EP184: Mindset and Vision: Ken Rusk's Blueprint for Blue Collar Prosperity

Well, I guess you could accuse me of being a blue-collar entrepreneur. I started as a ditch digger when I was 15. I still do that to this day, only on a much bigger scale. I've been a blue-collar guy my whole life. Really believe that the blue-collar side of our economy is getting some undue hard knocks. It's been taken over and stigmatized a little bit by college, and I get that, you know, but there's a whole other side of the economy that people don't hear about, and it is right now the most lucrative side of the economy by far. And I'm just trying to shine a little light on that, that, you know, we're supply supply and demand is a simple thing, Brad, where supply is low and demand is high. That's where the money goes. And that's certainly what you're seeing in the blue collar trades right now. And I'm just I'm just here to say that you can make a absolutely beautiful life and a very lucrative one working with your hands.

Yeah, actually, I've heard that quite a bit. You know, when I was writing the book, I had several titles. And one of the titles was, you know, The Path, A Ditch Digger's Guide to Comfort, Peace, and Freedom. And the publisher... you know, they, in their wisdom, they said, hey, look, there's this huge push for blue collar right now. We really love the title blue collar. We've tested it. And I said, that's fine, but I think you're going to eliminate some people. And it turned out, even though it still became a bestseller, which I'm wholly grateful for and so surprised by, you are correct. It talks a lot about, you know, I don't necessarily care whether you're a blue collar, white collar, pink collar, whatever collar, you have to get your mind straight first. And once your mind is straight, meaning the vision of what I want my life to look like, once that's established, you can take one of a million different ways to getting there, blue collar, white collar, whatever. And so I really worked hard to get people to try to get back to ground zero and say, OK, now what do I want the future to be for me? And what things do I want to bring into my life? How can I focus on those things and allow the power of your brain, which is. eminently powerful, by the way, to bring those things into your life almost subconsciously. And I've done a lot of research, interviewed a lot of people for this. So it's, it, it came out pretty good.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I haven't run into anyone on an airplane yet reading it that, you know, it looks like they're going to some corporate meeting in, you know, some other great big city. So it's had a lot of impact. You know, I've had people from all walks of life, Brad, come to me and say, you know, that section on goal setting. If I would have never read that, I would have never put my family in the Winnebago and taken them out to Yellowstone and across the West. And this year we're going to Ireland and next year we're going to Spain. And if it weren't for you and just laying it out so simply, and again, when I say me, it really wasn't me. It's just simple facts. It's simple math. Sometimes we try to overcomplicate things and we wait for things to happen instead of planning for them to happen. And I just got, you know, my whole life is about, I love to anticipate things. I love to anticipate vacations and new cars and my next good golf round and, you know, my daughter having her first grandchild and all those different things I like to anticipate. And so this book is really teaching you how to... You know, get back to square one and then learn how the joy of anticipating the rest of your life can be. And it's a pretty powerful mechanism, that's for sure.

That's exactly right. You know, for me, it was always about trading my own personal labor for something that I wanted. And it started with an aluminum baseball bat when I was 12. And I thought, OK, so I can trade labor and hours of work for this thing. And then the things got bigger and the labor got bigger. The dollars got bigger, obviously, as you move on to, like, you know, cars and paying off credit cards and, you know. establishing your homestead as a young man and whatever. So, but you're exactly right. See, the thing about most of us, and you touched on it a minute ago. A lot of us tend to lead these if-then lives, okay, these reactive instead of proactive, right? It's raining outside, put a raincoat on. It's cold outside, put some extra clothes on. This is happening, so I'm reacting to that stimulus or whatever. And we get so good at reacting to things that when nothing happens, we kind of look around the room like, okay, why isn't anything happening, and how come I'm not reacting to it right now? And that's the... That's the tragedy of living, because if you can anticipate multiple things on multiple fronts, some that are six weeks, some that are six days, some that are six months, some that are six years. If you can anticipate multiple things on multiple fronts. That's the way to live. And that's my contention. Now, I would tell you this. You literally have to allow the power of your brain that most of us never use because it's not a subject taught in school. I never took Vision 101 when I was in school, in high school, right? I'm assuming you didn't either. And that's the part of the brain that really drives all of your successes is to be able to see something first and then go get it. I mean, you don't. put your car in reverse, back it out of the driveway, put it in drive and go, where the hell am I going? I mean, you always have a destination, you know? So if you can plan a trip to the mall, if you can plan a dinner with your friends, if you can plan a mini vacation, you can plan your entire life. We just have to sit down and give ourselves the silence and the freedom and the permission. to go ahead and do that in such a way that, wow, I know I have this second person on my shoulder going, hey, this is what it looks like. Let's go get it. And that second person is the power of vision, which literally doubles your efficacy as you walk this planet. It's something that's so cool, and it's three. You don't need any training. You just start doing it, and your whole life will be different for it, I promise you.

