The Man Who Makes Millionaires: Aaron Young, Unshackled in Business, Bonded to Family

What happens when ambition meets unwavering support and strategic brilliance? Visionary entrepreneur Aaron Young learned valuable lessons from his hardworking parents. From a young enterpriser at 18, driven by financial desperation, to becoming a leader who has guided over 100,000 entrepreneurs and in his successful firm, Laughlin USA, Aaron's strategic vision and business acumen have transformed his multiple ventures into multimillion-dollar successes.   Aaron shares a glimpse of his new book, "Unshackled," where we can learn how to revolutionize our approach to business.

We celebrate the power of a supportive partnership in this episode, as Aaron shares  how his 37-year marriage to Michelle has been a cornerstone of his success, highlighting the importance of living true to your values and prioritizing strong family bonds while balancing entrepreneurial success and personal commitments. He shares how his wife Michelle’s unwavering support allowed him to pursue his ambitions, while he also supported her in her greatest desires to stay home with their kids. 

Lastly, Aaron shares valuable lessons from his experiences, including those learned during personal setbacks, such as his prison sentence, and how these have shaped his resilience and credibility. Prepare to be inspired in this episode brimming with wisdom, resilience, and actionable strategies for achieving your entrepreneurial dreams.

Thank you for listening!

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I'm wishing you lots of love on your own hero's journey,
Karen
xoxo

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Connect with Aaron Young
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Aaron Young, is a lifelong entrepreneur,  trusted advisor to CEOs and business owners, and creator of The Unshackled Owner, a program for entrepreneurs looking to build a business and not just a glorified job.

Aaron is Chairman/CEO of Laughlin Associates, a 52-year-old company that has helped over 100,000 entrepreneurs start, grow and profit from their business. For over 3 decades, his experience founding, acquiring and directing entrepreneurs from Main Street to multi-million dollar businesses, along with his integrity set him apart from the crowd as a voice of vision and authority.

Aaron arms other business owners with success formulas that immediately provide exponential growth and protection.  In addition, Aaron is a highly sought after Chief Strategy Officer, keynote speaker, author, media guest, and he sits on several boards.  He works very few hours a day and enjoys horses, traveling and spending time with his wife, Michelle, of 37 years.  They live in the Pacific Northwest where they enjoy time with their 5 children and grandchildren. 

Order your book, Unshackled, HERE and enter a drawing to work with Aaron!
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey there, welcome back. I'm Karen Hall, your host of the Hero Within Podcast. I'm passionate about sharing inspiring true stories of unsung heroes who've overcome some of life's most challenging adversities. Come along with me and learn how you, too, can find hope and healing to return to love. I'd like to welcome Aaron Young to the show today. Hi, karen, hi, aaron and I are just having the best conversation, and Aaron is an amazing entrepreneur and he is a visionary. He is a strategist that helps entrepreneurs with startups, and then he has helped entrepreneurs reach incredible success in monetary ways and in other ways, and he just keeps branching out and he keeps expanding with many diverse opportunities, and so he has worked with over 100,000 entrepreneurs and his business is Laughlin, usa, and he is just launching his book Unshackled, which we're going to talk about some more. Yes, unshackled. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:23

Oh my gosh. So I own like another guy and I own Laughlin Lee Morgan. We've been business partners since 97 and we bought Laughlin. We were competing with Laughlin. Mr Laughlin died. They invited us to buy it. We bought it. Lee works there a lot. He's the president, I'm the chairman. So my thing is I've built or bought and fixed over three dozen companies that we've built to multimillion dollar levels and then sold them or merged them. Laughlin now is a conglomeration of itself and four other companies that we already owned, and then we just in June launched a new company called Laughlin Black and we've moved all marketing and sales into Laughlin Black. Laughlin Associates is fulfillment for its 48,000 customers or whatever. We've worked with hundreds of thousands of individuals over Laughlin's lifetime. We're working with a couple thousand new clients a month. I mean that's a lot. That is a lot. I think people would think that was a lot.

Speaker 1: 2:36

It's definitely a lot. And then, how do you describe yourself with regard to strategy?

Speaker 2: 2:41

Strategic thinking partner. I always make money because the companies I work with always make money. And then I have a deeper ownership of Laughlin Black Prestige, which is our strategic tax planning firm in Florida, which we've quadrupled since I bought that half of the company 18 months ago. And what else? Laughlin Business Credit Advisors, which works with high-level clients who have been bootstrapping their money along and we show them how to use business credit. These are companies that are already making millions but they're bootstrapping, and so I do a lot of stuff. I've got a genetics lab in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then we breed horses too.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Right, yeah, I read that and plus. I read that you had built 10 homes. Oh, we've built.

Speaker 2: 3:31

yeah, we've built lots of homes Built. This house I'm sitting in, we built 22, 23 years ago and then remodeled it three years ago. We've done a lot of stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Yes. Well, one of the things that I find so fascinating about your, first of all, of your diverse experience, is how successful all of these things that you have been involved in and you're a visionary man and to, first of all, to recognize that a business has the potential to be successful and to help it reach its potential, that a business has the potential to be successful and to help it reach its potential. I see that as such a gift that you possess, and so I'm going to have you go back in time now and tell me about how did you get the entrepreneurial spirit starting when you were 18 or before you were 18? Because when you were 18, you started your first company. I'm sure there was something before you were 18. Can you tell us? Where did that come from?

Speaker 2: 4:29

I think it came out of financial desperation. I grew up with parents who loved me very much. I'm the oldest of five children. My mom was really the hard driver but we grew up in a very conservative, very traditional family where dad was a breadwinner, mom was the homemaker and they did a good job at their jobs. But my dad was really very in touch with his inner child and he enjoyed life and he didn't want to be a boss and so, as gifted as he was, as brilliant as he was, offered many promotions and turned him down and so consequently never made much money and kept a roof over our heads and stuff. But he was always robbing Peter to pay Paul and I saw that and I knew for everything I admired about my dad, that was something I didn't want in my life, even as a kid, a little kid young like middle school or whatever. So when I was about 14, a guy at church said, hey, aaron, do you know how to paint? And I said, like paint pictures? He said no, paint walls. I said I mean, it's not that. Yes, I've painted like my bedroom, and so he hires me.

