Ken Burke

[00:00:00] This is Walk to Wealth episode 70. Welcome to Walk to Wealth. Why enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives? I'm your host, John Mendez, and I'm currently walking to Wealth as we speak. And if you know the traditional route of finishing college, working in nine to five interior sixties, and hopefully having enough safer retirement isn't a path you wanna take, then join me as we walk to Wealth together.

[00:00:30] Before we start today's episode, I gotta give a shout out, and this one's a special one. I wanna give a big shout out to my boy Christian from CT 360 Virtual. He reached out to me a while ago to do a complimentary, a complimentary photo for one of my listings. Little did he. I wasn't really selling any houses, so I didn't have any listings to take photos of.

[00:00:48] But he's been supporting the Walk 12 movement. He's sponsored my first in-person event and he's sponsoring my hundredth episode celebration in May. He's going to be the primary sponsor for that one. So just, I wanna say a [00:01:00] public thank you here, Christian, just for supporting me on my journey and supporting a mission that I got going on.

[00:01:04] Thanks brother. And without further ado, let's get right into, , are you ready to learn the secrets of running a successful business or if so, I brought on a very special guest today. Today's episode I brought on Ken Burke. He is the founder and CEO of The Entrepreneur Now Network. He's a speaker, a serial entrepreneur, mentor, author.

[00:01:24] He's done, helped over 10,000, yes, 10,000 entrepreneurs learn how to successfully start and grow their companies. He has courses. He's doing a whole lot of things. His book is called Five Steps of Thriving In Business. He loves helping people like us, entrepreneurs that are trying to get it going, don't really know where to start, but before all the success wasn't always this way.

[00:01:47] I've been an entrepreneur since I was 10 years old. Always either starting businesses, throwing paper outs, doing whatever. Whatever I, I did to, need to do to make money didn't come from Rich family at all. And you know we struggled through things, but we got, we got [00:02:00] through it and I got a degree in a master's degree in Entrepreneur.

[00:02:03] Entrepreneurialism. And so, which is a little bit, different type of a degree, but it set me up really well to understand strategy, which I think is really important for any entrepreneurs listening out there. Really, you can do a business plan, you can do a financial plan, but it's the value of doing those is all around the strategy and really understanding that.

[00:02:19] So right now I kind of think of myself as a, a strategist more than anything else. And I started up in the e-com space in 1995, which was the beginning of the space. And that's another element that you look for an entrepreneurial. That is, beginning its rise. And really, e-commerce had just started in 1995.

[00:02:37] We became a pioneer in the industry. We built an e-commerce platform didn't take any money any capital as a software company until the first 11 or 12 years of the business. So we were basically our, and that doesn't really happen as much today. This was a while back. Yeah. Our first investor was Sequoia Capital.

[00:02:52] And for any of the listeners out there that know Sequoia Capital invested as the number one VC firm in the world got lucky. Don't know how it happened. They, they kind of came [00:03:00] to us and we, after, after saying no a couple of times to them, which I didn't realize that you can't say no to Sequoia Capital, they just keep coming at you.

[00:03:07] And , I finally decided this was probably a good time to fund the company, which was good as well back in 2004. And then we kind of grew from there, but we had already had a hundred customers by the time we were fund or a hundred employees by the time we were funded. So they were, that was just gas in the tank to let us grow even further.

[00:03:24] We had our roller coaster, we had our ups, and we had our downs you know and ultimately I was replaced as ceo, e o and then came back as c e o , because that's what VCs do. They made it, they made a mistake, but when the company went through its ups and downs during that turbulent time, but learned a lot, which is what entrepreneurs do.

[00:03:39] We learned a lot. And then ended up selling the company in 2015 for a very nice exit. And now I'm doing it all over again, starting from scratch. I'm a practicing entrepreneur. Like a lot of people out there listening. You think, Hey, well you sold a company, you sold a company for a lot of money.

[00:03:53] That somehow makes you good at what you do. Not, not at all. Actually, it doesn't because I'm learning every day the new [00:04:00] business. I'm now in e-learning versus e. Completely different industry, selling to consumers, selling to small businesses, and selling to corporations. Very different from what I did before.

[00:04:09] So we're always learning, growing, and developing. And that's an, an amazing story. And I, I kind of, I have a lot of different points that I kind of want to ask you about. You tell us a lot the first of which is though you said you had some pretty humble beginnings growing up. I kind of wanna ask you, one thing I've been asking a lot of my guests recently is what were some of the, mindsets and beliefs around money in your household growing up?

[00:04:31] Were they in, benefiting you? Did they not benefit you? And, how have they, helped shape you into who you are today and throughout your journey? . Yeah, no, it's a great question. It's one I haven't thought of for a while, but I I do have a . I do have a, an answer. I think, my parents came, they were depression era babies.

[00:04:47] And so, that time when they were being raised as kids and into adults, and my parents had me late in li later in their life. And so it was, it's all about not about abundance. It's about very being, [00:05:00] very frugal. And I find that today I'm very frugal as well. I think I did learn that almost, to the point where it can hurt sometimes in, in an entrepreneurial business.

[00:05:07] You can, you can, you can be too frugal and not spend the money on the things that you need to or not take the risks that you need to do. I'm not saying that you should go out there as an entrepreneur and be wild about, spending money, even if you're given, or if you have an investor who's given you millions of dollars, that doesn't mean that you should spend it all.

[00:05:24] In fact, there's a whole, that's a whole different topic I won't get into at least not right now, , but The, the, the idea, I think is, it did shape my brain in terms of being very appropriate with money. I know, I know what I'm spending, where I'm spending. I don't get over my skis. I always have a cash reserve.

[00:05:38] That's something that's different. I recommend every entrepreneur have a three to six month cash reserve so that they can operate their business. During the bad times, during the down times, which we're seeing right now, we're seeing that, kind of re recession looming and what does that mean for you?

[00:05:52] So I think that, certainly I, I didn't have the mentality that I do today around abundance. And so I had to create that out of parents that [00:06:00] probably really didn't understand entrepreneurialism and only understood work. And my definition of success versus their definition of success was a little bit different.

[00:06:08] So yeah, I did go to undergrad school. I went to grad school, you know at a good university, university of Southern California have to promote USC . Of course. And it's a lot better now than when I went . It was that easier to get into 20, 25 years ago. And today it's a lot harder which is good.

[00:06:22] But so, taking that, I think and just working really hard. I think what I learned if uh, is, and, and, and, and this holds true to today, right? You just work, you grind it out, you work really hard. I always say I have the three Ps I talk about a lot, which is patience, perseverance.

[00:06:38] and passion and patience is, you're wor patience and perseverance, but you gotta have patience. I always say, you gotta be in the game to win the game. You can't be sitting on the sidelines. So, and that's what I do with my business. Even my current business wasn't successful for the first couple of years.

[00:06:52] I struggled through it. It was a new industry. I didn't really know it. I was doing something I hadn't done before. And a lot of entrepreneurs are doing that, plus some things that have never [00:07:00] been done before. Right? Entrepreneurs are doing that, so don't have an expectation that everything's gonna go perfect and it's gonna go in your timeline.

[00:07:07] And it's not your timeline, it's, it, it, it, you don't control the timeline. You might think you do as an entrepreneur, but you don't . And so the, the timeline is controlled by, you could say higher powers or you could just say that sometimes everything doesn't fall into place. But you know,

[00:07:22] One of the things that struck me, Tony Robbins said, years and years ago, on one of his tapes that I listened to back at when we had cassette tapes, , John, you, you're young, you don't even know what those are. . But but back when we had cassette tapes and I listened to Tony Robbins in the nine, late nineties and two thousands, he, he had this thing, I'm gonna probably screw it up, but let me try it.

