The Power of Positivity: Encouragement in Business with Keenan Hart

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I realized that there was a huge shortage of mental and behavioral health providers

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_01]: here in the state of Nevada.

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I started trying to figure out how we could use that video connectivity

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_01]: to be able to increase access to mental health services.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back folks!

[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_00]: It's about payroll.

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_00]: We have another guest before us this week.

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_00]: My man Keenan Hart, not Keenan Hart, don't get crazy.

[00:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: My man Keenan Hart.

[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_00]: But before we get into that.

[00:00:29] [SPEAKER_00]: How you doing, what's good, man?

[00:00:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Man, it's another day that she is almost done as almost a holiday season.

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_02]: He said this year is almost done!

[00:00:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And then we're gonna look up and show between 25 and 1.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: No, no doubt.

[00:00:43] [SPEAKER_00]: It's definitely...

[00:00:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh god, last episode he's like, you know, it's going by so fast.

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly the year is definitely even more expensive.

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_00]: You can get a message.

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_02]: It's fast, huh?

[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's right.

[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_00]: That's just where it's just.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm good, man.

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm good.

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm good.

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man.

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm good.

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_00]: That was funny.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, laugh with that.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So let's get into the pay news, man.

[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_02]: So the first thing I wanted to shout out was the fact

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_02]: that there's talks of the interest rate going down.

[00:01:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Even though it will be like a quarter of a percentage.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Sure, something like that.

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_02]: It still...

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a down.

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Help maybe give all of us some relief and some aspects.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's a good thing.

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I find it not a cool by the zebra.com.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It was sort of about a mental health statistics, right?

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And as of July, 2024 really reshitted stuff like that.

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_02]: So just some very interesting stuff on there that's being...

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_02]: I love that.

[00:01:43] [SPEAKER_02]: So look, it says almost had little Americans experience and an episode of mental illness in their lives.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, 50% of us are going to have to experience that.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And estimated 26% of Americans age 18 older suffered from diagnosable mental disorder.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's a one and four, right?

[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_02]: One and four Americans are it.

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_02]: And so it says women experience depression at a rate roughly twice three of men.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_02]: So for whatever reason, women are feeling more pressure, feeling more depression.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_02]: It's stuff like that.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a lot of whole bunch of different things in here.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it says mental illnesses can start showing symptoms.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_02]: People can start showing symptoms at about age of 14.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_02]: So this happened even earlier in our kids lives and our families lives and stuff like that.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_02]: So no these things happen, right?

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_02]: This is a serious thing.

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Yep.

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a good one.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I like it.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not a joke, man.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Mine is...

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I found an article from Forbes.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_00]: It was like five ways to boost employee happiness.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And I just, you guys can check it out and look it up and whatnot.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_00]: But the call out is like, it's almost laughable because they said number five was happiness

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: officer.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was just like...

[00:03:09] I mean...

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I immediately think of my age or leadership.

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And she's always having us laughin' and like, wasn't me able to...

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_00]: She said it.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, you can always expect comedy with me and whatnot.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Who is a comic?

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_00]: So I thought about her immediately.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't know.

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_00]: But then I immediately thought about my CEO, right?

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And being like, yeah, let's hire a chief-baby.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_00]: He'd be like, what?

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, there's no art here.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_00]: They're not making money on that.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Don't just tell them they're the business.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why is that they did a survey and employee happiness was down 5%

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_00]: year over year.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, we all know why, right?

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Rates and inflation is going up constantly.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Prices things cost more and we make less and we get incremental raises.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it is what it is.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_00]: But like for my call out to folks is, look, if you want more,

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_00]: you gotta do more and doesn't necessarily mean working.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It could be just making smarter investments and doing things with your money.

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we don't have to work more.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_00]: But you can put your thought.

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Think about 50 cents.

[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_00]: He's always like, you gotta put your dollars to work.

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_00]: When you're sleeping, you gotta be making money.

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And look, I think there's this fascination too.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_02]: This is just my opinion.

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_02]: There's any stats.

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of things.

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_02]: But I think there's a fascination with wanting to have that quick breakthrough.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Get that fast money or get that.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_02]: That fantasy life.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm a window parable or window libraries.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I get that job out that six figure job right at a school or my son and

[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_02]: vacation, whatever it is.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And like, right?

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_02]: It's the perfect environment.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_02]: This perfect, like, is that perfectionism that I think a lot of us are chasing.

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_02]: But in that's a dream, right?

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the instant satisfaction.

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_00]: More and more of a thing with the age we live in because everything is on your phone.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And everything, I think about the comedian who was like, Amazon, we want to quick.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Now give it to me before I even order it.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, if you want to think so quickly, that there's no, and that's it.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the why.

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_00]: But the, so people, yeah, people are going to be, you know, it makes sense that folks

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_00]: are upset year over year and employee.

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_00]: You gotta do more for yourself though.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_00]: You cannot, you know, you cannot depend on your partner or your job for had like,

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_00]: the things around you cannot be your happiness.

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, drive like, you're not going to be instantly happy because, oh, my gosh, my job

[00:05:43] [SPEAKER_00]: is great or my gosh, my partner is great.

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_00]: No, like, you have to create your own happiness and I understand it more now as I'm older,

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_00]: but reading this stuff for years, but any who, before we get into a keen and man, let's

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: pay the bills.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And shout out to time, try go.

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Time track goal has introduced an innovative new feature designed to simplify time

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_00]: tracking for both exempt and non-exempt employees.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_00]: This feature aligns with the recent changes in the Fair Labor Standards Act

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_00]: for salary employees.

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Bi automatically calculating standard 40 hour work weeks in accurately,

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_02]: determining overtime when necessary, time track go ensures precise employee time

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_02]: while maintaining accurate ptl balances.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Additionally, the system can identify instances where non-exempt employees may not

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_02]: have reached the 40 hour threshold.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_02]: To learn more, please contact Tantraek Go at 808-321-9922 or visit www.tantraekgo.com.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_02]: That is, t i m e t r a k go dot com.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's go.

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And then we're going to get right into it, man.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_00]: We have a great guest for you today.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: His name is Keenan Hart.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_00]: He started his first company back in 2014 with the mission to increase access to health care in

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Nevada.

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_00]: What began as a quest to bridge the communication gap between health care providers and patients

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_00]: has evolved into a thriving tech company powered by the simplicity of SMS.

[00:07:30] [SPEAKER_00]: From generating over 6 million in revenue to having over 8 million SMS

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_00]: current conversations, Keenan's journey is a testament to the power of keeping communication simple.

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_00]: We explore how his company through services like Francis, Connect and AI-driven Francis,

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_00]: AI, continue to revolutionize the way business engage with their customers.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Join us as Keenan shares his experience, his lessons learned, and the hustle behind building a company

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_00]: that's making a real impact in the world.

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get started and welcome my man Keenan Hart.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate you having me here, man.

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_00]: This is gonna be a blast.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Heck yeah, man.

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Like you're feeling.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_00]: You haven't met my partner in crime, Walter, Walter Keenan, Keenan, I have me on his

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_00]: show when I was probably happy and honored to be a guest in whatnot.

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, man, we were looking forward to having you on, bro.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Walter, I feel like I've met you before, man.

[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I've heard so many great things about you.

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I've heard of the origin story of what you guys have been doing, man.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_01]: It's still good to be in the same virtual room as you, man.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Likewise, like Brian said he had a great time on your show.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_02]: He raved about it.

[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_02]: It was excited to get you on the show.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm excited.

[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Pleasure meeting you Keenan, man.

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited to hear your story.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm an open bookman.

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm really excited to be able to dive in with wherever you guys want to chat about today.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So let's get after it.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's get into it, man.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to start off by kind of exploring just a little bit of, I know we have a framework

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm definitely want to follow that.

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_00]: But just tell us a little bit about you and what Francis is and then we can dig in.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think it's really important to kind of start where it all started for me.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I've recognized as I've got a little bit older is that I've been

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_01]: able to take advantage of things that the men in my family lineage before me never even could

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_01]: imagine what was possible.

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, my first name is Franklin.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I go by Keenan, my middle name.

