Employee Empowerment & Hiring for Intention With Aaron Young

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author.

Of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life.

You'll gain powerful insights into how you.

Can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your.

Performance, and master the art and science.

Of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

I was going to say good morning. I don't know where that started from, but good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I mean, it's so funny when we start our podcast not knowing exactly what time of the day it is that people are going to consume this content, but welcome everybody, wherever it is and whatever time it is in your life right now, the time is now. Circle back to a pure personal development moment. The time is now. Welcome to the Conscious Pivot podcast, everybody. Today is a beautiful day. It's a gorgeous day. Simply to be alive. Regardless of the weather outside or even the weather inside. It bears repeating. And I take this. I relish this moment to be able to remind myself and to remind all of you that are watching, listening, et cetera, wherever you are watching, listening, that this is a holy moment, this is a sacred moment. If for no other reason than we are alive in this moment, we are breathing in this moment, and there are people who are taking their very last breath in this moment. And I can't think of any more important reason to be grateful in this moment than the fact that we're here together. Whatever the good, the bad, the ugly is, for each of us, at any moment in time, there's something to be grateful for. And I'm grateful for all of you. I'm grateful for the friend, the gentleman, the person I get to spend time with now in your presence, all of you collectively get to be the fly on the wall, so to speak. As I have a conversation with a buddy, I would say an old buddy. Well, the old part would be me.

Seems like I'm getting older and older all the time.

It wouldn't be me, or it might be me, it would be Aaron, but certainly somebody that's been a friend for a number of years. And I really respect this guy. And as is the the policy, I don't know why policy came up, but the policy of this podcast is that I don't introduce our guests and friends and folks that we want to connect with. I'd love it if you would share with everybody a little bit about yourself. Your name I know is Aaron Young. And as I said, you are a friend and a colleague and somebody that I have great respect for and the business that you, the way you conduct your business and how you transform people's lives. And we're going to dig into some really cool topics today. But why don't we start with what's important to you, Aaron, in this time in your life.

Wow. Thanks, Adam. Well, first of all, so my name's Aaron Young, but there's a whole bunch of Aaron Young's out there, including some guys that were recently convicted of murder. So I use my middle name now, Aaron Scott Young, to differentiate myself from the crazy crowd, but Aaron Scott Young. And boy, you asked me what's important to me now, which is different than saying I'm the CEO of this company or this is what I've done. Let me tell you this earlier this year. So this is, we're recording this in 2017. Earlier this year, my wife and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. It's been 30. You know, it's the typical roller coaster of life, but from a happiness perspective, from a glad to be together perspective, we are pretty blissfully happily married. We have four great kids. Two of the two oldest are married. We have each one of them have a child. So we are grandparents. We have a third grandchild on the way. So that is awesome. I get the chance to work with one of my sons and so that is a lot of fun. Those are all important to me.

I have, man, dude, we have so much in common. I mean, well, we have four kids. We're married 28 years. We have four kids.

Well, I'm older than you, our oldest.

By about a half a year. But yes, you are my senior. We've got our oldest daughter that's in the business too. Yeah, but that's it.

It's awesome, isn't it?

It's amazing.

It's great. It's super great when you can have that kind of a deal. So. And by a little further way of introduction, so that's my family. We live in southwest Washington on Little 25 family farm. And so I go off into the world and give talks and do things with business, but I get to come home to goats and chickens and my horses. And it's a very meditative kind of way to live. And I've spent my life starting companies or buying companies. And among them is sort of the company that people know about now, which is a company called Laughlin Associates, which I bought back in 2001 along with a Business partner and who I've been business partners with for 20 years and a great guy, Lee Morgan. And we help tens of thousands of business owners to build a fortress around their lives and around their businesses so that they can be safe and sustainable. You know, some.

You guys are moat builders.

I say we're fortress builders. We actually. But believe me, we can put a moat. We can put alligators. We can put whatever you, not depending on your needs.

Snapping turtles.

