Exploring Resilience And The Heart Of An Entrepreneur With Arias WebsterBerry

Nick McGowan (00:01.163)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. Today on the show, we Arias Websterberry. Arias, what’s going on,

Arias WebsterBerry (00:12.786)
great man, how about you?

Nick McGowan (00:13.814)
I’m good. I’m good. You literally just said what I have said at different times when I know it’s going to be a good conversation. Like everything we just said should have been recorded. Maybe there are some things that shouldn’t have been, but you know, we’ll leave the mystery there. There’s a lot of shit that we’re to be able to get into as entrepreneurs, as people have been through tough things. As somebody who is currently kind of grieving about their, their football team.

yourself. Cincinnati Bengals beat the Cowboys last night as we record this, but you

Arias WebsterBerry (00:43.618)
Hehehehehe

Arias WebsterBerry (00:49.848)
in a perpetual state of grief with freaking Cowboys so you know it’s nothing new so in

Nick McGowan (00:54.478)
But we can talk about resilience and not wanting to kill everybody or yourself because of those things. But man, why don’t you kick us off? Tell us what you do for a living and what’s one thing most people don’t know about you that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre.

Arias WebsterBerry (01:01.951)
Indeed.

Arias WebsterBerry (01:10.932)
yeah. So I’m areas Webster Berry. I am an entrepreneur, author speaker trainer. I’m the CEO of Webster Berry marketing. We’re a full service digital marketing agency, a staff of around 20 people. I also run ignite funnels. So I split my time between the two and I have a, innovative like AI tool called launch ignition.ai, where our mission is to what we call a hundred X impact.

We’re hoping to guide a thousand entrepreneurs to making a hundred thousand plus in a year and a hundred entrepreneurs to make 1 million in a year by 2026. So yeah, man. Funny enough, something that can I do two things that people don’t know about me? One, people don’t know I wrote a book, so I have a book called Content Canon. It is all about how to create a month’s worth of content for your business in one day.

Nick McGowan (01:53.518)
Yeah, go for it.

Arias WebsterBerry (02:07.064)
and, people don’t know about it because I haven’t marketed it, even though I have a marketing agency, we’ll probably be doing that next year. But, something that most people don’t know about me is I used to jump rope competitively.

Nick McGowan (02:22.293)
No.

Arias WebsterBerry (02:24.408)
That’s a real thing. You can’t make that up, right?

Nick McGowan (02:27.821)
I mean, you could, but that would be strange. Like why would you at that point? What a, you know, I gotta be honest. One of the reasons why I asked that question is to be able to kick us off and like move us into a cool direction and also have something that’s interesting right up front, like the marketing side of it. But I’m also a total nerd about people and I love to know the thing that’s like, what’s the thing that I wouldn’t know? And that’s one of those things like,

Arias WebsterBerry (02:32.568)
Right.

Nick McGowan (02:55.381)
I probably wouldn’t even come up and just like a long conversation sitting at a party or something like that, unless you were like directly asked what’s an odd thing? Well, here there’s this. But all of that stuff also ties into something that’s much deeper. Like I’ve never had anybody answer that question and that just be the thing where it’s like, yeah, this is that. One day I just picked it up and started doing it and that’s it.

Arias WebsterBerry (03:08.172)
Exactly.

Nick McGowan (03:21.143)
there’s always something that ties back to it and then also leads into what you’re doing typically today. So how did you get into that? And like, how did you move through that? I guess physically and emotionally and all those things.

Arias WebsterBerry (03:21.784)
Mm-hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (03:35.672)
I mean, how does it always start? It starts with a girl, right? I was a kid. So I was in middle school and there’s this girl that I liked and I was walking after school and I was like, so you want to hang out? She’s like, actually, I have practice. was like, practice for what? She’s like jump rope. And it’s like, you’re practicing jump rope. She’s like, yeah, I’m on a jump rope team. I’m like.

Didn’t know they had those. She’s like, yeah, you should come if you want to hang out. And I was like, OK, I’m an athlete. I’m like, I know how to jump rope. Sure. And I went and I was blown away. It was like the coolest thing I had ever seen. Like they were doing backflips and cartwheels and jumping over each other into double Dutch ropes and flipping off of each other’s hands inside. I was just like, what the hell is going on? It was like, you know, ninjas using jump ropes. So I was.

I mean, I was an athlete, so it was just something that was extremely challenging and highly technical. So I literally was like, yeah, I want to do this. told my mom and she was like, you want to what? Like I play basketball, you know, football, stuff like that. She’s like, you want to jump rope? And I was like, yeah. And then I showed her and she’s like, OK, I get it. So she signed me up and it was great, man. We actually went to Nationals. So we went to Nationals.