the foundation. Yeah, you know, we live in a world that it's a little different than it used to be because we have this world now where everything is, hey, what's in it for me to do this? What's in it for me to do that? And we don't have the patience that we used to have is. our grandparents did. They grew up in the same 1,400-square-foot brick ranch for 50 years, and they'd never move. But that was a different way of living. And now we have these aspirations and these things that we constantly see that we're comparing ourselves to with others, or we have access to things that they didn't necessarily have access to, like capital and ways to access things that we want into our life. And all I'm saying is that the most powerful way And science backs this up. The most powerful way to have something come into your life is to think about it really hard. And I mean in every detail. And I'll give you an example. I think most of us on the planet are good at planning a vacation. Okay, I'm going to go to Naples, Florida. I'm going to go where it's hot. It's going to be humid. It's going to be white, puffy clouds. There's going to be bright blue sky, really hot sunshine. There's going to be the ocean that I can stick my toes into. There's going to be sand. There's going to be a beach chair. There's going to be the smell of Coppertone No. 8 in the air. There's going to be the taste of the salt on the margarita. There's going to be the music that's probably something like steel drum band or something like that. If I keep going, you will begin to smell this vacation if I keep talking about it in these types of terms. And so because we're all good at that, And we typically put vacations out, what, four to six months away? We say to ourselves, I can't wait to do that. What does that mean? I literally can't stop myself from wanting to do that now. Or we say, man, am I looking forward to that? What does that mean, Brad? That means, okay, I'm trying to look way forward, four months into the future. I'm trying to actually see that picture in my head right now, even though it's not going to arrive for 180 days. Well, the joy in waiting for a vacation is the same thing as the joy in waiting for anything else that we want to plan in life. Your retirement, your next house. or your upgraded car, you're learning Spanish, you're taking a photography class, or bouncing your granddaughter on your knee. I mean, you get to look forward to all these things. The only difference is a wish, a hope, and a dream stays there until it has a pathway. And so what I try to do is take people from wishing, hoping, and dreaming about things and just kind of maybe someday it'll show up. No, no, this is not an if thing anymore. It's only a one thing. So take that goal, break it down into pieces. It's real simple to do. It's simple math. And put yourself on the for sure path rather than the I hope this shows up in my life someday.