[00:07:39] Which is, there, there really, this idea of luck is you putting yourself in the right place, creating the opportunity, and then luck is something that comes in, or a situation that comes in that you're able to take advantage of. The thing about entrepreneurs that we have to understand is you gotta put yourself in the right place.

[00:07:55] So everybody has this idea of the law of attraction. I don't wanna go off in too many different directions here. This idea of the law of [00:08:00] attraction says, if I just think it, if I have an intention, it'll come in. And I don't believe that. I believe that the law of attraction has a couple of different facets to it.

[00:08:07] You gotta think it. You have to have incredible clarity. Which is what I wrote my book about partly called Prosper. You have to have incredible clarity around what you want to do, which is the intention, but then you gotta take action, which is another part of my book, right? Chapter one, clarity, chapter two, take action.

[00:08:22] And I think a lot of people forget about that. You have to continually and consistently take action on an ongoing basis every day, every week, every month. That's that idea of both patients and perseverance. That's perseverance part where you're driving. And then the secret ingredient, I'll, I'll, I'll wrap up your on this topic.

[00:08:38] I know I talk a lot, John. Sorry about that. No worries. It is passion and a lot of entrepreneurs have this one. This is not usually a problem from entrepreneurs, but I you, you need to be infectious and engaging and charismatic. And even if it's not part of your normal personality, you need to find it inside of you.

[00:08:54] Need to talk from your gut up through your mouth, up through your throat to your mouth. Make a lot of eye [00:09:00] contact. We're doing a lot of zooms today. A lot of things that we're doing right here. . So you look into the camera and you speak with a voice that people really wanna engage upon like I'm doing right now.

[00:09:10] Yeah. Maybe with a little bit more speed to it. , that then starts to bring in that passion, that passion's, infection in infectious. And so those three things around making sure that you're patient and don't just wobble around in your business model. Say, this didn't work this week. I'm gonna try this. Well that didn't work this week.

[00:09:26] I'm gonna try this. Entrepreneurs love doing that. They're all of a sudden in 300 different things. It's like, well, slow down. Stop . Get one thing to work. I call it master and move on. Perseverance, keep driving, keep taking action. Action creates momentum. So the more action you take, the moment momentum you take and all of a sudden something really cool happens.

[00:09:44] Let me give us a quick story, very quick story. Two years ago, I set out to launch a new e-learning platform. Good God, the world does not need a new e-learning platform, but I'm revolutionizing e-learning. We're revolutionizing e-learning. We're doing, we're using it a different way. It's for sales and marketing.

[00:09:57] and, and, and, and, and prospecting and, and, [00:10:00] and and selling and customer retention. All the important things that are, we're using e-learning in a different way. We built a whole engine around it and next week we're launching it two years after we started. You hadn't had a line of code Two years later.

[00:10:12] Now I have a full-blown product that people are dying for two years, but I thought I was gonna launch it in six months and I'm supposed to be good at this , the timelines don't always line up. I spent double the amount of money and double the time, if not a little bit longer. Wasn't quite two years, a year and a half and, and, and, and such.

[00:10:28] But so, the entrepreneurial journey is things sometimes take twice as long and cost twice as much. That's what I mean about perseverance and then that passion, everybody gets passion. I don't need to repeat that again, John. Yeah, no, definitely. I, I kind of wanna touch on it too a little bit to take it back a little bit.

[00:10:42] You mentioned too, in your story that , you said that you were an entrepreneur and like naturally born, right? It was just in you since as young as you can remember, you've been, getting into your paper house, whatever you can. And, even still to this day and age, you're still, trying to find more ways to keep it going.

[00:10:56] And I genuinely feel like it, it, it's a game you have to love no matter if [00:11:00] you, start one business and see it through until your end of time or you're in the game of like, Gary V still goes to garage sales yeah. All the time. Like, he's, he'll post about it like a couple weeks ago.

[00:11:09] I think he was just that one in Jersey or something like that. And like he's, it just a love for the game that I think the most successful entrepreneurs have that, allows him to keep on going despite whatever circumstances. And I kind of wanted to ask you because like for me, in my circumstance I was never an entrepreneur, right?

[00:11:26] I always had a, was a smart kid. I was, But I never really focused on, getting money or finding ways to start a business or anything like that. It wasn't until I read Rich that poor ad, as my listeners know, that it really started for me. So I kind of wanna hear you a little bit of your thoughts before we kind of get into today's like, conversation.

[00:11:40] No more in depth as to is it something that can be learned? Is it something that you could pick up? Because for me, in my situation, it kind of like, once I read that in my mindset switch, like a I don't know, what was that? It, was it just innate and I didn't activate it yet, or something that we all have that we, we have to activate.

[00:11:56] But for me it was like something that I never had. Cuz I had friends that, sold [00:12:00] shoes and all that stuff and my sister was very entrepreneur entrepreneurial. She used to sell like slime and stuff like that in middle school to all the middle schoolers, . But like for me, I never had anything like that.

[00:12:09] I just kind of flipped the switch one day once I started reading. And I just took off with it and ran. Yeah. So kind. What's your thoughts there? Yeah. I mean, is it learned? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You can, business is learned. Business strategy is learned. It's a mindset. Entrepreneur and I talk a lot about the entrepreneurial mindset, which we might talk a little about today, of course, is on it and lectures on it.

[00:12:29] I, I spend a lot of time because I think if you get the mindset proper, then I, there's a million ideas out there, and you can start businesses all day long. The ideas need to be good, innovative, they need to solve a problem, they need to have some fundamental things. But if you have the right mindset,

[00:12:45] Wow. What you can do and what, that's the difference. That's the secret ingredient. That's the difference between, somebody that is just killing it out there and you see 'em and you're like, I want to be them. Right? Yeah. Be yourself. Don't be them. Right. And it's not all rosy over there. Trust me.

[00:12:58] But also, but it's a [00:13:00] mindset around, so, managing your ego, focusing always be building assets, master and move on. These are just fundamental things that perseverance, all the things I talked about earlier. So I love talking about mindset and how entrepreneurs can craft that mindset. That is something that's learned.

[00:13:15] And I, but I do think that there's a desire. Right. And sometimes people, by the way, you're, some of your, a lot of your listeners are younger because you're younger. I'm sure you attract that, that younger millennial and or even Gen Zer, which I love. We're Gen Zers over here. Most of us are Gen Zers. Most of Gen Zers, yeah.

[00:13:30] Millennials are old now. Okay. I am actually a millennial still. Although I'm old. I get it. But the Gen Zers, and so, and that's all that's great. You need, that's that, that energy that the millennials have. And I, I'm sorry, the Gen Zs tell you . I know I didn't need to call you a millennial. Sorry about that.

[00:13:44] Gen Zers have is, that's a, that's something that you should bottle and, and, and you have an understanding that some of the older folks don't have in their forties and fifties. And I, we can talk about that later. But this, so, so is it embedded? Is it in, in, in, there are [00:14:00] elements of an entrepreneur.

[00:14:01] There are some people that would never take the risk. They are too worried about judgments. They're too worried about failing, which is the, those are elements that are inside of you, John, in order to start your business, a, a and, and, and begin to craft your entrepreneurial experience somewhere you had to break down some fears because we all have them around this.

[00:14:20] And listen and, and push away the noise that other people are saying, that's a bad idea. Don't do that. You're gonna waste your time. You're gonna lose a lot of money. All that negative talk you had to push away. Well, those take some skills so you can learn those skills or you can acquire them because it's gonna be really hard to get off the ground.

[00:14:37] If you're so fear, if, if you're so fearful of failing, which is a big deal, or you're so fearful of judgments, oh my, my parents, they, they, they think I'm doing nothing because I'm an entrepreneur or I'm gonna start a business. They want me to be a doctor or a lawyer that actually makes real money.

