Kevin Nations On Big Money, Small Events

Welcome to Out of the System, the only podcast on the internet dedicated to showing doctors the way off the medical plantation where they no longer have to take insurance and they can heal the healers. So my guest today is a longtime friend of mine by the name of Kevin Nations. Now, unless you are in my world, there's a really good chance you have no idea who this man is, but the reality is, is he's really the go-to uh, let's call him savant, guru, uh, man on the mountain, whatever we want to call it, Kevin, um, of some of the biggest names in our industry, in the coaching industry, consulting industry, uh, internet marketing, things of that nature. His list of clients that he has worked with is pretty impressive, uh, people like Frank Kern, and the list goes on and on. If you don't know those names, it's okay, uh, you probably don't as a doctor. But, uh, Kevin is brilliant when it comes to showing people how to design businesses that matches their souls. And really structure your pricing and your offer so that it's either a hell yes or a no thanks. So we're gonna dive into a lot of things today, Kevin. Thanks for speaking at my event a couple weeks ago, and thanks for taking the time to join us today. So what's, what's new in Planet Kevin Nations these days? What are the things that you are working on and diving into?

I think one of the things that is most notable at the present— speaking of the word present— is the contrast between our desire to be efficient and using AI, and the contrast— contrast that with our desire and human need to be connected. And still maintaining a presence with people. And I think that because those 2 data points have collided rather recently, it's been difficult for people to weigh the balance of increasing efficiency through the use of even more automation, AI, etc. and increasing the human connection that is a key factor. I won't say essential, but I'd say it's perhaps essential, but definitely a key factor in part of our continuing value as service providers.

So when you talk about connection, why is it that connection— one, explain why connection is so important with regards to the converting of prospects? And how do you create connection in a world that is increasingly unconnected?

Well, people want to be understood. And this goes back to one of my early heroes was the late Stephen Covey. And he said, in one of his 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, seek first to understand, and then to be understood. And I think that so many people, once they feel understood, will trust us much more with prognoses. So whatever we're selling, but especially things to do with their physical characteristics, and the word diagnosis is very central to the medical community. Once they feel understood, they're much more open to our diagnoses because they feel that those diagnoses are coming from a place of connection rather than from a place of non-connection. So they feel empathy. And when they feel like that we are empathetic with them, they're much more likely to trust our diagnoses coming from a place of empathy rather than just from a platform of superior information. Yeah.

Like, in your— okay, so, so people get context of what you do. Well, explain to people what you do, because I think it's, I think it's really important so they understand how you've structured your life and your business. It's a very unique model how you have structured it. Um, give people a little bit of an insight of kind of your background and what you do.

So, background, I grew up in a very religious community, multi-generations of actual pastors and leaders in a church community. And as such, I saw, you know, the central theme of there being a gospel, something good news, if you would call it that. This was in the Christian religion. And from that, I think that there is a number of things that happen within a religious community. One is the things that you do— community outreach, liturgy, the community outreach, the Saturday carnivals and fairs, and how you show up in the community. And then there's the orthodoxy. And many, many times intellectuals want to impose their orthodoxy on others because they feel it's superior. Very prevalent in religion. My religion is better than yours because, you know, our orthodoxy is superior. It's been around longer, or it was evolved after, whatever the case might be. Much is argued over orthodoxy. And I saw that obviously our religion when I grew up had the superior Orthodoxy. Who would—

why would you be in anything less? Why would you be in an inferior orthodoxy? Right? Everybody's—

Exactly. And if you grew up in a strong political family or a strong religious family or a strong family with a central theme toward medicine or law or community activism or whatever that might be, your orthodoxy was superior. We are You know, we are nations because of this. We are, you know, Baptist or Buddhist or Pentecostals or Republicans or Democrats because of these superior orthodoxies. But what I really found when I watched growing up some churches grow and some not is the ones that grew the most were most often they grew because of a superior connection to the community. And very few people that became a member of the church, in my view, looking at it from a child's perspective, but I would say fairly open-minded child's perspective, in my view, people came because they enjoyed the kids program.

Hmm.

They liked how the church treated the family. And then all of a sudden, They reflectively embraced the orthodoxy as superior because it was necessary to defend their feeling of being understood.

Mm-hmm.

And so I think in sales, many times we get on a platform. I don't know anything about medicine, but my brother is a career physician and has been a practicing physician for a long time. So I've heard some things from him, but we get on a platform of our modus operandi, our way of doing things is superior. And yet, if we watch other people outselling us, outgrowing their businesses, very likely they are relating to their audience more than we are. And I noticed that As I was growing up, I grew up in a very fundamental, very rules-based religious organization. And many leaders, pastors, ministers would stand in their pulpits and adopt a platform of our church is small because of our strict adherence to this superior orthodoxy.

Yeah.

And you've heard this many times from— and I don't mean this in a negative way, but you've heard this from extreme sects in politics, religion, even in science and medicine that, you know, not many people follow this because this is so correct.

Yeah.

And that contrasts so viscerally with Dr. Covey's statement of seek first to understand and then to be understood. And when we have empathy for people and how that framed my background as I decided that I wanted to live a life, first of all, where I was free to choose everything that I wanted. And I have built a life around doing exactly what I've wanted to do. But But if I was going to have a client, I was going to need to, if I was going to choose to have a client, I was going to need to give them what they wanted, not what I determined they needed.

And it's such a, it's really funny because growing up Irish Catholic in Chicago, I remember, you know, there was the Irish part of town, there was the Polish part of town, there was the, you know, the Jewish part of town, right? All the, it was very segmented. I will never forget. I went to my— I spent— I had a sleepover at my friend's house, and they lived on the other side of town, and they were Polish. And I spent a Saturday night and had to go to Sunday Mass with them. My mom, when I got back home, she made me go to the 12 o'clock Mass, even though it had already been at 9:30, because she said, even though it's Catholic, it's not real Catholic. They're Polish. We're Irish. It's real Catholic. And I just was like, that stuck with me, right? Now somebody's gonna think my mom was a bigot. She wasn't. She was just born in 1932. So, you know, I mean, you, you think about it.

We put—

isn't it amazing how people, how people get so attuned and attached to a specific dogma and ideology? I mean, you can present facts to people and they'll still double down. What are your, like, I know you're a very thoughtful guy. Like, what are— why do you think that is? Why do people double down on something that they— this— the data shows that it's wrong?

