Yeah, converse that.
Yeah.
Hey, man.
The best way to own it is that I don't speak it.
All right, that's it.
I understand really well, though.
That's very good.
Awesome.
So Houstonian, and again, careers, startups,
you've done a lot.
Why did you start, I don't know, finding this path of purpose,
reinventing yourself?
Yeah, I think a lot of my personalized circumstances,
because that's not the point of this podcast,
but led me to a lot of self-reflection
and returning to core values, which
is serving and helping people.
And as I was working towards the end of the corporate career
that I had, or what at this time was I left corporate,
I started immense outreach in inner city Houston,
learned a lot about myself.
I think we have this savior complex where,
oh, we're going to go in and help these people
in so many ways.
It helped me, and it just opened my eyes to anything
is possible.
Anybody could end up in any situation.
I wanted to help people.
As I started doing that, I found that I
was invited to do things.
People saw me as a leader and whatever.
So through that group is how I started, helped
launch a mural art agency.
But when I left corporate, I was already
looking for something to do, and then I
had the opportunity to leave.
And I was either going to go to nonprofit.
I do want to serve people.
I definitely want to do something entrepreneurial.
That's always been in my heart.
As I spent 20-plus years in commodities trading,
that's very much you own that.
You wear that every day.
It's like being an entrepreneur.
You get comfortable being uncomfortable.
It's an awesome training ground.
Makes you super ADD.
But you do learn how to focus and do
the things that will ultimately money in a business
and hopefully help people, like we're doing a parachute.
Or if you're doing that to help people,
you're really focused on how can I meet their need,
just like you always want to meet customers' needs.
I don't want to build things that I want to do.
I want to help people how they want to be helped.
Absolutely.
That's how I want to reach for that,
wanting to help people.
And I see the product saint as well as part
of your introduction, three times founder, startup advisor,
product strategist, and career coach.
As a product strategist, what's the number one secret?
The number one secret is all right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
Hey, welcome into Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO
of First Class Business.
I'm excited to have you guys here today with us.
We've got Kurt Olivares.
He's going to be talking about reinventing himself
and reinventing yourself, how to go about doing that,
why it might be helpful for your life.
I'll ask some questions about the process as well.
Before we go into what Kurt does and his vision,
we're going to talk about some of these sponsors up here,
these being entities that I support and I'm grateful for.
In fact, neither one of these sponsors is paid sponsors.
I actually pay ColdClick for helping us
with LinkedIn automation.
But it's such a valuable tool and resource
from the majority of people who are listening in,
who struggle to lead, generate, and get
in front of the right people that I love
sharing that with individuals.
So this program allows us to create automation on LinkedIn
and get as in front of as many people as possible.
And it's up to us to create the right type of message
in order to do that.
But to put that into a frame, we're
very good at our messaging.
This weekend, Friday through Sunday, for instance,
I woke up on Monday and I had 39 people
who had responded excited to be on the show
and learn more about it.
So I don't know of too many systems that
can drive that type of result, especially
with the type of great percentages and engagement
that we have.
And I've got other videos on that process and the case
study itself.
But if you don't know how to get in front of people
and you need more appointments, then I highly
recommend looking at the automation tools that are out
there.
And stay agnostic.
Be willing to change at any given time.
In addition to that, simply fast websites.
Not something that I use, but something
that I wish I had found when I was starting out.
Shane Michaels built a program where
he's got websites offered at $179.
And if I were in your shoes and I'm brand new
and I don't have a website, then instead
of spending the hundreds of hours I spent on it,
and instead of, because I was trying
to use Wix and Squarespace and Weebly and WordPress,
all sorts of things to build up, and spending a lot of money
in the process of building my websites,
I would have paid Shane $179 and just said, dude,
give me your form, what I need to submit.
Let's get this done and get it out there.
And it would have saved me a lot of time and hassle
that I ended up dedicating towards processes that
prevented me from being productive.
It's important not to be busy.
It's important to be productive as an entrepreneur.
And that would have allowed me to do so.
Resources like that were harder to find back in the day.
Now you have one.
I hope it blesses your life.
Still do your due diligence and look out there
at what else you could be doing for growth.
Don't limit yourself.
The water project.
The water project is something that I'm never
going to get tired of talking about
because there's so many people in this world who
need us to talk about this.
People who do not have access to clean drinking water, something
you and I take for granted, I can actually go get from my sink.
