The Good Life Is the Enemy of the Great One: George Converse’s Story

You’ve had a job that paid well and still left you asking why you weren’t happy. George Converse describes reaching exactly that point, a job he genuinely thought was his dream, real money finally coming in, and a hollow feeling underneath all of it that money hadn’t touched. That gap between what he’d chased and what actually satisfied him is where his whole story pivots, and it’s worth hearing in full before you decide it’s just another rags-to-stage arc.

George grew up in Detroit without a clear sense of where he was headed, by his own account unable to see past today, let alone tomorrow. He grew up with a speech impediment and spent his first seven years just learning to talk, then spent door-to-door sales years walking what amounts to nearly the circumference of the earth, twice, facing rejection and worse on doorsteps most people would never approach. None of that built him a vision. It built him endurance, which turned out to be a different, and in his telling, less useful thing on its own.

What actually happened to his father, and why does he bring it up at all?

This is the part of the talk that isn’t a sales story. George’s father had undiagnosed dyslexia at a time when the condition wasn’t understood, and the shame his own family attached to that, partly over how it reflected on their public image, meant he never finished high school. Four days before George’s second birthday, his father took his own life. George is careful and direct about naming why he tells this story on a stage built around business training: the pain he actually carries isn’t his own, since he was too young to remember his father directly. It’s watching what that loss did to his mother and his older sisters, a family fractured by other people’s need to protect an image instead of a person.

Out of that came the family George did have. An aunt who taught him to dream without limits. An uncle who taught him that dreaming without action changes nothing. Neither gift alone was complete. Together they became the two ingredients he says were missing for most of his life: vision, and the willingness to actually work toward it.

What does it actually cost to change direction, and is it worth it?

George’s answer isn’t gentle. When he finally connected with a mentor’s message and decided to commit, he didn’t ease in. He sold or gave away nearly everything he owned, kept a backpack and a laptop, and began traveling to build a life around the freedom he’d watched someone else living. He’s blunt that plenty of people would call that reckless, and doesn’t argue the point. His case is simply that the alternative, staying in a life that was comfortable but not fulfilling, has its own cost, one that’s just easier to ignore because it doesn’t ask you to change anything today.

You see, if we’re so afraid to give up the good in our lives for the great that we desire, we’ll never have it.

That’s the challenge underneath the whole talk, the real objection George is arguing against. Most people don’t stay stuck because the path forward is unclear. They stay because the current life is good enough to make leaving it feel unnecessary, right up until it quietly isn’t enough anymore.

George names three things people give up without noticing, chasing a paycheck instead of the life underneath it:

• Health, traded quietly for hours at a desk or on the road.
• Relationships, put off for “someday” until someday stops coming.
• Whatever a person calls their spiritual life, set aside as a retirement project instead of a daily practice.

Why does he keep saying there’s no separation between people?

George frames the men who mentored him, credited by name on stage, not as business contacts but as family who chose to believe in him when people who shared his blood didn’t. His argument extends outward from there: the divisions people use to decide who deserves belief and who doesn’t, background, income, the labels attached to belief systems or identity, don’t hold up under the same standard his own biological family used to shut his father out. “I’ve taken risks in my life, but you know what? That’s far better than never risking.” He’s not asking the room to agree with every belief he holds. He’s asking them to notice how much of their own hesitation is inherited from people who never actually knew what they were talking about.

The full session goes further than what’s above, including the rest of his story on the road. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Let's go today! So, most of my life I asked myself that question, where I was going. You see, I'm from Detroit, Michigan, and I wasn't even lucky enough to be on 8 Mile where my boy Eminem was. I was over on 5 Mile.

But, so coming from there, it's like, I don't know if you guys here have asked yourself that question of, where are you going? What's your vision? What's your purpose? Why are you here?

Not just here at this event, but what's your actual purpose in life? Again, being from Detroit, I couldn't see past today, let alone tomorrow. So, I didn't have that vision growing up. And it wasn't until I met a collective crew of my new brothers that I learned to start having some vision for myself.

To actually look past. My own reality and my own circumstances to realize that there was something far more better for me, that I actually had a purpose in life. And that literally happened just about 7 months ago. I was in here, just like you guys, the back of the stage at my very first event.