[00:14:52] Yeah. Until, the pathway to make real money is entrepreneurship. That's the, that is the number one way to gain wealth. I believe. There are other ways, but that's one of the [00:15:00] main ways that if you look back at all the people that have wealth, a lot of 'em are entrepreneurs. That is a way, if that's what you're looking for, of course, that's the name of your podcast is Wealth.

[00:15:09] I will suggest to you that entrepreneurship, I think you've already suggested, it's not all about wealth. Wealth creation is great until you get it and then you're like, eh, not so good. I know that sounds weird. The Gen Zers are like, ah, this guy is an idiot for saying Yeah. Like wealth, that's, I want it.

[00:15:24] I mean, that's, I'm gonna go, I can buy things. I can go to trips and everything until you have it, and then you're like, eh, now it's gotta be more meaningful. Now it's about creating stuff and serving other people and growing something that out of nothing. That's the excitement. That's why I do it. That's why a lot of entrepreneurs do it.

[00:15:40] So yes, in your early days, you'll be, you'll be grappling with the wealth issue, which is, I, if I can, if I can create money out of the business, I will be de, my definition of success will be fulfilled. Let me tell you really what you need to focus on, your definition of success. Write about this in my book, in that if you really understand [00:16:00] what your definition, not your parents, not your friends, not your social group, not John doing a podcast telling you what, what success is for him.

[00:16:09] because it's success for you, but it's not success for somebody else. Maybe you wanna run a lifestyle business, you don't need to grow it fast. Lifestyle businesses are where you kind of enjoy the lifestyle of the business. Maybe it's a winery and you're not about grow, or, a lot of people like wineries, or maybe it's a sporting outdoor tour company and you love sports.

[00:16:26] So you're, you wanna take or you love travel and you, and you do, and you're, they're doing tours or you love sports and it's a sporting company. And that shouldn't be an element of what you do. Then, those become a little bit more lifestyle. You never intend to sell it. You just enjoy doing it.

[00:16:38] That's different from I gotta grow every day because at some point I wanna sell this and make millions. Right? That's a different business. So what I would suggest to you is understand your exit strategy, understand the business you want to create. By the way, you can create both lifestyle and lifestyle with a very drip profit driven motivation.

[00:16:54] So when you start to understand the entrepreneurial mindset, Then you start that. I, I think that's an element. [00:17:00] There are people out there that just wanna be workers. They have other aspects of their life because entrepreneurship is all consuming. You do work all the time. It's either in your head, you're working, you know this John, right?

[00:17:10] You work all the time. It's just, you're on Sunday and you're getting a text or there is no such thing as a day off or a vacation. Yes, you can turn it off a little bit depending on your situation, but you really can't, cuz it's embedded in you. Right? The, the 12 to 16 hour days are just part of the game.

[00:17:25] And so if you don't want that, you're like, you know what? I wanna nurture my family. I know Gen Zers may not have families yet nurture the, the, the, the children or what have you. And I just want a job that I can go nine to five and then when it's done, it's done. I go and I leave it and I don't ever have to think about it again.

[00:17:38] I wanna enjoy my weekends. I wanna enjoy my nights and my mornings. And, and so I don't want, , that's probably then you shouldn't get in entrepreneurship if that's what you're looking for. This whole, let's create a two hour work week or four hour work week, you know? Yeah. I get the concept, I've read the book.

[00:17:53] Right. But if you really think about it, you're gonna work your butt off in entrepreneurism. And here's a cool thing about the [00:18:00] younger folks, right? The younger folks out there, the, the, the gen Zers, they wanna work, they wanna work hard, they wanna work their asses off for this thing they call success. Just make sure that success is couch is couched properly in what you wanna do with your life overall.

[00:18:15] Because there's a lot of definition success and not all of 'em revolve around money. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, definitely. I, I, I learned, fortunately, Neil enough, I learned early on that there's a difference between wealth and riches. And I feel like a lot of people confuse the two. Right? Yeah.

[00:18:28] And making that this that separation, that distinction between the two is extremely important. because as you said everyone who's chased the money gets to the point where we're as humans, as you already know, we, we get a girl accustomed to things extremely quickly. It's a, it's a insane how fast we adapt to make whatever is the new and fresh thing, the norm, right?

[00:18:49] Because then there's always another mountain to climb. So it's like you constantly have to like figure it out. And when entrepreneurship, it's like even if you try to turn it off, it's something about you that's just always [00:19:00] on. It's like, it's whether you think about an idea, maybe if you don't look at your email or talk to a client that day, but it's like something in your mind.

[00:19:06] It's like searching for opportunity to search. It's like, it just, it's just nonstop. I'm telling. It's, it's nonstop. It just, and it keeps on going at all the time. It kinda sucks. But you have to like try to learn as, as much as you can that there, there's a time and a place for other. . And I say embrace it though as well.

[00:19:22] It kind of sucks, but also embrace it. It doesn't mean you have to work 12 to 16 hours a day. I, that's not the requirement to be an entrepreneur. But, but what drives the entrepreneurs, especially the ones that are considered very successful, what, by their definition, right. Grew Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, I mean, you know the names go on and on and on.

[00:19:39] Those are the ones that everybody says. But it, it's, it's the same. It's the same stuff for even people that are, are, are climbing the mountain. But part of it is the climb. It's part of it is a, a lot of it is the journey. I'll suggest all of it's the journey. Yeah. Majority of it is all you're doing this for.

[00:19:53] And again this is, I speak about this in my book, you're Journey doing this to learn, grow, and develop, period. Full [00:20:00] stop. Every relationship you're in is about. It's not about the other person. It's all about you. Now, I don't mean to tap into the narcissism that exists out there by the by, by the by, by younger people, which is true, and older people as well.

[00:20:14] But the, the idea though is that you're all here to learn, grow, and develop, period. So the entrepreneurial journey, the ups and downs of it disconnect from the outcome and have the experience around the growth. If you understand that you're growing and developing, and you're not just learning new business skills, but you're learning new life skills, you're learning how to relate to people you're learning how to manage people, you're learning how to be an authority or a thought leader, all those things that you're learning as you go through this, that's the gold.

[00:20:41] It's not, I'm CEO and founder of a company that's worth a hundred million dollars, eh, okay, great, right? Mm-hmm. . But to what you said, I call the treadmill effect, which is where you're on the treadmill. As soon as you make an achievement, you get it, and you get to that level and you think, oh my God. Now if I, I, if I just have this, I'm gonna be happy.

[00:20:57] I'm done. I'm, I'm gonna be happy. . I gotta tell [00:21:00] you, I and I, again, this is very important to me. More does not equal happy or happiness doesn't work that way. What equals happiness, joy, and fulfillment is you have to practice that every day and whatever rituals and other things that you have to bring that out.

[00:21:15] And then that starts to create behaviors and habits that create vibrations, that actually your energy and your vibrations start to rise. And as you have that, you attract them goodness into your life. Believe it or not, I know this sounds weird, but like attracts, like, we know that from science, high vibrations, happiness attracts more happiness.

[00:21:37] Sad people. Depressed people attract what? Sad people and depressed people. So, but, and you say, well, what does it do with entrepreneurship? What the hell is this guy talking? It's because this is all around it. Entrepreneurs that the personality of the entrepreneur who makes or breaks the business, I will tell you is the entrepreneur.

[00:21:55] The entrepreneur that holds too tight. They hold everything to themselves. They control every aspect of the [00:22:00] business. And don't trust anybody else, won't grow. You physically will stop growing at some point in terms of your business. In terms of your business, because you're not letting anybody else help you.

[00:22:09] You're not involving anybody. As an example, if you're putting out a low energy vibration, you're not attracting the best talent, the best investors, the best people out there that wanna be part of what you're creating. So raise your vibrations. How do you raise your vibrations? You practice it just like you go to the gym, which by the way, helps raise vibrations as well.

