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Show Notes:
Today is the 50th episode of Leveling The Playing Field with a unique format. Not only will this be the first Video Podcast for us, but also for the Mission Matters Network.
To celebrate, I’ve invited Mission Matters founder Adam Torres, as well as Elliot Kallen who is the co-author of the new book, DRIVEN, that these two gurus have just released. We discuss many aspects of how they got to where they are including drive, mission, vision, and legacy. It was an honor to host them on the show, and I’m grateful for all the golden nuggets of wisdom they dropped for those looking to model success!
Enjoy…
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Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, today’s show is very different than most of my shows, and you’ll see why in a minute. But it is not only my 50th episode and I really thank you. I’m really happy to, to have survived 50.
But it’s also my first video. Episode and that’s only possible because of my two honored guests, Adam Torres and Elliot Callen. And the reason that they’re here is that they’ve launched a joint venture book after years of collaboration. And so we’re going to chat about that in a few minutes.
But first, I wanted to welcome you guys. Welcome Adam. Welcome Elliot. Hey, happy to be here. Thank you. Cool. So before we start with the book, which of course is our focus you know, we at leveling the playing field, we debunk myths and we try to highlight places where people have misunderstandings about markets, investments and risk, and sometimes even pop culture.
So I wanna start off with letting each of you maybe give us a hint about how each of you level the playing field in your own aspect of life. Well, I level the playing field day in and day out by helping our clients really get their story and their message out there. You know, most of the time in, in the past we thought about you had to be this celebrity or this like influencer or this or that to have your story.
Heard me. I say, get your story out there. Get your message out there. Don’t take your story to the grave, like whether it’s books, podcasts, I don’t care how you’re doing it. Write a blog, use a company, don’t use a company, but I’m leveling the. Playing field by helping people get their story, their message, and their brand out there.
Well, thanks. Great. And, don’t let Adam fool you. He is a celebrity and an influencer and that’s , one reason he says two reasons. He says, successful. But you know, I had this amazing mentor years and years ago, or Ken, and he said he was tall guy with piercing blue eyes. Kind of in the image of L B J, Lyndon Bates Johnson, who was six foot four piercing blue eyes and intimidating when he was head of the Senate, and then vice president and President, he could just stare at people and that’s how this person was.
And he always would ask me the same question, are you doing everything you can think of doing all the time? In other words, before the term gorilla marketing came out, he was a gorilla marketer. Not by putting brochures on your flyers and flyers on your car windshield at a flea market. I don’t mean that kind of grill marketer, but we live in a world of digital.
We live in a world of podcasts. We live in a world of social media. These are enormous opportunities for everybody out there. And the level playing field now is people don’t care what you are. They care about who you are more than ever because they can research you. They can listen to you and they could see in your eyes at least, you could see in my eyes, even with glasses, a level of sincerity there, a level of integrity, a level of care at least I hope so.
And when you put those out there, people gravitate to you. Whatever your message is, when Adam, who’s so successful interviewing entrepreneurs, or I’m a wealth manager and, and I run a charity as well, they know that if I trust this man, and trust is the key, I trust this person. Good things will happen to me too.
And that’s how you level the field. You exude integrity and trust, perseverance, fortitude, and you’re willing to keep going until the job is done and do what’s right for the other person. Even if that means putting them in front of your desires. Excellent. Yeah, I like what both of you said. You know, it’s interesting in each one of your perspective fields, the field.
Has become so unlevel right in, in media, it’s unlevel because what used to require, you know, two verified sources before you could hear the story now is like, no, there’s no verification in Elliots field, in my field in money management. Mm-hmm. It’s all computerized. The bots have taken over. The computers run this.
75, 80% of the volume of the market now is black box games playing with each other. So I think both of you are right. It’s about morality and ethics and honesty, and really doing what’s best for your customers. And I think that that comes through with both of you guys. Speaking of both of you. How about that book driven?
Congratulations. Tell me a little bit about it. Yeah, I go first on this one. How’s that? And thank you so much. You know, I wanted to say to you on , at the end of your last sentence that you, ’cause you said it so eloquently, Kim, is that it’s also understanding that you can only control so much, and so work on what you can control.