So Tony Robbins wrote a little blurb for the cover of my book and I was pretty jacked about that. It's in the second printing. And I got to interview his son, Jarek, who's an amazing guy, lives all over the world. I mean, corporate coach everywhere. I mean, really accomplished guy. And one of the things that he said was, as you see these things, that you want to come into your life. We'll call it like my version of what he was saying, Brad, was you see the box of the puzzle that you're about to build. You have these pieces all over the table, but you can't do anything with those pieces without the box, right? So you start with the box because that has the picture. So what he was saying was, as you build these neurotransmitters in your brain, they're little... electronic firing mechanisms so when you see something there's a difference between i want that and i own that there's like a there's like a pathway and so what you're trying to do is you're trying to get I want it and own it as close together as possible. And the only way to do that is by thinking about it, keeping it in front of you, keeping the brochure that is your expected life in front of you somewhere on the wall in your bathroom or in your workshop or wherever you want it, wherever you can see it every day. Because what happens is the more you see something, the more those neurons fire to the point where they are one constant stream of thought. And what happens then is your body. your brain thinks it already owns that thing. So therefore, subconsciously, your body kicks into this mode of increased awareness, increased opportunity. How am I going to get it? And then it finds a way to get that object into your life. It's an extremely powerful mechanism, but there's science behind it. It's not just the law of attraction and whatever that people call it. Right. So I agree 100% with what you're saying. You have to sit in the car you want mentally and physically and emotionally. You have to sit in that thing and and act like you're in it. And what would where would you take it? And who would who would see you there? And what would you do with it? And, you know, what memories would you create? Because. Then you're actually downloading that thing into your mind, and then your body takes over and goes and gets that thing almost with or without you at that point, which is a really cool thing to think about in the end.

I got two examples of that that I'll share with you real quick that I think are powerful. I said earlier about what it has to do with golf and what it has to do with the aluminum bat. So the aluminum bat when I was 12, I remember that when those bats first came out, a friend of mine, David, who was a taller guy than me, a left-hander, he had the first one. And he took a swing at a baseball. And you remember the sound that aluminum bat would make? It'd go plink. And when you hit a good one, you knew. I mean, it made a sound. And that followed by the roar of your parents. Okay? So I remember the plink of that sound and the roar of the parents. And I'm like, I got to have one of those aluminum bats. I downloaded that emotionally into my head and said, this is it. I mean, I'm going to take this thing and I'm going to hit smack homers with it, right? So that's the thing. The other thing has to do with a golf analogy, and that is that you're out there hitting these balls. And good, bad, or indifferent, you own it. I mean, no one else is doing it but you. So if you have a good day, it's your fault. If you have a bad day, it's your fault. If you have a mediocre day, guess what? It's your fault. So there's an enormous responsibility in that. But there's also, like you said, that mental, physical, emotional connection to something. And that's why when you see a brochure for a pickup truck, it's never just the truck sitting in a black space somewhere. The truck's sitting on the farm, and there's bales of hay in the back, and you're leaning next to it with your cup of coffee in the morning, and your horse is over there. I mean, they try to emote that very piece of paper. They try to create that in you so that you're driving that truck thinking, I'm going to get myself a farm. And I mean, whatever it might be, you're really cool if you own that pickup truck. And so all I'm saying is build that brochure for yourself. No one else is going to do it. And only you know what should go in that brochure to begin with. So that's what's so important.

Well, do you remember the story in the book, the grass cutter from Minnesota? Yes. I mean, what we have to remember is that just like every one of us has our own favorite color, our own favorite meal, our own favorite drink, we all have our own favorite life in mind. We just have to sit down. And we have to draw that out. And not all, not every one of us. I mean, if you're looking for comfort, peace and freedom, which is how this whole book began, that's the triangle that is my life, comfort, peace and freedom. And I try to try to think about that every day. So if you're looking for that trio of concepts, man, draw it out, draw what you want. I mean, because, you know, not everyone wants. 15 cars and a McMansion and, you know, a mega yacht and a rap star career. I mean, some people, they want to live comfortable, peaceful and free. They want they want medium debt to low debt. They want equity in things. They want, you know, that ranch house with the I'll go back to the pickup truck with the kayak on the top so they can do their thing on the weekends and their dogs. And, you know, they want to they want to work out or play golf or feel good or maybe they want to be spiritual. They want to do some donating. some charity work. There's six or seven things in the course that I built that force you to draw those on a piece of paper in such a way that you're creating your own brochure for your life. And then you just kind of follow it because each one of those things has a series of steps that you can break down to get those things into your life. I've done it with everything I've ever acquired and it just works. So I thought, well, why am I not sharing this with more than just the 200 people in my office? When this is such an easy thing, it's free. No college needs to charge you for it. And you can start doing it this afternoon. It's just a wonderful thing.

