I have caused action obviously and everything.
When did it take off?
I mean, you've had how many episodes now?
Yeah, Lee.
Five, 550 now?
And I just hit 700,000 downloads actually over the weekend.
700,000 downloads?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, goals a million by the end of this year.
So it was like, I would say it ramped up
by year three, I was hitting anywhere between eight
to 12,000 listens or downloads per month.
And then when I crept into like halfway through year three
rolling into year four, that's when it started to get
to like 15 to 20,000.
And now, there's some months where I hit 40,
but average I would say is 25 to 35,000 per month.
Nice, that's awesome, man.
Way to stick to.
Way to, I'm sure you had an optimization process
as you went that all visionaries can learn from.
Consistency, and I showcased it.
So it's like, I post, it's always on YouTube,
it's Instagram, like, you know, the only way
that people will find out about what you're doing
is if you tell them what you're doing.
So, and I use my community as a way
to kind of shout myself out.
Like when I hit the 700,000 downloads,
I made a post about it.
And some people are like, oh, I'm definitely
gonna take a listen now.
So it's like a social proof and credibility,
you know, people are looking for that.
But it took a while.
I like that you appreciate the tactic,
but you don't glorify it.
Yeah.
You know, there's a difference.
It's like, we all learned how to say please and thank you.
That doesn't make us bad people.
No, not at all.
Because we don't have the tactic, you know.
And so some people are kind of like,
I think there's like a phase going through industries
where people are worried that, oh man,
if I'm principally driven, I won't use tactics.
You know, and it's no, the tactics aren't the problem.
It's how we use the resource, right?
That's the challenge.
So speaking of, I'd love to know for our audience,
what are three resources or three books
that you'd recommend any visionary pick up and learn from?
So there's a, you know, it's funny,
my wife and I, whenever someone joins our mastermind,
number one, we give them a little mug,
but we also give people three books that we love.
And three of our favorites right now,
number one is The Science of Getting Rich
by Wallace D. Waddles.
I think it's just such a,
even though the book was written like 115 years ago.
It was the best.
It's all the money mindset is such a big thing.
Everything has been predicated
from the teachings of that book.
Any money mindset book you have ever read
is based on that book, every single one.
And there are so many nuggets
that you can pull out from that book.
But I would say the big thing for me
is when Wallace talks about living in a world
of creation and collaboration
instead of a world of competition and comparison.
The second book I would say is Marketing Made Simple
by Donald Miller.
He's just, he's a genius.
I mean, I'm just gonna say it.
Like he is the foremost, I would say, leader in marketing.
And what I love about that book, it goes over,
it's like a $15,000 book that he charges $25 for,
because he gives you the keys to the castle.
You know, the benchmark of having 7,500 emails
to, you know, making sure.
And I love the concept of how he builds everything out
with the airplane and, you know,
the fuselage is represented.
You know, the wings are represented.
The engines are represented.
That's your marketing, your sales, all that stuff.
For anyone that wants to learn
how to properly market your business, that book is a must.
And the third one is something more recently.
It's not a recent book, but it crept into my life
and my wife's life.
And that is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
And that book is just, hands down,
it's just one giant, like great slap in the face
because he talks about the difference
between an amateur in business and an expert in business
and the habits that amateurs have
when they're going about business
and the habits that experts have and being a professional.
The other thing he talks about, which is really important,
is the law of resistance.
And he says, you know, amateurs fade away
and run away from resistance,
where professionals and experts lean right into it
because they know that the path to least resistance
is leaning into resistance to get on the other side of it.
So I would say those three books, foundationally,
they're just amazing and I recommend them for everyone.
Those are phenomenal resources,
two of which are new to me.
I'm excited about that.
I like old school books,
because you can see how has the principal
withstood the test of time, right?
Which is, you know, I don't think everybody wrote
their financial book or their growth book
with that book in mind, but again, that,
but because you can see like, wow,
this hit all of the same things on the head,
it's like, As a Man Thinketh, the book by James Allen.
It's like every motivational book you find right now
that's pure and good, you will find those same concepts
in that exact same book.
So that's awesome, thank you for that.
I'm also really happy to hear that about Donald Miller.
I've also been, I've been a distant fan of Donald Miller,
and I came across a string of people
who did not get great results with what he does.