Speaker 2: 5:51

He was a manager of an apartment complex and they had to turn the apartments when somebody moved out and they'd repaint everything. So after school, not every single night, but often during freshman and sophomore year and through the summers I would go over there and I paint and other stuff. Well, when I turned 16, the owner of that building, who owned a bunch of apartment complexes, invited me to come. Well, I don't know if invited Asked me to come over and paint the exterior of his house, which I did. And I got to know him and said to him at one point so I was making $3.50 an hour, three and a quarter $3.50, something like that. And this is 1980 we're talking about. So, and I'm 1980, I was 16. And I said to the owner I don't know what you pay your managers to turn the apartments, but I would do it for you for $10 an hour and I'll do all your apartments and he's like great. So now I have a car, a little Volkswagen Dasher station wagon, and I started buying my own brushes and rollers and eventually got an airless gun and got a couple other kids that were my age who came for $3.50 an hour to paint it's Tom Sawyer and the whitewashing of the fence.

Speaker 2: 7:02

So I did that through high school, went off to my one year of junior college. I got terrible grades in school, had a 1.9 cumulative GPA, so very much a C student. And I tested very well in the school I wanted to go to. Didn't do SAT, did the ACT and I took the ACT. I got a 31 on my ACT which put me in like the top 1% in the country, but terrible grades. Couldn't get into a university. So I went to a private junior college where I immediately got into the show choir. So the whole nine months of the school year or whatever, I was going off on tours all over the US and Canada representing the school. So I'm not even sure that I got grades when I went to school.

Speaker 2: 7:49

So but on that Christmas there of that freshman only year of college I had, I came home and I needed Christmas money. So I borrowed a pickup truck along with another guy and we went and knocked doors and picked up old newspapers and took them down to the industrial section, the area of Portland, oregon, and unloaded tons and tons of paper and made about I don't know $3,000 or something in a week each of us. Wow, and this is 19,. This is Christmas of 82. Came back in the summer from, so now it's like May of 83. And we officially started just what we called Paper Recycling Collection Very creative name and we went around and ended up by the end of the summer had about 5,000 homes we were picking up from and that was great and I left to go on a mission for the Mormon church. I grew up in the Mormon church and off on a mission for a couple of years and the business ran every day and I got a part of the money every day. Right, and it went into, went away, so did that. I didn't know that you couldn't get paid from a business you were not at it but where you weren't working. But it was mine. So I wanted to get paid. So I did that. And then another year or so later, in 1986, so I went on the mission from 83 to 85, came back worked In 86, I went.

Speaker 2: 9:23

A friend of mine who went on to be a founder of WebMD was my best friend, was still my best friend, but he wanted to start an off-campus newspaper at Brigham Young University and he had writers and artists and he'd gotten permission to use like Doonesbury and Calvin and Hobbes for in the paper. But they had no money to print the paper. So he called me. He said can you come down to Utah and figure out how to get money so I can print this newspaper? So I go down there. And because I was always able to figure out how to get money, and he was showing some slides. He was looking at the slides that he had just of the photos he'd taken and I was like what is this? And he's telling me and there gets this group picture of all the kids that had gone, like a dozen people or something, and up sitting up on this rock in the group photo is this super cute girl. And I said who's that? And he said that's michelle Pearson. And I said am I going to meet her on this trip? That was May of 86, february of 87. We were married. We've been married for over 37 years now and best thing that ever happened to me. So I thought, well, michelle isn't going to be that excited by a guy that picks up old newspapers all day.

Speaker 2: 10:46

So I sold my interest in the business to the other guy, took the money this is 1986. And I bought my first inventory of cellular telephones when cell phones were very new, yeah, and became a GT MobileNet licensed representative or distributor or agent. They called us and ended up with five stores. And then the market changed. We crashed and burned and I was bankrupt and sitting in bankruptcy court with my beautiful young wife With one little child and nine months pregnant with the second one. We had to turn in the keys to our brand new cars. We were in our second home that we purchased by then, but we crashed.

Speaker 2: 11:29

I thought I was smarter than the market. I was not, and so we went through about 18 months of just sucking wind and I was trying to schlep printers and and like plain paper faxes were new, I was selling those. I was doing all this weirdo stuff. I'd read these little cardboard things, I'd go to a video store and they would let me put their name in the middle and then we'd go knock doors in the neighborhood and sell these cards for 20 bucks that said free popcorn with a new release or free new release, get a second regular title for free, and knock doors at night. I mean I did anything I needed to do to pay the mortgage and and to pay the health insurance and we were so, so broke at that time that we were on a thing called gleaners, where they we would get like the bread or the milk or the vegetables that reached their pull date and they had to pull them off the short store shelves. So then we would go over and be able to pick stuff up from a home and take it home. Usually a couple times a week you'd get a call. That was $11 a month to be on Gleaners and there were months that I had to ask them to hold my $11 check. So, for all the stuff you said about me at the beginning to hold my $11 check so for all the stuff you said about me at the beginning, I want people listening to know that it's not all hockey stick growth.

Speaker 2: 12:52

I've done things people dream of doing. I've reached levels of freedom and financial success that have us in the top 1%, and I don't work hardly at all, almost not at all. I may take a few phone calls every day. That's what I do, it's what I say on those phone calls. That is valuable, right, but it's not like magic. This was me making sure I found a way to survive, and whatever I did, do it better than the other person so that they would buy my thing instead of somebody else's, and even though we do things that sound a lot cooler than that. It's still the same thing. How do I get people to pick our project over our competitor's project? How do we not just get the customer? How do we keep the customer for a long time so they trust us to do the next thing that they need or that we offer? So I don't know where I got the bug. You just heard kind of my story and it goes on and on. I will say all the things I told you happened up until when I was 29 years old. So that was all up to 29. All that stuff I just said.