Well, to reflect back on something I've already said, once we feel understood and accepted, and this is especially true for people who are protecting community, and this is kind of in the median of Abraham Maslow's study on human needs. And in the median of that, probably where the majority of people are, is people want to be loved, understood, accepted, these types of things. And when they are loved, accepted, embraced, understood, then protecting that community, protecting that tribe is of utmost importance. You know, we cannot be disrespectful to not only our Catholicism, but to the Irish sect of our Catholicism, which is even more specific and even more exclusive. But it includes me. And because it includes me and I can never be excluded from that, because your mother could be a lot of things, but she couldn't be un-Irished.

Right.

No matter how poor she became, no matter, you know, how rejected by men she became, no matter how fired from jobs— I don't know anything about your mom's history, but no matter— men could reject her, jobs could fire her, you know, many, many things could do many, many things to her, but she can never be un-Irished.

Right.

And so obviously, the dogma around that nationalism was significant because it was a hedge around her being understood, which is such an important thing for many people in the median and the vast majority of humans. They want most to be understood and appreciated. And so they will, in my view, defend any dogma that makes them feel that they are protecting the tribe in which they feel most understood.

It's really fascinating. I'm like you. I get fascinated by— I get fascinated by political parties. I, you know, when you really look at the stances of a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats, I'm not talking about the things that you see on CNN or Fox News. I'm talking about hanging out with your friends, right? Like, I have friends who are Republicans, Democrats, socialists, whatever, right? Libertarians. And it's amazing to me how they're all so very similar. Hmm. But defend their nuanced differences to the death, which I, as a person who's in sales and marketing— so like basically our job is to convince people that white is black and black is white, right? Like that's what, that's what you do in marketing, right? And I think one of the hardest things to do is to change somebody from a belief system. So when you are out And you are evangelizing your belief system and what you do and how you teach people. Walk me through that, because I know you're not out there trying to change people's position. You're really trying to find the people that have already began the transformation. Is that, is that a fair assessment?

I would believe so. And I think that if you rewind back to a number of things we've talked about already, first of all, you talked about many political parties being very similar in some of their beliefs, but separating the nuances. Your mom was much the same way. I wouldn't say there was that much different than an Irish immigrant, a Polish immigrant in Chicago.

Mm-hmm.

But the distinctions were enough that she wanted to make sure that one was clear about which was which. You know, both, both of you guys and gals were one or two generations removed from Europe, which was so far away from Chicago.

Right.

But lest we be mistaken, you know, it wasn't if she was talking about, you know, you guys as someone from an African nation or from an Asian nation or from an island somewhere. Here's you know two European transplants into this melting pot of the U.S. in the Windy City, making sure that someone understands that we're not like them. Although you know Polish, Polish and Irish were probably more alike than many other sects of immigrants to absolutely you know to Chicago. But lest one forget, we're going to make these. you know, we're going to make the key distinctions between these 2 likely very similar nationalities and families.

Yeah.

So I just, I wanted to make that point when you were talking about that it's many times nuanced. And then so you asked the question, what is it that I do? I really look to find myself people who are already inclined To believe what I believe. There's a couple of ways that one can do marketing. There is making someone unhappy with their prior choices and then inviting them, obviously, to your superior choice. Everything you've done was wrong, and now this way is right.

Mm-hmm.

That's, you know, One way of marketing. That way was wrong. This way is right. There needs to be a conversion. I look at my way of marketing much more like a euro stand outside of a nightclub. People most often— sometimes there are digressions from this, but people many times leaving a nightclub, or let's just say a food truck at a construction site. People at the construction site are happy. They're working, they're getting paid. They have no resistance to nor frustration with the worksite, specifically as it relates to the food truck.

Mm-hmm.

But every so often they get hungry. Same thing in a nightclub. You leave, if there's no kitchen in the club, you know, you've been drinking, you've been dancing, you've been sweating, you've been doing lots of things. You're about to go home, maybe have a little bit of a high alcohol content. What do you want? You want a gyro, you want a whatever it is that they're serving in the food truck just outside the nightclub. And so my way of attracting clients is I want people who have been incredibly happy already with the experiences that they've had most recently, even with competitors of mine, but also seeing that there's something that that competitor didn't offer with me because in My view, if one adopts the old way was bad and mine is good, then eventually, if we think about evolutionary humans throughout the course of one lifetime, evolution of our traits of choice, the evolution of our distinguishing characteristics of how we appreciate things, then one would naturally evolve from me. That would only be natural. But if I take people who have been happy with where they've been and offer myself as an alternative, if someone migrates from, let's just say, one religion to the other, then there's very few paths back, or one political party to the other. There are very few paths back. But if one migrates from the nightclub to the food truck, well, the next week they're still going to come to the nightclub and then they're going to go to the food truck.

Right.

Or the job site to the food truck. And so my way of marketing my own services is that whatever someone's already doing, I want to endorse that, ratify that, but offer what I'm doing as an addition to, or filling a missing piece for, or an opportunity. Maybe somebody goes into a nightclub pays a cover, but then also pays to be a bit segmented and buys a table or rents a table, whatever you call it, you know, finds an exclusionary place. Maybe somebody goes to a concert, still watches the band, the band gets paid, but they buy a VIP section. My job is not to rail against the other choices that they made, but ratify the other choices that they've made, but offer an upgrade in Generally, in exclusivity, so that they can enjoy things that they may have appreciated in the past. Not need to denounce those things. They can still celebrate their past decisions and then begin to do some work with me. And many of my clients do the same.

Yeah. So we're not talking about copycat marketing or copycat offers or copycat sales. You're not going to put another euro. food truck right next to the gyro truck and offer it at 5 cents less. You're talking about either a, a different type of experience around the gyro or something that supplements the gyro, like maybe, I don't know, Greek fries or something like that, or something like the dessert, the dessert that they didn't get or something like that.

Well, if I was right, but I'm actually thinking about being the food truck outside of a venue, like where is Where is there a venue of people that are happy with their experience but missing a piece of an experience?

Got it. Got it.

And what experience could I offer them that wouldn't have them— wouldn't have them need to denounce the current experiences they're having in life, but they could still, you know, benefit from mine as well? That way, You know, when let's say you and I had complementary services, and in some ways we do. If I said mine are directly in competition with Matthew's, and you must either choose to work with him or with me, then you could never refer me business.

Right.

If I were to say, you know, here is the point in working with Matthew that you may want to work with me. Here's the point in working with me that you may want to work with Matthew. Then people could migrate from one of us to the other, migrate back and forth between us, migrate from one of us to the both of us at the same time. And they could do that because they don't have to denounce one to embrace the other.