And at the same time, we always,
we have to remember visionaries
that it's not the teacher's job
for the student to pass the test, right?
It is the teacher's there to provide the materials,
but sometimes we're gonna have people
who aren't able to pick up what we're putting down.
So yeah, that was great.
The War of Art, I'm gonna love that.
I mean, you will love that book.
Well, I'm a guy that dives into resistance
that I've been met with plenty of people
who are very offended by that,
or very like, why don't you calm down?
Why don't you go the easy route, basically.
And I love you, that's not my route.
We keep going, so well said.
All right, we'll go to the break.
We'll be right back and we'll dive into
Scott Aaron's vision of living your legacy now.
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 everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And I am so excited to have fellow podcast host,
but mountain of a man in a show
compared to my show, Scott Aaron,
whose show Networking and Marketing Made Simple
has 123 reviews on Apple.
He's got a couple hundred, 554 episodes
laid down to help you with your growth.
And I can't wait to bring him on stage.
We're actually gonna be talking about the vision
beyond the podcast as well.
And that's one of the greatest blessings
we can gain visionaries from other visionaries
is knowing how are they going about their success, right?
What's going on behind the scenes?
There's so many people who go down a path of success
and regret it because they gave up so much to get there
and they don't wanna talk about those things.
On the flip side, there's other leaders who are rising up
and thanks to books like As a Man Thinketh
or The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and beyond,
they're realizing that, you know what?
Maybe we can have our cake and eat it too,
even though past generations didn't think so.
So lots of opportunity there.
We'll dive in, we'll bring him on in just a minute.
Before I do that, I wanna point out
a couple of our sponsors,
people and entities that we support tremendously,
one of which being The Law Spot with Melissa Gray.
Melissa came on the show, I was nervous to have her
because a lot of lawyers are very pretentious.
And so here she comes onto the show
and she's got this wonderful personality.
She understands that legal does not have to be complicated.
And she's somebody that was like,
man, I wanna hang out with this lady.
I wanna know more about how she goes about things.
And I have been so guilty of years past,
not only not seeking the legal counsel I need,
but also working with, I would say 95%
of the more than thousand companies
that I've consulted when they work,
but did not have any legal counsel on staff.
And that's dangerous in the world of business.
So I'm not here to scare you on that.
I'm hoping you learned from my $20,000 lawsuit
regarding our trademark at Restaurant Connect.
I'm hoping you learn from the distributors who,
or the clients who send you chargebacks
and you don't know what to do with that.
Or when Apple patents your software,
the way they patented ours,
or right now Vision Pros, man, I'm excited for Apple.
I hope we don't get in a fight over that one.
But their new product is stellar.
It's so important that we protect our visions
and have people to do that.
I would just consider her in your lineup
of people to interview as you look for
how do you protect your brand and vision in the process.
Then there's directional advisors with Franklin Parker.
Franklin Parker worked in the home office ecosystem,
meaning supporting an individual who is billionaire status
and learning how to run finances
and helping them with financial advice
and how to scale wealth.
Those individuals think at a completely different level
than I'm gonna say we do, right?
I don't think too many billionaires
are listening into this episode right now.
So I always say until,
maybe once I've reached Jeff Bezos status,
maybe once I've got the amount of money
in my bank account that Bill Gates have,
maybe then I'll claim to be a financial wizard
and know exactly what to do with finances.
Until then, I have got so much to learn
and he's a wealth of knowledge.
He was also on the show.
Feel free to check both those episodes out.
And I will never ever host this show
without talking about the water project
or some other similar cause
because there are billions of people in this world
who need tremendous help.
I'm so lucky to be able to get water anytime I want it.
And there's millions of people who don't have that.
The water project does an excellent job
of showing us what they actually do
with the funds that we provide them.
You actually get to pick the project,
kind of like a Kickstarter.
You get to learn about it
and see if they're building a sand dam or borehole well.
And you get to see that project come to fruition
because they give you social media updates.
Now for me, this is an opportunity to realize
that my dollar went towards helping generational impact.
These are kids that get pulled out of school
to go look for water that might not be safe for their families.
Their parents have to abandon work to do that.
If you're not in a position to help financially,
we understand that COVID economics has been hard on people.