Speaker 2: 14:03

At 29, I got taken to lunch and offered a job by a guy who just knew I'd been really successful in cellular. I don't think he knew about the bankruptcy or any of that stuff and he invited me. He said would you be interested in, would you even be willing to have a job? So if you ever felt you shouldn't give up your entrepreneurial dreams to take a job, listen to this. So I said, well, what's the job? And he said I said what's the company? And he said we're in financial services. We have about 350 offices worldwide, from Alaska to Australia. We're all over the place and we're getting ready, we're prepping to go public on NASDAQ. And I said okay, so? And he said where are you based? He said we're right over here in a Portland Oregon suburb. I said okay, what's the job? He said vice president of sales. I said for the Portland office. He said no, for the whole company.

Speaker 1: 14:57

The whole world.

Speaker 2: 14:59

I said wait a minute. You've got over 300 offices, almost 350 offices. You're going public big board, nasdaq, and you're inviting me to be your vice president of sales. He said yes, and there's so many stories I could tell you around the decision, which didn't take long to make it, but someday I'll tell you that story if you want to know. It's about how my wife was so dedicated to the commitments we made to each other before we got married that she would have continued to let us be on our butt broke instead of taking this very desirable job, because she knew that my goals were to run businesses.

Speaker 1: 15:44

I want to hear the whole thing about your wife, because a lot of here's the short story, my I'll tell quickly.

Speaker 2: 15:50

My wife grew up in a divorced mom and dad home. Her mom had issues, mental illness issues and was young, and so Michelle had an older sister who was born, I think, when my mother-in-law was 16 and my wife was born when her mom was 18. And she was young, divorced and wanted a life and was gone and anyway, there was a lot of other undesirable circumstances around that. But when we got together and she was 19, and I was 22, when we got married okay, 18 and 21,. When we met and when we were falling in love and it all happened very fast Cause I told you, we met in May but we went on our first date in September and got married in February, so it was very quick.

Speaker 2: 16:36

Yeah, she said look, here's the deal. I want to be home with our kids, I want to be home. And I said, well, I want to be an entrepreneur and that can be a roller coaster. I don't know what that's going to be. Wow, I'm getting emotional. To tell you the story, hold on, okay. So she said, I don't care if we have to live in a cardboard box, I want to be home with kids. Yeah, I done, and that we've done that. We've done that. When I got the job offer that day, I went home and I said, michelle, let me tell you what happened. And here's the job, and here's the salary, and here's the car allowance, and here's the health insurance, and here's the stock options and stock once they go public, and all this stuff. And she said, yeah, but do you want to do it?

Speaker 1: 17:30

Wow.

Speaker 2: 17:31

I said well, look, I mean, we're hanging on by our fingernails right now and her car. She had two car seats in the back seat and we couldn't fix the starter on her little Hyundai, so she had to park on a hill so she could pop the clutch. Yeah, yeah, that was going on back then. And so she's like well, do you want this? And I said, well, let's think about it. Uh, let's pray about it. And later in the day I said I think I just need to, I've got to do this. And she said are you sure you feel really good about it? You sure you're willing to take a job and not continue to pursue stuff, because I have things going? They just weren't taken off. I said, yes, I'm sure I'm going to tell him yes. And she's like thank you, thank you, thank you, yes. And she's like thank you, thank you, thank you. But I mean she, she could very easily have been. Well, you better take that job, or what are you thinking? Or your family needs you to step up. Buddy, quit being a dreamer, right.

Speaker 1: 18:42

Yeah, never did it.

Speaker 2: 18:43

And I've noticed that most of the people who are successful over time have, I mean, really do significant things, have a partner that's with them and who backs them up in those hard times. Right, the value of having been married to this wildly intelligent, incredibly gifted she. Once our youngest kid was in high school, we went on a cruise for our 25th anniversary 10 years ago no, 12 years ago, wow. And she's Louise. And I said, well, so this being there when the kids were going to and from, is we can sort of see the end of that time period. What do you think you want to do next? Do you want to study more languages, pursue your painting, travel more, because she's a very curious person? And she said, well, I think I want to be a life coach, but I don't exactly know what that means. But she'd been through a lot of stuff. But she'd been through a lot of stuff, we'd been through a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1: 19:51

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:52

And I'll just give her a plug. Her company is called Life Mastery and she is a wildly successful coach with clients all over the place and she's well-paid and her clients stay with her forever. And she's well-paid and her clients stay with her forever. And she's what most people, unless they go to the next level, which is Mary Morrissey, who is a dear friend of Michelle, says she's my mentor and she's Aaron's buddy. Mary and I are dear friends but Mary offered to put Michelle through her training and then Michelle just blew it up and is considered one of their great success stories but created her own curriculum. She's done her own TV show, now had a radio show, is in demand all over the place, run retreats around the world, done all kinds of cool stuff. So Michelle's awesome, but we made commitments and we supported each other in our commitments.

Speaker 2: 20:47

Yes, and to me that I was on another podcast called Entrepreneur on Fire a few months ago. Well, it's maybe been a year ago now and I'd been on before. But John asked me do you have a business hack you can share? And I said, yes, I plan a romantic date with my wife every week and he goes. Well, nobody's ever said that before. What is what is that? Why? And I said because when everything's good with my marriage, I can do anything. When things are not good, that's all I can think of. So I want to make sure that the most important parts of my life are in great shape.

Speaker 2: 21:29

Um, because then if those things are good, then I have all this free space in my mind to look at other people's stuff Right, and or other people's agendas, even if they're in my companies, because they're never. I mean, my agenda is like here's the thing I want you to do in my companies, because they're never. I mean, my agenda is like here's the thing I want you to do, and then all these people set about trying to figure out how to do it Right. So I need to be there to be supportive of them as they're figuring stuff out. But I'm not the, I'm not the boss, I'm not the, I'm not the guy driving the day to day. Not at all, not a bit. I don't go to the office, I don't have a login to our CRM. I do interviews, I write books, I give talks and I do a weekly meeting where people all these different companies on Tuesdays, an hour with each one. They tell me what's going on. I give them my feedback on stuff. Then see you next week.