You can’t control in our industry, the bots. You can’t control in almost any industry, the AI and bots that are eating away your profit margins. You can only control how you react to it and you could focus on that whatever somebody’s business is. And that’s always been good advice, is work on what you have control of.
Hmm. So now the book, here’s what happened with the book. Adam and I have collaborated in the past on a book. So we had a conversation, give or take a year, year and a half ago. I think it took us a year to write the book, give or take. And the conversation was, you know, you come from a great entrepreneurial world.
He has a financial background as well, but really he’s an entrepreneur who likes to interview entrepreneurs. Yeah. And it’s pretty exciting if you find entrepreneurs interesting and exciting because they’re so creative and so different that every day of his life he gets to be with some of the most exciting people on earth.
Hmm. That’s a pretty good world. I happen to love people as well. My world though, is money, so it’s a little bit different. I love talking to people about money and their life and their future and where they’re going. When you put those together, we realize as we talk to each other that we’ve got some really interesting, exceptionally divergent and different paths that we’ve gone down in life.
Yeah. But equally exciting to entrepreneurs in almost every world. And we thought if we can pull that together and we can create a storyline, That’s interesting and, and talk about the frailty and the failures that entrepreneurs go through without sugarcoating them, without making people feel like everybody , is a Mark Zuckerberg, they’re not.
They have a lot of failings. They take steps, two steps backwards sometimes with no step forward. The life happens. We want them to know it’s okay. If you just dig your heels in and keep that vision live in front of you. Mm-hmm. You can make it happen. And that’s how we came together on a book. Yeah, and , I see like day in and day out when I am talking to people, when I am interviewing people and when I see this, like my heart just goes out to the entrepreneur.
Like in in the book we talk about like, there’s two different paths here. I’m the accidental entrepreneur. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, never claimed to be one. I never thought the term was like sexy or this thing. I fit really well into corporate America and I was rewarded while I was always.
Top 1% in whatever company I was at for whatever metric I was measured on. And I, I really like corporate America. I wasn’t against it. And then, but I’ve, and I’ve met others through this journey that were super entrepreneurs or serial entrepreneurs like Elliot, who they, you know, in the book he talks about, you know, at one point taking an assessment and, and them telling them, you know, you need to think about the next business you’re gonna do.
That’s a very nice way of. Saying you’re unemployable, like for corporate America because you’re, you’re a threat. You’re a threat, or people are not gonna perceive your willingness, let’s just say in the right way. I wasn’t that guy. I was the opposite. So my hope was that. We could juxtapose these stories in a tale of two entrepreneur type story that would then let other entrepreneurs know that there’s a lot of different ways to do this thing and that it’s not just, you know, we’re always in our, I like to say in these echo chambers, like of the feed and whatever we’re looking at on social media.
Otherwise, well, You’re gonna get a bunch more content like you and otherwise. So this is like an attempt to break people out of their echo chambers of what they think an entrepreneur has to be or should be. Excellent. Excellent. So when I was thinking about Driven as a title of course, awesome title, but what really got me excited about it and hearing you guys talk was that.
I think it was Tony Robbins that said, or teaches that the, the two most base drivers of human behavior, even at the neocortex, like caveman level, are seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, and avoiding pain is dominant. So as you think about what’s been driving you since, you knew what Drive was about, you know, since you were a kid would you say , that you’re more avoiding pain or seeking pleasure, I’m gonna answer, that’s a great question there. Both of us are big fans of Tony Robbins. Oh yeah. We don’t wanna give you a Tony Robbins commercial here ’cause it’s about our book, but we both love it. I’ll, we love Tony. Go ahead. We, I’ve walked, I’ve done Weekend Destinies Destiny weekends where we walked on hot coals for 40 feet.
And I’ve gone to other events with him and I’m a big fan of, of Anthony Robbins. I’m not sure I buy into that a hundred percent. And but I understand it when you are sleeping at, when you’re in the middle of night and thinking about cash flow, And payroll and employees, and maybe even lawsuits.
As an entrepreneur, you are all about paying avoidance. How do I get out of this mess? How much are these lawyers or accountants gonna cost me? It’s a very negative scene, and unfortunately, in a world of entrepreneurship that does exist. But when you’re looking to grow, And you’re looking to expand and you’re looking for something better for you and particularly better for your family in five and 10 years from now, from your efforts and your results.