[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm named after my great grandfather Franklin who was a sharecropper from Arkansas.

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, one of the things that I wish I would have been able to explore more of was the sacrifices

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_01]: that he went through just to put his family in a position to live a healthy and safe life.

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Fast forward to my grandfather, guy named Harzley was put on a train at the age of seven years old

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_01]: with his three younger siblings in Arkansas and said, go meet your uncle in Washington State.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Here's the equivalent to a hundred bucks.

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Give it to my great aunt.

[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_01]: She took 50 of that 100.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Put the kids on a train and said, follow the route all the way through California up to Washington

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_01]: ran out of money halfway there had a big bar when steel to be able to make it all the way to

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Washington State at the age of seven showed up in Washington after going through that long journey

[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_01]: across the country and had to find his uncle ended up settling in an agricultural town called

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Washington or Yakama Washington where my father was born.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_01]: My mother was also born.

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_01]: My father was an entrepreneur who started up a whole bunch of different businesses,

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_01]: started in the banking space and really instilled an entrepreneurial spirit in me.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Now, when I was graduating from college, I was looking around. I was working a dead end job

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_01]: in the back of a warehouse moving around furniture office furniture cubicles, chairs, desks,

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_01]: big conference rooms. And I looked around one day as I was getting my check and a guy came up to me

[00:11:01] [SPEAKER_01]: named Dion and said, hey man, if you just hold on for another year, you're going to be eligible

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_01]: to get a raise and you'll start making good money like the rest of us. And in that moment,

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I realized that I was going to have to figure out a different path in life because the trajectory

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_01]: that I was on was going to mean I was going to end up in the back of a warehouse at the age of 40 just

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_01]: like my man Dion here talking to some other young kid who's just coming in for a summer job or an

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_01]: internship. I went home that day. I engaged with my dad. I said, hey, man, I want to be an entrepreneur

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_01]: just like you and he said, what do you want to do? And so we sat down across from a table for

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_01]: each other. Literally one on one and we started figuring out what type of business do you want to build?

[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And so in 2014 as right around when this started, I had discovered just by chance a bill that was

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_01]: passed in the state of Nevada that said, you could have a virtual interaction with your doctor

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_01]: and that doctor could be paid as if that happened in person. And so me and my pop started figuring

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_01]: out how do we make this bill into something real? When out we found some interesting technology that

[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_01]: basically was called a smart presence device that a doctor could walk around or control a

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_01]: movable computer through an environment like a hospital. And I went out for years trying to figure

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_01]: out how is going to sell this technology to have a doctor show up on a screen, have them talk

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_01]: to a patient and have a reimbursed as if it happened in person. For years, everybody told me no.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_01]: In 2017, I was having a buy chance conversation with a therapist that my family was a friend of

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_01]: and somebody walked through the front door at his office. And she said, I'm so sorry but it took me

[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_01]: five hours to get here today as to my normal three and a half. And naturally I looked at her and said,

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_01]: what took so long? She said, well, I had to drive here like I do every other Tuesday for my appointment,

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_01]: but there was a truck rolled over on the freeway. And this is the only way that I can get access

[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_01]: to my medication because Dr. AJ, the therapist is the only professional who I have access to.

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And at that moment, I realized that there was a huge shortage of mental and behavioral health

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_01]: providers here in the state of Nevada. And so I started trying to figure out how we could use

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_01]: that video connectivity to be able to increase access to mental health services. And so that was

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_01]: how I started my first company back in the day, which was trying to increase access to mental health

[00:13:23] [SPEAKER_01]: services via video chat and other things like text messages. And fast forward to the pandemic,

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_01]: our business was doing a lot better. And I still went out to my partners and asked a question,

[00:13:35] [SPEAKER_01]: what do you really struggling with? And they said, although people have access to virtual

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_01]: assessments and virtual connectivity to their therapist or counselor, we still have a lot of

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_01]: our staff members who are struggling in everyday scenarios. And so I started thinking, what can I create

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_01]: that would give a boost of encouragement, support or a just a reminder of what a great job

[00:13:57] [SPEAKER_01]: somebody's doing in the real world if they don't want to talk to a therapist or a counselor.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So I started doing some research and I went out and I found this amazing program

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_01]: called caring contacts of the University of Washington. In 2018, the University of Washington

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_01]: started using text messages as a way to send a reminder of encouragement, a positivity,

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_01]: or just something that was a reminder of a great job that you were doing, but they were using it

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_01]: for suicide prevention. And I'll let you back up a little bit. In World War II, there was a

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_01]: guy named Jerome Mado who was a soldier deployed overseas like thousands of other Americans.

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And something unique about Jerome is he had an anonymous pen pal who wrote in letters of

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_01]: encouragement. Hey, Jerome, we just want you to let you know somebody's thinking about you.

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Goes to a new station, new letters will be inherited out, hey, Jerome, we hope you come back home safe.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_01]: This went on. He came back from war and was so inspired by those little handwritten letters

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_01]: of encouragement that he got from somebody he didn't even know that he went into the field of psychiatry.

[00:14:58] [SPEAKER_01]: What he did is he helped his nurses when patients were discharged from his inpatient hospital

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_01]: dealing with feelings of suicide ideation. He would have them write letters of encouragement

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_01]: and support and positivity to them. Years later, they went back and found that not a single person

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_01]: died by suicide who received those little handwritten letters from those nurses.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Flash forward to 2018, University of Washington said the modern day handwritten letter is a text message.

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Yep. Now we're not just when I started thinking about how I was going to support my partners,

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_01]: it wasn't just suicide ideation. It wasn't just the depressive episodes, but it was feelings

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_01]: of stress, feelings of inferiority, feelings of anxiety. And the thing that I recognize is that

[00:15:41] [SPEAKER_01]: nobody that I am around on a daily basis often has somebody who's just going to tap him on the

[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_01]: soldier. There's all the shoulder and say hey man, you're doing a great job. Keep going. Remember,

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_01]: you're a human being not a human doing. How can you time our fine time today to simply just be?

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And those are the type of reminders that turned into Francis and we get paid to basically

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_01]: spread positivity and encouragement in the form of text messages to as many people as we possibly

[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_01]: can. And that's been kind of my entrepreneurial journey to wrap it back to my great grandfather,

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_01]: one thing I recognize is that the men in my lineage that came before me

[00:16:19] [SPEAKER_01]: overcame such hardship when it came to sacrificing their time and their work

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_01]: and the effort that they put in every day. But one of the last obstacles that kept us from truly

[00:16:29] [SPEAKER_01]: being free was the ability to have conversations about our mental health. It was to take off those

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_01]: invisible chains and invisible shackles about the things that limiting beliefs that we believed in.

[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And so one of my missions is to spread more awareness around mental health, how we can use

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_01]: things like text messages to give a reminder of encouragement that more people need in the world today.

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Then that is how we're proud for cleaning. Thank you for sharing that with us, your story,

[00:16:56] [SPEAKER_02]: your lineage and the fact that you're doing this to help people not a lot of people are doing that.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_02]: You're doing something that you love to do, which is helping people and it's also something that's

[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_02]: able to make a living off of. So I just want to just extend my thanks and appreciation for

[00:17:11] [SPEAKER_02]: you doing that because a lot more people could be doing this. I'm glad that you're prior near in that

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_01]: word. Well, it really means a lot, man. I really appreciate the encouragement. I think we could do a

[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_01]: lot better by as men, honestly, being willing to encourage each other a little bit more.

[00:17:28] [SPEAKER_01]: What's not exactly part of the male persona, right? I grew up in athlete, played football,

[00:17:33] [SPEAKER_01]: basketball, baseball. I was around someone the most influential men in my life and they never really

[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_01]: talked about the feelings of inadequacy that we all feel, the pressure, the stress. And we all think

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_01]: that we are stronger alone rather than stronger together. So that's why I love being able to have

[00:17:48] [SPEAKER_01]: podcasts and hop on a conversation like this with you guys because when we share our own story,

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_01]: it's very easy for other people to find themselves inside of it. You know, first show, man.