But if you are in the position
to where you can at least share that
or just tag somebody or say, hey, let's check this out.
That's one way where you might be able to inspire somebody
to make impact.
Maybe they'll donate a hundred thousand dollars.
Maybe they'll donate a dollar.
I know it means a lot to those people.
So without further ado, Scott Aaron,
thank you so much for being on Vision Pros Live, man.
It's an honor to host you.
Well, Jackson, grateful to be here
and looking forward to the conversation.
Yes, sir, diving right in.
You're doing so much for so many, 700,000 downloads.
That's a lot of people or your mom
clicking a button a lot of times.
I'm right to make sure that you're successful.
That'll be a combination of the two.
Mine too, man.
But with that, what is your vision for those that you serve?
To give people hope that nothing is impossible
and the life that they wanna create,
the impact that they wanna have,
the business that they wanna create and scale
is possible when you have that belief.
And I think that's the thing.
My wife and I believe so much in ourselves
and we believe so much in other people.
We want them to have the same narrative about themselves.
And I think it's just really shifting that mindset around
to a mindset of growth instead of a mindset of lack
and realizing that everything is possible
if you truly believe it is.
I love that.
Law of attraction.
I would call it the law of attraction,
the law of the harvest.
There's lots of different principles and laws
that you're talking about.
As you mentioned, the opportunity to serve.
What is your vision for you?
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
Well, creating a clear vision is something
that my wife and I truly believe in.
And for me, my personal vision is continuing
to have the work-life balance and work-life integration
that my wife and I have strived very hard
to create for ourselves.
We work three days a week right now,
Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays,
and we give ourselves the other four days off
or just as flex days to really focus on other things.
Because we believe in the principles
of living more and working less.
So you can spend more time with those
that you wanna spend with when you want, how you want.
And I think that's the big vision is continuing
to work smarter and not harder
and enjoy every single day that we're given.
Because we hear the analogies all the time
and we hear the quotes that life is short,
but it really is.
And until you're smacked in the face
with maybe a health issue,
maybe a health ailment or a challenge or a problem,
you have to appreciate the days that we're given.
And that is something that I really believe in
and my vision is continuing to show up each day,
very authentically, very genuinely as myself
and being a beacon of hope
and also an example of what is possible.
And just again, leading by example,
that's the whole thing.
Nancy and I don't want just the success for us.
That's why we're writing a book about it.
That's why we do what we do.
We wanna blaze the trails for others.
And we have as many seeds available
and our bus is possible.
So all are welcome
and we wanna see everybody achieve what they want.
I love that you're able to tie the principles of a book
like the War of Art with the idea,
the balance of the four hour work week,
and the realization that you don't have to grind
to get there.
I think a lot of us misconstrue
what Gary Vaynerchuk's intentions are
with the hustle and the grind.
We don't know what it's like a lot of us
to get out of the hood,
to escape a criminal warfare in Uganda,
to have to give everything that we can
to build a life for ourselves.
I think sometimes the hustle and grind culture
gets permanently embedded us whether we need to do it or not.
But I'd like to play devil's advocate a little bit
to give you a chance to Scott,
do you think that the hustle and grind is required
for certain circumstances in life or that it never is?
And how do you balance, again, a three-day work week
versus living your purpose?
What can you help visionaries understand there?
Cause we all have a choice as entrepreneurs.
Well, I think there's always going to be a time
in your business journey where you are working really hard.
You're never going to just kind of cruise along.
There, depending upon, I would say,
what phase of business that you're in.
Are you pre-launch?
Are you early stages?
Are you looking to grow in scale?
Are you established?
So it really depends.
And I think, Gary sometimes gets a bad rap
for promoting this hustle culture,
which he's more recently kind of detached from.
I think that was just a projection
of where he was in his journey.
And he was kind of projecting his journey
of hustle to other people.
And they kind of latched onto it.
I think the more appropriate way to state it
is whenever you're looking to build something
that's meaningful, that is your own,
it's going to take time
and it's not going to happen overnight.
My wife and I believe in the core principle
of treating your business like a 401k
and not like a lottery ticket.
And the fact is, is that anything that we do
is not get rich quick.
It is that compounded effect.
And there are certain times
when you are in your business
that there's going to be some long hours.
There's going to be some trials and tribulations.
