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Ken Salazar is a dynamic entrepreneur whose vision and tenacity have led to multiple successful businesses and transformative innovations in various industries. Inspired by his father's determination and focus, he made the choice to set out on his entrepreneurial journey, creating companies that speak to his passions and drive. As the driving force behind BillGo, he is changing the bill management and payment landscape, empowering individuals to take control of their finances in a sleek and streamlined manner. Drawing from his own experiences, he emphasizes the importance of passion and purpose in achieving success and fulfillment in business and life.

 

In this episode, Steve and Ken discuss:

  • The Four P’s
  • Choosing Positivity
  • Insights on Life and Leadership
  • The Importance of Getting Help: Coaching & Personal Development
  • The Value of Vision Boards: Aligning Personal Aspirations with Company Goals

Key Takeaways:

  • Explore the fundamentals of leadership that can elevate your personal and professional life
  • Realize the power of pursuing your passion to achieve unimaginable heights
  • Master the art of simplifying bill payments to enjoy more time, money, and peace of mind
  • Delve into the significance of a positive attitude for a happy, healthy, and productive life
  • Grasp the importance of collaboration in politics, leading to efficient governance and resolution

 

“Life's too short to not pursue what you really enjoy.”

-Ken Salazar

Connect with Ken Salazar

 

Connect with Steve and Jason:

 

Listen to the podcast here:

 

Ken Salazar - Revisited


            

Hello, everyone. This is Steve Scanlon, your host of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE, and recently I was re-listening to some of our interviews, and we've been doing this for more than three years, which has been super cool. And every once in a while, I get to go back and really enjoy some of the interviews that Jason's done and I have done, and I did an interview that I think is worthy of re-listening. So, I hope you get to do that. This is an interview I did with Mr. Ken Salazar, and I just thought as I listened to it again, I was like, his four P's, and some of the insights that he has and some of the leadership skills that he has, they were just fantastic. So, I hope you get to listen. Here comes Ken Salazar. So, I hope you have a good re-listen and go get some insights. Ken, say hi to the podcast world.

Hello, podcast world. Steve, thanks for the kind words.        

Yeah. There's Ken Salazar. Hey, look, Ken, Jason and I do these podcasts together, and I noticed that Jason is in this habit of he likes to get people's bios and he reads them because there's some fancy things that you people have done, and I've noticed that you've bought and sold a couple of companies. You've belonged to some organizations. You sit on boards of stuff and I'm in the habit of letting you do some of that. You don't have to boast about yourself, but I'm going to get to a space where I'm going to go, give us the Ken Salazar story. Like within the Reader's Digest of that, and I'm going to do that. So, I just want you to prepare for that before I do, Ken, because you really are a person that's got a really cool background. Before I do, I want to ask you something, and here's the question I want to ask. I want to ask you who in your life are you grateful for and why?

You know, I think it gets difficult to try and narrow it down to any single particular person, but at the end of the day, right now it's my wife. She's just a great balance to me, personally, obviously, and then on the family side as well. But professionally, I'm very fortunate that she is able to really help balance me out and keep me in check and challenge me, and we talk about it, Steve, all the time that having people that can tell you what your blind spots are and not be afraid of doing that is invaluable. And she is someone that has always been able to do that. From the time that I think about when we had the good old investment banking days and encouraging me to try and go out and really quench that entrepreneurial spirit to then the various companies that we've started over the years. She's there checking me to make sure that I'm doing it for the right reasons, my heart's in the right space and that we're set up to be successful. All the way to now. sitting here saying, hey, look, it's time to simplify. It's time to catch our breath a little bit here and really evaluate and take stock of where we are. So, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about my dad or my father in law, but I leave out so many other people that have professionally touched me that when you ask that one person, my wife's been invaluable.

I don't usually go down rabbit paths on the who are you grateful for and why. I got a little bit of a rabbit path on that, and that is I was sitting here as you were saying that, and I'm just wondering how many people can have a spouse, it could be a wife or a husband, that when they think about being challenged and being open and being someone who counterbalances and all that stuff, for so many people, that sounds like a chain and you're expressing it in terms of an asset. And I was just kind of curious what you thought. Do you find people do that too. Or am I just crazy?