Even my unfiltered water in my sink and yours
is probably likely better than the sources of water
that these wonderful people have to go and get
their livelihood taken care of from.
And they're missing school to do so.
They're missing work in order to get water.
And we have the opportunity to make massive impact.
And for very small funds, even if you're just
contributing $1 or $1,000, $10,000,
you have the opportunity to see the difference
in what you're doing because the water project shows you
where your money went to, which community you
were able to help and support.
And you get to see the transformation take place.
I think that's awesome.
If you have another cause that you'd
love to see us highlight and support and talk about,
then don't hesitate to drop a comment about that cause
because you never know how much good you'll have done just
by the ripple effect of creating a little bit of awareness
for a said cause.
And I'd be remiss to not take that opportunity.
Now, before I bring Kurt on stage,
one of his websites, productsaint.com,
does an excellent job.
He's in a great job of making sure
that it's very clear what it is he's capable of doing
and what his past represents as well.
So beyond the 20 years of commodities training
and his ability to work with startups
and provide career guidance and also his dedication
to reinventing himself, which we might dive in too deep.
We might not, that'll be up to him.
But there's just a depth that I caught in paying attention
to.
Again, when I'm studying, who should I bring on the stage?
And should we dive in about the personal aspects
or should we dive in about the business
aspects of this individual?
Me pondering and thinking through that
is what ultimately drives the type of questions
that come out.
Yes, we have a formula.
And you see that on the screen when
we highlight the questions.
But sometimes we take detours because there's
a perceived depth of appreciation on both the guest
part and my part.
And then it's just your opportunity
to take what you want from that.
So without further ado, Kurt, thanks for joining me
on Vision Pros Live, man.
It's awesome to have you here.
Yeah, it's a pleasure.
I was out of the blue.
I'm so excited to talk with you.
Just looking at your piercing blue eyes,
I know I'm going to be able to really pay attention.
And as most entrepreneurs, we get shiny things.
But I'm 100% present for this.
I hope that we can talk about some things that
are near and dear to others that are listening.
And hopefully, friends after that.
Change some lives.
And yes, absolutely.
The friendship's there, man.
I'm just going to call away, just like the song.
So who would you say should be listening today?
And why should they listen to you?
I think that's a great question, first of all.
Thank you.
I think that people that I'd like to help
are people that are doing some sort of a pivot.
Either life handed them something
that they didn't expect that happened to me personally.
Or their career, they just walked in one day
and they found that they no longer had
a place at an organization.
They don't know where to stop next.
Maybe they were very stagnated.
They didn't really grow in a career for 10, 15, 20 years.
That was my story.
But they are committed to making personal change.
And they want that next thing.
And they're saying, how do I figure that out?
Why they should listen to me?
I'm never supposed to tell someone
what they should do.
I always like to find out what their goals are.
What would it like if you snapped your fingers?
Where would you be tomorrow?
A lot of people can't answer that.
But it's a good thing to really think about.
If I achieve the things that I want,
am I putting myself in a position to do those things?
If I want to be an entrepreneur, what am I doing every day?
One thing.
And so I have applied that for myself.
It is much easier said than done.
It's uncomfortable.
But I think what we learned to be comfortable,
being uncomfortable, it's not a cliche.
It's true in my life.
So yeah, that's who should listen.
Why they should listen is I've done it myself.
But I like to help people find what works for them.
Wow.
So you actually hit one of my super secret powers, something
that I can't address very often.
Because if you have a power that goes
kind of against the nature of another person you're talking
to, it's not a good idea to put it into use,
in order to put it into place or to talk about it.
But you nailed it.
And we share this principle.
You said you never tell others what to do.
And I have been learning to practice that
over the last six years of my life
and really dedicated myself to shifting myself
from a network marketer mentality of shoving things
down people's throats, whether they want to hear it or not,
to realizing, wait a second, people have their own visions
and their own ability to guide themselves.
They don't need me.
I had the Savior's Complex you talked about,
the superhero complex.
And making that dynamic and gigantic shift
from being a in-your-face influencer
to living intentionally and allowing people
to make their own decisions, there
aren't enough leaders that are catching the vibe
and realizing there's a lot of shoulds.
You should do this.
Why don't you do this?
This would be so much better for you that exists out there.
And it's so toxic.
It's so overlooked.
It's not even caught.
And you hit it head on.
Thank you for that.
What is your vision for those that you serve,
speaking of, with that context?
For the success to reach their goals
or to realize that thing that I thought I really wanted,
it's not what I want to help them uncover
what are those goals.