So you don't—

which many people call—

Yeah, like a lot of times people will play like the zero-sum game. You have to choose A or B, right? In your case, You, when you take people through a discovery process of whether or not they want to work with you, walk us through that a little bit. Because when I first learned this in 2005, it blew my mind. And then I spent the next, I don't know, 20 years trying to really figure out how to really do it. Um, so you have a very unique way. You're not trial closing, you're not doing— you're not pressuring people. Your whole process is vastly different. Explain it to people.

I think I know what you're asking.

I mean, from the standpoint of, okay, if I have an interest and you start to sell— we used to— I, I keep putting air quotes around selling because you don't— you're converting or whatever you're doing, however you would frame it. Yeah, how would you frame it? Do you call it selling or converting? What do you call it?

Does it matter? Um, finding out if people— finding out if people want What I have more than they want the money they have, and if so, making the exchange, and if not, you know, becoming aware that that's the case. They want to keep their money more than they want to work with me. So the first thing is to find out what somebody doesn't want, because if there's something, if it's not something they don't want, then there's no reason they're going to move toward it. Coming out of nightclub. People are happy with having been there. Saw the gals they wanted, saw the handsome guys they wanted to see, saw the band they wanted to see. All their friends were there. They danced together. They talked about old times. They talked about, you know, future things. Now they come out. They don't want to get pulled over for DUI, so they want to get some food in their body. If they're rational, they're hungry. They don't want the night to end. They just like the guy or gal at the food truck because they want to continue a conversation with somebody. They've been talking to the bartender and here's another person. So what they don't want is whatever is ending or whatever they're migrating from where they left. So I want to find out, you know, what they don't want. And many people get too quickly in describing what they have, but I want to find out what they don't want. So usually I'll ask them, hey, why are we talking? What's so— what's so going on is so screwed up in your life that we're talking? Because that kind of brings a confrontation. Oh, everything's wonderful. Great. No need to talk. Oh, wait just a minute. But there is one thing. And so it's kind of like a reverse Columbo where you're allowing the prospect to be Columbo and you're actually just kind of baiting them into it and letting them discover Is most— many times, I won't say most of the time, but many times people reach out to talk to you to find out information about a solution you have. And it's because of an irritation that they have in their current life. But they feel if they reveal that irritation, it's going to make them vulnerable. And so they're wanting to find out and self-diagnose, which is the worst possible thing to do. Yeah.

Absolutely.

You know, it's for someone to self-diagnose, and you guys as medical professionals watching this would definitely agree with that, with, within, you know, regards to legal representation, within regards to money, within regards to, you know, your medical scenario. Even if you are a medical professional, you're probably less effective in the point of a heightened sense of stress, less able to diagnose yourself because you're in it. And so never let a prospect who's in it, even if they know all the things, even if you guys are diagnosing another medical professional, maybe somebody who knows more than you about it, that's in it, that has an emotional attachment to it. That's why you say, wait a minute, you're— didn't mean for this to rhyme, but wait a minute, you're in it. And let's move this along. So I ask them, you know, What's, what's going on that we're even on the phone talking? Because it's not, it's your time. You know, we think it, oh, we're investing so much time on the phone with us, so they should be so happy. Well, it's punitive to them as well.

Mm-hmm.

To be on the phone talking to us about a solution. They're having to take time out of their day. So what is it that, that matters? You know, it's taking time out of your day. And then I'll go into, well, I'm just going to ask you some questions. If there is something I have to offer, tell you more about it. You can ask me anything you want. And then just tell me if this is the path you want to take forward together or not. Is that fair? So really just like, I'm going to find out what's going on. I'm going to tell you the only thing that I am expecting from a conversation is a choice or a decision.

Mm-hmm.

Not some continued, constant circling of the decision so that both parties are in this constant state of unawareness of what the final outcome would be, but can't now completely detach from the fact that we've already started a diagnosis together. So just let me know if this makes sense to you or not, or is that fair? Many people might consider this high-pressure sales, and this is where it becomes high-pressure sales. When you make a stand for a choice and you have a bias for the affirmative, that is high pressure. Because now I'm saying, Matthew, you need to work with me. But you need to work with me today. You need to decide today. If you simply say, I work with people who are decisive because they're easy to work with me, and it doesn't matter to me either way whether you decide in the affirmative or to work with somebody else or to never address this once we've discovered what it is or to do it on your own or anything else you might can fathom. It doesn't matter to me. But I move forward with decisive people. And so if we're going to do it, we're going to do it now or soon. And if we're not going to do it now or soon, that's just not the type of people I work with. But that— someone may feel that it's high pressure, but that pressure is all about you protecting your boundaries, not you projecting boundaries onto someone else. You're protecting access to yourself. You're not telling the other person what they should do with themselves. So if I'm telling you, you have to decide today, which protects my boundaries, but now I need you to decide yes, which is a violation of your boundaries, right? That's an unfair exchange. But if I say, you know, I work with people who are decisive and you can do whatever you want, that only challenges people who want to control my boundaries, which I'm sovereign.

Right.

But then so are they. So that's the second part of that. And then I just try to— I'll use the word diagnose— diagnose what the pain is as it relates to them in their situation. Not only the orthodoxy of the pain. In other words, where is this medically in you guys' situation or in my situation? Where might this be relating to their sales or the success of their business? But how does this affect them? How has this affected anything else which they might bring up? Oh, it's affecting my marriage. It's affecting my— I feel like I'd be a better dad if I could be away, or mom. If I could be away from my business more and still be just as financially effective, or I really wish that I could X or Y, but I feel that I can't because. And so then, you know, I want to get the entire, complete impact of the pain, not only as it relates— if someone has an issue with mobility, there may be a lot more social issues. Issues that go along with just the medical issues. They go along, there may be a lot more familial issues that, or someone may feel like, oh, my parents don't respect me because I'm not successful, or I'm, you know, proving a generational curse, all these things that they assign to not succeeding in business or having a medical issue or whatever someone's orthodoxy is, or, you know, specific technical training is, there's a lot more things that are impacted by our specific lineage of expertise. If we can get off of that, not to exclude it, but to include the wider embrace of what it might be impacting in a person's life, and then ask them not, do you want to get the knee surgery? Do you want to work with me to help you in your sales? Do you want to do the thing, you know, go on the vacation? But do you want to change this entire recipe of pain that you've just described to me and invest X dollars and come in and come for a procedure on X day or come to a training like I do on X weekend? Or do you want to keep your funds and continue this? Or maybe a third alternative is, is there someone else that you've talked to in the past? you feel like would do this better? Because I want to bring this up because if I bring it up, then it, to me, is much more powerful than if they bring it up.

Well, you become a collaborator in the decision versus an adversary.