No, I think you're dead on it's what's healthy and obviously what's also troubling is that work is at home, and we're constantly engaged at a different level I think, than perhaps most relationships, but we find a way to make it work. Like I said, just being around people, and I'm very fortunate to be around multiple people that are not afraid to tell me like it is, but the fact that she's one of them and can bring so much value across my entire world is awesome.

Well, our podcast is called The Insight Interviews, and the concept behind The Insight Interviews is to get insights, and Jason and I do this a lot. We sometimes wonder if this is just for us, literally, as you were saying that, I was envisioning my wife, and sometimes when she shares truths with me that I'm not nearly as open as you're suggesting to understanding that. And that's just an insight for me, something that I know that I can work on. So, I think our time here can be done. Thank you so much for the interview, Ken. You've been wonderful. Just kidding. I got more for you. But that's a really cool insight. So, thank you again. Now it might be a little late and maybe people are going, okay, who's this Ken Salazar person? We have show notes. People are going to be able to see a little bit of your bio. Your beautiful face and all of that. It's always nice to hear from people. You're a fairly young guy, and even with that, you have done some really remarkable things with your life. And so, I think it's hard to synthesize that into just a few minutes, but I sometimes feel like no one can do that better than you. Like, if you had to synthesize whether it’s your career, your walk in life, personally, however it was, you want to weave that together, would you mind doing that for our audience?

Sure, I can take a crack at it. You mentioned the insight’s part, so I'll try and be mindful of that as I kind of talk through my bio, perhaps, but I do go to someone that was very influential in my life, which was my father. He was a dentist, and originally, I think, when I was leaving college, the goal was to jump into the dental world. But he said, look, make sure you are a dentist that understands business, so please take business classes. And so, I'll fast forward this, but he kind of set me up right out of the gate to start thinking about the real world in a little bit of a different light than the traditional path. And I think my mom and dad did a great job of always trying to plant seeds, of being your best quote, unquote, or to not let there be a ceiling, or to think bigger than what they had even done. And so, you fast track that. My dad having me pursue or encouraging me to pursue business with medicine led to me taking an investment banking job as an analyst. That's just the rat race. Building out a bunch of financial models for some people in some corner offices that you don't really know too well, and that are trying to bring tremendous value to other people that you don't know too well, that have some great companies out there. But going through that exercise led me to believe, like, oh, man, how cool would it be to be the one hiring the investment bank and having these guys take my company out to market. And represent me out there?  How do I get into that gig? And that's when I remember vividly, I was 24 years old, and I told my dad I was quitting my job. And he's like, what do you mean you're quitting your job? What are you doing? I was like, I'm not sure yet, but I'm going to start this company. up and it's in the credit card world. Actually, even before that, I was going to even do a Jello shot company, Steve. I never even told you about that one.

The point being that's not a company for most people, that's a fraternity party for a lot of people. You get that, right?

Absolutely. That's why we tabled that one. But my point is the entrepreneurial spirit started kicking in and I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn't want to do, and that was to sit in a cubicle and kind of just be another cog in the wheel, per se. And I didn't want to be doing something that I wasn't passionate about, as I kind of look back as key things that I found to be successful, quote unquote, and one of them is do what you love, no matter what it is. Life's just, you've heard it a million times, life's too short, but finding your passion and knowing what you really enjoy can give you some great insight and gives me good perspective on what I need to do next. I kind of use that as a little bit of a guiding light. So, I know I digress a little bit there, but that's led to me getting into the merchant acquiring space and forming our company there. And then as you mentioned, Amy and I have been fortunate to have a couple of exits and each time that leads to new opportunity and that's been a lot of fun. And obviously if I get bored, we have some real estate stuff that we do and just constantly planting seeds.        
            

That's awesome. Tell us where you are right now, if you don't mind. Tell us a little bit about BillGo and where you are right now.

