I've had some major miracles in my life and the very fact that I'm alive here today talking to you and sharing this with you is a miracle so I think the first step to bringing more miracles into your life is just to start to recognize those miracles around you and then opening your heart to the fact that if you're open to miracles they can actually come to you.

I'm on this journey with me each week when you join me we are going to chase down our goals. We've come adversity and set you up for better tomorrow.

Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet my guest today. He's Ryan Blair number one New York Times best selling author and serial entrepreneur Blair went from a gang member to businessman with over two billion in company sales.

After decades of building successful companies Blair began his latest company alter called which up lifts and helps entrepreneurs scale their companies using spiritual modalities Blair is the former CEO of buy Salis which is known for the body by by 90 day challenge in 2012 Blair sold by Salis for $792 million.

Ryan is the number one New York Times best selling author of the book nothing to lose everything to gain Ryan can't wait for you to break this down with us today.

Nice to meet you nice to see you. Thank you for having me.

Perspective is a powerful thing and I did not have a great childhood and so for the majority of my life in corporate America I never spoke about it and then to read your bio and hear that you were in a gang and just this perspective shift of

no matter how hard someone might have it there's always somebody out there who's had it harder can you get into a little bit of your backstory and what you're up and coming gang years or like.

Yeah yeah as a long time ago but you know there's a lot of things I reflect on to this day and I was raised in a I started out in the middle class environment so I had all the perfect situation I had to pull in my backyard.

I had new clothing comes school time lots of presence underneath the Christmas tree and by the outside it looked like we had the perfect family.

On the inside my parents were addicted to alcohol and drugs my father was very violent and as a result of him becoming addicted to drugs he disappeared on us when I was 14 years old and my mother was faced to raise me on her own.

He never sent a dollar child support and never gave her any assistance and she didn't have any career skills or corporate skills whatsoever so she had to try to raise me at 13 years old on her own and as a result of that I rebelled I rebelled as a result of the way I was raised I knew there was something wrong.

With my family although I was forced to lie about it and you know to put up with this whole charade basically that we were you know this perfect family when we weren't.

And so I was forced into a gang at the time this is the 1990s mid 90s early 90s and gang violence was glorified you know it it swept most of the nation.

And so the movies and the music and the things that we grew up on were basically inciting violence and so next thing I found myself involved in that and I spent a couple of years involved in a gang and the gang that is involved in was very violent you know they were involved in all kinds of criminal activity and murdered you know dry by shootings all kinds of things like that.

And the experience that I had growing up was you know anything but normal and as a result of seeing the middle class and then going into poverty I think that it gave me a unique perspective one that I would leverage to quickly move through the middle class in my adult life and then you know shift into the wealthy class.

How were you able to get out of a gang once you were in to me that sounds like it must have been a very hard challenge when you're involved in a gang they really.

Bond you to it for a variety of things one is protection to is you know your friends in your community you also get some power from it so you know people are intimidated by you they give you respect and so there's a lot of things that bond you to that environment and it's also a way of making money so you know it pays the bills as a result of that there's a lot it's very difficult to break that bond.

I had made a deal with God I'm very spiritual and I always was although I I straight from it but I made a deal with God that I would leave the gang when I was granted leniency in a sentencing I was facing four years for strong on robbery and I beg the judge for leniency and when he gave it to me I made a commitment that I was going to leave the gang and so the first thing that I did was I started working non stop generally speaking again won't hold you accountable for working.

But if you're in your house and you're not showing up to the required events they're going to come get you and pull you out of your house or intimidate you know to get out of your house but if you have a job and in my case I had a job because I had to pay restitution for some of the criminal activity I was a part of if you have a job and you're forced to work otherwise you go to jail they'll tend to give you a pass for that and so my strategy was simple I was going to work as many hours that possibly could as far away from the neighborhood that I was going to do.

I was going to go away from the neighborhood that I lived in to get as far away from the gangs I possibly could.

Wow how did you get people outside of that gang community to take you seriously and how did you start seeing yourself differently in order to move into more of a business culture.

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