This week's "Free for all Friday" episode is one you won't want to miss! Hosts Johnny Awesome and Jimmy Fantastic welcome Kurt Richardson, CEO of Encore Athletix, Mentor and cunsult for NFL teams and pro-athletes. Richardson shares his expertise on how athletes can capitalize on their personal brand and social media presence, while also shedding light on the challenges and controversies surrounding NIL rights.
The conversation then turns to Richardson's business of helping professional athletes plan for their post-football careers by building networks and managing their time effectively. He emphasizes the importance of networking and vulnerability, and shares tips on how to balance different roles while prioritizing personal time.
The discussion also touches on modern literacy and the evolution of education in keeping up with changing times. Richardson and the hosts delve into time management techniques and the importance of focusing on the right questions to simplify complex problems.
Inspired Purchase
Get you kids started now on their NFL dreams with this highly rated Kids Football, Johnny Awesome wishes his dad was cool enough to buy him one.
https://amzn.to/3AgHACP
(notice a small portion of the purchase of the ablove mentioned will help to support the theory that we are on to somthing)
If you enjoy our content, please like, subscribe, and share. You can also catch the show LIVE @ facebook.com/freeforallfriday and make sure you stick around after for "the afterburner"
This week's "Free for all Friday" episode is one you won't want to miss! Hosts Johnny Awesome and Jimmy Fantastic welcome Kurt Richardson, CEO of Encore Athletix, Mentor and cunsult for NFL teams and pro-athletes. Richardson shares his expertise on how athletes can capitalize on their personal brand and social media presence, while also shedding light on the challenges and controversies surrounding NIL rights.
The conversation then turns to Richardson's business of helping professional athletes plan for their post-football careers by building networks and managing their time effectively. He emphasizes the importance of networking and vulnerability, and shares tips on how to balance different roles while prioritizing personal time.
The discussion also touches on modern literacy and the evolution of education in keeping up with changing times. Richardson and the hosts delve into time management techniques and the importance of focusing on the right questions to simplify complex problems.
Inspired Purchase
Get you kids started now on their NFL dreams with this highly rated Kids Football, Johnny Awesome wishes his dad was cool enough to buy him one.
https://amzn.to/3AgHACP
(notice a small portion of the purchase of the ablove mentioned will help to support the theory that we are on to somthing)
If you enjoy our content, please like, subscribe, and share. You can also catch the show LIVE @ facebook.com/freeforallfriday and make sure you stick around after for "the afterburner"
World Class gas breaking news and you with your hosts Johnny awesome and Jimmy fantastic you are on free for all Friday Good morning Good morning Good morning everybody this is Jimmy fantastic and I have been a vessel for my greater as a positive positive energy a secret of greatness within all my kids doing his daddy insert anything and let it be known that I will live up my purpose this day because shake free the chains of complacency stop out the flames out there goes what I was finishing here oh my piano yeah me yes thank you that's why keep him guessing season three I think has been the season of me just cutting my own interrupt. Do you mean I think we got to get even close yeah, we're gonna have to the room is bigger than there we go. And we have a very very special guest today we're excited to announce Yes sir. Sir is there Curtis Richardson so I was super excited I was super excited to make this thing happen and get this and get you on our show with us because I've been we've known each other for a long time we used to work together downtown at the Big Red queue and and and but you've done some amazing things man and watching from afar and watching your social medias and the things that you're doing and the impact you're making. Not only I mean you're making a huge impact for professional athletes but what you're doing for your community and for kids man is second to none so that's what I just had to I needed to get it out and I needed to get it out there so I appreciate you coming on for sure thanks. I think it's cool when you guys are gonna by the way already Troy and sat in their way you anytime it wasn't it's a lot bigger when we're not trying to fit into such a small queue but absolutely so this is so this is great so Jimmy we have not met and except for the three seconds beforehand when he watched me scramble to try to get the show started on time. So this is great and actually it's one of the favorite you know our favorite things to do is to just have candid conversations but I was looking over your profile a little bit working with you know is it mostly NFL I saw on there is it like mostly NFL players that you you were working with? Yeah, we work with a lot of NFL guys a lot a lot of like Power Five guys went out a few schools so we work with Michigan State Oklahoma State and Florida State as well similar thing now that and I ELLs more viable thing just teaching people how to maximize the access they have been in a high profile place like you know that I kicked out Oklahoma State is practically a pro athlete time with the amount of things they can make move and check for themselves compared to two years ago. So what we focused on is all the off the field stuff opportunities that allow people to go from being a young guy with money to be an old guy Yeah, so And how has that how is the how is the NFL thing changed man like it's so crazy just looking at it from the outside in right that'd be my you know I you know my son's the manager at elevated tide roll tide of course. And but so looking at it from the outside and I'm like holy crap how does a coach or somebody like yourself even hang on to this? Yeah, so everyone's got the Dragon by the tail. I don't think what happens now is the way that it's going to be later. Awesome fixed by the way on the fly. I see what you did there. But with my audios, kudos to that, because that was gonna give me a little bit of a freakout, I think at some point. And then what exists now and nio will not be the way it will be soon very soon. I would imagine in the next like year or two. The positive of it is I'm a pro and il guy like I'm for it. You look at like the quality of people that are coming through they already know their brands. So I had Trevor Lawrence as you know, like when he was a rookie, that guy comes with literally a team of people. I mean, he has brand he has like trademarks and service marks they like they have a team of people that have set him up for the rest of his life so that all he has to do is perform on the field and a whole bunch of other dominoes will fall now. Not everybody's a Trevor Trevor Lawrence, but what's great is there's a lot of kids with big personalities and big social media followings that will be able to capitalize and monetize and learn a lot about business. So it's not all of these people won't make a lifelong amount of money, even if they're a pretty good college player. But learning how to walk into a room with people who have an interest in you and negotiate a fair deal, and watch how product is executed and how campaigns are executed. All of that, to me is as important in many ways, especially for people that look like me and come from where I come from then learning, you know, your regular program, you know, because you know, a lot of us athletes, we do communications, we do kinesiology, we do some of these less exercise science. And I fall into both of those, I have a master's in communication. And my undergrad is and can you spell it, so I'm double MI, as far as curriculum goes, but you get this, you've got kids that are walking into rooms with like Mars advertising, and like Coca Cola, and they're meeting people who are doing something other than sports at a high level, and they're also the best in the world. And that's one of the things that got us involved with the NFL side is, these