And to find you hit a superpower is something
that we talk about in career coaching a lot.
What's your superpower?
When something needs to get done and you're not in the room
or you couldn't make the meeting,
what are people in your personal life or professionally?
What do they say?
I wish Jackson was here because they would know what to do.
They're really good at this thing.
And I think when we start there, and that's
part of my vision to serve people,
is to help them uncover what it is.
Because just like we have people like us,
they have a very dominating personality, or we did.
And we tell people what to do.
A lot of people, that's also for themselves.
This is what I should be doing, comparison and so on.
So to help them uncover their vision for their life
and then to support them in that by holding them accountable.
And I always ask people, OK, so here's what we might do.
And the reason I say that is that's how it is in software
development.
How might we?
I think we go in with so many strong assumptions.
Where has that gotten us?
Where helping people uncover that for themselves
is incredibly rewarding to see them do it,
and for myself to continue to learn from others.
So vision I serve, I actually get service for that.
That's not why I do it.
But there's a benefit to me of just learning,
always be learning.
And it's so rewarding, man.
It's not any different than parenting.
I have a work-it-us.
And there's moments where I control the reality.
And then the moments where I let go, though,
and I allow my kids to make that choice for the decision,
or I guide them through a healthy question,
and they have that, you can see the fire unleash
in such a good way.
And they get it.
And you're like, whoa, just experiencing that.
It's not why you do it.
But the experience of that, it unleashes a level of life
that couldn't exist if you got in the way of that learning
process.
So what's your vision for you, Kurt?
My vision for me, that's a good question.
And I hope people encourage it.
People often say, what you do for your profession
is so well for yourself.
I know a lot of traders that don't manage money very well
themselves.
But they manage billion-dollar portfolios, right?
So for me, I have gone through this exercise.
And it's ever-evolving.
So my vision for myself is to put myself
in a position financially and through a sphere of influence
where I can reach as many lives as possible to help
them accomplish their goals.
What does that look like today?
Career coaching.
I don't know what it will look like tomorrow, right?
Or setting up a framework to disrupt an entire way
that a generation finds work.
I mean, I'm part of the Gen Xers.
I came out of school, went to a decent school, got a job.
They even had this, what kind of paper
do you print your resume on?
That doesn't matter today.
But we're still trying to help kids find a job there.
So my vision is to help as many people as possible
professionally, students, and to disrupt the way
the universities, technical camps, upscale programs
justify or help them find work optically for those universities
to be able to still be in business.
Honestly, the government is putting a lot of pressure,
social pressure, to justify the rising cost of education.
And that is a social impact that I would love to be a part of.
But personally, what is to always be growing,
again, my whole life has become a how might we.
And I've learned to appreciate uncertainty in a way
that other people find to be very,
they're like, you're nuts, or you're
the most optimistic person, or you're shaded,
rose-colored glasses.
I'm very realist.
But my vision for myself is to continue to grow.
And it doesn't, you know, you flatline,
you go back to behaviors.
But it's always to get better.
And how we define better is really important as well.
What does better look like?
Does it mean more money?
Whatever, for me, happens not to,
though I do need to survive.
It is, am I delivering help to others,
or am I able to receive knowledge and learning
from others in a meaningful way?
And that's your personal connection.
Wow.
That's my vision.
That's beautiful, man.
We have had some awesome, awesome visions today.
And we've got three episodes today.
And all three people have just hit powerfully
on the personal vision.
And I don't want to say that hasn't happened with others.
But there are tears.
And it's like today, there was an entirely new tone set.
So thanks for being part of that.
I'm going to shift you down to one of the,
I say down, over, perhaps to one of the darker subjects
of business.
You've had a lot of business experience.
You've got three times founder.
You've worked with clients.
What's been your worst business experience ever?
Wow.
We could do a whole show on Top 5.
I think that this is something everybody can relate to.
And it's something that I don't focus on too much,
though I'm going to tell you.
But I always like to just always be moving forward.
I always tell people, if you're leaving a situation because
of an experience that you have there,
you're going to find that experience elsewhere.
It's an easy philosophy, right?
Always go to something rather than away.
Because the thing that you're going away from,
many times, it's been my experience personally,
as well as working with others, it's something
that you're carrying with you.
So to expect that when you leave, because this thing
happened to you.
And yeah, 100% things happen out of your control,
in business in particular.
But you can only control what you control.
And your response to that is very important.
