- CEO Story: Loren was always been a football player in high school and in college. With lots of accomplishments came an injury that led him to stop playing. From sports, Loren started venturing into entrepreneurship from one to another – websites, SEO, lead generation investments, and loans. With virtual employees in over 4 states, Loren has planted its roots and successfully growing.
- Business Service: Asset-based loans.
- Secret Sauce: Faster service and more efficient decisions.
- CEO Hack: A good morning routine.
- CEO Nugget: Recognise some unhealthy practices that might deter you from success.
- CEO Defined: A journey of knowing yourself.
Website: www.primeplusmortgages.com
LinkedIn: lorenhoward , prime-plus-mortgages
Facebook: primeplusmortgages
Instagram: primeplusmortgages
Episode Link: https://iamceo.co/2020/11/22/iam832-founder-runs-private-money-loans-company/
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Transcription
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00:28 – Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share precisely the information you're searching for. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:55. – Gresham Harkless
Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Lauren Howard of Prime Plus Mortgages. Lauren, it's awesome to have you on the show.
01:04- Loren Howard
Appreciate you having me. Really excited to be here.
01:06 – Gresham Harkless
No problem. Super excited to have you on as well too. Before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Lauren so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Lauren is the founder and president of Crime Plus Mortgages, a private money loans company. Lauren, who is a serial entrepreneur, loving father, and husband, boasts a portfolio of multiple successful companies, world records, and a decorated football career.
He's a coveted world record holder for indoor rowing in the 500 meters, 100 meters, and max distance in one minute. Additionally, Lauren provides serve proudly serves as the president of the Valley Gardens, a 501c3 charity that runs on a $0 operating budget and offers mentorship, leadership, and educational opportunities to underprivileged children in Phoenix, Arizona. Lauren, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
01:53- Loren Howard
Absolutely. I need to. I like that bio right there. I'm not used to that.
01:58 – Gresham Harkless
Exactly. You're doing so many awesome things. It's hard to keep up with everything that you're doing. But I love how you're putting a dent in the universe, so to speak.
02:08 – Loren Howard
Trying, man, trying, trying. One day at a time.
02:10 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to kind of rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with your businesses.
02:18 – Loren Howard
Yeah, sure. Growing up, I'd always been an athlete. Like playing football. I was an all-American in high school in a blue chip and went off to play football at Northwestern in college. Got there thinking I'd go to Northwestern because I had offers all over the country. You could have gone to Miami, could have gone to Nebraska, could have gone to Michigan, could have gone to USC. But I didn't start playing football till my sophomore in high school. So I didn't really know where I was going to be. Leap of faith figure I get a good education and play some Big Ten football. But I got there.
I was starting on day two in camp. I was Big Ten defensive freshman of the year, a freshman all-American. I was all. It was all the same year that Maurice Claret was the Big Ten offensive freshman of the year and I was a Big Ten defensive freshman of the year so took off and football was, was going to be the ticket from there out. My sophomore year came out as an all-conference, I just kind of dominated. It did really well going into my junior year.
Mel Kuiper had me ranked as the second DN to go in the draft. This is preseason obviously, right? It was the same class as Mario Williams and Matthias Kiwanuka coming out of Boston College and I'm going, I think 10th. Mario ended up going first in the draft. Then I am getting hurt and I got hurt that's going into. I came back six weeks later, probably too fast. Developed with that knee tendinitis that never healed up. Played the last six games and then my knee never really got better. I tried to get it healthy and I came to the camp the following year, couldn't play, and I'd have surgery again and transferred to ASU.
So all of a sudden my football career, I thought that I would do anything. I was going to start a business with a friend of mine and we decided to start a supplement manufacturing line with a sexual enhancement product. I kind of call that my MBA. We borrowed like I borrowed five grand from two different, three different uncles. We both put 15 grand into the pot.
Keep in mind, I never had a sales job before in my life. I talked very fast, the mumble. I was an athlete, I was a smart guy, I was a driven guy, but no business background. My mom was a teacher, and substitute teacher. Dad wasn't really around a whole lot. We grew up pretty, pretty humble. Pretty humble I mean and I didn't have a basic background, money background, so decided to go start a business.