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the things that's really special about thing. Me and Walt because we like,

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_00]: but we always sound in sharp sharpens iron. Iron sharpens iron. We always help many each other out through

[00:18:09] [SPEAKER_00]: difficult days, things like that. Send it to each other and know like, yo hang in there,

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00]: blah blah blah blah. And it makes a difference. And Kenan, would you mind it? I was blessed with a

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_00]: subscription from Francis. Would you mind if I shared my post like my text message from today?

[00:18:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, brother. This is an example of Francis and so Kenan I was on Kenan show and I mean,

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah, on his podcast and through our conversation he was moved to bless me and my daughter

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_00]: would have subscription to Francis. And I gotta tell you like, I'll reach out, I'll ask my daughter

[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_00]: every now hey, you still get the subscription. She's like, yeah, she's like, I'm not gonna lie.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_00]: It really hits. It really like makes my day some days and it's on time. So today's is,

[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_00]: if you're for me anyway, if you're constantly thinking about what you don't have,

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_00]: you'll see all that is lacking. If you're thinking about all that you are grateful for,

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_00]: you will see the abundance and gifts. What are you grateful for today?

[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a little and I read it every day and I'd be like, oh man, wow, like, it's so on time.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you grew up in the church, but like I've had my time of going to church and

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_00]: things like that. And like when you actually trying to read and read the Bible,

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_00]: read the word, you find randomly find the word that's on time. And you're like, wow,

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_00]: that message was on time from today. And that's how I feel like it's like church for me

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_00]: who goes text messages and it's super helpful man. And I appreciate that. And yeah, still still

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_00]: looking to help you expand on that. And I like when you hit me up for the show, I was like,

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah, man. Like, oh, it was so happy to have you on. But so now let's build on that, right? So

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_00]: you talked a lot about the entrepreneur piece and now tell us a little bit about

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_00]: the evolving landscape of leadership, the fast pace, the high-growth settings, like startups

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_00]: and enterprise usually have, right? What's your experience building the teams, leading the teams?

[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_00]: How have you done that? What's that experience been like for you? Building a tech company really,

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the experience has been it's been an ever-evolving process because the one thing that

[00:20:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I have found out is that entrepreneurship often acts as a mirror. Right? When we find,

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_01]: we can look ourselves honestly in the face. We see some of the things that we're inadequate at.

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the biggest skill sets that you have to be able to build today is leadership. Now,

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_01]: one of the core values that I was growing up on or I was brought up on was my mom would always say,

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_01]: a leader, not a follower. And so one of the things that I think we have a unique opportunity to do

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_01]: is start instilling better values in our lives that act as a north star that can lead us towards

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_01]: the things that we're trying to accomplish. And when I think about building a team, we have

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_01]: values like ultimate accountability. Now, ultimate accountability plays into the role of saying,

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_01]: you're not just accountable for the group here but furthermore, you're accountable for yourself.

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And when you're ultimately accountable for yourself, everybody else around you seems to be taken

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_01]: care of. I know, yeah, Walter, do you have kids? Oh yeah. Okay. So I know that our man here has kids.

[00:21:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that when he is accountable for himself, that he is accountable for everybody else around him.

[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's easy to recognize and we're not living up to be 100% of our best self because

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_01]: everybody else around you kind of feels it, right? And one of the things that I constantly focus on

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_01]: is how can we be ultimately accountable towards what we know is right? And so when I'm trying

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_01]: to think about building a team, I think there's a unique opportunity in 2022. The surgeon general

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_01]: came on to a national television broadcast and said the biggest threat to the American society today

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_01]: is not another viral outbreak in a pandemic, but rather an epidemic of isolation and loneliness.

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And over the years, we've seen a lot of people who have started to tell this story, if you

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_01]: will, about how work is bad. But I have a theory because I grew up into Troy. And when I grew

[00:22:17] [SPEAKER_01]: up into Troy, I grew up in a community of people who looked forward to working for an organization

[00:22:22] [SPEAKER_01]: like Ford or General Motors. The culture of our community was if you can graduate from high school

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_01]: and if you're lucky enough to get a job, you can go work for one of those factories. One of

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_01]: those organizations, you make $144 an hour. You'll have amazing benefits and a pension that you'll be

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_01]: able to take care of your family for the rest of time. Now me being born in 1990, my first experience,

[00:22:47] [SPEAKER_01]: really that I can remember was 9-11 and then the Great Depression in 2008 when everybody left

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_01]: our communities. So there's a lot of psychologically unsafe experiences that we've had that are

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_01]: tied to work. And so when I look around today, I continue to see the things in the media like Amazon

[00:23:05] [SPEAKER_01]: 12,000 jobs cut, Google 10,000 and we're constantly exposed to all of these elements of

[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_01]: psychologically unsafe experiences. I think because we are so isolated in our personal and our own

[00:23:20] [SPEAKER_01]: individual social lives, that there is a unique opportunity for businesses to play as that safe place,

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_01]: as that culture, as that family if you will, that people want to be a part of for that connection

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_01]: that sense of safety wanting to be protected. And so when I think about building a business,

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not trying to just make money, but I'm trying to create a culture that people want to be a

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_01]: part of because they know that they are seen, they are heard, they are validated and more importantly

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_01]: they are valued for the work that we are doing together. And when you think about getting people

[00:23:56] [SPEAKER_01]: to buy into something and give their time, their life, their waking hours, you have to be able to

[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_01]: paint a vision so big that other people can find themselves inside that vision. And so when I think

[00:24:08] [SPEAKER_01]: about being a leader, it's not just doing right by yourself, but it's doing right by the people

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_01]: who you lead. Right when I think about the Bible as a great example man, talking about being a

[00:24:18] [SPEAKER_01]: shepherd, protecting your flock, somebody has to have the level of accountability and awareness

[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_01]: to recognize that everybody's not going to be their best every day, but if you can create

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_01]: an environment where people feel safe, that's where I feel like true leadership is today. And I

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_01]: think we're yearning for that deep down our souls more so than every any other time in history

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_00]: to be very transparent with you. Wow. Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Yes. Yes. Very

[00:24:46] [SPEAKER_02]: hard to relate it. There were resonates with us and I want to ask you about the mindset

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_02]: that goes into into this entrepreneurial role in this leadership role that you're talking about

[00:25:00] [SPEAKER_01]: and how you can continue to grow in the future. Well, I'll be honest with you guys. When I came home

[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_01]: at the young age of I think it was six or seven years old, I was leaving second grade and I said

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_01]: my mom, mom, how much longer do I have to do this whole school thing for? And she laughed at me

[00:25:20] [SPEAKER_01]: and said, man, you got a long way to go. So just stick with it. I was never a good student.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I was never into the education process. I hated school. It was literally one of my worst

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_01]: enemies. It wasn't for me. I didn't learn the same way everybody else learned. I always struggled.

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I had bad reading comprehension. I was never good on tests. I was getting seasoned these my entire

[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_01]: academic career. But I did make the honor role of my last senior semester in high school and

[00:25:47] [SPEAKER_01]: that was a great experience for my family. But when I started thinking about the things that I wanted

[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_01]: to accomplish in life, I started thinking about the skills that I needed to develop. Right? Being able

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_01]: to have tenacity to stick things through consistency. Thinking about all these things that were

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_01]: going to help me become a better entrepreneur and I realized that after school was done,

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_01]: that's when the real learning started. So I fell in love with personal development,

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_01]: reading books like atomic habits by James Clear, learning about how small habits if you stack

[00:26:19] [SPEAKER_01]: them over time can build into something great. And I had a mentor say something to me when I got

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_01]: out of college really because I was an athlete my entire life and I always dreamed about going pro and

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_01]: baseball. But I went to a school in South Carolina called Coastal Carolina, then Conway South

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Carolina Routes had a mortal beach played baseball there and ended up getting hurt,

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_01]: red shirting and then honestly falling out of love with the game. And as I fell out of love

[00:26:44] [SPEAKER_01]: with the game in my early college years, I recognized I went through an identity crisis and I had

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_01]: a mentor who said, Keenan some day you're going to have to decide to go pro and something other

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_01]: than baseball. And in that moment I asked myself a question, what can you become the best that you possibly

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_01]: can? And I've heard other people make the analogy of like I feel so bad for athletes who are

[00:27:06] [SPEAKER_01]: in their young 20s because unless you're a brawn by the time you get into your early 30s,

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_01]: you're past your prime and you're going to have to go through that same identity crisis to figure

[00:27:15] [SPEAKER_01]: out what else you want to be pro at. And so I applied my pro competitiveness to becoming the best

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_01]: version of myself but also the best business person I possibly could because I realized that my

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_01]: season or my time horizon to go all pro and this was as long as I was alive Charlie Munger,

[00:27:35] [SPEAKER_01]: all these other great leaders you know what I'm saying? They're doing it until the end.

