for three days. He locked himself in the studio and he played the song Wild Thing over and over
for three days. You're just like, what the heck is going on?
The studio is really only mad about that because they got to pay the royalty rights on Wild Thing
all day every day. They're sending out that check. They're mad about it. We got to get the studio back.
Oh, absolutely. Finally, after three days, he came out. I don't know what happened,
but he had locked himself in and then they renamed the station Wild 102.
I was like, that is so brilliant. That's a great way to capitalize on it.
Did you ever do anything like that as a radio host?
I never did anything like that as a radio host.
Did you play the guitar or was that just a creation?
No, no, I played the guitar. I'm a trained musician, man. That's kind of my heart.
You got one back there too. What about you?
Mine is just a four. No, I'm just kidding. I definitely play. I'm a trained musician,
retired musician, I guess. I was a trumpet player.
Played the piano. I like to improv on the piano. That's fun.
Were you a jazz guy?
I write songs for my kiddos. What's up?
Were you a jazz guy?
I was, but I didn't have the confidence for jazz. I had a super inferiority complex when I was
younger. I led the jazz band, but that was so uncomfortable. I was terrified.
I think that one of the things, so I went to college for music, right?
Okay.
I went to a jazz school. I didn't major in jazz, but all of my friends were jazz musicians.
But I think the thing that I didn't like about music as professionally, kind of in college and
being real serious about it, it just sucked the joy out of it. It sucked the social nature of
music out of it. It sucked the fun out of it.
You've seen August Rush.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great.
That's musicians, man. We can geek out on this all day. And let's be honest, music is the absolute
key to the future finance, isn't it? It wouldn't hurt. That's for sure.
No, we are going to be diving into finance, everybody. Speaking of, if you could just give
one tip on finance, what would it be? Oh, the world 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, what's up, Vision Pros? Welcome in to another episode of Vision Pros Live. I'm your
show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business. And I'm excited to have
Franklin J. Parker on the show today. We're going to be talking about the future of finance and how
it is personal. So we're going to be personal about finance. We're going to talk about his vision
regarding that. One of my favorite things about his form submission of who he is and what he does
is that he says, I'm an imposter. And he talked about shifting gears from the world of music
and being a Southern boy into, of course, the world of finance. I think he's going to blow our minds
today. So I'm going to team up and put him on a huge pedestal that he now has to live up to.
This will be fun. So before we dive into the Franklin story and how he got the knowledge he
has regarding finance, we're going to dive into some of these sponsors. So those of you who are
in a position where you're trying to scale your company's distribution is top of marketing funnel.
We use ColdClick for our LinkedIn automation. That's one of our trade secrets. I'm just not
very secretive. So Art Hoffman runs that program and we use U-Link and Octopus as part of it.
It's part of the platform, but the key is not just having the right tools. You can give me a garage
to be a car mechanic and all the right tools are equipped with it. I'm going to suck at being a
car mechanic. The key is to get the right people in the right positions to help you do the right
things so that you can move your business forward effectively. And again, distribution top funnel,
you need to get in front of more people. So do we. So we use ColdClick. The Simply Fast website
at the top there too. Shane launched that. Now, this is such a hard subject for me to talk about
because we don't use it, but I almost guarantee you I would have hired Shane right away from my first
website had I known that there was a platform where somebody, an individual was willing to do
websites at 179 bucks per website. And that's where it would have started. If I had done things
the right way, at the same time as a young entrepreneur, I was highly distractible. So I
was playing with Wix and I was trying to learn Squarespace. And I was also building with Weebly
and with different Divi and Elementor and WordPress. And I wanted to be over involved in that process,
but I will tell you as a young entrepreneur, I had to learn the lesson over and over that busy
is broke. If you want to move your life forward, you want to move your business forward, learning
how to delegate and who to delegate to is a very, very helpful thing to move forward. Your website
is not likely to be the catalyst to seven figures and beyond as so many people promise.