A little bit of a backward way of doing things. Usually, you get out of the business world and the sales world and figure it out. But that wasn't a path for me. We learned a lot through that process. So we were thinking we were going to sell this thing online, kind of like the enzyme model, remember that mail enhanced probably enzyme back in the day with a free trial and rebuild? We thought, well, once we launched the website and made it go live yeah, we did that and built out a guy in India. I don't want to go into the story. I could tell you that's building the website. I became really close with him and actually hired him away. He actually got it. He left the company because I guess the head guy was an asshole.
We had built a relationship. He kind of went dark on me. I hit him up and asked what was going on. He told me a story. I sent him like I think 250 bucks just to take care of him because he's a friend of mine. We became really tight from that. From there, we decided to partner up. He would set up an office over there and I would get out there and try to sell the website packages and SEO packages, right? That's my second venture in a business and really I got into a BNI networking group there which is how.
It was one of those deals where you just crack a sale and you can pay your rent that month means it was a struggle. He's on the other side, a young guy in India set up an office and tried to manage that and I'm running the front here. It was a chaos. It was a struggle, but it was fun. I still have a relationship with his name Ajay to this day. I had never met him personally, but we were like brothers. He actually came out to my wedding four years ago. I got to meet him for the first time and we haven't done business together probably in 10 years, but we just had a kinder spirit. From there I met a guy that kind of taught me to lead the lead generation business.
I started generating leads through call centers. So I would broker, I go find call centers on LinkedIn or on Skype in the Philippines and India and then I would go. They were generating call-verified leads or live transfers, right? I would go and find buyers and I'd link them up and I make a dollar or two bucks a lead. And then I found a guy who let me license his lead exchange platform. I became a lead brokerage and that's where I really started making good money. Made my first million bucks.
I was probably 26, or 27 years old and scaled that business to about 2 or 3 million dollars in revenue out of my guest room by myself and all my employees were virtually other countries managing these things. Then I got involved in a compounding pharmacy and the compounding pharmacy did really well. We did eight figures in like 15 months. Then from there, I started investing my money into real estate and sort of lending it out into the hard money space until I learned about hard money and when the compounding world kind of disintegrated because I stopped paying for compounds.
We got into the lending space into the real estate investment space and into the day trading space, which is what I do now. I came from having 170 employees in 40 states in a 10,000-square-foot facility. Having gone to the office every day, which comes with a lot of stress, comes with a lot of responsibility. Now I work from home. My employees are virtual businesses, really systematized.
I have the time, have a one-year-old son now and spend my family from my wife and to really live the lifestyle that I want to have, the time that I want to, which I think is important for me at least that's kind of where that's my journey up to, up to now. So I kind of packed in, I don't know, a good 15 years into however long that was in a couple of minutes.
08:14 – Gresham Harkless
Now I definitely appreciate you for synthesizing that and getting that down so that we can hear the journey so many times we don't see, we just see the finish line or where a person is. We don't see the process that it takes to get there. I wanted to ask you now for like a little bit more about your business. Could you take us through how you serve your clients, what exactly that process is, and what you feel kind of is your secret sauce or the thing you feel kind of sets you or your organization apart?
08:37 – Loren Howard
Yeah, sure. Good question. So for me, handmade loans are just. It's an asset-based loan, right? It's a short-term asset-based loan that people use to acquire investment properties. So they want to go buy property from a wholesaler or pre foreclosure and they need to close in a week. They come to us and we don't pull credit. We don't, we don't want background checks. We just purely lend on the asset value and it's only on investment properties.
What sets us aside is a little bit of a commoditized business. But we're very quick. Right. Like I'm the owner of a company, I have one partner who's a 25% partner, who's a 5050 partner in the bank. But we have two lending arms. One of them I own and then he owns half of the other one. But we make fast decisions. We're able to get an answer within an hour, hour and a half. We tend to be a little bit more aggressive sometimes on our terms because we really know the wholesale values of the properties and we want its customer service. We want to get to know our clients and follow up.
When you're in a business that can be slightly commoditized, the level of service and speed is what's going to usually set you aside. That's why we do a really good job of our systems, our operations, and our response times. Catherine our SEO girl does an amazing job. We rank from the top keywords locally here. We only live in Arizona so I think that's kind of what sets us aside. Yeah, one other thing too is it's all our own money. It's me, my partner's money, or its bank lines of credit.
