Never Stop Building
Sam Kaufman, an accomplished entrepreneur and thought leader, brings his wealth of experience and expertise to the forefront in each episode. With a captivating voice and a genuine passion for building, Sam creates a welcoming and dynamic atmosphere that draws in listeners from all walks of life.
In "Never Stop Building," Sam dives deep into the stories and journeys of remarkable individuals who have achieved great success in various industries. From startup founders and CEOs to creative artists and social entrepreneurs, Sam explores their triumphs, failures, and the lessons they learned along the way. Each episode is a captivating blend of personal anecdotes, valuable insights, and practical strategies that listeners can implement in their own lives.
What sets "Never Stop Building" apart is Sam's ability to extract powerful wisdom and actionable advice from his guests. He skillfully guides conversations, asking thought-provoking questions that delve into the mindset, strategies, and core principles behind their achievements. Listeners can expect to gain a deeper understanding of what it truly takes to overcome obstacles, cultivate resilience, and create impactful change.
Beyond interviews, "Never Stop Building" also features solo episodes where Sam shares his own perspectives, reflections, and strategies for personal and professional growth. His relatable storytelling style and ability to distill complex ideas into actionable steps make these episodes highly engaging and accessible.
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a creative professional, or simply someone seeking inspiration and guidance, "Never Stop Building" offers a wealth of knowledge and inspiration to help you on your own journey. It's a podcast that encourages listeners to embrace their entrepreneurial spirit, embrace continuous learning, and never stop building their dreams.
Never Stop Building
Fat Shaming On Facebook + The Man At The Gas Station Who Did Nothing | Ep 108
When I encountered a derogatory social media tirade against overweight salespeople, my stomach knotted in revulsion—not just at the cruel words, but at the silence that often greets such bullying. That's why this episode of Never Stop Building is a manifesto for action, a call for us to raise our voices against the injustices we witness in the business world and beyond. I, Sam Kauffman, take you through a candid discussion on the moments that demand our courage, from confronting bigotry online to the real-life consequences of choice and intervention.
Late one night, the stark glow of a gas station served as the backdrop for a test of my own principles. The tension in the air was almost tangible when an unsettling situation unfolded before my eyes. I recount the tale of stepping in to defuse a potential domestic dispute, supported by a brave young attendant, and the crucial role intuition and collective vigilance play when danger looms. This isn't just a story of confrontation; it's a revelation of the deeper conversations and lessons that emerge, especially with my children, about the essence of real-world advocacy.
As we close our time together, I invite you to consider the infinite power of everyday choices—how a simple act of roadside assistance or speaking up can ignite transformation within our communities. This episode is a testament to the strength that lies in proactive kindness and the unwavering belief that standing up for what's right should be our default, not the exception. Join me in embracing personal excellence as our collective responsibility, and let's foster a culture that extols the virtues of speaking up and effecting change.
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Welcome to Never Stop Building, where we discuss all things business, growth and leveling up to become the most elite version of yourself. We're here to challenge fear and shatter doubt. Let's dive in what is up everybody. Welcome back to Never Stop Building. I'm your host, sam Kauffman as always Excited, grateful, happy, joyful, whatever To be here with you. This is my favorite form of communication speaking with you guys. So this episode is going to be a kind of like a story time and it's going to focus on the message being you need to speak up.
Speaker 1:A lot of people talk a lot, have a lot of opinions about things that they think are wrong, whether it be bullying or something political or something economic or something with family values or whatever it is. Everybody has opinions and everybody has a. Well, I would have, or they should have, or this could have, and not a lot of people actually do anything when they see something, and so part of this is stemmed from the fact that I have a huge soft spot in my heart for people being bullied, because I got bullied most of my life and as a kid and into a teenager it really wasn't like it really did stop until for me, until I was 15 and I lost a bunch of weight and I, just I was really good. I've always been really good in my life about somehow getting myself in situations where I had something to be bullied about, whether it was my weight, or it was drug addiction that I had to overcome, or it was business failures that people can judge, and I've continuously even my relationship or choosing to adopt two kids in my early 20s to help change their lives, like I've always. I've always somehow managed to fall into. It's not somehow. God has always called me to overcome things, to do big things, to try big things, and that means huge successes and that also means huge failures and stumbling blocks, and I've always ended up in situations where I've been able to catch heat for the decisions I made, or the challenge or the roadblock or whatever. What's yet to be able to happen is, even in the mistakes, even in the challenges, even in those failures, I've been really fortunate to be able to maintain integrity through the situation, even when it's inconvenienced me or my family, or sometimes decisions inconvenience other people and I'll tell a story here in a second about speaking up where it definitely inconvenienced someone else. But the reason I share all that with you is to share.