Speaker 1: 22:30

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:30

That's how I am. That's my life.

Speaker 1: 22:32

What's so interesting about when you started to get emotional, I could feel that commitment that you and your wife both made to yourselves and to God was so important to you, and that it was that it related to every decision, every other decision that you made after that and your commitment to each other, to her, to help you accomplish your dreams, you to help her in supporting her to stay home with the children and then supporting your family to be so successful. Because, like you said so many times, as entrepreneurs we get off in the weeds. We get so focused, we sacrifice our relationships and our family time for the almighty dollar to make that business to work, to turn it around. And yet you're such a powerful example and I'm sure you have felt the Lord inspire you and guide you through all of those difficult times to be able to have that inspiration.

Speaker 2: 23:29

I have. Well, I'll comment on that in one second. Let me tell you so. Yesterday now I don't know when this is going to be published, but yesterday I was able to give copies of the new book, which is all about building a company that you can scale right, that can scale up, and it's my formula I've learned over 40 years and applied many times now. But I wrote this because of what you just said. I want you to hear this.

Speaker 2: 23:55

Aaron also wishes to take a moment to thank his children, adam, zoe, max and Scout, who were his reason for wanting to become Unshackled and who many times paid the price for Aaron's business adventures. So I feel passionate about helping people to get there quicker, because I have a great relationship with my kids. I do. We love being together. We do things often. We're in their homes a lot, we're on the phone most days, but they go off. We raised our kids so they could go off on their own, have their life, and then, when we did come back together, everybody would be able to get along and have fun, but not be like a little hornet's nest of symbiotic relationships. We want everybody to be healthy and individual and pursue their own goals and dreams.

Speaker 2: 24:48

But I know that as much as I drove kids to football or dance or scouts or horse shows or whatever I did, my kids will say dad, you were with us, but you were on the phone. You were on the phone, you're always on the phone. When they were younger, they resented it a little bit. Phone You're always on the phone. When they were younger, they resented it a little bit as adults. They say. I learned so much sitting in the car or listening to you talk about going public with three companies starting this, buying that, negotiating this. I realized now I learned all this stuff sitting in the backseat of the car.

Speaker 1: 25:25

I'm having osmosis almost.

Speaker 2: 25:29

So the kids have gone on to become successful, all of them in their own right. I believe, deep at my core is the parable of talents, which says the master gave resources, right, talents, money to three individuals and said go into the markets and make more. And I'm leaving. I'm going into a far country. Right, I'm not here to micromanage you, I'm not here to tell you how to do it. I'm going to give you stuff to use. What will you do with what I've provided for you? And I believe that, whatever God is and I do believe in an intelligent creator that the parable of the talents is fabulous because it basically says hey, we've been given this whole earth and all of its resources, and all of the books and all of the individual people's experiences, and all this cool stuff. And now technology and AI, where you can go out and spider the whole world in seconds and get answers on stuff. And what will we do with the resources that are provided for us? Will we bury them in the ground because we're afraid to mess up, or will we go out there and take a shot? And the one that buried in the ground was like okay, you had your shot. You're a slothful servant, unwise and slothful servant, but to the one who multiplied the 10, right To you. You'll become a master of many things.

Speaker 2: 26:57

And what I notice in my career if I can be so bold as to compare myself to that character in that story is the more I do and the more things that I learn work and we do more and more of it, the more people come at me and go. Can you help me with this and this? And we'd be a part of this and we'd be on this board. And it's not because I have a great education, it's not because I grew up in private school, it's not because I'm a genius, it's because, if you just keep working at stuff and stop doing things that don't work and do more of things that do work, at some point people will notice that, oh, that person, even when they fall on their tail in a bankruptcy, even when they go to prison, come back and they're okay, right, why? Because they've figured out a formula that just works. They don't have to be tricky, they don't have to be nefarious, they just it's. They land on their feet right.

Speaker 2: 27:57

Because it's. How many times have you seen somebody go? You could take me and drop me naked in some foreign country where I don't speak the language or anything, and within 90 days I'd have half a million dollars. Yeah, right. Well, I don't know if I could do that, but I'll tell you what. I'd be okay. I'd be okay because I know things that translate. In every situation I always talk about SRA same rules apply. Things that worked in financial services also work at the genetics lab, also work in military contractors, also work in the nonprofit boards I sit on. I work this book, the new book. My co-author is a young tech guy in Romania. I'm a 60-year-old asset protection financial guy in America. He took the lessons and applied them and scaled from a million and a half dollars to $50 million in five years. Wow.

Speaker 2: 28:55

Wow Because if you know the formula and if you have a viable idea, then you can do great things, and the more great things you do, the more opportunities. You know. What I've noticed is rich people rich, not comfortable. Rich people get invited to sit in the owner's box at the Super Bowl. Right, Taylor Swift was up there a lot, and she brought her friend, the other actress, ryan Reynolds' wife what is her name? Why can I not think of it? Anyway, they were up to her buddy, her good buddy, who's a movie star. They're up there.

Speaker 2: 29:33

Oh, aaron, no, we'll pay for you. We're going to pay you $25,000. Speak and buy your first class ticket and put you in a suite and pay for your food. Not like, hey, you're getting paid 25 grand, buy your own damn ticket. No, we'll take care of you. Yes, right here. Do you want to fly in my airplane? Here, let's go out on the yacht, right, things that you just get invited to do, right, because people are like, oh, I want to know what you're thinking about, so let me get you somewhere private where we can talk, and that's people go.

Speaker 2: 30:02

I don't know, it's no fair, I'll never get there. And it's because they don't understand that you start off picking up smelly, musty, old, dirty newspapers and then you turn that into $3,000 phones and 49 cents a minute sales. That is not an easy sale, kid, and there was no training manual. I was in the first wave where I'm to talk people into this technology. No really, this is going to be great and that progression. Then people look at me. They look at me now I just turned 60. And they're like oh my gosh, I wish I had your life. Your life's amazing. I'm like you don't want my life. Nobody would want to go through the stuff I went through to get here.