That's what I'm talking about. So I teach people, you know, center of the board is your homestead, farmhouse, condo in the city, you know, suburb, house, apartment, whatever. Then your favorite mode of transportation, car, pickup truck, electric scooter. The subway, what? What's your favorite charity moment? Okay, if I gave you 100 bucks right now and you had to give it away, what would you do with it and why? What's your favorite hobby? What's your favorite sport? How are you going to take care of your body? Tell me about your vacations. Tell me about your pet. Is it a dog or a cat? What color? What would you name it? I mean, get down deep into the brochure that is your life. Draw it, put it on the wall, and then do what Jarek Robbins said. stare at it two or three times a day. I mean, it's just going to happen naturally. You go into your house, you come out of your house, you do that two or three times, you're going to see it somewhere. And just allow those things that you really want to come into your life. And they just do. I've been doing it for 60 years. And I should say, no, I've been doing it for 47 years. I started when I was 12 or 13, but it works. And the anticipation of it is so much fun. that I'm kind of addicted to anticipating things now, which is really kind of cool because when you're involved in anticipating things, you know what you don't have? You don't have depression, confusion, doubt, fear, anxiety, because you're on the path to somewhere and something, and there's that other little person that's walking you down that path, not letting you falter. So it really kind of clouds out all those negative things, and that's why I put it in the book. You have to clear your emotions too, and it's in the book on how to do that. Yeah, you'll have a much better way of living, that's for sure.

Yeah, I use the, see in our business, we use five gallon buckets a lot to haul debris out of basements. So, and I use that because I believe that. You know, the very top gallon, the fifth gallon at the top is where your emotions lie. And you have to be careful because you only have a gallon to fit those emotions into. So if you start putting, you know, fear, anxiety, jealousy, rage, those kinds of things, suspicion and worry, you are going to kick out as much as you put in. So it's almost like, you know, you're in line at one of those clubs and there's a bouncer. And the bouncer is your mind. And he's only going to let so many people in and so many out because it's full. So he tends to want to put all the cool people in the bar because that attracts more cool people. So I think it's the same way. I think when you sit down and you think about emotions as a choice, which is very hard for some people to do, but yet they are. You know, if I'm going to get angry about something, if I'm going to worry about something, I am choosing to be in that state of mind. So if I work at this hard enough, I'm going to see, you know what, I tend to fall into these four or five or six bad emotions that I just kind of fall into them. You know what I mean? I don't need to do that. And here's all these other emotions that I didn't even think about, like joy and excitement and discovery and elation and gratefulness and friendship and love and all these good emotions that are out there that I'm not even given a chance to come in. Spontane 80 is a great one. I'm not even giving them a chance to come in because my garage, to your point, is so full of stuff I don't even use. Why do I still have this? So, yeah, I think it's a great idea. And that's why I say you've got to get to ground zero by clearing your mind. And you have to give yourself permission to say, I'm not that guy anymore. I'm not that gal anymore. I'm not going to let these things jump into my brain. And, oh, by the way, the people who are putting them there, they're out too, okay? I need to hang with people that are positive reinforcing people. And, yeah, I think it's really important to clear your mind before you get that going. Because once you do, then all these things kind of flood in and you're like, man, does that feel good?

Well, I always start with, you know, what do you want? I mean, what do you want out of this job? What do you want? Why are you running your business? Is your business running you or are you running it? And if so, what do you want out of it? Like, what's the reward? Because here's the thing, and this is where I get controversy all the time, but I have to say it. So we love controversy. In my business, my goal was to become as irrelevant to my company as possible, as quickly as possible. And what I mean by that is I want to rise above it, tear the roof off it. Hover above it in a helicopter, look down and go, OK, now where do I want to plug myself in voluntarily on my terms? I want to drive the vision side of this company. So I'm going to enlist the power of non-entrepreneurialism. But entrepreneurialism, and those are the people within the organization that do want to kind of run their own department, but they don't really want to run their own company. They don't really want to take the risk and buy 42 dump trucks like I've had to do and all those other kinds of things. So in my mind, the first thing is, what do you want? And I also have to also diffuse the hero complex because You can't say that working 70 hours a week makes you a hero. You can't say that forgetting your kid's birthday makes you a hero. Your wife is someone you hardly even know makes you a hero. You make a lot of money, but you got diabetes and heart problems, so now you're a hero. You can't say that's true.