But, I told myself at that event, as I watched Justin and Dee up here on the stage, because they inspire me so much, that I was going to be on this stage. I thought it would take me years. I didn't think I'd be up here right now. But, things happen when you set intentions, and you set purpose, and you realize that you do matter.

So, what I want to show you guys right now is, when you stop separating yourself from other people, and realize that we're all one. When you believe in yourself, and when you believe in others. When you actually take action on the dreams that you have, that are probably buried deep inside of you, that you might have even given up on. Because people told you no.

People told you you couldn't do it. You got beat down so many times in your life, that you threw away. But, when you can bring those dreams back up, and realize you have purpose, you have dreams, and you can believe in yourself, and you can start believing in others, and you can take action on that. Amazing things can happen, and you can actually accomplish true freedom.

So, as one of my best friends, Colter, would say, roll it. I put together a video for you guys. I want to show you guys what true freedom is. I was always a kid that kind of went off.

And took the path that was kind of untraveled. We all come from separate paths. We all face separate struggles in our lives. Each one of our paths is unique in itself, and the obstacles that we'll face.

What I want right now is to be even more fulfilled. Become even a better version of myself, because when I become a better version of myself, I inspire other people to do the same. It was a struggle, because I didn't have mentorship. I didn't have focus.

I didn't have personal development much in my life. Family was very important to me. I wanted to be able to be at home, you know, with my family whenever I wanted to. I wanted to be able to give my family more.

Give them the ability to quit their jobs. And also give myself the ability to be around the right people that would lift me up, that encouraged me, that just fulfilled me. You know, I was a kid with an imagination. And I had an amazingly, you know, fun, creative side to me.

And I always, you know, I guess I was never one to fall short of exploring outside. You know, I had a passion for traveling. And to me, I thought I was going to learn more about, you know, people and experiences by taking off in the world. And, you know, just really getting out of my comfort zone and seeing new people and new places.

And it wasn't until we came together that we broke free of this that we realized what actually freedom really tasted like. Being able to do what we want to do. Have what we want to have. Be what we wanted to be with.

And be able to travel the world full time. Living out our passions as a group that we were able to realize what true freedom was. So over the past seven months, I was blessed with a new family. These guys that are like my brothers.

And they believed in me. And as a result of that. And myself taking action on my dreams and having people that believed in me. I've been able to live a dream.

You know, like my life, to me, it's like a dream now. It's like I've traveled the world over, I think, 13 countries. Now at this point over the past, like, several months. And it's been like a dream.

You know, being able to have what I want. Do what I want. Anywhere in the world that I want. With whom I want.

And be able to live this type of lifestyle that we've created together. Because they didn't create separation. Even though they're not my family, they're like my family now. They treated me like a brother.

They believed in me when other people didn't believe in me. And I want to share a story with you guys that I've literally never shared with anybody my whole life. So, my father was born with dyslexia. And back in the day, it wasn't understood.

And so as a result of it, he didn't get the education he needed. His father was a minister. And… As a result of that as well, too.

It just was kind of frowned again, I guess, upon. Because of the type of image they were trying to have. What they were trying to portray of being this perfect family. Because he was a minister, you know.

And so, as a result of that, he didn't graduate high school. And he did have three beautiful children. Me being one of them. And that was his proudest accomplishment that he had in his life was his children.

But even his own family, because of image, took away that from him. Because they'd have nothing to do with us. Still to this day, I've never met my father's parents. And they created separation in their own family.

And they took away the one thing that meant the most to my father, which was his children. It was the proudest thing that he had ever been able to accomplish in his own life. And… As a result of this, and not just this, but other challenges.

Not being able to hold down a job. Not having the skills. Not having a vehicle like Empower Network to, you know, actually take you somewhere to fulfill your dreams of what you're looking to do. Four days before my second birthday, my father committed suicide.

And most people would look at this as something, you know, horrible, horrific. And at the time in my life, then it… I was two years old, so I didn't know any difference. You know, somebody just vanished out of my life that…

It was that. But where the pain is in my heart is for my mother because that was somebody that she loved. Somebody that was dear for my older sisters. You know, we lost our father because people chose to have separation in their own family.