Speaker 2: 30:47

And yet it's a blissful life. It's a fabulous life, and I've been calling my own shots since I was 18.

Speaker 1: 30:56

So when you were going through some of these experiences, like you'd come up with this new idea or something, did you feel because of your connection with God? Did you feel inspiration, Like were you able to say, oh, that was from God, I feel good about that. Or did you just feel like it just looks good, it just feels good?

Speaker 2: 31:15

Do you feel like it was inspiration or no, I've been around the world too long and no too many people to go. This one dogma is the right way. What I need to do is not have an intermediary between me and God. I need to have my own connection to God, the Father, the universe. Now physics is telling us that the universe is sentient, it thinks. The universe Not it's controlled, it is its own thing Thinking. I don't know. I'm not a scientist and I'm not a theologian.

Speaker 2: 31:53

What I will tell you is this I have a strong belief that there are so many people who slowed down and thought about things and, thankfully, wrote them down. And there are all these words of inspired individuals, men and women throughout time, who, when I read their words, it makes me go oh, that's a perspective I hadn't thought about. And I think all of this is holy, it's all sacred. I don't have to buy off on all of it, but I can be exposed to it and then let this magical machine in between my ears go. What do I think? And I do believe that I have a soul, and the soul is separate from my brain and my body and it's in tune with whatever I'm focusing or allowing to be out there in the world or in the universe to me so I can tune in. So when I read something, something inside of me feels like revelation. Right, something is revealed. There was something under the rock. You moved the rock. Oh, there's something there. If you never turn over the rocks, you'll never find it. So I'm constantly turning over rocks to see what I can learn.

Speaker 2: 33:05

People say what do you do all day? I said I probably spend two-thirds of my day in taking information, watching educational programming, reading business books, philosophical books, having talks with my wife or other smart people that I know all over the world, and a very little amount of time directing anything. I've earned that over time. I worked my butt off for many years, but for the last 10 or 15 years I haven't had to work very much. All right, I believe we, as individuals who exist and breathe on this planet, have a responsibility if we want more, if we're seeking abundance. Whatever that is for you, it could be engaging with animals, with people, giving to charitable causes, being the best crossword puzzler in the whole world, I don't know. Whatever is your thing. However, you find joy and feel expansive and happy and growing. It's all here for us. I just don't believe that God blesses me and ignores all the people living in mud huts in Africa or all the people living under the bridge in Portland. I just don't believe that I get to be better than them or that I think what happens is.

Speaker 2: 34:25

I mentioned prison because and I don't know if we haven't talked about it here, but I did I spent 14 months in federal prison and people said what did you learn? What was the biggest thing you learned in prison? Right, and I said I learned that I'm further up the ladder than almost anybody I meet, but I'm not sure that I've made as much progress on the ladder as some of the people that were born into horrible circumstances Horrible, terrible. Yeah, they're in prison, but you know what? They actually had done a lot of stuff to get away from that.

Speaker 2: 35:01

I grew up in this happy little home. Everybody loved me. I was the golden boy. I was popular in school. I had the lead in the play. Three years sophomore, junior, senior year I was the chief of staff at the radio station. I had a business. I always had money. My first car I won selling tickets to a thing at the school. I mean I just like everything worked for me right. Does that mean God loves me more than somebody? I don't think so. I think it's that I've made choices along the way to say there's more here than what meets the eye, and if I look a little harder for it, or slow down enough to go, what else could happen, what else is possible? Somebody is going to do it. Why not me, right? That's why I think people succeed or live that life of quiet desperation where they just feel like I'm stuck in the machine and I can't get out.

Speaker 1: 35:58

What you just said, though, is really that parable of the talents, because when you saw those other people in prison and you saw where they had come from, how many talents were they given, and yet you saw what they did with what their talents.

Speaker 2: 36:14

They weren't burying them.

Speaker 1: 36:15

They weren't burying them, and that that's such a compassionate way to look at things things because so many times we don't look at where someone came from and where they are now, we just look at where they are right now and we try and compare. And it's not equitable to compare that way, and so it's so compassionate of you to look at things that way.

Speaker 2: 36:34

Well, thank you, it's also unhealthy. Exactly, there's a great poem called the Desiderata, and in the Desiderata it says never compare yourself to others, you'll become vain and bitter. There will always be those greater and lesser than yourself.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Yes.

Speaker 2: 36:52

So don't go oh, look at those. Just don't do that. Just play your own game. Stay in your own lane, do the best you can with what you've got. Don't try to hurt people along the way, and if you do hurt people, apologize and figure out how you can make it up to them and don't just don't think that winning. I feel like I'm winning in the game of life and I don't really have any enemies that I'm aware of. Right, I've been through hard things, but you know what does Frank Sinatra say? Regrets I've had a few, but then again too few to mention. Right, I did what I had to do and saw through that exemption. Right, that's life.

Speaker 1: 37:43

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:43

That's life.

Speaker 1: 37:44

So people that when they look at your book and they say what that book's about, can you tell us a little bit more about the formula that you describe in your book?

Speaker 2: 37:52

The unshackled. So for years I would get asked to come and do consulting. Or I'm not a consultant, but people would say can you come spend a day with our board of directors or with the CEO and we'll pay you $25,000 plus your expenses and just come and visit with us for a day. I did that a bunch of times and for big companies Procter Gamble, CoverGirl, Max Factor, WebMD, others Okay and I always thought I mean I appreciate getting the check, but I don't think we're really making any significant difference in this exchange. Maybe they'll get something good out of it. But then I thought you know what? I'm going to take all this stuff that I talked to these people about and just say, well, look here's. I'm not saying this is the way to do it, this is my way to do it, you do this and then this, and I broke it down into eight steps and they're pretty hefty steps, but I broke it down into eight chunks and I created a course called the Unshackled Owner, which I'm pretty much just promoted to our database. Right, Okay, you guys are already trusting us to do this asset protection stuff for you. Here's something that might help you to help your business grow more effectively, Because I knew selfishly, if I kept people in business longer, they would stay clients of ours longer. So I needed to help them be successful. And that's still my personal goal Keep more companies in business for more years, making more money, Because then they'll hire people, buy health insurance, give money to things. I know we need to wrap up Unshackled is simply the course and how one of my students applied it to dramatically scale their company.

