Built A $100M Business (Then God Spoke!) | Taylor Welch

Is it just me, or is the whole internet marketing game starting to feel a little soulless?

We’re in luck because today, I'm talking with the legendary Taylor Welch.

After his first company broke every record in the industry, he was on a non-stop upward trajectory, until a year ago, when his company faced scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Taylor has made millions, lost millions, and found something way more valuable along the way: his purpose.

We're talking about the stuff most marketers are too afraid to touch.

This episode is for you if:

1. You're tired of the hustle-and-grind mentality and crave more meaning in your business.
2. You're curious about the role of spirituality in entrepreneurship.
3. You’re ready to show vulnerability in building a badass brand.

We're talking about massive success, FTC investigations against his business, and a spiritual awakening that changed everything for him.

Taylor shares lots about his wild ride, and trust me, you won't want to miss this.

Hit that play (and subscribe) button and let's get into it.

#business #entrepreneur #motivation #success #inspiration #mindset #money #marketing #christianity #faith #god #prayer #spiritual #testimony #purpose

Follow Taylor Welch at:

https://taylorawelch.com/
https://www.instagram.com/taylorawelch/
https://www.facebook.com/taylorawelchprofile/
https://www.youtube.com/@TaylorAWelch

Follow Ken Okazaki at:

https://www.instagram.com/kenokazaki/
https://www.youtube.com/c/KenOkazaki
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-content-capitalists-with-ken-okazaki/id1634328251
https://open.spotify.com/show/09IzKghscecbI7jPDVBJTw
Content Capitalists YouTube

Transcript

Taylor Welch: There's some things that people would probably ask you. How do I do this? How do I scale a business? You can make so much money and still be present. A lot of us don't know how, why? Cause we're listening to voices that don't know how either. And so then we're just modeling those people. This is the saying, you are what you eat.

Like that's true in the spiritual sense. It's true in the mental sense. It's true in our physical sense. And so if people can learn to like, I only want to listen to voices that show me how to become what I want to be. I'm just like, thinking about all the wiser decisions that I've been making and be listening more to these voices.

Go explore how they're doing it and implement it. The Content Capitalist Podcast.

Ken Okazaki: Hey, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist podcast. Today, my guest is somebody who you've probably heard of if you've been in the internet marketing space at all, because He's made a lot of waves for a couple of reasons. Number one, making a ton of money and then number two, losing it all.

Taylor Welch: And then jumping back on the bandwagon. Taylor Welch, welcome to the show. What a great introduction. Thank

It's what I had at the moment's notice off the top of my Perfect. It's perfect. Taylor, you know, there's a lot of things that people would probably ask you and they'd have questions like, how do I do this? How do I scale a business, run ads, et cetera, et cetera. But there's a lot of people who also talk about that. But I want to focus on something that really caught my attention about you, and a lot of people probably have heard about your business, Traffic and Funnels, and they have heard about things because you talked about it publicly, about, uh, you know, FTC issues, et cetera, et cetera. But there's one thing that I never heard anywhere until I met you in person, and that's about an experience you had where you heard the voice of God. Oh yeah.

Ken Okazaki: And in respect of our time, and because I know the listeners, are probably looking for something that's different. Is that something you'd be okay talking about today?

Taylor Welch: Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, walking on the beach when he told me what I was going to do

Ken Okazaki: Exactly. Exactly. And also the conversation you had before that and how all that led up to this, the decision you make. 

Taylor Welch: with my, um, daughter 

Ken Okazaki: I, yes, Uh, I think it was your wife, if I remember correctly.

Taylor Welch: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a, there's this, this is what I've learned sometimes just in looking back through my short history is some seasons you'll go through, uh, 10 years and it's like an hour has passed. and some seasons you'll go through an hour and 10 years has passed because there's so much going on.

This was a season that, there was so much going on. And so I have to make sure I'm telling you the right story, but I was, this was in the spring of the early Q2 of 2022. We had gotten a valuation for the portfolio about a year before for 70. It was 74, 70 $8 million. I'm not sure which one. We were gunning to sell for a hundred million.

