EP448: Rebuilding Your Life, Finding Your Mission & Building a Legacy

This is the High Voltage Business Builders podcast. Daily intelligence for operators…

This is the High Voltage Business Builders podcast. Daily intelligence for operators building brands that last on Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, Walmart, and every channel where demand gets captured. No theory, no gurus, just what's working right now from operators who are in the trenches every single day. Strategy, tactics, real numbers, real mistakes, transparency, everything built with the end in mind, the exit. I'm Neil Toit, let's get into it. Hey folks, welcome back to the High Voltage Business Builders podcast. I am playing around here with the new settings on the podcast. If you're watching this on the video, it might be shifting. If you're listening to the audio, you probably don't care. I have a new episode I'm coming up with right here. John Berryhill is gonna join me. We're gonna talk about his new book that's coming out called Warrior to Wealth, and it's his story of overcoming challenges, finding a mission, finding your identity, and building a legacy. So it's something that if you are a person who's interested in the story of struggle and growth and opportunity and how it can change your life and change others around you, that we're gonna talk about today because John has an amazing story that I wanna get into, and I don't wanna preempt that by muddying the water or lowering the tonality or the frequency of your story. So I wanna give it to you and let you tell us a little bit about who you are, John. Yeah, so Neil, I'm a ex-military. I'm a U.S. Army veteran, combat veteran, ex-law enforcement. I played some college sports. I was a linebacker for University of North Alabama. Almost wrecked my marriage and wanted to fix it. I'm from a broken home, so I was thinking things aren't going good. We filed for divorce. I became a selfish human being, was running around on my wife having affairs in law enforcement when I got out of the military. So life was not good. It was just challenging, and yet I didn't realize that I was doing it to myself. Most of the time, folks, if you just stop and look at ourselves in the mirror and go, hey, you're the one doing this, no one else. And I had this victim mentality, and oh, it's always someone else's fault. Well, God woke me up in the middle of the night, showed me a successful businessman, showed me where pretty much I was going, which was nowhere and actually downward. I was a great soldier, great police officer, even a great college linebacker. But what I was not focusing on, didn't realize is my home life was a wreck. It was chaos, and I was the one doing it. And so I got on my knees and begged forgiveness, called my wife, who I had filed for divorce on, and had a little girl. She was visiting her sister in Hawaii and begged her forgiveness, said if she took me back, I would give her an amazing life. Now, take it I was a police officer making $12 an hour in the early 2000s when I got out of the Army in 2002, 2003, I think is what it was, or no, 2000. And so, how was I gonna give her this life? All I know is I saw this vision of this businessman, and I was willing to just be humble and ask God to forgive me, ask my wife to forgive me. Now take it, it took two or three years before I actually came back to my wife and confessed everything of me running around being unfaithful. But that was another step in my growth. So you fast forward to now, I'm giving you the condensed version. We own a couple hundred acres. We live on a farm. My kids live here. We've homeschooled our kids. Two of my kids are married. We have four grandsons. They all live on the farm in houses. We always say we built a family compound. I've started multiple businesses, sold them. And so it's been, I'm living my dream now, and I thank God each and every day. I get up each morning, I'm still working hard, still got goals and inspirations to grow even larger. But people started coming to me over the years, John, what are you doing? How did you do this? And so God laid it on my heart quite a few years ago to start writing a book. And of course, I'm thinking, I'm not a book writer. Kind of like when I ran for Senate, I said, I'm not a politician, but God kind of put these things in steps for me to do. And just, I think it was testing my faith. And so two years ago, I started writing a book. Well, guess what? It's getting released December, 2026, which is not long. I was told that it's in line to be print now. So that kind of where we are now. Life's been great. We had some challenges, but once I created a belief system in myself and I just turned over my life to God and said, Lord, use me. And man, he just started opening up doors. Don't get me wrong, it was still hard. Sounds easy talking about it, but- Sure, now it is in retrospect. Exactly. There was a lot of sacrifice and getting up at four o'clock in the morning, hitting the road, going and meeting