[00:27:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And if I think about giving myself that air cover or that horizon, if you will,

[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_01]: to get as many skill sets underneath my belt as possible, I felt really comfortable about maybe not

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_01]: being the best this year but being the best in 10, 15, 20 years. And so my mindset really is kind of

[00:27:59] [SPEAKER_01]: about extending my time horizon because I feel like when you want to become the best,

[00:28:04] [SPEAKER_01]: the only injustice that you can do to yourself is by trying to get it done quickly.

[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And I realize that the best things in life take time, maybe that's a belief that I have

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_01]: but I also recognize that when I give myself more time and I focus on my trajectory of where I'm

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_01]: going, then I can enjoy the journey a lot more than just the mountain tops that I hit along the way

[00:28:26] [SPEAKER_00]: if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, wow bro. Good, good. So like you said this before,

[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_00]: that's the stuff man. So guys, okay, so let me kind of let me let me riff on that

[00:28:41] [SPEAKER_01]: little bit. So there's a guy I listened to a podcast the other day. There's a dude out there. His name

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_01]: is Dan Bolzerian. Not sure if you guys have heard of him but over the last couple of years this guy

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_01]: became very famous on Instagram. Now I don't want to speak negatively about anybody but he

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_01]: pursued things that were all about pleasure as an example. This guy had the biggest house

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_01]: he had all the cars. He had 10 15 girlfriends at a time and that's why he became famous. And I was

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_01]: listening to a podcast about him the other day where he said, one of the things that I realized is just like

[00:29:17] [SPEAKER_01]: any other addiction that we have when we start becoming addicted to pleasure and fulfilling

[00:29:22] [SPEAKER_01]: those instant gratification needs. At first you need something that makes you feel great. And then

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_01]: that same amount of that same thing makes you feel a little bit less and then eventually you feel

[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_01]: terrible unless you have your thing but eventually it all becomes numb. And he said, one of the

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_01]: things I wish I would have done instead of racing to the mountain tops of my life and saying,

[00:29:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I need the jet. I need the 20 million dollar house. I need the 16 girlfriends. I need all this.

[00:29:48] [SPEAKER_01]: As I wish I would have paid more attention to my trajectory rather than where I was going.

[00:29:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And the trajectory of saying, here I am today in 10 days or 20 years I'm going to be there

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_01]: and you're still on that climb. That is way more fulfilling than any other accomplishment is.

[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Right? Getting things or having things is not the thing that's most fulfilling. It's the process

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_01]: of getting them. And I continue to hear these guys who are super successful in the eyes of society

[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_01]: talk about money never made me happy. The accomplishments they've made me happy. The cars never made me

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_01]: happy. But it was the pursuit of them. It's the journey. And so I'm trying to re-fortify my mindset

[00:30:30] [SPEAKER_01]: to really lean into that process of appreciating this experience of sitting down with you guys

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_01]: on this Monday, right? Because these are the memories that will matter, not the accomplishments

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_01]: of the views at the end of the day. It's time that we spend together. No doubt. No doubt.

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_00]: It's so amazing, right? Because we put our notes together separately. Well, we'll pick something

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_00]: out prepared. And then we get our little notes. So there's a, you'll see when you hear the episode

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_00]: we talk about right before you got on, we were talking about instant gratification and how folks

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_00]: just like, it's all about that instant gratification now and folks don't enjoy the journey. Don't even

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_00]: realize they just need it now now. Now now. So now look, it sounds like, oh wow, you've been very

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_00]: successful. But what about you inevitably had to have setbacks quote unquote failures? How have you dealt

[00:31:22] [SPEAKER_01]: with that those along the journey? The process of failing is learning your lessons. I had a mentor

[00:31:33] [SPEAKER_01]: one time tell me that failure is a prerequisite to success. Yeah. So when I was growing up and the

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_01]: reason why I hated school so much is because we've demonized failure. You know what I mean?

[00:31:46] [SPEAKER_01]: You were made fun of. Your teachers looked down on you. Your parents were like, what happened here?

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_01]: You didn't learn anything. You're not doing a good job. That failure has always been demonized.

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_01]: But as I got older, I recognized that I am separate from the results of what happens. And once again,

[00:32:00] [SPEAKER_01]: the only objective is to keep on going. I mean you hear amazing leaders and amazing people who are

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_01]: accomplishing amazing things. Always talk about the process was I failed on this. So when I came

[00:32:13] [SPEAKER_01]: across to second time, I didn't make that same mistake. And I feel like we have a terrible relationship

[00:32:18] [SPEAKER_01]: with failure instead of recognizing that it's a prerequisite to being successful. The more you fail

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_01]: and if you don't die in us, you know, have you heard the saying like what doesn't kill you makes you

[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_01]: stronger? Yeah. Yeah. It's exactly that. And I don't know why we have such a tough time

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_01]: really conceptualizing that process. I'm not sure if it's the story that we tell ourselves.

[00:32:39] [SPEAKER_01]: It's the pressure that we have from people around us or if it's that internal voice

[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_01]: that we believe is us, that kind of tells us we're not good enough or we're not adequate

[00:32:48] [SPEAKER_01]: or somebody's going to make fun of us or what do they think? Those things aren't really even true.

[00:32:53] [SPEAKER_01]: So people who are willing to fail forward and have that good relationship with failure

[00:32:57] [SPEAKER_01]: that makes the biggest difference. Now I have I lost clients. Of course I have.

[00:33:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Have I thought the world is ending? Of course I have. But my father always had a saying when I was

[00:33:05] [SPEAKER_01]: growing up he said this too shall pass. Wow. How many is that? That's so funny. It's I mean it's real though.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean? It's like yes, there's terrible experiences. Everything doesn't go great

[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_01]: but it's only in this moment where it doesn't feel good. And if you wake up tomorrow and heaven for

[00:33:23] [SPEAKER_01]: bid, you still have the ability to show up and keep doing what you're doing in the world's

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_01]: not ending. Then you're going to be okay. But there's a lot of people who have had their

[00:33:30] [SPEAKER_01]: world and that next day. And guess what? They're still standing. They still make comebacks. They

[00:33:36] [SPEAKER_01]: still do the stuff that's necessary to succeed. And I just try and really represent

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_01]: or I'm trying to represent a mindset of if you fail that's okay. But what lesson are we

[00:33:46] [SPEAKER_00]: learning here? Yeah. Absolutely. Me and Walt subscribe to Ray Dallios some of his

[00:33:53] [SPEAKER_00]: teachings on radical honesty and paid voter book called Principles and in the book he was talking

[00:33:59] [SPEAKER_00]: about it and when as he was building Bridgewater like he recommended people for not sharing the failures

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_00]: for not sharing those challenges because that's what you've learned from right? He was fanatical

[00:34:12] [SPEAKER_00]: about it because that's what you learned from. And I'm also the same thing like I tell my kids

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_00]: look, you fall seven times, you got to get up eight times but you got to keep moving, you got to

[00:34:24] [SPEAKER_00]: keep pushing some of the like the most difficult challenges in my life. I know there's a lesson

[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_00]: to be learned. I know there's something coming out. I know it's sharpening my skillset and

[00:34:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I as frustrating as it could be in the moment, I just like there's something coming out of this

[00:34:44] [SPEAKER_00]: that's going to be that it's going to be worth it for is going to make I'm going to be better for

[00:34:48] [SPEAKER_00]: it. So I definitely maturity wisdom like what I was saying older bulls like wisdom.