We wanted to boost the value of the company and and sell it, and I was on a walk on the beach. My wife was in an Airbnb. We had gone down to take a quick vacation. And I was raised in a kind of a Christian conservative household and here in the South of the United States, but I had never really taken it that seriously.

I had always just prayed because it was like meditation. You know what I mean? Like we just do, we do what we're taught to do. But this particular instance, I was specifically praying to ask God to give me direction. I wanted him to tell me what to do. And I remember one of the only times, maybe two or three times in my life, I've heard like a audible voice when I'm praying and the, the voice said, you know, you're, You're going to give everything away and you're going to start something that, is brand new.

And I was taken aback by it. And I was like, there's no way I'm going to do that. That is not what I'm going to do at all. At first I was like, that's can't be God because that sounds so stupid. There's no way it's God. I was like, I don't, I'm not going to do that. And he, he was, he responded, the voice responded to me and he was like, there's two economies.

There's your economy and there's my economy. Pick one. I was like, Oh, this must be like, actually God, because that's a really smart response.So I said, I'll make a deal with you. if you tell my wife, I will do it. If you don't tell my wife, then I'm going to just chalk this up to me hearing voices.

So I went back to the Airbnb and I found my wife. Her name is Lindsey. And I said, Hey, I, um, I want some confirmation on something. I feel like God might've told me to give away the businesses, but I don't think that it was necessarily God. I'm just not a hundred percent sure. So why don't you pray about it and see if God tells you.

And she started crying. And, she said, God told me that two weeks ago. And I said, I'm not going to tell him. You're going to have to tell him and that was the moment I was like, I've just made a deal with God and I have to either honor the deal because he wins this one or decide that I'm like not going to live for God, it's basically a demarcation line.

So we did that, it got crazy. And, um, it was FTC showed up, which I tell people all the time. A lot of times when you're raised in a spiritual environment. You always think like obedience has an immediate gratification to it. if you're obedient, it's an immediate thing, but a lot of times, um, you can be obedient, your life can get temporarily, you can feel like it's worse.

You have this idea of what a good life is. Because we don't have the right grid for it. then I had to go through the next season where I was mad at God for telling me to do something that didn't work the way I wanted it to work, which was all another story. When we started the new companies, the FTC showed up and started investigating everything, and that was really difficult for us.

And things now are just, I can't imagine what I would have missed out on if I wouldn't have done that. It always works out in hindsight. When you look back at the past, it's like, that was the right decision. In the moment, it was pretty tricky. That's the right story, right?

Ken Okazaki: that is the right one. And I'll tell you what, sometimes when I first heard that, I thought to myself, I don't think that I listened enough to anything other than what I can physically see in front of me, what I, what numbers I could crunch in a spreadsheet, what data I could track using some kind of analytics tool.

Like that's where 99 percent of my brain operates when it's got to do with business. And when you pulled that out, I thought to myself, I feel like I'm seeing just black and white compared to, what's possible in business 

and I know you have a 

Taylor Welch: same way, by the way. I think we're all like that. Because we're intellectual creatures. That like to figure things out. There's another story I can tell you later on that. But that was my whole life. And to be honest with you, it's still my life. And sometimes I still have to be like, What does God say about this?

Because I have my spreadsheet, but I haven't asked God what to do with it. It's just a habit. Working that habit out. Sorry to interrupt you.

It's okay. Why do you think that one punched through? Was it because you were more sensitive or was it because from the other side of, let's say the veil, there was a lot more energy or emphasis put on it. I think we have moments in our lives that are, very strategically important. If you go into like, if you want to look at life as like kind of warfare, you know, you have battles that are important, but they're tactically irrelevant to an extent, like you're willing to lose this battle to win the war.

And then we have moments in our life where what you do and what you say is very, very, very important. It's a strategic culmination point. And a lot of times people, I, you can tell that you're in one of these things because you feel a little bit of pressure. just chaos. You fell a little bit like kind of like things are kind of not working the right way.

