They divorced when I was three. My grandmother moved in. They kind of went kind of chased their own separate stuff. And I remember at nine years old, my grandmother comes up to me for the first time and basically says, “Stephen, I need your help.” Now keep in mind, I’ve got a GI Joe in one hand, Transformer in the other. Snake Eye’s about to whoop Bumblebee’s butt. But here I am with my Nanny. She’s looking at me, crying with tears in her eyes, and said, “I need your help.” And that was my first stint at what would become this need or desire or want to take care of other people.

Long story short, she passed away the time I was 11. Very, very quickly went into construction industry, and I think that’s when I actually heard my first life lie. You see, my father told me that Scoggins don’t get ahead. They get by. And I find that a lot of us unfortunately struggle with these types of life lies that end up governing a good chunk of our life as a result. And at first, I didn’t really know what to think of it. We didn’t have a lot, we didn’t grow up with a lot. It wasn’t uncommon for our water to get shut off or our lights to get shut off or stuff like that. When you’re younger, you don’t really realize that you’re kind of going through that big of a struggle. But as you become older and older, you kind of get further and further down that path. And around the seventh time I turned 17 years old, I’d been working on the framing crew for some time, and that’s when I met my first mentor. His name was Steve Marks, my dad’s employer.

And for some reason he saw me working, pulled me in his Jeep grand Cherokee, and he asked me a very simple question. He said, “What’s the difference between a rich man and a poor man?” I’m like, “Well, duh. Money. Of course it’s money. It’s got to be money.” He’s like, “Absolutely not. It’s the way they think.” Now the next question he asked me ultimately changed everything, and the question he asked me was, “Do you want to continue thinking like your father, or do you want to learn to think like me?” Now, my mental Rolodex went like, “Zzzz.”

Ray Higdon: You want to defend, I bet. I bet you want to defend and be like, “Hey, man.” [crosstalk] normal reaction.

Stephen: It was like, “Okay, well my dad’s always borrowing money. He’s never repaying the money.” We were always running into financial difficulty. I’ve now had to co-sign for light bills and stuff like that around 18 years old in order to kind of move the bill somewhere else. And then I would contrast that with this guy named Steve, and it was common for him to go into a barbecue restaurant, put $1000 under the hushpuppies, and leave it there as a tip for a single waitress, a waitress that has a single child. And I just remember being in that moment and I was like, “I want to live like this.”

Ray Higdon: First, what a bold dude because I think most people would kind of like, “Man, I wish I could teach that kid,” but this old man for him to say it exactly that way is what a bold guy. What an amazing guy.

Stephen: Yeah. I mean it totally stabbed me in the heart and it changed everything because up until that time, I hadn’t had what I refer to. One of the things we teach at Transform U is the seven levels of life mastery. And I hadn’t had the step number one, which is the awakening. I hadn’t been awoken yet. One of the things I love about your audience so much is that each of them have had this awakening moment and they’re ready for more. They’re ready to do more. They’re ready to ultimately put their future in their hands. And had I not had that awakening moment, I would definitely not be where I’m at. Now, unfortunately I’d love to say that I learned it all right the first time, all of it stuck in my ears and went in one side and actually stuck. But it didn’t. What actually happened was Steve put me in business for myself, serving him, doing siding. Sidin’ as we call it here in North Carolina from time to time, and I made a bunch of money really fast. 19 years old, never been taught how to handle money, never been taught how to steward well for any kind of leadership whatsoever. And what do you do? You blow it.

Ray Higdon: The same with my story. I made a lot of money in real estate, didn’t know what to do with it, wasn’t a good steward. Same.

Stephen: But I think it’s also right. Historically, there’s always seems to be some rite of passage that we also have to go through. And I think that’s one of the reasons why ultimately, that those decisions led me into homelessness, but what kept me homeless was actually my pride and my ego. I didn’t want to ask for help. I didn’t want to admit that I needed help. I didn’t want to admit that I had blind spots. I didn’t want to admit that my emotional intelligence wasn’t where it needed to be. And I think when we get into that, that’s where the homelessness kind of piece kind of, again, steps in. But on the other side of that, all you’ve got to do is learn to actually use what’s at your disposal, so that’s kind of how I got there to begin with.