Well, again, yes, and you're reminding them of their autonomy while retaining your own.

Yes. Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it because they are a collaborator, but you both have autonomy, which is really kind of a fascinating duality, isn't it?

Yeah, I have full agency to say yes or no to things as they relate to me. And until we're contractually obligated, which is— a contract is the decision to relegate our autonomy for a specified period of time, for a specified action, for a specified investment. You know, that's a decision to give up that autonomy or endorse that our autonomy now extends to That collaboration, but while we're still in the conversation phase, it's like this is what I will and won't do. And here, so then I'm affirming all of your options so that even by my silence, if you thought I didn't want you to work with anybody else, do you want to work with me? Do you want to work with? Do you want to do this on your own? Do you want to just let it let the symptoms continue to persist? Now that you've seen the cost of both, or would you like you know someone else to do this for you? Now I don't get into the nuances of oh well what John and James and Bill and Sam. I'm completely outside of that. I'm not going to compare all of those. I'm just going to say if it is indeed someone else in a general sense, then go. If your choice is to work with them, I can't be your advisor for against this specific. other individual. But if it's the only other name that I'm willing to talk about is not me.

Right.

And then, you know, now we've moved that decision away. And so then I talk to them about all that pain, and then identify what the potential solutions might be. And then I just ask them to make a choice whether or not we're going to work together. And many times, I'll lay out as many as I can think of, of the other alternatives. Like, do you want to do You know, this, or do you want to do— these are the other 2 or 3 alternatives I see, which is typically if it's helping someone with your expertise, then the other alternatives are, you know, do it on their own, which I don't know their capacity to do that. But sometimes it might be if it's heart surgery, that might be a little bit difficult. But yeah, if it's—

Although I did have a doctor do his own vasectomy. I had a urologist do his own vasectomy. So there you go.

Good for him. So it's either do it, do it on their own, uh, continue to— now that you've identified specifically the symptoms, let the symptoms persist or pray that they'll go away or something. Find someone else to remedy the situation, or let's do it together. And then I kind of lay out, let's just do one of these 4 things. And, um, but I am much, much of the time My interest is going to wane on some option where they want to amplify their autonomy. I want to wait to decide, which is an amplification of their autonomy, but diminish mine or retard mine, constrain mine. I want to wait to decide on this. How long do I have to Except this offer, which if you look at it, that's an amplification of their own autonomy and a constraint of mine. Fair enough?

Right. Absolutely.

Because now not only— I have to be— I have to project into the future my willingness to make the same offer that I'm making right now, which I don't know. I'm not saying that I would take it away, but I don't know. I don't want to make commitments for the future. So I don't know what the future will may hold. I may get bought out tomorrow. I may win the lot. I don't play the lottery, but I may win the lottery tomorrow.

Right.

I may decide to retire. I may decide to retire tomorrow. I may get, you know, I may buy another practice. I may bring on another practitioner. I may just not feel well. And so while I might offer certain things, but so the conversation is this offer that we've just discussed expires the moment you tell me something other than yes. I might not be that Explicit about it, but in my mind, and now you see why that is. It's not that it needs to be some sort of people have described this as a takeaway close. I'm not taking it away. Ah, it's right there. They are rejecting it. If you come into a car dealership, and I say, you know, for. And the cars have gone up. For $100,000, you can have the keys to this nice, nice, fancy, shiny car. And you say, I'm not gonna give you the $100,000. And then I say, fine, thank you. Have a nice day and shake your hand. I didn't take the car away from you. It was never yours to begin with.

Right.

And if you make an offer to someone, they had nothing to begin with except a proposal for an exchange. And they never brought consideration. So you didn't bring the service or your consideration. And so many people propose that as a takeaway close, but I'm not taking anything away. I'm simply maintaining my autonomy in the future, although I was willing to exchange it for an agreement at that moment.

So let's say that person comes back a week later, you make the offer, they come back a week later, and now they want it. Does the offer change?

Well, yes, no, not as a reaction to the fact. I don't say in my mind, oh, they were here a week ago, so let's go do something punitive.

Right.

But if my business has changed, yes. If I just won the lottery, yes. If my price coincidentally went up in the meantime, yes. If now, if I told them I could do it the next day, but now I've already taken on 30 jobs, then yes, many people may feel like if the offer changes, and we need to be careful of this as service providers.

Right.

Many people may feel like that it's our duty to change the offer to show them a lesson. Well, that's not the point of maintaining the autonomy. We don't know what will happen in the meantime. We might've had a 10-day waiting period and they may come back and we may have a unit in stock or may have a, They might be able to go the next day. The offer may change for the better. So the offer doesn't necessarily— the offer, the offer didn't— doesn't exist anymore.

Right.

So the offer neither changes nor stays the same. The offer was for that conversation. The offer may have the same terms with the same timeframe and the same payment, but it's a new offer a week later. But in no way does any change for me serve to, you know, teach the person a punitive lesson and show them, well, how dare you, you know, wait to make a decision with me. That's not the purpose of that offer. But it may change, but it doesn't change just because they waited a week. It changes because of all of the variables that may have changed with my offer in the week between.

You know, when I was growing up playing golf, um, I had a temper, right? I wanted to— it was golf. Was— I was a small kid, kind of overweight, so I couldn't play football, couldn't play basketball, wasn't very good at baseball, but I was pretty good at golf, right? And so nobody— none of my other friends played golf, so I was the best golfer of my friend group, right? So I put this unbelievable pressure on myself to become a very skilled golfer, and to a certain level I did as a former professional. Uh, PGA golf professional. But one of the best lessons I ever learned about playing the game of golf, and I still use it to this day in every walk of life, and that is what's called NATO golf— not attached to outcome. And how that— I hear you talking about this and how this relates is your sense of worth isn't dependent upon whether or not the client says yes or no is what I'm hearing. Is that a safe assessment?

Yeah.

Okay. So is there a way, like, do you celebrate when you make a sale? Do you, you know, in all the years that you've been selling, when you closed a big client or you closed a big deal, would you celebrate? Or are you the same like every day? Do you just go yay and, and Go on to the next thing. How does that, how does your psyche play on this and look at this?

Well, of course I celebrate because I like to celebrate things that happen that are good. But also my pipeline just got a lot smaller.

Yeah.