I think the true hero is the one who has total control over his company, works 40 or 50 hours a week, but has the ability to go play golf if he wants or take his family on a picnic if he wants or schedule his workouts if he wants. Because those people start with me first on Monday morning. Here's my workout. Here's my golf game. Here's my dinner date with my wife. Here's my time with my kids. They plan that first, and then they plan work around that. Now, I know that's controversial, but you better do that if you want a balanced life because you wake up 10 years later and your body's sore and aching and you never gave anybody else a chance, and all you did was yell at people and be grouchy because they didn't do it as good as you thought they could do it. But yeah, you made a few bucks. But who's the hero there? So I just caution people on getting really real with what they want and then putting it into a place where they can use what they want once they get it. Because a jet ski is no fun if it's sitting behind the bar and gathering dust, right? So it's all about putting that balance into life. And I do get people that say, man, Ken, how am I going to do that? That's so hard. It's not. You just got to start with that very first entrepreneur that is probably standing real close to you somewhere in your office and then just build on it from there.

Now, here's the thing. Let me just add to that. I don't want to belabor the point, but let me add to that. So entrepreneurs are only good if they share in what they build. Okay. So I had, this is a word of caution. So I had a group of entrepreneurs in my office that I knew were close to me and they were good. They were long-term loyal employees. They were great people. And I sat them down one day and I said, here's a piece of paper and a pencil. I want you to write down how far you think we can take this company revenue-wise this coming year. okay, wouldn't you know that all of their numbers were at least a million or $2 million higher than mine? And I didn't even write the number down because once I started reading these numbers, I was like, holy cow, I might be my own limiter, okay? So I was very cautious saying, oh, by the way, if we get to that extra level, I'm going to share some of that newfound money with you, meaning I don't have it yet. So it's not costing me anything. But if you bring in newfound money, I'll share some of that with you. Man, Brad, it was like, get out of the way, Ken. We're going to go kill this thing. And we have never looked back. That was about 10 years ago. We've doubled the size of our company. We doubled the size of our staff. And we're still growing yet today. And it's because they're not only in control of their own departments, but in effect, they're in control of their own pay at the same time. So you will never fret about spending money you don't have yet. So don't worry about this costing you anything as an owner. But when these people bring you ideas and effort and focus and results that you didn't have before, take some of that and give it to them. It's worth every nickel you'll ever spend and get out of the way because your company is going to grow by leaps and bounds.

It's so easy, Brad, to go, I have the answer. You know, someone asks you a question, let me tell you the answer. Let me show you how smart I am, right? It's so hard to say, I don't know, what do you think? Okay? Someone asks you a question. You know what? I have a couple thoughts in mind, but I'd like to hear your thoughts, too. Well, how many options? So you've got three options. Which one do you think is best and why? So then, you know, now you're training these people to think independently on their own, solve their own problems. And by and large, they'll leave without you ever having even said anything with their answer. So, yeah, you're exactly right. You have to create the ability for them to trust themselves into getting there. But. You yourself, you have to start with you and say, is the goal for me to show everybody how overworked and how smart I am, or is the goal to live a really cool life and get the things I put on my vision board? Because those are not the same. Okay? So if you look at it honestly, you're going to say to yourself, you know what? I think I'd like to work 40 hours a week or maybe 50, but not 70 or 80. I think I'd like to delegate some of the things that I don't necessarily like to do that other people are better at. And I'd like to remain the things that I think that I'm good at and I can drive the company with. And then pretty soon you have this whole nother level that you get to and you're thinking to yourself, man, how did I ever do this on my own? I never tried to do that by myself or lead by myself because certainly going home at night on Friday and going, man, you know, beating your chest. I solved this problem. I fixed that problem. I yelled at this person I designed, built, motivated that. That's no way to live. Not at all.