[00:22:26] Mm-hmm. , you practice, I know this sounds a little bit touchy feely, but the gen, the Gen Zers get me the Gen Zers get this right? Yeah, they get it. The millennials don't. My generation doesn't , but you guys do. So embrace that meditation. pretty good. Exercise, good diet, hanging around positive people.

[00:22:45] Whoa, right? Taking out that negativity because they're bringing you down and, and the list goes on and on. I don't mean to bore you no with it, but that's so important because when you do that, your entrepreneur mindset's, right? You may not know every strategy. You may not know how, all the techniques, I can [00:23:00] see things a mile away from a strategy perspective, cuz I've been doing it for 30 years, right?

[00:23:03] I've been doing business for 30 years. You may not be able to see the blind spots, but you know what all that entrepreneurial mindset comes in, you can get through all of that, right? Don't let your ego get in the way. As an example, don't be driven by ego. , and that's a big one. Especially, I mean, for any entrepreneur, especially for entrepreneurs, it's a big one.

[00:23:22] Yes. Because ego will, will destroy you. It will absolutely destroy your relationships with other people because you're what you're doing, you're constantly judging. That's how you know if you're coming from ego or not, you're judging yourself or you're judging the situation out there, and then you start attacking and you start getting in fights with the people that you're working with.

[00:23:39] I don't mean fist fights or anything like that. Disagreements, and then those disagreements because you have to be right. Your ego has to be right. Oh, maybe not. Sit back and listen and shut up for a little bit and let other people in, and then start to give other people power and control and responsibility, and then let them either succeed or fail.

[00:23:58] That's called [00:24:00] leadership. That's when you know you're starting to arrive. When you're letting other people use their talents and skillsets. I always. Don't partner up with somebody that has the exact same skillsets as you. If you're an engineer, go out and partner with a marketer or a salesperson. If you're a salesperson, market, maybe partner with an operations person, depending on what type of business it is.

[00:24:17] But that's not what we do as entrepreneurs. We partner up with people that are like us, like attracts like. So if I'm an engineer, I partner up with another engineer, guess what? We're really good engineers that don't know how to sell a damn product. Market a damn product. You can't. You, you can build the best product in the world, but if you don't market it and sell it properly, nobody's ever gonna see it.

[00:24:36] So you better balance yourself. Last piece of a little bit advice in this area. Never do a 50 50 partnership please. Please do th do. Do three partners good. Never. Two partners at 50 50. Never. Never works. Just never right? Because you can never make a decision. You'll always run into a problem when you're equal partners.

[00:24:53] Somebody has to be 49, somebody has to be 51. It is a law that I suggest you follow. All right. [00:25:00] I know that's a little off topic, your question. , but I wanna make sure we get some good advice out there as well. Yeah, definitely. No, I, you mentioned a couple points a couple points that kept on popping up throughout this, the law of attraction and vibration and energy.

[00:25:11] So I'll, I'll start there. Right. A lot of people don't understand, and fortunately I've been able to interview if, if you guys check out my interview with Vic Manzo he is talked about this stuff. He's into like, he's like a quantum coach and he Oh, I love it. Oh wow. And so he was kind of breaking it down for me as well.

[00:25:25] Cause the law of attraction is a buzzword. Everyone thinks that manifesting, you write it down, you see it in the mirror, you say it a couple times and boom, like, everything's gonna be yours Right. In a couple weeks. That's doesn't work like that at all. And as you were saying, you have to vi rise your, you know you're vibration, your level where you're vibrating at.

[00:25:40] Right. And. That's the law of vibration, right? That comes before law of attraction. The, which then leads to law of manifestation. So what I've learned from his is that it works in threes, like don't know why, but he told me it works in threes, right? So the first one is the law of vibration, right? And so we're like mini radio players, right?

[00:25:57] When you turn on, at least if you're in the Northeast or over here in Connecticut, [00:26:00] New York, tri-state area, 97.1, it's hot 97, right? That's. You put that on the fn, hip hop music is gonna play. Right. It's the same way with us. What, what, what, what radio station are we on? What that, we're attracting the things in there.

[00:26:13] Exactly. Right. And, and it may be something you're tuning into without even realizing, because you might have not even realized that you're a radio station. So you're just driving the car, listening to whatever music is coming on, asking, why is this happening to me? Hopefully it's something good, but if it's something that's not, you gotta check what station you're on.

[00:26:28] Right. A lot of people aren't taking the time. So I kind of wanted to ask you, because a, a lot of the time, especially when we're trying to get, get into entrepreneurship, a lot of, especially as from coming from humble beginnings a lot of the things that we grew up learning don't help us, especially when we try to get into things like that.

[00:26:43] For example, trying to be the center of everything. Wear all the hats, be in control. It's the narcissist. This is the ego. We wanna, we wanna have our hands on top and everything, and that stunts us. Yeah. So what kind of you know I don't know if you kind of felt that in your career, but I know you've probably seen it in careers of.

[00:26:57] A bunch of other people that you've, seen and came across, [00:27:00] what advice would you kind of give there to kind of, let's go of that ego, get rid of that so we can hop into our role as divisionary in growing the company and not be doing the, the minutia. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We're all good points and, and specific No, no.

[00:27:13] I, i, I please. I was an egotist. I, my, my, absolutely, for the first 10 years of my business, I knew everything that went on in the business. I had a hundred plus employees. I controlled everything. I didn't work through my executive team. I went down and I managed every individual. If I didn't like something, I'd dive in and talk to a customer.

[00:27:32] My e I would sit in a board meetings and and, say, you know that's not right. You're wrong. You're wrong, then I matured a little bit. So I'm just saying, Hey guys, mature faster because I'm telling you this stuff, right? And I matured. But, but the thing is, is that first of all, first thing about ego is you have to recognize you're coming from ego.

[00:27:48] So you identify yourself now as the money that you have, the cars that you have, the status that you have, which is also part of your, the business that you have. It's these, all these labels that you put on yourself and that you [00:28:00] want the world to look at you through that lens. That's your ego, right?

[00:28:03] You're creating the, the facade, if you will, of what, who you are and what you are, and then you care about what they think. So ego, you always know when you're coming from ego, if you ever render an opinion about yourself, like, I'm not good enough. I'm too fat, I'm too thin, I'm too smart, I'm too dumb. I'm, I'm I'm not doing the right thing in the business.

[00:28:22] It's called negative motivation. I wanna beat the crap outta myself. And by the way, this comes from our childhood. Not that you had bad parents, but it comes from your childhood and even beyond. It's not embedded in us at birth. It's something that we learn. And so it's something that can be unlearned, but it's manifested over and over.

[00:28:37] If anybody of your listeners have had a critical parent, I did. Boom right there. Critical parent teaches you, they criticize you thinking that they're helping you, right? Thinking that you can do better, you can be a better basketball player. I used to love playing basketball with my dad, but he has to criticize the crap outta me cuz I wasn't that great, but I love doing it.

[00:28:56] And it was a bonding experience, all of that. But he was critical. So, [00:29:00] That, that's just one example of many things. Or I didn't go to the right school or, whatever, whatever, I didn't, whatever it might have been. And so there is no, right, there is no that. So the judgements, the first thing you have to do is you have to understand that if you're do, if you're, if you're judging yourself, that you need to stop, the rubber band test, right?

[00:29:16] Where you snap the rubber band every time. So it's just awareness. And I have a whole chapter in my book dedicated to just awareness, and then a whole section dedicated to managing your ego. There's something called ego triggers that I write about, and those are things that trigger your ego. And if you're starting to watch for those judgment's, the big one, so that's why I'm focusing on it today.

