TL: Obviously, I’m a man of faith. I was a born again Christian many, many, many years ago. Obviously, when I went through all this adversary stuff. I would not say I’m a person who follows fellowship as much as I should. I’m definitely a person who believes in God and believes every night in God when say my prayers. Before I go on every show, I always do one thing. It was Vincent Creel or Zig Ziglar, but they said they always say this one thing before they go on-air. I started it many years ago and I always say, “I accomplish all things through Jesus Christ, he’s my strength. I accomplish all things through Jesus Christ, he’s my strength.” [Laughs] I even say it on the plane before it goes up in the air.
A lot of reasons my twins wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for above. Being able to give doctors the ability to handle premature babies today. The medicines and the stuff like that. It’s all around us in some manner. You go back and look, how can somebody kill a child or hurt somebody? It’s such a weird world out there. It’s like we’ll never understand it, I’ll never understand it. At the same time, I do understand the miracles and the ability to look to a higher power for faith.
TCC: Despite your undeniable success, a key statement I took away from the book was that said in the beginning you were “one lonely man” for many years until you married your wife. Love is the most important thing in life, do you agree with that?
TL: Yeah, I absolutely do. To sit there and smile about a business success doesn’t even come close to being able to smile about kids and a family that love you. Or being able to have someone that’s there for you. In business, none of these people would be involved with you if you weren’t successful or if you weren’t making money, if you screwed up. In family, your screw-ups, your failures, your successes, they’re all accepted. Yeah, that’s a very, very important thing. It doesn’t mean I’m a perfect dad by any means. I still try to be as active I am and as creative as I am with family. But, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve got a son whose graduating four years in college, he’s going to med school. I’ve got a daughter whose graduating four years in college and going on to a master’s degree. I’ve got two nine month old boys named Cody and Chase that have surpassed being under two pounds and living as preemies, turning out perfect so far. I’m a very lucky guy. It doesn’t say that I won’t have pitfalls, it doesn’t say I won’t have problems, it doesn’t say someone won’t rip me off somewhere or something, it just says that I’m always going to be positive.
TCC: Did you sacrifice your personal life in your early career? I know in your book it said that you were putting business first, especially right in the beginning and that women and everything else would be second.
TL: Back when you were in an individual sport like bodybuilding, when I first started in that area --- obviously it was a very narcissistic and a very you-only sport. Where did you have time for anyone else when all you were doing was working out all day long, watching what you eat all day long and sleeping all day long? Obviously, I understand the dedication it took to get to my next goal level -- which would have been Mr. America. But after that, I never felt that way. After that, I was married and I had my two kids. Kids change your life. No matter what happens in your life, no matter what goes on, you get back and watch those children smile at you – they melt you. It’s funny because there was a magazine called Direct Response magazine, which is kind of my industry a lot of the times, the infomercial industry, the commercial industry, the shopping channel industry – they did an in-depth interview with me one time. They asked me a bunch of questions and the first thing I did talk about was my family versus business. The editor commented that out of the last 50 businessmen he’s interviewed, nobody talked about family first. I thought it was interesting and then later on, the magazine was nominated for an award for that article. Their first award. So, obviously someone else believes in family. When I had my kids when I was divorced, probably when they were about five or six, so I had the kids about three or four days a week as a single father – it was such a joy. But if I had a business meeting with somebody, no matter what the business meeting was, I brought the kids to the meeting or to the restaurant or to wherever it was that I had going on. If that businessmen or businesswomen did not want that to happen, I didn’t do business with them. Because obviously, they thought business was more important than family. That probably wouldn’t have been a good match for me anyway.
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