guys have a particular skill that we know about on Sundays, but also, there's a lot of very high level guys that can be best to the world at something else. And that's what we really try to preach is like, Hey, this is fantastic. But you take a guy like a guy like kendama, can sue, for instance, he's gonna be the best in the world at other things. And so there's 1700 guys that get to play on Sunday, that are capable of it. And there's not a 200 guys on the planet that can do it, meaning, there's probably only like 50 or 60 guys who are close enough to the NFL, no knock on the XFL Yes. So it's such a rare small community, you get to be number one in the planet at something for 10 years when you consider college through pros. And then you go to be an ordinary Joe again, but you've developed all these skills that help people be number one in the world. And if we can point those skills towards, we do a lot in real estate. As you know, if we put those skills towards FinTech development, or even foundational stuff, we work with a lot of guys who don't have to work ever again. But you don't want to be 38 years old, and your daughter's asking you why you don't leave the house every day all her other friends, dads go to work, right, and you're sitting in this $4 million prison. So you know, redirecting that high level skill, because a lot of us on the outside we look at it as DNA, but there's a really, really interesting stories that show you you know, my saying is you can't stop a go getter, we got some guys that will their way into the NFL. And if we can point that at anything else, you know, you see what happens in college guys to you know, the head of our state legislators, a former sparring dog, Joe take, I don't think there's any person on the planet surprised that he became, you know, a leader in the military and then is now going, you know, he may be President of the United States when no one is shocked by that, because of the way he worked at this other skill. And that he's started working, he took those exact same traits and apply them to this political life now, literally reps, and contacts and focus and mentorship, all the stuff that made him a great offensive lineman at Michigan State. He's just redeployed that energy somewhere else, and we see it pay off. And we just haven't seen enough of that. We've seen a lot of the stories of guys going pro. But I think there'll be this new generation because of that IL and because of some of the stuff that exists for these guys post career now. We're gonna see some people have really unique lives afterwards. Yeah. So I'm following everything you guys are talking about? I just want to let everybody out there. He has nothing about sports. No, I do. I do. We're talking about the end. And I Oh, look for um, but you know, what's interesting is somebody that has no clue what's going on. This is the whole success leaves clues things, right? I picked up so many nuggets inside of what ever you guys were just talking about. But I was like, wow, listen to this. So you're helping people walk into a room? That was one of the things I picked up on and negotiate contracts with other people that are that are pros in negotiating and merging both of them together, right? That's just contract negotiation. Right? Then the skill. So what what does that look like? How do you prepare somebody for the let's just say for the sale, then so they're walking into a group of people to negotiate the stuff out, you're helping them learn how to walk into that business world and negotiate that it would be over stating my importance in this situation by saying I'm doing it what I like to do is I have a big network of people who are much more capable than me. And I put capable people with people that are in demand. So that's really my niches. So there is, you know, I have a couple girls that I know that are like, experts in figuring out what somebody's social media is worth. And so they can help prepare that person who's going to be a part of a deal to say, Hey, look at your engagement. Here's your follower contact. Here's people with similar followers, what they asked for from brands of this size. There's a lot of approaches on the NIHL deal that are and I'll just for because you bring up a good point. It's name image and likeness. And its design. The NCAA got sued a bunch of years ago, over a video game basically that there was a very popular video game called NCAA was one of EA Sports, which is a classic video game makers wants popular games. But kids were like, wait a second, like, how am I in this video game and nobody cut me a check. And that led to wait a second, how is a jersey with my family's last name in the student bookstore and people sell it and nobody caught me attractive. It was one of the classic modern guys. But it's really started with the UCLA basketball team from the 90s at op ed and Charles O'Bannon, and a guy named Tyus, Edney, they were probably the most famous people in the country for about a two or three year span. They made $0 from they broke every Jersey record. They were like signing autographs on behalf of the team and the team was like selling pills autograph, they would like bookstores would pay the team to have these guys come sit down at their bookstore. 20 $30,000 these guys would sit there all day and sign. And we were just saying, Oh, congratulations. So forget, you get free food in the cafeteria, or we're gonna pay for your books. And so I don't remember who it was at Charles one of them started a class action lawsuit against the NCAA. Fast forward, they realized, Okay, wait a second, we're selling these guys name, image and likeness, they need to be compensated for that. So very controversial because of the amateur status of it. But what happened is and where I landed on this is that if you were a biology student at the University of Michigan, and you patented something, even if you were on scholarship for biology, you would be able to be compensated for your extra work. If you were an English student at Michigan State and you wrote a podcast or or you wrote a blog that was monetized, you're able to get that money, even if you're on scholarship. So there was this weird competing idea that, hey, we're already paying you guys, tuition and books go be happy. But there's literally other students at the universities that are on scholarship as well for academics and being able to monetize their extra skill. And so name image and likeness was designed for guys to be able to create opportunities for themselves, it's turned into something else to what Jimmy and I were talking about where I said, That's Dragon by the tail is there's a lot of people getting compensated for things other than their name, image and likeness. And what that means is, there's very big schools, Texas a&m is a notorious one not good, bad or indifferent. They're just taking advantage of the vagueness of the rules where they're literally just paying players to come to that school out of what's called a collective. And they're saying, we'll figure out how to use you later how to use your name, image and likeness later. But here's a 500,000. If you come to school here, literally a half million up just because they have a name or an image and a light because they are saying, Hey, you got a big following. You're important or a five star person. We'll figure out how to monetize this later. But if you sign on National Signing Day will get you a 500,000. So what I'm hearing if I'm hearing this correctly, is Johnny awesome here, who's never really played a sport in his life. I could get a name and image and likeness so large that some professional football team would want to pick me out don't College. Oh, college, that'd be even better. You're a little you're a little overweight there. They're a little old for what they're looking for. How big the name image and likeness is, right? Yeah, no, it's a massive player. Yeah, well, oh, wait, they're luring this fantastic players in and saying, Hey, you got 800,000 followers to sow will give you a million bucks to come here. Yeah, I see. So I need to have 16 on your blocking and tackling. So I've never had a problem blocking anything. The funny thing is like there's, there's, you know, the you know, being a basketball coach in Michigan, too. Like I see all these