Yeah. It can be as dangerous as you want to make it for people, but we can help you with that. But the thing that also is super cool that I'm doing right now, that is really fun for me. About a year and a half ago, I. I finally caved in and I put together what's my process for what do I do if I'm going to buy a company or get a company ready for sale? Something I'd never taught, I'd never developed a course before, but I did about 18 months ago. I call it the Unshackled Owner. And it's been great, and we've had a lot of people go through it, and it's a good program for people who have employees and who are growing a business to a bigger level. But I knew the day that I found the URL, the Unshackled Owner, I knew that that was still playing too small for what I wanted to do. And so at the same time, I grabbed that URL, I grabbed the Unshackled Life. And my wife Michelle and I just started a couple of weeks ago, our first foray into the Unshackled Life, which is we're doing a radio show together and we're talking about business. Sure. Family, health, spirituality. We are kind of talking about our life and how to live a life that's a big life. And you understand that, Adam, because I know the things you've done. But so many people are just stuck in being driven by the currents or blown by the wind, and they look and say, you guys are so lucky. I do think that there's a lot of stuff that we're grateful for, but I don't think it's luck. I think it's because we've been through the stuff and we'll go through these pivot stories, or at least my worst one, my most significant one. But a life that brings you a lot of fulfillment and a lot of joy doesn't happen by chance. It happens by intention and by working towards it constantly, even through the ups and downs. And so that's Unshackled Life. Is something that I didn't realize how tickled I'd be to be doing it. It's just a show. There's nothing to buy, there's nothing. There's no event, there's no. It's just me and my best friend talking about things in a way that we're already getting a lot of positive love back on that show.

I love that. The idea that you could spend some quality time with your best friend talking about things that are near and dear to your heart.

We were already doing it. We just thought we'd put a microphone in front of us.

Yeah, why not?

Exactly.

So I'm inspired to ask you, how do you define shackled?

Well, I define shackled if you're. If you're. So it started as unshackled owner. So let me describe. That's easier. And unshackled life. I think I can describe too. Unshackled owner is really about when it doesn't really matter how successful you've become in the business. If the business is still owning your time and your life, you're shackled. If you're worried about leaving for a month to go do something where maybe you didn't have a cell phone or a computer and you couldn't be in touch and you're worried about the company struggling, you're shackled. Whereas what I've learned how to do and I've done repeatedly over the decades now, is build companies that I put a tremendous amount of time in at first, but then build systems so that. So that we not only have a. We know what we're doing, we know how we keep track, how we keep score. We have an empowered management team, we have empowered employees. So that. And a culture that wraps around the whole thing so that it can go whether the owners there or not. That's how you build a good business that you can sell. And that was my original thought process when I started trying to build things that didn't. They weren't my forever job. It was build up, make something that somebody else would find value in. Unshackled life. I really think unshackled life is. An unshackled life is getting to do things that you love to do when you want to do them. And that doesn't mean constantly being entertained, but it does mean being able to make the choices to do what you want to do. It's great if you have financial wherewithal to do that because you have an unshackled business and you make the money to go do things, but you don't have to be wealthy to live in unshackled life. You just have to get clear about what turns you on and why you're working. Even if you're working at a job that you don't love, why are you doing it and how is it. How is that a means to an end that gives you the life that you want? People always think they have to have every element of their life be so pristine and fun, and that's not real. What you need to do is know why you're doing the stuff you're doing and that you're doing it for reasons that matter enough to you that you are pleased at your outcomes.

Yeah, I mean, that's. You're describing the pivot process really, in many ways.

Well, it's a great book.

Well, no, I mean, just the idea that you reinvent because things are not the way, you know, that you think they would serve you best in this moment. So sometimes we're pivoting out of reaction to the loss of a loved one or a job or a relationship or our health or something. And at other times we're pivoting out of some other. Some other motivation, which is usually painful. It doesn't have to be. But I know in my case it was pain pivoting out of the pain of mediocrity. The pain of just doing work was uninspiring and being in a job that I didn't love, doing it just for the money and just for the security. So just really based out of fear, not out of love, not out of joy or.

Not everybody is an Adam Markell or I'll say an Aaron Young, where it's super easy to say, I'm going to scrap that my law degree. Right. In your case, and I'm going to go chase this other personal development, training, teaching, inspiring others. Not everybody's going to get that big opportunity, but everybody has something that's inside of them that their music that they want to get out of them. And sometimes you might have to work eight hours a day at a job that you don't necessarily love because you can earn three or four weeks of vacation and you can be putting money into retirement so that you can go out and volunteer at the, you know, teaching people to read or, I don't know, serving in your church or coaching Little League or something like that. That coaching Little League might be tough for a lot of entrepreneurs because they're. They're not available at 5 o' clock in the afternoon. Right. I think that the idea of unshackled for me is if you know what you want out of your life, if you put the pieces in place so that you can do the things that you really love and some people might have to work. I always. This is what I tell people in the program, actually. I say, remember, you have all these employees. These employees are working for you to fund the rest of their life. It's not because they're necessarily so madly in love with your business, but if you can provide a good, safe place for them to be and to work and to spend those eight hours a day so that they can take the money and go do whatever they love. Because they're not all going to be entrepreneurs. Right? So. But I think that somebody that's getting to go out and they get to go dive the reefs around the world because they love diving. And so they work eight hours a day, 49 weeks a year, and then get three weeks of vacation, they can go dive. I mean, maybe that is what they want. Maybe that is the life they want. Maybe. And, you know, whatever it is. That's a lot of. I'm saying a lot about.

