Natalie: Today on the show I'd be speaking with Rich German. He talks about his Gen Why Project of how he's helping homeless kids around in America. So, stay tuned.

Natalie: Hi, I'm Natalie Ledwell and this is The Inspiration Show. And today, my special guest is Rich German. How are you Rich?

Rich German: I'm wonderful Natalie. I'm so happy to be here with you.

Natalie: Now, Rich is a fellow coach. He's actually, he's messaged a lot about Law of Attraction you'll say hopes. Coaches become coaches. And he has this amazing Gen Why Project that he's working on as well. We're gonna be talking all about it in the video today. So, why don't we start first with your story? Like how did you get to, to do this type of work?

Rich German: Yeah. So, I've been a coach, I was kinda jog now. But first of all, thank you for having me and I'm excited to be on your show. I kinda joke that I've been a coach since before coaching was cool. I actually became a coach back in 1999. And I was, looking back was funny coz I was 29 years old and didn't even know much about life yet. And I actually need to sell real estate, that was my background. And I never really liked selling real estate; it was by no means of passion of mine. But I was actually pretty good at it in a little need of money. But as we know, even chasing money gets old after while coz that's something I would truly love. So, back in a like late 90's I hired a coach to support me in my real estate business taken up maybe my plan to really enjoy the business. Whatever enjoyed selling the real estate, but I really got turned on to the whole idea of coaching. And I got close with my coach. As that company was expanding, they hired me to come to be a coach for them. So, 1999 I started coaching and then fast forward in 2003, I woke up, I was looking at a 4-lottery old at Florida at the time. And I wake up one morning on October 2003, and I was married, I lived in this big beautiful home in the perfect Suburb before Florida, Florida, right neighborhood, right on the lake, driving the nice cars, making money like on the outside everything looked like my life is amazing. But I wake up one morning and my wife sits me down and basically says that she wanted a divorce. And it totally like, came out of the blue and I got my whole life planned out. Even though I wasn't happy, it kinda laid out in that one conversation where she basically said "I would rather be on my own", my whole life changed. And literally, within the next few weeks, my marriage fell apart, it was already fallen apart obviously and I got really cleared then that real estate was not my thing and the idea that my whole life wasn't working. And I basically left everything. I packed up, moved from this big home of 4-lottery in Florida and down to Key West, Florida. Which is you know that Key West is a little 2 by 4 mile island in the middle of the ocean essentially. And I started my life over. And that's when I quit some of my real estate and started coaching full time. I lived in Key West for about 3 years and then this was a October 2.., October's always been a weird month for me. So, October 2005 I was living in Key West, had a great little life going there. And this was the year that all of the hurricanes came through, this was the year that hurricane Katrina came through that basically devastated New Orleans. And as the country was focused on that, a smaller hurricane came through and this barreled through Key West and it destroyed and wiped me out. So, my home, all of my possessions are completely wiped out. And the whole story in that, that's the free version, that was my sign from the universe that was the time to get out of Florida and that's what brought me here to California and moved right here to Laguna Beach. That time I was looking for a friend who had a coaching business that I helped him build a very successful coaching business. But the truth is I actually opened my book "Monetize Your Passion" opens with this story where I was miserable working for this company, it was very much a corporate deal company. And I was the leader of the coaching department and it's just a very fear-based negative environment. And I had to quit that job, it was actually good that the environment was so bad and it pretty much forced me out and that's what I said, "hey, I gotta start my own thing and do my own thing". Came home to my own home on the beach, start my own coaching business exactly four years ago and it's been the best thing that I've ever done in my life. So, there's the last ten years of my life!

Natalie: Excellent! So, that's how you gonna do the coaching. Tell us about this Gen Why Project and how this started.