So one forgets the negative, the downside of a big sale. You know, we celebrate the upside, but we've been, you know, if it happened, if it took more than a day, even if you've been waiting to talk to the person and knew a couple of days and knew that, you know, there was a potential windfall coming through for you, you know, the moment that happens and it's in the pipeline or in, I'm sorry, in the, you know, been billed off. Well, now your pipeline's been reduced by that amount. So you don't have You know, the forward-thinking positivity. So when I make a sale, of course I celebrate. I like to celebrate great things. At the same time, I realize what that's just done for my prospecting. And I need to, you know, focus on prospecting again. It's interesting that the only thing between a trophy and atrophy is space.

I've known you 20 years. I've never heard you say that.

I've said it a few times. So be careful when you get a trophy that you don't let it, you know, collapse into atrophy. And many people do that. You know, we've seen this happen. People go out after a big win, celebrate, and lose all momentum that they had. So I do celebrate just a bit. But I certainly don't want to celebrate with lethargy because that's probably the worst. Probably some of the best times, I know this might sound like I'm obsessed with my business. I'm really not. I really like my life outside of my business. But one of the best, some of the best times to keep pushing in sales is while you're on that high of a big sale.

Yeah.

Like literally probably the best time. And some of the worst things one could do being on a high of a big sale is to go and immediately go on vacation or immediately do— I got this big sale, let's go on vacation. Because it literally, if you think about that rationally for a moment versus, oh, I deserve to celebrate, it's almost like I deserve to regulate back down. to my level of success that I'm willing to tolerate because I've had a success that exceeds that. And so I need to find something to relegate me back down to, you know, to anchor me back down to my mediocrity lest I get too successful.

You remind me again of a game we used to play in high school and college. We used to play a game called streaks when we were playing golf. And It was what it taught you was it taught you how to play, keep playing your hot hand, right? So like, for those of you that don't know golf, when you get a birdie, if the, if the par score on a hole is 4 and you get a 3, that's called a birdie. If you get a bogey, it's a 5, right? So it's 1 over. So we would play this game where you would get points based on streaks, and there were negative points. Like if you got bogeys and double bogeys, you lost points. If you got pars in a row, you didn't lose any points, you just remained flat stasis. And if you made birdies and eagles, you got more points. And the more birdies you made in a row, the more points it exponentially went up. And you paid like a dollar a point, or, you know, we would— we were playing like a dollar, $5 a point, which got pretty expensive, by the way. Um, you know, like a couple hundred bucks, and this was in the 1980s and late '80s and early '90s. And so you just heard me say, like, that is the thing, is that when you make a sale, people want to celebrate. And I think, I think of, I think of, all right, I just closed somebody, fantastic, a little high five. But you get back in. Like, I have to do this with my team all the time. We just, you know, we'll have really good weeks, we'll have really good months. And I said, I want you to think about it like this. In a football game, it's a full 60 minutes, okay? What we're looking to do is we're looking to win the game, not You know, if we focus on the process, the statistics, and we know that we have to, you know, run the ball 20 times or whatever like that, those are the parts of the process that are going to lead us to having the outcome that we want. But if we spend too much time celebrating the touchdown that we scored in the first quarter, it's going to suck energy away from what we need for the second, third, and fourth quarter. So if you watch football, they high-five, they do a little dance in the end zone, they go back to high-five everybody, they sit down and they grab game tape and they start watching the plays. Right? Because you're right.

That's what champions do.

That's what the champions do. Yes. You're, you know, they ain't celebrating getting close. They, they take that energy and they go, okay, we just, we've got momentum. How do we do it again? Where can we— not exploit isn't the right word. That's a football phrase. But in our parlance, it's, you know, okay, how can I stay in the flow of that, of giving the, of finding the people in the market that are in flow with my offer, that want, that are in need or want of what I have. So yeah, it's, it's, I think, I think the, the whole point of celebrating, I think sometimes people, it creates a backlash that they don't even realize exists. Comments on that?

I agree. And I think the converse is often true. When people hit a slump or a slow spell, they just try to double down and grind it out. And there really isn't much momentum you can make when you're miserable by becoming even more miserable.

What do you do when you have a downside? When you're—

when you're— Go on vacation. Get in my RV and go out to the mountains and get away from it and come back to a more successful week. You are the king of that. Why? You are the king of getting away. Why keep, you know, grinding against something that is never, you know, going to happen? Obviously, you want to play out the game with, you know, with success. But, you know, if you're in the middle of a playoff series and you find yourself down by an almost unwinnable amount, you may or may not You know, rest your starters because just 2 nights from now, you're going to be back at 0-0.

Mm-hmm.

And if you're this far down and you're trying to recover this game, you know, fans think in terms of, you know, games. Players many times think in terms of seasons. Coaches think in terms of careers. And owners think in terms of legacies, like they're going to hand this down to their kids and their kids' kids. And so all of them are making decisions from a different time perspective.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, all of them are playing the same game, but they're on a different field. The owner's like, I want my kids to have a billion-dollar asset. The coaches are like, I want to retire well. The players are like, I want, you know, I know I'm going to be traded. I want that to be traded up versus traded down. And the fans are just like, I bet $100 on this game and I don't want to lose to Matthew. You know, so all of them are on the same game field at the same time, but they have a vastly different perspective of how you're viewing it. And so if you're always out there, often out there, you know, oh, this is a terrible sucky day and I'm not making the sales or a bad week, I'm not making the sales that I want. I want to get here and grind it out. Well, that just is going to, in my view, it's just my view, but that's going to further reinforce that work is supposed to be punitive and painful. I don't believe that. I love what I do. I'm glad to be here. You and I've worked together for a long time. I don't think you've seen me have a miserable day's work in my life. And I haven't known you 20 years. I've started this.

You are the same every day.

Every time I Well, if I'm not though, I'm not working.

Right.

I mean, obviously, if you have an appointment or if you have— like, I do events and things. But my daughter and I go many times. My daughter works with me. For those of you who don't know, Matthew does. She's worked with me since she graduated college. When we come and we have an event, a lot of people prepare for an event by doing all the study. Well, I do it like a week or two ahead of time. And then a few days before I'm supposed to show up for everyone, We go to Bryce Canyon, we go to Zion, we go just chill out and get away from everybody so that we can come back, you know, on the backside of a holiday rather than having grounded out right to the moment. Go ahead.

Yeah, that's the thing that I want to dive in with you because I think it's one of your most beautiful skills. So I grew up in a day and age that— and in a family who grew up in a working-class, you know, family, Irish Catholic family from Chicago. I always say my brother, the union plumber, if, if hard work dictated wealth, he would be a multi-billionaire because I don't know anybody who works harder than my brother Tim.

Okay.

