Secrets for Success
Episode 1: New Beginnings
Welcome to the Secrets for Success podcast. Greg Todd here. This is our first episode and I'm so excited that you guys are here. I'm assuming that the majority of you that are listening are coming over from the Wealth Code Secrets. So I want to explain to you guys a little bit of why I'm doing this podcast and why the changeover.
So just to kind of bring you guys back. My first podcast I ever did was Hunt for Greatness. We did over 500 episodes and that was just me talking and me sharing what I was going through as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and then probably about 40 episodes in, I decided that I was going to start helping people grow their brand, help them grow their career and grow their business.
So that's basically what I did with that. It was me just doing it every morning and that was it. And then I decided, okay. I'm going to shift away from that. I am going to now do a new podcast called the wealth code secrets, which we just finished our 300th episode. And again, that podcast was primarily me sharing tips, tricks, and what was going on in my life, and hopefully it is helping you as well, but here's the reality.
The reality is that my success that I've had over my time in business. And for those of you that don't know, I have created three businesses that have done over a million dollars a year in three different industries. And I've created five businesses that have done over six figures per year in their business.
So how did I do that? Well, I believe I did that through the grace of God and through God's provision over my life, because I've gone through a lot of different things and he has allowed me to still be here alive on this earth. And so... I'm grateful and thankful for all the experiences that I've gone through.
But the reality is that it also happened through people. And the reason why I wanted to create a Secrets for Success podcast is that I didn't want this to be just about me. I wanted this to be about how I truly believe that I've been able to attain success. And I believe it's through learning from other people.
I want to bring on some of those special people throughout this podcast and some of those people are going to be my spouse and my kids and mentors and coaches and people that I believe can inspire you. The reality is this. I am a mentor and a coach primarily in the healthcare space, but I'd never had a mentor and a coach in the healthcare space.
I learned about business. Outside of the healthcare space and the people that I want to bring on this podcast are people that are going to basically do for you what they did for me. And so I'm really excited about this. I'm really excited to share this stage with not just myself, but with other people.
And I'm excited for you all to be able to meet them as we do the podcast. So you're going to be getting some episodes. with just me and we'll continue to do that, but you're going to be getting much more frequent episodes where I'm bringing in guests that I believe can bring a lot of value to you.
So with that said, let's talk a little bit about who the host is and my journey. So I am an immigrant and I was actually born in Kingston, Jamaica. I was born September 20th, 1977. I did not live in Jamaica for very long. My parents actually immigrated and moved to the States in January of 1978.
So I was only in Jamaica for four months. But the culture that I was, that I was brought up in was a Jamaican culture. And one of the things that I think was so amazing about my childhood and what I truly believe has So the secrets for my success is the fact that I have this Jamaican culture in me, but I was also exposed to life in America.
So from when I left Jamaica and we came here, we lived with my grandparents because that's the best that my parents could do at the time. They were still trying to find their way and my dad was working for a newspaper company called the Miami Herald. And we were living with my grandparents and during that time, you know, even though I was a little kid, I realized a couple of things. I realized that, you know, in the beginning we needed help, right?
We needed help like we couldn't do it on our own the minute that we, you know, decided to come over here to America. So, sometimes you need a little help and there's nothing wrong with that. And that's what I got. My dad and got my mom off the ground. So we were able to do that and we lived in an area called Norlin, Florida.
I wouldn't say it's a hood, but it definitely wasn't Beverly Hills. Let's just put it like that. It was, it was a rough neighborhood. It was a tough neighborhood, but you know,we were there for about four or five years. And then my parents decided that they wanted to have their sons.
They're two sons at the time, myself and my older brother, Mark, and they wanted to move us to where the best schools were. And that was an area at that time called Pembroke Pines, Florida. And so, Mark, myself, my mom and my dad moved out of Norlin and moved to Pembroke Pines. And that was, that honestly really shaped me.