Speaker 2: 39:40

We could have done this with a lot of people, but he came to me and said an engineer in Romania makes $500 a month. They can't afford your $7,500 class. We need a book here in Eastern Europe. We need a book. And I said, well, I don't really want to write a book right now. I'm doing all these other things. He said how about if I co-author it with you? We'll give, I'll interview you, We'll use all your training, all of your words and then just how I applied your training and it'll be in our two voices and off. We went and we did it. It'll be in bookstores July 9th.

Speaker 2: 40:19

It tells the formula of what's the outcome you're seeking. What are your superpowers Like? What should you focus on? What should you not focus on? Who do you need to surround yourself with how to build a forward-looking organizational chart. So imagine a baseball roster. You need a pitcher, a catcher first, second, third base and so on. You don't have to have hired anybody yet, but you know you need those positions to be a baseball roster. You need a pitcher, a catcher first, second, third base and so on. You don't have to have hired anybody yet, but you know you need those positions to be a baseball team. So, okay, we're going to start with the pitcher. Right, we hired that person. Okay, now we're moving on. Oh, time to get a catcher.

Speaker 2: 40:52

The org chart looking at what does the company need to be as best as we can estimate at the time we ring the bell, we succeed. Whatever our vision is. What is that? How do we hire those people and create clear expectations? How do we build scoreboards so that they feel very much in control of how they do their job? And we have very clear and very simple goals that we're measuring them on instead of a thousand things like three things, so that we never surprise them by going well, why didn't you do this? No, I've told them what they're being measured on, They've told me how they're going to accomplish it and we just track it on a scoreboard right, Building an intentional corporate culture instead of an organic one, building an intentional corporate culture instead of an organic one.

Speaker 2: 41:43

So organic always go to the bottom. Intentional will lift people up, but it's got to be based on the owner's values and the values of the company and the mission. So you've got to know what that is and how to do it. And then, how do you understand your financials, how do you understand your corporate structure and how do you empower your management team so that you can be as involved or uninvolved as you want, right, so you can play a great role, or you can do like I do now, which is just a little drop once a week.

Speaker 2: 42:12

There have been times I've had to be in the mix long days, but I learned many, actually decades ago how to get out of that. The problem most entrepreneurs have is they stay in startup mode and they stay the most critical member of the team and they get a lot of juice out of that, and so they feel well, I'm the smart. Look how smart I am. I solved all these problems. Today, my deal is, the quicker I can get all those people to understand how to do it and we can scale that. I don't have to do anything anymore and I get paid on all of it, just like when I was on my mission and got paid for other people picking up the dirty newspapers. Right, I was in a suit, they were picking up busty old newspapers.

Speaker 1: 42:54

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:55

I learned young and I never forgot the lessons, and I've just done it at a bigger and bigger scale.

Speaker 1: 43:02

Yeah, One of the other things that I wanted to ask you was one of the things I understood about you was that you helped level the playing field for like the mom and pop that were starting out on main street. What would you say as far as what? How you would advise someone that was a small business owner compared to like WebMD or something like that.

Speaker 2: 43:22

My advice to everybody is the very first thing and it's the very first thing that we teach in Unshackled is get clear on what is the outcome you want for your life. What would be the what's the life you want? Remember how Michelle and I agreed yeah, what we wanted when we were kids and we've we did it. We accomplished it because we knew it. We weren't being blown around by the wind, tossed by the waves, we were intentionally going to something. So that's the first thing is figure out what is the result. Forget about your company. What's the result you want for your life? Once you are clear on that, then say is this thing that I'm giving my time and effort to going to get me to that place, does it have the capacity to do it Right, or is this a stepping stone? Or am I wasting my time Right? Is this a fool's errand, because while I've committed so much time to it, I don't want to let go of it? Or what else would I do? Here's the deal If it's not going to get you to the life you want, then you need to figure out a way to get out of it Right.

Speaker 2: 44:34

And then the next thing is get really good employees. Get people around you who are better than you at almost everything. You don't want to be the smartest person in that meeting, right? Because the thing that the owner typically has is a vision or a willingness to take risk that the other people don't. That's why they're signing the check, the paycheck, and everybody else is there to receive the check. So you don't have to be afraid of smart people. Smart people will show you all your blind spots and smart people will help you go way beyond your personal capacity, because if you try to be the smartest person, you keep all dumb people around you.

Speaker 2: 45:18

It'll never get better than however good you are, and most of us entrepreneurs are not that great. Honestly, we move fast, we take risks, we don't get a lot of data and we're great to start, but we need to get smarter people around us to grow and then, if you do that well and if you follow a formula, including the one that's in the book, you will be able to duplicate that. Do it over and over and over. People say how do you be involved with so many diverse companies? It's like well, because it's the same thing over and over again. It's just a different product, it's just a different market. It's the same ideas. And people don't understand that. They think, oh, if I go from wound care to private equity, those are different worlds. Well, they're different products and they're different markets. Same thinking, it's the same formula.

Speaker 1: 46:14

It's interesting what you're talking about because it all revolves around that bigger picture. I think that what you're saying is what is ultimate success for you and what are your values that are related to that success which you started with in your life, and then to move forward. And I think what you just said about the entrepreneurs is very interesting about surrounding yourself with that team, because you have an abundance mentality to be able to do that and, frankly, it's a very high emotional intelligence to be able to do that, because a lot of people feel threatened in those kinds of situations. But you're allowing people to soar, and then you all soar together. And so what?