Speaker 1:I've always had a really soft spot for people who are trying to hurt people on purpose. That's really like the bullying and the standing up when I talk about. You have to say something I'm not talking about. You need to find everything you have an opinion on and go spout it out to everybody, because it really doesn't mean anything. What I've found is that a lot of the people who talk about having these strong convictions about certain things don't actually act convicted when they see that thing happening to somebody else.
Speaker 1:The opinion all of a sudden doesn't mean much, and there's two specific instances recently that I want to highlight in this story time that really made me feel like something needed to be said about if you're going to, if you're going to hurt people on purpose I'm not saying hurt people, everybody hurts people. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has to overcome challenges. Everybody owes a men's. Everybody has to grow and evolve. People hurt people. It happens, life shows up and people need to. We need to grow, we need to mature, we need to own it. We need to act like leaders, we need to act like adults. But when people hurt people on purpose, anytime a good man or woman says nothing, it contributes to the hurt. Silence, the absence of saying anything can be almost worse than the person doing the hurting on purpose.
Speaker 1:So story number one and I made a post about this on TikTok the other day, my Instagram story, this one, really it absolutely just drove me insane. But I saw I was in this Facebook group big popular Facebook group and somebody made a post and started with unpopular opinion. First of all, anytime somebody says that, it's typically not an unpopular opinion, it's actually a popular opinion. That just makes you look like an asshole. So it starts with unpopular opinion and it goes on to list. It goes on to list all the reasons why overweight salespeople and this is a quote are a waste of time. And it goes on to say I don't know how you could trust them and I don't know why you do business with them, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's like, always that little terribly misplaced like and maybe I'm missing something. Bro, you don't feel that way. You don't feel that way at all.
Speaker 1:This post was not to learn something. This post was to start a controversy to gain attention to, like because it was so unnecessary. So I saw the post and I was like ew, gross. I've seen the post before. I watched all the dumb ass content. I see the dude, the Andy Elliot dude, talking about I'd never buy anything from anyone who doesn't have a six pack, and like all this stuff. That's just insane, just absolutely insane to me.
Speaker 1:And I see the post and then I see there's like 250 comments on this post and I start going through the comment section. This is not something I typically do, like I know, like my wife loves the comment section of shit, like the comment section's apparently where the party's at, and like I just don't. I never really dive, I don't really do much there. I'm not a huge consumer on social media. But I see there's 250 comments. I'm like damn. And I see there's people I know commenting in here Like again, this group has like 100 something thousand members. It's a big active group. And I see there's people that I know commenting and some of the comments that I saw I just lost so much respect for so many people.
Speaker 1:Comments like oh, you're telling me that people with no work ethic, that can't delay gratification, the blah, blah, blah, shouldn't be trusted. Lol. Oh, you're saying like all this, like nasty, nasty stuff about anybody who's overweight. And then I see a couple of people who I know, who are absolutely killing it, that are overweight, that are actively working on not being overweight I actually know for a fact actively working on not being overweight and say something like hey, man, I'm a big guy and I just go out and I have integrity and I tell the truth and I do my best and I try to serve my community and I'm working on losing weight. It was the most genuine, kindest response. And then a bunch of the people who were coming oh no, man, that's totally different. And blah no, it's not totally different, it's absolutely not totally different. You just feel like an asshole now because what you realized was that everything you said to try to be funny wasn't funny. You were a bully.
Speaker 1:And so what I loved, what started happening in the post, was people started standing up for other people, and I loved it. I loved it and people because I started typing out this long aggressive and what I realized as I kept going through the comments was people were saying something. People were standing up, people were standing up for themselves. There's one guy who was like I'm honestly, I'm 100 pounds overweight right now and I guarantee you I have made more money. I got the bank account receipts to prove it. I loved it. I loved the hype, I loved where he was coming from. What I didn't love was that he obviously felt so bad, so insecure, and all because somebody made a post that was straight up bullying.