So I'd recommend working with somebody like Shane, knowing that there are web developers,
web designers out there. You can contact, of course, and you should consult several,
but this is an opportunity to, if you're launching your brand for the first time,
just get it launched, get it out there. Imperfect progress is far better than perfect and never
hitting it. So with that said, one more shout out and that goes to the Water Project. If you're in
the giving mood or you want to, I don't know, resurrect your heart a little bit, this is a
great opportunity to do so. The Water Project represents people who do not have access to clean
drinking water. There are millions of people in the world who are less fortunate than those of us
who have the time or the opportunity to listen to an episode like this. And I think that's
a great opportunity to do so. So please do me a favor, either share this link with people
or share a link for a cause that you want us to support so that we can spread the word about other
needs that are out there. And what I love about the Water Project is that you get to choose a
community that you're going to help, and then they will give you an update of what's going on in that
community, what it is they're building, how they're going about the project. You probably will learn
more than you want to even learn, but usually that inspires us to take on greater capacities
and to do more. So, anyway, so Water Project's a big deal. I'd love to see you support it and
feel free to share so, or feel free to do so anonymously, of course. But thank you for your
time and attention on that. Without further ado, Franklin J. Parker, welcome to Vision Pro's live,
man. Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So I gave you a super hyperbolic
introduction, not my norm, but I dig your personality, man. And I know you're going to
be a little bit of a
tough guy, but if you were to define who should be listening right now, who should that be? And why
should they listen to you? Yeah, that's such a tough question. And partly because I feel like such
an imposter in pretty much everything I've done. So I think anybody who just feels that way, anybody
who feels like they're kind of making it up as they go, even though you may have this killer
resume, you still kind of show up every day and you're like, I don't know how to solve this problem.
I'm smart, for sure. Hey, man, I will join you in that definition of imposter. I would join you on
that. I mean, so many people would think that that's so negative, but I think that's actually us
hiding from the realities that we're all humans learning every day along the slide. And if we're
not, what the heck are we doing? So interesting observation. Okay. So if you're struggling with
the imposter syndrome that's holding you back and limiting you, this is going to be super helpful.
In the world of finance, what qualifies you? What are some of the things that we should know?
You know, there's fiduciary, I can't even see the word fiduciaries. There we go. That they have
certain type of caliber of status qualifications that allow us to know that they're supposed to be
non-biased and what they do. And I don't really know how that works because I'm not a fiduciary.
Just a fun F word to say. Then there's people who are CPAs and get their MBAs and all these acronyms
that most people don't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, finance is a big place, right? And I talked to
a lot of kind of college students who are wanting to get into finance, right? And my first question
is, well, what do you want to do? I mean, what are you good at? Because, you know, finance is like any
other industry. I mean, you need accountants, you need CEOs, you need CFOs, you need people who are
good with numbers, you need people who are good with people, you need website designers. I mean,
everything you need in the other line of work, you need in finance, right? And I think that
people have this vision of finance that it's all billions or whatever. Did you ever watch billions
on HBO? I didn't. Okay. It's good for a context. Yeah. It follows this guy who's a hedge fund manager,
you know, and it's all very dramatic. And I always joke that no one really wants to do a real show
about finance on TV because it would be super boring. It's kind of like suits, but for finance
people. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I love suits too. That's good. I love suits. That's not how
lawyers work, right? If it is, I'm not going to throw myself on a bus. What a toxic work environment.
I remember watching that show and I was like, this is such a toxic work environment. Who would ever
see it? But anyway, that's what I said. Well said. That's true. The banter, man would make it hard
to leave in my opinion. But now you're right. If you think about the realities of going through that,
I hadn't thought about outside of a show perspective. Praise the Lord. I love that.
Yeah. That's my Southern heart right there. Absolutely. Okay. So again, it's not billions.
It's not all hedge funds and all that. What is it? Yeah. So I think the first thing that I always
tell people about finance in general is that, you know, we talk about all this business stuff. We
talk about, I mean, in finance, we're talking specifically about money and investments and,
you know, cash flows and balance sheets and all of this. But all of these things that we talk about
with money at the end of the day have nothing at all to do with money, right? That finance just
facilitates the accomplishment of real things in the real world, whether it's a business or whether
it's an individual or whether it's a non-for-profit organization or whatever it is. And so the first
thing that finance is about has to be people. And I think when finance goes wrong, we forget that,
right? Those are the times when finance has gone really wrong is when we forget that it's
primarily about people and it's about accomplishing real things. And to accomplish things,
you have to have resources to do that, right? And so you need to organize labor, right? You need
people to do things. You need to organize capital, which is just resources that have been saved up
in the past. And you need to deploy those resources in order to kind of accomplish the vision that
you want to accomplish. Whatever it is, but finance is about the facilitation of the organization of
those resources, right? That's ultimately what finance is about. And exactly where you want to
sit in finance is a big question. So, you know, like I spent and still spend a long time in the
family office space, which is, I know you're familiar with the family office space. I don't
want to, I don't want to explain anything. Teach me. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. When you're very,
very wealthy, you know, like hundreds of millions of dollars, wealthy billionaire status,
you hire professionals to work on just your financial picture. So you hire an investment guy
or gal, you hire an accountant, you hire bookkeepers, you hire, you know, someone to manage
your, your family dynamics, for example, like all of these things, whatever it is you need doing.