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, I mean, does it be in principles? Have a concept called like healthy conflict?

[00:35:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. As you talk about that in the book, right? I mean if you think about healthy

[00:35:05] [SPEAKER_01]: conflict in your own life, you're going to come across times that are not going to feel good

[00:35:09] [SPEAKER_01]: but they are necessary in friction to be able to come stronger. Right? That resistance that is

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_01]: necessary to be as good as you possibly can. I was actually listening to a podcast the other day

[00:35:20] [SPEAKER_01]: with this guy who was the former head of Google X and he was talking about an experience that

[00:35:27] [SPEAKER_01]: he had dealing with a really terrible situation. His son at the age of 21 named Ali died because of

[00:35:36] [SPEAKER_01]: a botched app and dectomy surgery. Now this guy has tens of tens of millions of dollars in a son

[00:35:41] [SPEAKER_01]: died from a common procedure, right? And the one thing that he said was without the terrible

[00:35:48] [SPEAKER_01]: experience is in life, you can't have the great experience is either. And the one question that

[00:35:54] [SPEAKER_01]: he talked about in a huge study that was done with like 6,000 people is they were all asked a simple

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_01]: question. They said, what is one horrific experience that you've had in your life? The passing

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_01]: of a loved one like my son Ali or something else that's happened. If I gave you the opportunity to

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_01]: go back in time and to eliminate that from your timeline and all of your memories but you also

[00:36:17] [SPEAKER_01]: had everything else that was eliminated that came from that moment. A family member coming and

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_01]: giving you consoling you, your friends leaning in and you having a deeper relationship. New opportunities

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_01]: that came on the other side of that tragic event would you erase it? 99.9% of those people said no

[00:36:40] [SPEAKER_01]: because these experiences that we have in life the hardships and the times where we fail to take

[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_01]: these that aren't even perceivable in this moment. I mean, I'm a big believer in fate if you will.

[00:36:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure if you guys have ever had the feeling of deja vu. I've had moments of deja vu

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_01]: were like something really great happens. I'm like wow and then I naturally go back to the place

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_01]: in my mind of thinking was all that time stressing was all that time when I was doubting myself

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_01]: even worth it in the moment because I'm here right now. I'm having this really weird feeling of

[00:37:16] [SPEAKER_01]: euphoria about being here before. Am I on a path that's already kind of designed for me?

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a really interesting concept to kind of think about in your mind. Yeah, yeah.

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Same here we talk about the fate and all that and like it's the same and there's something

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00]: about that energy. There's something there's a higher power. I don't like my kids talk about religion.

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to tell them look I can't tell you what the right label is. You know what I mean

[00:37:41] [SPEAKER_00]: that's for you to decide later. I can tell you I believe that there's a higher power. There is

[00:37:45] [SPEAKER_00]: some energy that governs karma is real what you put out is what you get back right? How you do

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_00]: anything is how you do everything and that is going to come back to you for sure, right?

[00:37:59] [SPEAKER_00]: However, you want to live it's a guide. It's a Buddha. It's a it's a no. It's a long whatever

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_00]: you or beliefs are there's this real energy in all that so we definitely connect with that man.

[00:38:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Now like shift in gears a little bit. Now we talk about the good, the bad, the ugly.

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_00]: How has your personal experience with mental health challenges anything while you're running

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_00]: your business and have you had? Have you had any mental wellness issues for yourself or that

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_00]: you can relate to personally and that's impacted the business at all? Many and often one of the things

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_01]: that people don't see about the entrepreneurial journey is everybody loves to share their highlights,

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_01]: their wins, their victories. Exactly. Right? But one of the things that I've recognized and my

[00:38:52] [SPEAKER_01]: girlfriend always talks to me about this. She says, Keen, if you're going to be an advocate for

[00:38:56] [SPEAKER_01]: mental health, you have to practice it yourself. I fall trap very transparently as a guy of not

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_01]: often expressing my feelings of inadequacy or my needs for validation. And this is one of the

[00:39:09] [SPEAKER_01]: first times I've really talked about this publicly. It's a really tough journey when you are

[00:39:15] [SPEAKER_01]: walking a path of trying to consistently inspire others, when you're somebody who is on the

[00:39:22] [SPEAKER_01]: other side of a brand like Francis that is all about spreading positivity. You often have to justify

[00:39:27] [SPEAKER_01]: the times of not being okay and I think it's really been difficult for me and it's actually part

[00:39:33] [SPEAKER_01]: of my origin story with Francis. So back in 2017, we were doing the stuff with Metaure with

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_01]: the Telehealth. Right? And this is three years before the pandemic. And so me as a 2627 year old kid

[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going into healthcare systems and trying to convince a chief medical officer, a chief nursing

[00:39:53] [SPEAKER_01]: officer, a CEO of a hospital system that there's going to be a future for this virtual interaction

[00:40:00] [SPEAKER_01]: thing in healthcare. And for years, everybody told me, no, never going to happen. Doesn't

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_01]: make sense. Nobody wants to do it. Patients will never do it. I can never get my doctors to do it

[00:40:12] [SPEAKER_01]: XYZ. And after a while, you can only have so much belief and an idea when you're trying to convince

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_01]: people who are making decisions and they're kind of laughing you out of the room. So at the end of 2017,

[00:40:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I just turned 27 years old. January 1st, I sit down and think about what is my

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_01]: New Year's resolution going to be? And I said, Keen, and the only thing that you're going to

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_01]: be able to control even your business-wise is your mindset. And so I took it upon myself to say

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_01]: every single day this year, I'm going to hop on Instagram and I'm going to put a little story out in

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_01]: the morning that says, hey, today's going to be a good day. Do what you can do, but just remember,

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_01]: you're going to be all right, right? Just a little in-you-endos and little messages for myself.

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Something amazing happened. 50, 60, 37, 162 days in. I had friends who had started reaching out

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_01]: to me and saying, hey, man, I never told you this, not to my face because we're hanging out

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_01]: the time, but in text messages and DMs, I look forward to your message every single day.

[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_01]: I've been going through some really tough times, and I feel like you've been writing these messages

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_01]: directly to me. And in that moment, I realized although we may manage this mask of everybody

[00:41:25] [SPEAKER_01]: being okay and talking about here in Vegas, how we're partying in the clubs and we're having a

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_01]: good time with each other, everybody's feeling a little bit disconnected, and maybe we need a

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_01]: little bit more encouragement. And so that really kind of informed Francis years later and me

[00:41:40] [SPEAKER_01]: building the SMS stuff because I had lived experience in the fact that if you put out messages

[00:41:44] [SPEAKER_01]: a positivity and support even if they're for yourself, other people are going to find their

[00:41:48] [SPEAKER_01]: story inside those messages. Wow. And so that was my first adventure into saying, I mean, if I

[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_01]: can do this for myself and other people want this, maybe I can go sell it to people and that turned

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_01]: into a little bit of a business. But man to go back, I mean, everybody deals with these mental

[00:42:03] [SPEAKER_01]: health challenges. Over the years in healthcare, we talk about a buzzword which is called

[00:42:08] [SPEAKER_01]: whole person health. Whole person health is not recognition of your mental health being separate

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_01]: from your physical health and your cardiovascular health being separate from your immune health.

[00:42:20] [SPEAKER_01]: But you are a whole image of a person and everything is interconnected. And so when I think about us

[00:42:25] [SPEAKER_01]: thinking about mental health, everybody has mental health. Doesn't matter if you're doing great,

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_01]: if you're doing bad, if you come from nothing or if you come from everything, everybody has

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_01]: something in between your ears and you have to be able to manage it, take care of it,

[00:42:39] [SPEAKER_01]: need to attend to it. And so yeah, I've been through my tough times. I do feel down often

[00:42:46] [SPEAKER_01]: because a lot of the times you are crazy until everybody sees you winning and everybody believes

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_01]: in the message that you've been trying to say. But it's not an easy road. And I love having

[00:42:55] [SPEAKER_01]: conversations like this because from the outside, everybody thinks everything is going great. And I know

[00:43:02] [SPEAKER_01]: that there are moments that we've all individually battled with. But if we can have conversations

[00:43:06] [SPEAKER_01]: like this, then it kind of is like, oh, if he's been through it, then I guess I've been through it

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_02]: too. And I guess it's okay for me to talk about it as well. Yeah, absolutely like like

[00:43:15] [SPEAKER_02]: radio side of the pressables of the radical transparency. And I think if more people lean into that

[00:43:21] [SPEAKER_02]: and we would have more healing and more openness about it. But so thank you for sharing that

[00:43:27] [SPEAKER_02]: for the first time and being accountable enough to share your story. What strategies would you

[00:43:34] [SPEAKER_02]: would you give or are kind of recommend for us to use with our own mental wellness and especially

[00:43:42] [SPEAKER_02]: with the demands of leadership and our constant connectivity?