It shaped me, and I look at how my communities are today, where they're so they're so diverse. And it's not just a bunch of black people and it's not a bunch of Hispanic people and it's, it's white people, it's Asians, it's this, it's that. And if you even look at my businesses, if you look at everything, they're just diverse.
It's all different types of people. And it's because I actually grew up in Pembroke Pines. And in Pembroke Pines, it was, I was like the one black kid in all of my classes., and... I grew up with people that didn't look like me and it shaped me because today I can tell you that with business, most of the people aren't doing what I'm doing and I don't care because it's always been like that for me throughout my entire life.
I think that's one of the big secrets is you've got to be willing to stand out. You've got to be willing to stick out and I didn't have a choice, but that's just the way that it was. and I really believe that I had, I believe that I had the perfect childhood to set you up for success. I was the poorest kid in a middle class neighborhood.
I saw the other kids have the cool stuff and get the awesome gifts for Christmas and get this and get that and I was exposed to it, but I couldn't have it. And so I didn't feel sorry for myself because I feel like my parents did one thing for me and that was every year. They sent me back to Jamaica and I'll, I'll never forget this.
You guys, I, when we would go to Jamaica and I would leave like back then you had to go to Miami international airport. Cause I was the only airport in South Florida that took you to Kingston, Jamaica. And I remember on our way from Pembroke Pines driving, my parents would drive me and my brother to the airport and they would ship us off to Jamaica for the summer.
And when we were on our way driving from Pembroke pines to the airport, we would have to pass. I 95 and go to the airport and we would go through cities called Comer and Brown. And, gosh, what's the other hood places? Liberty City and these other places. And it was rough. Like it was like, Oh my gosh, man, you'd never want your car to break down in the hood here.
Right. And then they would get us to the airport. And. My brother and I would get on a plane and we would, you know, fly over to Kingston, Jamaica. And when my uncle or my aunt would pick us up from the airport, I remember within two hours driving from the airport to their house, seeing people on the side of the street naked.
Seeing people, I mean, I'm talking totally emaciated, like just bones and just all you see is ribs and just like... And like they don't even have enough money for clothes You'd see people coming up to your car when you would get to a stoplight and banging on your window Right and just please please give me something and just realizing the perspective of how How life was so different and how I might have been the poor kid in the middle class neighborhood growing up.
But I felt so rich when I would get to that island and realize how fortunate we have it here in America. And that, that shaped me. Between me being the one black kid in my class and knowing that I was never going to fit in. I was never going to, to be like and look like everybody else. To being in a neighborhood where I saw nice things, but I just couldn't have them the way that the other kids have it.
But then also having the perspective of seeing that as, as poor as I thought I was, I was so rich relative to the rest of the world. I believe that all of those things combined, set it up to where I had to be successful. Like I had to be successful. I had a level of gratitude for what I did have. But I also was aware that there's a lot of things that I didn't have.
And I think a lot of people, they're just stuck in their environment. They've never seen anything good. So they don't even know that there's anything to even work for. I think that there's some people where they have everything so good. And because they have everything so good, why should I work for anything?
I think there's also a lot of people that all they know is all they know, and they've never been able to see the other side of things and the other side of the world and third world countries. And, and I think all those things together. Have allowed me to be set up for the success that I eventually had.
Now, I want to tell you a couple other things. for me, I've, I've always been, a kid that was trying not to get in trouble, but I got in a hell of a lot of trouble. I was a tyrant growing up. my parents will tell you that I was, they said that I'm either going to be extremely successful or I'm going to go to jail and I'm going to be, because I'm going to go to jail for drugs.
That's it. I've always been extremely obsessive. And whatever it is that I did, so whether it was sports and playing baseball or playing basketball, I always wanted to win, and I got that from my dad, in understanding that here, my coach says it like this, my coach Ed Milett says, winning is more fun than fun is fun and I've always been extremely competitive, my dad instilled in me something from an early age, and he said, hey, whatever you lack in talent, we can make up for in repetitions.
