Cole Hatter On Tragedy, Finding Strength Against All Odds and Partnering With Tai Lopez To Help Millions

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Today, we’re chatting with Cole Hatter. Cole is an entrepreneur, investor, speaker, philanthropist, and creator of Thrive: Make Money Matter Conference.

Cole started his life with a dream to become a firefighter, which he did. However, by the age of 21 he was in a tragic accident. He had to learn how to walk again, learn again, and live again. Today, Cole is an entrepreneur with a passion for helping the victims of social injustice, and mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs.

In this episode, I’ll be talking to Cole about losing his two best friends within 64 days of each other in separate tragic accidents and how he honors them. We discuss how to start a business with no idea, no money and no idea on how to get started. Cole shares how partnering with Tai Lopez generated 7 figures in less than a month. And finally, we discuss how to approach setbacks and failures so they motivate you rather than define you.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Hear how the entrepreneurship bug was sparked inside of Cole as a child, selling mistletoe.
• Learn more about Cole’s story of how he lost his two best friends within 64 days of each other.
• Find out how a decision and a mindset shift helped Cole get back to living his life.
• Cole shares how he got into real estate simply because that’s what his neighbors did.
• Discover the biggest struggles Cole faced when he just started out in the real estate industry.
• Find out why Cole quit his job and moved to Mexico to work with orphans.
• Learn more about Cole’s conference, Thrive: Make Money Matter.
• Understand why any publicity can be good publicity and why the key is to be polarizing.
• Discover how one relationship alone was able to generate millions.
• Find out more about Cole’s big picture and ultimate goal with his life and with Thrive.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“Change happens in an instant, you make a decision, it’s done.” — @colehatter

Tweet This

[0:14:56].1]

“Age is totally irrelevant; knowledge is what matters.” — @colehatter

Tweet This

[0:24:02].1]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Cole Hatter — http://colehatter.com/

Thrive: Make Money Matter — http://attendthrive.com/

Cole on Twitter — https://twitter.com/colehatter

Tai Lopez — http://www.tailopez.com/

Coto de Caza Golf & Racquet Club — http://www.clubcorp.com/Clubs/Coto-de-Caza-Golf-Racquet-Club

Tony Robbins — https://www.tonyrobbins.com/

TOMS Shoes — www.toms.com/

Blake Mycoskie — https://twitter.com/BlakeMycoskie

Re Perez — https://twitter.com/bftpagency

Branding for the People — https://brandingforthepeople.com/

Inc. Magazine — https://www.inc.com/

Huffington Post — www.huffingtonpost.com

Entrepreneur Magazine — https://www.entrepreneur.com/

Than Merrill — www.thanmerrill.com/

FortuneBuilders — www.fortunebuilders.com/

Sam Ovens — https://www.samovens.com/

Mixergy — https://mixergy.com

The E-Myth by Michael Gerber — https://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280

Water.org — http://water.org/

Stella Artois — http://www.stellaartois.com/

Jayson Gaignard — https://twitter.com/JaysonGaignard

MastermindTalks — http://www.mastermindtalks.com/

Tony Hsieh — https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyhsieh/

Zappos — http://www.zappos.com/

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh — https://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446576220

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 004

“CH: People can sniff out people doing this as a gimmick. If you’re just wanting to get on the bandwagon it won’t work well for you. But if you believe in the mission and use your business as the vehicle, people can sense that.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:15.1] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:41.1] RN: Hello and welcome to the podcast that believes, if you desire to create the life of your dreams then embracing failure by taking urgent and bold action is the only way. Today, you and I get to learn from none other than Cole Hatter, an entrepreneur, investor, speaker, philanthropist, and creator of Thrive: Make Money Matter.

Today I’ll be talking to Cole about losing his two best friends within 64 days of each other in separate tragic accidents and how he honors them, how to start a business with no idea, no money and no idea on how to get started, how partnering with Tie Lopez generated $1.8 million dollars in just 30 days, and how to approach setbacks and failures so they motivate you rather than define you and much, much more.