That is not about pain avoidance at all. That is about and isn’t necessary pleasure. It is the pleasure of knowing I could do better tomorrow than I did yesterday, and someday down the road , or tomorrow’s tomorrow. I could reap magnificent rewards for my family. Maybe it’s just the pleasure of controlling what you can control.
Maybe. Maybe it’s, I just know that as an entrepreneur, no matter what field you’re in, the reason you’re growing, the reason you have a vision is not to avoid pain. I. Hmm. It’s still, it’s to gain pleasure. But look, we live in California, two of us. California is the most me state in the country. If Adam rides a Porsche nine 11, I want a Lamborghini.
If I’ve got a Lamborghini, he wants a convertible Ferrari. I mean, that’s the world that California is all about. That is right. The world, the pure, unadulterated, personal pleasure. But in business, you are gonna be out of business if that’s how you run your company. Mm. Because you’re just gonna spend wildly on dump stuff, right?
Yeah. And if you read the book cover to cover, you’ll see me and Elliot. It’s not that we outwardly disagree in the book, but you see con like juxtaposing conflicting ideals. So, I feel different on this one than Elliot. Like this is the first time we’ve done an interview like live with both of us on, but, and I don’t care about the Ferrari, I don’t care about the Lambert, I don’t care about any of that.
I’m from Michigan. I don’t like, that’s just my background. I’m from the Midwest. I don’t even have that in me. I’m like, who caress? I’m all about pain avoidance, and every time I take on. A new thing or a new rung, or I think about a new product, or I think about taking on more revenue or more risk or adding another you know, employee to our mission and things like that.
I’m like, oh, how much is this gonna hurt? Like, if I was about pleasure and if that was my seeking, then I probably would’ve led a, and I don’t mean this to sound like, I mean, obviously we, I’m in this to make money in business, like I am a business person, so I’m not trying to. Claim like overtly altruistic.
But let’s just say , I wouldn’t have designed a business model where I have to give so much of myself. I would’ve maybe sold widgets and I could have not had to, you know, those entrepreneurs that the four hour work week or all these other things where they have this mm-hmm. Like passive business, not a lot of employees, things like that.
How did I design such a, a business model where I have to do so much work? Let’s again, every bit of every bit is like, oh, do I wanna do more pain? Do I need this pain? Can I handle this pain? Yeah. And that’s, that’s the way I view the world for sure. Yeah. And that is, that is so fun to, to have each of your perspective.
And still see that you came together for a book. So that’s a great, that’s a great lesson. And that, that’s the feel of the book by the way. So we have these conversated and now got two very different points of view there, Ken. Mm-hmm. Adam is incredibly successful at what he does. It’s very interesting. His prism is pain avoidance.
Yeah. And my prism is, I still don’t wanna call it pleasure ’cause I think that’s too hedonistic. It’s success at a certain level. Mm-hmm. Excellent. This is good. I like the two people on here. This is working out to be a therapy session. Give us more, Ken. Come on. All. All right. Alright. Again, it’s two 50 an hour.
Analyze this some more. This is good guys. And I’ve talk to you if we need it. Yeah, I was gonna say you guys can feel free to just relax, you know, lay back if you’d like. So I have another question for you. You know, many, many of us are influenced we’ll take pain and pleasure out of it, although we could tie it back to then, but I.
You know, how do you know parents and faith and goals , and do you feel called to do it? , what, which one of those four words speaks most clearly to you guys? Parents? Faith goals or calling? I. And what drove you to, to do your So calling is mine for sure. Like it’s calling like for the I mean, it’s just so obvious to me so many times, like God at work, I’ll give you a an example.
It happens all the time when I’m in flow and when things are happening the way they’re supposed to happen. Then I get these signs that are just ridiculous. I’ll give you a quick one. So, It was maybe a Sunday, maybe two Sundays ago. And I was, I was just randomly on YouTube. I, watched usually church on YouTube and it comes up, there’s , this pastor that comes on and he’s a younger guy and he has on a t-shirt and I’m just like, oh, this guy’s interesting.
Lemme listen to this. So I’m kind of listening to it, doing some work. And he starts talking about He starts talking about a Jeep, you know, like a Jeep Wrangler that he just bought. And I’m like, and I’m like, okay, that’s interesting. So then he is talking about this Jeep, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not even 10 minutes later Hillary, our editor who I believe both of you have worked with, she texts me and she’s like, I just left the Jeep dealership and I’m thinking about getting a Jeep.