Yeah, it makes sense. I guess the thing that's coming up for me is that there are statistics that I could pull them out if I had to.

I believe you. Go ahead. I'm here to be trained. I want to be taught.

Recent Harris poll statistics about quality of life. When people are polled and what they say about their job, for example, that 80 plus percent are in a job that's not their dream job, which. That makes sense, right? I think that aligns well with what you just said. And then 53% of those folks are actively looking for a new job, which that number is a little. I don't know what the word is. I could say it's disturbing. Enlighten. You know, it's. It's. It's something that's important that we.

It's illuminating. It's illuminating because you go, oh, so. But. So.

But illuminating as to what? Because that's what's coming up for me when I hear you say about. That there are people who are willing to trade their hours for dollars. That was made into a bad thing when Kiyosaki's book got really popular. Trading Hours for Dollars. I know I felt that way at the time when I read it.

But how many people are gonna read Kiyosaki's book? See, there's a difference between an entrepreneurial mindset and somebody who doesn't. Like my dad. My dad is so. He's so Smart, he's so well spoken. He's such a fine man. And yet the things that I do in my life terrify him. He worked his whole career at a job he hated because it provided money, health benefits, a company car, they could go out and entertain guests. So he and mom got to go on really nice dates, but with customers. And he never loved it, but he loved it way more than the fear of trying to go do something on his own. Yes, you see what I mean? And so there's the vast majority of the people in the world will never listen to this podcast, will never read Kiyosaki's book, will never even think other than just a casual armchair conversation of starting their own deal, because the risk is greater than their confidence. And so they're going to stay shackled. Things like you're doing things like I do are designed to help those people who have gotten to a point where they or innately had something in them. That said, I'm sure there's more that I could do if only I could identify, if only I could find that doorway onto the path. And so they're searching and they're reading books and they're listening to podcasts and they're going to events because they want more out of their world. They know it's there, but they don't know where to find it. So we can't, I can't try to have a completely all encompassing solution for people. But for those people who've gone far enough up on Maslow's hierarchy to where they're not thinking about survival anymore, they're not thinking about eating or housing themselves or clothing themselves or even basic fundamental relationships, they're thinking, what else can I be? You know, what am I meant to do? Those are the people that will find their way to mentors like yourself or me or others that we know and say, somebody give me, give me some hints and all we can do is try to, is to add some fuel to that little spark that is inside of them and maybe give them some ideas. I do a podcast I just podcasted. Earlier today. I recorded a visit with a woman who went through a variety of jobs, was well trained on things, but she missed the farm that she grew up on as a little girl. And even though she tried for 20 some years to do it, you know, the traditional way, right, like so many people do, she finally just gave up on it and she decided that she could clear blackberries and other brush using her goats. And so she started renting out her. She'd set up temporary fence and bring in the goats. And that now she lives from April through October as a. Just travels around with 120 goats and they're clearing hillsides and they're. I mean. And now she's been on Nightline. She's been on the Colbert Report. She's been written up in the Wall Street Journal. She's loving her life. She's never made so much money. She's never had so much fun. But she said, I wasted years because I knew there was more I could do. But I had no idea where to look. And it was only through a lot of blood, sweat and tears that I finally thought maybe these goats could do something. Who would have thought of the goats? Maybe these goats could make a business for me.

She's a pivoter, man.

She's a pivoter.

We gotta introduce her to me. I would love to hear that interview.

And there's. The goats are the hook. But the. But the woman is so cool.

Yeah. Because she wasn't. She wasn't settling. So my qu. I guess we're getting into a personal conversation here about your dad for just a second more.

Sure, go ahead.

Did he ever feel as though he was. Look, my father in law was similar. He worked a practical job that he didn't necessarily love. Although I wouldn't say that I want to speak to that degree because I think he did enjoy aspects of his job. But he was primarily focused on taking care of his family. That was his higher. That was his higher. In Maslow's pyramid, taking care of his family was at the top of the pyramid. Self actualization was not what he was.

Focused wasn't part of his world.

No. So your dad's similar.

I guess my dad, he had some ideas early on. So my dad was involved with the Mouseketeers back in the 1950s. He was in a movie with Frankie Avalon. He did a few other TV appearances. He had a. He was kind of a cast, you know, like an extra kind of a dude. But on at Paramount, right. He. He was a. He still is a great singer, great performer. He writes songs, he writes poetry. Super creative. He met this really cute little blonde and they got married a few months later. And I came along a year and a half later and then my sister another 18 months later and pretty soon there's five kids.

Dude, you're a dream crusher. How come you never told me this?