And then that group of people is called the family office, right? And if you have,
Oh yeah. I did not grow up with this environment. I didn't mean it, man. I grew up lower middle
class, right? Like, so this was all eye opening for me, but yeah. And if you think about it,
like when you have three quarters of a billion dollars, you know, that's basically a business
you're running. That's all absolutely. And you very often own businesses, right? And so that's an
added piece of the equation. So, so I spent quite a while in the family office. You're giving me
life goals now, by the way, have a family office space. Oh, and so I was most recently the chief
investment officer for a family. I was their investment guy and we had a little team and
everything. I forgot where I was going with this train of thought, but yeah, no, but-
That's my fault for interrupting you.
Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's such a small train in such a big space, you know, it gets lost.
No, no. So I think I was going here. So like, if you're like on my side, I now run an REA. So I
do financial planning and investment management for individuals and for wealthy families.
You know, that's a different zone of finance. So it's an interesting overlap between understanding
people and understanding investments and understanding numbers, right? And you really need
both of those types of folks. And then of course, there's investment banking, which is a whole
different world. And then there's, you know, fund management, which is a whole different world. So,
you know, if someone's looking to get into finance, it is its own universe of things to do.
It is. And I'm really glad that you highlighted that. That is mind blowing for anybody who hasn't
heard that they have the opportunity, they're mind blowing. And here's why. I think the conversation
of the difference between the rich and the poor, you know, is so over generalized that it's often
just becomes kind of a shouty match without very much productivity. But the productivity comes from
exploring the difference in lifestyles and how the systems processes function. And you're talking
about a system that I think most people haven't heard of or paid attention to. I had never heard
of it. You know, I hadn't reached that level, but now it gives me insight into, oh, that makes a lot
of sense. You know, I've thought of, you know, everybody knows you've got a wealth advisor or
finance advisor, but I had never heard the term of the family office space. And I've thought about
personal chef, you know, and the fact that somebody might have a personal chef, but you've
alluded to the greater team at work that's there to coach, maintain and move things forward. And so
why do they get the rich get richer? A lot of times it's because of the infrastructure that's
supporting the way that they've built their dynasties. It's taken for granted. Yeah. And I
don't want to, I mean, not to cut you off. So I would actually argue that, you know, very wealthy
folks, so especially, especially wealth creators. So people who start a business that grows very
large, which is almost always how family offices start. You know, they have, because like I said,
I grew up lower middle class, right? But very wealthy people have a different way of thinking
about the world than the rest of us do. So like I was raised with the power of thrift, right? If
you want a beach house in Florida, you live below your means and you save your money for 30 years,
and you can retire to a beach house in Florida. Congratulations. I mean, that's what I was taught,
right? Like the world is static. You make this much, you, you, you know, a beach house costs this
much, you have to save this much. And that's just not how extremely wealthy people think. To them,
money is just a problem to solve. It's just another resource that you have to bring to bear to get
what to accomplish your goals, right? So using this simple example, like if, if you want a beach
house in Florida, you know, you'd look around and say, okay, who has the capital? What bank will lend
money against it? Let's put it in an LLC. We'll throw that thing on Airbnb. We'll cashflow it.
And I've got a free beach house in Florida today. Like that's how, that's how that mindset works.
And the way I sum this up, and this was the most powerful lesson, you know, having operated in this
environment for a while now, this is the most powerful lesson to me. It's just that the world
is malleable. It's not static with enough energy and with enough capital, with enough resources,
with enough vision. You really can change your world. And once you change the world kind of
immediately around you, you can influence and change the wider world. And that's, that's both
comforting and kind of scary, right? Because it's, it's sort of easy to sit back and say, well, the
world just is what it is, right? I have no responsibility for it. You have no responsibility
for it. There's nothing we can do about it. And so the first difficult thing is showing up and saying,
well, no, if there's something I don't like about the world, I actually could change it if I wanted
to. I just choose not to. So there's a kind of moral weight that comes with that, right? And then
secondly, it shifts blame. So now it's much harder to look around and say, you know, I'm just not
there because of fill in the blank instead of saying, well, I'm just choosing not to solve the
problems I need to solve. And that's just a different one entirely. I love the example that
you gave. There's a lot of depth to what you said. The way you started that phrase though, you said,
you said, I would argue that I caught it. It was all harmonic. Like there's a lot of harmony in
what you said, harmonic and what you said. So what was the argument? Cause I missed that part. What
were you arguing against? Well, I think not everyone views the world that way, right? Oh,
correct. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of folks who kind of view the world as static or as
as oppressors and oppressed or as you versus me or as us versus them or whatever. Right. And,
and rather than viewing the world as changeable. And that's, I don't, I don't think that's a popular
nor common belief today. Have you read tribal leadership? I haven't read tribal leadership.