But first, if you’d like to stay up to date on all Fail On Podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page.

Without further ado Mr. Cole Hatter.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:53.5] RN: All right, we are here at Coto de Caza Golf & Racquet Club, kind of sitting in Cole Hatter’s backyard. Actually we’re more along the lines of the — what hole is this?

[0:02:06.9] CH: This is the third hole on the south course, it is a par five.

[0:02:12.3] RN: We actually have a couple of golfers right in front of us, one guy is hitting out of the woods right now.

[0:02:17.5] CH: Which is a good metaphor to take into the conversation, we’re going to have a failing on, right? He’s not calling a mulligan, he is deep in the woods right now.

[0:02:27.4] RN: So, as you can probably gather, I’m sitting here with Cole Hatter and I would just like to welcome you Cole to the Fail On Podcast.

[0:02:35.7] CH: Thanks for having me man.

[0:02:37.4] RN: You got it. Obviously this is a pretty casual episode and I try to keep most of my episodes pretty casual, but we are either going to — just to get a little context, we’re in Orange County, California. What is this? South Orange County?

[0:02:48.3] CH: Yeah, this is Southern Orange County, yeah.

[0:02:49.6] RN: Okay. And Coto de Caza is a community country club, racket club-type place and yeah, we’re literally sitting on the third hole, right beside a sand trap, seeing a couple of guys hitting away. It’s a beautiful back drop, we’ll actually take a picture so you have some context and can see what we’re seeing.

Anyways, let’s get right into it man, and again, thanks for coming on and hosting me, I appreciate it.

[0:03:13.6] CH: Yeah, this is by far the best podcast scene I’ve ever had.

[0:03:19.2] RN: Well you don’t have to say scene, you can say the best podcast too.

[0:03:21.7] CH: Yeah, for sure, we’re one minute in and you’re already the best. No, we’re like 40 feet from my house but still, this is rad, I’m normally looking at this through my office window, podcasting, you know, using my equipment and my house but you’re on the go gear is pretty fantastic.

[0:03:37.9] RN: Yup, only thing we’re missing is a beer.

[0:03:40.6] CH: I know, I can’t believe I was out, I’m going to text my wife right now and it will show up during this episode.

[0:03:45.9] RN: That would be amazing, service from the golf course.

[0:03:48.8] CH: Just watch, it will happen in the next 20 minutes.

[0:03:52.4] RN: All right, I’ll let you text that real quick.

[0:03:55.1] CH: I can multitask.

[0:03:55.6] RN: Oh, you’re a multi-tasker okay. I do want to just, to get the listener a little context and background about you and your story, how did you get into entrepreneurship? Were you always an entrepreneur and take us along that journey to get started.

[0:04:10.4] CH: Yeah, there’s that always an entrepreneur, which I always, I don’t want to say struggle with but I think that they’re — because I don’t want to say, for somebody who may be is their 30’s or 40’s and has never done anything entrepreneurial to count themselves out and say, “Oh, I guess I’m not.”

But I was one of those stories where you feel like you’ve just been called to it if that makes sense. For the listeners, whether you’ve done anything entrepreneurial or not, we all can be if we choose to be and follow the correct course. But I was one of those kids that was seven or eight years old, Christmas was coming and I wanted to buy gifts for my family and like most seven or eight year olds, mom or dad, front the bill and I said that I wanted to do it on my own.

I distinctly remember we were in a shopping mall here in Orange County and they were selling mistletoe and I was like dude, this stuff grows for free right next to my parent’s house because I was eight years old, I climb trees all day long. I went back and I started pulling mistletoe out of the trees that lived near us and got some red bows and went door to door and sold one for three dollars, two for five and literally hundreds of dollars’ worth of mistletoe at like eight years old.

[0:05:17.0] RN: Did you actually have the idea or thought that this stuff grows for free or did like somebody say that to you?

