The School of Greatness

Every stage you never took is the only real failure. The rest is just data.
Jo Koy, the comedian who has sold out SoFi Stadium and won Showtime at the Apollo, sat down with Lewis and told the story of driving Vegas to LA with a broken taillight for a $40 set, getting a ticket both ways. He rode a Greyhound nine hours home from an unpaid audition. He walked to the front of a line wrapped around a building with a fake resume and a headshot his dad took, and asked a promoter for five minutes she did not have to give him.
She gave it to him anyway. Three weeks after crawling through a curtain as an unannounced warm-up act at Def Comedy Jam, he won the Apollo. Years later, when Netflix passed on him, he paid for the special himself, shot it, and brought it back to them. They bought it, and then he broke Mariah Carey's attendance record in Hawaii with 22,000 tickets.
He still prints flyers. Ten thousand of them, for sold-out shows, put on windshields by hand. He talks about his mom rolling lumpia to sell at work during her divorce, about his stepdad teaching him that a messy bed is a messy head, about hugging his son on stage in the same arena where he watched Eddie Murphy at fifteen.
This one will make you uncomfortable in the best way, because you will start counting the lines you did not walk to the front of. Jo's definition of greatness is doing what you love for absolutely nothing, and he says he is still asleep, still dreaming the thing he dreamed at nine.
Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo
Jo's Website
Jo's Instagram
Jo's YouTube
Watch Jo Koy: Blue in the Face
In this episode you will:
Hear how Jo Koy talked his way backstage with a fake resume and turned one stolen set into a career
Reframe bombing as proof you showed up, because you win the moment you accept the challenge and fail
Overcome the insecurity of broken teeth and hair loss that shadowed him for decades
Bet on yourself the way Jo Koy did when Netflix passed and he funded his own special anyway
Redefine greatness as doing what you love when nobody is paying you a dime for it
For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1986
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You already know where to start. What scares you is finding out you might not be good enough once you do.
Lewis goes solo here on the fear that hides inside preparation. He read every page of a 500-page book before his first Tony Robbins interview and still walked in nervous, and that nervousness never actually went away.
Then there was Kobe Bryant. A 5pm phone call the night before, an interview the next morning, 20 minutes, a publicist handing over a list of banned topics, other crews waiting in the hallway. With almost no prep time, it became one of the best conversations Lewis has ever recorded, because he stopped performing his homework and just stayed present and curious.
He gets honest about launching The School of Greatness with an iPhone and no idea what he was doing, asking questions he thought were basic and dumb. Confidence came after the action, never before it. Perfectionism and procrastination wear the same costume, and self-trust only gets built by surviving the attempt.
Ask yourself the uncomfortable question: are you still preparing because the work requires it, or because preparing feels safer than beginning? Whatever you have been circling for months, you will want to take one real step on it today.
Make Money Easy
The School of Greatness
The Greatness Mindset
The Mask of Masculinity
In this episode you will:
Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects.
Spot the moment preparation quietly turns into a sophisticated form of procrastination
Move through the terror of not feeling ready by understanding that confidence arrives after the action, not before it
Steal the mindset that let Lewis turn a Kobe Bryant interview booked the night before into one of his best conversations ever
Answer the question underneath your stalling: what are you actually waiting for
Build real self trust by proving to yourself that failure never gets the final word
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What if your body is already telling you the work you do every day is wrong for you?
Jonathan Fields, founder of Good Life Project and a former securities lawyer, sat down with Lewis to answer the question so many of us carry around: what should I do with my life? He shares how 100 hour weeks at a big law firm ended with an infection eating a hole through his intestine and a trip to emergency surgery.
From there you hear why burnout keeps climbing, why an existential crisis is really a crisis of meaning, and how collapsed boundaries between home and work make it worse. Lewis opens up about eczema that cleared within days once he stopped abandoning himself in his relationships and career.
Jonathan walks through the ideas in his book Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work That Makes You Come Alive, and Lewis learns he is a Maven who hates Essentialist work. You also get Jonathan’s blunt question for finding purpose: what should I just stop doing entirely?