But what I will say is when the foundations are laid down,
that is when the walls of your house can be built.
That's when the windows can be installed.
That's when the front door can be put on.
And that's when the roof can be put over your head.
But I think depending upon what stage of business
that you're in, it will require more time
to hire more of you at certain times.
And then as you grow,
like Nancy and I just hired a full-time COO.
But it's five, it's like, yeah, but it's seven years later.
So it was just us all, in year seven, we hired our COO.
So it's not overnight, it's a process.
And I think slow and steady will always win the race.
I have analogies for days.
I love the tortoise and the hare aspect
because it's not how you start, it's how you finish.
Businesses should not be built around speed.
They should be built for distance.
You want a legacy business.
And that's why the final analogy I'll leave you with is
you can take Usain Bolt,
who's arguably the greatest short track runner
in track and field history, put him in any marathon,
he'll lose every single time.
He's not built for distance, he's built for speed.
So just understanding, I think for the people
that are watching or listening to this,
just understand that there will be times
where you're working more than you maybe would like,
and you're gonna be quote unquote grinding,
maybe a little bit more.
That's just, that comes with the territory
of growing a business.
It's not always like that.
It's a phase of the business that you're in.
Yes, I love it.
So one of the big examples that's come up
between the two of us on this show already,
I wanna honor for those who are building
in today's world.
We were doing podcasting,
I was doing it for video power marketing back in 2013 or so.
We were doing a special guest hangout, we called it.
So we have video involved in it.
But nowadays, that's a big part of the norm
is getting yourself out there in the world
and really distributing your voice to the masses.
And it can be scary when you got haters
who talk bad about you.
It can also be scary if you don't recognize
the difference between somebody who's hating
and somebody who's appreciating,
but you're sensitive, right?
You get defensive about it.
It's like, you didn't say that Usain Bolt was a bad runner
or did something bad with his life
because he can't run a marathon.
The news wants to manipulate that type of stuff.
That's drama, that's exciting.
Let's get clicks with that.
You glorified the reality of the difference
to support your analogy
in relation to long-term business growth.
I said Gary Vee was bad for hustling and grinding.
I'm saying, I think from my perspective of living
in Uruguay for two years,
and seeing people really suffer through poverty,
that what he teaches and what he talks about with that
is incredibly relevant for certain people in life.
And so when we're able to navigate,
it took us, I'm projecting now, and you don't project.
That's another big thing that I really liked
that you talked about,
was rather than project and assume we understand
where somebody else is coming from,
you've learned to have the diplomacy,
to recognize the harmony in different perspectives.
Did that come naturally for you as a leader
and as a visionary, or is that something that you developed?
I sucked at that badly.
It took me a lot of development.
I think a lot of the things in business
are developed over time,
whether it's the foundations of what you've built
or the lessons that are learned.
And I think for me, I learned from a very early age,
because I got into entrepreneurship
when I was about 19 years old,
and I'll be 45 in two months,
less than two months, about seven weeks.
And for me, when you're thrown into the entrepreneurial ring
at such a young age, it was such a benefit to me,
because I wasn't quote unquote in the real world yet.
I've been psychologically unemployable since day one.
So I never, even though I did graduate with an HR degree,
I was going to college full-time
and running our family business full-time,
I was getting the best of both worlds.
I was getting the education needed
to bring it back to my real world business and vice versa.
And I think that was kind of like that double doozy
of a positive effect on myself as a person,
but also as a professional.
So I definitely faced more challenges at a younger age
than a lot of people maybe would have,
but that was to my advantage,
because now when certain things arise in business,
yeah, there are emotional hiccups
where maybe I overreact or,
because I'm a very, I work off of gratification
and making things that are right.
And when there's a wrinkle,
sometimes I have to do a check within myself.
But a lot of those things that come up in business,
that's the armor that you've been kind of building up to face.
It's the Entrepreneurial Roller Coaster by Darren Hardy.
He's best known for the compound effect.
But-
Or Success Magazine.
Or Success Magazine, yeah.
But I mean, that book, The Entrepreneurial Roller Coaster,
it couldn't be any more spot on,
because if you think about when you go to an amusement park
and you're in line to get onto that roller coaster
and you sit down in that seat for the very first time,
what's the first thing that the person running
that ride tells you to do?