A traditional hard money lending fund typically has the reg deep private placement memorandum which they raise private funds. Right. They have investors to speak to, and deal with. People want redemptions, raising more money, deploying that money. We tend to have a little bit, be a little bit more nimble in that aspect because it's all our own cash or it's our lines of credit banks that we're personally guaranteed on. Because of that, we can make faster and more efficient decisions. It's less management from us having to try to manage with a fund or investor.
10:38 – Gresham Harkless
Anytime you have so many more people that have a voice, so to speak, it becomes a lot more red tape. It reminded me of Madden. Every time I played Madden, it would say SPE kills and that sounds like it's relevant as well too, as you start to see every business commoditize the faster and quicker you're able to communicate, provide quality service, and do that at a quicker pace, that definitely provides a great way to break through the noise. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this might be an App or book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
11:10 – Loren Howard
Yeah, that's a good question. I think a lot of times it depends on where you're at in your, in your CEO journey. But I definitely think like having a good routine, like a good morning routine, like for me, I get up and meditate. I have a hyperbaric chamber that's in for an hour. Then I work out like and depend. When you're going through stressful times or you're in a startup environment or you're. You need to have the right routines and qualities. You need to read the right things, do the right things for your mind, and your brain, because that's got it. That's going to be your fuel man.
It's hard to get through tough times and tough situations and even good ones without optimizing your. It starts with your overall physical health, right? It's what you put in your body. It's your sleep, it's your meditation, it's your reading. It's having that balance to be able to fuel you for the day. So what I would say is getting the habit of having Tony Robbins call it your power hour. There are plenty of words for it. But just having that routine in the morning, that feeds you the energy you need for the day to be able to attack that day.
12:11 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. I think he says too, is in order to win the day, you gotta win the morning. A lot of times when you win that morning, you understand what exactly success looks like. It empowers you through that day. I think that's absolutely powerful. So I love that hack. Now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. If you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell this to your younger business self.
12:34 – Loren Howard
It's a little bit of a. Jim Rohn had a quote that always stuck with me that was, a lot of the times, more often than not, the qualities that get you to where you're trying to go are not the same qualities, are going to help you enjoy it when you're there if that makes sense. Right. I see a lot of guys like that. It's good to be ambitious and continue to go for bigger and better and greater goals. But I also think it's important to recognize maybe some of the unhealthy characteristics that might have led you to success.
The unbalance, the neglect of other areas of your life because you develop these habits and then you get to a place where you're successful and you have the money, you have the resources, and you have the time, but you don't have the skill set mentally or psychologically to enjoy it. You know what I'm saying? So I think sometimes you can always kind of reassess where you're at, where you came from, where you're trying to go, and the mentality and skill sets that kind of got you there because I think those you want to be able to.
You want to be able to enjoy your life and have balance. Sometimes I know for me, I mean, I was super unbalanced and super single-minded, super focused on where I was going, and almost selfish in a sense. I had to reflect on that and figure out and now I'm where I want to go, where I wanted to go to be able to enjoy that and smell the roses, I guess.
13:59] – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Lauren, what does being a CEO mean to you?
14:08 – Loren Howard
I think being a CEO is knowing, like really it's a journey of knowing yourself, right? Knowing your management style, knowing your leadership style, and then being able to play into your strengths, knowing your personality style, knowing what drives you.
14:21 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Well, Lauren, truly appreciate your definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all those things. You're in the team we're working on.
14:37 – Loren Howard
I'm trying to think of one thing that always comes to mind is I've never known a successful entrepreneur who didn't like, read all the time, and always on a constant quest for knowledge. So I would recommend getting in the habit of reading daily and not using the stigma that we generate in school of, oh, I hate to read. But really get out there and educate yourself because are you going to turn on light bulbs? As far as things I run a charity I started with some friends down here.
We raised about $1.4 million in the last four years and we give all the money we raised to different kids in need here in the Valley of Arizona. That's my passion project and my operating business which I'm really enjoying. It's called Valley Guardians. You can go to valleyguardians.org and find out what we're all about. You can find me on Lauren Howard Six Six on Instagram or Lauren Howard on Facebook or Twitter. But yeah, it's really cool.