You almost quoted the, the basis of that book. And it's amazing. So yeah, it's,
it's a good one. It's a really, really good one. Okay. So let's, let's dive in then I'll let you
write for a minute, but what would, what, how would you describe your vision for those that you serve?
Yeah. That's a big question. How much time we got to 20 seconds. Okay, great. Oh, good. Perfect.
No, no. So, you know, I started, I left the family office space and started my
RAA because, but for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is because I feel like I clearly see
where this business is headed over the next 10 to 20 years. And not only did I want to get ahead of
it, but I wanted to help build it. And that was, that was meaningful for me. It was exciting to me.
It was what wakes me up in the morning. And, and, you know, basically to just sketch out the vision
in a nutshell, what I was doing in a family office was, was building fully customized investment
portfolios and monitoring them and talking to people about these are your ethical constraints
and these are your ethical constraints. Cause those are different. And talking about what your
goals are and what we're trying to accomplish and educating and all of that stuff. But I was doing
it for just a handful of people, right? Not, not a wider world of people because I'm expensive,
you know, if you want me to sit and just build custom portfolios for you, that's, that's not cheap.
But what I believe is going to happen over the next 10 to 20 years is we're going to start rolling
that out for everybody. So, you know, we'll be able to sit down with Jackson and say, okay, here's
your exact tax situation. Here's your financial goals. Here is your ethical constraints. Like,
for example, I have a client whose father fought in World War II. She doesn't want to own any
Japanese stocks. Okay. Now that's not my ethical constraint, right? But it's hers and it's not my
job to sit there and say, well, this is dumb, you know, no, it's my job to say, this is your concern.
This is what you're willing to sacrifice for it. I'm going to execute it. Right. And I think this
is a place where financial services, I'm going down a tangent here, but I hope that's right.
I like where financial services is really messed up because we have approached the ethical investing
revolution. In the same way we've approached every other investment issue, which is we're going to
build these monolithic products and we're going to tell you what an ethical investing is. And your
job is to buy it. And if you don't buy it, you're not investing ethically. Right. And I think what
bothers me about that is like everyone's, everyone's vision of, and everyone's kind of concerns in life,
everyone's heart is a little bit different. Right. And just because yours maybe bends more towards
social issues and mine bends more towards environmental issues, doesn't mean that you're
right and I'm wrong. It just means that we have a different vision of what we want the world to look
like. Right. Right. So what I view my job is, is to give you the tools to express that in your
investments alongside all of your other goals, your financial goals. You want to retire, send your
kids to college, buy a vacation home and so on and so forth. So anyway, back coming back from the
tanning. I love it. Yeah. You know, we'll be able to sit down with Jackson and all the things that
make you unique, that make you completely you. We can build into an investment portfolio and then
execute that. Right. And then you have a fully custom portfolio that's being monitored and run
on a day-to-day basis. Now I can't do that now because I can't scale it, but the answer is
technology. So, you know, building the technology currently to, to be able to execute this vision
of what it needs to look like. And if you, if you'll allow me, I mean, what I'm excited most about
is that when you give people the tools to express themselves, not just financially, but also
ethically and socially, and, you know, reflecting all the things that make you unique that aggregates,
right? So, so you have those tools, I have those tools, everybody has those tools that all aggregates.
And now, you know, prices in financial markets reflect not just all fundamental economic data,
but also all of the ethical and social data of the society in which it operates as well.
And I think that could be capitalism's greatest moment because, you know, we might be able to
finally look at financial markets and say, yes, that is an accurate reflection of our society.
Now we may not agree with what we see in the mirror. We may not like it, but we can at least
say that's an accurate picture. And I think that's the part that's most exciting to be.
That is a mega vision. That was awesome. And here's what's, here's one of the things that's fun
about this for me, because you're cracking paradigms with like a Thor-like hammer.
And I'm going to, I'm going to expand on that. So if this podcast were big enough, for instance,
and Fox News, CNN, and others were to get a hold of this, one of the things that would probably
happen for the sake of driving clicks and conflict and drama, because that's what we love to judge
as human beings. We have, we have been bench pressing to the max our ability to judge others
and how others do things. Right. So when I was saying, I love that, you know, like, wow, like I
said it twice. It would be very easy for somebody to twist my words and say, oh, Jackson loves the
fact that she's not willing to invest in Japanese companies. Jackson must be a real estate agent.