Pull that safety harness down,
and you do that because much like business and life,
there's gonna be twists and turns,
there's gonna be ups and downs.
Sometimes that roller coaster
actually starts backwards, right?
It doesn't even, you take 10 steps backwards
instead of going forward.
The slingshot effect.
That's right.
Yeah, I mean, I remember even the,
there was a Dorney Park in Wild Warrior Kingdom
was the kind of like our local amusement park.
It's right where I lived outside of Philadelphia.
It was like an hour and a half drive.
And they had a, it was the largest wooden roller coaster
in the US at the time called Hercules.
And the way that the ride started
was this just uphill climb.
And it was a click, click, click, click, click, click, click.
And then you get to the top, it stops,
and then it shoots you straight down.
And again, that's how sometimes a lot of businesses go.
It's that slow climb, right?
And you reach that pinnacle,
but the peak of one mountain is the valley of the next.
And you have to just work through those things.
And I just, I like, you know, bringing analogies to things
because I like to paint pictures.
I was just having a call with one of our Mastermind members.
And you know, I said, when you're doing your workshop,
you know, her and her husband
are doing their first workshop.
I said, don't under deliver on the value.
Give enough value just like you would at a black tie event.
You don't wanna fill up on the appetizers
because then you won't be able to eat the main course.
So just give people enough of a sample size
where when you're ready to open the doors
for your offering, they're gonna really wanna dive in
and wanna eat everything that you're offering.
So I think it's, a lot of it is mindset
and the view of what we have with it
and how we go about it.
Love it.
The mindset, the strategies to compound that,
the fireworks show, right?
It doesn't start with the grand finale.
It's called a grand finale for a reason, Ryan.
So if your business launches with the grand finale
and then you don't have room to follow up on it,
it sometimes torches,
your audience doesn't wanna come back for the next show.
Like, okay, well, that was cool.
But I'm not coming again, you know, it's over.
So there are lots of realities
that we should be preparing for as entrepreneurs
in order to have the most effective presence
and impact that we wanna have.
So let's dive into a dark subject on this.
What is your worst leadership experience ever?
It could be yours and it could be one you've experienced.
Worst leadership experience ever.
That's interesting.
I would say it was more on myself
because, so the backstory of how I got to be an entrepreneur
was not the traditional one.
You know, my family went through trials and tribulations.
My father, who's still one of my best friends,
mentor, you know, everything,
you know, made some bad business decisions
early in his career.
He ended up going to federal prison for two and a half years.
But he made sure that his ducks were in a row
before he left.
And he, with the help of my two grandfathers,
purchased a failing health club in downtown Philadelphia.
And when he went away, he turned the keys over to me.
He goes, you gotta keep this thing going.
And I was a sophomore in college
and there were a lot of ups and downs.
But I think for me, this was not like to blame my dad,
not to blame my mom.
But I think for me, I didn't take the bulls,
the bull by the horn quick enough
because we had owned two gyms.
We sold them for a really nice amount of money,
opened up a third location.
A lot of, most of everything was put into my name
just because of my family's credit situation
due to my father's past.
It's just what you do as a family member, right?
Like we were in it to win it.
But I think for me, I was naive,
but also I almost like leaned into the whole ostrich effect
where I just buried my head in the sand.
And I just kind of wished upon everything
would kind of work itself out on its own.
But it did end up leading me to have to file
for personal bankruptcy in 2016 to kind of wash away
all of the things that I had knowingly
and unknowingly had done
from a financial perspective with the business.
So I feel that lack in self leadership
enabled me to be a better leader now
for the team that my wife and I have,
but also sharing that experience
with the people in our programs
gives them the path to go down
to and to avoid the path that I went down.
So I would say that was probably the worst
leadership experience, my self leadership experience.
That's powerful.
It reminds me of my first co-founder.
I was a junior co-founder by far.
I mean, he had been building for 11 years
a system called Restaurant Connect.
And before our peak, about a year and a half in
we're struggling and really pushing hard.
I mean, we had some intense moments
of what we were going through.
And he told me a story about how when he was an executive
chef at a James Good restaurant,
when we get really busy and things get crazy,
he'd know that they needed onions.
So he'd go in the back and he'd chop onions.