Let me tell you, they fanned my dreams though. But my dad, during that early time, he bought all the insides of an ice cream parlor. And he wanted to set up an ice cream parlor and. And do that. He leased this popcorn truck that was like an old wooden trolley. And he was out there all dressed up with the little garter around his arm and a striped shirt and selling popcorn down in Southern California in the 60s. And tried to borrow money from my grandfather who just said, no, I'm not going to loan you money to buy that truck. So he had a couple of, like when he was young, he kind of tried to chase a little bit, but then the weight of money and family and obligations and all that just kind of took it down. And so he did. He worked. He was a sales guy, right? And he was very good. He was well respected. And he didn't love his job, but people loved having him there. He was highly regarded in his field and was promoted multiple times only to request to be put back down sales because he just didn't want to hire and fire and he didn't want to do that. That was not his personality. What he did do. What he did do was he wasn't going to let that happen for me. And even though we didn't have a lot of money, he always pointed me at kind of odd things that turned out to be giant blessings in my life. And my comfort of being in front of a microphone was because my dad said, first there was one high school in Portland, Oregon, that was not a neighborhood high school. You had to be accepted into its public school, but you had to be accepted. Benson High School. It was all boys. I had zero interest in going to a boys school. I wanted to go with all my friends to the neighborhood high school and chase girls and have fun and do all that. But dad said, just apply and just see if you can get in. Just see if you can get in. Well, I got in. Well, I said, but I'm accepted. But I don't want to go. I'm going to go to my high school. He said, we'll go for one semester and if you hate it, you can leave. I get over there. He said, you know, they have a radio station, the oldest radio station in Portland, the public radio station is at that high school, kbps, Benson Polytechnic School. He said, you ought to just go up there and check it out, you know, and see what. See what they do. So I've wandered up there as a freshman, 14 years old, and they said, well, do you want to do a voice audition? I'm like, I don't know what that is, but sure gave me some stuff to read. Put me in front of A great big microphone hanging on a big boom, you know, And I did it. Next thing I know, I'm accepted in their program. Before you know it, I'm my junior and senior year, I'm chief of staff of the radio station. Right. I mean, I did a national. I got a national award from NPR for this magazine program, Portland High Life, that I was the host of. Right. I did all of this because my dad just kind of kept nudging me. My dad came home from work one day and said, this was when I was between eighth and ninth grade, I think. And he said, hey, I heard this super cool thing on the radio. There's the Boy Scouts of America are going to do this horseback ride. It's 180 miles, takes a week to go over the mountains. And I signed you up for it. And I'm like, what are you. What are you talking about? I'm a kid living on Southeast 29th street in Portland, right in town. You know, I don't know about horses, but he always loved cowboys, and he grew up in the 50s and watching John Wayne, and he never had that. So he's going to get his son on a horse. Well, I did that. And who would have known that that program, not only did I enjoy it all through my teenage years and then help kind of revitalize it in my early 20s when I was newly married, but my kids have all gone through. Three of my four kids have gone through that horse program. And the Boy Scouts of America just hired me to help them save the horse program, the second largest horse program in the United States that's of this ilk because it's underfunded and they needed some stuff, so they hired me. Now, at this age, I'm doing that right now. All because dad, who didn't get to live out his dreams, but he understood the importance of dreams and just kept pushing his oldest child out to do stuff. So, I don't know. I mean, did my dad live the life he wanted? I don't think so. Did my dad do right by me and all the people that I've been able to employ and affect in some way, shape or form? Thousands and thousands of people. I mean, he was a blessing for all of them. How you get it?

It's a wonderful ripple effect of his life.

Yeah.

That. This is what.

And I'm all choked up talking about my dad.

Yeah. Well, what's coming up for you right now? What's.

No, I just. Just as I said that, I don't think I've ever said out loud. That when I think about the things that. The phenomenal life that I get to live, I mean, I really have a great life. I said, did he live his dreams? No. But did he make it right for me and for all these people that now I get to touch? Yes. So was he successful? Yes. You know, it's a tender thing.

Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway, I'm an easy crier.

So am I, buddy. And it's more that you and I share. It's a wonderful life. This is the ripple effect we don't always see. I think the part that troubles me and those statistics, and where I agree with you is that we're not speaking to everybody. In fact, the people listening to this are clearly not the majority.

They're the exception. You know, they are the exceptions.

The fab, normal, as somebody once said in my event I was at, and the fabulously abnormal, in other words. Yeah. That to live, to live a life that is in service is. Creates fulfillment. So if it's in service to your family, as was the case for your father and my father in law as well, not that I think that they didn't have. My father in law didn't have pleasure and joy. Great pleasure and joy. But much of that pleasure and joy actually came out of being there to see the joys and the pleasures of his kids and his grandkids.