You will finish this one ready to take the free Sparketype assessment and finally chase the work that makes you feel alive.
Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive
How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science, and Practical Wisdom
Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance
Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love
Jonathan's Website
Take the Sparktype test
In this episode you will:
Discover your Sparketype to uncover the unique imprint for work that makes you come alive
Recognize the physical warning signs your body sends when your work or relationships fall out of alignment
Break free from burnout by rebuilding the boundaries between work and home that have collapsed
Question the hidden assumptions that keep you stuck in a rut using Katie Byron's The Work
Eliminate the tasks that drain you so you can focus on what truly matters
Close the gap between your felt and expressed potential without sabotaging yourself once you finally align
For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1985
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There are seven quiet signals that show up in your life long before the money does, and most of them feel like losing.
In this solo episode, Lewis walks you through the money mindset shifts he lived from his sister's couch to a life where his investing runs on autopilot. He tells you about the networking event where he stuffed cheese and crackers into his pockets with a full arm cast on, because he had no idea where his next meal was coming from.
Then comes the number that stops you cold: 48% of people earning over $250,000 a year are still living paycheck to paycheck. A raise was never the answer. Lewis walks through why rich is a number and free is a length of time, and why saying no to a $20,000 sponsorship or a $10,000 coaching call felt like losing his mind right up until it felt like peace.
You will hear how one conversation at a salsa club sent him to Toastmasters and rewired what he could charge, and how he bought a life insurance policy in his twenties for a wife and kids who did not exist yet.
By the end you will have one small assignment: take what you have, divide it by what you spend in a month, and look at the number without flinching. Then start adding months.
Make Money Easy
The School of Greatness
The Greatness Mindset
The Mask of Masculinity
In this episode you will:
Spot the seven quiet signs that wealth is already arriving before anyone else confirms it
Climb Myron Golden's Four Levels of Value so you get paid for deciding and imagining instead of grinding harder
Dismantle the scarcity habits that keep hardworking people stuck, including judging the rich and hoarding out of fear
Reclaim your peace by saying no to real money that violates your values, the way Lewis Howes turned down millions in sponsorships
Measure your runway in months rather than chasing a net worth number, so freedom becomes something you can count
Break the paycheck to paycheck trap that still swallows nearly half of people earning over $250,000 a year
For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1984
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What if the grind you think makes you successful is the very thing keeping you broke and exhausted?
Codie Sanchez, a former Goldman Sachs employee who has run 1,621 businesses through her company’s systems, sat down with Lewis to talk about money, freedom, and why most entrepreneurs across the US earn less than California’s $78,000 minimum wage. Her book Own or Be Owned is built on one uncomfortable question: do you own a business, or does it own you?
She tells the story of walking into a bank for a loan and finding the account she thought held a million dollars almost empty. That night she sat in the dark and called her dad, who told her you are not really in the game until you have had a night like that. She never ran a business without systems again.
The fixes she shares are simpler than you expect. Most businesses are underpriced by 30 to 300 percent, fewer than a third have recurring revenue, and hard work has almost nothing to do with how much money you make. She also explains why more than 80 percent of kids want nothing to do with their parents’ business.
You will finish this one ready to raise your prices and build a life where work fits around the people you love.
Pre-Order: Own or Be Owned: Build a Business So Good It Doesn't Need You
Main Street Millionaire: How to Make Extraordinary Wealth Buying Ordinary Businesses
Codie's Instagram
Codie's YouTube
Big Deal Podcast
Codie's Website
In this episode you will:
Learn the OWN system of 12 profit levers Codie Sanchez uses to build a business that runs without you
Raise your prices with confidence once you see why most businesses are underpriced by 30 to 300%
Escape key man risk by building systems and hiring people who can outperform you
Test real market demand before you build, so your next venture doesn’t start from your pain
Break the money beliefs that keep you living paycheck to paycheck
Pay yourself first and add recurring revenue so your profits turn into lasting freedom
For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1983
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