with people, asking for business, talking to others, finding mentors, listening to audio tapes, because I mean, I was an infantry sergeant, law enforcement guy. I got a degree in biology and chemistry to pre-med. That was gonna be the change to get my life right was get this great degree and go to medical school, but that even changed. So that's kind of where we are. That's why I wrote the book, is to inspire and create hope in others as they started asking me over the years, because we bought our farm 15, 16 years ago. We've got our first home. We raised quarter horses, beef cattle, and people see this on Facebook or Instagram that knew me then, and over time have reached out. So I started, you know what, I'm gonna write this book. I'm just gonna give it to them or they can go buy it and just inspire and hopefully create this hope and belief that if this old Alabama country boy can do it, anybody can do it. That's awesome. It's such a cool story, man. And I love the way you present it. You're very humble in the way you do it. And I've got to ask, just as we kind of go back through this a little bit, what that moment where you realized, I need to call my wife, I've made a mistake, what led to that moment? That was it, man. It was that, you know, I believe God knew he had something for me. And I, you know, it was kind of like, I think in the Bible where he was trying to reach, you know, the Pharaoh, you know, he was using Moses and he said, okay, one more time, go tell him one more time. So I got this thought in my head. Is this God telling me this is my last chance? Like, oh gosh, I better, I better act. Yeah, you know, he hardened Pharaoh's heart, you know, and then he, and then his lost his, so anyway, I woke up and I was like, okay, God, you know, used me. I still didn't do everything right. You know, I still messed up a time or two and, you know, but, you know, but I learned from it. And, and, you know, I just knew that I wanted different than what I had grew up with, you know, broken home, abuse, violence, all kinds of just craziness and not saying it was all that way, you know, but a lot of my childhood was, you know, is bad memories, you know, trauma and stuff like that. And I knew I didn't want that for my wife and kids and I knew I had done wrong. And so, man, I just said, I've got to fix this and didn't know how, but I just, you know, put my, had a little faith and knew I wanted to become this guy that I could see and visualize. And so I just started working and doing things that I thought that guy would be doing. Right, right. So the process is really what it got down to. And a lot of people think you have an epiphany and then everything suddenly changes after that. And you're such a, you're a whole new person, which is in some ways the case, right? But it's the conditioning and the effect of the consistency after that, that makes it change, right? Yeah, going to the gym. I mean, you want to get in shape, you want to get built, you want to, you know, what do you have to do? You have to, day one, everybody has a day one. If they want to grow. Ground zero. Yeah, so I remember in the army, you know, we had week zero. It was miserable because we didn't know how long week zero was going to last. For us, it was about 10 days at Fort Benning, Georgia. And I was like, oh my gosh, is this week zero ever going to end? Yeah, no, I think I had a week zero for about six years. Yeah, exactly. It was just like a continued process of change. Yeah. It took quite a long time for me to recognize myself and my own story. And I think you can relate to that. Maybe a lot of people listening to this can relate to it as well. Yeah, I mean, when you think about it, we all want, you know, everyone I've met wants to have a good life. Nobody wants to have a bad life. Right, no, they really don't. Yeah, and so, you know, you talk to people that after the New Year's, they want to get in shape. So they picture themselves in shape and they start doing things to become that person. Again, day one, go to the gym. Day two, you know, and continue on. And if you continue down that route, eventually you become that person. But if you stop and you just quit because it gets hard or you're tired of it or it's boring, guess what, a lot of times success is boring because it's just repetitive. It's just over and over doing the same things over and over because no one else is willing to do it. Yeah, well, and it takes a forgiving spouse. I mean, I don't want to discredit your wife in any step of the way. No, my wife is the winner in this. Yeah, my wife's the winner in this whole deal. You know, she's the reason I worked so hard. She's the reason that I wanted to give her. That was my new mission, my why. You know, people say, what's your why? Or what, you know, military, law enforcement, we have missions. Sure. My new mission, finding my mission was giving her a life of, you know, amazingness. And so we've traveled the world. We've been to, I think it's 36 different countries