Speaker 1:And then everybody not everybody, but a bunch of people jumped on that train and I started clicking profiles skinny, undermuscled, four foot tent, like all and I'm like, oh okay, so like, let's be, let's deploy some empathy here. You're hating on people who are overweight. You have your own insecurities about your own body and your own stature and your own self-worth and your own business and like, okay, fine, I get it. That's the empathetic part of me is like I get it. You have your own insecurities. You're taking them out on other people. I understand. You know what.
Speaker 1:Like big guys, big women, like being big, has always been a good, easy, targeted excuse for people to tease somebody. It just has. And like if you've never been big, if you've never been big and had to lose weight, if you've never struggled with your emotional relationship with food or overeating or under eat, like you, just you wouldn't get it and that's okay. From that perspective and here's one of the things I talked about in the video I made the other day was like the thing about being overweight and the thing about all those people jumping on it. All those people that jumped on like I'd never buy from an overweight salesperson because they're obviously this, this, this and this. Okay, bro, like half of you are probably alcoholics, probably railing Coke, probably have miserable marriages and relationships.
Speaker 1:Like just see, here's the thing. Just because you can physically see the manifestation of where that human being is struggling doesn't mean that you have a better work ethic, a better gratification. Like why would you ever believe that you have nothing that would make somebody not want to buy from you just because you aren't overweight? And I found that, like the Bible talks about this right, before trying to remove the spec in your brother's eye, remove the plank in your own meaning, every single one of us have a bucket, a pillar, a thing, a vice. We all have something we are struggling with. We all have something that we are deeply struggling with, that we are deeply insecure about that. Truthfully, if you may be told a certain couple of people about it, they wouldn't buy from you, thank you.
Speaker 1:But I, oh it was gross to me how people just jumped on this train and like, on top of that too, like you jumped on the train, like you've, like, I don't believe any of these people have ever actually not bought from somebody just because they were overweight either. I think it sounded cool, I think it's and that's the that's the most disgusting part about bullying. To begin with, when people don't say anything is because people just jump on the train because they want to fit in. Half of these skinny, undermuscled, underdeveloped young entrepreneurs haven't really done shit yet, haven't like, did I have failed bigger than they have succeeded Like nothing, accomplished nothing with their bodies, have had no radical transformation in any department. All of a sudden, jumping all over this trend of hating on people who are overweight is just very telling of where you're going to end up in the next 24 months, because that is not a heart posture of a successful man.
Speaker 1:The heart posture of a successful man is one who is supportive, encouraging, loving. It doesn't mean that they're perfect. It doesn't mean anything. What it means is they have a heart posture of service towards other and I don't care how many times I have to say this over and over and over and over again the truly fulfilled, and so I guess maybe I should clarify how I define success, because I believe you can get super rich and not really be of service to anybody. I believe you can get super rich and be a huge piece of trash. I believe you can get people do it all over the world every single day. You can get super rich with money and not do anything good ever. That's real man. Making money is not what's in question here.
Speaker 1:When we talk when I talk about success, when I talk about success, I'm talking about peace. I'm talking about joy. I'm talking about owning your responsibilities. I'm talking about owning your mistakes. I'm talking about owning your failures, owning your successes. I'm talking about, for me, being a great husband, a great dad, an example setting the standard. And if a lot of money comes with that over the course of my lifetime, that's amazing and I would put that to good use and I will do good things with it. And if that's not what that means, then that's OK too, because God has and will provide everything I need forever. That's a truth that I have to accept, that I struggle to accept, because we all want money, money, money. But the truth is, everything will be OK as long as I live in a heart posture of being the best version of myself, and if that means that I'm going to come into a ton of money or if it means I'm going to just have enough to live, that's OK. That's OK. I'm not defining success, but and that's what they're doing their definition of success is broken and because of that there's a bullying of other people.