I love coaching people. I love helping advice. I love taking advice too. So I'm a very virtual person and I know I'm always trying to constantly improve and get better and help others do the same. So if anyone wants to reach out, I'll be very responsive and I'm always here.
15:53 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Thank you again, Lauren. We will have those links and information in the show notes for the organization as well as your social media links and for your company as well. But I appreciate you again for coaching us up and giving us so many words of wisdom and insight and we will have all that information in the show notes as well. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:13 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
00:28 - Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:55. - Gresham Harkless
Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Lauren Howard of Prime Plus Mortgages. Lauren, it's awesome to have you on the show.
01:04- Loren Howard
Appreciate you having me. Really excited to be here.
01:06 - Gresham Harkless
No problem. Super excited to have you on as well too. Before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Lauren so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Lauren is the founder and president of Crime Plus Mortgages, a private money loans company. Lauren, who is a serial entrepreneur, loving father, and husband, boasts a portfolio of multiple successful companies, world records, and a decorated football career.
He's a coveted world record holder for indoor rowing in the 500 meters, 100 meters, and max distance in one minute. Additionally, Lauren provides serve proudly serves as the president of the Valley Gardens, a 501c3 charity that runs on a $0 operating budget and offers mentorship, leadership, and educational opportunities to underprivileged children in Phoenix, Arizona. Lauren, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
01:53- Loren Howard
Absolutely. I need to. I like that bio right there. I'm not used to that.
01:58 - Gresham Harkless
Exactly. You're doing so many awesome things. It's hard to keep up with everything that you're doing. But I love how you're putting a dent in the universe, so to speak.
02:08 - Loren Howard
Trying, man, trying, trying. One day at a time.
02:10 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to kind of rewind the clock a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with your businesses.
02:18 - Loren Howard
Yeah, sure. Growing up, I'd always been an athlete. Like playing football. I was an all-American in high school in a blue chip and went off to play football at Northwestern in college. Got there thinking I'd go to Northwestern because I had offers all over the country. You could have gone to Miami, could have gone to Nebraska, could have gone to Michigan, could have gone to USC. But I didn't start playing football till my sophomore in high school. So I didn't really know where I was going to be. Leap of faith figure I get a good education and play some Big Ten football. But I got there.
I was starting on day two in camp. I was Big Ten defensive freshman of the year, a freshman all-American. I was all. It was all the same year that Maurice Claret was the Big Ten offensive freshman of the year and I was a Big Ten defensive freshman of the year so took off and football was, was going to be the ticket from there out. My sophomore year came out as an all-conference, I just kind of dominated. It did really well going into my junior year.
Mel Kuiper had me ranked as the second DN to go in the draft. This is preseason obviously, right? It was the same class as Mario Williams and Matthias Kiwanuka coming out of Boston College and I'm going, I think 10th. Mario ended up going first in the draft. Then I am getting hurt and I got hurt that's going into. I came back six weeks later, probably too fast. Developed with that knee tendinitis that never healed up. Played the last six games and then my knee never really got better. I tried to get it healthy and I came to the camp the following year, couldn't play, and I'd have surgery again and transferred to ASU.
So all of a sudden my football career, I thought that I would do anything. I was going to start a business with a friend of mine and we decided to start a supplement manufacturing line with a sexual enhancement product. I kind of call that my MBA. We borrowed like I borrowed five grand from two different, three different uncles. We both put 15 grand into the pot.
Keep in mind, I never had a sales job before in my life. I talked very fast, the mumble. I was an athlete, I was a smart guy, I was a driven guy, but no business background. My mom was a teacher, and substitute teacher. Dad wasn't really around a whole lot. We grew up pretty, pretty humble. Pretty humble I mean and I didn't have a basic background, money background, so decided to go start a business.
A little bit of a backward way of doing things. Usually, you get out of the business world and the sales world and figure it out. But that wasn't a path for me. We learned a lot through that process. So we were thinking we were going to sell this thing online, kind of like the enzyme model, remember that mail enhanced probably enzyme back in the day with a free trial and rebuild? We thought, well, once we launched the website and made it go live yeah, we did that and built out a guy in India. I don't want to go into the story. I could tell you that's building the website. I became really close with him and actually hired him away. He actually got it. He left the company because I guess the head guy was an asshole.