Rich German: Thank you. So, about 2 years ago, and I was sitting right here down on the beach and I, I have been very blessed in my life and my business have been doing great. And I decided it was time to give back. And I had no idea what I wanted to do from majorities to here point and so, what I always do, when I don't, when I'm pretty much, I'm unclear on something, I literally just go down to the beach and I just, I literally sat there and I put my hands up towards the ocean and I was like "tell me what to do". And then I stood up and came back to the house and over the next several days, I literally, everywhere I went I would get signs that pointed to homeless youth. And not just homeless youth around the world, specifically here in the United States. Like I literally was driving and I saw a bus and there was a picture of this homeless child and said something about "do you know where your kid is sleeping in at night?" and I would get emails, it was literally every day I would get some kinda sign pointing me towards the homeless youth of the U.S. And I started doing a lot of research and it came to my attention unfortunately that there's literally nearly 1.6 Million homeless children here in the wealthiest country, you know, plead! And I really researched and find out what was actually should've been done. This wasn't a lot. It's like, barely I'm supposed to be that someone who takes the lead in bringing awareness. It's mostly I've had no idea. I live in Orange County, right after the road from you. And Orange County's maybe one of the top 3 wealthiest county in the entire country. Ten minutes down the road, there's 22,000 homeless kids right here in Orange County. And so, basically, I still care I'm gonna do something, "what do i do?" and I realized that media was the way to go to. We wanna create awareness. And so, I partnered with some local guys that are also involved with the homeless youth. And our original plan was actually to make a full feature documentary film called Generation Why, we called the Gen Why Project. Like WHY? As in, like Why is there such homeless kids in this country? And we started raising money that we keep talking about my book. Originally to create a movie and we should appear just a little bit of an hour in post production, on a reality TV Show called The Cut, which is awesome. So what we do is we found five local homeless kids. There are homeless that going to the foster system that were musicians and we made a TV Show. It's kinda like we're Gen Why is meeting American Idol. Coz he reality is it's a very dark subject and out of the reason not a lot has been done. Coz people just wanna look at it. So, we gonna come up with something entertaining. And people love music, you know, and shows like American Idol lovers so popular, so we've merged the two. And we just finished filming the whole first season. So we'll have a reality show called "The Cut" which features, it was originally five kids and the idea was they go to school, they keep the grades, they keep their jobs, so they make the cut. We put them in the studio and record and two of the other kids unfortunately didn't make the cut, one wasn't going to school, one guy caught with drugs, the other three that made the cut are just three of the sweetest kids you'd ever meet in your life. We put them in a studio and recorded the most beautiful song you'll ever hear and we're editing to the show right now. And our intention is to get it on, you know, either an MTV or NBC or something like that. So, we're really excited about that. So, it's probably awareness stand point. So it's really about awareness and eventually creating solutions for these kids all over the country.

Natalie: Yeah. That's awesome. So, I mean, Okay, this is a, it's a massive problem. You know, what is your solution? Do you know what, what's some of the solutions can be to fix this?

Rich German: Yeah, absolutely. It begins with the awareness people just need to know about the problem. And then from the solution stand point, these kids need a lot of things. Number 1, they need, they need support, they need love, they need to know that they're not alone. From the basic stand point they need basic life skills, we figured that the typical homeless youth is about 6 years younger emotionally and mentally than in an averaged kid. So, they need like things like how to open up a bank account. The basic life skills, they really need that. So, the combination of basic life skills, love and support and then obviously jobs so they can create an income and then major thing is they need, they need homes. A lot of great organizations out there they kinda supporting these kids while they're out on the streets. And we wanna get them off the streets. So, these are all the major 4 things: Life Skills, Support, They need jobs and They need somewhere to live.

Natalie: Right, ok. Coz i know that you touched before on a, on your book that's connected to Monetize Your Passion, which is such an excellent information. But this time, specifically, coz you know, I was just, actually I was on call with the Mike Dooley, we're talking about how, you know, these days, a lot of people have been through been might redundant and all just through choice or whatever. And no longer incorporate in doing it a business and thinking I'm kinda do it at the age of 40 or 50. I'm gonna make something that I like, that I'd like to do. So, tell us about the book "Monetize Your Passion".