Because the next time it happens,
and it will happen again, you're prepared for it on,
what does my trauma trigger?
And how can I manage that down?
And you can actually turn that into an opportunity.
So all right, I'm going to answer your question.
I'm a storyteller.
That was huge.
I just wanted to say, I had to write notes on that one,
because I was like, that's a concept
I want to journal about later.
So I'm glad you did hit the principle.
I've been a lot of work.
Something in every way.
Yes.
Go ahead, man.
So thank you for that.
My worst business experience was actually
right before I left corporate.
And it wasn't the reason why I left.
But it was something that I thought, if ever
I start my own company, how can I avoid this thing?
It is where we put people in a position of a lot of responsibility.
I had a lot of responsibilities managing a billion dollar
portfolio for a publicly traded company that had just gone through,
just was doing asset divestiture.
And I was called in because I had expertise.
I'd never had my role before.
And so in the beginning, I was, we love this guy.
But I quickly found out that I had a lot of knowledge
that wasn't held internally and a lot of responsibility.
But I didn't have any authority to execute.
And that's OK.
I think if managed properly at the highest level, that
can be a very useful segregation of powers.
You can have a diversity of thought and really have impact
without somebody going rogue.
That's what it's intended for.
But what I found is that that was also a way to resolve
the people who were making decisions of the rationale
for the decision.
And so I found myself in a position where,
and this happened twice in my career,
but the most recent experience was, hey,
you told us to do this thing.
And yeah, we didn't do it.
Why didn't you pound your fist harder than we should have done?
I was like, well, I mean, I did.
I didn't know how else to demonstrate that.
But again, being a Latino, you just
turned 40 sitting in a room full of white, gray-haired people,
making millions, multiples of what I was being paid.
I was well-paid.
But not only did I have to win them over with,
you look like a bartender.
I mean, a lot of people ask me, oh, what do you do?
Do you have an island?
You're a bartender.
Exactly.
I'll catch it up with you.
I'll get that question soon.
Yeah.
I don't have a hair down the shoulder wearing a bon
or whatever that's falling out now.
But my point is that it's responsibility
without an adjusted amount of authority.
That was a bad experience.
I had multiple times.
So I don't want to hone in on that
because someone would go and look at my work history
and say, well, it must have been that place.
I don't want that because I hold everybody that I've worked with
in the highest regard professionally.
And I don't want to carry that with me.
I've let go of some people that were like, oh, my god,
did that happen to me?
It didn't, number one.
And number two, I can control how I respond to this.
And I'm not a believer in karma, but I do
believe that you reap what you sow.
So that's a similar concept.
And if it doesn't come back to you on what you did to me,
that's OK.
I don't need that.
But it likely will.
And so I'm very direct about this isn't right.
I will tell people this isn't right from my perspective,
not only because I'm hurt, but I think
it's going to hurt you in the long run.
I have those hard conversations easily.
So that was my worst business experience several times over.
A lot of responsibility, not the authority,
and then being hung out to dry when things didn't go well
and they didn't even take the advice that I had
or allow me to execute that strategy.
That's a common occurrence, even in well-prepared companies,
but especially in the startup and the small business world,
because you're just starting out.
You don't know how to go about that.
But the period and the ability of transition,
how to prepare for it, how to navigate it,
is there's just so many intricacies
that are hard to anticipate if you don't have
the right experience, the right training,
the right preparation for that type of a process.
So well said.
And well articulated on how to define that responsibility
without an increase in authority.
I love that.
So what's your best experience in business look like?
Shifting gears?
Feel free to hone in on one or two of those.
I don't want to make you.
Yeah.
I really, yeah, my best experience
has been actually with what I'm doing right now.
And it was something that I never
expected I would get into, was career coaching.
And yeah, I'm not forever going to be the main career
coach at Parachute.
We were building a scalable model, multiple verticals
to help coaches develop as well as serve our platform
to disrupt the way that universities and learning
organizations prepare students for the workforce.
But I've had the pleasure of either through a one-to-many
or one-on-one impacting people, even
if it was a brief DM conversation off
to the side during a panelist on a job community, whatever,
to coach or help over, at this point, it's over 100 people.
And that has been the best experience for me
because A, again, I always learn something about myself.
You can never shed.
I mean, I find, well, never is dangerous, where never
and always is the most dangerous word in business or in life.
Well said.
But society that is so polarizing with hyperbole,
I think we need to talk about that for just a minute.