[00:29:34] Judgment's the big one. If you start understanding that you're, you're in a situation, like if you're in an argument and you're in that argument with your, with your spouse, with your girlfriend or boyfriend, with your business partner, or with your executive team or employees, understand, are you in the argument and just realize it?

[00:29:52] Are you in the argument to win the argument? Or are you in the argument to get the best solution possible? Right. And sometimes I find myself, even [00:30:00] today, it's like I'm arguing with this person. I'm not sure I even believe my argument, but, but, but the difference between me now and me then is it was completely uncontrolled.

[00:30:08] Right? I didn't know why I was doing it. I didn't know why I was reacting. Now I know why I was re I'm, I'm reacting and if I wanna argue with somebody, I'm making it a conscious choice to do it. That's where you get to, and it's hard to do, but the more conscious you are, and by the way, figuring all this stuff out, not figuring it out, but practicing it.

[00:30:25] You practice it, practice it, practice it. It's like building a muscle. It's like go into the gym, you get better and better at it. So now I can see anytime I'm coming from ego and it's not because I'm bragging about myself or bragging about what we're doing, that's not, I mean, that's an easy way to identify that, but it's more that you are identifying your own.

[00:30:43] With external factors, because here's the problem with ego. Once those external factors are gone, so let me give you an example. Even after I've worked on myself and worked on myself and worked on myself, I sold my company the hardest thing you say, and made a bunch of money, sold my company, made a bunch of money, you should be happy.

[00:30:59] Go away. [00:31:00] Okay. I was, I was worse off after I sold the company. Then before, I wasn't feeling as good because what, what fed my ego was having 250 employees having 45, 50 million in reoccurring revenue, having a business that was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That was my ego driving it because I was taught that that equals success.

[00:31:20] Even later in my career, even when I thought I had my ego under control, as soon as I sold it, it was. My 250 employees were gone. My big office was gone. I used to bring people here to San Francisco, and I have a beautiful conference room overlooking a beautiful river. And I'm looking at all this stuff right now because I'm in a similar office.

[00:31:38] And and, and, and people would come, big retailers and CEOs would come out all over the place just to come and visit us, right? And learn what we know, all gone. So then you're left with a certain emptiness. So here's the deal is that as you're progressing forward, if you're building something, it can be gone in a second.

[00:31:56] Anybody that's had a relationship and that relationship is now no longer, you have [00:32:00] a hole, right? And you're like, I just invested all this time, energy, money into building a relationship, and all of a sudden it's gone. You have this emptiness and so, so nothing is permanent. So if you control, if everything is controlled from ego is my point, then, then if it ever disappears, then you're feeling horrible about it.

[00:32:17] So you gotta wipe all that out. Realize when you're coming from a judgment and stop it, or try to stop yourself and say, you know what? Just acknowledge it. What's my motivat? I always say what's my motivation? Is my motivation to do good, to serve others to help the situation, or is my motivation to help me and me feel.

[00:32:35] You'll start to understand that as you start to play with ego, you gotta play with it. Read, read my section about ego or just watch the video on my website. That will get you started. And so I, I know I kind of wanna mention too, cause you kind of touched back a, a couple points earlier about, instead of chasing happiness, you got, you have to chase something that fulfills you and also brings you joy.

[00:32:54] Right. And a lot of people I always, at least me personally, the way I see it is if people that [00:33:00] chase happiness, I feel like that's very, very hedonistic cuz just like, you know that, well, it's impossible to chase happiness. Just so we're clear. It doesn't, you can't chase it Exactly. Work that way. It's, I, I, exactly, I agree entirely because I feel like happiness is so kind of similar to every other emotion.

[00:33:15] It comes and it goes right, but fulfillment, it's our destination. It's happiness is not, you're not supposed to be happy. I write in my book, you're not supposed to be happy a hundred percent of the time, but I wanna make sure I correct something slightly in that you don't chase fulfillment and joy or happiness.

[00:33:28] what you do is you practice 'em every day. Some days are a little better than others. You still work. You work on creating high vibrations, and you have the practices that are embedded in you, which, which thank God, your gen, zer generation understands you understand this better than any generation in history.

[00:33:43] You understand these concepts because you were brought up in an era that these were acceptable in my, when I was brought up. This is all like, you start talking about this stuff to people and they think they're, you're nuts, right? When I grew up, you'd be crazy. We talking about vibrations and energy in the [00:34:00] universe.

[00:34:00] What are you some kind of crazy dude right now, today we can talk about some spirituality and we can talk about energy work and things of that nature are meditation and it's completely acceptable where it wasn't. So embrace all of that and, and, and practicing it means you put it into your life. One of the greatest tools I have, I'll just communicate to working through ego or working through anything to practice happiness.

[00:34:21] Join fulfillment is journaling, journaling. Just keep a journal. I keep a journal. It's right here. Actually, I have it right out. It's always the same journal. For those of you that are watching on video it's from Amazon. They're 10 bucks. They're all, I have these same black journals with, the college rule paper and all of that.

[00:34:36] And I write down in the journal. Sometimes I'll write a paragraph, sometimes I'll write 10 pages. I don't journal every day, maybe once a week. Usually journal on planes. I fly a lot. So I usually journal on planes. That helps me get what's in my brain. And that's, that's all a, a mess out. And here's the, and you say, well, Ken, you know what?

[00:34:54] I have a good support system around me and I can, I can talk to people. Here's the, here's the problem, is [00:35:00] they're coming from a different perspective and a different lens. A a as in business. Lemme give you an example here. If you're off and you're starting a business and you're, and you're putting your idea out there and you're putting it out to your mom, your dad, your friends, and they're giving you a response, like, I don't get it.

[00:35:14] I don't think your idea's very good. That doesn't mean your ideas not good. It means you're taking it to the wrong target market. When you're getting feedback about your idea, and this, I'm gonna link this together in just a moment. When you're getting feedback about your idea, you gotta take the idea to the target market that would be interested in the idea.

[00:35:29] So your mom may not be your target market if you're doing something like a adventure sports, and she's like, yeah, that's nice, honey, I don't know that it's gonna work, right? You're like, why does she, she say it's gonna work. She's not the target market. The 20-something year old that wants to go and spend their, their disposable income on what you have could be brilliant.

[00:35:47] The same thing holds true about where you get your advice from. Everybody has an agenda. So what you're doing out there, and I see this all the time because I'm usually the people, people come do four advice and they're coming, they're coming and they're, you're ta You might be talking, you might be [00:36:00] getting advice about your life from the wrong people, meaning they're looking at their, everybody looks through life through their own lens.

[00:36:07] So before you take advice or get it or get advice from other people, look at what lens they're looking at life through if they're a victim. First of all, if they're a victim, they're probably not gonna be giving you very good advice if advice at all. Cuz victim Victimness is really a killer, right? Or if they have a lot of limiting beliefs, around entrepreneurship or around life in general, they're just not the right.

[00:36:27] You're getting advice because they're close to you. They may not be the right person to get advice. The journal gives you advice from you. So I'm not saying that you should only rely on a journal, but find those friends, find those people that are in alignment with you, that's who you get advice from. And that may not be your parents, that may not be your brother and sister.

[00:36:45] That may not be people that have been in your life for 20 years because they have a preconceived notion of you and they look at life through a different lens. , you've gotta have a life that's looked at. And sometimes that's helpful, by the way, but sometimes it can be very destructive. Does that make sense?

[00:36:59] No, no, it [00:37:00] makes a lot of sense. And okay. There's a, I forget, there was someone that said something along the lines of, if you're the only person in your brain, then you're, you're, you're, you're psycho or crazy. Something like that. Yeah. Okay. Like pretty much the, the out, a lot of this stuff I, that's journaling is about figuring things out for yourself.