And so I adopted that. Like when things got down, you just worked harder. One of the things that I've really learned to appreciate as I get older is the power of what the outside world would think of as doing nothing. as being wasteful as some of the most powerful things that I can do. So you just mentioned something. I know you take huge amounts of times where you, you get in your RV, you go out to the desert. Like, when did you learn to start to do that? Like, what was the turning point in your life that you said, you know what, this way that the world tells me to do it is not really working for me, I'm gonna create this other model? Walk me through that.

This wasn't necessarily about taking off. But I, in 2000, late 2000, early 2001, I was working at a division of SBC, which became AT&T. And I was working for one of their consulting divisions selling consulting and technology services. And When I went to work there, I was assigned about 100 government accounts. And I had a $16 million quota. And I noticed that many of these accounts were not buying stuff from my division, although we're buying things from SBC, but they weren't buying stuff from my division. But yet I was supposed to quote them and just keep, you know, making the quotes as a matter of course. Well, I just stopped. I started no bidding everybody who hadn't bought from us in the last few years, which got me fired from over 90 of those accounts. 90 of the 100 with no quota relief. A few months after that, I, with the Columbus Public Schools, I sold beginning in August of 2000. Well, the sales process started before, but the first conversion was for about $6 million and then came to be about $100 million over the next 6 or 8 months of services to Columbus Public Schools, all outside of the normal bid process, all sole source back to our company, all against the resistance of much of the internal politics within SBC. Because I had the free time to, you know, think of something more successful that was an opportunity rather than just continuing to go and to make bids in these nearly zero likelihood opportunities that came about. And so, you know, I learned the benefit of going for the clients that I want. I don't email prospects, right? Or, you know, massive prospects.

Right.

I don't maintain an email list, which is completely against what's, you know, taught for the last 20 years I've been in this industry and nearly all of my friends do. I don't do, you know, very, very much of the many of the things that people think that they need to do going after the masses. I just think You know, where is the specific place that, that there are people who'll be exiting this opportunity that they like, and what is the thing that they'd be liking? As it sits, I've got about 23 names just over here that my daughter— she was just out— she and I wrote up about people that we would like to work with, that either we have worked with or we've, we've known about. You know, we're going to send specific invites out to them. and say, hey, we'd like to work with you. Like very well put together. But 23, not, you know, people are like, oh, I've got this 20,000 name email list. No, this is like 23 people. And I think that is the thing that I like the most is focusing on the highest likelihood and also the highest thing that I enjoy. Like, you and I work together. I enjoy working with you. It's fun. Uh, we get to talk today. It's fun. And so this isn't something I go out and just get on, uh, tons of podcasts because I— it's a necessity. I don't— probably been on 4 or 5 ever, but you asked, and it's like, well, we'll have a great conversation. I've learned from the questions that you've asked, you know.

Thank you.

And so Of course, I've learned a lot already, to be honest, about the entire process, reaffirmed some own thoughts and how to think of new things, and then also learned from, you know, your questions. But as it relates to taking time, I don't think that it's really possible to do something new if you don't have any time away from doing everything the same.

Yeah, that's a quote.

And so Michael Saylor owns a company called Strategy, which used to be a technology company. Now it's basically a Bitcoin holding company. And Michael Strategy talks about his use— there's an interview he did, I think, in July of 2026. where he was talking about his use of AI over the last year prior to July 26th. And he used AI to source a lot of ideas for some of his new funding ideas to fund his new Bitcoin acquisitions. Now, you guys might be 100% pro-crypto, anti-crypto. You might be pro-AI, anti-AI. You might love strategy, hate strategy, love Michael Saylor, hate Michael Saylor. None of these— this is not an endorsement of any of those nor rejection of any of those. But one of the things that he said was that a lot of people are using AI to guide them into doing what's always been done.

Hmm.

And I decided to use mine to find some sort— I'd need to go back and source the quote so I can attribute it more accurately. And I'd recommend you do because what he said was more potent than what I'm about to share as my recollection of it. But he said, I used it to source an amalgamation of sorts. He didn't use that word. Of other things into something that had never been done so that I could create something unique. Well, that is an interesting way of looking at it. But he had to first accept that everything that had been done in the past, he didn't need to make some edit. And I think, you know, we've been lulled into what I would maybe not so affectionately label as the laziness of Revision, taking something somebody's done and making a slight edit in it and calling it our own. And it's taken us away from any type of creation. And I get that creation is just very likely a significant revision. But let's just say we've gone from lazy revision, you know, gone from very, very dedicated revisions to more lazy ones.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

You know, I can call those dedicated revisions, creations. You know, the movement of a— from a horse to a car. Yes, that might have, you know, might have been just a bit of a revision because we had the horse-pulled wagons, etc., etc. We had the steamboats, etc., etc., moving that into a combustion engine. Yes, that was just a revision, but it was a significant revision. And so I think, you know, one of the things, it's really difficult to me to make significant revisions in my life if I'm still caught in the mundane of practicing the sameness of repetition over and over and over again. So I try to get away from that as much as possible.

Yeah, you talk about AI, because I think AI is a fascinating thing, right? And it's, most people don't realize it's the It gives you the average. It gives you the most common answer. But if you train AI the right way, like you and I have, for me, AI becomes my Bernie Taupin to the melodies of Elton John. And for those of you that don't know, Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics, Elton John wrote the melodies.

Okay?

One does not exist without the other. Okay?

Mm-hmm.

And when you, you know, when you view— like, I take— this week's a classic week. This week's been— we— I've got a couple clients in next week, and then Christine and I go on vacation for 2 weeks, and we're com— we completely shut down, right? We're going to Mount Shasta. We're driving down the California coast. I'll be completely off the grid. But this week has been really just prepping for my 2 clients that I have coming in next week, doing this, and I've got 2 podcast interviews. When you are able to take the time and just sit and let the ideas flow, and then you can use something like AI to maybe refine the ideas, to me, that's a viable use of it, right? It's kind of like having somebody that you can bounce an idea off of. Okay, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Versus going to AI and saying, solve this problem for me, because it's going to go give you the sameness of what everything else is. And I think one of the most powerful things we can do as entrepreneurs is to have the courage to take time and say, no, I'm not going to grind. I'm going to do this a different way, because it's the creative act. It's the new way of, uh, you know, Chris Centeno did this with, with regenerative therapies. I mean, he's You know, he's the pioneer of it. He's one of the godfathers of it. You create this environment where the ideas feel safe, where they feel trusted, where they feel heard, and they then more and more come. So you were— I saw your wheels turning there. I think you have some comments and thoughts on this because how I was saying how I see AI.