Speaker 1:So that story I wanted to like, just like I wanted to highlight how cool it was to see people start to come out and stand up and say something. And this rhetoric of like, of I like, because I've heard this recently more than ever there's like I wouldn't buy from anybody overweight. Like yeah, you absolutely would. And like I wouldn't buy from somebody who has a terrible relationship with their wife Maybe that's you. And like it's not even like. It's like it's true. It's just like I don't understand exactly who you think you are or why you don't think you have a plank in your eye when you're looking at the spec of somebody else's. And it's so easy to hyper focus on people being overweight because you can see it. But every single person on that post Brown, every single one of them, man, I know for a fact, without ever talking to them, that there are countless unseen unseen gratification problems, impulse problems, relationship problems, money problems. Man people who come out like that, talking that much shit about other people's weight or anything else. Man, lord, give me the ability to empathize with the things that are going on with people I can't see. Amen, that's story. Somebody standing up for somebody. Story time number two on say something right. Story time number two on speaking up.
Speaker 1:A couple of weeks ago, I was driving home. We were at a friend's house, me and the kids and Amanda. We were at a friend's house here, and we left late at night. It was probably 10 o'clock. It was like it's late for us, though, and we were driving separately. Amanda and I were driving separately, and Amanda took her car, I took the kids. She wanted to go on her own, she needed a break from kids Totally understand and she was heading home. I had to stop and get gas.
Speaker 1:On the way home from this person's house, there's a gas station. It's a little kind of rinky dink on the corner gas station. It's not nice or special. I stopped in there to get some gas and I'm stopped at a pump, and on the other side of my pump is a pump and there's a guy stopped at that one and we're both driving Pretty nice cars and we're both, like you know, 30s, 40s dudes. He's got his wife in the car, of my kids in the car. We're both very similar. If you were to look at us on the outside, meaning what, I believe we both have some of the same ability to Speak, the same kind of like understanding of what's about to happen.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden, this woman pulls in the gas station. She pulls in behind us, she goes in front of the guy to the pump across from me and pulls up to the pump. She does not get out of the car. She's driving kind of a beat-up car. Windows are rolled up, some and it she didn't get out of the car at all. Left the car running, pulls up to the pump, but a minute and a half after she pulls in, this dude in a Jeep comes flying in the other entrance and blocks her like a T. Right she's at the pump. He pulls in front of her horizontally like a T and and blocks her in the pump immediately. I know something's wrong.
Speaker 1:Now, I was not in the military, I was never a police officer, but I wasn't a lot of really, really unhealthy and dangerous situations. And so my, my eye and ear for Some things about to happen is very heightened, from a period of my life where Something was often about to or was happening. And I am so grateful that I am not in that and never will be back there again. But that heighteness, that sort of trauma response, that understanding that like I Don't think this is right, that gut, that intuition I had that before I even ended up in those bad situations. I've always had this innate ability to understand that something was off and and something was off. It's got poles and blocks her in. I Didn't think much of it at first. I did like my, my intuition went off.
Speaker 1:And pumping gas, my kids are in the car. My daughter's door was open. I was talking to her. I was like, hey, I'm gonna close this, close the door, lock, lock it. Guy gets out of the car and all of a sudden I hear him come up to the window of her car, knock on it and say something like there you are whore, or something I and I couldn't. I wasn't a hundred percent sure that's what I heard, but that's what I was pretty sure that I heard and immediately I was like not good, we have a dangerous situation. He doesn't leave her alone. He's not being super loud. What I noticed was she was not rolling down the windows. Immediate red flag. She is in danger. Windows are staying up. He's trying to talk through the window. He has her car blocked in. He did not look like an upstanding citizen by any means whatsoever. So I finished pumping gas, I put my pump on the hook. I hit no receipt. I walk into the gas station. I go to the attendant. I say hey, do me a favor, please call the police. I'm gonna go ask this gentleman to pull his car over here. Blah, blah, blah. We're gonna get this handled. And I got that. Look, I got a. I got to give credit to this gas station time.
Speaker 1:It was probably like a 19 year old girl, tiny, and she's like oh okay, so she doesn't pick the phone up. She walks outside with me and before I can even say anything to this dude, she just starts going off. Don't be harassed, my customers, get your ass. I was like, damn, like this little girl Just went harder than I've seen grown men at cow or before. Like this girl, just like she crushed it. I was super impressed, it was awesome, I loved it. I was like that's, that's how you do it, that's a strong woman, I love this. And this dude gets argumentative not violent, but argumentative and he's defending. He's like I'm not doing anything. You know that, all that bullshit. And so like I stand up, I walk behind her, walking up to the guy. She's still yelling. She's like I'm gonna go call the police.