Ray Higdon: Yeah. And was there one light bulb moment that changed the direction for you? Or was it a series of things? What changed the direction?

Stephen: Yeah, so it was really two. So first of all, I was underneath the capital of our bridge, and I’d been couch surfing and doing other things. That was my first full night out by myself. And I remember thinking to myself, “Is this all my life has made up for?” And then a Steve Myrick because he was like a quote. He talked in fortune cookie, constantly spurting out quotes. This one came back from being a teenager, said, “You have to be willing to do today what others won’t, so you can have tomorrow what others don’t.” And as I’m out there looking around, stars kind of chilly night, I’m thinking to myself like, “What the world? What am I doing? What am I doing?” And the very next thing that I remember doing after that was actually going to a public restroom, looking in the mirror, and actually having a conversation with myself, saying, “Enough’s enough. This will never happen again. I’m not looking back. I don’t know who I need to meet, what I need to do, what I need to learn, but I will not stop until I’ve actually mastered some level of life and then hopefully go on to do some better things.”

Ray Higdon: That’s awesome. And so what were some of the steps that you took to get out of that?

Stephen: Well, I think the number one step that anybody’s got to do to kind of level up is actually going to have to be okay with learning again. I think it’s really easy to trap yourself in thinking like the Scoggins history. I learned about the Scoggins history, 450+ years, not a single Scoggins had been affluent, not a single Scoggin had been impactful. Not any one of them have actually had a level of influence in 450 years. And at some point in time, the person’s got to be like, “I’m going to be the one,” and they’ve got to open themselves up to new things and new learnings, which not everybody does. Unfortunately, we like to think we got it all figured out, but then you can’t pay a bill or then you can’t make the relationship.

Ray Higdon: Blame something outside of you versus I need to learn more.

Stephen: Exactly. That’s one reason why I love your content so much and why I study it all the time is because I like how you’re constantly talking about just as much about life as you are about leveling up. A lot of your new tweets and stuff like that have all been impactful in this. Look, here’s a limiting belief. Here’s a blind spot. You can’t talk to yourself like this. You can’t let these kinds of people around you. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I admire you so much myself.

Ray Higdon: …Stephen, any last words? So for the person out there and maybe they’re not under a bridge like you were, but maybe they’re in a different kind of struggle phase of their life. Any kind of advice for that person as we wrap this up?

Stephen: I think the one piece of advice I’ll try to leave somebody with is searching for purpose. There’s nothing wrong with searching for purpose, but I can tell you from personal experience, I’ve discovered that the greatest purpose in life you’ll ever have is serving the person you used to be. But in order to serve the person you used to be, you’re going to have to become something more, so why not become something more with us to transform your life and then hopefully go out and serve the person you need to be.

Ray Higdon: I love that. What’s funny is, and I don’t think you know this, but I literally just talked about this in a video today, serving the person you used to be. Or no, I talked about it last night, actually. Last night. So last night I did a training last night and I talked all about that, and I just thought about who did I use to be? And just really thinking about that person, that person that struggles with selfworth, that person that kept people at base because he’d been betrayed in the past, the person that was a workaholic, always said he’d spend more time with his kids, but instead would work. And so just that mindset of constantly thinking about the person you used to be is just so powerful. And I see a lot of amazing people on here. Renee Adams, I know that she’s serving the person she used to be. She’s serving who the type of person that has gone through similar things as her. And so it’s just really powerful. And so I see Nancy got her ticket.

Stephen: Awesome. Nancy, can’t wait to see you. It’s going to be awesome.

Ray Higdon: And so I’m excited, man.

Ray Higdon: There we go. There we go. Thanks for coming out here and give him some love.

Stephen: Yeah, man. I can’t wait to see you, brother. It’s going to be awesome. Thanks, guys. Take care.