And there is a harmony middle ground
that exists that is so much safer.
Right.
Boundaries are a way to kind of have a soft never and always.
But I think when we go how might we, how maybe,
that's a big software principle.
But I've learned a lot about myself.
But I feel that I've helped a lot of people that said,
well, I try to instill confidence.
I deal with a lot of people that are unemployed
or they're pivoting in their career
or they're a student with very little experience.
They have their portfolio.
And I help them.
That's been my best experiences, again, kind of drawing back
to what are your goals and here's the things that I see.
Like I always like to encourage people.
I do a lot, one on one, Zoom, whatever.
So I ask people, give me your elevator pitch.
What are you about?
What do you want to do?
We help people with that.
You get to give them inside of 60 seconds.
10 minutes later, I still may or may not know.
But I try to draw it out, find one, two, three good things
that they did.
Oh, you're a great communicator, whatever.
That power of words to help people,
because I'm a words affirmation person,
I think it's really important to know what kind of way
that you want to receive love.
I try to live that out with others.
And I found it to be very effective.
That's been the most rewarding experience,
is helping people that feel, maybe it's true or not,
feel marginalized in a particular area of their life.
That were in inner city that I knew
and I became friends with that were formerly incarcerated
or recovering drug addicts, whatever.
Or if there's a young professional who says,
I've been rejected so many times,
I don't know what's the problem with me.
Well, are you talking about this part of yourself?
That's awesome.
Let's highlight that.
And let's not talk about our failures.
That is a very rewarding experience
to see people put that into practice
and come back and say, the thing you told me,
I feel so good about it.
I feel confident.
I hear the word confidence a lot back to me.
Yeah, absolutely.
You have a subtlety about you.
Something that I've caught.
Now, vision pros, I got to see Kurt's pre-show
that he did with Sean, who's on my team,
and evaluate that.
And now I get to see him talking to you guys as well.
And you've got a quiet dignity about you
that is often rare to see in today's society,
especially for podcasts.
And it's got a different style of level up.
But what really draws my attention
is your ability to mirror.
Mirror the person you're talking to
in a way that's not just, it's not mimicking.
It's respectful of the vibe.
How do you do that?
So how did you train for these, you got boundaries,
you know, you said verbally.
You know, it's like I'm talking to,
and I'm serious, I've talked to a lot of therapists
in my life, a lot of doctors.
You have a tremendous amount of resources for communication.
Where the heck does that come from?
Wow, that's a layered question.
So bear with me.
I use all my words for the day by 11 a.m. usually.
So we'll buckle up.
So I can't attribute it entirely to myself.
Number one, I was not always this way.
And it hurt a lot of relationships
that impacted other people.
And it was around my late 30s when I was brought
to a place of humility through some circumstances,
personally and professionally,
that I began to examine that.
Why am I so dogmatic in a way?
And because I've always had the same values.
I always wanna help people,
but I think I was really pounding trying to justify it.
I'm smart enough because I was often the only,
you know, let the know in the room.
Honestly, I grew up in a fluent white area.
I wouldn't say it was a chip on my shoulder,
but I had something to pay.
It's kind of like an inferiority complex to a degree.
I mean, 100%.
I didn't do that until later.
So you wanna prove how smart you are.
And part of the way you do that is like,
if you only listen to me, I can help you.
So that was one thing.
I identified that through personal study,
through introspection to really end up.
And so this is the thing,
two things I attributed to my change.
Number one is it takes time.
It's time, maturity.
If I went through exactly the same things that me personally,
I'm not saying this for all 25 year olds,
for me personally, 25 or 28,
when I was making far more money
than I ever thought I would make,
and then I'm gonna make more.
And that's not what the point is.
The point is that we received that validation
and now we're leaning into that thing.
We think that that's what got us there.
I wouldn't be able to receive
what I needed to learn from those situations.
So it's been time and it's been, I have a very strong faith.
So whatever your faith is,
I find it to be really useful to meditate, pray,
do a lot of introspection.
During those times that you're in a voice,
often that's been lying to you all day.
Nobody speaks to you more than your own mind.
And that is the person that needs to love you
because you are going to be that person until you die.
So you need to understand that about yourself
and then start to filter out what's the negative
and be honest with yourself.
So that comes through faith, wisdom in the passages
of the, I wouldn't even call it a religion.
It's the belief and a relationship that I have with,
you can call it the universe if you'd like,
but I happen to call it God.
God is the universe and I think his expanse.
So I have no problem with that.