There's death by a thousand cuts. There's just a lot of activity. Usually that means a spiritually speaking that you're kind of in a culmination of event and what you do and how you respond is incredibly important. I think God, the God that I know and talked to him is. Is really kind to be like, You don't listen very often, but this is the moment where I'm going to get your attention.

If you read the Bible, there's this guy named Moses, and one day God shows up and he sets a bush on fire. Moses has to look at it, like, you can't walk past a bush on fire that's not burning. All throughout history, there are these moments where it's just like, like, hey, Ken, you're, you're an important enough player, and your life is at a culmination point, I have to get your attention.

Ken Okazaki: Because if I don't, and you don't listen, then you'll end up on the wrong side of the tracks. For But then it's up to us to to obey. The criteria of those culmination points and whether you move past them or get blocked by them is when the voice of God does show up and you ignore it, you can just get trapped in whatever season you're trying to get out of forever. Now, let's look at the flip side though. Let's say that, you know, you said there was a few months between when you gave it all away and then when it became apparent why it was a good thing. Let's say that didn't happen. They had a multi billion dollar exit. Would you be like the guy who sold like 8, 000 Bitcoin for a pizza, you know, way back when I just thought I should've hailed on?

Taylor Welch: Like, how would you, would you have come to the conclusion it was God or another conclusion? Because sometimes it's a, it's longer than a few months, right? Well, it was actually probably like a year and a half. Like I kind of wrestled around with the ramifications of that decision for a while. how many times have we, have we been saved from something catastrophic because the plane doesn't take off, or our car won't start, or somebody misses a meeting, there's no way to know, and this is the perplexing thing even about, like, physicists today, they're kind of, like, trying to figure out, like, is, are we on, like, a a multiverse thing here or is there really like action consequence that we'll never be able to go back in time and figure out?

The answer is I don't, I don't know, but I do know enough now to be like, God talks to people. We're too busy to listen. So I told you that was like one of the three times that I'd heard like the audible voice of God. But before that season of my life, I didn't hear from God at all. Like I didn't really ever pay attention.

I hear from God every day now. Like it's. It's a practice that I've now, if I can't figure out what God wants me to do, I just do nothing. I don't want to. He's told me things that don't make any sense. And then in hindsight, it's like, wow, that was, I could have really messed that up. And so pretty much, every day, sometimes a few times a day, I'm checking in. I have a video on YouTube. That's like it, the title is how to hear the voice of God, the frequency of the Holy spirit. And I taught for like an hour and a half on here's how different people hear God's voice. And it's not always audible. Sometimes it's the frequency of your subconscious changes and matches something.

And if you're present, you'll notice that. And you can tell the. Whether a food is good or bad for you based on how you feel when you eat it and based on what it does to your, to your body. It's the same with the voices that we consume. when we consume certain voices, you can tell that like the spirit of God is on this thing because it will change how you feel energetically.

It will change the way your brain works. So, I don't think we have time to go into that, but I don't know if it would have turned out the way that it did. You're saying or not, but I would rather not sell for a couple billion dollars and still be able to hear what God's telling me to do than have a couple billion dollars and not have that.

And that is where the, um, that's where the magic is. Like, would you rather be rich or happy? It's not a dichotomy, but most of us would choose when we're young, that we would rather be rich. And most of us, when we're old, we'd rather be happy. So there's a maturity maturation process that happens too, when a person realizes what's most important. It's more important for me to hear God than it is for me to make money. But the funny thing is, is like, I make way more money now than when I was not listening to God. It's not a dichotomy. God's not like, be poor so you can hear my voice. It's more of like the hierarchy's got to be right. And then we get to keep a lot of the stuff that we that we need to function well on earth as well.

Does that make sense?