[00:37:16] Yeah. And not necessarily taking a lot of external output, but input. But I am suggesting that you do get input. I'm just asking to make sure that you look at who's giving you that. Because they may have an agenda. Let's say it's your girlfriend or boyfriend and they want stability. They want you and the relationship and they want stableness.

[00:37:31] The last thing they want you to do is go out and start an entrepreneurial business if that's what they're looking for. So they're gonna talk you out of it because their lens. Stable and your lens is, I want to go for it and have a life where I'm living on the edge of my fingertips. That's what I call living life just out there, and I want to go for it and I'm gonna take risks and I'm gonna fail.

[00:37:49] Well, if you go to somebody that failure is a huge issue with, and you start talking to 'em about the different things you're doing that are high risk, they're just gonna talk you out of it. That doesn't mean that's just their [00:38:00]perspective, that's their life. Let them live their life. That's their opinion right now, I'm not saying don't take good advice.

[00:38:06] I always say, and when I give advice, I start off always by saying, . If my advice resonates with you, then take in what resonates. Take in what's in sync with you. Take in what clicks in your brain and throw out everything else I just said. So 80% of this podcast, if 95% of this podcast they throw out and say, this guy's a kook.

[00:38:25] This Ken guy don't ever have him back again. He's nutcase, but 5%. They actually listen to one little thing and they're like, that resonated. I, that was a silly thing. I'm never gonna have a 50 50 partner, cuz that guy said that one thing. Now I've said a lot more important things today, but that one thing they may grab onto, great, boom, I've did my job, I'm done.

[00:38:43] Right. That means take what resonates. Look at the lens that people are giving advice from. I think why people come to me a lot and take or get advice or wanna get advice. Cause I don't have an agenda. I've gotten rid of the agenda. Right? I don't have an agenda with you. So I'm gonna try to give the most pure advice possible [00:39:00] and I find that then people seek that out more.

[00:39:01] Anyway, that's just my experience. No, yeah, definitely. And kind, kind to finish what I was kind of saying is that I feel like. Kind of to combine what I was saying, what makes what you were saying is that you should get input from these other people. But like the, the quote I, I, I butchered it entirely, but pretty much it, it was pretty much about like how like you should be searching for information from different sources in terms of like, like credible, so like books, podcasts, things like that.

[00:39:26] Yes. Successful people. Like if you're the only person giving yourself advice, then you, you gotta go start reading some books and get, learn from other people. Absolutely. And then I feel like the great thing about journaling, I feel like journaling in my, at least the way I use it, it is more like a filtration system, right?

[00:39:42] Once you get all that, information and all that info blog that just, you, especially as young people, we suck things in like energy, like a sponge, right? And brand new information. You can, cause our brains are so much. More they're faster by the way, percent faster. You consume, you, you've been educated through [00:40:00] the educational system to consume information at a much higher rate.

[00:40:02] This is what the Gen Zers need to understand. And I coach some Gen Zers and I tell them, here's a couple of things you guys need to know. Sorry, I know I'm going up a little different, but you have to understand, you have some superpowers. You have a lot of superpowers. You ha you lack. So if you go to a, if you're 23 years old and you go to a VC and say, I want 10 million, they may not give it to you.

[00:40:20] They're gonna look at you and say, you're a baby. Right? You're young. I shouldn't say a baby, but you're young, right? Here's what you have over those VCs. Incredible energy, the ability to process information at a much higher rate than a 40 or 50 or 60 year old. It's just, it's the law of physics and things about today's.

[00:40:37] That they don't know. I don't know. I suck at social media. I try it, I do it. I have no, there's nobody who can beat a 22 year old that's been grew up on social media, which is part of where, and digital marketing, you guys get it. Power. That's part of your power. So it's when you go into do an investor pitch or you're looking to raise angel money, embrace your, [00:41:00] your Gen Zer.

[00:41:00] Don't be afraid of it. Embrace, I know things you don't know, you don't say that cuz that would be wrong. Mm-hmm. . But when you're talking to an investor, highlight the things that you do know. The energy and the ability to process information and analyzing analyzing that. The people that I work that are the gen, the mil, the gen Zers, excuse me they can do that.

[00:41:17] They can think at 10 times the rate that I can, that's a value bottle that. Yeah. Anyway, so yes, I'll kind wanna tag on a separate note, a lot of these things that we find that aren't value, right? Valuable and the things that we kind of grew up with, we don't know how to, you, actually realize that, hey, we have something that we, something a, a gold mine that we're sitting on and we actually can't count because all of your social network, your friends, all have the same skillsets, right?

[00:41:42] So, or similar skillsets. We all, you grew up on TikTok and, and and, and, and Instagram and, and you understand the medium, right? Yeah. I didn't, so I don't, I mean, I grew up when PCs were brand new and I had them, and that was, so I understood the computer world. It's the same thing now.

[00:41:59] So all I'm [00:42:00] saying is embrace that superpower because within your, with exactly what you said within your friend group, you're not special, but go right outside, take a 22 year old and stick 'em into a corporate environment and they're like, holy crap. What? It's a wonder kid, this kid like knows everything.

[00:42:14] I mean, what, what? This is great. And then take that kid, cuz I was that kid back in the day in my evolution. Mm-hmm. , I worked at newspapers, not just throwing newspapers. I worked inside of newspapers, the LA time, the San Chronicle and our local, more local newspaper. And I was kind of a whiz kid there.

[00:42:31] I was putting in computer systems when I was 22. I was managing hundreds and hundreds of people. It's like I'm 22. What the hell do I know? Right? Yeah. But I knew something that was very valuable to that company. Take that now, that was at that time because computers at the time, even personal computers were relatively new and they, they didn't understand the flexibility of them.

[00:42:48] And I did. My brain just clicked right in. And that's just what worked. Your computer, my generation, your computer is social media and digital marketing being an influencer, right? I, it drives me crazy. I can get like [00:43:00]10 followers, on my Instagram account. You guys like wake up in the morning and you have, a hundred thousand followers and you're like, Well, you don't even saying anything and you have a hundred thousand follow.

[00:43:09] Where does this come from? And I can put out really great information and try to educate people and they're like, yeah, no, yeah, no, no, I'm not following you. See, you have a power bottle that power and bottle the other powers that guy just gave you two. Find the other ones and discover the other superpowers.

[00:43:24] Go into those investors with confidence, not cockiness. Cockiness is ego. Go in with confidence that I do know some things and the things that I don't know you're gonna help me with and or I'm gonna find the rock, right help and I can take that a hundred or 200 or $300,000 from your million dollars from you and start my dream business because I can really make, you guys can have incredible impact in the world because what you're focused on, the environment, social issues, social causes that can still be rolled into a business are extremely valuable right now.

[00:43:52] So what you care about is also valuable. So in the world of business, you're gold. Just make sure you understand that. Yeah. [00:44:00] And so despite having all these gold mines that we're sitting on, right. That we're, we just kind of just grew up with that. We have at our, at our access. Most of us in entrepreneurship fail.

[00:44:10] So let's take a little bit of a spin. Why is that, why do most entrepreneurs fails? Right. Despite, being in a day and age where information is more accessible than ever, right? We're li we're living in the greatest transfer of wealth, right? That's ever existed in human history. And despite that, a lot of people never see themselves.

[00:44:29] Have, find any of the success they're looking for, and they end up either failing entirely or creating another job for themselves that pays them less and gives them more hours worked than the job that they were originally trying to escape. So why do most of entrepreneurs fail? Yeah. So 80% of all entrepreneurs fail in the first five years of the business.

[00:44:47] Okay, that's a bad statistic. Let's change that statistic right now. Let's make it, let's make it better. And what you, first thing, you need to always be learning. So you're always acquiring information. You don't know it all. You may be an expert or you are probably [00:45:00] an expert in your domain knowledge. The knowledge that you have that are bringing you into the business, because you're so passionate about it.