To not love somebody. To not accept somebody. Just because of somebody wrote in a book or whatever it was. Or to try and have an image.

And… In going through this, the blessing that did come out of it is that I had multiple parents. You know, my mother, she struggled. You know, bouncing checks in the grocery store, things of that nature.

But the one thing she did for me, besides making sure that I ate something, you know, even if she had to bounce checks, was she believed in me. She knew that nobody believed in my father, but probably her. So she chose to believe in me. She chose not to put any limits on me.

And as a result of that as well, she had to work all the time. So my aunt and uncle, they stepped up. So my aunt Karen, she taught me to dream. She taught me to always go confidently in the direction of my dreams and live the life that I imagined and not everybody else.

But what I imagined for my own life. So I dreamt a lot. But my uncle, you know, he was a business owner, an entrepreneur, and he taught me to not dream, because my aunt taught me that, but he taught me to actually take action to work hard in life and that I could have things. The one thing that I was never given, though, was vision, clarity, actually getting clear on what I wanted in life.

And most people go through life on Facebook, on Instagram, on Tinder, on all these things, and we don't ever take time for ourselves. We rob ourselves of all the things that we truly desire in life. And typically we do this just for money. You know?

We go around our whole life giving up our health. We give up our love, our happiness. We give up our time. Think about your time for a moment.

What is your time? It's your life. And we give up our spiritual freedom. Whatever religion that you practice or don't practice, being able to actually fulfill your path spiritually for yourself, whatever that might mean to each and every one of you.

We sacrifice all of these things. We sacrifice in our life for money. But then the funny part is a lot of us don't ever have money. At least myself.

I went check to check, paycheck to paycheck, robbing Peter to pay Paul. I don't even know who they are. I haven't met them yet, and they never put money in my bank account. But we all live this way.

And then we get older, and retirement comes upon us, and then we think we're going to have it all. But then the little bit of money that we maybe stacked or we didn't stack, or the Social Security that really isn't here, we have to spend to try and get our health back. To maybe try and rebuild some of the relationships that we didn't focus on. You know, maybe try to go on a spiritual journey now all of a sudden, you know, that we missed out on our whole life.

And so it's just something when I started realizing in my own life all these struggles I went through from, you know, my father committing suicide when I was two. Believe it or not, I grew up with a speech impediment. I spent the first seven years of my life learning how to actually just talk. And then I spent the next 15 years of my life building a career off of speaking.

Anything that happens, any obstacle in your life, you have two ways to look at it. And you can focus on the negative of it, or you can look for the positive. And I promise you, if you look at every event that happens in your life, and you try and find the positive, you try and look at the blessing, try and learn the lesson, that you're going to attract better things in your life, and obstacles that are going to be more pleasant for you, and so much more value in your life. But I can almost promise you as well, too, that if you see the negative in things when things happen, because this is life, guys, so things are going to happen in our lives.

We already know that. That we don't desire that we're going to judge as not being positive. But if we focus on the negative of those things that happen in life, then we're going to create more circumstances and realities that we don't desire. I did it for over 15 years of my life.

By 19, I did graduate high school, so I made it a step past my father. But then I went on the road that most people try to go on, which is college. A year later, I dropped out. Didn't make it.

Spent 10 years trying to still do it. But what that did lead to, the positive, is I got to do door-to-door sales for seven years instead. So I still got my college education on the hard knocks of life or the streets, but it was a lot different. It was Detroit, Michigan.

I don't know if you guys have been to Detroit before, but eight mile, five mile, four mile, seven mile, it doesn't matter what mile you go on, you really don't want to be there. And when you're going door-to-door, and knocking on people's door, facing rejection, having guns pulled out on you, I've been stabbed. I've had dogs released on me, German Shepherds. I can run fast now, though.

That's why I got my Converse shoes, you know? But you can look at the negative of those things, but what I realized is that walking 20 to 25 miles a day, six, seven days a week for seven years, the earth is, I think, 24,901 miles, I've almost walked around the earth twice. So, in doing this, though, it developed thick skin. I have some of the thickest skin that anybody has.

I can face any obstacle. I've fallen on my face so many times. I've claimed bankruptcy. Three years ago, I was homeless on the streets of Miami.