Nick McGowan (04:58.379)
Nice.

Arias WebsterBerry (05:01.288)
at Disney World. So they had their whole sports complex and thing there. And we actually performed for the Houston Rockets at a halftime show for this thing. So, yeah, man, it was it was interesting. It was, you know, talk about endurance and precision. It just yeah, it was it was a great foundation physically for me, you know, for years and years ago.

Nick McGowan (05:30.453)
What a cool thing in such, I mean, it makes sense about being an athlete and trying to push yourself and stretch yourself a bit. remember hearing, I don’t know, maybe in like, middle school or even high school where there were certain football players that were taking ballet classes and stuff like that. And my first thought was like, how does that tie into what they’re doing? And then I thought the amount of core strength, the amount of. Dorrance flexibility, all of that. I’m like,

Arias WebsterBerry (05:59.234)
Body control, yeah.

Nick McGowan (05:59.827)
Yeah, they’ve got to be able to push another giant fucking human down to get to somebody else and like move in all that ways. And I think it can be really easy to judge, you know, where you go, why would somebody want to do this thing? But if you start to pull out the pieces to it, what a cool thing. And I hadn’t thought about any of that. I mean, I grew up outside of Philadelphia, like 10 minutes outside of the city and a lot of friends and some family in the city. And I saw a lot of that as a kid.

and never really thought to do any of that, but I was an aggressive skater in high school where it probably would have helped me have better flexibility and core strength to be able to do that. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody do backflips and all that sort of stuff. But I remember watching some people where I’m like, I couldn’t even see the rope. Like it was just going so fast where I’m like, so if you get hit, are you decapitated? Like, is that the end of it?

Arias WebsterBerry (06:53.044)
Jesus Christ, I mean, it is the worst pain I remember when I first started and I started getting into real intricate tricks, tricks, man. I hit myself once and I had a welt for like a week and a half like it broke skin. It was terrible. I must have screamed so loud. You’re crazy.

Nick McGowan (07:10.366)
Oof.

Nick McGowan (07:15.05)
Should I did something like that in my early 30s doing CrossFit? You had to do like the doubles and I was having a hard time with it and at one point I thought like well if I put more oomph into it maybe I’ll do it and I just like drove the thing directly into my shins and yelped. Everybody in the room was like the fuck I was like I gotta take a step outside or crawl or something but fuck this hurts. So.

Arias WebsterBerry (07:24.194)
Yeah.

Arias WebsterBerry (07:33.512)
Ugh.

Yeah. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (07:44.19)
being an athlete, doing that sort of stuff, even stepping outside of your comfort zone in a sense to be able to do that, feels like it’s part of, it’s like the DNA of an entrepreneur. I had mentioned to you even before we hit record that I had a conversation with somebody who had recently left a company because the founder of the company just wanted a title, didn’t want to actually do the work. And I’ve seen that happen in different ways. Some people are vocal about it. Some people are not. They have their own.

Arias WebsterBerry (07:50.904)
Mm-hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (08:06.742)
Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (08:13.662)
traumas and triggers and all these things that just kind of shut them down because it can get really difficult. But if there’s passion and there’s purpose and all that kind of wrapped into the resilience of all of it, all of those pieces, and those are just a handful of the pieces that kind of sum up what it takes to be able to either run a business or run an organization or something like that. But if those pieces are slightly off, everything’s askew. If one of those pieces is missing,

you’re basically just hemorrhaging, hemorrhaging energy, hemorrhaging sanity, all that sort of stuff. So talk a bit about not only, not the businesses specifically that you’re doing, but the things that you actually have experienced that were maybe some really pivotal moments throughout your journey of business and kind of tying in everything that you’re doing that’s helped you become more resilient in what you’re doing and also adaptive throughout all of it.

Arias WebsterBerry (09:11.576)
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you had to put a through line between some of my stuff in early life and, you know, even, you know, getting my business started and changing careers and moving, it’s all kind of boils down to resilience. You know, growing up, I faced, you know, quite a few significant challenges, you know, including living in over 12 different places before I was 18.

you know, multiple states, multiple cities. My father struggling with addiction, you know, both of my parents being incarcerated at one point. You know, my father passed away when I was just 13, you know. But despite all the hardships, I developed a list resilience, right? I really had to. And.