[0:05:21.1] CH: No.

[0:05:23.0] RN: You had enough awareness to realize that?

[0:05:24.7] CH: I literally will never forget the moment where it like clicked where I said, “They’re selling this for money and I know I can get it for free.” Maybe that was the moment that entrepreneurial spark happened and then at the end of going door to door, this little eight year old boy is like, “Hey, you want a mistletoe?” And it was weeks before Christmas so my close ratio was pretty insane. I came back after making a few laps in the cul de sac with enough money to buy everybody in my family presents.

[0:05:49.5] RN: This is the easiest thing in the world!

[0:05:50.4] CH: Exactly, it was like printing money. That puts a little seed in my mind that, fast forward into my adult life, I think that’s where the entrepreneurial endeavors began. The question was, have I always felt of been an entrepreneur? And I guess to a degree, yes.

[0:06:07.0] RN: Did you go to traditional college?

[0:06:08.9] CH: Sort of. I decided in about Junior high school that I want to be a fire fighter, god’s put on my heart to want to help people and so I looked at a career where I could help people and be compensated for it. So being a doctor, being a police officer and playing with fire and saving lives and getting paid for it was a good fit for me.

In high school, I would go to high school during the day, college at nights and weekends to take care of all my prerequisites. So I took care of my EMT certificate and a lot of my fire fighter certificates while still in high school.

[0:06:37.5] RN: Good grades or bad grades?

[0:06:39.3] CH: Actually, I got better grades in the college than in high school because it was subjects had interested me. I’m one of those guys where I’m not a dummy, I can learn but it’s really hard for me to learn if it’s French poetry from the 16th century. But when it’s on the weekends and at night firefighting, I actually did very well. I aced everything because I found that actually fascinating.

When I graduated high school, I went right into the fire department. So I did do some college, enough that I got my firefighter certificates, my EMT, and then all of my prerequisites to go to paramedic school taken care off. But I didn’t do any general Ed-type stuff so I don’t have a degree. Did do some college, not a college dropout, I did what I needed to do and I moved on but no degree either.

[0:07:22.9] RN: Got it, went straight into firefighting and then just for context, how old were you at this point, where were you?

[0:07:28.0] CH: 19, Seattle, Washington. Here in Southern California, it was very competitive to become a firefighter, so moved up to Seattle, Washington and…

[0:07:35.4] RN: Did you know anybody up there?

[0:07:36.6] CH: Yeah, my sister and her husband lived in Seattle, Washington. So that was my only connection literally two people in the whole state. Went up there and again, started life, made friends, all that good stuff.

[0:07:47.8] RN: Got it, where did it go from there?

[0:07:50.0] CH: That’s where I thought I was going to do my whole life, I’d put on my 30 years, I’d retire full pension, benefits, you know, that’s one of the perks of firefighting is that they have fantastic retirement options. Two years into that, career at 21 years old, got in a really bad car accident where I was ejected out of the car, they estimated going around 80 miles an hour and so hit the pavement at a tremendous amount of speed, I got very hurt to the point where they actually had to fly me in a helicopter to the hospital, they didn’t think I would survive in an ambulance.

[0:08:17.5] RN: Not work related at all, right?

[0:08:18.8] CH: No, this was just with friends. Yeah, this was not a work related injury and so, got in that really bad car accident and long story short, almost didn’t make it. Did survive, obviously, here I am but was in a wheelchair for a while, had to learn how to walk again, had a traumatic brain injury so my brain was real foggy for a while. I had to learn how to learn again and so it was a pretty crippling accident and although it looked like I had a strong recovery, how long and how much of recovery, 80%, 100%, was uncertain and so for sure, firefighting was out for the time. You can’t be a firefighter if you can’t walk.

So, you know, as I was getting out of my wheelchair and on to a walker and then crutches and then eventually a cane, it looked like firefighting could someday be an option again. I would have had to come through all the physical exams and all of that. But bottom line is in that...