It totally does. It totally does. And I think, you know, I'm, I just hit 44 or gonna be 45 in, uh, 2025. And I'm just kind of, you know, reaching that cre where I'm just thinking about all the wiser decisions that I've been making and probably gonna, you know, be listening more to these voices as I get over. I think a part of that has to do with when you're young, you feel like the Money even, you're going to go through the pain of not being happy because you have a lot more life to enjoy the money later and fix the other shit. Right? Whereas when you get old you're just like this money's not around for very much longer, so I might as well just be happy. And, that's when they start giving stuff away. That's when they paying a bunch of money to put their name on a building or something, right? It's just a different timeframe. I think that really gives you perspective. Yeah. Well, your time, when you realize the expendable nature of time, you just want to spend it. Spend your time doing things that are good for you and good for other people. And like my kids, there's another, tons of stories we can talk about, but I re I missed the first three years of my daughter and I got to experience the first year and a half of my son's life.

I wouldn't have been present for, to experience that if I would have been running the same way I was running back then. And it's hilarious that it's even a temptation for us because you can make so much money and still be present. A lot of us don't know how, why? Well, cause we're listening to voices that don't know how either.

And so then we're just modeling those people. And what you, you, there's the saying, you, you are what you eat, like that's true in the spiritual sense. It's true in the mental sense. It's true in our physical sense. And so if people can learn to like, I only want to listen to voices that show me how to become what I want to be. 

there's a secret there, there's no greater equalizer of what's important than getting old. That's what you're talking about. Like the older you get, like time's not going to last forever. So what's the most important is like top of mind all the time. Have you seen those pictures that have like the weeks that you have left to live?

Ken Okazaki: Yes Yes. got one of those and put that up in friend Taki Moore's got one up and Yeah, I did buy one, but I ended up not putting it up because Well, I can't remember. I think it just sat in the box forever after it arrived.

Taylor Welch: I got one of those. Yeah. Taki is really good at this. Like you can tell when I got to hang out, I met Taki for the first time in Fiji. I was like, Oh, this guy knows how, how the game is played, not the game, just the business, although he's a brilliant business person, but he kind of knows, like, what's the point of life if you get rich and don't live?

Ken Okazaki: People die way too soon, you know? I'm going to read you a tweet that really caught my attention. you don't like it when it's small, you're not going to like it when it's big. not going to want it when it's big. That's something you put out. Is this kind of what you're talking about here? Yep. if the business doesn't feel like it's what you want to be known for when it's small, you have no point and no business making it big. It's just the, the bigger it is, the more of a monster it's going to become. I got one more. Can I read it to you?

Taylor Welch: Yeah, let's go. it. Marketers talk about being honest in their marketing. then their marketing breaks a dozen compliance rules and you realize They're confused. Honesty is not the bar. It's way higher than that. You remember that? No, when was that? This was February 1, 24 this year. I don't remember what I was thinking about or doing, but it's talking about honesty and just honesty in terms of, it's like, even the FCC doesn't really, they don't really pay that much attention to even whether something, they want it to be true. They don't want you to take, they don't, they don't want you to miss, describe something you're doing, you know, like, well, what they're really interested in is the impression that you give for what it means for other people.

They call it net impression. It's like, actually, it's, I think it's a pretty good rule actually. But, um, if, if you're going to bring people over to, to what you're doing, they, they don't just have to trust that you're being honest with them. They have to trust that they align with you, which is where people really get brands. Explosion is when people align with that person. Cause I could just say, Hey, we've made, you know, 80 million, 100, 100 million, whatever dollars. And people are like, Oh, that's pretty cool. I'm going to follow this person. But following does not equate trust. People trust what they align with and what they feel like.

Ken Okazaki: Um, is in their best interest, long term, uh, it's probably thinking around something like that, February is like a decade ago, it feels like though so long ago. So what's the next Barb of honesty? There's, let's kind of go a bit deeper into that. You said there's alignment, right? And is this, are we talking more about alignment in your marketing message for FTC compliance and more in terms of like Okay,

Taylor Welch: No, no, no. Like, so let's say that me and you run identical businesses and our companies sort of do the same thing for people. Um, you have kids and I have kids, but you never talk about having kids. So there's alignment. just if I talk about having kids, there's alignment cause trust is now Personality is now a legitimate data set for brands.