She's not willing to invest in Japanese companies. Jackson must be a racist, you know, against
Japanese people. And it's like, that's the context of what I said, even though the two statements
were close together. But we have this, we have this, we have this super strong ability to judge
and desire to protect ourselves. Yet our strengths often become our greatest weaknesses as well.
We could use more voices like yours, Franklin, that are willing to tell, like help people see
that, wait a second, maybe we need to take a step back from judging so harshly, realize that we all
have certain biases and make some space for the reality that if, you know, if you feel a sense of
stranger danger, then you may not be, you may not be comfortable with moving forward to said entity.
For instance, I can't invest in a, in a Chinese company if they only speak Chinese. I don't speak
Chinese. I wouldn't understand what I'm doing. That's not, that's not a racist thing. That's
just because I don't know. I can't possibly comprehend what the heck is going on. So there's,
there's more to this equation and more depths to this than online. We're often willing to
allow ourselves to dig into as, as humanity. So I'm all for your vision. I'm excited to see it
kind of blow our paradigms open. Yeah, me too. I, like I said, it's, it's, it's a hard problem to
solve is what I'm finding, but, but I think hard things are most often the things worth doing. So
they're worth it. Absolutely. Nobody wants to play soccer if there's no opposing team,
you know, maybe for maybe for 30 seconds, you know, but then you're done and you're bored. It's like,
what the heck, man, this isn't fun. So we don't love to win as much as we think we do as human
beings. We love competition. We love challenge. My own, again, humble opinions. What's your vision
for you? And specifically not the path. What's the outcome? What's it? What's that look like?
No, for me, world domination, you know, I know that's probably an, I'm just kidding.
I've had the opportunity to think quite a lot about what I think my life, what I would like
my life to look like. Right. And, and I'm, I have kind of come to this, like, this is how I distill
it. I'm a big believer in constructing a life that you enjoy living. You have to do that. And
work is a big part of that, you know, I mean, and I, I'm not a big believer in this whole work life
balance idea. I think that, you know, that's a new modern, very Western idea that you separate work
from your life. Everywhere else in human history, you know, they're always interlinked. Right. Yeah.
Now that's not to say that you should never see your kids, for example. I'm not, I'm not saying
that. I'm just saying that, you know, there are times when work demands more of me. And there are
times when it demands less of me. And I'm okay with that as long as I enjoy the work. Right.
You always have to do your chores, but, you know, as long as you are enjoying the work. And for me,
that is building meaningful things or things that I find meaningful. Now, what you find meaningful
might be a little bit different. And that's great because, you know, I need someone to build an
iPhone for me. I'm not going to do that. I need someone to be excited to get up on Monday and do
that. And I'm going to build the thing I'm excited about. And you build the thing you're excited
about, but ultimately you need to be excited about something. You need to be getting up every day,
excited to go to work on Monday. Because look, man, you only get so many laps around the sun and work
is such a huge piece of your life that if you're going in every day and it's destroying your soul,
like, I don't know. I mean, I know you got to eat, but let's start laying plans and developing a
vision for where we can go from here, because I don't think I could do that forever. But then
also like, yeah. We have more options than we're willing to admit, you know, like, I mean,
I get it that some people, there's a risk involved. There's a massive sacrifice involved, but I mean,
if you're a miner in a mining town and there's no other job, move. I'm sorry, but I don't want to
sit to scream at you like, like it's your fault or something, or I don't get it. I have my own
challenges too. And I certainly, I don't have the struggle of having to be a miner, right? And
having to go through that. But there are records and historical records of lots of people who made
the choice to make new things happen with their life. Some of them, it didn't work out. Some of
it didn't work out. Some of it did. I empathize to the best ability possible, but you're not,
we're not, in most of our cases, our cases aren't that, especially for listening to a podcast,
we have the ability to move, to do things different. It comes back to this idea that the
world is malleable, right? I mean, to use your example, if you're living in a mining town,
everyone around you a miner, you've been a miner. And now the town shutting down. It's like,
I mean, you can accept that this is just how the world is, or you can say, maybe I can change it
and what problems would I need to solve to get to where I want to be. Now, maybe that means I can't
quit tomorrow because I need to eat tomorrow. Look, I'll step off my high horse for a minute too,
with that. I want to, I want to retract a little bit. I'm just super grateful for my great, great
grandpa or great, great, great grandpa, whichever one it was. Our family was hit by the dust bowl
in Oklahoma. We, they moved, there was no option. You move. That was it. Because they made the
decisions that they made, I've been blessed with a life that I've been blessed with. And so while
they may have been a forced move and maybe they wouldn't have moved under certain circumstances,
they still were able to do it. And because of that way exists. So yeah, well, they were willing to
get in the wagon or whatever and head south. And as a side note, every summer in Dallas, I'm like,
I don't understand why anybody settled here. Why in Dallas is brutal. You think the 1st July would
come around and they'd be like, back in the wagon, we're going north.