now. We've taken our kids, homeschooled, and it's been awesome. Now, again- Reconciliation is the word that comes to mind, I think. Man, listen, I didn't want to reconcile. So I kept listening to this lie in my head for years that, oh, I don't want to hurt her again. I've already got us back together. I just need to continue denying all this stuff. And not that even it was even coming up. But after two, a little bit over two years in, God hit me hard. Like, you know, son, you want to grow? You need to really reconcile. Let her know that you were the dirtbag that people were saying you were. Now, don't get me wrong. There was a lot of embellishment in people. Once a story starts, people just start pouring gas. We all agree. We're all listening. We get it. You're a total dirtbag. But anyway, so I sat down with her one day and I said, I don't want to do this. And I said, but God's just telling me that I can't grow any further without him. And so this was after two and a half years after we got back together and our marriage was great that I confessed that I'd had affairs on her. It was horrible. It was a horrible, but let me tell you what, the moment I did, I felt so lighter and relieved. Yes, it broke her heart, but our marriage from that moment, oh my gosh. And then we started going to marriage classes and stuff. And then we, next thing you know, fast forward a few years, we were teaching marriage classes in the church and outside the church. We were counseling with other marriages. And we still, we've been married 30 years, madly in love, crazy about the woman. And we still mentor and coach and talk to a few marriages. People call us, they're having struggles and always say, hey guys, don't get fooled about the grass is greener on the other side because there's a lot of S-H-I-T that fertilize that grass. Okay, don't be stepping in it. Just stay on your side and make your own grass green. Out in the country, we say here, if the grass is greener on the other side, it's usually because there's a septic tank underneath it. Want today's Voltage 3 written out? The daily Amazon seller puts the three tips in your email, plus a free Alexa gap audit. Go to VoltageDM.com slash Amazon seller newsletter. And now back to the podcast. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, it's causing it to grow so good and you don't always want to go step in that or drive over it because it can be a mess. Yeah, there's always a path to that. And I think, yeah, it does take a couple people. It takes more than one person to do anything in life. Yeah, absolutely. Even when we have a life by design that we're trying to create and get to. I imagine now, and speaking from my own experience that you live a life now, you probably could never have imagined coming to, which is a great fulfillment to the process of forgiveness that has been going on for quite a long time. And your kids were young. You had one daughter, if I'm not mistaken. I had one daughter when we filed for divorce. Yep, yep. We got back together. I had one daughter. We got back together. And of course the fire was there. And next thing you know, we had a son, which was immediately after that, right? You know, this was about a year being back together. And then when we had our third son, was right before we had him is when I reconciled with her. And so then we had our third child, second son. And then fast forward, we have four boys, two girls. You know, they're- That's amazing. Yeah, they're just- Well, I mean, this is out here now. It's out in your life. It's out as a part of your walk. I assume your children didn't know about it for a while, but they've come to that understanding of who you are. Have you had conversations with them to kind of clarify all that? Yeah, we have. They know their dad was unfaithful and I did these things and I fell short, but through Christ, you know, I was redeemed and my wife loved me. And when I called her, I'll never forget in Hawaii, when I called her, she said, you know, will you please take me back and I'll give you this great life. She said, John, I've just been waiting on you to call. And I'm just like, golly, you know, even more humility was you've been waiting on me for, you know, 10 months and hearing all these rumors and stuff. And, you know, that's just the kind of woman she is. She's a beautiful, gorgeous, just godly woman that loves the Lord and wants to serve her family. And still does. It's giving you an amazing story and the book is a basis of that conversation extension to the world. And we're excited about that coming out in December. And you've done speaking engagements. Obviously you've been in the business world in a number of ways, real estate and business. You mentioned you grew a couple of companies up and sold them. What were those companies you were doing? Yeah, so I started the first company, I think it was around 2007. We sold it in 2009 for a few million dollars. And, you know, it was a medical device company. We were doing durable medical