Nick McGowan (09:46.953)
you

Arias WebsterBerry (10:06.612)
I was really determined to change the trajectory of my course. And these experiences that gave me a deep understanding of how adversity could become an advantage because…

in going through all those things, I have a perspective that most people don’t. I’ve had to face things that most don’t. So I have the muscle to in the power, the strength, the internal or what I say intestinal fortitude to push through things, even when the situation is bleak. I always say adversity doesn’t break you. It builds you.

Nick McGowan (10:29.138)
Mm-hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (10:51.36)
And those early struggles led to the foundation of the entrepreneur that I am today.

Nick McGowan (10:55.731)
Yeah, I don’t want to skip over that because one of the major things that I really love to be able to get into on the show is trauma, purpose, but also getting into the context of those situations. There are some shows that are out there that are like, great, well, you’ve been through all these things. Your dad died and here was addiction and there was this, but you don’t tell us about your success. Like, wait the fuck, hold up. I kind of think like, well, fuck your success for the moment. Let’s talk about all these times because

Arias WebsterBerry (11:17.026)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.

Nick McGowan (11:25.661)
Typically the people that listen to the show are the people that are successful in what they’re doing or leaders in what they’re doing, either entrepreneurs or within their organization. And they’ve had these things that they’ve had to work through, that they’re still working through. Coming from any sort of addiction with a family member, especially a mom or a dad, that can seep into your genes. And even if it’s not just actually genetic for you, it can still be environmental.

Arias WebsterBerry (11:46.584)
Mm-hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (11:53.378)
Yeah.

Nick McGowan (11:54.652)
where you can start to look at those things where you go, well, shit, when things were tough for my dad or my mom, they would drink like mad. So subconsciously, do you think, well, just drink yourself crazy and it’ll be all right. You’ll be dehydrated the next morning, but you will have forgotten about all of it or whatever. So let’s get into some of that shit because that, that would have shaped you differently if your parents weren’t that way. And the resilience is a thing like a beautiful silver lining that came from it.

Arias WebsterBerry (12:07.096)
Mm-hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (12:16.92)
Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (12:23.557)
Fuck, if we’re real with each other, that’s never easy to go through that and probably created your own struggles out of

Arias WebsterBerry (12:32.856)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, you know, some people are handed a a different set of cards. Right. And I definitely didn’t get the ones with the the aces and the face cards in the deck. You know, my father was a tall, charismatic, good looking guy with an easy smile and a way with words. You know, he

got a scholarship to Rice University, which is a great university to play basketball. Unfortunately, he grew up in the 80s. And around this time, we now know that the US government was pumping drugs into every low income part of America that they could in order to fight communism. That was their excuse for poisoning their own people, essentially.

and he fell prey to it. You know, I’m sure, I mean, I don’t know how it started, but I’m sure it was something simple and recreational and, fun. And it quickly got hold of him and he lost his scholarship. And, you know, he struggled with addiction for the better part of, you know, 15 years or so. And, you know, as a result, my mom had to step up and say, Hey, you know, that shit’s not okay. we have a son.

And I need to make sure that he’s okay. while you’re doing whatever the hell you’re doing, you know, you can’t be around and you know, him battling with that, landed him in and out of jail. And, know, he just, wasn’t around and, and, you know, to my mom’s Testament, she never told me about any of it. You know, she shielded me from most of that. She never spoke ill of my father. So I never had a negative.

image of him. I was mad because he wasn’t around and I didn’t really understand why. However, you know, I did have the benefit of I want to say when I was

Arias WebsterBerry (14:40.536)
probably 13, 12, 13. My mom basically said, hey, he’s old enough to understand things now. He’s in high school. So you need to tell him why you weren’t around and, you know what you’ve been doing and you need to tell him in your own words. They need to be honest. So, you know, we were living in San Diego at the time we flew back for, I think it was Thanksgiving and he and I wouldn’t play basketball and had a very long and hard conversation about his life choices. And,

Nick McGowan (14:54.51)
Hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (15:10.604)
You know, I could I could tell it was difficult for him. Right. What father wants to lay bare all their failures and misdeeds to to their son. But to his testament, he he was honest as much as he could to a 13 year old. And it at the time, it didn’t give me closure. But as I grew older and reflected on the conversation, I I understood more.

and then fast forward, I want to say four months, five months, something like that. And I find out that he was killed. He was, in a altercation with police on the side of the freeway and, know, he lost his life. and it was tough and that was my, my freshman year of high school. So I’m trying to make this, this transition from, you know, being a boy to a man, right? That

Nick McGowan (15:58.214)
Hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (16:06.2)
13, I’m dealing with purity and girls in high school. And, you know, I was also in a new neighborhood, a new school. So, you know, it was just it was a lot of change. And, you know, I didn’t handle it well. know, grades sucked. I was mad all the time. I was an athlete, but I even athletics kind of took a backseat because I was just pissed. So, yeah, it was it was a tough time. And

You know, eventually I realized that, you know, the grades and me being angry and, you know, not really caring about my performance in various areas was a reaction or coping mechanism for, you know, everything that was going on. But, you know, at the time I was just like, leave me the fuck alone. just watch TV, play video games and, you know, veg out. Yeah.