What do you think? And I was like, God wants you to have the Jeep. She’s like, what? She’s like, what? And I’m like, God wants you to have the Jeep. He told me, I just watched it. She couldn’t believe it. She sends me back a picture like a day later I got the Jeep. I was like, well, God, you did what God wanted you to do.
Like I get these crazy things like I. For mission matters to even exist. Think about it. It makes no sense. It started with me just interviewing individuals and putting out the content and listening to their mission and their stories, and it grew from there. Like what are the odds or what are the chances or how does that happen if it, to me, if it’s not a calling, like how do you get that strength or that thing?
Like at the, in the beginning I was doing upwards of 90 interviews per week. So we are putting out, you know, Two years worth of content every week. If you think I did that by my own strength or by my own, like my own plan, you put that into a business plan and what like, that’s crazy. So for me it was calling like it was, I had to take that leap of faith to leave a very secure career, secure everything, and just feel like I’m supposed to go on that path or else it would’ve never happened.
That’s how I relate. Yeah. Nice. I get it. I felt that as well. Go ahead. I think that’s great. I, I’m a little bit different. You know, I, I come from a very strong, grounded family. My mother was an Auschwitz survivor. My dad was part of the greatest generation. And they always had in your ear, you know, a little talk that said, you can make a difference.
You can do better always. Yeah. And it was a driving force that if somebody, if I got a 95 on a test, the next question was, did anybody get a hundred? Right, right. So it was a driving thing. You could always do better every day. And then it became, okay, how could you make a difference? Because that, and maybe that’s part of faith too, Adam, how could you make a difference?
Yeah, because I don’t, I don’t wanna knock or discriminate against faith at all because I, I live in that world in a different world, but in my own world as well. But I’m also, there’s a bit of karma. Mm-hmm. There’s a bit of hard work that goes in there. Adam’s not telling you how hard he works at this. You know, it didn’t, it’s, it’s not an accidental, hard work is not accidental.
Yeah. You’re putting in that effort and you can’t make up for hard work because the people that don’t work hard and have success, those are the real accidents. Mm-hmm. In the entrepreneurial world, most of us are constantly scratching and clawing and like a cat going up a curtain, trying to get up there all the time.
But, you know, this is my, this is my third or fourth company now that I’ve started and, and sold. And eventually I’m gonna sell this one as well, one day down the road. Mm-hmm. And I’ve got a charity that I’ll pass on. I will sell that. It’s not that kind of thing that I’ll pass on. So if you look at making a difference and I’ve had an interesting change in my life that makes a difference.
When I, when people said to me before, eight years ago, Elliot, what are you doing in your life to make a difference? And I said, I help people retire. Find things to do, not waste their lives, make a world of difference, and they’re all surrounded by life’s journeys and money. But then in 2015, my son took his life while a sophomore to University of Montana, and I started the charity and I started talking about starting the charity at Brighter Day.
At a brighter day info, literally on the plane home from Montana with his body under the plane, because I turned to his mother. I said, we’ve gotta do something to stop this devastation and destruction from attacking every other families. Yeah, and I came up with the concept of a brighter day. So now people have said to me seven years later into the charity, they’ve said, Hey Elliot, what if this is your greatest calling in life?
Wow. Not helping people retire. Not writing a book with Adam. Mm-hmm. Not deal. Talking about finances. These are all really good things. Mm-hmm. What if this change lives because 5,000 people a month are touching your resources. Yeah. What if your teens are not committing suicide? Can’t use that word technically, but not taking their lives.
What if families are doing better because your son took his life? Hmm. And I’d much rather have my son back than have the charity. I don’t really think of it in those terms because I’m not sure if that was Karma or, or God’s will or whatever. I’m not smart enough to know that, but I do know that maybe, maybe the real legacy that I leave in life is not about changing financial lives and help helping people retire and meet their financial goals, but helping teens get through life.
I. And go into adulthood and help our own species continue. I don’t have the answer to that. I certainly have the questions, but like Adam, who believes in faith and karma and the bigger picture, I don’t know if that’s part of that. I can’t ignore it. I’m just not sure how much I accept it. Hmm, hmm.