You certainly gave them a lot of fish, but you didn't give them any fishing lures, any fishing rods or any bait or anything like that, right? So that they could go fish for themselves. I think one of the things that you're going to find when you do this, you're going to find a whole heck of a lot of appreciation from people that are around you that say, man, you gave me the confidence to go do something on my own. You gave me the confidence to see things. for myself rather than for this company or for you specifically. You really implanted, because this is a statement that I hope everyone listening will make if they decide to take this task on. You need to stand in front of your people and you need to say, listen, I can't get what I want for myself, nor can my company get what it wants or needs until all of you get what you want first. And it's true because in any endeavor, there's input. There's work, there's creation of a product or service, there is revenue from selling that service, and then at the very end, you hope that there's profit, and that's where you come in, right, at the end of the line. So it's an absolute fact that everyone else gets what they want before you do. You just need to really start talking about that because you want people to say this. You want people to go, okay, so what you're saying is, I'm really working for me first, and you second, Ken. I'm working for my life first and the company's life second. Absolutely right. Because if you're gaining on that puzzle that is your life, if you're gaining on that vision board that is your life, you're going to say, wow, I can make my life happen with and through this guy's company. This is pretty cool. I don't have to go take the risk. I don't have to go job hopping. I can create my own profit. I can create my own. revenue, my own financial gains, and I can create the picture that I have in my life for myself with and through this building or this company that Ken has. That's kind of cool. So I don't feel the need to go looking elsewhere. I don't feel the need to waste things around this company. I feel like I'm kind of a mini owner right now, and I'm gaining on those things. If you surround yourself with enough people like that, man, again, your company's going to explode. you know, everybody wins first, you're going to win in the end big time. I can promise you that.

Well, look at the pandemic. I mean, I thought that I knew everything about this business. I thought I had seen and experienced everything. And then the pandemic came along and I had to stare at 200 people and go, well, I don't know what we're going to do. Okay, we're going to figure this out together. So, you know, we became an essential business. We positioned ourselves that way. And then we thrived through the pandemic, which was amazing. But I mean, it's kind of like this. Let's assume you had your son and your son was going into it or your daughter and your son or daughter was going into a job interview. And every time the guy asked your son or daughter a question, you piped in and said, oh, well, yeah, he did this and he's done that. Okay. Right. How effective would that interview be? So I would say to that entrepreneur the same thing. If I want to go see how good your company is, I'm not talking to you. I'm going to go talk to the people within the company. And you can stand there if you want, but you can't say anything. So I would much rather stand there with my arms crossed with a big grin on my face saying, look how smart these people are, man. Look, they don't even need me here, okay? They want me here because of the vision of me being able to drive this company higher and higher and higher so they can get bigger and bigger pieces of the pie. But from a day-to-day mechanical standpoint, they got this. That's the true meaning of an entrepreneur, of a leader, okay? Again, you know, one of the examples of that is we have these giant black glass boards. They're quarter-inch glass. They're heavier than hell. And we hang them on the wall. And we have these neon markers. And the board looks like one of those boards in front of a Mexican restaurant with the margarita special of the day, you know, all the colors and everything. And what we do is we have people who are doing these goals, these individual goals. They literally write that goal on the board, but they don't just write it like, you know, I want to be taller. I want to buy a car. I mean, you can't get away with a vague goal. It has to be this, okay? I'm going to Scotland to play golf. It's going to cost me $5,000. I'm going to save $50 a week for two years. I already took it to page our controller. That 50 bucks a week is coming out of my paycheck. I'm going to start it today. I'm going to go in two years from today. I'm going to sign it and date it. And it's live. And boom. Now that's the real goal. So now I get to walk up and down the hallway, as is everybody else, and look on that board and go, oh, so Tim's building a new deck and she's buying a roof for her house. And this one's getting a new car. And this one's going to Scotland. And this one's. So you see all these goals there. Everybody else sees all the goals. So they all high five each other because as you know, as well as I do, if you're not working out with a partner, you're missing a lot more workouts than if you're someone that are waiting at the gym for you, right? So it's very important that these goals are live. They're visible. And not only do existing people see it and they then believe it because you spent the money to put those boards in play. You spent the money to hang them up. to get the markers, you spent the money to hire someone who part of their job is to maintain that board. That shows that you really care and you mean it about I can't get what I want, nor can my company get what it wants or needs until you get what you want first. Then people started to go, wow, you know what? This guy really cares about what we do with our lives. And he never really talks a whole lot about his own life, you know what I mean, like so many egomaniacs do. So I think it's really important that you say it. I think it's really more important that you show it and that you stick to it. Because after a while, people begin to own it, and they're like, wow, loyalty. I'm giving this guy everything. Okay, I'm going to give him all parts of me because he's really interested in what that looks like down the road.