I've made bad choices. I've taken risks in my life, but you know what? That's far better than never risking. It's far better than never taking risks.

It's far better than never taking action in your life on the dreams that you have. Thank you. You see, if we're so afraid to give up the good in our lives for the great that we desire, we'll never have it. And so, you have to be willing to make mistakes.

You have to be willing to take chances in your life because when you do, beautiful things can happen. Despite all of this, what I've learned is this, is several months ago, I got to a point in my life where I had finally thought I made it, because I chased money my whole life, thinking money was the answer to my happiness, realizing it wasn't, because I made a substantial amount of money at a job that I thought was my dream job, and then I asked myself, why am I still not happy? I've chased money my whole life, and I'm still not happy.

I'm not feeling passion. I'm not feeling fulfillment in my life. What is it? And that's when I started searching, and that's when Brian Dixon showed up on my newsfeed because he placed an ad on Facebook, and I read his story, and I connected with it, and I got all in.

I took action. I did some things that most people wouldn't do. I used my savings. I used my checking.

I took risks. I literally sold, threw away, gave away everything I owned except for a backpack and a laptop. You guys probably think I'm crazy right now, but I did that. And as a result of taking action on my life, because I saw for the first time my dreams because of that man over there.

He was living a life of freedom. He was traveling the world. He was working from the laptop. I didn't know if I could do all that, but all I saw was what he was doing looked pretty cool and I wanted to do it.

So I sacrificed everything, and I committed my whole life to making this dream a reality. Three months later, I fired my boss. A month later, I moved out of my apartment, got rid of everything I owned, and I started traveling the world with these four guys right here. Or three guys, four of me.

And it's been the biggest blessing ever. So I just want you guys to realize that when you take risks in life, when you believe in yourself, when you believe in others, and when you stop creating separation, because there's truly no separation between you, myself, between God. We're all one. And when we realize this, you'll be able to unlock the key to limitless potential within your life.

Because each and every one of you I believe in because I know that I'm not anybody special to be up on this stage. I'm not, truly. Each and every one of you have the same potential. But I have within myself to be here right now and to have made what happened.

So I want to take a moment of gratitude for my brothers and bring them up on stage real quick because without these guys, I wouldn't be here. We got Brian Dixon, Facebook God, Travis Holder, the Instagram God. Surprise! I love you, man.

I love you, man. So these guys, I can't say enough about them because literally, they're all mentors for me. You know, I look up to each one of these guys. They're my brothers.

You know, they've all taught me so much. And it's not just about YouTube. It's not just about Facebook. It's not about Instagram.

They taught me about life. They believed in me. I believe in these guys. I'll go to bat for these guys any day of the week.

I have their backs because I know they have my back. And again, these are some people that, you know, where my own family, who I haven't even met my whole life, didn't show me love and created separation. These guys showed me love. They took away the separation.

So when you guys can, again, just realize in your own life that there's truly no separation. There's just not. Regardless of the religions we all choose, that's our choice. Regardless of whether we're black or white, gay or straight, you heard me, regardless of any belief that anybody has here, regardless of whether you're wearing Louis Vuitton or you're wearing Walmart, it really doesn't matter.

Regardless of the languages we speak, we're all one people. That's my belief. Because I get to have that. And I truly believe at the point when you can realize this for yourselves and realize that you have God within you, you're within God.

You're one. We're all one. Regardless of what team you're on here, we're all one. Regardless of anything, we're all one.

And we all win when we realize that. When you tap into your own limitless potential within yourself and when you realize that everything you own, your time, your money, your credit, your possessions, your relationships, everything that you own, every asset you have within your possession is not more valuable than the dreams that God has instilled in your heart. And if God's instilled those desires and dreams within your heart, there's a reason and it's your purpose. And I believe in each and every one of you that you can actually have that if you're just willing to give up the good in your lives, guys.

And there's so much more great just standing around the corner waiting for you guys and it can happen like that. I wouldn't ever think I was gonna be up here right now. I wouldn't think I'd be traveling the world full-time, working from my laptop, goofing off with these guys, having just a blast. But dreams happen, guys.

And I want it to happen for each and every one of you because I believe in each and every one of you. Thank you. Give it up for George Converse! Give it up!