Well, AI is a tool, but da Vinci did it with pen and paper. Uh, you know, Edison did it with pen and paper. Uh, you know, people have done it in much more austere environments than we— than the tools we now have. And, and I'm, I'm a big fan, so I'm not here to—

Yeah, yeah.

You know, to do anything other than endorse superior tools. But one of the things to be aware of is, if you think about this for a minute, You don't have an advantage because you have a superior tool that the rest of the world got at the same time you did.

Yeah.

You know, that's not an advantage. That's just an asset. But everybody got the asset at the same time. Some may use it, some may not use it, but the asset is there. So the only asset we can have that the world doesn't have is our own space and our own creativity.

Mm-hmm.

Because, you know, I've got the same, I've got the same subscription as someone else who's doing much less. And I've got the same subscription as Michael Saylor who, you know, went and got $15 billion in funding through some creative ways that made people believe in him. Now he also had built, you know, goodwill from some, and you may not be a fan, but he built enough goodwill that some people decided through their either their goodwill or their greed, or a combination, to invest, you know, billions and billions of dollars in some of his new service offerings. But I was just suggesting, he was using that, and I was just suggesting that he is always seeking for a creative edge, or that interview seemed to indicate that, or at least at this point he was. And that our, our competitive advantage is our creative edge, our quantum competitive advantage. You might have a You might have a linear competitive advantage in that you can, you know, do a procedure 10% better than someone else or, you know, 100% better than someone else. But your 10,000% advantage, your 100,000% advantage, that's always a new procedure. And most of the time that gets discovered in a lab or in silence or in a place where you can be away from the repetition of practice into the freedom to either practice new things or just, you know, invent, go through the practice of new things in your mind.

Yeah.

I'm a big fan of, you know, time away to think, uninterrupted thinking with AI. But it can also bring you back and have you be reactive to it. Uninterrupted AI, you know, pen and a journal, all these types of things, regardless of the industry that you're in, uninterrupted thinking is probably the competitive advantage that is the most superior one that anyone could have and the one that is impossible to replicate.

What's your, what's kind of your process when you do the creative process? When you do this thinking? What's your, is there a standard kind of process that you go through? Is it kind of by feel? Explain that to me.

Well, one thing I find to be true for me, you guys and gals may find it to be true in your life or not. A lot of people say that they get, you know, ideas when they're in the shower. They get ideas when they wake up. I tend to get ideas early in the morning quite a bit.

Mm-hmm.

But if you're different, then find out when you're, this is kind of like the sales thing. I'm not going to go out with a journal and then sit there with a pen in my hand saying, oh, what are my thoughts? Because that's too stressful. I'm just going to try to have, you know, a recorder or something around or pen and paper around such that when I wake up first thing in the morning, one of my credos is create before you consume. So not going to turn YouTube on in the morning. I'm not going to go look out and see, you know, what the stock market did last night while I was asleep or the what the Asian market did when it opened up or this or that. I'm not going to go out and do all of those types of things. I'm going to try to find some moment of either turning, you know, for me, Apple Notes on and just starting to ramble in the dark or put some coffee on and just start, you know, you can talk now. You mentioned AI. You can talk into AI. You talk into Apple Notes. You know, I have as many small digital recorders laying around the house as I have reading glasses. And so some— That's a lot.

That's a lot.

I know that.

For those of you that are not from the late '50s, early '60s, you don't understand. There's a lot of those.

So, you know, I just have a little digital recorder, you know, most everywhere I go and have them in the car or in the car, I can just turn on, you know, Apple Notes. Just get in a practice when an idea comes to mind to get it recorded. And get it recorded with enough specificity, you can develop it later. And then when you want to take some time and sit down, you've got all these brilliant things that obviously, well, I don't know. I don't think well under stress. I don't like stress. I like peace. But obviously, then when you find yourself wanting to get into some sort of structured creation, you got like between 2 and 100. I don't know how long it would be between those, but you got a bunch of little things that you've done. And, you know, you can just take those little recorders if you've happened to record something and go upload it into your computer and get all those things in one place. But let those come as they come. And then when it's time to do something structured, then you have all of these things that happen divinely. You know, it's— those ideas are very difficult for me to come up with when I'm under stress, but they're pretty easy to come up with When they just kind of pop into your head. So those are, that's what I do is I try to just, you know, whatever comes up, there's moments I try to record many of my calls. I'll, I will put the audio transcript of this into AI with a bunch of other, like probably 4,000 or 5,000 hours of other stuff.

Mm-hmm.

And then try to find out, you know, what did I say that was an evolution, what was incongruent, what was further endorsement, where did I go deeper, what point did I bring up anything that was different than what I said before. I'll probably have a 10 or 15 page breakdown of this conversation after it, you know, a little bit after it's done.

Yeah, I read something, I can't remember, maybe it was 15 years ago, and the Bee Gees wrote a song every day. Now think about that. They started writing songs in the '60s, and it was in the mid-'60s, mid-'70s where they hit their fame. And they, up until, you know, and I, I forget which one is still alive. I think it's— anyway, uh, Barry. But, uh, you know, 3— the other 2 of the 3 brothers are now passed away. But he said they wrote songs every single day. And he said it's not that it's a discipline, it's a respect for the for the muses, for the process. And I think, you know, it's kind of like if you're a good steward of money, more money generally comes to you if— because it feels safe, right? And I feel the same way about ideas. If you have ideas and they come to you and you don't write them down and you don't honor them, you don't record them or track them, then they're not going to come to you anymore. They're not going to feel safe to come to you. And so what I like to do is I'm like you, I get up, um, I have music playing in the house throughout the night, uh, binaural beats, delta waves. It switches over to something else in the morning to kind of begin the slow wake up. And I grab my laptop and I start, or my voice recorder, and I start typing, recording. Like this morning, it was a good hour, right? I'll have some water, a little bit of coffee, but that's it. I'm not checking the news, not checking ESPN, any of that stuff. But the ideas flow. They feel safe. It's almost like they know that they have a safe place to come. to be nurtured. And 99% of them, maybe 95% of them, don't— they don't— on the surface, they don't materialize into stuff. But like yesterday, I was working.

Same here.

I was working on something, right? I was working on something, and all of a sudden, bam, something came for me. And I'm like, oh my God, this came to me 18 months ago. And I was able to go back, find it, right? Boom. Like, oh my gosh, that's the thing. It's like, oh, it's time for this now. Back then, it wasn't time for it. Today it is time. Tonight, now is the time. It's, it's ready to come out. So I think the creative process for entrepreneurs, the creative process in general for me is a very fascinating thing. But the creative process for entrepreneurs, because we don't really look at ourselves as artists, but we are in a way. I feel like we are. I feel like we're artists in a way. I feel like the work that you do is art. I mean, it's your way. It's your form of self-expression. You ever think about it in those terms, Kevin?

