Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben Paige.
Ben, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My dad helped me create and strengthen my work ethic when I was young. I would be at work at 5:45 in the morning, dig ditches or holes in homeowner’s basements all day, then do side work in the evenings tearing out patios with jackhammers and pick axes. My life was foundation repair which meant shovels, hammer drills, and jackhammers were always in my hands.
I learned some valuable lessons. Doing really backbreaking work for long periods of time helps you build a great self-confidence when it comes to any other kind of work later in life. When I was a senior in high school, my girlfriend’s Dad, Jim Cook, opened my eyes to what life could be. He was a restaurant guy that had leveraged his restaurants into owning and developing commercial real estate. He had time and financial freedom… and all I could think was that I wanted it too.
When I graduated from high school, I went off to college… the “smart,” safe, and responsible thing to do. I spent most of my time in college partying and hanging out with my fraternity brothers. I still always worked. I had lots of jobs… I mowed my professor’s lawns, I rented out a wedding venue for commissions, I worked at the local lumberyard, I worked at a golf course, and I built and sold custom cornhole boards to bar owners in town. I learned to play the “game” of college, doing as little work in the classroom as I could and partying as much as possible.
When I was a junior in college, I went to a national fraternity meeting in Kansas City, and there were a lot of undergraduates and alumni there. The alumni were a good resource to help make things happen. I identified one alumni member who looked very unique and like he might be very business savvy. He was about 70 years old. Picture an old, bald attorney that worked for a mafia family. That’s what this guy looked like. I talked to him for maybe 10 minutes, he gave me his business card and wished me luck in life.
For the next three months, I called him every day and left him voicemails asking him to mentor me. After maybe 50 voicemails he called me back and asked what I wanted. I told him I had a burning desire to learn and thought he might be a good teacher. He thought about it… and told me okay. Buz and I had a call every Friday morning at 9 am for a year. He would teach me about life and business on the calls; I came to find out he was an attorney working in venture capital in Dallas. February of my senior year rolled around, and I asked Buz if I could visit him in Dallas.
He asked why and I told him because I wanted to move there when I graduated. He told me to book a flight and the last weekend in February 2017; I was in DFW for the first time. I stayed at the Motel 6 in Addison.
For 2 days, Buz drove me around the Metroplex showing me around and introducing me to people. One of the people he introduced me to was Tony Jeary, his longtime client of 30 years. Tony lived in a mansion and coached a lot of the world’s top business people and companies out of his backyard in a studio that he built. I found myself in that studio in February 2017 asking Tony for a job. A lot of people told me the fastest way to become successful is to model someone who’s doing what you want to do. I figured Tony seemed really rich and knew everyone, so that was good enough for me.
Tony asked me if I could do video editing. In my head, I thought, “Damn, the one thing that would have been last on my list for him to ask me. I have no idea how to edit videos and as a matter of fact… doing anything like that served as a very fast (10 seconds maybe) way for me to get really aggravated.” So, I replied to Tony, “Of course I do video editing, I love editing videos!”
Tony handed me a flash drive with a 1-hour presentation of him on it and told me to edit it down into a 1-minute highlight reel. I told him, “No problem, I can absolutely do that.” In my head, I’m thinking, “Man I just committed to doing something that I have no idea how to do.” Here’s the lesson, when the right opportunity comes knocking… say yes, and figure it out later. You can always figure it out later.
I went back to my college campus to finish out my senior year knowing that I was going to do anything it took to move to Texas in a few months to work for Tony Jeary. I quickly located the digital media lab on my college campus where all the kids, majoring in video hangout.
I quickly found out that a lot of these video majors loved editing videos! Before I knew it, I had a whole crew of people helping me and even doing Tony’s video editing for me. I’d send the finish products back, and Tony loved it so much that he told me he wanted to hire me full time and have me move to Texas when I graduated in a few months! Cha-ching! Mission accomplished.
Only problem, my video editing team wouldn’t be with me in Texas and Tony would know I actually was terrible at editing videos. But, I didn’t care. I enthusiastically told Tony yes and knew I’d figure it out later. I moved to Texas and lived in North Fort Worth. Tony quickly found out that I didn’t know how to edit videos. I apologized but told him I was willing to do anything he wanted me to do – pick the weeds, make coffee, pick up lunch, stand and hold a phone for him, anything.
The funny thing was, Tony didn’t care at all that I had kind of manufactured the whole video editing thing, and I think it made him like me even more.
Within a few months, I was Tony’s right-hand man, sitting in and listening to all of his coaching and strategy sessions with CEO’s and other high achievers at private and public companies. Tony and I were traveling the world together, and he was mentoring and grooming me very closely, some days we’d spend 14 hours together. I’ve gotten to build relationships and serve the CEO’s from some of Warren Buffett’s companies, owners of professional sports teams, all kinds of other CEO’s, and high achievers from every industry that I know of.
I started really plugging into Tony’s network and working to bring them value. Now, the average age of the 5 people I spend the most time with is 60 years old and a total net worth into the billions. I don’t tell you this to brag or talk about myself – just to maybe encourage someone to say yes even if you don’t know how it will work… just ask, say yes, and figure it out later.
I now have become business partners with Tony in a few businesses and have moved to Flower Mound. I recently started a podcast called “Rewire Yourself,” to help people rewire their thinking by listening to super successful people be interviewed on my show about their biggest failures, successes, thinking, lessons, beliefs, principles, stories, values, and more.
I’m 23 now, and my life has changed a lot in the last few years. What I believe is that anyone can do anything if they have a rock solid work ethic, invest like crazy in making themselves valuable, have a burning desire to sow their way to success, and have the balls to say yes to the right opportunities even if they have no idea at the time how they will figure out how to make it work.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
In general, I’ve been very blessed. I’ve had all the normal challenges everyone else has had, but nothing crazy or particularly traumatic.
Learning Machine – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
One business I have is a personal branding strategy service that helps people “own page 1” of a search on the web. We do websites, SEO, and content creation for our clients.
What sets us apart is that we create any content that our clients want. Podcasts, blogs, videos, tools, we’ll create anything that is useful for our clients. We do all the heavy lifting to save and protect our client’s most valuable asset, time.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Just like Earl Nightingale said, I believe success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. It’s different for everyone. Everyone has different values, and I think that if a person’s living their life in alignment with their values, then they are successful.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.benpaige.com
- Phone: 3147754110
- Email: banthonypaige@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benapaige/
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