Nick McGowan (17:00.933)
Sure. Or not to, you know, you want to escape if you don’t know what’s going on. We’re also going through as 13, 14 or 12 years old, whatever, as you start to go through those hormonal changes and start to shift differently, that can be super heavy, man. I’m sorry to hear that that happened. I’m also really thankful, at least from a third party perspective, that you were able to have that conversation with your dad.

Arias WebsterBerry (17:08.406)
Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (17:30.326)
A handful of months before all that happened. What a beautiful turn of events in a sense where if that were to happen and you didn’t have those conversations, you’d be left with more questions. and even, even though that was what three, four hours of basketball and hanging out or whatever it was, being able to have some of that and take that. Into your memories going forward of like, I can tap back into that sort of stuff.

It sounds like your dad went through…

I’m trying to figure out what’s the best way to put this because the systemic issues of it are fucked. To know what happened where all the drugs were being pumped into the system of literally all these spaces that are being deprived of resources already that are like giving fucking drugs to guinea pigs in a sense. Like, let’s just see what happens to them and treating people like mice. Like that is totally fucked up. It also.

Arias WebsterBerry (18:24.62)
Mm-hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (18:29.632)
Yeah, but you know, it’s also I always look at it, you know, it is fucked up in, you know, the people that are in those neighborhoods and in that time had no idea that that was, know, that there was a grander plan and an overarching campaign to, you know, coordinate these things. However, at the end of the day, it’s still your choice, right? You are making a personal choice to experiment with something you don’t know how you’re going to react.

You are making a personal choice to do something that may be detrimental to your future. That’s obviously illegal. That could, you know, let’s say you don’t end up addicted, you end up in jail, right? And, you know, or dead, you know, and if you have responsibilities like, you know, a wife, kids, a mortgage, you know, a job, any family members that are, you know, rely

on you, well you’re putting this thing before that. And again, you know, I feel for him, you know, because he couldn’t have known what he was doing and what was going to transpire, but at the end of the day, every man and woman is responsible for their actions and the choices that they make, right? And, you know, like you said earlier, I could have

I could have went down the same path, right? And use that as an excuse. Like, well, my dad went around and I’m angry and, you know, drugs are readily available and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, follow the same path. But, you know, I had the opposite response. It was. I like I since I was a kid, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I realized that, you know, the things that I had saw, the things that.

I had come across maybe the things that people that were around me didn’t line up with what I was trying to get accomplished, which was to be a multimillionaire entrepreneur. And, you know, those two things didn’t equate and I really had to choose a path. And in choosing that path, I didn’t know the amount of hardship that would come with it and all those different things. But I knew that that path was not most likely going to lead me to this one. So, you know, I had to make a choice and I did. And, you know, it’s made all the difference.

Nick McGowan (20:45.814)
Sure.

Nick McGowan (20:56.227)
Choices, choices stacked upon choices. And the environmental side of it, economical side, all those pieces can be difficult to like wade through at times. Systemic issues and all those things can just add to that recipe that just kind of makes it harder. it’s, there’s no excuse for it, but there can also be justifications made for those things to.

Arias WebsterBerry (20:59.756)
Mm-hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (21:21.432)
Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (21:24.554)
show somebody grace, you know, without just being like, well, fuck off and like, totally judging. But it is all the choices that are being made. I look at people have conversations at different times about people that went to high school with I’m like, man, I haven’t thought of that person in like 20 years. I hope they’re okay. And you find out some of them are doing great. You find out some of them are just not only because of the choices they’ve made. And you stack those things up. So even tying that into the business, you’ve had your bumps, you’ve had

Arias WebsterBerry (21:27.64)
Mm-hmm.

Nick McGowan (21:54.495)
sure different times you get punched in the mouth and you’re like, what the fuck was that about? Other times where you’re on extreme highs, and their choices to be made with all those moments, there are people that can take an extreme high and just run with it. And then they fall a lot faster and a lot harder. And other people that don’t give themselves enough credit, because of the choices they’ve made to be able to get to that high moment, where they just brush it off and just put their head down and keep working on things. So how do you find balance within that?

understanding the stuff that you’ve been through, but also still staying true to yourself and enjoying the highs, enjoying the lows and not getting pulled either way.