We had built a relationship. He kind of went dark on me. I hit him up and asked what was going on. He told me a story. I sent him like I think 250 bucks just to take care of him because he's a friend of mine. We became really tight from that. From there, we decided to partner up. He would set up an office over there and I would get out there and try to sell the website packages and SEO packages, right? That's my second venture in a business and really I got into a BNI networking group there which is how.
It was one of those deals where you just crack a sale and you can pay your rent that month means it was a struggle. He's on the other side, a young guy in India set up an office and tried to manage that and I'm running the front here. It was a chaos. It was a struggle, but it was fun. I still have a relationship with his name Ajay to this day. I had never met him personally, but we were like brothers. He actually came out to my wedding four years ago. I got to meet him for the first time and we haven't done business together probably in 10 years, but we just had a kinder spirit. From there I met a guy that kind of taught me to lead the lead generation business.
I started generating leads through call centers. So I would broker, I go find call centers on LinkedIn or on Skype in the Philippines and India and then I would go. They were generating call-verified leads or live transfers, right? I would go and find buyers and I'd link them up and I make a dollar or two bucks a lead. And then I found a guy who let me license his lead exchange platform. I became a lead brokerage and that's where I really started making good money. Made my first million bucks.
I was probably 26, or 27 years old and scaled that business to about 2 or 3 million dollars in revenue out of my guest room by myself and all my employees were virtually other countries managing these things. Then I got involved in a compounding pharmacy and the compounding pharmacy did really well. We did eight figures in like 15 months. Then from there, I started investing my money into real estate and sort of lending it out into the hard money space until I learned about hard money and when the compounding world kind of disintegrated because I stopped paying for compounds.
We got into the lending space into the real estate investment space and into the day trading space, which is what I do now. I came from having 170 employees in 40 states in a 10,000-square-foot facility. Having gone to the office every day, which comes with a lot of stress, comes with a lot of responsibility. Now I work from home. My employees are virtual businesses, really systematized.
I have the time, have a one-year-old son now and spend my family from my wife and to really live the lifestyle that I want to have, the time that I want to, which I think is important for me at least that's kind of where that's my journey up to, up to now. So I kind of packed in, I don't know, a good 15 years into however long that was in a couple of minutes.
08:14 - Gresham Harkless
Now I definitely appreciate you for synthesizing that and getting that down so that we can hear the journey so many times we don't see, we just see the finish line or where a person is. We don't see the process that it takes to get there. I wanted to ask you now for like a little bit more about your business. Could you take us through how you serve your clients, what exactly that process is, and what you feel kind of is your secret sauce or the thing you feel kind of sets you or your organization apart?
08:37 - Loren Howard
Yeah, sure. Good question. So for me, handmade loans are just. It's an asset-based loan, right? It's a short-term asset-based loan that people use to acquire investment properties. So they want to go buy property from a wholesaler or pre foreclosure and they need to close in a week. They come to us and we don't pull credit. We don't, we don't want background checks. We just purely lend on the asset value and it's only on investment properties.
What sets us aside is a little bit of a commoditized business. But we're very quick. Right. Like I'm the owner of a company, I have one partner who's a 25% partner, who's a 5050 partner in the bank. But we have two lending arms. One of them I own and then he owns half of the other one. But we make fast decisions. We're able to get an answer within an hour, hour and a half. We tend to be a little bit more aggressive sometimes on our terms because we really know the wholesale values of the properties and we want its customer service. We want to get to know our clients and follow up.
When you're in a business that can be slightly commoditized, the level of service and speed is what's going to usually set you aside. That's why we do a really good job of our systems, our operations, and our response times. Catherine our SEO girl does an amazing job. We rank from the top keywords locally here. We only live in Arizona so I think that's kind of what sets us aside. Yeah, one other thing too is it's all our own money. It's me, my partner's money, or its bank lines of credit.
A traditional hard money lending fund typically has the reg deep private placement memorandum which they raise private funds. Right. They have investors to speak to, and deal with. People want redemptions, raising more money, deploying that money. We tend to have a little bit, be a little bit more nimble in that aspect because it's all our own cash or it's our lines of credit banks that we're personally guaranteed on. Because of that, we can make faster and more efficient decisions. It's less management from us having to try to manage with a fund or investor.