 

Yeah, BillGo is in the bill payment space, obviously, and what we're trying to do is assist and actually what we are doing is assisting customers to better being able to manage and pay their bills from where they want, when they want, how they want to who they want. And so right now, you and I, when we're paying our and managing our bills, it's in a very fragmented environment where we're setting our credit card information, our ACH information, or writing those checks are going through this archaic bill pay system within our bank. It's just not a good experience. And most customers and most people live paycheck to paycheck, and so they're not on auto pay. And so, when you think about when they've got 23 bills on average due, it gets very complicated and cumbersome for them to be able to manage that. And so, our platform, we help the financial institutions, banks and MEGATEX leverage our platform to provide a better digital experience and payment experience for their consumers.   
     

Well, I won't tell you what bank. I have, but can I refer my bank to you? Because they have kind of an archaic system. We'll have to talk about that afterwards.

Well, that's what led me over here. To BillGo, is they're not alone. And there's just a huge opportunity in the marketplace that hasn't been touched. And I'm fortunate to be surrounded by some brilliant people that inspire me to come to work now, which is great.

I want to ask you, I like the way you put that, we've been fortunate to have a couple of exits. I won't dig into that too far, but good for you that you've had a couple of exits and new beginnings, right? I heard you say exits, If I heard that right, they lead to new open doors, right?

Absolutely.

And maybe I don't know, I don't. Want to put words in your mouth. Maybe you could speak about that. I find a lot of people in my coaching practice wanting to find an open door with an unwillingness to exit. What do you think about that?        

Oh, man. So, as I mentioned, my dad's a dentist, sole proprietor. My Amy's family comes from a business That's I think it's 116 years old now. It was 1904, was the collection agency was founded. So, this has been passed from generation to generation to generation. And so, Amy and I both kind of bucked the curve there by her not staying in the family business and me not going into the dental space. But I say all that because the way that we were brought up and raised and programmed was you create a business, and you build it to pass on to the next generation that comes in. And the ideas of having partners or sharing equity or not being that 100% owner, that wasn't necessarily how we were raised. Whereas to now I'm sitting here saying, I can actually make a heck of a lot more money being the most minute partner of this entity that I could even imagine compared to being 100% owner of something else over here. It's just totally transformed the way that we approach business now and the way society and people who they want to work with now. And so, it's changed that mindset for us tremendously from where we kind of started right out of the gate.        

Wow. You know, there's a thread already to our inside interview. Wouldn't it be nice if I actually planned that thread? This thread of your thinking coming from your upbringing, and it kind of came back to that, how you were brought up with regard to we were talking about doors opening and doors closing and this kind of thing. I'm sort of curious, you have kids now. Is how your dad and mom and dad is what they did with you informing and having an influence on what you do with your children? I mean, are you already thinking of your two boys and thinking or your daughter or whatever, are you thinking, hey, I want to make sure they're in the family business, or are you going to do what your folks did?       
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I answered this question very poorly a few years ago. As I said, I'm fortunate to be surrounded by some brutally honest people, and I was in a YPO meeting, and we went around the table and talked about what we did, and they wanted to know what your exit strategy was, and I told them that I wanted. To create an unbelievable cash flow business, cash flow strong business, that I could ensure that my kids and their kids were in a great spot, et cetera, et cetera, and I thought it was just a noble, awesome answer because I was really concerned about my kids and not just trying to make a bunch of money for myself. And I think we got to the second person around the table, and this guy looks at me. His name was Buck. And Buck goes, that's probably the most selfish thing I've ever heard. I was like, wait a minute. Actually, I think I was about 31 years old, and I was like, what do you mean? I was like, that was a great answer. I'm taking care of my kids. And he goes, Why would you want to predict the path and what your kids were to do for them and take that away from them? He goes, why don't you do what you want to do and do it so well that you put yourself in. A spot that you can enable your kids to do what they want to do? I was like, that's a much better answer. It really did open my eyes.

Yeah, what he said.

Yeah. It really opened my eyes to sitting there saying, you know what? That is a great idea. And it really did plant the thought of, hey, an exit is something that we should not necessarily pursue entirely, but we want to build a business that is attractive to other people, and we want to build a really strong business, and if an exit happens, it happens. And even at BillGo today, we say that same thing that we're not here with goals and aspirations of going IPO or being acquired. What we're here to do is transform a marketplace, and if we put ourselves and if we do it really, really well, opportunity will happen and inevitably, I'm sure an exit will happen as well with creating a great business.