Call it God, we call it.
So that's number one.
And number two is a shout out to my brother-in-law.
He's a crisis communications expert.
And when I went from trading where you,
it is very dogmatic about what you do.
You gotta be right.
So you really ingrain that thing into like, I'm right.
To learn how to read my audience
and know how to deliver the message that does not change.
My core values don't change.
How I deliver that is how my, what my perception is
of how others wanna receive it.
And that came from, again, my brother-in-law
kind of guiding me to that when I was kind of struggling
making that transition from a trading role
directly into kind of a C minus one role.
I didn't even know that when I got it.
And then it was like, next thing I know is he was like,
I want you on my floor.
I want you to come pound on my door,
interrupt me in a call if this thing happens, right?
I had to learn how to be, I always wanna tell the truth,
but people that are truth seekers,
oftentimes it comes across super judging.
That's because they're not, they might not be modifying
the way that they communicate.
Nice modification, live example.
Yeah, yeah.
And I don't often correct myself that much
because I don't wanna draw attention to it,
but I do wanna be intentional.
The reason why I wanna draw attention to it though, Kurt,
is because most of the visionaries who listen to the show
are in some stage of developing the same type
of leadership responsibility.
We have a responsibility to communicate to others
our vision clearly.
And if we can't communicate that vision clearly,
which 99% of people I would say,
aren't very good at that,
then we're gonna end up with a world
with 96% failure rates in business.
Hello, we live there right now.
So it's very important that people recognize these subtle,
there's so much depth that you're unpacking right now
that yeah, the meme world's not gonna care
too much about it.
They're just gonna go right past this episode
and be like, man, this,
and they're gonna pass all my episodes,
they don't care about it.
But the people who are leveling up,
it's these little subtle tactics.
And when I say tactics, it's a tool.
You happen to use it for good.
Some people can use it for bad.
I hope that everybody listens,
continues to use it for good.
So sorry to interrupt you, but I-
No, I'm learning from you,
but hey, I'm learning from you.
And again, I just wanted to reiterate,
it's a pleasure to be invited.
I did know what I was signing up for.
Quite in the beginning, right, with the initial,
and you did mention that your LinkedIn campaign
is very good, it's very effective,
because it plays to that little piece of us
that wants to say, oh, I'm special.
People should hear what I have to say.
And it was serendipitous that,
because I had just been invited to another two podcasts
and I wasn't able to do those.
And somebody was saying, you should go on the speaking circuit
because that will help build your business.
It wasn't like, oh, you're so awesome at speaking.
It was that you're trying to promote this really thing.
It sounded like they were selling them
on what they said should.
This is somebody I really admire and they've done it.
And people like that, I think they can tell me should.
I think it's a layer of trust,
though it is still a dangerous word
because people are really rebellious
about our heart, right?
What I say sell to,
I don't mean they have a financial reality.
Yeah, well, I get it.
No.
That's that you know.
I get it.
But it was very serendipitous that you reached out
because I was like, oh man, what is it about me?
All of a sudden the people want me to share my ideas.
But when it comes to business,
I do know and maybe you're about to pivot us there.
And you did ask about business.
I keep going back to like this,
like I'm some guru floating here, like a yoga master.
I'm not that all the time.
But I do strive not for that persona,
but for people to know me as someone that's like,
okay, I'm very passionate.
Okay.
But when you mix it and you're like, you know, right?
Like you mix that passion in with kind of this
know-it-allness, right?
You end up judging.
You can just have passion and retell that
into someone else.
It can be very effective in business.
So, you know, one thing I've learned a lot about is
the people that we're serving right now
is the student level.
It's, you know, even tech pivoters,
you're kind of that 25 to 35 years old,
maybe even a little bit younger.
Understanding how they want to be helped
has been, is our moat at Parachute.
It's people, they know what to do.
They don't know how to do it necessarily
or if it's being effective for them.
And that applies to so many places in life.
And a lot of my coaching sessions about, you know,
helping with my resume or help me with my elevator pitch,
help me uncover my superpowers.
It ends up being this unpacking of,
well, you're really talented.
You should have, you will get a job.
What's holding you back?
And a lot of times it's like a first generation American
or a LGBTQ plus or people of color that, you know,
they feel like I'm not like the person there.
But at the end of the day, you are, you have a heartbeat
and there's something good about you
that I want you to work on showing that professionally.
So that helps me.
People get, people are working for me that are awesome.
They came in and they're committed
because that's how I approach it.