young kids, right? And there's a there's a there's a young kid, I'm not gonna bring up names, but he's a them. He's here locally, but he has over 300,000 Instagram followers. He's in eighth grade. And he's got that right there. Yeah, and because in MHS, Level A will still be in him, right. But as soon as he decides the, in your world and basketball, we have a lot of kids decided to not play high school basketball, right? We tried 300,000 followers, depending on the engagement of that. So they look at posts, they say, alright, you have three other guys and followers. But if you put up 25 posts, what's your average engagement on those posts? He could probably have businesses paying him between five and $7,000 per post. So he could put up whatever picture he wants and put like a Cadillac logo on it, and Cadillac might pay him$7,000 Every time he does it. It's not easy, though. If you think about that. It does sound nuts. Johnny, don't let it make your head explode. So think about this. How much does Cadillac pay for dead air on channel six, right that nobody watches are paying hundreds of 1000s of dollars for people not watching television? Yeah, whereas they can look at a kid like this and say wait, it's like every post he sends gets 35,000 eyeballs on it. 7000 might not be so bad. Yeah, it's amazing man. And so and I want to I want to gotta reverse because I know we got deep into the Nile stuff. But like, how, how did you go from where like how did this idea come come about with you like to start this business and to even to go down this path. So one day at our former employer I used to work right outside there and Gilbert's office at Quicken Loans was where our training setup was on nine Monroe in the copperware building. One day I go to get on the elevator and big ass arm opens the door and keeps it from closing. Right, you know, I'm hitting the Close button and this huge arm comes in thing and it opens back up and it's Adamic ensue. his rookie year he had just been drafted by the Detroit Lions has not really played in the NFL yet. And here he is on his way up to nine Monroe to meet with Dan Gilbert. And, at the time, the guy that mentored me, he was the president of Quicken Loans Patrick McKenna's. He's friends with all these lions. I already knew that, you know, his best friend is notoriously Kid Rock singer and so he was already kind of like the business person that was in this like other subculture of like celebrity and pro athletics and pro athletics and and so I just asked him later in the day, I was like, why was soo up here and they're like, oh, he wanted to meet Dan. He's got all these ideas for life after football, that he has not played football yet pro. He was really good college player, obviously, in his career, in many ways has gone the way people thought I mean, he's very if he's not a Hall of Famer, he's very close. In any event that did something to me like, oh, my gosh, these guys because I have you know, I played in college, I was on Michigan State scene for 10 seconds. Got in trouble was unfair state scene for a couple of years got in trouble. I was the guy that kept spilling out. But I had friends I had success. And I was like, Oh, they didn't know they went all in on football. But no one in my saying is no one goes to the NFL, they go through it. It's not like a destination, you're going to do something else after the NFL. Here was the guy the first guy had ever been around that realize that early. And he wasn't some bum. He was like the number I think two or three traffic. Yeah. And it figured that out. And so later on, he famously became best friends with Warren Buffett, and his circle of people is unbelievable. And when I realized this, okay, wait a second. It's not just him. The reason I knew it wasn't just him. It's because he started doing this before we knew if he was going to be good or not. I realized that all of these guys have access that you and I don't have, were even experts in what we do. Right? So I get, you're affiliated with a brand. So I don't know, exit CEOs name necessarily, but pardon me for using another brand. But like we've had players called Gary Keller. You get a meeting with him while they're in the NFL. We can't do that. Right? I can't pick up the phone and call Gary Keller. What when someone's like, hey, Devin Mccourty, from the New England Patriots is trying to reach out to you. That message gets through. What is that? That's access? Yeah. And what I teach the guys is, while you're a current player, not when you're a former player, because former player almost unfortunately indicates that we've got a need, like, I need you to help me. When you're a current player, you can open all kinds of doors. And so the ideation of what I ended up doing started because somebody came to see Dan, and it didn't make sense to me. Why is this guy who was a third or I can't remember, he's one of the top five picks in the NFL draft in like 2010 or 2011. Why in the hell is he here in our building? And so you might have seen one of the slides in my presentation, I put up all the applicants who had a badge for quick and low. Yeah, he could come buzzin and come see. And he would have meetings there and his sister who ended up again, I learned all about access from this accidental conversation, his sister, GM, great lady Shimon working for Jay Z. No knock on her. She's not saying she's qualified or not qualified. But there's a lot of people trying to do that. Why did she get to do that at an accelerated rate as soon as she's out of God, because her brothers and dama can sue and I started seeing all these parallels how, wait a second, there's this world here that these guys don't know how to do. And I was able to kind of craft that Tony knuckles who you know, helped me put together a message of like, how you pitch this and then slowly but surely, you know, I got an at bat with the Miami Dolphins and then he connected me. He's a good childhood friend, he connected me with the Giants, the Giants gonna come to the Jets does connect me with the cult. And before you know it, I'm like, I there's a book of a resource book in the NFL. And for the section on networking. I'm the subject matter expert. So that goes out to everybody who comes with NFL NFL legends NFLPA, and it's me and the guy who wrote the book. Never Eat Alone, which Ferrari is his last name Ferraro. Which is ironic because I had never read a book. His book has never been alone. My lifestyle was never read a book. told me not those who helped me build this presentation that got me into the NFL. The first thing he ever did for me when we were talking about like networking was give me that book. Never Eat Alone. So there's a little serendipity or irony in that as the first book I've read. Yeah, it's funny, right? It's incredible that what you're doing and not only that, now it's it's now you're back In the community, right, and you're you're on the school board, right and doing a ton of stuff for your community. So like, again, there's 24 hours in the day, man, how are you? Well, there's a couple of things. One is, what's ironic about me teaching about access is that that's exactly what has been my life. I'm from Cranbrook housing projects. Like my mom worked at Denny's. She wasn't working at Denny's like to pay for school or transition from a job that was her real life. We really our rent was $6 a month and we would sometimes get kicked out. Like we I had a really hard life. And that all of a sudden, I started realizing how to really easy life. And what it was is I had access to different information, different opportunities, and so much to people's chagrin. I live in East Lansing, which I live in a wild setup. I live in us new sub that was built on a golf course that is randomly annexed into the school district where I grew up. I had been living in Florida for years and years and years, my sister passed away of cancer. We came up here to get her kids and the judge was like cool. All you have to do is re establish residency in Michigan. We're Excuse me. And so I got a trick or not trick. Well, maybe that's a Freudian slip, I got to convince my wife to move out from Fort Lauderdale and sunrise to Lansing, Michigan, you love the snow. But in any event, we ended up we end up here I find out randomly that my neighborhood is part of