Your Stories Become Your Reality w/ Kevin Wilke

Hey, guys, this is Ryan, and I'm sharing with you today part of our last Sunday coffee inside the 1%. I brought on one of my longtime friends, Kevin Wilkie, who has had a lot of ups and downs in his entrepreneurial journey. And we talk about how he managed some transitions during the last economic crisis, the last great period of change. He made the decision that he was going to grow through that and made a lot of progress, but also got kicked around during that time. And during this time, he has been handling it differently. And as a result, he has grown by leaps and bounds. And so in this podcast, he shares how he navigated this crisis versus the last crisis, what he learned, how he grew, and I think as a result of hearing his story, and you're going to be able to cruise through this time with a lot more ease and a lot more growth than everybody else who is scrambling around you. So this is taken from our Sunday coffees. These are done live on YouTube and they're streamed from the 1%. So if you'd like to join us as a member, you can join us@capitalism.com 1. Or if you just want to watch from the sidelines, that's fine, too. Just make sure you're subscribed on YouTube to get notifications for when we're going live.

All right.

Enjoy this chat with Kevin.

Kevin, good morning, my friend. It is good to see you.

Great to be here. It's been a while.

This beard that you are sporting right now is making me jealous. Can I, I have to ask, what product on Amazon did you buy to make that beard look so awesome naturally.

Have an awesome beard? I'm fortunate.

So, so that, that nice, like, deep move right here that you. That just grows in all naturally. You don't put any, like, miracle beard grow on it or anything?

No.

All right, and we're caught up. There's your how to guide on how to have amazing beard, ladies and gentlemen.

So, I mean, I could talk to you all day. How you been, my friend?

Let's start there.

And then I want to introduce kind of your why you're. Why you're amazing to the rest of the group.

I've been doing, doing awesome. Life's going really well, Getting married in a month, got a fast growing business, gonna be moving to Austin in about six months.

That's great news. That makes me very happy. Congratulations on everything. And the, and the business that is growing so fast is. Would you describe that in 30 to 60 seconds?

Yeah. I have a local marketing agency, so we go into specific local Industries and perfect the online ad campaign for that industry. And then we can replicate in every city across the country and get an exclusive client in each city where we generate a lot of inbound customers for the at local business.

And is it, is that like niche specific? Like you have one market that you really own and own in every market or do you take on a bunch of different industries?

Yeah, we have been focusing on emergency home service industries like pest control, water damage companies, appliance repair companies, H vac companies.

And so those companies come to you because you're doing Internet marketing to get them leads, is that right?

Correct.

And so are they paying you for shows for leads on a month to month basis? Just help us understand the business.

Yeah. What we've found, we tested a bunch of pricing models so charging them a monthly fee based on how much their ad spend is. So they have a couple different like levels. So as they want to grow, increase their ad spend and our fee goes up accordingly.

Got it.

So on average they pay us around $1,000.

Okay. So I got so $1,000 per client.

Ish.

And they're paying for local marketing to do, I'm guessing like Facebook ads and Google Ads and all that.

Google Ads or Facebook ads depending on the industry. So then we set up like a whole brand specific for that industry. So look, and we position ourselves as the specialist or expert in that industry to get them business using online marketing.

Got it. Cool. And so you set yourself up as an expert in this industry. You know how to get leads specifically on Google and you're managing that for local businesses. And is that your. In the time I've known you, we don't see each other as much as we used to, but you used to have multiple things going on. And then like a couple years ago something switched where you just got like happy, fit and rich. In the course of, of, of like nine days, it was like, it was, it was like your whole life flipped. Like I, I want to talk about this because I mean you were, you were known in the space, pretty well known in the space.

Spoke on stages, referenced from stages in Masterminds. Pretty much everybody knew who Kevin was. And one day you completely flipped the model. You became really happy, got engaged and your whole life seemed to change. Would you tell me what in the world happened in those nine days?

Oh man, that's a big question. So I used to have a training company called Nitro Marketing. Very well known in the industry. A lot of people either worked for like got their start through us. Like simple example, like Back in the day, Russell Brunson applied to be our affiliate manager before anybody knew who Russell Brunson was. And of course we did hire him. We hired somebody else that did it work out.

Although I can't see Russell keeping a job for very long.

So it was best for everybody. But then I just. I loved the training business and making a difference for people or I love training and making a difference in people's lives. And my mind is really just naturally a trainer at heart. But I didn't like the business model behind training.

I felt like to make the business work, we always had to come up with the next thing to sell people. And everything we created was great, but. But it actually created more overwhelm in people's lives versus the.

Generally more overwhelming. I just felt like out of integrity of what I had to do to make the business work wasn't always in line with what was going to make a difference. And.