Speaker 1:He gets in his car, he pulls it up to the spot. I stay right there in the middle. The woman stays in her car. Windows are still up, her cars off. Now she's obviously crying something's wrong. He's trying to figure out how to get this situation back under control and it's not working. She comes back out with the phone. I'm standing between him and the car, right in the middle of the parking lot and he just he gets in his car and he peels off. Then the woman gets out of her car and runs into the gas station, assuming my assumption is because she was finally safe enough To go inside and she would be safer inside than outside Gas station. Girl tells me cops are on the way. I hop in my car and I leave.
Speaker 1:Now, before I left, before I actually got in the car. Here's the kicker to the story. The kicker to the story is not that I did that. I've done that countless times in my life and I rarely talk about it. Before I got in the car, the guy on the other pump, right around the same age as me, nice car wife in the car, you know, totally just just average guy Goes hey man, thanks for saying something. Something seemed really off over there and I said, and he went to shake my hand. I Shook his hand and I said yeah, man, I mean we both Could have said something, but you're welcome. And he went, yeah, well, you know I didn't want to get involved. I said understood, I got my car closed the door and I couldn't get it out of my head.
Speaker 1:How often and frequently people allow something like that to happen in their life to their spouse, their kids, and maybe not to that extreme like I'm sure your spouse isn't getting teed into or it's not what I'm saying but how often people allow people to treat people that way and just think I don't want to get involved and that's fine, what's fine. But somebody has to, somebody has to say something. I got in the car and my kid, my daughter, specifically my son, was confused. My daughter kind of started to pick. She was like she was. She was like what happened. I told her she was and her first question was did the other guy do anything? And I said no. I said why did you ask? And she was like I don't know, like why. She said something, like why did you choose to do something when he didn't? And I started telling her well, this isn't the first time that I've done something like this.
Speaker 1:And I started sharing with her story after story of helping somebody change their tire on the side of the road, pushing a woman's car in the pouring rain on the middle of a 60 mile an hour road into a parking lot. Well, my wife and I were driving home one night and, like my wife's watching me praying, I don't get hit by a car and I started just, story after story after story, what I realized was if we could all just be people who chose to help people who needed help, the world would be such a better place. I'm not sharing these stories to prop myself up as anything special. For every situation that I've helped somebody, I've also, I'm sure, fucked up 10 things I'm not sitting here talking about. What I am talking about is like if, if you see, like, if you listen to, like the Andy for cell or like they talked about, like personal excellence is the ultimate rebellion. Do you realize how successful of a society we could be if we all just stepped into and further into our own personal excellence, as as fathers, wives, moms, husbands, sons, friends, neighbors, people who see people with broken down cars? We wouldn't need much if we all just rallied together in mission and on purpose to be there for each other.
Speaker 1:And the reason I told those two stories about speaking up were because at that gas station nobody was going to do anything and in that Facebook post, a ton of people said something. And the difference being when people say something, speak up, serve people who need it, see it, get it heal, feel appreciated a part of, get some added safety and security. But if nobody says anything, does anything, people can get hurt, really, really hurt. And I think about the Facebook group and the gas station, as I wonder how many people are willing to say something in a Facebook group but unwilling to say something in real life. And what I want you to focus on, and something I've been focusing and pondering and praying over, is how can I serve both the online presence and be a force for change, but really serve the in person presence at a higher level in my community. How can I deliver at a higher value? Because that's needed also, and it was just interesting how many people were willing to do something online and how nobody was willing to do something in real life.
Speaker 1:At 1030 at night at a sketchy gas station, and I get it. It's more dangerous at a sketchy gas station, and I get it. There's some confidence. You know, like I understand that that's not the scenario for everybody to want to get involved, but somebody has to, and I think that person at times can be you. And so I just wanted to ponder on how can we speak up more in person in our day to day, in real life, when we interact with others. How can we be a force for change and positive impact with our voices as we go through our day to day life? And that's something I'm going to continue to ponder on and think on and learn how to articulate better and document more, but I would love for you to do the same. I appreciate you guys. I'll talk to you next time.