Lansing School District, even though we have no kids that go to Lansing schools, like we live in Bath Township. We don't even live in the same county as the school district. But I had been involved with the schools for so long. I was like, Oh, this is perfect. And so I was like, alright, I'll let me run for the school board. Everyone's like, why would you do that? Like, you know, it's a really mess. It's the worst kind of politics there is, by the way. Local politics is notoriously like grievious and contentious with school board politics, especially in 2023. It's a wild arena to be in but because I don't have other political aspirations that allows me to focus on the word in the title education. And so no knock on my colleagues. But we have people running for city council right now. We have a person that wants to be a state senator, like it's, for most people involved in a big school board like this and a big town like Lansing. It's just a springboard to meet the people connections, because, you know, we oversee a $362 million a year budget. So you're gonna meet movers and shakers. So what's that go back to access? So people take this job and run for this job, get appointed to this job to meet other people? I'm doing it. I don't need any of these people for anything. At least right now. Right? So I'm able to talk about, you know, last night I'm, I'm able to say, hey, we're on a losing team. Right now, our district is underperforming. And it's all of our fault. And I just joined this team, but I'm no different from you all. I'm part of the losing team, too. We need to spend more time talking about education and not all this other stuff that the political world lumps on to that space. So I just to answer your question how I got involved in that. I just knew I could stand I could carry it because I don't have these other aspirations. 24 hours in a day I time block stuff. So literally access, I met one of the best organizers of time, like this guy is sought out by people all over the planet, to help fix their place, and was able to just be a fly on the wall in the room. And I realized, like, Oh, I could work really, really hard on school board twice a week for 45 minutes and get more done than people can do a two hour you know, like we're doing right now. When you had sent me the text this morning, I had already done two hours of work for my business, Aqua athletics. Right? I work on the leadership team with a company that owns ServiceMaster brands that owns like two men in a truck and Merry Maids and all of that stuff. So I have like a national accounts like nine to five job, we're building relationships with Coca Cola and all that stuff. But what does that do that when I meet the person that Coca Cola on this side of my life, it applies on this. And so I've just kind of structured my life that when I walk into a room, I'm gonna meet the people that I need to meet for the other people, including the kids. Are you guys paying attention? Is anybody listening in between the lines right now? You guys are watching. Give us a thumbs up on this do you? Do you realize what this man is saying? There's so much that there's so much we talk about how this all like my mind is blown. I know you I haven't said anything in 20 minutes. Because my mind is spinning thinking right now. Here's somebody that took the principle of not to talk about I know Russell Brand talks about that right that you you have taken the principle of you know that that old saying that you can meet everybody in the world. You're your two people away from meeting everybody in the world. And you've made that work for you. Because you actually did that like even the school board thing to two weeks ago. I can't remember which podcast episode we were talking about the importance of relationships. Not necessarily because As you need that relationship or that person today, but you never know if that person might need something from you in the future, or if some other future opportunity will come up, where you can then go back to that person. So it's all about relationships and, and being able to have that network and you are a master of living that I mean, I don't know if people are catching this or not. But Oh, my word from the school like, like even said, you know, okay, cool. And part of the school. I don't need any of them now. But we don't know what what in the future, you might have this relationship. And then you have the side business, just because that gives you access to network with this next guy, who now you can put him in the other kid that you just met, like, Wow, that's incredible spot on. That is I have through other people. I'm very unskilled myself through other people learn how to do this. I just was speaking on a thing with ESPN last week in Atlanta. And there's all these kids trying to break into sports. And I tell them all, you're all trying to do it wrong. Like if you're trying to break in the NFL, the 32 teams is the worst way to do it. Yeah, there's always 32 of those jobs on the on the planet, right? If you work for United Way, on any of their like community foundation stuff, you're gonna meet the guy and gal that run the stuff for the Falcons or the Jaguars or whatever. And then when the job pops up, you already know them. Right. And you've already done work with the United Way. It's like you're bringing something to them, IP know how and all of this other stuff. So to your point, yeah, that's what I focus on really trying to be super intentional about. And then the other thing is, and this is where people I can, we can literally change this to a networking podcast right here, because it's my damn, most people are meeting people for themselves. Yes, I tried to meet people for other people. And I collect people and like, I'm trying to do I accidentally call them and it's four in the morning in Los Angeles. I have a we have listeners in Los Angeles that are on right now that are on right now. Yeah. I don't know if we can work that out or not. So yeah, J Brown. J Brown is Jay Z's business partner. He's the CEO of rock nation. There's no plan at where I'm supposed to meet him. For the morning, if JC would have walked in the room, any of the times I've been out there, I wouldn't have a real health problem on my hands. Like I can't in my mind. When I meet somebody who's like, Oh, we got this guy who's like sick and branding. Oh, he's also in music. But he knows he's a businessman and all this stuff. And like, he walks into the room. And you can have mentioned that the guy is the CEO of rock nation. Right? Right. I've had that scenario happen so many times, because people want to connect me with the good people. Because I'm going to, hopefully connect other good people with that. But what I've started to realize is is like you mentioned the call away from the connection you need, yeah, I kind of have this tear of people. And I don't know if you've seen it, because I was trying to cover up his phone number. So it didn't go out there once we will. But I have a bunch of phone numbers and my contacts that have this gold hand next to it. And I believe those are people that could call the president, the United States within one or two calls. So I have like this network in my mind broken up by like, I'll have like a, I have an icon. So that might say Johnny awesome, and then have like a microphone. Okay, this guy is figured out podcasting. So I might have a player soon that says, Wait a second. All right, Travis Kelce. And all these guys have podcasts on their player, I need a mentor in this. And so I'll just look through my phone for the microphone. And like, Oh, Johnny, awesome. And Jimmy Nelson, maybe I could put them in the room with Joe player from the from the ravens, which you can, by the way, I just want to throw that out there. Or Jay Z, whoever you want to put us in the room with me I'm not prepared to. But the only unfulfilled goal I have in my life was to go the rock nation bread. So if any of the people from LA are are watching, and that opportunity pops up, I would love to be contacted. But all of that is not what I tried to tell people about and that's the same for this interview. I don't want somebody to meet me and feel better about me. I want them to meet me and feel better about what they could do because I literally, I literally am