[00:45:05] Let's say you're, you make jewelry. I may making this up. You, you're probably a really good jewelry maker, and even if you're a mediocre jewelry maker, you're still better than I am and you still have a knowledge. So bring that knowledge out. Become a thought leader. So I don't mean just build a platform and be an influencer, that's not what I'm talking about.

[00:45:21] I know everybody wants to be an influence today, but, but build a. Build, put your knowledge out there and give it away free, freely and free, right? Because then that elevates you. And then the, there's also the reasons businesses fail is that in part, the business strategies are not alignment with one another.

[00:45:36] So that you've got a strategy that says, I'm gonna charge, I've got a high quality product. I'm gonna charge a lot. I'm gonna charge really less for it so I can get a lot of customers. Well, right there, that's, that's just the wrong strategy. It's just like, that doesn't make any sense. If you have the highest quality product, you're gonna charge a premium price for it.

[00:45:51] If you're offering a premium service, so and so, but there's a million of those, right? You just need to learn them. I have a site called entrepreneur now.com that teaches you all this stuff, right? [00:46:00] So tap into something like that or anything else. I don't care if you use my site. I've got a bunch of free stuff on my site as well.

[00:46:05] But tap into that. Then there's also the financial rigor that happens within a business. People don't, they ignore the entire financial. You have to build a financial plan and then every month of the execution of your business, you have to update it with all the new information that you have. You're like, well, I don't really want to do that.

[00:46:21] Well, you gotta do it and you gotta be present in the business and you gotta push away your ego. All of these things cloud up what you're doing. You can learn the strategy, you can learn the strategy, get a good mentor, listen to the mentor. That would help. I don't, coach, mentor, whatever but you kind of do need that.

[00:46:36] And a lot of your generation, the gen gen Zers, are open, absolutely open to mentorship, right? They like the mentorship as well. That's an another element that can make you more successful and not fail. But the, the, the true reason why businesses fail is cuz they don't, they don't follow in their financial plan.

[00:46:51] They run outta money. But also businesses that are growing fast can also fail because you need cash in order to grow. So what you did is you started growing and then all of a [00:47:00] sudden you built your infrastructure up a little bit more than you could handle. And things are going like this, and then all of a sudden it falls off a little bit and then you got this big infrastructure you can't support.

[00:47:08] That's a business fundamental. That's keeping your eye off the ball, not on the ball. So there's a lot of reasons why businesses fail. You make dumb mistakes you don't know. But here's what I wanna make sure you understand. It's okay to make. Here's the thing, don't get into analysis paralysis. There is no such thing as failure.

[00:47:24] Period. Full stop, end of conversation. Failure does not exist if you learn something from the failure. We know that, John, you've talked about that on your podcast. I'm sure the point is though, that one, you have to learn from the, the, the, the challenge that you had. But two, you have to understand that that's an entire learning process.

[00:47:43] You don't start a business and say it's gonna be perfect tomorrow. What you do is you start a business and you try something, or you start a business and you don't try something that's even a bigger problem. Yeah. You're not doing it. See, if you try something, you're gonna get feedback. That feedback is gonna then allow you to build something else, and then you're gonna kind of pivot.

[00:47:59] You're [00:48:00] gonna turn it around, you're gonna reshape it, you're gonna stumble on a different idea, and then all of a sudden it's gonna be. I love that. Okay, let me give you an example. Can I give you an example real quick? Cause she's in my life right now. I started an e-learning business two years ago. I have an e-learning content business that I've had for four years, four or five years now.

[00:48:15] It's successful, it's great. Everything's wonderful. I was bored with that. I wanted to move on. Not bored, but so I started an e-learning software company and it was for e-learning software for enterprise class type people, sales and marketing. And about a month ago, I stumbled on an idea and I'm like, e-learning, e-learning social media, e-learning, not e-learning about social media.

[00:48:33] So it's combining e-learning and social media, which I'm now executing on. I would've never come to that idea, and I won't go into the great idea yet because it's new and, and, and, and, and we're executing it right now. And I don't wanna be copied. But the point is, is that I built a platform that once I looked at what I built, I, I looked at uses for it afterwards and I said, oh my God.

[00:48:52] I went, oh shit. Am I allowed to say that on your Yeah, no worries, no worries. Yeah. Holy crap. What I just found was my big idea. , [00:49:00] I was operating on a hundred million dollar idea. I understand how to run businesses in the a hundred million dollar range, right of, of, of value or $200 million range. I've done that before.

[00:49:10] What I didn't realize was after I looked at what I had, I started putting a couple of things together and I went, holy crap. I'm gonna, I can change the business model slightly. I'm gonna do my enterprise business, but I can change the business model slightly. Offer influencers, membership oriented e-learning sites that can be brought up in 30 seconds or 30 seconds, 30 minutes or less, and they, and free of charge, absolutely free of charge.

[00:49:33] And I can bring in their social network that will allow them to expand. Okay? The point is, is that I would've never gotten to that idea. That's a unicorn billion dollar idea versus my little idea, which was my enterprise class software company that I could still make successful and will. But then, so what one thing led to another, led to another, led to another, and then I start to pivot around and all of a sudden the world opened up.

[00:49:55] And this idea is really good and in high demand, and I can put it out there in literally [00:50:00] a month because I already built, I spent two years building the infrastructure for it and didn't realize it until I had the infrastructure and it kind dawn on me one day, holy crap, all I need to do is this, this, and this.

[00:50:09] That's like three weeks of work. And I can literally put this out to influencers, free of charge membership sites where they're making a ton of dough and I'm taking a little percentage to give them the software and everybody's happy. That's a billion dollar idea right now. Again, don't, listeners don't go out there and steal it.

[00:50:26] No, I'm kidding. . No, please do and do it better than I, I would be I have a little headstart because I already built a platform and it took two years to do it. Can't do this overnight. Right. It's complex. , that's when, so take whatever your idea is and look at how it's gonna, so there is no such thing as failure.

[00:50:41] The failure is then you act upon the failure and you go, oh, okay, I'm gonna, that's feedback. Failure is feedback, not failure. It's feedback that you can take. That's knowledge that you can then twist, turn, pivot, you adjust. That's what you're doing in business anyway. That is business, by the way. Business is pivoting, business is [00:51:00]adjusting.

[00:51:00] That's what a smart business person does. That's why when you see these very large companies, give you an example. I'll use a really silly one, GM, because it's the first one I can think of if, and that's a, it's a big ugly company nobody likes. Okay? Right. If they hadn't pivoted into EVs electric vehicles and they did it too late, right?

[00:51:18] Because Tesla's eaten their lunch. They're the cool company. Nobody wants to buy a GM electric car, especially if you're a millennial. I mean, ew. Gross, right? Although, I will say it's actually not that gross. They have really good cars. Even though it's gm, but, but you still wanna buy a cool Tesla, right? So that, my, my point is, is that they obviously missed the market.

[00:51:35] They should have been leading the market. They didn't, bigger companies get old and tired. That's why entrepreneurs exist. Because they can come in, sneak through the crevices, they can twist and turn and be flexible. And all of a sudden, literally in a week something else is, you can, you can, you can make something and then you, you hit it and then boom, you ride the wave.

[00:51:52] That's entrepreneurship, right? A big company can't do that. A medium size company can't move. I ran a medium size company. We can't move that [00:52:00] fast. We can't pivot, we can't turn, cuz we have customers and we have employees, and we have stakeholders and investors and all that. You can't turn. But when you're an entrepreneur and you're very, you're very.