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Got to lean into the people around you, man. When you are willing to be radically transparent

[00:43:56] [SPEAKER_01]: and vulnerable, which is a scary word for a lot of us, I think we need to do a better job

[00:44:02] [SPEAKER_01]: of redefining what masculinity looks like. I think of a hero as an example. It's somebody in the

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_01]: face of danger or the face of uncertainty was willing to charge forward and do what was necessary

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_01]: to save the princess or save their friend or make a positive impact. We're all fighting

[00:44:21] [SPEAKER_01]: these individual scary moments in our lives. And if you're willing to be vulnerable enough

[00:44:27] [SPEAKER_01]: to reach out and say, hey, I'm going to charge straight into this man but Waltman, I need you

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_01]: to be like my guy. You know what I'm saying? Like I need you guys to be with me because I don't

[00:44:38] [SPEAKER_01]: know if I'm going to be able to do this, but if I can lean on you, I know I can get through this.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It's leaning on the people who are around you. It's leaning on the people who are willing to

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_01]: raise your hand and lift you up when you don't have the ability to keep going forward, which is

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_01]: really powerful. And to hit this home, I want to talk about a story that I heard the other day.

[00:44:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So there's this guy who wrote this book called B1, it's how to be a good man in like terrible

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_01]: masculine times and he tells us story about how him and a couple of his buddies hiked to the top

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_01]: of count, Kilimanjaro or some other huge mountain. And it's him, a whole bunch of other military

[00:45:14] [SPEAKER_01]: dudes and one guy who's a veteran and he doesn't have legs, right? So he's got prosthetics

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_01]: and they're all climbing this mountain and they're all asking each other the question,

[00:45:22] [SPEAKER_01]: who's going to be the guy who's not going to make it to the top? And they're all trying to like

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_01]: shame each other because like these are all like military man, these are all marine special ops,

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_01]: forces everybody. And one of the guys says I think it's going to be you. I think it's going to be you.

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's going to be you. And as they're climbing the mountain, one of his friends pulls

[00:45:40] [SPEAKER_01]: a messide and says, hey Brian over here, the guy who's got two amputated legs, his wife told me

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_01]: that he had a shotgun in his mouth two days before coming on this trip and if he doesn't make

[00:45:53] [SPEAKER_01]: it to the top of this mountain, we're probably not going to see him again. So halfway up the mountain,

[00:45:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Brian is exhausted. And his team, the people who he are with, have to lean into the fact that they know

[00:46:05] [SPEAKER_01]: that he is quietly struggling and that if he doesn't make it to the top of this mountain,

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_01]: that they might probably never see him again. And so what do they do? They spread the message

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_01]: amongst friends and they start encouraging him to get to the top of the mountain. There are 200 feet

[00:46:20] [SPEAKER_01]: away from the summit and Brian says he can't do what he's turned him back. And so what do they do?

[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_01]: They drag this guy to the top of the mountain because they realize that their brother was fighting

[00:46:30] [SPEAKER_01]: a secret fight that none of them had any preview to except for one guy who had a text message

[00:46:36] [SPEAKER_01]: from this guy's wife. And he said it was the most impactful moment because I realized that in a moment

[00:46:41] [SPEAKER_01]: of weakness, you have people around you who might know more than you think and they're willing

[00:46:46] [SPEAKER_01]: to get you across the finish line. Now this guy Brian is still around to this day because

[00:46:51] [SPEAKER_01]: they helped him get to the top of this mountain but I think about the mountain doesn't always

[00:46:55] [SPEAKER_01]: have to be Mount Kilimanjaro. It can be any type of mountain. The new job adjusting to a new city

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_01]: trying to overcome challenges. And the best thing that we can do as men is not trying to keep

[00:47:07] [SPEAKER_01]: everybody away from the battles that we're trying to fight or the mountains that we're trying

[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_01]: to climb. But let people in because you never know when somebody's going to be willing to drag

[00:47:15] [SPEAKER_01]: you to the top of that mountain so you can accomplish things that maybe you didn't even think you could

[00:47:20] [SPEAKER_02]: yourself. I mean, you got me ready to walk through a wall with me. Yeah, no for sure man, I love it

[00:47:28] [SPEAKER_00]: and man, it's so much, Brian, we got to come back for part two because I want to talk a little bit

[00:47:36] [SPEAKER_00]: about how you wrap it up. Me and we'll always talk about you thinking like an employee, not a boss.

[00:47:51] [SPEAKER_00]: How do you take all this? How do you take all this and apply it to your journey as an entrepreneur?

[00:47:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Why do you think you're a successful entrepreneur? How do you deal with that day to day? How

[00:48:03] [SPEAKER_00]: do you feel like you impact your team? What are the type of what's your values as a company?

[00:48:09] [SPEAKER_01]: What are you trying to instill? What's your corporate culture? It's a constant process of evolution.

[00:48:17] [SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean? It's easy to sit here and talk about stories, right? But the implementation

[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_01]: is where the rubber meets the road. And the one thing that I try and do is hold myself accountable.

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I had a really interesting guy on my podcast the other day as name was Jason Eruci.

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Now Jason has a philosophy called Live 100 and I thought it would be really interesting to dive into

[00:48:38] [SPEAKER_01]: what that means and he said so many of us are going through life living at 84, 78, 91. But you

[00:48:47] [SPEAKER_01]: never realize that delta between how much you're living at 86 in your relationship or 74 in your

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_01]: physical health or maybe 91 in your business. You never recognize the delta between that number

[00:49:01] [SPEAKER_01]: in 100 because at the end of your life you're going to ask yourself one question.

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Why didn't I try harder? You're not going to think about the things that you did often but

[00:49:12] [SPEAKER_01]: it's often the things that you didn't do. And so one of the things that I've been really trying to do

[00:49:17] [SPEAKER_01]: ever since I had that talk with Jason is I've been trying to live 100 and I know that every day

[00:49:22] [SPEAKER_01]: is not going to be a 100 day but when I look back at everything for how I support my team,

[00:49:29] [SPEAKER_01]: how I try and encourage others, how I talk to myself. I know that there's a delta between

[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_01]: that number that I'm living at and 100. So one of the things that I've been trying to do with my

[00:49:41] [SPEAKER_01]: team is I've been trying to trust more as a boss it's very easy to get caught up in the weeds.

[00:49:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where that employee mindset, no offense to anybody is really about it's the weeds.

[00:49:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a things that don't matter. It's a things that we choose to consume ourselves with right?

[00:49:59] [SPEAKER_01]: A boss mindset comes from a place of trust and so what I've been doing with my team is I've

[00:50:04] [SPEAKER_01]: been putting a lot more trust into the people to do what they're supposed to do. And how do I do that?

[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I publicly encourage them. I say, you know what this is your thing. We're going to do whatever

[00:50:17] [SPEAKER_01]: you want to do in this situation because you have the best knowledge. When you empower and invest

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_01]: time and resources into people, you can multiply yourself because you can get as an entrepreneur

[00:50:31] [SPEAKER_01]: caught up in the game of trying to do everything every single day. But when you're truly powerful,

[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_01]: you can get other people to believe in a vision that you can talk about. I believe I said that

[00:50:42] [SPEAKER_01]: a little bit earlier. To be a great leader, you have to cast a vision so big that other people can

[00:50:48] [SPEAKER_01]: find themselves inside that vision. And that's one thing I've tried to do is create a bigger vision

[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_01]: for where we are going as a team, how everybody's going to contribute to that. And when you

[00:51:00] [SPEAKER_01]: feel that sense of I'm the owner of my thing, you're more willing to do what's necessary

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_01]: to help everybody else to be successful. But somebody has to set that tone and that's the biggest

[00:51:11] [SPEAKER_01]: thing that I've been really trying to focus on is I get a little bit older for you, man.