one day like drinking Miller lights at Michigan State and the next day, I'm hired at Quicken Loans. But I wore love to my first day I didn't even know what business casual was like. Luckily, I've always kind of had a little self awareness. I got there early on my first day to see what people I started in 2003 for. There's no internet on the phones. So I literally show up the victor Parkway, and I had to watch like 20 people walk into work, because I don't even know what business casual was. And so like, and then I went to the Myers across the street and bought like literally they didn't have any size 12 shoes, they only had size 10 like black shoes and like, like, I've just kind of had a knack for knowing that other people know stuff. I don't know. And they have these experiences that I don't know, and they have this culture and IP that I don't know. But the one skill I know is if I walk into a room with it, I'll detect it. Like oh, this is what these people do. And oh, this is what these people do. And that what it allows you to do is and this is really important for the So I try to teach athletes especially but I come into contact with a lot of young black kids who are from where I'm from young white kids who come from, like, you know, I look at like the kids in the projects in the trailer park, they have the same problem, which is lack of access. So I'm teaching them like, Hey, you don't know stuff, go in the room with people that know stuff and feel confident about saying, I don't know. So there's something to being vulnerable that way. And schools not teaching you that you everything that you do in the K through 12 system tells you don't let me not know when something's wrong, just guess. And it's like, no, wait a second, the idea of networking is that people can solve these problems that you have, and you don't need to do anything except be vulnerable and say, Oh, wait, I don't know what business casual mean, you know, or people will use a word or context. Or the reason I went back and explained and is because like you said, I don't know what any of this means. We're living in such a fast paced world, we forget that we know stuff other people don't know. And other people know, stuff that we don't know. And that's a great thing. Because this, this lets us know more stuff than we could have ever known before. Yeah, especially now that it has chat GPT forum. I use chat GPT all the time. I use it every single day. Not not. Here's another example. Yeah, we just I don't want to name the players. But we just had a player who was very vulnerable with us. We do these immersions through my buddies company, pro athlete community. The pack puts people in the Hilton or the W and Fort Lauderdale for a week, we basically capture these guys attention for a week, big time players, guys who will not go broke, they've made 40 5060 $110 million, some of them. And we bring all the resources to them. So we'll bring the president of a company to them, we'll take them to Facebook, we'll take them, you know, there's a lot of people involved in, in the real estate world. So we'll we'll we'll bring in the biggest real estate investment trust, we'll bring in, you know, like people that real top Realtors Ben Moss was one of the top Realtors on the planet, but certainly in Florida. You know, he's listening Shakira and David Beckham and all these people's homes. He not only does he knows stuff that is practical enough, but he has a network of people that they may be able to use, you know, when they want to start their thing. Maybe they're not using him, but they have a title guy or they have a questions person, or you have like a hard money guy like all of that network, we're trying to give them access to this community of people and my buddy Caleb has really built that out in an immersive environment than then it has like, a bunch of weeks of courses afterwards to really show these guys like, Dude, it's okay to know. It's just okay. It's not okay to not keep knowing once you come in contact with the thing. But chat GBT, we had a guy that's like, well, I just met all these people. I don't know what the hell to type in the email. Let me show you this thing. Yeah, type it and like, follow up with a connection I met at a networking event and right at like a professional NFL player without a degree. Yes, specificity. You can get it set up. And if you don't like it, you can just hit rephrase. Yep. And it's like, that is different from when I remember even just getting hired. I really had a not a huge, robust work history I like was a bartender Applebee's. And I worked at Quicken. And then I did this that's like the interface. But I remember getting my offer letter at Quicken. And, you know, almost 20 years ago, and I wanted to type something back. I remember staring at Yahoo. Yes. yapping back to these people. Like the world has changed. You don't have to have any of those fears or anything. It's okay math to know. So you've got Google that can help you know, and you got chat GPT that can help you communicate. There's not an excuse for failing for a bunch of people now. And I think that's fantastic. Like people are dumping on the world dumping on chat, GBT, I'm fired up for it. So I just I just read today too. And this is something you could probably if you have the time block for it look up right when we're done with this, but a new search has been announced that everybody is really excited for and this is real. Everybody should look this up. It's called Cat GPT so it's just like chat GPT but the program responds as a cat and then finds relevant memes Whatever your question was, and then and then shows them to you. So that's I suspect is going to fall outside of my timeline. It just sounds super important. I like that talking about your time blocks. Do you have a written calendar somewhere near you? Yep. Can we see a written it's on my I can't show it it's on my screen here. Oh, it's on your screen. Yeah, go for it. And so like my service masters last two men in a truck world is is green. My encore athletics is purple. My MSC I'm working a lot with Michigan State Athletics right now that's a different color green. And that will that one will come out for instance. So we have an event coming up in probably two weeks down there. We're going taking all the ins again, you'll see the thread. I figured out my thing and I just stay on it. We're taking all the athletes from Michigan State that are juniors and seniors. We're taking them on the World Tour of companies in downtown Detroit. We're gonna make Make them do the same thing that athletes do, we're gonna have them going up shadowing, asking question like, kind of a scavenger on on like, what does this mean? What does that mean? How did you start your job? We go into LinkedIn and we've ever reverse engineer like, okay, this person is the let's randomly this person is the vice president of stock x let's reverse engineer from what did they do before that job? What did they do before that job? What did they go to school for? Okay? You didn't go to school for this, but it looks like some of these skills will transfer and really map this thing backwards for people. So right now that takes a lot of time and I got a lot of stuff to get done. You know, I'm in all of the businesses I'm involved in are like high accountability, like you either hit the sales number or you didn't, so I gotta get all that stuff done too. But right now there's this 45 minute window where I try to chip away at this Michigan State trying to build this program for them for early May, I think it's made 12. And then that will come off and something will play. So I might get a keynote, I do a lot of keynote speaking. So I might get a keynote. And then that will go on there at some point in the day. As soon as our kids go to bed, I have twins as well, I come back down here. I'm in my basement right now. And so I work another three hours every night from about 830 Till. And I do that seven days a week. And so that really creates another part time life. For me. People hear this stuff and they think, Oh, well, I don't want that. And it's not for everybody, that's fine. But I scroll Instagram means is just as much as anybody else. But I have a timeline for that my wife just gave me my set every day this week, I've told her I'm gonna look