And so, I've won a lot of competitions. I've won a lot of races. I won races from, from when I was, you know, growing up in elementary school where there was a race called the mini marathon and. I won it three times in elementary school and beat the entire school out with just what I did because I trained so hard.
So my dad has always taught me discipline and how to train and how to work for anything that you want. And you can basically get anything that you want in your life. And that's honestly, that's, that's what's made me, me. And so it's other people, it's other experiences that have shaped my environment and this environment eventually has led to what it is that I'm doing today.
But before I finish this, I want to tell you this. I have never had the intentions to be an entrepreneur. I went to school. I decided after seeing a few different things in my childhood that I did not want to be an entrepreneur because I always felt like entrepreneurship was too volatile. It was too up and down.
I wanted to have a stable job. And even when I finished high school, I said, well, if I am going to go to college, I'm going to make sure that I.
And so now it was just a matter of what do I go to college for? my mom was a medical transcriptionist. She worked for an orthopedic surgeon. And when she couldn't do the work that they wanted her to do, cause she wanted to go see my younger brother's games or whatnot, she would have me do it. She taught me how to type.
She taught me how to And I was able to type like 50 to 65 words a minute at my, my peak. And basically when she would go to my younger brother's games, his baseball games, I would actually do the work that she was supposed to do for the orthopedic surgeon's office that she worked for. And so I started to fall in love with anatomy and with.
The human body and, but I knew that I wanted, what was most important to me was that I had a job that was stable and that was secure. And so that was the reason why I did decide to go to college and I decided to become a physical therapist., I was the only brother of my three brothers, I was the only one to not get a scholarship for college.
My grades were just average. And I remember my parents saying to me, Greg, we don't know if you're necessarily college material. So, you didn't get a scholarship like your older brother. At that point, my younger brother wasn't in college yet. But, what we'll do is this. If you want to go to college, you're going to have to help fend for yourself.
And you're going to have to pay for some of your college. And so, that was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Because... I was making about 5 an hour with my job, actually even less than that. I was making just under 5 an hour with my job and I had to pay for my college classes, or at least pay for some of it at FIU.
And because I had to pay, there was a level of commitment that I went into college with that I don't think most people go to college with because they're either getting loans and it's not coming out of their pocket. But I had to work at my job as a janitor at TJ Maxx. I had to work and clean toilets.
And clean crap off the seats to be able to learn. And it was the first time in my life that that happened. And in college, it was the second time I ever got straight A's. The first time was in fourth grade one time. I got straight A's in college because I was committed. And that's why I make people pay to work with me.
It's because I know that when you pay, you pay attention and there's a level of commitment. And you won't mess around. And so I went into college knowing that, okay, I'm going to do this physical therapy thing and I'm doing this physical therapy thing so that I don't ever have to work for myself and I don't ever have to be a business owner.
Like I saw my dad do as he left the Miami Herald and went onto business. I didn't want the marital struggles and the pain that my dad had. And so I decided this was the direction I was going to go. So I'm going to kind of finish off by just telling you that, I decided to become a physical therapist.
And while I was in college and made that commitment to become a physical therapist, one of the biggest shifts in my life happened. And I met this little young girl named, Kaywanna Simpson. And so you're going to hear a little bit more about Kaywanna on the next episode. And,, she is the reason why I decided.
to play a different game than most people are playing. But,, it's pretty important that you know a little bit about who I am, what makes me, me, why I'm wired the way that I'm wired. And I hope I did that in the first episode. So I want to tell you, thank you so much for being a part of the Secrets for Success podcast.
I hope you guys enjoy it. I hope you guys enjoy the guests that come in. I hope you guys enjoy the stories that I tell. And, you know, I'm not going to tell you what to take from the stories, but I'm just going to ask that. You know, as you hear me say the things, take your own conclusion from it and use it, to better yourself.