Interesting. You know, it, it’s we all are, are believers and I think in, in, in the, the greater being and I remember learning. Back at some point of my studies of the Torah that, that God doesn’t give us tests we can’t pass. So Elliot brought up that excellent point. Maybe, maybe your test Elliot was what to do with the death of your son.
I mean, I read that in your book and I literally, tears came to my eyes. I can’t think of a more devastating drive interrupter, vision interrupter, mission interrupter than that. How, how did you move through that? So it’s a really complex question, Ken, and it’s a great question. I get asked that almost every day.
So one thing that we did, because I got focused on the charity you could actually argue, even make an argument that the charity’s a little bit cathartic. Or as a catharsis to it, you could say that. I don’t, I don’t do it for that reason, but I can’t ignore that fact as well. But the mission of changing lives and saving lives and stopping suicide on that charity is first and foremost.
Hmm. So I have to talk about my son’s. Suicide all the time, not once in a while. And my daughter has asked me a number of times, dad, at some point, when will you stop talking about it? And I said, when everybody in the United States has a crisis text hotline for teens, and they stopped taking their lives.
And he said, but it, it beats you up. I said, it does. He makes me go to the cemetery and I have my own cathartic moment and I re recenter myself and put new gravity boots on and get back into life at that moment. The picture is the, the cause is bigger than me. It’s greater than me. And at some point, this cause will be self-sustaining and not just Elliot helping to financing and to raise money for it, but I’ll be sitting back and saying, wow, look at the fruits of this labor.
It’s really an entity all to itself. Without me, we’re not quite there yet, and lives are changing. So that’s how I think about it. If your team comes up to you, Ken, and Adam, and what Adam’s gonna have is, you know, 12 children. If they come up and they say, dad, go, Adam, I’m thinking about hurting myself. You as responsible fathers are gonna try to come up with help right now, not next week, right now.
And if you call your doctor and you get a referral to a psychologist that you wanna put your child in front of right now, ’cause they’re talking about hurting themselves. You could wait six to 10 weeks for that to happen. Mm-hmm. And that’s a lifetime for a child in pain. So as long as that exists, we are gonna bring out alternatives to help your child right now.
Mm-hmm. That’s the purpose of the charity. ’cause we are making a difference right now because status quo stinks in a world of teen depression. We don’t wanna be in that world. So could you say that your biggest driver in life now is to answer that call? I don’t wanna lose all my financial clients saying that, but there’s, there’s no doubt about it that I wake up every day in the middle of the night with a passion for changing lives.
No question about that. Adam, how about you? What’s the biggest driver in your life? It’s really what Elliot just said. So meaning when I think about what I’ve been blessed with and what I’ve been able to do, and I look at, so there’s a, this is the first book that I’ve ever co-authored with one author.
So I, I mean, we put out a little over 140 books and when me and Elliot were talking about like, why we would do it, okay. The entrepreneur part, all of that, that’s a thing. And we do think it’s an interesting story, but when I think about like higher purposes or higher callings, like I, I don’t have kids yet, but when I read, when I’ve, I’ve heard Elliot’s story.
Or when I thought about it and I’ve followed A brighter day foundation now for, I don’t know, two or three years. I feel like Elliot and I have known each other through the whole course of our, like knowing each other and building this relationship. And when I see the work that he’s done and that like this, it’s not easy, like building anything’s easy, but that like, I.
Going out there day in and day out. Like so my calling is helping other individuals get their mess, their message and mission out. So for me, whether that, you know, if that something like that happens in my life or not, I feel like I’ve been given that ability and privilege to be able to help someone like Elliot get their message out.
Because it’s all, it’s really just about sharing, but sharing the right messages and becoming that trusted source to be able to get the right information out. So that’s where. My calling is, and I’m not just saying for the book. I mean, there’s other individuals I’ve helped, but it’s, it’s helping individuals like Elliot that have that big, big calling.
That’s my calling. Nice. Would either of you say that well, most people think about successful business people and they think about, Hmm, monetization. What’s their exit would. Did that go through either one of your minds, you know, how can I grow this for my retirement? How can I cash out? When does cash out come into the mind of a driven business person, entrepreneur?