That's great. See, when Buck said that to you, that's what we're talking about. An insight. Like, you sat there and listened and rather than be defensive and whatever, you listened and you had an AHA moment, right? That's what an insight is. That's an epiphany, an insight. Sometimes I'll have clients go, it dawned on me. That really dawned on me. I love that language, right? Like the sun comes up when something dawns on you. It was like I felt like maybe I was in the dark and now I'm in the light. So that's a great story. Thank you for that.
Definitely blasted the light. There was no doubt about that.        

Again, the only prep work that we did for this interview, Ken, was I told you I was going to ask you some questions about maybe just some of the things that you've learned along the way in business or in life. I've been working with you for a little while now. I feel like I've known you for a few years. You and I have a funny connective type of story, but you've always struck me as someone that I think you're pretty clear headed. I think you're a fairly aware guy and I love being around people like that. I think one of the things that I'd just like to know, maybe I'll start with a broad question, and that is what are some of the just even take the last ten years, some of your exits, some of your entrances, some of your failures, some of your successes. What would you say just I guess let's start from a vocational perspective have been some of your greatest lessons learned?  

Where to start on that one? Whenever I would bring on a new training class and I was the CEO of Silver Edge, I'd always like to meet every training class and the number one question is would every time be, hey, what do I need to do to be successful here at Silver Edge? And over the years I had, through various talks, boiled it down to this thing that I ended up calling the Four P's and I won't go down each path too far, but the first item was live with purpose, which was the better that you can understand why you are here and what it is that motivates you and what it is that drives you, given that we're in Colorado, go to work when there's twelve inches of snow on the ground or continue to plow through those sales calls when they keep hanging up on you. Or taking those customer service calls or dealing with people that really challenge you, the more that you're grounded in your purpose, the more drive you'll have and the better off you'll be. The second thing I'd say is stay positive, and that's continuing to keep that growth set mindset and the cup half full lens as you're moving through the day. Obviously, I kind of talked about working passionately and doing that which you love as best you can, and sometimes we have to do what we don't love in order to get to ourselves into a spot where we can get to do what we do love, but the fact that you continue to pursue that and drive, if you got a really strong purpose, it'll help you move through those valleys. And then the last one was, just be professional no matter what happens and no matter who you engage with. My dad always taught me if you put others first, everything else tends to take care of itself. And I think just continuing to keep that professionalism is critical as you go through the day to day. So, I'll kind of stop there. That was one thing, but we could go on about ego leadership and being humble and understanding that.

                                                                                                         
"I used to also have this saying that I now understand that no one really cares about me except for me at the end of the day. So, you have to do everything for yourself, and I have to do everything for myself, but I can't do anything by myself necessarily."

And so, I know there's some absolutes there that aren't entirely true, but it's a mindset of you don't know it all, man. And there are a lot of people. Around you that you really, really lean on, but at the same time, they've got their own stuff, too, and they're not going to go engage with you unless you engage with them or help make them better. So, I'll stop.

Please stop, because I got too many questions. This would be a four-hour deal. First of all, do it for yourself, just not by yourself. I'm so going to steal that and call it my own and give you no credit. I’m just kidding, I think that's wonderful. I'd love to see that on a bumper sticker. I'll come back to that one because I would like to hear about ego leadership and et cetera, et cetera. The four P's, by the way, thank you for being succinct. You see, you weren't going to go down, too, and then here I am going to scratch and help you go down a little of each of them. Purpose, positivity, passionate, professional. For all I know, Stephanie, my colleague is going to come back and this whole interview will be known as the four P's. Obviously, these things in and of themselves, independently and individual are not Ken Salazar things. As you were at Silver Edge or maybe even at BillGo or wherever else you've been, did you come up with these things? If I heard the story right, you were being asked and asked and asked and asked, and it came down to these four P’s. So again, I know they're not necessarily yours, but does anyone else talk about the four P's like you do? I mean, did you take that from a book? Did you get that from somewhere?