Right. Old Yeller shows you a lot of that too. It's like, oh, that would have been hard.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Anyway, so I don't know. But yeah, but it's just back to this idea that
the world is malleable and your world is malleable. You just have to kind of show up and,
and solve problems. You saw the Martian, right? The movie. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's
one. We're ruining it for everybody. Matt Damon ends up being like, whoa, no.
Yeah. Yeah. The book is great, by the way. I couldn't put the book down, but
there's this great quote at the end of the movie that is fantastic. He's kind of like talking to,
you could tell he's sort of aged a bit and he's talking to this crew of new astronauts.
And he says something along the, I'm going to butcher the quote, but it's something along the
lines of, look, you just solve the problem in front of you and then you solve the next problem.
And then you solve the next problem. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.
Right. And I love that because that is, that's life, right? Like you, you're never going to
not have problems. And I have worked with the wealthiest people in the world. I'm telling you
the problems don't go away. They just have more zeros attached to them.
Right. It's, it's the same. We're all dealing with the same nonsense. It's just life. And you got
to show up and just solve the problems as best you can. Absolutely. And I love that you talked
about times you go around the sun, alluding to the reality that we have this journey that we can
choose to make the most of, you know, or not. But then you use the word you need to, I don't
normally tell people what to do, but I think it's a very well-placed need. It's like, you're only
hurting yourself. You're hurting yourself. You're hurting yourself. You're hurting yourself. You're
hurting yourself. If you're not allowing yourself to break free from your limiting paradigms. So
with that said, what's your worst leadership experience ever, frankly?
Oh man, you're hitting me. Yeah, no real, seriously. I think I need something stronger in my cup here.
No, I tell you, I have been, I've been on the receiving end of, of poor leadership
before. And I've been on the receiving end, especially in finance. Like this is a, this is
a business where, you know, rent seeking is extremely common. So, so like not adding value
is what I mean by that. And it's just a business where people have been around a long time. They've
always done it one way and their clients never leave. And so they just continue to collect the
check and don't really add much value. Right. So I call that rent seeking. I thought that was all
finance. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No comment. Anyway, but so, so I've been on the receiving end of poor
leadership, but, but I would actually attribute that less to poor leadership and maybe to, to no
vision, right. To places where the answer is always just, you know, why are you rocking the boat? Why
are you trying to do something different? You know, we've got to do something different. You know,
we've got to do something different. We've got to do something different. We've got to do something
trying to do something different. You know, we've, we've, this is how we do it. This is how we've
done it since 19 blackie. We're not going to change it. And, and I think that that breeds an
environment of, you know, not stagnation is true, but it, but it, it just sucks the life out of the
room. You know what I mean? We're not building worse than stagnation. You're right. Yeah. We're
not going anywhere, right? We're just, we're just cutting checks basically. And it's just an icky
place to be. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't recommend it. It's a universal representation
too, that pretty much most people can understand. And yeah, if that's your culture is one of a safe
house, you know, let's just ride this out. You know, the safe house is the last place on earth
you want to be. You don't want to be in that type of an environment. And so that's a, that's big.
You said rent seeking, not adding value. I'll let go of the other thing that you said there.
We're going to move on to the best. There was something there that I really wanted to hit,
but that's all right. I digress. What's your best leadership experience look like?
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, again, that's, that's another tough question. You know, and unfortunately I've,
I've really not had a lot of opportunity to see excellent leadership at work. I have seen good
leadership here and there, and I've had good bosses, don't get me wrong. But I just really
link this idea of, of strong vision, powerful vision to good leadership. I think that's a key,
a key component to any good leadership experience. And, um,
Thanks for the podcast endorsement. Appreciate that. Vision pros and we were hitting it every day.
You're welcome. Yeah, that's right. I've given you as many Google keywords as I can. Yeah, exactly.
Oh, that's great. Keep going. Strong vision leads to the strong leadership. And have you,
have you seen that? Where have you seen that at play?