Arias WebsterBerry (22:35.388)
for me, I was actually just having this conversation with a, one of my students, that’s in launch ignition and she’s also a client and she’s, my Guinea pig, and all the things that we do in my agency and different things we create. so she’s the first beneficiary. and she was just reminiscing on, you know, the, the phases that she’s seen me through over the years, you know, in me.

testing various things and being in different industries and starting businesses and them failing. you know, some of them, making enormous amounts of money. Yeah. It was one business where we’re making six figures a month. And then, you know, the next month we were basically out of business. you know, she’s been there through all those things and the thing she commented on it last night was she just finds it interesting how I keep going. in her, her,

her exact words. She’s like, somehow you just keep going. I think it’s amazing. She’s like, even when things like completely blow up, you just keep going. You get onto the next thing. And, and I think that that’s been like, that’s how I operate. It is.

staying true to the purpose and the mission, right? As when I was a kid, I’m like, want to be a multimillionaire entrepreneur. And that mission hasn’t changed. Right. The path of the vehicle might it’s changed several times. But, you know, the destination is the same. And when you know your why, right, what’s the reason why you’re doing the thing, not the thing that you want to do, but what’s the reason why? Well, that has the ability to kind of

hope you flatten out the highs and lows and realize that they’re not ever as good or as bad as you think. They’re never as high, they’re never as low as you think, right? Because, you know, I’ve made enormous amounts of money and I’ve lost enormous amounts of money and I’ve made it again. I’ve partied with rock stars and celebrities and, you know, in penthouses and 40 room mansions on

Nick McGowan (24:38.059)
Hmm.

Arias WebsterBerry (24:47.582)
in, know, where they have a hundred million dollar yacht parked outside. They just, yeah, well, whatever. It’s a little boat out there. And, know, I’ve been places where I, you know, I couldn’t afford a bottle of liquor to drown my sorrows. Right. In and to realize that you’re you’re one or two decisions away from any of those. Right.

makes you kind of sober up, you know, figuratively and stay focused and keep your eye, you know, fixed on the ultimate why and goal.

Nick McGowan (25:28.929)
Good points, And along those lines, what’s your advice for somebody that’s on their path toward self-mastery?

Arias WebsterBerry (25:41.27)
I mean, honestly, you know, self mastery and like mindset is the is the foundation of it all. Right. If you can’t lead yourself, you can’t lead anybody. You always have to focus on leading yourself. And in my opinion, leading yourself is your ability to be honest and have tough conversations. I have tough conversations with myself literally every morning.

Part of my ritual is affirmation. It’s looking at my goals. Well, a lot of times, like as soon as I open my eyes, I’m having conversations with myself like, yeah, don’t hit the snooze button. You actually have shit to do today. Get the fuck up. Right. Hey, you know you need to go work out, right? Like if you don’t, you’re going to feel like shit. You’re to be tired.

You know, like I have all of these conversations, right? Or when I know I’m not hitting the mark, you know, I actually talk to myself out loud. My girl’s like she’s got used to it now, but she used to be like, who the are you talking to? Right. And like, I’m talking to myself. Just leave me alone. You know that to me, that’s what what mastery like like self mastery and mindset is. Right. Having those conversations with yourself in order to keep yourself true.

to your mission and your purpose. you’re you are one pivotal moment away from hitting your goal. And. You know, you’re also one pivotal moment away from asking, why is this happening to me? know, so it’s it’s one of those things where you really have to be dialed in. You have to be focused if you’re actually going to get to the other side.

Nick McGowan (27:40.733)
Yeah, great points. Man, I appreciate you being on today. This has been an awesome conversation. Before I let you go, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

Arias WebsterBerry (27:52.28)
I guess Instagram is a great place. So Arias Web A R I A S W E as an echo B as in Bravo. I’m usually on there posting things. And for all things that I do, all my businesses, all my books, courses, all that different stuff, you can go to Arius Websterberry dot com. It is a lot. It’s a mouthful. It’s a unique name. So it’s not hard to find me online. But Arius A R I A S

Webster, like the dictionary and then B E R R Y.com.

Nick McGowan (28:26.703)
Again, man, it’s been a pleasure having you on today. Appreciate your time.

Arias WebsterBerry (28:31.778)
Likewise man, it was pleasure.