And his business partner, Karl Bergemeier came in
and just just destroyed him and said,
what are you doing?
Blah, blah, blah, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
Like you should not be chopping onions right now.
We need you on the front lines guiding things.
He had stuck his head, right?
Ostrich in the hole.
So he's sharing the story with me.
And then he goes, Jackson, stop chopping onions.
And I was like, oh man.
Oh, I didn't know he was gonna spin it on me.
I didn't have that level of self-awareness yet.
But whether it were the ostrich in the hole
or the person who goes in the back,
again, these analogies, again, I'm all about them, man.
Bring them to us.
Let's dive into the best leadership experience you've had.
What does that look like?
So I think for me, it was that moment
where I decided to file for bankruptcy
when almost eight years ago.
And I think for me, why I feel
that was my best leadership experience
is because at that point, well, number one,
I knew I was getting a fresh start.
Number two, I knew I would have a great story to tell.
And number three, I would also.
Yeah, and-
Sorry to interrupt you, but I'm like,
yeah, this is amazing.
And I would say the third thing is
that I would create a level of relatability
that a lot of other people couldn't.
Because to be a great leader,
you have to be able to share everything.
And I feel like in today's online marketing world,
there are a lot of facades put up
where everybody thinks business is all sunshine and rainbows.
There's, you just start something
and you're gonna make a lot of money.
And my wife and I really pride ourselves on keeping it real.
Like we share the good, the bad, the ugly.
I mean, it's there.
And I think for me, understanding that
when someone comes into one of our programs
that is in a great place,
but they see it as that they're in a bad place.
And then I kind of share my story
of actually where I was just eight short years ago.
It helps them kind of turn the mirror around
and say, you know what?
There's people out there that could have it worse than me.
And I think that's a really tough pill to swallow
for a lot of people, but I need to be very open,
honest and transparent with people.
If people are gonna look up to me,
it's just what Spider-Man says, right?
With great power.
Uncle Ben.
Yeah.
Great responsibility.
With great responsibility.
I mean, and it's the key.
So I knew that if I was stepping into this leadership role
where I was influencing other people in a positive way,
I couldn't hold anything back.
Like I was not gonna leave anything swept under the rug.
I was gonna showcase, highlight and share it all
because the more relatable I became to my audience,
the more they knew, liked and trusted me.
Not that I required that,
it's just the natural human tendencies.
People work with, buy from and link arms with people
that they know, like and trust.
And I pride myself on doing that every single day.
I wanna be that beacon of light for a lot of people
that may be in a dark tunnel.
And I wanna let them know it's gonna be okay.
I've been through the ups and downs, but you know what?
As Les Brown says, no matter how many times
I get knocked down, if I can look up, I can get up.
And that's one of my main mantras that I live by.
And I literally stick to it every single day.
That's so powerful.
I love this quote.
To be a great leader,
you have to be willing to share everything.
The good, bad, the ugly.
It's so worth doubling down on.
It's hard to provide results to an entrepreneur
who's not willing to lead.
And so you're helping people catch that on the front end.
Like if you're going to get the results that you want,
and you have to be willing to lead,
and leadership does require that level of vulnerability.
There is a context.
For those of you who are listening,
you're ready to go tell your entire story on live.
Certainly you have to protect
your non-disclosure agreements, right?
If you have those, you have to be willing to,
you don't have to be willing to.
I recommend being careful with what you say
and how it might affect your personal familial relationships.
You might wanna discuss that with some people first
before torturing your mom about whatever she did to you
as a 12 year old.
There's nuances that you sometimes can't come back from
with people who matter,
but there's also fear in the middle of a mergers
and acquisitions scenario,
it might not be appropriate to reveal
certain details about that.
That doesn't make you not transparent.
That makes you aware, intentional for your realities.
I've twice divorced.
I wasn't sharing that publicly with everybody and anybody.
It wasn't that I was hiding it.
Me too.
Twice divorced, buddy.
So you know that-
Yeah, and I mean, just to interject,
no relationship in my life I never considered a failure.
So many positives from every single thing
I've experienced it.
And again, it prepared me for meeting my wife.
And so there's no negativity or ill will,
or it's everybody has a different journey they go down.
It's not a straight line.
Everyone's life looks different.