I do.

Tell me about it.

I do. Well, actually, more than— I've not thought about it so much as myself as art, but I guess that would be true. But I've thought about it more as, in Christianity, gospel means good news. That's one of the things that You know, we as Christians attribute the 4 books that the apostles wrote about their experience alongside Jesus— Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John— as the Gospels. That is the good news of Jesus Christ. So in a business, like the gospel of business is the thing that you've decided was your acts and your orthodoxies, right? And that's in your business. You know, everybody has their orthodoxies. Let's just take a muffler shop, for example, because I've been writing about that for a particular case study. Everybody, you know, that cares in the muffler business can talk about how their, you know, joints are welded better, the muffler parts that they choose are better. But if the customer touches a greasy door handle or goes into a restroom with paper piling out the top of the trash can or waits for an hour and a half in a lobby without Wi-Fi, Mm-hmm. all of these things are part of the experience. And so, you know, our Orthodoxy is what we know about our technical parts of our business that's maybe superior to other things. And I think there's things that I know about sales and business and things like that that are far superior to my, some of my competitors in the same vein.

Mm-hmm.

At the same time, it's imperative that When I have clients come, or important at least, when I have clients come, I like to be in a venue that's not that far from the airport.

Mm-hmm.

Be in a venue that's not that far from nice restaurants.

Mm-hmm.

A venue that makes people feel like they're embraced. I live in a condo where a lot of my clients come, and it's got like windows on 2 sides and it overlooks the Strip. So, and you can see like 50 miles probably out of any of my windows. And so I like to be in a place where people can, you know, have big dreams and big things when they're here. Would that orthodoxy translate in an inferior environment? Yes. But then I would likely be, without any disrespect, that small, resentful, congregation-atrophying pastor that constantly railed against how they were more pious, yet people were following all of these less pious leaders, when in reality, the likelihood is those people that they labeled less pious— and maybe they were, I don't know— but maybe the people they labeled less pious were really being followed because they were more empathetic. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And that wasn't a reduction of orthodoxy, but an increase in empathy. And so could I still teach my stuff out in the middle of nowhere? Well, you came to— the first time we met, you actually came as a client along with a friend, and we met at the Columbus Airport Marriott, Ohio.

Yep.

Which was close to the airport. But it was a tiny little room that was kind of like a sleeping room with a conference table inside it. I remember.

Yep. Yep.

You know, small conference table inside it, probably even had the bed still there and maybe partitioned off, maybe not. And, you know, now my surroundings have measurably upgraded. Well, one would think, you know, do you need— after you've been in business a long time, you know, wouldn't people just come because you learned more? Well, possibly. But I've come to notice also, and I think that our hospitality is a lot better now than it was then, you know, because all of those things matter. You can't— it's difficult to just work on your— I'll call it orthodoxy, but your craft.

Yeah.

You know, there's the science and the art. And much of what we do in our specific orthodoxy is the science of what we do. And those of us who are smart, anybody in a skill, an attorney, a doctor, a consultant, anything, anybody at a high level of scientific oversight of a particular skill set that can transmit that skill set, it's very imperative that we transmit the science with the honor that's due of developing that science and becoming good at it.

Mm-hmm.

But also the art is, in my view, and we can have art in the way we practice our science, but the art is also everything else we do to make the receipt of our work be empathetic. Like performers work on, you know, the videos that are going to sell their song. Back in the day in the MTV generation, maybe now still, you know, some places on streaming services, they have the video side, the artistic side. It's still important that we embrace all the senses. And if you have a superior craft and an inferior, you know, case that it's enclosed in, we all go get— many of us go get Apple products. And the casing of that, the unboxing of that is just impeccable.

Just got a new iPhone yesterday. I couldn't wait to open the box.

It's great. Great experience. You know, you can open it without any challenges. And so, you know, we, we need, I think, to look at the art of how we're doing everything that we do so that we remove any friction that might happen when people are at that vulnerable moment of making a decision as to whether to work with us or to work with us more deeply or to refer somebody to work with us or any of those choices. Yeah, yeah.

Well said.

Well said. Yep.

Well, Kevin, we are getting to the end of the Any final thoughts? You've had a chance to speak in a room full of our folks. Any final things that are on your heart that you want to share and impart to our listeners?

Well, I talked about growing up in a church environment. I just thought of a scripture. I don't even remember where it's from. But it said, it says, you know, that the man that knows to do good and doesn't do it, to him it's sin. I don't even remember where exactly in the scripture that is, but it is there. And I can tell you, it's very great to work with someone. You'll likely be working with Matthew, a number of other people. You might be finding ideas certain places. The speed to implementation, even poor implementation.

Yeah.

The speed to implementation is likely what separates some of the most successful of you from those who are less successful. I would submit that those of you who are at least in the bottom, like the 3rd quartile, I've usually found the 3rd quartile of successful people to be the smartest.

Mm-hmm.

So you look 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. They're not in the very bottom, but they're like in the 3rd quartile, just below half. And the reason is that they want to define and refine all the nuances of the learning before they put it at all into practice. And again, what somebody might say, you know, people are putting things into practice too soon. It's not that pious. It's not honoring the orthodoxy. They don't know it all yet. And some of there might be some wisdom to that caution. At the same time, you know, the speed to implementation is such an important metric to watch. And so if anything I could leave to you at the end, if I've shared something that's been helpful, that's awesome. Go do something with it.

Yeah.

If Matthew shares something, go do something with it. If it is affirmed by your actions, great. If it's not affirmed by your actions, then, you know, discontinue it. But all of these things, don't hold on to them as ideas to continue to evaluate But actually find some sort of commitment in yourself to when you learn a specific thing, to work on your speed to putting that into some sort of practice as quickly as possible. Then you can decide where to develop it into a more complete practice or just abandon it, doesn't apply to you, revise it, whatever you may want to do with it.

Great. Kevin, thanks so much for taking the time. If somebody wants to learn more about you, what's the best way for them to Find you and stalk you.

Probably Facebook. I spend a lot of time there. I don't do a lot on the internet. You could just you know Google me. I have a profile on Facebook. Kevin Nations pretty easy to find, or just send me it. Send me a message. Kevin Nations at Gmail and ask me what kind of questions you have, and if there's some way I can help you, great. And if not, be very, very easy to get to that as well.

All right, Kevin, thanks for taking the time. And folks, thanks for joining us for another episode of Out of the System. Thank you.