No, I just look at tipping points in my life and one of them I already referenced, which was leaving the investment banking job right out of the gate. That taught me about passion and the last P of I guess that's what it ultimately ended up being, and that I needed to find what I loved, and once I did that, it set me up and it just kicked me into a whole other gear of wanting to go and do, and then purpose, when we started the business, I'm so grateful that we started that company when I was, I think we were 24 years old, 25 years old, we were so ignorant to downside risk, and the idea of not a failure, like, it didn't even cross our mind. It was just we had to make this thing work. So, we were so driven to sit here and find a way to meet the bills, week in, day in, week end, month in, month out, and it just had that drive. And then I had my first kid, and I was like, okay, different ballgame here.

This just got real.

It just got real. So, then the purpose changed there. But then also I always remember in our weekly stand ups that I'd have with my company, and you just look across the floor with all these employees that have their eyes on you, and I think about their spouses that were at Christmas parties and their kids that would come to the summer picnics, and I'm like, dude, you can't only not screw this up for you, but you can't screw it up for all these other folks that are depending on you. And so that kind of gave me- that's more meaningful to me than just hitting numbers. It makes it more at the heart. And then I kind of talked about my dad talking about putting people first, and I think that remaining professional has been critical. I think about relationships that I still have today, and I survived the merchant acquiring space, and not many people are able to do that. It's a very cutthroat industry and I think just continuing to not get sucked into just kind of some of the dark paths that are there and staying professional helped me out. And which one have I not touched on? Staying Positive was the last one. You've got that one. I don't need to tell you about that one. 

Well, I might ask you about that one. You very much know that we're in the coaching space, and so when you come up with these four P's and you're speaking about them and giving people examples and articulating what you articulate about them, it's just so wonderful. I guess one of the things that I'm always interested in, Ken, is how do you coach it? Like, I hear what you're saying about the four P’s: purpose, positivity and passionately and professionally and all that stuff. You've probably had to encounter people that don’t wake up like you do. They don't have your DNA, they don't have your past experiences, whatever. Maybe they're not positive, maybe they don't feel as purposeful, and we could take each one of those, but let's start maybe with one of the harder ones: purpose. I was actually going to ask you, like just walking around the earth, if you and I were going to put a spectrum together of people that lived on purpose, and let's say our spectrum was a zero to ten thing and ten was Jesus or Gandhi or people that were just ten, whatever that is. Zero was the most aimless, meandering, wandering nothing. I'm trying to create extremes on purpose. Right? How about that? On purpose. How do you encounter most people, even in your vocation, if there were kind of a median, and I know there's no science to this, but what's the median that you find most people in with regard to just measuring that?

If I had a guess, the number of people that I've come across, even some of the people I respect more than anyone, are three, four, as far as being crystal clear on what their purpose is.

Right. So clearly you've had in your work world, you've had to deal with people who don't just walk around with the sense of purpose that you and I wish everybody had. I mean if we were being honest, Ken, maybe we even have moments in our own life where we need to go find that again. But really what I'm looking for is from you is how have you helped people without just saying, hey, you need to have purpose? Okay, well, thanks. How do you help people find that?

 

What we have done, and you kind of think about the various companies and some cases, hundreds and hundreds of employees and other cases, when you're in startup mode, it's just you in a room. We came across, and I do not, I think you know me, Steve. I do not like getting into any kumbaya areas and sitting around and doing scrapbooks or any of that stuff. To me, it takes a lot of energy. But I have found tremendous value, and one thing that we've been able to do through the years is we've created these things called vision boards, which many folks do that are out there. And at first, I thought it was going to be just a really cheesy exercise and a great excuse to keep the entire company off of the floor for half a day, or it was an hour or two or whatever it was, and cut out magazines, pictures of what they were hoping to achieve for the year. But I was very mistaken. It was really cool to see that we were helping people really think deeper about not what are your goals for the company, but let's start the beginning of the year or end the year with what do you want to achieve personally this year outside of work? Like, don't even bring work into this. How do you see your family? How do you see your personal life? What are some of your dreams? And let's talk about those think biggers. And we put down to these vision boards and it was awesome to see the team do this together because they're sharing now these visions and they're sharing these aspirations with their coworkers, and so inevitably, there is this connection and chemistry that's just being built through that process. So fast forward through that part, then it's okay, now, how do we, as a company help you achieve those and what do we have to do? Usually there's monetary components to that and so, lead to, okay, well, this is what you need to do in the company to help achieve this number or whatever it is that you're going for. Now let's back into what do you need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis, behaviorally, to achieve that? And can we agree on what the attitude needs to be? And then if we do some attitude checks that we're in the right mindset to make that happen. So that's what we've done just in a more scaled fashion. And then we do coaching, and I like to use coaching to assist my team to be able to have that outlet. Because if they're not right personally, if they’re not right at home, they sure as heck aren't going to be able to give me their best self at the office place. So, I've always been a big advocate and proponent of getting help, and that's something that actually I'm thinking there's a lot of "aha" moments, but when I talk to people about getting help and how I've got a coach and I've got a therapist and I've got the YPO group, my forum group that I work with, and obviously that doesn't include my wife or my brothers or family that'll let me have it, they're always like, man, you go to a counselor, you have a therapist. I'm like, look, I don't have to go to therapy all the time, but you're darn right.