Yeah, their successes were awesome. So let me go back to your statistics for a second. So the unshackledowner class, which I'm not trying to make this a commercial about that at all, but one of the things that we talk about is one of these studies that I think you're citing talked about over 80% of employees. They interviewed over 200,000 employees. And 80% of them didn't know the mission of the company, didn't know where they fit into the company, didn't know really what they were being measured on, consequently didn't feel a deep connection to the business because they were just stuck in their little cubicle churning away their work without understanding the big. What difference it made in the big picture. When I bought Laughlin associates back in 2001, our turnover rate amongst the 80 employees was 300%. Okay, 300%. That's the culture that sucks. That is a bad culture.

Yes.

We took the same things that I'd done over and over again before. It took a couple of years to get the trust of the people, but now you can't hardly drag somebody out of that company. Our average tenure now is 13 years. I've owned the company for 16 years. Right. So once we got rid of the bad apples, we brought in people with a different context, a different culture, with an understanding of what we're here to do. Not just we sell corporations or we do corporate compliance. No, we build fortresses around people's personal and business assets. That's what we do. We're fortress builders. When you get on the phone with somebody, you're helping protect them and their family. That's what you're doing and understanding. Here's why. You hire for intentions. You don't hire to fill a spot. You say, I'm hiring you because this needs to be done. Is this something you can do? Now, we're going to figure out three or four things that we're going to measure to make sure that we're making that progress. So every single day, we both know how you're doing. See, when you do that, it changes the. It changes the deal. When you say, look, you don't have to go up through layers of management to get permission on something. Your job is solve the problem for the customer right now. Right. So you're empowered to do that. If we don't like what you did, that'll be a training moment. That'll be a way to teach. Okay, there's maybe a reason we don't do it that way, but you're not in trouble for taking care of a problem. I love the expression. I heard from Keith Cunningham one time, he said, you can't provide exceptional service without making exceptions. I thought that was brilliant. If you empower your people to do it, they will take ownership of that job. They'll understand why they're there, they'll understand what they're working towards, and then they feel great. That's why they don't leave the job. People that are looking for other jobs, they're unfulfilled because nobody's leading them. Nobody's giving them a flag to salute. Nobody's saying, here's the difference we're making in the world. Here's how we're helping people.

So tie back to the 53% of people that are actively looking for another job. Because part of what I'm hearing you say is that the reason potentially that they're looking for another job is that they don't feel a part of that company. They don't feel either engaged or respected or a part of the bigger picture. They don't understand where they fit in that big picture, what's the purpose of their work, you know, all that kind of thing. That would lead to some form of happiness or contentment within the. Within the space of their workplace.

So there's two. At least two things. One is that if you. If. In other words, if somebody says, I like working in an office, I like working in a team, I like having. Understand what we're doing. You know, they kind of like the work and they're looking for a job, it's because they're. It's bad management. 100%, it's bad management. The other part of that. The other. At least part of that group is people who started to do something because they believed it was a good idea. They went and got a degree in something because they thought they would like it. All they knew growing up was fireman, policeman, astronaut, lawyer, doctor. Right, exactly. And so they pursued it, and then they got there and they said, well, this isn't for me. So those people that might be looking for a job are the ones who. There's maybe no fault amongst anybody. They're just. Still, they haven't figured out how to identify their own superpower. What is it that their natural gifts are? That you could deploy those natural gifts in almost any setting and be successful and be happy, but if you don't know what they are, you're just. You're doing somebody else's errand all the time instead of saying, this is what I'm great at. I can do this in the military, I can do this in the private sector. I can do this in charities. I can do this in an entrepreneurial setting, because this is what I'm good at.

Most people, that's the area that I'm the most curious about, because that's the people that we speak to, the ones that are ready to look at. What are the ways that you shift out of that? Well, how do you stop the cycle of doing something that. That doesn't feel the way you want it to feel, Whether it's to not have the fulfillment to feel like you're not actually sharing whatever your true interests are. You're living for the weekend, you're living for the vacations, and that's.

Or you're living for somebody else's expectations.

Yeah. Or you're living out of obligation.

So. Yeah. Yeah.

Driven by responsibility. Driven by fear, really. Because the fear is that if you stop doing that, somehow you wouldn't be able to take care of yourself.

So we're talking about the. But we're talking about the fab normal right now, right?

No, no, no. See, this is why I'm getting at this with you, because the number, the Harris poll was 53%. And it wasn't 53% of the Fab. Normal. It wasn't 53% of a segment that might be the segment you identified earlier, which are the people who might naturally be gravitating toward you or myself or other people in the business development or personal development space. But let's say people who are wanting a higher level of consciousness and education. We're talking about 53% of the general that are working. Yeah. And so to me, I go back to what. What's the percentage of those folks not. Brother, you interrupt me anytime you want to keep going. Right.