Well, I'll tell you a quick story. You read about it in the book, maybe, but Kiara, she was walking down the hallway. and a new gal in the company, and I was doing a goal session with somebody at the board, and she goes, man, that's really cool that you do that. Someday I'm going to do that. And I'm like, no, not someday. It was Friday. Monday we're going to do this, okay, Monday. So I asked her what her goal was, and she said, you know, I borrowed $2,500 from my dad for a used car. I never paid him back. He never really wanted the money back, but I feel bad that I never did that. So I'd like to pay him back that money. And I said quickly in my head, because I'm good at math, I'm like, can you afford 48 bucks a week? And she said, well, yeah. And I said, well, good. Then a year from now, you'll have him paid off. And Brad, she looked at me like I invented penicillin at that point. You know what I mean? I was like, this is not that difficult. So since then, she paid her dad back. She saved money for her wedding. She's bought a house. She bought a new car. She got married. She has two kids. And she's now this independent, goal-oriented machine. I don't even have to tell her to put the goals on the board anymore. She just does it. And so that's really what you're looking for, because if you can fill your building with as many people as that, you know, working for themselves and saying, I'm going to win and then Ken's going to win or his company's going to win, whatever. Man, it is the most powerful way of building culture that I've ever seen.

You know, you know, what's funny about that real quick. What's funny about that is, you know, I do collect cars. Okay. And on Fridays, every once in a while, I'll drive one in here, but I don't get the animosity for doing it because they're on the path to doing what they want. You see what I mean? So they're all getting new, they're all doing things for themselves and they want me to be successful because I'm interested in them being successful. So I don't get that slant. I'd look. You know what I mean? Like, oh, that slide looked like, oh, wow, you got that great car. No, because they're all on the path to doing their own thing. So they almost celebrate the fact that I'm successful because they're all being successful in their own ways.

100%.

Well, sure. And some of them have since, they know I'm a car guy. So some of them, you know, there's a... There's an old Viper in the parking lot once in a while. There's several custom Jeeps here. There's new pickup trucks. There's a couple of old Corvette convertibles that show up. I mean, they have their own deal. They have their own acquisitions like I do. So it's kind of a cool thing because we're all in this together. You know, it's not like I'm at the top and they're at the bottom. We're all on this path together. And as you know in life, you never really own anything. You just kind of. rent it for a little while and then it moves on to the next person. So that's, that's the cool thing about it is everyone's on the path and we're all on it together.