                                                                                                     
"I was like, it's mind boggling, because we have no problem having a coach to help us with football, or a coach to help us with basketball, or a math teacher to help us with math, or a priest to help us with learning the good book. But when it comes to getting help for ourselves personally, that ego gets so far in the way that it's like, wait a second, we're not willing to get help with this little thing called life, and that kind of blows me away sometimes. Business gets really easy; life is where it gets tricky."


I figured this would happen. Thank you for that. I mean, just some really cool insights coming out of that. And I had asked you about purpose. I won't have time for all the four P's. We're going to probably sew it up here in a second, and it might be a similar answer. I don't know. Let's say you're not dealing with someone in this particular season who just doesn't walk around positive, and by positive that glass half full, that thing you were talking about because it’s one of your four p's. Clearly you can sit them down, Ken, and go, okay, you need to be positive, but you and I both know just telling people to be positive or frankly, passionate or purposeful or professional, just telling them that is not particularly good coaching. It might be true, and they might need to hear that., but let's say you're dealing with someone who's just not again in this season or for whatever reason, not being positive. Without just saying, hey, be positive, how have you coached people to understand and or deploy more positivity?

Positivity, I do believe at the end of the day is a choice, and I have to take ownership of where my head is at and where my attitude is. I know some people that have done really good things with journaling. I know some folks, and now I'm working on, can I engage in a form of meditation that helps get my mind right and my spirit and my head in the right space? Obviously, I do use scripture, and I find that to be very therapeutic every single morning. Being fully transparent, some mornings I only have just a few minutes, but I'll just grab this Fightervse app and I'll just look at one verse just to try and get going there. Or if I'm not in a rush, I'll read. I’m trying to read the whole bible in a couple of years, and so I'll read one chapter, like I said, I think it'll take me about six years to finish this thing, but we'll get through it eventually. But it kind of gives me perspective and grounds me on what's true north. And when I do that, then that tends to turn my heart a little bit that this isn't about me and I need to get off my selfish self. And then there's the last thing, which is we're supposed to wake up each day and think about before we check email, before we open the news, before we check our Twitter or whatever else it is, just do that gratitude check. Thank you for letting me wake up next to this person. Thank you for the family that I have here. Thank you for the ceiling that I'm staring at. And so, I've tried to do that too. And admittedly, I don't do that on a regular basis, but if someone was to ask me of what they can do, those are some things that I've learned and I've either used and experienced firsthand or I've seen others that I respect and admire that do. And then just surrounding yourself with an environment that's got that positive energy, and that includes your company, that includes the people and who your coworkers are and when you're around what we used to call the energy vampires, it's impossible. It's so draining, even for me. It just pisses me off so much, that we'd remove them and we would move them fast. If you are not someone that was contributing in a positive nature to our environment, you are gone. And I said, I told all my buddies, at the end of the day, man, I hope that I've been measurement of impact on this world, I hope, is measured by the net add I am to the lives around me.
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Well, you've done a really great job of that. I am eager to have you back on the program because I've just got so many more questions to ask you. I am laughing in my head about energy vampires. One of my mentors, Ken, has this saying that says if we don't transcend our pain, we will transmit it. And for me, energy vampires are people that really haven't figured out how to transcend their own pain, so they just walk around transmitting it.