10:38 - Gresham Harkless
Anytime you have so many more people that have a voice, so to speak, it becomes a lot more red tape. It reminded me of Madden. Every time I played Madden, it would say SPE kills and that sounds like it's relevant as well too, as you start to see every business commoditize the faster and quicker you're able to communicate, provide quality service, and do that at a quicker pace, that definitely provides a great way to break through the noise. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this might be an App or book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
11:10 - Loren Howard
Yeah, that's a good question. I think a lot of times it depends on where you're at in your, in your CEO journey. But I definitely think like having a good routine, like a good morning routine, like for me, I get up and meditate. I have a hyperbaric chamber that's in for an hour. Then I work out like and depend. When you're going through stressful times or you're in a startup environment or you're. You need to have the right routines and qualities. You need to read the right things, do the right things for your mind, and your brain, because that's got it. That's going to be your fuel man.
It's hard to get through tough times and tough situations and even good ones without optimizing your. It starts with your overall physical health, right? It's what you put in your body. It's your sleep, it's your meditation, it's your reading. It's having that balance to be able to fuel you for the day. So what I would say is getting the habit of having Tony Robbins call it your power hour. There are plenty of words for it. But just having that routine in the morning, that feeds you the energy you need for the day to be able to attack that day.
12:11 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. I think he says too, is in order to win the day, you gotta win the morning. A lot of times when you win that morning, you understand what exactly success looks like. It empowers you through that day. I think that's absolutely powerful. So I love that hack. Now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. If you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell this to your younger business self.
12:34 - Loren Howard
It's a little bit of a. Jim Rohn had a quote that always stuck with me that was, a lot of the times, more often than not, the qualities that get you to where you're trying to go are not the same qualities, are going to help you enjoy it when you're there if that makes sense. Right. I see a lot of guys like that. It's good to be ambitious and continue to go for bigger and better and greater goals. But I also think it's important to recognize maybe some of the unhealthy characteristics that might have led you to success.
The unbalance, the neglect of other areas of your life because you develop these habits and then you get to a place where you're successful and you have the money, you have the resources, and you have the time, but you don't have the skill set mentally or psychologically to enjoy it. You know what I'm saying? So I think sometimes you can always kind of reassess where you're at, where you came from, where you're trying to go, and the mentality and skill sets that kind of got you there because I think those you want to be able to.
You want to be able to enjoy your life and have balance. Sometimes I know for me, I mean, I was super unbalanced and super single-minded, super focused on where I was going, and almost selfish in a sense. I had to reflect on that and figure out and now I'm where I want to go, where I wanted to go to be able to enjoy that and smell the roses, I guess.
13:59] - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Lauren, what does being a CEO mean to you?
14:08 - Loren Howard
I think being a CEO is knowing, like really it's a journey of knowing yourself, right? Knowing your management style, knowing your leadership style, and then being able to play into your strengths, knowing your personality style, knowing what drives you.
14:21 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Well, Lauren, truly appreciate your definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all those things. You're in the team we're working on.
14:37 - Loren Howard
I'm trying to think of one thing that always comes to mind is I've never known a successful entrepreneur who didn't like, read all the time, and always on a constant quest for knowledge. So I would recommend getting in the habit of reading daily and not using the stigma that we generate in school of, oh, I hate to read. But really get out there and educate yourself because are you going to turn on light bulbs? As far as things I run a charity I started with some friends down here.
We raised about $1.4 million in the last four years and we give all the money we raised to different kids in need here in the Valley of Arizona. That's my passion project and my operating business which I'm really enjoying. It's called Valley Guardians. You can go to valleyguardians.org and find out what we're all about. You can find me on Lauren Howard Six Six on Instagram or Lauren Howard on Facebook or Twitter. But yeah, it's really cool.
I love coaching people. I love helping advice. I love taking advice too. So I'm a very virtual person and I know I'm always trying to constantly improve and get better and help others do the same. So if anyone wants to reach out, I'll be very responsive and I'm always here.
15:53 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Thank you again, Lauren. We will have those links and information in the show notes for the organization as well as your social media links and for your company as well. But I appreciate you again for coaching us up and giving us so many words of wisdom and insight and we will have all that information in the show notes as well. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:13 - Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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