You're asking a question.

I am. Because what's the percentage of that 53% that are. That are in a bad. In a bad culture, or let's. I don't want to use the word bad, but let's say in a culture that's not engaging them at the level where they want to stay. Right.

Yes.

Motivating them, inspiring them to be there and want to commit their time to that company ongoingly, versus the percentage of those folks that just realized they took a job the way we all probably at the beginning took a job, which was without great rhyme or reason or because we thought it was a good idea. In fact, I don't typically quote Keith Cunningham, and it's funny that his name came up twice. Now, I'm gonna say it again, but there is something I want to credit him with that made a difference when I heard it. He told a story about. We said something like, you know, every mistake he ever made. Because he's got a pretty incredible pivot story himself, right? He does, yeah. And I want to get to yours in just a second. But he says, you know, every great idea, or I should say everything that's ever gone wrong in his life started out as a great idea. And I thought that there's something really.

That sounds like marketing. I know. It sounds a little like marketing to me.

Well, I'll say how I interpret that.

Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah.

Whatever errors that we've made. I mean, to me, any error in my life wasn't because I started out to create an error, make a mistake. It started out as a good idea. So to go into a job or seek a profession or whatever.

Yeah, that's a good point.

You're going in with the best intent. You're not going in because you're saying, you know what? I would love to work this job for the next 10 years. And then at the end of 10 years I want to wake up in the morning and realize. Or have this realization that I've wasted 10 years of my life, you know, sort of climbing.

Nobody wanted that one on the wall.

On someone else's wall. Building. Someone else's building. Building or dream or something. And now I feel lost and have to pivot, have to change direction. Nobody starts out that way.

No. And the whole concept of pivot and the whole idea of your book and of this podcast is that there are people who are becoming. Well, either maybe they've been really happy in their life up to this point, and then something dramatic happened, like they got divorced or they. Somebody died, or they got cancer and they're like, well, this was okay.

Or they got fired.

I need to. Or they got fired, but I'm.

Or their business went bankrupt.

But. But I'm saying, what if it was okay? Yeah. But then. Then something bad happens. But. Or maybe it was okay, and then they turned 50 and they said, I don't know that I'm. Yeah, I think I could play a bigger game. Or what if I never even try? And maybe it's not even about, I want to build a big business. I want to travel the world.

My dad didn't give me these options and suggest that I go to a certain high school and suggest that I, you know, check out that radio show. Suggest, you know, they didn't have somebody who was actually sort of helping them pivot into a bigger space because they could see that I, you know, that they had more potential than they could see. Maybe they've actually had people who did the opposite in their life, where they constantly naysayed them and told them why that's not a good idea. Get a safe job or don't try that.

That's most people. That's most people. That's most people. I think most. That's why I said a minute ago, they're in a job they don't like. Out of. You said obligation. I said out of their. You know, they're. They're trying to live up to somebody else's expectations. Billy Joel has a great song called James and you should go back and looks one of his early albums. But it's all about. You know that. But it's all about a friend. Yeah. James, do you like your life? You know, but he talks about your. Are you still in school living up to expectations, you know, and he talks about all the ways this friend, this kid that he grew up with was not having his dreams lived out because he was so busy trying to live Everybody else's dreams out. So to just to close the loop on this thing about the 53%, I believe. I'm sure you can't break it into two categories, but I think if I was going to simplify it into two, it'd be those two I mentioned. One is they have bad management. They might have liked the idea of that industry, but they have bad management. And so they don't feel fulfilled in that position or they're in a job that was really wrong for them in the first place. But they're looking. And a lot of people jump from job to job to job looking for that, you know, that mothership where they feel comfortable again and where they feel at home. And then other people, like, I've got friends who just are professional professionals and their CEO or CFO or something, a chief operating officer, and they go for a two year contract. I just get more money everywhere they move, you know, that's a rare exception. But those people are there too. They're. They're changing jobs because they're going to get another half a million dollars when they move. And they already got all the stock options they're going to get from this company. So now they're going to go to another one. There's a lot of stuff out there that's not the solo entrepreneur. There's a lot going on.

But check it out, brother. This is just for you.

You can play it.

Totally. I want everybody to hear this song.

It's a great song.

Freaking great. Off Turnstiles. One of my favorite turnstiles.

Yeah, it was like his second album after Cold Spring Harbor.

Yeah, no kidding.

Is it gonna play?

Sure is, buddy. You don't hear it?

No, I don't hear it.

Oh, wait.

But. Okay, that was fun. I've never sung on with anybody to a song on a podcast interview, so this was a kick. Oh, you got your guitar back there, Adam?

I do.

Dude, I didn't know that. Okay. We have other things to do when we're not doing this.