at that when I laid out. I go to bed around 1030 1130 depending on what that last time block looks like. And the last thing I do is scroll all the memes that people have sent me or real I guess it is now. But there's this weird expectation in her mind this my wife, my favorite person on earth other than my kids, I can't get through to her head. I'm not sitting around when my phone dings. And by the way I'm numb to a notification doesn't mean anything. When my phone dings, I'm not looking at that reel. And the reason is because I don't have this discipline to get back into it. I'm not doing this stuff because I'm discipline I do all this stuff because I'm vulnerable. And so I'll be the person that is all of a sudden, like looking at the price of bulletproof. That's the thing. How did how did I end up? trace it back and I saw a meme. And that made me YouTube, a video I saw two years ago. And then there's an ad and I'm like at Cabela's online. I'm like what is happening? So I'm vulnerable, which is why I do this. And this is what people I think people will miss and could learn from a story like mine, where I'm a super average person who's undisciplined in a million ways. Time blocking and being intentional is for us. It's not for the highly driven people. That's the misnomers. People are like, Oh, these are hard charges and all this stuff. No, I'm the person who would end up. I'm not a cat guy. But I could easily end up rotting 10 hours of NFL bad lip reading. Like I'm vulnerable to that that's like a snare out there in the world that could catch me. So I can't go near like I have to live in this world. Do you? Alright, so I want to I want to talk about this for a little bit then do you? When do you what do you work out your time blocks? Do you do them a week in advance? Are you doing them as the day comes in? How are you organizing yourself into all these different facets of things? Yeah, so what happens is I always look at, I've got three that stay on there forever. So when we get we have a family calendar. So like stuff like soccer just ended. But that'll be something that's on there, I have to have everything on my I'll email it to you guys after you put it in your Instagrams or something like that, or, or not use it at all. I have to have like basically everything on it. The other thing is, is look at this. This doesn't always translate. Then because I'm undisciplined because I'm not good at any of this. I really do everything I'm telling you, I really do everything I'm telling up, but I suck at itself so that I have alarms on my phone right now. 635 was to get up and get my link from Jimmy 1045 I have a meeting at 11 1140 have a meeting at noon. 330 I have to go and call the school and make sure that the girls are staying up. Like I have everything in a calendar and then I need this phone to ring of super annoying printing. Because otherwise the calendar won't mean enough to me. I know there's people that are on calendars, they print it out and they're good. Their brain doesn't work that well on either. Yeah. And so to answer your question more directly, there's some things that live on there all the time. And then I'll get an email like the thing at 330. This guy has this company called Build Senior Living, it might be a way for athletes to invest in basically the construction of senior living. It's interesting to me, he showed me some returns, but all of that was on the fly. That's no good for me. I have a formal presentation with him at four o'clock today. Right? That's during my real work day. So from 330 to four I need to make sure I have no outstanding work things done Unlike, you know, I take my job very seriously. So I don't want to get on this call at four and realize there was things I didn't do. So basically, my day is going to today going to end up for my work day is going to end up for, but at 330, I'm going to make sure every loose end is a button up between then and four, because I'm gonna be on the call with this guy from four to five. And I also know when I get off, I'm going to feel like a million bucks, because I feel like this guy's got something that we need for our athletes and really need for any investor, I feel like this is going to be fantastic. And it's gonna be very hard for me to work again after that I do nothing from five to seven. Every day, I do nothing except the kids and family, I do their bath, we put them to bed at 730. I relaxed with my wife from 730 to 838 30 is my last time block. And that's kind of how my day goes. So as things come in, I'll add these little like Michigan State this, that that's one that's not permanent, but like 530 to 730 is permanent every day of the week, Sundays included, where I'm always doing nothing on LinkedIn, which is this is our first comment from LinkedIn. Sweet, thanks for watching us on LinkedIn. They're waiting to note the time blocking strategy some of which you just gave. So you're you're basically taking you have things that don't change. And if I hurt you, right, are your years calendaring in and blocking out family first, if I heard that correct, is that is that right? What Yeah, so I would love that. One thing is, is I was a dad at 15. And I'm a data 43. So I have kids every quarter century 21 is 32 is gonna be Wow, I've been a bad dad. And right now I'm trying to be the best dad. So yeah, I'm always cognizant of the fact that I'm trying my best having been a bad dad before, to put family first. There is. And it's really not even putting family. First, it's putting the structure our family first. I'm big on what I'm noticing when you have twins, by the way, which I don't recommend I would give it a bad Yelp review. Having twins forces you into a level of organization that is not not common to the regular parent experience. Now, I know there's some people listening and saying Kurt, I have a two year old and three year old or I have a five year old and a seven year old, okay, trust me, it's different. It's just, you know, sometimes you just gotta take except that means the expert and twins, I'm telling you, it's different. Because the level of organization you need to get to human beings who don't want to do anything together at the same time to do stuff together every day at the same time. It's it just requires you to be a better person. So the upside is, is as much as I don't recommend having twins, you've got to there's a, there's some benefit to it. As far as like the strategy for time blocking. The one thing that I tell people is if you get into time blocking, and you're susceptible to being a maniac like me, and really doing the stuff, really trying it, the first thing that you've got to do is you've got to start with your time blocking your personal time, whether that's family or you are your scroll time or whatever. Otherwise, it'll feel like you're always working. The thing that I try to express to people when they see my calendar is I don't feel like I'm always working. I do know for sure, when I go into a block, I'm working harder than other people in that block. I know that for sure. Complete focus, again, number, the distractions number the anything else that's happening incoming emails or whatever, when I'm working on a project, if I time lock that for 45 minutes, which sounds short, but if people would, you know there's the four hour workday and all these other theories out there, I get where all that comes from. Because really what we do is called the task void phenomenon is which is when there's no time bounding, we let a 15 minute task take up however much time we assign it. So if there's something we could do in 15 minutes, we'll let it take an hour. Like we'll just fill up the rest of the void in time. But if there's a 15 minute block to do a 15 minute task, it literally starts to feel like Jack Bauer, like oh my god, it's 14 minutes and 12 seconds and I've only got 48 seconds to do it. And then I'm not as disciplined as some of my mentors in this. But my mentors will walk away at 15 minutes whether it's done or not. And that's not punishment. That's the word wrong word because it has a negative connotation. It's skill building. It teaches them get that shit done. Pardon me that's I'm gonna aggressive talking. Next time in 15 minutes. Oh, wait so whereas we'll walk away from it or we'll take the 17 minutes you're