So I got sold that business and I also had my. So I taught people how to do local marketing and start their own agency and taught thousands of people before anybody else did that. And I also have my agency where that's what we did as well. So I like, you know what, I just want to focus exclusively on my agency. That's the bigger opportunity of actually doing it because I can scale and grow, creating a large company that we could eventually sell.

So I did that and back in 2016 and my partner at that time didn't want to do that. He had. He was making more money than ever before, more freedom than before. He just wanted to like enjoy his life and didn't want something bigger. So he bought me out. I sold my company. Both deals actually closed on the same week, which was crazy and it was great. I. I removed everything from my calendar and looked at the next week and I literally had nothing on my calendar. Is this whole new like sense of freedom I never had. Took some time off and then started my current agency the next year with one of my best friends. And that's what I've been doing since going back to. What made the difference for me is this. I just went more into my own personal growth. Like what caused me to get burnt out and miserable and have a business that wasn't thriving and all that. I had to like work through my own kind of growth to move past that and create what was next for me.

So I want to talk about that more because I think it's so easy to talk about where you are now without providing any context or for the foundation that brought you here. And if we don't get that context and that foundation, I think we've missed all of the juice. And I. I know, like, it seems to me from the outside, I remember when we were in Jackson Hole together, me telling you, like, it just seems to me like you are as happy as you have ever been. And this was your reaction? Yep.

Like, you seem happier and calmer and just like you're ready for the next chapter. And it seems like the next chapter has come, has kind of unfolded your way with a lot more ease than previous chapters. And first of all, I want you to tell me if that's a right assumption. And number two, what did that area of personal growth look like in order to set up the chapter where you are now?

So, on a personal growth side, it was just going deep.

In a, I guess, a mythology. So the route that I took was through landmarks programs. And it's all about identifying the stories we unconsciously created in the past growing up that just dictate how life goes for us and how we see life. And we're just like, replaying the same stories over and over again. So to be able to start to peel back the curtain or the onion and uncover what are those unconscious patterns and stories that are running my life, that are creating the same outcomes over and over again, allowed me to change everything, gave me the freedom to get rid of my business I didn't want anymore. It allowed me to see the same, like, path I was going on with dating that was unsuccessful for me. And that same year, I sold my. Both my companies. I met Graciela, which we're now getting married. Just absolutely amazing relationship. And then we've been on a path of growth together.

So I guess that's a. A quick summary of it all.

What I love about what you just said was that you said you just decided to go deep with a modality, because.

Pretty much all self work is discovering what stories got us here and what stories feel empowering for us to move forward. And I know I've been guilty of skimming the surface of a lot of different modalities, but they're all kind of the same. Like, they're all. They're all trying to address the same. The same. The same cause, if you will, just looking at it from a different way, and the work is really identifying those stories and peeling back those stories. Would you. Would you give us an example of a story you didn't know was there that, once you unpacked, gave you a new, Like, a new perspective for that was More powerful.

So one that really drove my life is growing up. Grew up on a farm in small town Iowa. So back in the 80s, Farmer's was not a great profession to be in. And I saw my parents struggle financially and then how that created conflict amongst them and a positive of that. It gave me a huge drive to not experience that as an adult. And that's what propelled me to as a kid, I thought the pathway out of that was to have my own business and be in control of my future. So I was always entrepreneurial. But the downside of like laying in bed at night upstairs, listening to my parents yelling and arguing downstairs and crying myself to sleep, I just created the story. Like, I'm all alone, Nobody cares about me.

My parents still love me. So if my mom doesn't love me, that means like, how could women love me? And I just created this dynamic of I was just alone and isolated and.

Nobody actually could love me. And to unpack all that was.

Very impactful. Like I'm just like in tears as I'm like uncovering the story. But then the freedom of the other side that that offered me was life changing.

And what does it look like on the other side to unpack that? Do you then frame a different story?

Yeah. So I was very disconnected from my family. And for like years and years I would create my goals. Beginning of the year, like I want to have a better connection and like loving relationship with my family. But all I saw was everything that drove me crazy about them. I'd go home once a year for Christmas and they're like having the same conversations. They're telling the same stories I've heard before. They're comparing which gas station has the cheapest gas in town. And I'm just like, oh my God, this is like unrelevant. Like this is not who I am. And I just check out and can't wait until I get to go home and like cross it off the list and go back and it didn't matter. Nothing ever changed with that. Like year after year I'd have the same goal and the same experience. And then the next time I went home after I did my first program and I unpacked that story and I created.