equipment. We specialize in certain medical devices. I lost one of my battle buddies that I served with to suicide, he committed suicide. I lost a few actually. And this inspired me to create a government contract to put medical devices, non-opioid type devices that veterans could use for pain, anxiety and stuff. And we still do that today without having to take opioids because, you know, he was on all kinds of meds provided by the VA. And so, you know, I had this desire where I was told, hey, you're a disabled veteran, you can start a government contract. You know, anyway, it's not as easy as it sounded. Trust me, it's still not. We still have to fight the bureaucracy. Yeah, we still have to fight the bureaucracy. So that was my first company I started was doing durable medical equipment and medical devices. So we sold it, went to work for the corporation. I negotiated to have some ownership in the big stuff. Then we did another transaction and sold, went to work for them for about two years. And then I left and started my own again. But this time I did a few different things. We had physician clinics. I went and bought one and then we started some others. And, you know, everything from physician clinics to medical devices to real estate brokerages. That's amazing. So quite a few different ventures to spread out across. Yeah, and then we raised beef cattle and quarter horses on our farm. Quarter horses and beef cattle, that's amazing. Out of the acres there, that's love. And, you know, being in the land is so amazing. It's getting away from some of this stuff we do technologically. It's wonderful to get out and get your hands in the dirt. Yeah, yeah. Horses do the things, you know, that are on the land, using the land. It's part of the legacy, isn't it? That's it, that's it. I love, that was my, Hannah and I had this dream just to own, you know, 10 to 20 acres. You know, we didn't know how. We just knew when we got back together, we were talking about raising our child. We didn't know, because it was just Mabel at the time, my daughter. Then we talked about, you know, we had more children. Could you imagine this? Now we live on hundreds of acres and got four houses on the farm. We hunt, we ride horses, we raise cattle, we fish. It's, I mean, we literally- We're just a few years ahead of where we were when we talked about this on our pre-call. Yeah, exactly. I have 60 acres and I'm like, man, I want another 100. Yep, exactly. And that's how we started. We're just doing track and then we bought up others. Yeah. Well, I should have bought a little sooner. I'm also talking about the price of the land. It has changed so dramatically since we bought 15 years ago. You bought 15, we bought 13 years ago. Yeah. The price per acre- Drastically changed a little bit. Yeah, pretty dramatic. I could have got that 100 for a sweet deal about 13 years ago. Course, you know, everybody says hindsight's 20-20. I wish I'd have known. I would have figured it out then. I didn't know it was going to be that crazy. But you know, after COVID, that's when our spike, like, gosh, it really spiked after COVID. Yeah, insane. What was 1,100 an acre is now eight to 15 grand an acre. Exactly, same here. Yeah. It's just crazy to think about that. I hope it doesn't go to 30 to 40 or otherwise land would be a great deal right now. Yeah, exactly. And you know, we sell between, we got this new, actually, we're doing a new little TV show series. It starts next week. We're shooting our first show. We're selling real estate between Music City and Rocket City. That's between Nashville, Tennessee and Huntsville, Alabama. So we're pretty excited. We're going to do a little shoot here on the farm and then go to one of the local towns, which is in between Huntsville and Nashville, called Athens, Alabama. And it's growing everywhere in North Alabama, Southern Tennessee is booming. I've heard it's growing like crazy out there, so. Yeah, it's insane. What's the name of the show? It's The American Dream. It's a series that comes on Apple TV, HGTV. And so my will be, it's all about lifestyle, culture and real estate. So mine will be the land between Music City and Rocket City. America's Outdoor Realty is what we'll be focusing on. That's one of the brokerages I own and founded. It's licensed in Alabama and Tennessee. We've got about 25 agents and it's growing. We're fixing to be in Georgia. We're fixing to be in Mississippi. We're talking with brokers right now all over the country, actually, to join in us. We've got some cool platforms and stuff like that with our website back office. Excellent. You got a lot going on, brother. Hey, we work hard, play hard. That's what we do it for. We do it and it's great. We get to do it. I do it every day with my sons. So two of my boys work for me. My son-in-law works for me. My daughter-in-law works for me. I mean, I get to work with my kids every day. I love it. It's a purpose and mission, right? That's it, yeah. Awesome. Well, guys, check out the book. Let's go back over that again, because I know it's coming out, you said roughly in December sometime. Yeah, there'll be mail out. We're doing a pre-sale right now, so people can buy it on our website, johnberryhill.com, J-O-N-B-E-R-Y-H-I-L.com. And they told me that they will start shipping sometime in December. Now, will that be before Christmas or after Christmas? I'm hoping before, because I know some people reached out to me and said, hey, my dad's a military veteran. My brother's a veteran. My son's a veteran. I want to get this book for him. And absolutely, I said, yeah, get it. Let me know. I'll sign it, whatever. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, if the veterans are out there listening to this, I know there's quite a few. My dad is one. To recover your mission or claim your identity and build your legacy, there's a purpose-driven aspect. Less than 25 bucks. You guys got to go grab a copy when it's there. Get the pre-sale. Check out the mission. Give it to somebody as a gift. Christmas is coming up. It might be out before Christmas. So definitely go check that out. I encourage you guys to do that. If you are stuck between some of the conversation that was today in terms of family, life, your spouse, your purpose, business, what it means to become wealthy. I know you had a quote on yours. I'm going to quote it for you because I thought it was genius. It says, you don't become wealthy by escaping the warrior. You become wealthy by giving the warrior a mission worth fighting for. And I know there's a lot of people that have missed their mission, especially our veterans who come back or are in the state of wondering what happens next as I leave and where do I fit into society? It's a big question for our veterans. We want to support them. We want to give them opportunity for focus and family and faith and friends and freedom and finances, right? Absolutely, that's it. You named all the good Fs. All the good Fs. Those are my five Fs. All the good ones. That's right. There's a sixth F, but I'm not going to say it. Yeah. What did we just bring up today, John, that you wanted to cover that we didn't get to? No, I think, yes, it's for veterans. It's also ex-law enforcement, but it's really the book is for anyone that wants to maybe just get inspired or just have a little bit of hope or you think you're somewhere that there's no way I can. Listen, I was living in a mobile home with holes in the floor, two bedroom, heated by a window unit. If you know what that is, it's a window unit at Walmart to cool your house that's very small. And now you fast forward and look at what the Lord has just blessed us with. And I think it's all because, and I know it is, it's because we've honored him and honored, we still fall short each and every day, but just anybody out there listening, listen, there's tons of opportunity right in front of you. You just got to visualize that person and start doing what that person would do today. Yeah, great last word. I'll leave it with you. Thank you so much for coming on, John. Absolutely, Neil. Thank you for having me. All right, guys, this has been a episode of the High Voltage Business Builders podcast. Check out the links below. Go grab a copy of that book. As always, we talk about doing something imperfect and something perfect will happen along the way. And that might make you a high voltage business builder as well. Share, like this podcast, let somebody else know what's going on with it. Check out the last episode that we just had that went out this morning about Amazon FBA fees that are changing. If you're in the e-com world, you're going to want to check that out. If you're in the business world, stay tuned with us. Get on the free newsletter, grab the podcast, come and learn and join us on another episode coming up soon. Until then, see you soon. Jonathan Berryhill and I talked about rebuilding your life and finding your mission. We dug into how building a legacy is not just about numbers on a screen. It's about the impact you leave when you are gone. Most sellers get stuck in the day-to-day grind. They forget why they started in the first place. Jonathan shared how he found his purpose again. He showed that your business can be a vehicle for something bigger. It can be a tool to serve your community and your family. That shift in mindset changes everything. It makes the hard days easier to handle. It gives you a reason to push through the noise. You do not need more e-commerce noise. You need clarity. Get the five e-commerce updates that matter. What changed and what to do next. The Voltage e-commerce brief is free every Tuesday and Friday. It cuts through the clutter. It gives you the actionable steps you need to move forward. You can sign up right now. Go to voltagedm.com slash newsletter. That's the only thing you need to do today. Take that one step. Let the brief do the heavy lifting for you. We will see you back here tomorrow. Until then, stay high voltage.

Episode chapters

0:00 Introduction