Another really good question. I’m gonna answer that a few different ways. If I could, can, and I wanna answer it, the world of Adam and myself last on that. Mm-hmm. So every business owner should begin his business, her business, with some type of ending in mind. I wanna build this up and pass it to my children.
I wanna build this up and sell that. I want to do this until I can’t do this anymore. And there’s some type of monetization but mostly there’s some type of exit. For them, because you don’t want, including even in my financial industry, I run into people in their eighties. They’re still doing it.
They have no hobbies. Mm-hmm. You know, their clients are dying faster than they are. It’s bad. And so you don’t want that happening on there. So we’re entrepreneurs, we think about the end of mind, and there needs to be a, a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow for my wife, my children, my family, myself. You know, and, and so forth and so on.
When Adam and I got together, we had the conversation of what if we write a book that actually becomes a bestseller? Mm-hmm. And we could begin, and maybe it’s the first of five books, who knows? And it’s a book that every entrepreneur in America, ’cause that wasn’t a financial book. It’s an entrepreneur and a leadership book.
What if every entrepreneur in America could pick up this book and say, you know, they’re talking about me. Yeah. They’re talking about me. Can we take this show on the road? Can we create a financial podcast That’s super positive. We did talk about the money side of this. I mean, we live in a, in a capitalist society.
I’m not gonna apologize for being a capitalist here, but we live in that world. We didn’t say, okay, we’re gonna sell a book for $25 so we can make more money on it. That we never had that conversation about that we thought can Adam and I, very different personalities? Mm-hmm. But at the same time, Personalities that can come together easily like that too.
You don’t need to be that. You could be that, which I think we are. Can we come together and be hired out by corporate America? By entrepreneurial America? Can we go to the Marriott in Des Moines and fill up the room and, and have a conversation with entrepreneurs? Can we do that? And we thought if we could figure out how to come together with a positive book, that becomes an ebook that becomes a message that’s salient and to the point.
Hmm. Can we monetize this? And that’s still our vision. The book’s only been out since, since July 4th, so it’s not like as if we have a 12 page business plan since July 4th, we don’t. But we are going to have at some point the ability to say, Hey Adam, are you going to Des Moines this weekend? Or are we going together?
Hmm. For me, the Ken God’s still working on me. That concept of exit and what all that looks like, that’s just another language for me. Like as of this moment. The way that I view money in general is it allows us to do more. I. Like, it just allows us to do more and it allows us to, like, that’s my understanding and for everybody that’s listening or watching this.
So my background briefly, I mean, I was in finance almost 14 years, so it’s not that I don’t have a financial background. It’s just, and I managed money as well, but it it’s just that at this point I feel like a lot of the. Things that I’ve you know, certain things you plan as an entrepreneur and for me, I’m not saying this for Elliot or for anybody else, but they never tend to quite work that exact way you plan.
It’s always something different that works. Whether it’s like, it’s all for me, it’s always been something different. We were never going to. For example, we were never gonna produce podcast shows for other people. Like never. That was not even part of the, the roadmap. Now we’ve launched over 150 admission matters.
Like I, that wasn’t my plan if I was thinking about like how to plan that out wasn’t the case. So I feel like I’m trying to just become a better steward of what I’ve been given and the opportunities I’ve been given. And when, just like what Elliot just mentioned, this, this driven brand and movement, which is what we’re really creating is a movement for entrepreneurs.
I feel like that’s a blessing and I feel like that’s just something that I have to figure out and we have to learn how to steward as it gets bigger and bigger because I do believe there’s a really unique and solid message there that many need to hear, need to hear. And the more that hear it, of course, the bigger the brand will grow.
I. Nice, nice. So as I was reading through the book, and, and from what I know about that you, Adam and Elliot, I don’t know you very well, but I kind of got this roadmap and, and it leads us to the next topic that we’ll end with. So you guys came together and, and you’re driven and you’re driven by your missions.
Each one of you have your own. The missions are kind of guided by your visions. And then I think that’s gonna wrap up into what you each think about legacy. Hmm. Tell me about that, Adam. So legacy is a big one. I don’t, it’s, it’s interesting because as I, our brand was originally created and the reason why it was done this way, it wasn’t because like, it was by by design.