[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Just for you. That's big. Do you we say all in this show all the time, trust but verify?

[00:51:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like like I heard accountability in there. But that's part of it, right? It's an

[00:51:31] [SPEAKER_00]: inherent part of like yeah, you can boost somebody and encourage but they have to be held accountable

[00:51:38] [SPEAKER_01]: as well. 100%. And this is kind of one of the things I talk about on my podcast a lot of

[00:51:43] [SPEAKER_01]: time, there's a book Gary Vaynerchuk Gary Vee on social media and every 22. Yeah, he came out

[00:51:49] [SPEAKER_01]: of the book called The Twelve and a Half, which is leveraging the emotional ingredients necessary

[00:51:53] [SPEAKER_01]: for business success. Okay. Now, one of the things that he talks about in here is kind of

[00:51:58] [SPEAKER_01]: candor. So kind candor is this healthy conflict but doing it in a nice way. So I will paint the vision.

[00:52:06] [SPEAKER_01]: I will put trust in you to get the job done. But one of the things that we talk about is

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_01]: ultimate accountability. So we can have an honest and open conversation about this was your

[00:52:18] [SPEAKER_01]: responsibility where you living up to the value of being ultimately accountable for that result.

[00:52:24] [SPEAKER_01]: If you can look at me and say that you did, that's one thing. If you can look at me honestly and say,

[00:52:29] [SPEAKER_01]: you know what? I dropped the ball on this. I should have done XYZ. We're leading with that value

[00:52:34] [SPEAKER_01]: which is that North Star that keeps people in line to what we know we're supposed to do because

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_01]: at the end of the day, it's just about me. But it's being accountable to the people around you and

[00:52:42] [SPEAKER_01]: if you don't do your job, none of us are going to be able to do our job either. But that's a constantly

[00:52:48] [SPEAKER_01]: evolving process. Right? You've got to be that coach. You've got to be the encourager. You've got to

[00:52:52] [SPEAKER_01]: hold people accountable to the things that they're supposed to get done because it's not just about

[00:52:56] [SPEAKER_01]: you. It's about to everybody else as well. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. No. So, thank you so much for

[00:53:03] [SPEAKER_00]: coming on the show today, man. I think it's just an amazing conversation before we let you go.

[00:53:09] [SPEAKER_00]: We have a little game that we like to play with our guest and it's called this or that.

[00:53:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And before we get into that, anything any parting words that you want to leave us with,

[00:53:21] [SPEAKER_00]: anything that you definitely wanted to share but you didn't get to.

[00:53:26] [SPEAKER_01]: No, man, you guys are doing an amazing job with this platform. The fact that you guys have been

[00:53:31] [SPEAKER_01]: doing this as long as you guys have been doing this is really a testament to your

[00:53:36] [SPEAKER_01]: tenacity and your grit because once again, we show up. You do what you got to do. You're accountable

[00:53:42] [SPEAKER_01]: to each other but you're accountable to the audience that you're building as well. And I

[00:53:45] [SPEAKER_01]: as well say thank you guys so much for having me on. It's really a serious pleasure. Thank you.

[00:53:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Likewise. And again, you see how that fate thing is, right? Because and that the energy,

[00:53:56] [SPEAKER_00]: the connections of things, me and Walt just I mean, I feel like we're always struggling

[00:54:02] [SPEAKER_00]: through this. But we we we we have we've had we're 123 episodes. This is 123. And we I mean,

[00:54:13] [SPEAKER_00]: even if we skip a week, we still put in some content out, right? And it's on as we haven't

[00:54:18] [SPEAKER_00]: really missed many weeks. And it we've had these iterations of evolution in these 123 episodes.

[00:54:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And every time we hit that moment of of refresh where like, oh, do we do do we keep going?

[00:54:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Is this worth it? What are we doing? Right? And then we have someone on or someone hits us up on

[00:54:42] [SPEAKER_00]: LinkedIn or on a side conversation that's like keep going because you are an impact to the industry.

[00:54:50] [SPEAKER_00]: You're doing something like just those words of encouragement, because it's not, well,

[00:54:54] [SPEAKER_00]: right, this is a laborer love still. There's no life changing money in it. So

[00:54:59] [SPEAKER_00]: that is the currency right now, right? Well, like, that's the currency is like you sharing that

[00:55:05] [SPEAKER_00]: with us. You didn't know that. You don't know that any of this stuff. Like you sharing those stuff

[00:55:10] [SPEAKER_00]: we appreciate that man and it's such the right conversation that you're talking about this

[00:55:16] [SPEAKER_00]: and letting people know that during that work struggles and all these struggles like it's

[00:55:21] [SPEAKER_00]: keep going, keep pushing, right? Find that right happy. Like, and we just said it, like

[00:55:27] [SPEAKER_00]: your spouse, your job is not going to give you instant gratification. The Yankees and the Giants

[00:55:33] [SPEAKER_00]: winning of game is not going to be the happiness that you're searching. Like it's from within

[00:55:37] [SPEAKER_00]: you have to create your own happiness. You have to like find that balance of things to really

[00:55:44] [SPEAKER_00]: and it's just struggle. It's just, we just, we just, we just, we'll just give a stat 50% of,

[00:55:50] [SPEAKER_00]: because somebody just said it right, 50% of people like struggle with that mental wellness on a

[00:55:56] [SPEAKER_00]: day-to-day. So thank you, bro, that. Thank you, man. Thank you, Canadian.

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to give you guys a message of encouragement one more is one day the things will pop

[00:56:05] [SPEAKER_01]: or you'll have that moment of, oh my gosh, we finally made it. And when you can look back

[00:56:11] [SPEAKER_01]: at the original hundred and plus episodes, that's when everybody's going to tune in because

[00:56:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Amazon only got traction. Once I knew about Jeff Bezos from the biggest billionaires. But if he had

[00:56:24] [SPEAKER_01]: a vlog back in the day of him building in the warehouse with his team, picking what books were going

[00:56:31] [SPEAKER_01]: to be available. And then they said, we could also sell mugs in all this type of stuff. That's

[00:56:36] [SPEAKER_01]: when I would love to go back and look for a story from the beginning. So the documentation of

[00:56:40] [SPEAKER_01]: the journey that you guys have together is so important. Yep, early on, I shared a picture

[00:56:46] [SPEAKER_00]: of Jeff Bezos in his office. We were like a paper Amazon sign over his desk. So yeah, man,

[00:56:52] [SPEAKER_00]: it's this man. All right, before we close it out, we love to play this game with folks. It just

[00:56:58] [SPEAKER_00]: line it up, gives people a different view of things and well, you want to start it off.

[00:57:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Yep. So we have six questions for you. It can be one of the other are both are neither neither.

[00:57:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And so here we go. Football are basketball. That's basketball for me, man. Which you guys can't see

[00:57:17] [SPEAKER_01]: is I got a picture of a Tachon Prince blocking Reggie Miller in the two thousand

[00:57:22] [SPEAKER_01]: princess and super company finals over there. Like I got Kobe right here as well.

[00:57:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Can't really see it in my life. A basketball from even. Yeah, okay. Lys LA or Vegas.

[00:57:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Vegas man. Home town right now. Got a love Vegas growing and becoming something special

[00:57:38] [SPEAKER_01]: every year. Lys. My last one is Excel or Google Sheets. Google Sheets for me, brother.

[00:57:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I love being able to share. You know what I'm saying? We do a lot of stuff with a team on Google

[00:57:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Sheets. I love that. Lys. No doubt. I think you already answered this for us, but LeBron or Kobe.

[00:57:59] [SPEAKER_01]: It's got to be Kobe for me, man. The OG man seriously, Mamba. He inspires me to this day.

