A Founder's Life
Join me as I explore the powerful intersection of entrepreneurship, health & wellness, and parenthood. In each episode, I’ll be interviewing inspiring individuals who excel in one or more of these areas, sharing their stories, insights, and lessons. My goal is to provide valuable takeaways that can help you thrive both personally and professionally.
A Founder's Life
Building Wealth Without Losing Your Soul - Ken Salazar - S6 -E1
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👤 Connect with Today’s Guest – Ken Salazar
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-salazar-00198a8/
Website: https://www.gosilveredge.com/
Email: ken@gosilveredge.com
Ken Salazar is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years in payments and fintech. From investment banking during the tech bust to scaling and exiting a payments business — and later buying it back — Ken shares hard-earned lessons about growth, leadership, and purpose.
We talk about why America is still behind in payments innovation, how COVID accelerated digital adoption, and why scaling too fast can destroy a company. But more importantly, Ken opens up about a deeply personal realization at age 31 — when outward success left him feeling completely empty.
What you’ll learn:
• Why founders must not “scale broke”
• The hidden dangers of private equity pressure
• How success can mask personal emptiness
• The discipline behind faith, fitness, and family
• Why you can’t do anything alone — but must own everything yourself
⏱️ CHAPTERS
0:00 – From Investment Banking to Payments
1:49 – Reinventing Payments & Fintech Exit
13:29 – Faith, Family & Daily Discipline
35:16 – Success Without Fulfillment
37:42 – Don’t Scale Broke & Final Advice
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Welcome to a Founders Life. I'm your host, Leo Gastetna. On this show, we dive into the real stories behind the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and how we pursue a more balanced and meaningful life along the way. The podcast is sponsored by Thanks, helping founders like us scale with reliable remote talent. Email founders at Thanks.com. That's T-H-A-N-K-Z.com with a subject line of founder's life to receive preferred pricing. Now I'm excited today to be joined by Ken Salazar. Ken, great to have you here. Thanks for joining us. Would you like to introduce yourself to the audience?
SPEAKER_00Sure, Leo. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. As you said, Ken Salazar, uh gosh, a serial entrepreneur, been at this game now and in the payments space in particular for about well over 20 years. I uh have also dabbled in fintech for uh a bit of time as well as some digital marketing. Love doing side adventures with real estate, and I do all of this for my family. At the end of the day, I've got a lovely wife who I've been married to for uh over 20 years as well now, uh, and three kids that uh are growing up fast all in their teenage years uh and having fun. Love skiing, love being outdoors, love taking advantage of all that Colorado brings. And then, of course, uh, you know, visiting the beaches and uh and you guys that uh tend to um you know have some great experiences on the oceans. I like to stay active.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and for those that are actually watching this in video versus audio, uh nice view out of uh your windows at the back. We at Colorado, we've got despite what many may think, we've got pretty good sunny days and it's decent weather. Excellent. So talk a little more about your journey that brought you to where you are today and then what your current business is really offering your clients.