Oh, no kidding.

We do some music stuff.

Why not?

But anyway, I think that that's. I think that's a great. Everybody should go download turnstiles. At least get James and then play it when you start feeling that and go, oh, yeah, I've got my own life to live. Not just. I'm not just here to do what everybody else wants me to do. That's.

Everybody else is satisfied. Think about it. How would you like to get through your life and get to the end? And the thing, you know, for sure is that everybody else is satisfied.

Yeah. But you never got to pursue your dreams. And it's scary, it's challenging. You have to make a decision to do it. Because it's. Anybody that says it's not scary, I think is fooling themselves because you have to be willing to give up something. And change is almost always difficult and quite often it's painful. But when you can get through it to the other side, there's a world available to you that you. That you just didn't even know existed other than watching a few people, little flickers of people that, you know, seem to have a nice motorhome or travel to Europe first class, where you had this little idea, but you didn't understand the freedom that comes from being in a position to do the things you want to do. And then when you get to go help other people at the same time and you see the difference that this idea that you had makes for somebody else, it just. It just changes your world.

So, brother, I'm gonna put you on the not. I know I'm not putting on the spot when I asked you to talk about this. I think the people listening might think to themselves, yeah, good guy, good guy. Really want to know more about him, all that. But he seems like, you know, he had a good father. Father took good care of him. We had a good realization moment, vulnerable, really authentic moment, really early on in this podcast where I think you were feeling great gratitude for your dad, just recognizing how behind, sort of behind the conductor's wand he's been in your life, which is beautiful. And there are people listening to this saying, what does he know about adversity? Because I've had adversity, I've experienced adversity. People know my story. I pivoted out of practicing law because I felt like I was near death and had a near death moment where I really thought, this is the way it's going to end. Me being a sellout and then shifting and pivoting and seven, eight, eight years later end up pivoting again when through not. Not seeing eye to eye with my own partners in a business that I put a lot of my life energy into that didn't work out. And now recreating a business from scratch and all the, all the, whatever, you know, all the challenge of that, the fear of it, all of the stuff that's in pivot had to then be applied for us to move forward ourselves. So people probably would love to know where it is that you've experienced adversity and how you Came out the other end of it.

So, Adam, you know, if you hear my bio or if I say I've been married for all these years and blissfully happily to this great girl and all these great kids and great business, I can tell you lots of great stuff. The stories that people don't know about me very much. They don't know that we had. Well, they don't know that I was super sick as a teenager and a young adult with ulcerative colitis and I would be on the toilet 25 times a day with blood coming out and I had to have my large intestine removed at 21. They don't know that story. They don't know about my second business, which was a great success until it wasn't. And I hung onto it too long and we ended up in bankruptcy court back in 1992 with my nine month pregnant wife, with our second child. We had to give our cars back to the bank. And for a while, for about nine months, we had this car that we couldn't fix the starter on. So my wife, with two car seats in the back, two little children, has to park on a hill so she can roll, start the car. People don't see that when they come up and they see the things we do now, right? They don't know that stuff. The story that you're referring to is again, being on top of the world, being way up in my office tower office, you know, downtown Portland, 26th floor, the bank tower down there. And you get a visit from the IRS and the FBI, and they were seeking information from, from us about a guy that we had stopped a couple years before doing business with, but. And a good, a nice guy, but a guy that I thought was a hot potato and kind of doing some things that were gonna. That I just didn't want to be around. And so when they asked me, you know, can you answer a few questions for us? And I. And they assured me I was not part of the, you know, investigation, I said, sure. And I answered their questions. And four months later, I get indicted on conspiracy charges. They said that, hey, you either knew or you should have known what we think this guy was up to. Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my company, nothing to do with my taxes, nothing to do with our family. Never took one shred of evidence out of any of the companies like Laughlin. Never took one piece of paper. But we thought, how can you be in trouble for something you should have known about? How can you be criminally indicted? So we fought and fought and fought, spent about about $2 million fighting in legal fees and finally just had to give up and. And made a plea bargain. I'll never forget when the prosecutor told my wife was there, she said, you know, I always thought maybe Aaron, that up until that moment that maybe you'd been gullible, maybe you'd been innocent in your intentions, but you had been, you know, on the edges of something that was wrong. But she said when we sat in that meeting, it just, she made her want to fight more when he said, I don't care what you plead guilty to. It could be anything. As long as that is a 36 month charge, I don't care what it is. In other words, doesn't have to be anything we found. You just need to tell us something you're guilty of. Can you imagine that? That's just. Anyway.

So I want to pause there.

Yeah.

To imagine that.

Well, I can tell you what I.

Think it's a real moment to have somebody say that to you when you've.