Unconditional love with my family. Like it actually instantly changed. The second day I was in this program, I called my mom and had like a profound conversation with my mom. I called my dad for the first time as an adult on the phone. Like I unknowingly blamed my dad for my parents divorce. So he went from Being my hero in life to now being this person I can't stand. Like even the way he ate his food would like annoy the crap out of me. And then I actually had a real conversation and connection with my dad for the first time as an adult, told him I loved him. And then I called my sister. And during that conversation I realized all those stories I had about my family like literally disappeared. Because once you distinguish an unconscious story or belief you have, you can now be free from that and put in place what you want, which I put in place. Unconditional love. So from that moment forward, all I've like had for my family was unconditional love. And now I look forward to going home. I talk to him regularly on the phone. And I have a, like now my dad has such a huge place in my life. Like no matter what happens, I can have total.

Sense of peace of who my dad is for me. And I even had him come out and spend a week with me in New York. And that was amazing as well.

There's something you said that I need you to illuminate a little bit more, which is as, as soon as you recognize the unconscious story, it disappears or evaporates or frees up. I don't remember the language that you use, but, but would you comment on that a little bit more?

And when you like, you go through like a, like a methodology, it's like the one that they work through. There's other people. Tony Robbins has his own. I mean one of my favorite books that I've given out, the Most Untethered Soul, the, a great like entry point to this. But once you distinguish like what actually happened separate from what we make it mean. It's like as soon as something happens in our life, our brain instantly puts a meaning on what, what that is about us and life around us. So all that happened as a kid is my parents are having a conversation downstairs with a loud tone and that's all that actually happened. But then my brain as a little kid, 10 year old kid or whoever was, now created this whole world of what that actually meant, but the meaning, is it real and does it exist in reality? But for the rest of my life, that was how life was for me. So once you can actually peel apart what happened from the story, you get freedom from the story running your life. And now you can create something new because you have this blank slate that you just created for yourself.

The thing that you just said that was so true is the story doesn't exist in reality, but we make it True. Over and over and over and over and over. I could be here a while. Over and over and over again.

Again.

Because from that moment forward, our brain now just looks for evidence that the story we just created is real.

So Kevin, talking about how that that kind of, kind of creates the filter for all the evidence that we see, I've been playing with this idea of can we flip it? Can we just believe a story and look for evidence of the story and allow our brain to start creating that meaning? Like could we pick what it is that we want to see and then find evidence for it? I'm curious your thought on it.

Real life example right now. So back the last economy, recession, 2008, 2009.

I was not prepared for that. It just came out of nowhere and really devastated my business back then. People just stopped buying. So now I like every day at the end of the day, I like work the entire day as long as possible. I'm now sitting on my couch and I'm just left with the thoughts going in my head. And it'd just be this constant spiral of death and destruction that was going to happen in my life. Where I was going, my business was going to fail, I was going to lose my house, I was going to have to move back to Iowa and live in my mom's basement. And that was just like the thought process over and over again. And fortunately, like I made it out of that. And that's what set me on the path to focus on local marketing, helping local businesses and all that. So now back in March of this year, very apparent that this was going to be a massive impact on business, probably even bigger impact than what I experienced back in 2008 and 9. So I'm like, well, I'm going to have this go different than how it went before. And what I learned is during times of the biggest change is where the biggest opportunity shows up. However, it's not going to show up doing what you've been doing before. You have to actively go out and look for where the opportunity is in the shifting landscape that's out there. So I told myself I am choosing if this is going to be the biggest opportunity in my entrepreneurial life up until this point. And I've been in business since 96 when I was in college. So over 2020, what's that, 24 years now? I said this is going to be the biggest opportunity in my, my entrepreneurial life and I'm just going to be on the lookout for it. And then I created that reality with my team, with My business partner, my team with myself and I just went on the search for it and that's what showed up is everything that came out of that. So our business, the best growth that we've had actually started once everything started falling apart in March. So we've been growing faster than we ever have before in the three plus years of my agency and what we're creating for the future, I'm like super excited about.

That's fantastic. Great work. Thank you for sharing that.

Like going back to what you're asking. If I didn't create that, then whatever, something by default was just going to show up. And the default usually is not what we want.

Well, it's usually a past story and past stories are usually disempowering. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I love you buddy. It's good to see you. Thanks for hanging out with us. All right team, thanks to Kevin for hanging out with us. Thank all of you for hanging out with us on your Sunday morning. Next week we have a general Q and A call. So I'll just be taking questions and hanging out with you guys on Sunday morning. And this week I'll have some announcements on some upgrades and changes coming to the 1%. So stay tuned for that. Alright guys, we'll see you next week. Take care.

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are members and non members. If you are enjoying this stuff, you have got to join us inside the 1%. 1% members get access to our courses on building businesses and investing the profits. They get access to experts who are bringing in lessons on a regular basis, some of the best in the world and they're joining regular calls with myself or members of my team to keep the community growing. The 1% is a community of entrepreneurs who are actively building businesses and investing the profits. And every month you get a community newsletter to see what's going on in your community and what the opportunities are to create the change that you want to see in your world. Join us at capitalism.com the number one that's capitalism.com one.