And again, I don't have a fear of judgment anymore.
I did for a long period of time,
I cared what other people thought and how they felt.
And I even remember saying to my sister,
when I started dating again,
I said, who's gonna wanna be with me?
Like I had two marriages that didn't work out.
I have baggage and my sister said,
listen, people will love you for you.
And it was a great piece of advice because again,
I could have lived by that narrative that like,
oh, I'm damaged, I'm broken.
And then you can find somebody else who has that damage
and then you end up both having destructive habits
versus healing.
Yeah, listen, everything works out for everybody.
And that's the mindset.
Like everything happens for a reason, for a purpose.
And it's that half glass full aspect.
You know, just whenever one to live the best life,
we get one go at this.
So let's make it our best.
That's right.
Mind's abundant, man.
I love the analogy and I'm like,
my glass is overflowing, thank you.
It is.
And so when you can find that and see that,
John Whaley was on the show, he's a phenomenal leader.
And he talked about not the silver lining.
He used to talk about all the,
and we both came to the conclusion of like, wow,
like our adversities have been our silver road, you know,
to the greatness that we've been able to accomplish
and achieve.
And the same is true for all you listening in.
I just wanna double down on what Scott said.
If you want to lead people, then be vulnerable
because people won't know where you're leading them to
and they'll feel it.
They'll know that they can't follow you
and they can't see your path
because you're not sharing it with them.
And naturally that's gonna lead them
to have a very hard time connecting with you long-term
unless they're also faking it until they make it.
And you don't fake it till you make it.
I think that that's a lie.
Yeah, I just, I have a really tough time with perfectionism
because it doesn't exist.
And I feel that social media has given people
this false perception that perfection exists,
meaning they have all these prim and proper pictures
and it's like their life is one big photo shoot.
And that's not, that's not reality.
How those are the highlights, right?
Yeah, it's the highlight reel, you know?
And I, you know, and then people share, you know,
all these drunkologue posts where they're just writing
on and on and on and on.
And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like,
who's got time to read all that?
Like, I'm just, I'm too focused on
like what I'm trying to accomplish.
Like I appreciate what people do and what they share.
I just wish there was more honesty
and there was more openness and more truth.
Yeah, and again, like I-
I gotta ask you real quick though.
I don't wanna lose a chance.
I gotta ask if this was the last chance you had
to rock the mic and to share a powerful lesson
and visionaries about your experience,
from your experience rather,
what would the final power lesson be?
That, you know, this is something that I took away
from an interview I did with a friend of mine,
Cody Schuen, a Canadian bestselling author
of the book, Everyday Legacy.
And he shared this one impactful thing for me
and it has not left.
And this was nearly like four years ago.
And he worked in the funeral parlor industry.
So he was surrounded by death for nearly 20 years.
And he said to me, Scott,
you don't have to wait until you're gone
for your legacy to be felt.
You can leave it while you're still living.
And that rocked my world.
I mean, it just, it basically it stopped me in my tracks
because I realized that I had a responsibility
not for how I show up for myself,
but how I show up for the people that look up to me.
And I wanna make sure that I'm leaving my legacy right now
so people can feel it, they can see it, they can believe it
and they can dream it themselves.
And I think that that's the big lesson
is that your legacy, it's happening every single minute,
every single hour, every single day that your eyes are open.
You just have to realize it.
I love that.
We're gonna dive deep into that.
We're gonna feature a portion of your legacy
while we do that.
But in terms of helping visionaries,
living your legacy now, how?
What does that look like, Scott?
Well, I think for one is doing things
that you actually love.
And I can honestly say that everything that my wife
and I get to do as co-founders of our business,
the Time to Grow and all the programs
and the mastermind that we run,
we get to help people build their legacies.
And I think that's what it's all about.
It's helping people earn more to have more,
to be able to do more.
And I always tell people the money shows up
when the impact is felt.
So when people work with us,
whether it's in any of our programs or my coaching
or consulting or our mastermind,
the idea is to then pass down everything
that we have learned and how we've become successful
to teach other people how to do the same thing.
We are not an anomaly.
We are not special.
Yeah, we have some aspects of us
that are very unicorn-ish.
I do believe that we are very special people,
myself and my wife,
but there's millions of special people out there.
