I started this blog to write about Bill Lyons. I have been following Bill since the mid 90’s. He was born an Entrepreneur and has a passion for life. He is a risk taker and although he has had great successes and victories he has also had what he likes to call “setbacks.” 99% of the population, including myself, could not endure or overcome what he has been through. When you ask him about these things he talks about things like learning lessons, high tolerance threshold, strength, never quiting, unwavering faith and the desert. I think of him as a warrior.
There is no doubt in my mind that Bill Lyons will create and attract abundance again. If anyone is going to lead us out of this economic mess to success it will be him. He has the heart of a lion and is here to grow and contribute. So I would like to dedicate this blog to his lessons and to his comeback.
Mr. Bill Lyons is most known for founding Lyons Enterprises Inc. (LEI Financial) in 2003. He often tells the story that he thought he could start the company with $100,000 of savings and a brokers license. He quickly found out that it would be more like $700,000. So after mortgaging all of his properties and getting turned down by 10 different banks for an SBA loan the 11th bank finally said yes after he signed over his life.
The company grew very quickly from zero to $11 million in revenue by the end of 2005. He then diversified and created several other companies: LEI Holdings LLC, LEI Financial Services LLC (Life Insurance), Lyons Realty (Real Estate Sales and Services), LEI Marketing LLC, and LEI Mexico just to name a few. Combined the companies generated revenue of $20 Million in 2006. 2007 was a different story and that is where things started to change in the other direction for Bill. It was a going to be a year to go from 20-40, heck, why not, they went from 10-20! The Market changed, the credit crisis happened in August and froze a pipeline of $100Million, a sales manager sold a bill of goods to the sales team (1/2 left to go to his failed venture and stole everything they could on the way out the door) and then the company lost $2million plus dollars! In December of 2007 a federally chartered bank proposed to acquire LEI Financial to focus in on national FHA business. The merger ended up never going through and ultimately failed in September of 2008. LEI Financial (the mortgage company) is insolvent and is now dissolved, cancelled and closed.
WOW! What a story! I am sure there are many memories and lessons in that chapter – I hope I can interview Bill and share here.
I have asked Bill what his intentions are with the mortgage business and he responses that it is not his focus and it must remain on the side of the road for now.
I guess if he focuses on that he will not focus in on his comeback.
Perplexed I asked him “how in the world are you able to get through this and the continued setbacks?” and he responded confidentially “the desert”
Out of continued curiosity I pushed him for what the desert meant and he said “in Ninjutsu we had a test in the desert that was very similar to what the Navy Seals refer to as ‘Hell Week’ (a 2day version), it taught me to never f*@!ing quit and to push myself beyond my limits! I can either quit, do nothing and make the naysayers happy or I can try, fail, try, fail, try until I succeed. Naysayers, thieves, and those that don’t know me can think what they want or make up lies but I will never quit.”
He went on to say “to this day I still thank Marco Palumbo for the desert”
I did ask what his focus is for 2011 and he replied “2 things: Real Estate, and something that has nothing to do with finance or real estate. Those will be the trends to capitalize on!”
When I asked him what that “something was” he was pretty vague. He did say “it contains 3 elements or philosophies: Anti-overhead, Automation and Recession proof” and then jokingly but obviously serious, he says “and it doesn’t have any loan officers or x-loan officers, I have a stereotype against them as does everyone else plus they always seem to be a liability and cost me money”
We will see if he finds this website and contacts me for an interview for post #2 or makes a post on his blog that he writes on occasionally. I really like his “Top 10 Things to Avoid in Business” post – it really seems like all of them come from lessons learned and pure experience.
Bill Lyons 