Rich German: So, the book is a funny little story. I was in the shower one day, I realized all, I don't take credit on any of my ideas coz they all come to me. They all come either from the ocean or I'm in the shower. Just something in the water, something at the water. So I was in the shower one day, this is gonna sound a little weird, just stick with me. And I had this epiphany in the shower just about two years ago. And the epiphany was that I was the luckiest guy in the world. And literally, in the shower in the morning and it started just came through that I'm the luckiest guy in the world, alright, that's a nice start, where did that came from? And the reason that I had that thought was, I get to do what I love, like you, you're the luckiest girl in the world. I get to do what I love, all day long. Doing what I do, provides financial freedom for me and number 3 it makes a real difference for other people. It's why what we do, the coaches, and leaders and thinkers and others and speakers. And it makes an impact on other people. And I was like, I called that life as an ultimate win, win, win right there. Doing what you love, creating financial freedom while doing it and making an impact doesn't get any better. And it hit me like, Oh my God! Like, I can teach other people how to do that. And what that was I did, I put on a one hour tele-seminar that I call "How to Create Financial Freedom". And it was a freak all and everybody loved it. And I said, Oh, let me create something else. And then I created, from then I always wanted to write a book, just don't know how to do it. And that I created a four-week class that I called the same thing "How to Create Financial Freedom" and people just ate it up. So I took those 4 recordings, having them all transcribed, and BAM! That was like the core of the book "Monetize Your Passion" and I took a few mile, I realized I had something there, I took a few months and I just expanded and expanded, I think I've got a copy just over right there. Turning into a 238 page book on "Monetize Your Passion". Now, when the book came out, we make a kinda crazy decision and that was I decided to give the book away for free. And people were like, what are you talking about? You used to... It was like years of work. That's what's great about that book, it's like you got years of somebody's thoughts, and actions and like the power of the 200 pages and you could just bang! Just to get it off in one shot. And like why did you give this away? And I've decided to give it away for two reasons and we have already discussed one. The first reason, we actually discuss both. One, it pains me to see people struggle. Yeah, how many people do you honestly know? Even in a little circles that we run in, unassuming like you are run in a pretty high conscious circle of people. But how many people do you know that truly love what they do? How many people do you know that are just totally happy? I really don't know that many, of course. Most people don't, I read that stand that 70% of people hate what they do. Not dislike it, not tolerate it, they literally hate what they do. And your figures that 50% of your waking your life doing your job and you hate it. People don't like what they do, you and I both know that when you get down into the core and really get to know people and most people are not totally happy and satisfied with their life. Most people are in great loving amazing relationship so people are struggling out there. So part of me wanted to give the information away because I want, I just wanted people to be happy. Just it, that's all I really care about, I just want people to be happy and enjoy their lives. I think that's kinda meaning of life right there, at least. So I wanna give away the information away. Now we did it a mass of fund raiser for Gen Why. So, back when the book came out, I made this huge online campaign for basically want everyone that I know that online world that I've been supporting for years and say, "now I need your support". And we have tons of people mailed to promote the book for free. And we gave a 28,000 copies of the book within two weeks and raised a whole bunch of money. So, the way we do is give the book away for free and it's completely optional but we asked for a charity donation. Totally optional, most people don't make something. And it was so successful that I made the decision. I don't care if I'd ever sell this book. It brings so much awareness and raising so much money. And so, till to this day, I'd give away the book for free and I'd be happy to give it away to anyone who's watching right now, of course.

Natalie: I know. So, if people wanted to help with the project and buy the book or get the book which could be sent out by the book, where can we send them to do that?

Rich German: The best place to just my website. I'd appreciate to send through, it is richgerman.com and it's like "German" but it's pronounced "German". So go to richgerman.com on the top right of my website to download my book for free. You can get the e-book version immediately for free, you can get the physical copy just paper shipping and handling, you'll see a trailer that we made of, all that Gen Why, it's pretty emotional, I warn you right now. And I guess, it's totally, you can have the book for free whether you donate or not. It's totally cool with me to rhyme coz I wanted you to have it and anybody if you wanna donate, we obviously be more than happy to accept your donations.

Natalie: Well, I'm so glad that we get the opportunity to be able to support to such an awesome project. So, thank you for joining me today Rich.

Rich German: My pleasure Natalie. Thank You.

Natalie: And just remember, if you click on the banner to the side that you actually go straight through, straight through the Rich's site as well. And I encourage you to share this video, get the message out of it, this amazing project. And you can do that by clicking the Facebook and the Twitter share buttons above. And if you haven't done so already, make sure you put your email on the box above in. I would love to send you my Manifesting with the Masters video e-course. It has masters like Bob Proctor, John Assaraf, Joe Vitale. It's barely $87 and I'd like to give it to you for free. And make sure you put your email on the box above here to get that. So, till next time. Remember to live large, choose courageously and love without limits. See you soon.