Every single person listening or watching this,
there's something about you that is very unique and special.
And that can be highlighted, showcased,
and put out for the world to see.
And that really is what your legacy is all about,
is what can you do today to leave one person better?
And that's what we really focus on.
What can you do today?
So that's the write-down of what can we do today
to make one person better?
And then you've got a system now where your ripple effect
and of having all these episodes out there
is doing that for multiple people at once.
And it's so cool how...
I'm just bought into that concept.
I drink the Kool-Aid.
That's what I love.
It tastes good.
Drink it all you want.
It's a great talk by a man named M. Russell Ballard.
And he talks about honeybees.
If you were to look up his name in that,
you'd probably find anybody would find the talk.
And he talks about how the amount of honey
that a bee provides to the hive on a daily basis
is almost so small that it's almost insignificant.
Yet we have all the honey that we have available to us
because of these bees and their little work.
And he relates it to the divine power
of saying hello to somebody
and how we often take that away from ourselves.
That the value of those small actions
rather than recognizing that that's exactly
what we're able to do and supposed to do
to make an impact in this life.
And we don't have to...
We shouldn't be upset or lose sight
of the value of those moments
just because of the highlight reels available
on Instagram and everywhere else.
So I'm paraphrasing by far from what he said.
But that concept is...
I hope my kids, when they do those little things,
I hope that they are happy with themselves
at the end of the day.
And I know that impact that they made,
no matter how small it was, matters tremendously.
Because it's not fun to live life
when you're constantly threatening yourself
or thinking that you're not of value to the world.
And so you hit one more thing in my soapbox on this.
You talked about you guys knowing that you're unicorns,
you and your wife.
And we do live in a world where people think,
oh my gosh, that's arrogant.
No, Scott's confidence and his value of himself
does not contradict or challenge your value.
It's not a competition.
There can be eight billion amazing people on this world.
It's not about who's number one.
It's about being appreciative of the fact
that you're beautiful, Scott's beautiful,
I'm beautiful, et cetera.
It's a whole world.
We're able to come together
and stop tearing each other's beauty down.
It would be a beautiful thing in my opinion.
Yeah, I think for me, it's two things.
Number one, I know that we're special
because we're getting people results.
And I think that makes me that value-added person.
It's not about my success.
It's the results that other people get.
But my mom shared this story with me a few years ago
that I never knew about.
And she told me she was picking me up
from preschool one day.
And she picked me up, she put me in the car,
in the car seat or whatever.
And the teacher followed me out.
And the teacher pulls my mom aside
and she goes, I just got to share something with you.
My mom's like, okay, is everything all right?
And she goes, yeah, everything's fine.
She goes, I just let her let you know
there was something really special about that little boy.
She goes, I just wanted you to know.
And I still get the chills when I even just talk about it
because my mom said from that, like she knew it,
but to have an outside perspective
when I was only four and five years old,
someone saying there's something really special
about that kid, a sparkle in his eye, whatever it was.
But that's every single one of us.
I could go on and on and on.
Every single one of us has a gift inside of us.
And I'll go back to something that Les Brown said.
Les Brown talks about how the graveyards around the world
have some of the greatest songs, greatest movies,
greatest inventions that will never be made,
never be heard, never be seen
because they're buried with the people in those graves.
And the last thing that I want personally
is to go to the grave with my gifts inside of me.
So I will make sure every single day
that I'm sharing my gift in one way, shape or form
with those around me to make sure
that it's not going six feet underneath with me.
Vision Pros, you can subscribe
to Scott Aaron's podcast, Networking and Marketing Made Simple
on any one of the major podcasting platforms.
On the landing page as well,
you'll have the opportunity to see what actions
Scott recommends and what paths he's put in place
to help you with your success.
And if you have a desire to come on the show
and share your own vision,
in the top right hand corner,
you'll see a button that says, be our guest.
If your vision is wholesome,
if it's helping other people,
then whether you're, I don't know,
Elon Musk or Joe Smith that nobody knows,
that doesn't matter to me.
I want the great visions on this stage,
but Elon, you're always welcome, of course, as well.
So with that said, guys,
thanks for being here for the show.
Have an excellent rest of your week
building out your visions
and we will see you on the next episode.
Take care, everybody.
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 thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an.