Yeah, because he wouldn't have been able to say this is the last day. until he figured out all of his other things, financing and payments and all that other stuff. And then at some point he could say, okay, at the end of that is my last day, right? And he could certainly do that right now, okay, and plan it out. It's the willingness to say, I'm going to happen to life versus waiting for life to happen to me, okay? It's a completely different way. I'm going to live. Instead of living an if-then life, I'm going to live the then life first because I'm going to see it first and then go get it. I'm going to live a proactive life instead of a reactive one. I mean, you can say it a lot of different ways, but it's a very simple choice. And not only that, but... Look, you're talking to a ditch digger. I have no college degree. I have no formal training. I have no letters after my name. They call me a life coach, maybe, but I've never been to a life coach school. So, yeah, you know, I'm not like an anti-college guy, okay, in any way. I mean, if you're going to operate on my shoulder so I can get back on the golf course, I want you to know everything there is about a knife before you come at me with it, of course. But, yeah, whether it's a teacher or a finance person, I mean, The bottom line is that we all inherently have the ability to survive. And the way we survive is by forecasting what we need to survive. Well, forecasting is seeing into the future. It's visualizing what you want. And we all have the ability to do it. We just need a reason why. Okay? Every one of us has the skills to be an entrepreneur. You know, persistence, resilience. faith, courage, hope, initiative, generosity, vision. We all have those characteristics. We just need a reason for them to come out. And in my mind, the brochure of your life is what does that.

Yeah. So, you know, I wrote, I wrote this book to help. I mean, I know you hear that a lot to help people, but the book was coming out of my, I never sat down and said, I'm going to be an author someday, but it just kind of happened where I'm just writing all these stories. And, um, So the book came out. It became a bestseller. I was shocked. I mean, I had an agent. I had a PR person. I had a publisher. I mean, I had, you know, a publisher, all this great Harper Collins. I mean, all these crazy, amazing things from New York happened and the book went pretty good. And so I decided to build this course around the book so that the book wasn't just a shelf help book, you know, where you read it and you put it on the shelf and you never see it again. I wanted it to be a course that would take the book and force you to start thinking differently like this afternoon, okay, not next week or next month like now. And so it works really well. I've had a lot of great feedback from people who have taken the course. It's got like an 85, a 90% approval rating, which is great. But then what I decided to do was I noticed that veterans were coming out of service and they were thinking, okay, now what? And I kept thinking to myself, why would they say now what now? Like, why wouldn't they have that thought about before? So we're targeting now veterans who, you know, they're amazing people because they learn these great skills, okay? Mechanics and carpenters and plumbers and people that fix things and computers and cybersecurity and all those kinds of things. So I want them to know what they want to do before they go into that field of battle and then think about it while they're there, maybe get some training while they're there. And then when they come out of that, they're ready to just jump into, okay, I'm going to start my own carpentry business. I'm going to go, let's go do it. Let's make it happen. I'm going to be an electrician or whatever. Because if they do that, Brad, then the tendency for them to be depressed, confused. Even with some of the really bad thoughts that you see 22 people do every day, which makes me ill to think about. They don't have time to think in those negative ways, like we said earlier, because they have hope. They have a job. They have a career. They have their own business they're forming, and they have a life that they want to build off of that. So that crowds out all the negativity that they have gotten from the theater that they were in, hopefully. And so that's what we're doing. We're taking a lot of the proceeds from... the book and the course, and we're putting veterans through the course to hopefully make their lives better in the process.

It is, yeah, and you can find it at veteransuccess. org.

Yeah, the cool thing about the course is it's not something that you have to learn and then at the end you take action. The learning is the action. So on day one, you're already drawing what you want your life to look like, and you're learning how best to do that. And then you're learning about your emotions, and you're learning about other things that you need in order to complete that drawing. And by the time you're done with week eight, you're going, okay, this is my new life. I'm thinking completely different now. And yeah, to your point, the book is 170, or the course is 179. You get a free $25 book with it, blue collar cash. And then... that's what you use to study through the course. It's all done online and it's been pretty successful. So we're real proud of it.

my God. One that I reference all the time. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. You know, believe it or not, that book has been around for so many years, and it's a perennial bestseller, even though it's been around and reprinted and reproduced and relaunched. I mean, oh, my God. It's just a great book for you, especially for people, like you said earlier, they want to be an entrepreneur, but they don't really know how to communicate or get things done or whatever. This is really good because it's just kind of a foundational book for, okay, how do I present myself to the world and then go get it?

Thanks, Brad. And by the way, I know you're a veteran, and thank you for your service. That means a lot to me. I appreciate