just all you've done is put medicine on your bad time blocking they'll walk away from them and say they just didn't get done this time. Now I got to reallocate a time lock. Yeah, I am not that person yet. I aspire to be though. It was a little late and a little late little late and a little late. The best practice for you Sorry, no yeah, no, this individual to the LinkedIn person. We all of us. Now the one upside to having a kinesiology major even though it's just professional gym is you do learn a little bit About the body and mind, our levels are set, there's a circadian rhythm that all of us have have, when we're going to get dopamine, when we're going to have histamine release, all of this stuff get better and different. Each individual needs to spend time on when they're most productive. And then that has to affect your time blocks, like the things that are super important. I see people that get into time blocking that are doing their important thing at night, because they feel like they have more time than but you're probably there's very few human beings, we're not wired this way to be productive at night. And so understanding when are you most like when do you get the juice the most? On when do you have it the least and, and reconciling that with your time blocking is important. I know for me, for sure. I don't feel better. After about 11 o'clock, I start feeling progressively worse until I don't have anything to do for the day. So let me ask this is somebody that you constantly say that you're not disciplined? So because you're not disciplined? You have to do all these time blocks? I have two questions for you. One is your entire day. Like do you have space that that there is nothing there? Or do you literally is it all blocked out? And the second question is, if you're not disciplined to and that's why you need the time blocks, how did you build the discipline to actually stick to your time block? Yeah, I answer the second question first, when you build a business while you also have a job, and I've been very fortunate part of it is I report to the president of a really big organization really big. And I my work as I hope I like to think is spoke for itself for the last few years I deliver. But the reality is, is I don't want to get fired. I want to live in a world where I can do both things. There's an incredible stability into having a really good like, My people want my job, I have a great job day job that pays very well and has like great, incredible people that work with and for us. I want to keep that job. So I have to deliver. And again, I'm in like a metric space. Yes or no like, hey, we have quarterly goals, we have EBIT, we have revenue targets we have like I everything I have has a scoreboard with it. And so I wanted to prove in some ways that it could be done. But also I wanted to self survival. I wanted to keep that job and be able to build this other business. There are days when what's fantastic about my leader, Randy, there are days when I'll fly like I'm going on the 18th to the Jacksonville Jaguars for the rookies that presentations an hour. He doesn't make me take a day off even though I'm traveling because I he knows I'm gonna get all my stuff done either way. On the airport. I try not to have that time even when I drive I'm listening to right I'm the non book reader guy, but I'm listening to podcasts like not entertainment based podcasts usually. Well, we're kind of come up with a concept for ours. We call ours entertainment entertainment. Oh, that's smart. Let's see now this is what's crazy about my world. I want to service mark that. Let's get you with Nina spears. And let's service mark that if it's not. Yes, why wouldn't we own that? Yes, brilliant. Hey, I changed my legal name is Johnny. Awesome now, so I'm all about everything you just said. Hey, the first question was, what was his everything time block? Yes. You leave space for yourself? Yeah, I have a lot of like, whitespace on on stuff. So I tried to have three hours. If I can have like nothingness. It's not when most people do though. So like, for me, I and that's, you know, Jimmy, our world that we come from? I worked in a world for 11 years where you just weren't even supposed to eat lunch outside of your desk, right? I still eat lunch if I was right now. There's two things. I won't work on weekends anymore on stuff that I don't Oh, I work every weekend, but only on shit that I owe. Right? I will never work another Saturday, Sunday again in my life. I've worked all the ones I'm going to do. Also, I take an hour lunch every single day. I take an hour lunch. I have nothing that's every day. I have that hour at night every single day and I have from 530 to 730 every single day. That's four hours. Right? That's 28 hours a week where I don't have anything to do. That's a full time job almost of not doing a job. I think I'm institutionalized. works a lot. He's got all these things, but I have a full time job where I my I have a almost full time job that that is nothing. Yeah, it's a job about nothing. Yeah, I'm institutionalized, I think. Yeah, I was to you know, when I took this job, I found myself saying every single person would leave at like 455 I found myself staying till six just to say I would did it right. And then one day, our CEO was like, by the way, I know why you're doing that kind of jam. Yeah, I'm Facebook Dave is asking, what's the best way for a regular Joe? Which is funny because his name's Dave, who is not good at conversationalist and might not seem that interested to network effectively. Here's the interesting thing. This is a fantastic question regular Dave. This is something I would love. This is like headstone material for me. People think they're not interesting or unique. And they forget that they're one of 7.6 billion people on the planet. They're having a singular experience. I'm not religious, but I know some people think that there's a, an encore or math after this. But here on Earth, you got one ticket, you got one lap around the track, it's singular, you are interesting, you are unique. There's no one that's not your one and 7 billion. And so I know that doesn't make you feel good to hear me say that Dave, like, but that's the thing is, the first thing is you got to take the lens off that you might have to have some charm or uniqueness or this cool thing that you've got to make up and celebrate the fact that you have a lived experience that is one of and we think at this point, 14 billion people have lived on the planet, you're having a one in 14 billion experience in your 5060 7080 years here, that is singular, to the degree, it wouldn't show up on the frickin calculator, you know, there'd be alphabet involved. So if we put that right, like 3.4 E, you know, your calculator would jam on that. So the tactic of that, though, is getting around people that you might think are interesting, and asking them their story. Sometimes people want to get in a room with interesting people and be interesting to them. And I don't think that that's a very successful strategy. Again, what did I say I want people to hear my story and not feel better about me feel better about that. The people that you really can learn best from, you'll ask them questions, and they'll tell you stuff about themselves. And if you leave there feeling better about them, that wasn't the person to network with. But if you leave that conversation and feel better about you, that was the person. You know, there's a famous story about the Gladstone and the guys, the Prime Minister's in the 80s, late 80s. Like in the early 80s, late 1800s, a lady went on a date with two of the most interesting people in London at the time. And what she got done, she said, I forget the one guy's name. But when I got done with him, I felt like he was the most brilliant person in all of England. And when I got done with Mr. Gladstone, I felt like I was the most brilliant person in all of England, the people you have to spend time with, especially if you're living life, regular days, thinking that you don't have this unique experience. And it's hard for you to articulate that. Go when rooms with people have them tell you their story. And I bet what reflects back to you as cool. Your brain will want to say, Oh, I've done some of that I've had some of that. It's