If you look at Elon and Tesla and, um, to an extent, even Zuckerberg and Meta, like these brands used to just run off of P& Ls and cost of feature revenue, there's a multiple in there for just personality alignment and the political structure of America has made that 10 times more important. So if they believe that you stand for something, The other competitors don't stand for it. Now they're trusting you even further that requires you to take a stance from time to time. Let's take it a step further. We have two identical businesses and, we both have kids and we both talk about kids, but I talk about the times when I screwed up with my kids and how I've learned to do it better.

That's another tier. Cause now they're like, Ken's never done it wrong. So I feel a little uncomfortable. Maybe he's lying. And all this, these conversations are happening in the back. It was copywriters are the best at, entering inside of those conversations naturally. So vulnerability is a way that you can really create this wonderful moat of brand alignment, uh, with people.

If you see, look online and you see people like Alex Ramosi, Alex and Layla are incredible, but Alex has this really unique and interesting way of being vulnerable that doesn't make him look like an idiot. he'll talk about how his early days were hard and people were like, that's where I am right now.

I feel exactly what he felt then I feel that right now I'm gonna follow Alex It says the vulnerability takes it up a notch. So, there are tiers of like where people see themselves Do they see themselves being like you? Do they see themselves being like Taki? Do they see themselves being like Formosi?

And all of these people were all different. And the more that we, uh, share with the world, the more opportunity there is for alignment. But the danger in why people don't do this well is because the more you share, the more opportunity there is for misalignment as well. So you can tell the people who just play it real safe.

And then you can tell the people who are like me, or I'm just like, this is my real life. I messed this up a million times. Don't do what I did. I learned how to do it better. And people are like, that's who I want to follow because he's honest. but not just base table stakes honesty like it's not like He's honest.

I don't believe he's lying. It's like, he's honest. I can see myself in his story. Therefore, I align with it. Does that make sense?

Ken Okazaki: it does. Absolutely. I want to wrap this up with a question and I'd like to end with a question from you to the listener. And I know you've mentored, coached, consulted a lot of business owners. If you were to ask a question to someone who's listening who's going to be someone who sells information or IP with courses, with coaching, with mentorship, and this question is going to help them unlock the next level. I know that's a lot to throw on you at the last minute here, Thank you. but this is something they could, they could take internally. Think about what would that question be? Alright, hold on. Let me think. If you continue living the way you're living and building the way that you're building, what regrets do you have the night before you die? That's a big one. 

And then go and fix those regrets so you no longer have them. That's a big one. I'm going to take that. Taylor, thank you so much for that. I want to respect your time. You're a busy guy. I do appreciate what you shared with us during this, uh, 20, 25 minutes. Is there anything else that you want to add in here to an aspiring online business owner who's, who's just struggling or, or they're stuck at a million or stuck at 5 million? Whether it's your story that's going to occur to Are you, or, just pull, know, full on drill sergeant on them. I don't know what that's going to be. Is there anything you can share?

Taylor Welch: I would just say find the people that you want to model and get around them. Pay to get around them if you need to. Most of the times you're going to need to. Um, that's why we, I have different projects that pay me varying degrees of money. Um, I don't have to do like consulting anymore, but I'm, really, really motivated by helping unlock people's monetization abilities without sacrificing the things that everyone else is telling them they have to sacrifice, because it's not a, it's a false dichotomy, which really means you don't actually have to choose.

That requires education, more options requires more education. So just get around them, get it like if you like me, get around me, go, go, go to our website, find events, come to an event, come hang out. There's a Osmosis of energy that is super powerful. And don't quit, but those are all the platitudes. Like if you want to actually grow, get around these people who you believe are not full of it.

Ken Okazaki: They're actually doing what they say they're doing, go explore how they're doing it and implement it. All right. Well, thank you very much. And everybody else who's watching or listening, thanks for watching all the way to the end. Check out the links down below for Taylor Welch, his website and uh, his social media links. And for everybody else, if you enjoyed this, please do share this with somebody else you know is going to appreciate this content.

That's it for now and I'll see you next week.