Never had an issue with the law and you never. You always thought the government was supposed to be the good guys. And then here's this guy representing the United States of America saying, I don't care what you plead guilty to. When I told the judge when I changed my plea from not guilty to guilty and I told him what I was pleading guilty to this. He's a black man with gray hair. He was the chief justice of our federal court here in Portland and on the ninth Circuit appellate court. So I think that's what they call it isn't the ones that make case law.

Sure.

So he goes down there, you know, when, when the arguments with Trump over immigration, all that sort of thing. He, he was part of that group making the decisions for the ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Answer Haggerty. When I told him what I was pleading guilty to. I kid you not. He's sitting up on the bench. I'm standing down there in my little blue business suit. All these other guys in orange jump shoots have been going by in shackles. Right. I changed my plea. Adam, I kid you not. And you're a lawyer. He did this. He'd been looking down, reading this sort of thing. You know, you're giving up these rights and edit it. You understand all. He's reading a script. I said what I pled guilty to. He sat up in his chair and he took off his glasses and he said, let me repeat this back to you. You're saying that you met a guy one time at A lunch with the other defendant, and you gave this individual a phone number. And then two years later, that person bought an insurance policy that's completely legal to buy, and then later, he deducted inappropriately the premium on that insurance policy. But you didn't do his taxes. You had nothing to do with his deduction, and you didn't get paid a commission or anything. You're saying you aided and assisted in the filing of false corporate tax return by doing that? And I said, yes. And he. I kid you not, he went like this. He goes, all right. Like, even I. My lawyers didn't even think that the prosecution would accept it. That's the only thing I could figure out that I could plead guilty to, is I did give a guy a number. And I had found out in the discovery boxes, 400 boxes of discovery, a whole giant room full of these boxes, that this guy who I met once, who I did give a phone number to, did buy an insurance policy and did deduct it inappropriately. And I said, that's. I aided and assisted him by giving him the phone number.

Yeah.

So off I went to prison, federal prison, for a year and a half. And there's a tremendous number of stories in there. But the main thing is, as a guy who grew up super straight, Lace. I grew up in the Mormon church. I was a Mormon missionary. It's an Eagle Scout. I only ever had sex with my wife. I never drank. I never smoked. I was just this straight, straight, lily white guy who'd never had trouble with the law. And then I. And then I thought I was help. I'd separated from the guy that I thought was a problem. When those that came to investigate him, which made sense to me, asked me questions, I thought I did the right thing by answering their questions. And now here I am in federal prison. It was never part of my, you know, when you lay out your vision, when you write out your here's where I'm going to go, or you want to make a mind movie or a dream board. Right. Prison was never on the dream board. That was never. It was nowhere in the path I saw for my life at all. I couldn't. I mean, I couldn't fathom that I would ever go to prison. And. And there's a. There's all kinds of stories I could tell that would be tearjerker stories about it. But, you know, we. It was a hard time Going. Going up to. It was very difficult, very terrifying. And going through it was dehumanizing and long. That was since 18 months. But you spend 14 months and a week actually in the facility. Then you go to halfway house. Then you have time off for good behavior, right? About 10% for good behavior. So I was 14 months a week. 14 months in my normal life goes by very quickly. 14 months and a week in there. It felt like I had always been there and I would always be there. You're so cut off from the world and so. But if anybody's listening, I'm going to tell a story. I've only told this story a few times, but I tell the story, if you don't mind. Because if anybody's going through this right now, whether it's a legal battle, a marriage battle, a health battle, a loneliness, a sadness, whatever, whatever is, that's your thing. I remember a day where we'd hired this attorney from Canada to do research. We didn't want anybody that was part of the US system. So we'd hired this attorney and he was down for one of his regular every couple of months meetings with us. And he came into the room, this off site location that we were doing this conversation, having this meeting, and he saw me and he said, aaron, you don't look good. Are you okay? And I said, no, I'm not okay. I'm horrible. I can't eat, I can't sleep. I'm freaking out. We're spending money like water, just water pouring through our hands. I'm worried about the business, I'm worried about my family. I'm freaked out about how this is going to affect my wife and kids. I'm absolutely terrified that I might go to prison and what that might mean to me. Because I'm thinking raped and beaten and you know, I'm thinking every story I'd ever heard in my life. I said, no, I'm not okay at all. He said, here. And you'll understand this, Adam, because I'd never really done this. I do it a lot now, but in those days I didn't. He said, here, let's take three deep breaths together. You know, in through your nose, out through your mouth. That was not a practice I had at that time. But when he said, take a deep breath in, and I went, I realized that I couldn't even open up my diaphragm and take a deep breath. It was really hard for me even to breathe in all the way. And he said, I've seen this before, Aaron. He said, you can't breathe.