You know, I have seen it in the people that I have. So I haven't actually directly experienced it,
but I've witnessed it right from the outside. So, um, you know, I've had clients who I've really
admired in terms of what they've done and what they've been able to accomplish and what they've
been able to organize. Right. So, uh, what's amazing to me is like, we kind of see business
as complicated. I don't know why it has that, that ethos about it because it's not,
it's not that complicated. And I have seen folks like, there's this one guy, I know he dropped out
of college and, uh, you know, he was kind of just scrapper. He was out just scrapping together
stuff and trying to make things work. Um, and he probably tried 50 things before he found the thing
that he's doing now. Um, and he just kind of built up this little manufacturing company out of nothing.
And now it's a $30 million a year business. And, you know, he's not that sophisticated.
He knows his business really well, but you know, it wasn't because he sat down and ran an Excel
model and did all these stress tests on it, that that's why he's in this business. No, he just
showed up every day and scrapped it together and solve problems and figured it out and made it work.
And then, then what he found was that he's, he's in this business and he understands this business
and he understands the industry he's in. And he's been able to kind of chart this course and, and
develop this, this kind of destination of where he wants to go. Um, and man, it's, it's really
something. I mean, you walk into his place and his employees are excited to be there. They're
energized, you know, they, they like them. They think he's the smartest man on earth and, and he's
killing it, you know? And I think I really respect stuff like that because like I said, we have this
image that if you don't have an MBA, you probably can't own a business. And that's just total BS,
man. Like you buy something for X, you sell it for more than X, you do that enough and you're in
business. That's it. Right. Those are, those are separate territories to me, but man, I want to,
I want to get some boxing gloves for this show and be like, okay, it's spar time. We're, we're
in the ring now. And I want to prelude that dude, you can knock me out, you know, in this as well.
Like this is legit, but we have our first battle. Um, and, and that is related to, and so let's have
a healthy battle on this business is not complicated. I think that's, I guess baloney. Um, and, but I
come from, I come from a business world or on the marketing front. So many people right now are
selling easy, cheap, simple, and they're, they're over promising and drastically under delivering.
We have a 96% failure rate in the country, um, over the last 50 plus years in business.
And we have a 4% survival rate, not a 4% success rate. We have a 4% survival rate. And out of those,
the, the, the number of businesses are actually crushing it and have what you talked about,
the appreciation of work in life. Yeah. Yeah. We'd have a hard time naming companies where we agree
that they have that, um, you know, naming any companies, um, let alone a bunch of companies.
Um, so, but to digress a little bit, you're, you're right to me. I agree with you that,
no, you don't need the NBA. Um, and we, we need to become our own visionaries in order to know what
we need. You know, it's, it's, Franklin doesn't have the answer. I don't have the answer for you.
You listening, you have the answers. If you can tune into your own heart and mind and learn how
to become self-aware enough to do that. And it might take you 60 years. It might take you six years.
You might never make it. That's not the point. Again, it's back to that journey concept,
but here's, here's what I say about the battle. Business is simple. It's very, it is very simple.
The challenge though about business is business is a recipe book of over 300 simple recipes. And
you have to learn how to make those recipes on time at the right temperature for the right person,
for the right reason, at the right price. And there in lies the complexity. You're doing complex
things. Like you mentioned, you're going to, you're going to destroy your chance of success.
Oh man. I have so much like so much there to unpack.
Like go free to box me on it, man. So, so the, the thing that I would,
I agree with that recipe book analogy. I think that's exactly right. And business isn't easy,
but it's not complicated. I think is what I'm trying to say. But I will also push back on one
thing you said, which is, you know, this, this concept of a 96% failure rate for businesses.
Look, I would be interested to know how many of the 4% the people who had businesses that survive
and succeed, how many of those people had started previous businesses that had failed. Right. So
the data is actually reviewed because you don't get, you don't get one failure and you're done.
You can fail as many times as you want. Almost. I mean, you know, there's, there's certain things
you can't reach more. But, but look, that's the thing that I've seen.
I'm a politician. I'd semantic you to death about what you just said, but you're good, man. I get it.
Okay. You know, you get the concept, right? You give it a try. No, I'm just saying that like,
like the, the numbers work for you when you need a win, right? If you're looking for a big win,
for example, you can fail 99 times, win once and you're there. Right. That's an Alex Hermosy
reality. He's trying to paint that big for people. Absolutely. Yeah. And then on the flip side of it,
though, see the problem that I have always tried to solve in my career is the opposite problem.