Speaker 2: 46:58

an abundant mentality. I love what you just said and I know we need to watch time, but let me just say this All of us are scared of things that we haven't done before. Everybody's scared of things that they're unfamiliar with. They get nervous about it, even if they're excited about it. It's still a little trepidatious, right, right. So you will fear having a bunch of smart people around you until you do it and you see what works and what pays off, and then you'll never be afraid of it again. The first time you step on an escalator, it seems very scary. A little kid thinks they might get sucked down like the stairs, right. But then you get on it. You go oh, that's so much better than walking the stairs. That's trying to get your heart rate up. But the point is we're always going to be fearful of things that we're unfamiliar with.

Speaker 2: 47:52

Success comes from consistently doing things that are out of your comfort zone and trying. And then you go oh, I didn't die. Oh, that actually worked really well, let's do more of that. So, yes, people might be intimidated. My encouragement is just try it. It's not going to hurt anything. Just try it, and I think you'll be surprised at how fast. I just want to keep going. I have all these things in my mind, I want to say, but I'm not going to do it. But the point is you will, as Thoreau said, you'll meet with a success.

Speaker 2: 48:27

Meet the success unexpected in common hours, when you try something new, when you decide on where you're going, when you get clear and you're living the life you've imagined and you progress, you're making steps toward it. You're not necessarily there yet. Everything. Every step, things get easier, but most people are so terrified of failing or letting go of the thing that they hate, but that's paying some bills or whatever that they just don't try. And to them I say you have your reward.

Speaker 2: 48:59

There's a poem that I love that says and I hope I can remember all the words I bargained with life for a penny and life would give no more. However, I begged it evening while counting my scanty store, for life is a just employer. It will give you what you ask, but once you've set the terms, you must bear the task. I worked for a menial hire, only to learn, dismayed, any price I had asked of life, life would have willingly paid. What are you willing to imagine? What are you willing to dream? What are you willing to risk in order to have the life you want?

Speaker 2: 49:36

If you're not willing to risk like my dad was not willing to risk and he was always robbing peter to pay paul, and that's how most people live their life yes, and they're then they say I should just be grateful, I'm healthy, I should just be grateful I have a roof over my head and I say baloney, that is no. This is a big world where there's opportunities for great abundance. Everyone to their own level. Not everybody's going to be Elon Musk, right, but you don't have to be stuck. You don't have to be. That's a choice to be stuck.

Speaker 1: 50:15

Right and to that mentality of settling you don't have to settle, you don't have to, you don't have to.

Speaker 2: 50:20

And the reason my marketing people were saying please don't use the word unshackled it's so negative. I said any entrepreneur who hears that word unshackled owner will resonate. Every owner I've ever met who has employees goes oh my gosh, I am so shackled.

Speaker 1: 50:39

Yes, absolutely goes, oh my gosh, I am so shackled.

Speaker 2: 50:43

Yes, absolutely. Well, the book is a whatever I don't know how much it is 20 bucks or something. You can read that book. People who've done huge things, who are my friends, who endorsed that book. The forward is by the president of Warner Brothers, the founder of Teladoc, who stepped out of the leadership position at $34 billion, the founder of the E-Entertainment Network, the founder of Uggs, the founder of Priceline, sharon Lecter, rich Dad, poor Dad, and on founder of WebMD, on, on. These are all my friends. They all read the chapters, they wrote the endorsements. These are all my friends. They all read the chapters, they wrote the endorsements. And my best friend, harvard Business School, webmd, all those things said they didn't teach us any of this at Harvard, wow, wow.

Speaker 2: 51:33

To that end, spend 20 bucks and get a quarter million dollar education. This is not theoretical. I've done these things. This is not. And even the publisher said how did you get all these people to endorse your book, like, how did you get them even to talk to you? I said these are my friends. These are all people I know. I sit on boards with these people, I do business with these people, I go on vacation with these people. These aren't far away bogus deals. These are people I work with all the time. So you don't get there by staying stuck and being afraid. You get there by trying stuff, sometimes failing.

Speaker 2: 52:14

My biggest partnership ever is started just a few months ago and one of the things he said to me was one of the reasons I want to be your partner is because you've been bloodied. I said really, tell me about that. He said I play at a very high level. He does. He had a $3.4 billion fund that he raised the money and did it. He goes on vacation with guys like Mark Cuban, goes skiing with Franz Klammer. I mean, he does these things right. He said your marriage survived, your business survived, your employees stayed with you, your clients stayed with you. I know how you'll behave when a challenge comes along.

Speaker 2: 52:56

So the thing I thought would ruin my career, which was that stupid prison thing about one of our customers' activities, nothing about anything in my life, but we had materially assisted. They said we know you don't know about the crime, but you materially assisted by forming companies for them. Three and a half years, $2 million later, we gave up, said we'll go to prison. Three and a half years, $2 million later, we gave up, said we'll go to prison. The judge cut the sentence in half from what we agreed because he said this doesn't make any sense. We went off. We did it. I did. I pled guilty to something. I did a plea bargain. So that's on me. But I'm saying who knew that thing? You know who? The first person asked me to come speak after prison, brian Tracy. He said if you knew everything in my life, aaron, he said if people knew about my past they wouldn't necessarily trust me. But I know you Come speak at this event. You're out, come back, come get on the stage.

Speaker 1: 53:52

Wow, wow.

Speaker 2: 53:55

Les Brown said to me don't write the prison book, don't tell them about prison. You don't have to tell. We give people enough already. And I said but, les, you don't know the stories in the book. And he said, okay, tell me a story. I told him about checking into prison and at the end of it he goes tell me another story, right. And then he said you have to write the book. You have to write the book. That book's not out yet, but it's written. It's written, but I haven't published it yet.

Speaker 1: 54:25

Oh, I can't wait to read that one.

Speaker 2: 54:27

Oh, my goodness, that's kind of door to door of the prison story. But folks, the people I sat one time four guys in a little cabana. One of them had been deputy director of the scc in 08 when all the banks were collapsing. He was one of the people that decided that lehman brothers would close, and so on. He was one of the senior executives making the decisions now senior partner at one of the biggest securities law firms in new york. Him and I won't say the other names, but you would know well people in this audience. I was one of the people and there were two more guys, both of whom are very well known. One of them's passed away now. The other one is doing big things right now. He's all over the internet right now and I've done work with him for many years. The four of us are sitting there and I said, geez, how does it feel for you, this high-powered SEC guy sitting here with three felons? And he said, aaron, if I didn't work with felons, I wouldn't have any business.