It was because I was the guy to do the job. We, it was just started myself and the other co-founder cigar, like when we first started, for example, our first podcast. We didn’t like design it to say, okay, Adam’s gonna do all these podcast interviews. He’s gonna be this podcast host and this personality.
That wasn’t the point. It was just me and him. Who else was gonna do it? He was the, he was the biz dev guy and he was that, that was kind of his skill. And I’m, I’m the c e O, so I’m the operations at the office. So who was gonna do the podcast? It couldn’t be the biz dev guy that’s at an event by default. I was the guy.
So that all wasn’t planned. But as I see this grow, and as you know, as things get more interesting, I don’t think my legacy will be probably what, maybe some that have seen the brand think at the moment, which is like what content I create or you know, I. What views or this or that, like vanity metrics or all that kind of stuff.
Like that’s not what it’s gonna be. For me. My legacy is gonna be how many other people I empower. So when we think about, like I want, if you ever hear any interviews, I’m encouraging other people publish books. Like whether you do it through a publishing company like ours, do it on your own. Whether you self-publish, I don’t care.
Like I want you to get your story and your message out there. Like that’s the point. Like same thing with the podcast, whether somebody does a show through our company. Or does it on their own or. Heck goes on Anchor or some other platform and starts it in like five minutes. Like start where you’re at. The first show we ever launched was, I think it took me 10 minutes to launch.
And Rag was the first person I ever interviewed, and I was like, I, we didn’t even know we were gonna be a show. I didn’t even know if it was a show, though. Content’s still out there somewhere. It could be found pretty easily, but that wasn’t the point. But now, as this. Froze and I see this expertise that’s grown over.
I mean, we, as a company, we produce over 150,000 pieces of content now. So now there is expertise in all these other things behind it. So now it’s, again, I, we’ve been blessed and now how do we figure out how to empower others and to be a blessing? And so I think that’s what my biggest, like, I don’t have kids yet, but hopefully one day, and hopefully that’s part of my life.
But I hope that my kids look at it and they don’t say, oh, my dad was this host or this person. I’m I’d much, I get more enjoyment outta hear them say, oh, my dad helped launch X, Y, Z person, or this other person or this other show, or, wow, we were part of that way back when. Like, that’s gonna be interesting to me.
Nice. And I think Adam’s underselling himself a little bit there because I know that, you know, we’re having a book opening ceremony in a, a give or take a month. I know that there are gonna people that are gonna line up with their sharpie pens and have him sign their for their forearm because they’re not gonna wash that for a month.
He’s the celebrity. But I think if I look back at my life, you know, they always say, look back at your life and what will your tombstone say? What will, how would that read? I’ve heard that done actually. I think Anthony Robbins was the one. I heard that with us. What is your tombstone gonna say? If it had one line?
And I think the way I run my financial business and the way I run the charity and even the way I am with my wife and my children pretty consistent, it’s gonna say he changed lives. And so if I could touch people around me, I don’t consider myself with a golden touch or a God-given touch. I think I have a touch that like it.
It’s important. It’s, it’s right. It’s warm again, filled with integrity, honesty for, it’s gonna make differences in people’s lives. That’s what I’d like to be remembered with. That’s my legacy. Awesome. So nice. So nice to to chat with you guys and hear about what brought you together in the book and. And Kent can we all, are we gonna, here we go.
Oh, you know, I’ll do it there. Come on. And more to come on this event. It’s gonna be fun. Get it up there. Yeah, make sure we know about it, man. I, hopefully I can be there with you guys. And it was just a pleasure having you on the show again. My 50th episode, Adam, thanks to you, beat me over the head. How many times, Ken, you gotta do a podcast?
I said, I don’t think so. He said, no, you really gotta do it and you gotta get a book. You. I do feel better. I’m not gonna sue. It’s good, but I do feel better. Yeah, it’s good because you’re such a creative guy. You’re such a, like you’re a powerhouse. Elliot’s a Power. Elliot’s got a podcast. He’s put out episodes for years and like there’s this certain people that I meet that have this creativity in them and other things, and I’m like, like this is a way to express it.
Like if you’re so inclined. But when we were working together, I’m like, come on, are you kidding me? You gotta do a podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. So thank you so much. You’re honoring me by being on the show, and I hope to see you both. Very soon. Thanks for having us on, Ken. That’s great. Right on.