Well, what do you want to do?
Like you have this training,
but we'll find something for you to do.
I'm not paying you yet, but it's opportunity.
It's a mutual exchange.
What would you like to learn from me?
What would you like to learn more of
and then share with others?
And then, you know, if you find a job, great.
As you're working with me, that's what we're rooting for.
So I don't know where we started on that.
No, you're good.
It was, it doesn't matter where we ended was great.
We can rewind if they want to, we can watch it later too.
But to move into one of the more powerful questions
and not that we haven't stuck with all power questions,
but if this was your last opportunity to share advice
with visionaries, what's the powerful lesson
that other visionaries can learn from your experience?
I think for when we're talking about that reinvention,
I think we probably didn't, I told you that,
hey, maybe that could be the thing that I want to talk about.
But it's that to never, it's okay to make assumptions,
but I think if we translate those into hypothesis
and then we break that down, it's, you know,
how might we, or I think based on the prior experience,
this about that type of employee
or about that type of opportunity,
and then unpack that rather than just say,
I'm not doing it or it worked in the past.
So I'm gonna go do that.
Now let's test it.
Every situation is unique, but there are some commonalities
and you can look for those flags, right?
So it's to use your experience to not form
such hard assumptions until you've done the data,
you know, uncover the data by forming a hypothesis.
And that goes for whether I think I want to go into,
you know, medicine or I think I want to be in a band
or whatever it is, that's hypothesis until you've done it.
So for the non-science people, be open to questioning.
Yes. Correct?
Yeah.
Rather than feeling like you have to live in a safety box,
you know, where you don't look at the question,
you don't question how things are,
being open to questioning your experiences
and what else you can get out of them.
Is that correct?
It's the way we frame, maybe this is another way to put it.
The way that we frame the problem
or the problem that we think we're trying to solve,
it's the way that we frame that question.
Because a lot of times when you talk to customers
and software development or even when you're coaching someone,
they think that a lot of times we help them uncover
that the thing they thought was the problem
is actually just a symptom of a root.
So it's again, validating the hypothesis
and not holding too tightly with closed fist,
the thing that you knew that worked, that's okay.
It's part of your value system.
But I found that when you are not in a position to receive,
when you have these closed fists
and you also look like you're fighting,
kind of go in open-minded and say,
I wanna share what I know.
I wanna find out more, tell me more about that.
And now my hands open both literally
and figuratively in my mind, I'm in a position to learn
and possibly help someone receive help
that could help someone else.
It's a stewarding of that advice.
But it starts with a hypothesis or a framing of the question.
That's awesome.
Great advice.
Always, there's always an opportunity to be questioning
one of the greatest resources in the world,
in my opinion, is the Bible.
Take the opinion for what you want
and ask and you shall receive.
Right.
It's one of the most powerful.
That's, I was gonna say, some people,
I'm very forward about my faith, but I also.
I should say that if you don't mind.
I'm a Christian, but I wanna say,
but I practice what I believe is closer
to an Eastern Christianity,
meaning that's where it started.
This Westernization of it's,
I love an entertaining church.
So if I go to a very charismatic church
where it's like, the band is amazing,
but the creative assets and the way that they do the programs,
that's not for everyone, right?
Right.
But that's not what carries you through life.
It is the quiet moments of self-reflection
and being honest with oneself.
And that's really, and loving other people.
People always ask me,
what does it mean that you're a Christian?
Well, it doesn't mean I'm perfect.
If you spent a day with me,
Jackson would probably frustrate you at some point.
But that being said, it is,
my heart's intention is to love other people.
That's where you love God.
You don't know it, but you do,
because that's what he is.
So again, thanks for giving me platform to share that,
but that is a big part of who I am.
It's huge on this platform.
Yeah.
And I'm gonna take that.
Very few business shows or leaders actually talk about that.
And that was something that I set out to do in tech
is to say, why aren't there more people that believe
because what we're doing is changing the world
and they wanna have impact.
That's what we wanna do as Christians or Jews or Muslims
or whatever your faith is.
That's ultimately what's at the heart of it.
How can we help other people?
That's what we're doing in tech.
So we're doing three.
Now, my first semester at BYU, I got a 0.33 GPA.
So if you're looking for advice in college,
just tell your kids to go like this.
But on my last semester before dropping out,
I had a world religions class.
It was one of my favorite experiences.
A teacher was as boring as it could possibly get.