So once you, once like a family has a lot of wealth, you have to win every time you can't,
you can't lose. If you lose it all once you're done, you got to start over, you know, but, but,
but getting, you know, kind of getting the win. And this is a good stat, right? This, this is a
stat most people don't know. So over the course of your life or of the average population's life,
it's something like 85%. That's the vast majority of people will spend one year in the top 1%
income earners. Right. And it's because that one year they sold a business, they sold a family
farm, they, you know, hit it big, something happened in their life where they, they made it big and,
they spend at least one year in that spot. There's this idea again, back to the world is
malign. That these, that these income and wealth brackets are static and they're not,
they're not, you move through them over time. Right. And I think that's an important
distinction, right? Just the idea that you can fail a lot and still win. It's okay.
It's huge. It's huge. I, I would again, argue back though, that even if you're not a big
player, I would argue back though, that even if let's say 96% is wrong and that it's 50%,
I'm still not, I'm not happy about that. I mean, we got things we got to fix there.
I think that's great though. I disagree. Like you want, I mean, you don't necessarily want a high
failure rate in the abstract, but it could also be evidence that people are just trying things all
the time. We're just running tons of experiments. Most of them don't work, but the ones that do work
go great. Or some of them go amazing, you know? Well, but with the, again, I think it shields,
it's like looking, so here you got a good point. Because I like to use the hyperbolic analogy
that if my school, my kids were in a school that had a 4% pass rate, you know, we'd move them out
like that. You know, and most people see you, even you agree with that for sure. Yeah. As
entrepreneurs, we accept this reality that the formulas are broken to an extent and more could
be done about it, but it's not being done because there's no incentive for the banks to change the
documentation that they're asking for, for getting started with loans and stuff like that. There's
no incentives for venture capitalists to do that. They all have protections built into the contracts,
not to drive some conspiracy. I don't think it's that. I think it's a matter of that stagnation
that you're talking about earlier about why rock the boat, right? That things are good for people.
They're not going to rock the boat, but there's a large majority of people that while we could,
now, so let me digress back to my analogy. I probably wouldn't be the parent who pulled my
kids from that school. I would be the parent who goes and tries to make a difference. That's my
nature. And it's so against the nature of most people, even people who support me like,
Jack, just shut up, man. And, you know, don't get your head chopped off in the process. But I
wouldn't have a microphone if I was, you know, if I was worried about that too much, but, you know,
we can make adjustments and changes to optimize the processes. That's what you're working on
with your mega vision. And that's my ultimate suggestion is, no, we're not trying to shut down
the banks or call it the wealthy from my perspective. We're trying to say, hey,
let's make some optimizations to this process, because what would happen to our economy
if double the amount of entrepreneurs won, given that we're already one of the strongest
economies in the world? Yeah. I think we'd be in a much better position.
So I don't think I disagree with anything you just said. And if you want to talk about kind of how we
can modify systems and policies, and especially financial systems and financial policies,
to better benefit entrepreneurs and to give people the best chance of success,
I could talk for days about that. I've got tons of ideas and I 100% agree.
I love to host you on our other show. Most people don't know we have one, but it's called
PowerTake. And it's a business news show. And we can take a lot of time on that to dive into that
particular subject without sacrificing the framework of this particular show. So we didn't
get into powerful lesson. But if you were to share one really fast, if you had what this is the last
chance to share a lesson with all of us on visionary opportunities and the experience,
what would it be? I think just the world responds to action. I mean, that's all there is to it.
You show up every day, you just do what you can do. You learn what you can learn and go.
You don't need someone to tell you it's okay to go. Just go.
Lot of physics. I love it. That's awesome, man. Well, Franklin, thank you for being here. Vision
Pros. I hope you gained as much out of this as I did. Feel free to like, subscribe, comment. That
certainly helps. Share this with friends that might benefit from it. If you want to connect with
Franklin as well, what's the best way to reach you? Yeah, I'm on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn. I
accept most connection requests there. I wrote a book, so check that out. It's on Amazon. And
always about the good conversation. So if you buy the book, I'd love to chat with you about it.
That's fantastic. I know a lot of people have never contacted the author of a book. In this
case, you have an open invitation to do so. And it seems that, not seems, Franklin not only survived
but thrived in the sparring ring with me. So if you have alternative concepts, bring them his way.
This is a lot of fun, Franklin. Thank you for being here today. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So
Vision Pros, if you want to apply to be on the show, don't hesitate to do so. When you go to the
landing page for Franklin's information, you'll have the links to subscribe from him. And then down
below that, there's actually an application to share your own vision. We would love to host you.
If you've got a great vision out there, come and share it with us. All right. Everybody take care.
Have a wonderful day. 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 going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll
invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time.