Speaker 1: 55:32

Wow.

Speaker 2: 55:34

Don't let the things that you think are horrible stop you from your progress. Just don't let it stop you. Your life isn't done until you stop breathing. So if you want to become unshackled, learn the methodology. Help a lot of people get what they need and what they want and give them the freedom to be great at what they're great at, and they'll work like crazy for that cause. And you just support them and pretty soon you'll say, geez, I've got all this free time and I'm freaking rich. You know that's how it works. That's how it works.

Speaker 2: 56:12

But if you don't have a formula, you just grope around in the dark trying to figure things out. If you get a formula and you'll notice, all the wealthy people will tell every, go watch any video about any super successful person on the internet and at the end of the day, they tell you the same things. All of them tell you the same things, same things. I'm saying, which is get a viable idea that people actually want. Surround yourself with smart people. Pay them before you pay yourself. Don't consume all the money. Get out of the way of growth and keep looking for what the market wants to buy. Figure out what they want. Go out and get it, sell it to them. That's how you succeed and it's not brain surgery, unless you're a brain surgeon. And it's not hard. But people make it hard and that's okay. They get. They must enjoy making it hard. I enjoy making it easy, so easy that I wrote a book about it.

Speaker 1: 57:09

Well, and for all of us who didn't get to have that kind of education, we wouldn't have gotten this education anyway. So so how amazing. I mean, like you said, so many people would want to have you on their yacht so that they could just interview you like this and have you tell your stories and have you tell your perspective and to give us hope that, if we've had something that was what we would perceive as negative, that we can turn those lemons into lemonade and, with the Lord's help, we can overcome. And so what a beautiful example you are of, first of all, staying true to your North Star and to your values and how that I feel like you've been so blessed because you put those most important things first in your life.

Speaker 2: 57:55

And I will say this parable of the talents again.

Speaker 1: 57:57

Yes.

Speaker 2: 57:58

The master will come. The master will come and give you more, but don't expect miracles and don't expect a free lunch. You've got to do the work. Everything you need is in front of you. Everything you need you can start. As Mary Morrissey says, start where you are with what you've got. Start now from where you are with what you've got. We didn't have a training program for cellular phones. There were no recycling businesses in Oregon when we started the first one there, right there and just over and over again. You don't need, if you're waiting for somebody else to tell you how to do it and they already know how to do it you're going to end up working for them. You're not going to end up being the leader. And if you're working for somebody else, your growth will always be. There will always be a limit to the growth. What you've got to do is one of the richest people I ever did anything with said to me one time if you're standing in line, you're with everybody else. You're probably in the wrong place.

Speaker 1: 59:04

Right.

Speaker 2: 59:05

So anyway, there you go.

Speaker 1: 59:07

Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, and we could go on and on, I would. I just loved hearing about your life. I've loved hearing about your wife and your family. It's just you really touched my heart.

Speaker 2: 59:21

Yeah, it's a great life. It's a great life and don't want anybody else's life. Just make your own life the way you want it. Make a life you want, because there is only one you. So just do what you want to do and don't live somebody else's dream. Live your dream.

Speaker 1: 59:37

So much. Thank you for sharing, thank you for your example, thank you for your generosity to give people hope that they can make more and that they just do the best they can with what they've been given, that there is hope and that they can excel in their own way. So thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 59:58

My pleasure.

Speaker 1: 1:00:00

I love this. I loved every minute getting to visit with you. I appreciate your time is so precious and I appreciate you so much sharing your time with me and with our audience, because I was so uplifted and I was so touched by your story and I know that our audience is going to be so edified too. So thank you so much, thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:00:17

Will you do me a favor? Encourage people to go to barnesandnoblecom, not Amazon. We need a certain number of pre-orders at Barnes and Noble. Let's get behind your business and let's achieve your dreams. Go, spend 25 bucks and be the first one to get the book and anybody that buys the book can go to unshackledlifecom and we'll give them a bunch of freebies.

Speaker 2: 1:00:42

You'll get my other book, you get Robert's other book. We're going to do a thing where somebody's going to win by whatever lottery. The both of us work with them for I think I can't remember if it was 90 days or six months, which is pretty huge because Robert's tech company built he owns it. He built Intel's whole employee management system worldwide. He built Jaguar Land Rover's website where you build your own cars and order stuff for the whole world. I mean, he does huge projects and then whatever I do, but he was a million four when he met me and he bought the course. He took it over and over.

Speaker 2: 1:01:31

The thing is, if you buy the course, you can take it as many times you want. You take it forever because I know the more you apply it, the more questions you're going to come back with, because you're going to get more sophisticated. The information is quite deep, but you won't know it the first time. So I just want people to get the sophisticated. The information is quite deep, but you won't know it the first time. So I just want people to get the finish line. I don't need to keep charging them, pay enough to get in and show that you're serious and then I'll just keep and I teach it live. It's the only thing I still do myself. Other people could. I'm constantly being told other people could teach the class there and I said, yeah, told other people could teach the class there. I get. I said, yeah, lots of people could teach the class. Who's going to answer the questions?

Speaker 2: 1:02:08

exactly, yeah, and a lot of people would do it recorded and they wouldn't be there to answer the questions wow, I teach the class wow, I keep showing up and there are hundreds of people that show up randomly and some of them have five employees and some of them have 3,000 employees, and some of them are publicly traded and some of them are main street and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, and the book was written. So even managers in companies, people that have a team that they're trying to build, this will. It will be equally good for them as somebody who's an owner trying to build something. So, anyway, thanks a million. If I can do anything for you, let me know.

Speaker 1: 1:02:50

Thank you. So thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 1:02:52

Well, good, we're all going to do this together.

Speaker 1: 1:02:54

All right, thank you. Give your wife a hug for me, I will. Okay, that'd be great, thank you so much Thanks, a million Okay. Bye-bye, you too Bye.