Sorry, I threw him under the bus,
but I think he deserves it.
However, we did so many cool projects
of learning about different religions that were out there.
And one of the things that he did say was,
he said, man, the Western cultures, the Eastern culture,
the Eastern cultures have such a profound connection
to the art of meditation.
And he kind of threw his hands.
It was the only time he showed any emotion whatsoever
in an entire semester.
And he apologized for it afterwards.
And I was like, this is all I want.
If you just please like create some emotion in this.
And he did it right there with that.
And that has stuck with me for my life.
So in nine minutes, this little device right here
will go dong and there will be a prayer bell
that happens to remind me that it is time to pray.
And I learned that from looking at different religions
throughout the world and realizing like,
wow, how cool is that?
That they are so dedicated to their internal discovery,
their devotion relationship with their God as well,
that they will stop everything to make sure
that they contact the being and the source of power
that can ultimately guide them
to live their best life possible.
Like that's what we get with that.
So it's a superpower that, yeah, sure.
There's people who shy away from it,
but in terms of you sharing it,
now this is an open platform.
And if we can't share our super superpowers,
then we're not doing, we're not serving our audience.
And the way that really quick,
the way that I share my faith is people often ask me
kind of questions that you're asking like,
man, why are you this way?
They just did that to you.
And that's what I never leave with my faith.
I want, if I'm living it out,
somebody will be curious about it.
And then just like we were talking about,
how does someone who couldn't be helped?
They're gonna ask you, how do I do that?
How do I, how, what?
And even when I share it, some of my best,
two of my best friends are atheists.
They're kind of tired of it, right?
Cause we get into these philosophical questions.
So there's no, we can't come to a common ground
that we share so much, so many positive moral values
and ways of helping.
The fact that you do, they do, you guys, you're able to,
you created a bond based on that open respect
and the ability to talk about it.
But naturally there's going to be a type of a chasm
that exists between being able to understand
each other fully.
You saw mutual respect for each other's ideas.
And that's really what it's all about in my opinion.
We are running a little bit short on time.
I wanna extend the invitation,
hold myself to this publicly.
And one, anybody who's listening in,
definitely feel free to connect with Kurt through LinkedIn,
through his websites, parachute.
If you have somebody who needs a career guidance,
like you've just learned
and realize there's an awesome opportunity there.
We're not gonna expose a reality
that I love you talking about.
You said resumes, possibly not even mattering anymore.
There's, if you wanna know more about that, then ask Kurt.
But I would say that from my perspective on jobs,
one of the things I don't see people doing
is proactively going in and saying hi
or making the phone call to do such,
but it's more than that.
There's so many more aspects that can prepare you
for having a great career,
such as negotiating salary and knowing how to do that,
defining what does you wanna do,
redefining and reinventing yourself.
All those aspects are things that Kurt can do with you.
But I'd love to propose the idea, Kurt,
that I actually wrote 80% of a book several years ago,
and I was very close to finishing and publishing it
when I was going through my divorce.
And I realized I didn't wanna go on interviews
and have to talk about the reality
of what might be happening in my marriage.
And I didn't wanna lie to the audience either,
so I shelved it.
The book is called Dead and Broken.
Jobs are dead and universities are broken.
And it's a guide to freelancing as well.
But it dissects both those dynamics.
If you're ever interested in being a co-author
with me on that and joining forces,
I would be very happy.
100%, man.
Let's put up, let's make volumes.
I think this is so, it's very much needed,
not only the economic,
but there's such a mind professional connection.
And that's part of what we do in career coaching.
And specifically at the curriculum
that we were in at Perish,
we talk about your mind, let's be honest,
let's talk and let's set goals.
And then we go from there.
Before we actually get to resume it directly,
three and a half, we do an initial review,
but I can't help you unless I know what you're about.
And oftentimes people don't know what they're about.
Your book might help with that.
And yeah, I'd love to talk more about that.
Thanks for the offer.
Yeah, absolutely, man.
Look forward to a lifelong friendship.
Vision Pros, if you have any questions for Kurt,
don't hesitate to drop those in the comments as well.
We'll make sure to forward those to him.
Also on the landing page,
we'll make sure that his links are there.
If you have any desires to be on the show as well
and share your own vision,
don't hesitate to reach out visionproslive.com.
There's the guest button so you can apply to the show.
We'd love to hear your vision
and potentially put you on the show as well.
So Kurt, thank you for being my guest today, man.
And everybody have a fantastic rest of your day.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and.