Yeah.

The other thing I wrote down, see, my hand hurts, Ken. That's why I have to end the show, is because I've got a cramp in my right hand. What if I added to your P’s? Is that a violation of code? Do I get sued or something like that?     
   

No, my VP of sales added profits one time, which I thought was great. But go for it.

Well, I'd love to take credit. Unfortunately, you said it, so it's back to you, buddy. Perspective, right? And maybe that maybe that's linked into Positivity. Maybe it's linked into all of them. But I don't know, when I listen to you, I think you're a guy that works on himself. Can't even begin to tell you how much I appreciate you having the willingness to say, are you kidding? Therapy? Are you kidding coaching? Are you kidding people? Yeah. What is it about us that so many people are just you don't need any of that stuff. Just do what's right. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. And I'm the first guy going, it's so funny, none of us can see 360 around us. But that, to me, just goes back to do it for yourself, just not by yourself. Ken, what perspective we do got to sew it up here in just a second. As you've gone into this and you've gone again, maybe not even as deep as you and I both know you could with the four P’s, what did you hope I would ask you that I didn't, or what did you think I should ask you that maybe I didn't?        

I love it when I'm interviewing someone, and they ask me that question because it’s a very valuable question. And why would you not ask the person that you're trying to get a job with, like, or what's your biggest concern about me? That's the other one. Or what would prevent you from hiring me? Man, Steve, I never know where you're going to go. What did I anticipate? I really came in here, as you said, we didn't do any preparation for this, so I really had no preconceived notions about what was going to happen. What were your biggest failures? That's one that people always tend to want to go into. You could say, what were some of your greatest accomplishments? You asked me about mentors. That's great. I think you did pretty good considering the time that we had.

Do you happen to have your top ten failures listed down? I don't want you to go into it. I just want you to list them all off. No, don't do that.

We don't have enough time. We don't have enough time.        

You know what's funny is I know we learn from those things for sure. There's this great concept in coaching where we talk about being in a toward state versus an away state. And my team and I learned that through the NeuroLeadership Institute, and being in a toward state is when you ask people questions, and the questions move us towards something, and so it's part of your positive thing. But just as a little side note, when you're a coach, we're really trying to ask the kind of questions that keep people in a toward state. When people are in a toward state, here, for your guy that wanted profit, you want to make more money? Keep people in a toward state.

Yeah, it's great. Love that.

So, if you start with what are all your failures again? Yes, we have them, of course. But it's so funny. You want to talk about an energy vampire.? What an energy draining question. Let's talk about all your failures again. I know we learn from them, and I know we have some, but I'm not intuitively going there, buddy. That's enough. I feel like just kind of having the music come on and play. I am grateful. Tomorrow morning when I'm counting my ceiling tiles or whatever, I'm going to be grateful for Ken Salazar. I think you gave us more than we could bargain for, and I know we're going to get some requests to have you back on. I'm sure people can link in with you and find you on LinkedIn if they want. Not that you're probably looking for any more friends, but yeah,

Absolutely. Always.       
 

And we'll have that in the show notes and where to get a hold of you if anyone has any questions. Thank you. Thank you for the time.

Humbled, honored, grateful. Appreciate you, Steve.

As you have probably heard, I've got all these notes in front of me, and I'm actually going to take some time when I'm done here to just sort of reflect when we edit this show and put it out. I can't wait to hear it again. I'm sure I didn't get some things, everything from when you were talking about your mom and your dad. I think one of the things I learned there is be the dad that your dad was to you, not just reflect on what he was, but how do I be that for other people? How do I free my own kids and not have some idea for what it is that they want? I thought that was really, really cool, learning about your wife. I wrote down the word champion. Really learn who champions you. Your wife sounds like a champion for you, and that's really, really great. I have too many notes over the four P's to go through all of those and too many insights, so that's why I'm going to take some time here. Storyboards, meditation, different ways to be positive. I just walked away with a ton of insights. Ken, thank you. Like Jason and I always do here at the end of our shows, it doesn't really matter what insights Ken had, it doesn't matter what insights Steve has. What matters here as we end this show is what insights did you have? We'll see you next time on The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE.        

 

 

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