[00:58:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Real talk. I was I was onboarding a young guy the other day who works out of basketball facility

[00:58:11] [SPEAKER_00]: and he's like, oh, what's today's date? And I was like, oh, eight 24. He's like, oh,

[00:58:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Kobe day and I was just like, what the hell my gosh? Oh, the next one is remote.

[00:58:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Or hybrid. I wish I could do hybrid. I've done a remote my entire life. My entire entrepreneurial

[00:58:30] [SPEAKER_01]: career has been hybrid, but I'll tell or a Ben has been remote, but I wish that I had the ability

[00:58:35] [SPEAKER_01]: to bring people to an office because I don't really believe that you can get away from that time

[00:58:39] [SPEAKER_01]: of spent with each other. You know, I'm saying those mic and conversations are incredibly valuable

[00:58:44] [SPEAKER_00]: for me. Yeah. Yeah. I've struggled with with that this question. And that's what I think is

[00:58:50] [SPEAKER_00]: on this list because I've been struggling with it for a while and I'm beginning to appreciate

[00:58:56] [SPEAKER_00]: hybrid more. I was remote for four years straight just but I'm beginning to appreciate that connection

[00:59:03] [SPEAKER_00]: that community that fellowship again. And I do I do prefer the hybrid now. Last one, meet or

[00:59:10] [SPEAKER_01]: veggies. I'm a meat guy because my girl is all about the veggies. You know, I'm not nothing

[00:59:17] [SPEAKER_01]: better than a good steak for me. You know, I'm saying or some chicken trying to lean out as well.

[00:59:22] [SPEAKER_00]: So that definitely helps you build that muscle as to. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. Same here, man. Just

[00:59:27] [SPEAKER_00]: trying to stay healthy is I think that's the time that we're in right now and this is like

[00:59:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I've been talking about this recurring thing. You're not you may not quite be there. Yeah,

[00:59:36] [SPEAKER_00]: you're still a little young there, but we're in this mid life. I don't want to call a mid

[00:59:41] [SPEAKER_00]: knife crisis. I don't think it's that it's a mid life reevaluation of things, right? Where you

[00:59:47] [SPEAKER_00]: just hit that wall, you're like, wait a minute, I have to I'm going to have to change my life and

[00:59:51] [SPEAKER_00]: shed some of these young thinkings and these silly ways and and really try to be more mature,

[00:59:59] [SPEAKER_00]: be more intentional. What is being intentional mean and all these things and it is just a real

[01:00:04] [SPEAKER_00]: mid-life reevaluation because it doesn't have to be a mid-life crisis. People are just we love drama.

[01:00:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, talking about that all the time, the drama people just love the drama of things. Like

[01:00:14] [SPEAKER_00]: if you invite that drama in that negative energy and like you cannot, you've got to shed that out.

[01:00:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Can't that it's it's not productive. It's not conducive to your health and or progress. So

[01:00:26] [SPEAKER_00]: yeah, man, we just you might have a little more years there. So to to to circle the back to payroll for

[01:00:33] [SPEAKER_00]: us and employees and HR on all that we have but we ended with a safe talk kind of conversation,

[01:00:40] [SPEAKER_00]: things and won't pose the question to us should more payroll and HR approach strive to be more

[01:00:47] [SPEAKER_00]: entrepreneurial. And what are your thoughts on that, Kina? I think so, man. One of my favorite

[01:00:54] [SPEAKER_01]: things is what got us here won't get us there. That's man. Oh one of the things that you said to me

[01:01:01] [SPEAKER_01]: was payroll is life. You know what I mean? And when we're talking about such a fundamental service

[01:01:06] [SPEAKER_01]: but also something that keeps all of our lives going, I think there's a room for a lot of

[01:01:11] [SPEAKER_01]: entrepreneurial spirit in the payroll space and I think different ideas, different perspectives are

[01:01:19] [SPEAKER_01]: the cradle of progress. And I think being able to have a different approach is not a bad thing.

[01:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Even in spaces like payroll and HR because once again what got us here is not going to get us there.

[01:01:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And that healthy sense of curiosity is something that talk about a lot of my podcasts as well.

[01:01:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You got to build that skill to be curious about doing things differently because that's when

[01:01:39] [SPEAKER_01]: the best stuff comes out and that's how you do right by others. Go, well, you think. No, I couldn't

[01:01:45] [SPEAKER_02]: say to any better Kina here, right on the head at the moment and I told her agree with what he just

[01:01:51] [SPEAKER_00]: articulated. What about you, Brian? Yeah, no for sure already. No, that's how we got here. We

[01:01:57] [SPEAKER_00]: started this with trying to build the app that is still on the horizon and just with bootstrap and

[01:02:02] [SPEAKER_00]: things and trying to come up with different solutions and creativity. So yeah, entrepreneurial has been

[01:02:08] [SPEAKER_00]: part of my journey since I mean, I mean, I talked about it on the show with you and as a

[01:02:16] [SPEAKER_00]: sense of young age man. So yes, I think and again at the beginning of this show how we talk about

[01:02:23] [SPEAKER_00]: how we talked about how things were so expensive and inflation and not at all by the way,

[01:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: the article that we that I covered in the beginning was five ways to boost and play his happiness

[01:02:36] [SPEAKER_00]: because year over year, play happiness is down 5%. Right. I'm sure at least that's like crazy. So

[01:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: it's like, yeah, of course, because things again expensive, raises are not it. It's always like a

[01:02:49] [SPEAKER_00]: 3% cap and businesses incorporating that. And it's like, look, if you want more, you got to do more

[01:02:55] [SPEAKER_00]: to get more. You know what I mean? It's again, no one thing is going to fulfill you and solve all your

[01:03:01] [SPEAKER_00]: things. You got what you put in is what you get out. Yeah, absolutely. I think everybody in every phase

[01:03:08] [SPEAKER_00]: of life should have a little hustle, a little grid, a little that entrepreneur spirit, whatever you

[01:03:13] [SPEAKER_00]: doing or entrepreneurial even, right? You can be an entrepreneur in your company and help to spread

[01:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: how are you helping your company make money? So yeah, man. And before we go,

[01:03:25] [SPEAKER_00]: keen and how can people find you where is your what is the name of your podcast? Where is it?

[01:03:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Where do we listen? Yeah, man, you can come over to YouTube. You can search my name,

[01:03:35] [SPEAKER_01]: keen and heart, ke, e, n, a, n, h, a, r, t, the heart and hustle, h, a, r, t and hustle, podcast. I'm

[01:03:41] [SPEAKER_01]: really talking to a lot of different leaders that I feel like represent that intersection, which is super

[01:03:46] [SPEAKER_01]: important of heart and hustle. And I've recognized that that's really kind of the way it is

[01:03:50] [SPEAKER_01]: stay sustainable in this chase for personal greatness that we're all seem into accomplished as well.

[01:03:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I love it. I love it. Oh man, look, it was a great episode, man. Thank you for making the time

[01:04:03] [SPEAKER_00]: for us tonight, man. I appreciate you. We appreciate Go check keen and out. He's got some amazing

[01:04:08] [SPEAKER_00]: episodes out there doing great things for us sign up for the Francis, get your company to get on

[01:04:14] [SPEAKER_00]: that Francis tip, employees need those little imagine if your employees just got a word of wisdom,

[01:04:19] [SPEAKER_00]: every day to just help encouragement help you get through the day that mental wellness and

[01:04:24] [SPEAKER_00]: leaders need to set the tone for a safe place for mental wellness and keen in in Francis.

[01:04:31] [SPEAKER_00]: I hope with that man. Thank you, bro. We appreciate your man. That's a little of the guys. We really

[01:04:37] [SPEAKER_00]: appreciate you having me on. No doubt. And like a night everybody and we love your man, peace.

[01:04:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Before we sign off, here are a couple quick things. Don't forget to follow it's about payroll,

[01:04:50] [SPEAKER_02]: on LinkedIn and it's about your paycheck on Facebook and TikTok. Thank you for being part of our

[01:04:57] [SPEAKER_00]: payroll community and thank you for being a part of this journey with us until the next time.

[01:05:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Keep learning, keep growing and most importantly keep going.