very interesting when we get in a room with people that have unique stories, even if we don't feel like we've had this hero story the way that some of them have. We see a lot of ourselves in those stories. And we know that because we know when we communicate will often say Oh, that reminds me of X, Y and Z. The hero story might not have paid off and CEO title or NFL title, but you have a lot of that same stuff in here. And a lot of it really becomes understanding that you're in this one of 14 billion experience as a human on this planet. And you're doing it when there's frickin cat GPT. What an experience Yeah. So getting in rooms with people where you can ask them questions and be vulnerable. Just say, hey, you know, one thing I recommend when people think that like Dave, like, Hey, I don't have this charisma or this charm, find the most charming person or Christmas charismatic person and ask them where that came from. And I bet you they tell you a regular story about like, Oh, I was just in class one day, and I made someone laugh. And I realized I liked doing that. And most of us have it. We've had those experiences. And then we've just never been intentional about duplicating them. But the charismatic or the class Person, well, the funny person was, like, you know, they said something to the teacher in third grade and got a response. And they're like, oh, you know, I have I have twins right now. And they're, they're just now having this happen. Like, oh, if I go to Reno's West, and I stand on the stage and scream out Beyonce, even though I can't sing, people will clap for me. And, you know, life tramples some of that out of us. Yep. But that's my advice. Dave, spend time in networking situations with people you think are interesting, and ask them about their journey. They'll tell you all this stuff, and it'll help you because there'll be parts of that in that story that are mirror that will reflect something that's in your life that you forgot to highlight, or you don't know how to articulate. Wow, you know, it goes back to something that you were talking about earlier. And that is, you know, just asking, asking people questions. And what's really interesting when it comes to successful people, and you know, in our company, and I know Jimmy the same way, you know, we've had opportunities to be around them, and they're never like, I've never had anybody shy to answer a question or talk or share a story or, you know, even the joke about Gary Keller, I reached out to Gary Keller one time I was having a real issue. He didn't know me from anybody. And he was on vacation. And he responded back to Me sent me a text. And, and there was I was just simple. I was humble. I said, Hey, I'm one of your agents. I work at one of your brokerages and commerce, I had this situation issue happen, I'm worried about the outcome of this, it was something that I a mistake I had made in real estate. And, and, and I just reached out and he was like, I'm just stepping on a plane, I'm on vacation. But and then he gave me some advice. And, and, you know, and I thought that was a that was a real neat thing. So it's been my life experience. And I'm sure you've felt the same way that successful people would are looking for the person that's truly interested that they can share with Yeah. Well, that's the same principle. You know, what happened when you told Gary that the mirror effect that reflects on some part of his story. And there's this connection there, he's been the you before. And that's the whole point of it is like, when you talk to people long enough, we're having unique experiences. But there's these points on our stories that reflect or resonate back. And that's the connective tissue. Now, the other thing is, is you start with questions, questions are the most important thing. But answers change over time. It's the answers that change over time. The questions, we should really be asking the same questions we were 2000 years ago, 4000 years ago. So I'm really big on one thing I teach the guys, this is some IP, I'm going to let out to the public for the first time ever, I've never shared this in a situation where someone that wasn't cutting me a check. I believe there's only two skills. Networking is one of them. Most people won't get the app that they need. Sometimes I watch the show The Voice. It's one of the only entertainment thing that I spend time on. And I got to fight back tears when people get a button rang when their 37 year old singer with this brilliant voice that for celebrity coaches turnaround for and I think how many times has she gone and tried to pursue this dream and she didn't get her at bat? It's access. It's at bat, it's um, into that way. But networking is what gets people that bat. And we don't teach that anywhere in K through 12. We don't even teach that. And you can graduate from MIT or Harvard. But if you can't talk to people, it doesn't matter. Two plus two is four for everybody. Yeah, knocking on the door and getting in the room and telling people that two plus two is four is unique and hard and difficult and arduous. So the questions, we don't know how to teach people the questions, the answers will change. Right over time. It's the answer chain. So the second superpower, the first one was networking clearly. But I call it modern literacy, which is the ability to learn than unlearn and relearn the world is going to change so many times before we die, hopefully knock on wood, we will have to unlearn a lot of the stuff we know to be true about success now, and then relearn the new way. This is what's crazy about education. We're still teaching that World War One started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, right, that is so meaningless now. Because I'll never have to know that because somebody asked me I can just put it in Google. It's 1,000,000% authentically commoditize. I never need to know that again. But education is so arduous to change, where they're just like, yeah, that's what we do. We teach World War One World War Two, like we never still got to Vietnam, or any of the other like, education that we went through is not much different than that. Now, we've ruined some things, depending on your political party with how we teach math and some other things. But like, it's very interesting to me, that whole bunch of the stuff that was we were learning in 1986, is what they're teaching now. And they just took cursive off. It's like, Wait a second. Yeah. Like, there's a lot more stuff we can take off. We're spending time on stuff that's in the phone. Yeah, just wait till the girls get a little older band. Now. Sixth grade math is rough, bro. overcomplicate. We put a lot of really smart people in to solve simple problems. And the only way smart people can solve a problem very helpful. I just went through that last night and the board, no knock on superintendent till dinner. But one of the things that we were kind of butting heads on last night is we put a man on the moon when school schedules were just six periods. But we left early. And now we have these four blocks to blacksnake schedule, and thoughtless stuff. And every metric we measure is getting worse across the country. And now Now, now Elon Musk is putting people in space. That's not the government has stopped putting people in space and rather than that regular civilians because, yeah, you know, it's interesting, but even then, right, those problems that we were solving in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s. Those questions apply to stuff now like, right so like, you take a topic like what is school for? Back then it was like we didn't have people with degrees in this country and they didn't Germany and Russia they had a lot of degreed people. And when that wall fell in the world opened up that was gonna be a real problem for the United States. Because basically all the smart people had a funny accent. Hey, we're about ready to go to overtime. The afterburner is coming around for a little bit. Everybody this was in the podcast make sure to catch us free. Free For All Friday. We're trying to rush this now. Yeah, so you can check out the afterburner where we'll go live. We're gonna finish his thoughts right there. Stick around with us. If you guys are watching us live. We're going to the afterburner right now.