[00:52:11] This is how you take advantage of the market. Does that help? No, that helps a lot. And that helps a, a ton actually between, because a lot of people they think, oh, it doesn't work out. They get stumped and well maybe not cut out for me, but instead of taking that feedback, as you said, re re shifting your mindset around the thought of failure, right.

[00:52:29] Changing the effort from failure to feedback actually. And it, I kind of, it, it goes kind of with align with something I learned in I went to summit back in June and it was pretty much saying how, kind of all sums what you said earlier in this podcast actually about, learning, growing into developing and each feedback, moment that we can, I think a failure is only a failure if you take nothing from it, right?

[00:52:51] That's time wasted. That's definitely true. But if you take something from it, which you could take something from everything, right? Then you'll be able to learn where can I p, where can I prove so that [00:53:00] you can move forward? And so you have to fail to create something new. Look at, look at what you're doing when you start a business.

[00:53:05] You're doing something you've never done before. Then you bring in other people that you've either never worked with before or you might have worked with before that have never done this before either. Even if they've done around it, they haven't done it. Right. I, I have a chief technology officer who's frigging brilliant, but he's never built anything in the e-learning space before.

[00:53:21] Mm-hmm. , I knew the e-learning space. He knew technology. In a year and a half, we built our very cool big ass platform. The point is, is that we had our mistakes and we underestimated this and that. By and large, the platform is really kick ass good. The point is though, that even with that, we were doing things we didn't under that, I'm sorry, we were doing things we'd never done before.

[00:53:40] Then add in other variables, like the economy's different. We have a recession, we don't have a recession, we have a covid, we don't have covid. It's like, oh my God. And so you think you're gonna operate perfectly in an environment that is constantly changing in an area, in a world that you've never done before.

[00:53:54] You may be an expert in, in your domain knowledge, but you may not be an expert in running a business with your [00:54:00] domain knowledge at this moment in time. So don't hold yourself to a standard that says, I can't fail. Because if you say you can't fail, you will never move forward. You will stop yourself. You will block yourself, and your business will be little itty bitty, teeny tiny business.

[00:54:13] That's okay. By the way, I fully support little itty bitty, teeny tiny businesses. Maybe you'll be a solopreneur. Solopreneurs are great, and by the way, that's a great lifestyle business, but you'll never, you'll never make a ton of. Being a solopreneur, it's really hard, especially if you're a services solopreneur.

[00:54:30] Here's why you have a limited resource. What's your limited resource? You . Exactly. So, and you can, you literally will cap out maybe four or $500,000 if you're a superstar, super influencer, maybe seven, $800,000. Here's the problem, can you sell that business? No, it's not sellable. Period. Now, if you start to build some employees and you got a big employee base and you're a services based company, yeah, you can get one x of revenue.

[00:54:54] I want you to get 20 x of revenue on a product company, like a a mobile app or a software company or a healthcare company, [00:55:00] 20 x of revenue. So I can spend the same time doing exactly the same work, starting a service business and or I can do the same thing, starting a product oriented business that has a different multiple and just literally do the exact same thing for 10 years.

[00:55:14] This person gets a million dollars, this person might get $20 million. Same exact thing, except one's doing a service business and one's doing a product business because it's more valuable. These are the things you need to look at, right? These are the things you need to learn. I'm not saying don't do a service business, just understand the reality of when you go into it, right?

[00:55:31] So some of these things can hold you. I so that make the original point, some of the things can hold you back. And I'm just saying that, that don't let that fear hold you back because at that expansion, that's how you expand, right? That's how you expand is overcoming that fear, not stopping yourself.

[00:55:45] Definitely. Definitely. All this, all this well as well. Definitely. Ken, Ken, you draft a lot of great advice throughout this entire podcast. Where could people find out more about you? Where could we connect with you if we wanted to get more information, just like what we were talking about today?

[00:55:58] Absolutely. Sure. Absolutely. A [00:56:00] couple things. One, ken burke.com has my book of course, that's on amazon.com. It's called Prosper five Prosper, five Steps to Thriving in Business and in. A lot of stuff we talked about today is actually in the book. Didn't know where this podcast will go. It went in part a lot of that stuff was in the book, which was great.

[00:56:14] But we also talked a lot about entrepreneurialism and I have a site dedicated entrepreneurs called entrepreneur now.com, and lots of free information on there, some courses and other things that are paid for as well. Go to it and take everything that you can get out of it and rock and roll with it.

[00:56:28] All righty. And now it's time for our final four questions on lightning round to end every episode of my favorite segment. What is the most impactful lesson that you've learned in life? Whew. That's a big one. Most impactful lesson is probably, for me, it was judgments and managing my ego. That was for me, that was a big, that was a big issue that now I'm just so free, right?

[00:56:46] And, and, and, and, and practicing happiness, joy, fulfillment. I didn't realize that you actually have to practice it every day. That was a huge lesson for me. Oh, oh, I'm supposed to practice it. Okay, got it. What is the most admirable trait that you could find in a [00:57:00] person? Trust. I think you know that because that also stops a lot of activity.

[00:57:04] For entrepreneurism. You gotta trust people. So, being able to trust somebody, I, integrity is wildly important for me. So don't put out a all the scams that are out there. And I gotta tell you, I always say, one or two in 10 marketing programs work. And the reason it is, everybody's got a marketing program, they wanna sell you in the digital space, right?

[00:57:19] Digital marketing, I gotta tell you, nine outta 10 don't work. Sometimes it's one out of a hundred works, right? So have integrity in the business know what you're delivering. You're delivering more than you're like, well, that, that's, that's, you're delivering more than somebody would expect, exceed expectations.

[00:57:37] And in today's world, unfortunately, we're so quick to try to grow and develop and get what we can. We forget about that because I will tell you, you can get a customer and you can lose a customer just as. and I went through that period of time with my business where we were getting customers left and right, and we were losing customers left and right, and that didn't feel very good, but we had a lot of integrity.

[00:57:56] We fixed those operational problems and our customers stayed with us for [00:58:00] 20, 20, 20 plus years. We had customers for 20 plus years. It never happens in technology, but it happened with us. Integrity will sell a lot. If you had to change someone's life of one book, which book would you recommend? Whew.

[00:58:15] Good question. I mean, think and Grow Rich is, is an easy one to grab. Anything written by Wayne Dyer is, is is life changing as well for me anyway, it was, Wayne Dyer was an incredible leader. And a lot of what we talked about came from Wayne as well. Dr. Wayne Dyer, any of his books, I can't give you one.

[00:58:30] But the other one would be Think and Grow Rich certainly is the predecessor to a lot of that belief and getting your psychology right, it's all up here. So remember, it's the mindset. It's the mindset that will make you successful or not. . And then what is the legacy that you're trying to leap behind?

[00:58:46] Yeah, and I'm struggling with that right now. When I say struggling with it, I'm, I'm working on it, I'm figuring it out, and it's getting really good information and education out to people so they can live better lives. So if, if I have one thing to [00:59:00] give it would be I took everything in that I've learned over the last 30 years or what have you, and I, and I've tried to process on it in such a way where I can then spit it back out into things that people can understand.

[00:59:11] So that, that, and, and, and if they make just one distinction, look at life through a slightly different lens than they are now, that's gonna lead them to something that they would call success, not what I would call success. They would call success, then I've achieved my goal. That is all for today's episode.

[00:59:28] Thank you guys so much for tuning in and supporting. As always, you guys are amazing. If you guys love this episode and found it valuable, you wanna hear another entrepreneur guy that loves helping other entrepreneurs, then make sure to go check out episode 40, how to Explode Your Income and Network Like a Boss or Chris Chapman.

[00:59:45] That was an amazing episode, so go make sure to check that out, especially if you found this episode to be valuable. Again, I'm your host, John Mendez, and I'll see you guys in the next episode.[01:00:00]