SPEAKER_00Sure. You know, I think uh coming out of college, you know, and and having that you know finance degree, I was able to be fortunate enough to have uh an opportunity to be an investment banking analyst. I say fortunate, I should be careful about that because as you know, it's basically grunt and labor. You're just building models and doing what you're told and you know, go into the office early, uh, you know, while it's dark, and you leave when it's dark, and you really don't have much of a life in between. But while I was there, I was you know able to really understand, uh, and that was you know in the early 2000s. Um, there was the tech bust that was transpiring there, and I got to, you know, most of our uh deals and transactions that we were looking at were helping corporations avoid bankruptcy and go through um recapitalizations to you know change up, you know, their cap stack and get access to liquidity. And so um it was a really interesting time uh to see, you know, the the dark side of the world right out of college. And so what I quickly learned through that was obviously that, you know, many success successful businesses don't always remain successful, but secondarily was the entrepreneurial side uh started kicking in quickly. And I realized that, hey, I don't want to just sit here and analyze, you know, how to sell and run other people's businesses. I want, I want to have, you know, investment bank one day, perhaps, you know, look at my business. And I want to, you know, have have control and be out there, you know, uh having impact on the marketplace and creating um you know, creating opportunity. And so I jumped into uh the payments world. I was very intrigued uh at that time. It was the merchant acquiring and you know, we were we were going around and and literally taking people from these you know terminals that were set up with dial up modems, and the upgrade was getting them access to IP, you know, internet processing, more secure, faster transaction, not waiting, you know, 20 to 30 seconds for you know the landline to dial out and process that credit card. And then you had the the printer systems, but then that quickly evolved into you know this age of uh security and fraud and you know PCI compliance came out, and so that became a big part. And then in the um you know, 2010, 2012 range, this little thing you know called the iPhone and iPad came out. And uh companies like Square and SaaS-based services in the cloud came out. So now you had tablet and cloud-based services, which gave us an opportunity to pivot and evolve from just being a you know credit card processing company to now becoming a um a trusted advisor to help small business owners navigate this new technological world whereby they have access and had access to technology they never could afford previously. Because to install you know a point of sale system, you know, in the in the early 2000s, you know, that was gonna cost you tens of thousands of dollars. Because you had to put in the servers, you had to put in all the infrastructure, and then you had to put in the workstations, which is as you may remember, the computers back then were you had a couple thousand dollars plus, you know, depending on how how nice they were that you got. So to for a general small business to put in a point of sale system, that was, you know, $20,000 plus. And then almost overnight, it became you can have an iPad for you know less than a thousand bucks. And for $20 a month, you had a full-blown functioning, you know, point of sale system now. And so uh it was a really unique opportunity to now bring more value to um this you know engine that we had, which was great at acquiring new customers and supporting those customers. But now we weren't just providing them this service of credit card processing, but it was really about how do we help them transform their business, make their business richer, as we said, leveraging technology and including payments on the back end. And so that was a fun run that we went, you know, 2012 through 2018 when we were able to sell that business. And then uh I entered in uh to the the fintech world as an investor, and uh we could probably talk about that some more. You know, it was a whole different adventure of the last five years that I've been playing, and now I'm back, able to take, I was able to acquire Silver Edge, um, the payments business back after my five-year non-compete was up. Um, and it was fun because I've been able to take all that I've learned over the last five years in my um world in the fintech world with a company called Bilgo. Uh, and now we're doing basically the same thing that I did in 2012, 14 that early time. But instead of working and focusing on point of sale technology, now it's all about how do we help um B2B transactions or remove check from the ecosystem? How do we replace ACH with something more modern? And how do we enable um uh businesses to get paid uh much more effortlessly without friction via invoice and other methodologies, as well as make payment so that they're not able to easily pay their invoices very simply with methodologies that do not involve uh the checks. There's still $26 trillion of checks being done that's out there. So there's and also a tremendous amount of ACH as part of that. And so we want to go head in on that and make it really, really easy to pay and get paid for businesses as well, and and them to be able to adopt many of the technologies that these large enterprise customers and then many of my bank clients at Bilgo were using. Um, and like I said, these large enterprises are using, and now bring that down market, bring that to the mid-market companies into the more sophisticated uh SMBs.
SPEAKER_03That's uh a great aim. And I moved to America 16 years ago, and banking was one of the things that surprised me. You know, the UK, we pretty much stopped using checks. But in America, you still had to write checks and still do need to, it's getting better, but checks pretty much don't exist in countries like the UK anymore. But here they're in America they still seem to be a normal part of business. And payment-wise, I mean, you know, I received a uh payment from somebody uh in the UK uh yesterday. Literally arrived within 10 seconds of them click and go. That was just a normal interbank transfer, no cost to either side. Whereas here that's still slow and expensive. You know, a lot of that came the UK, I can't remember now, probably 25 years ago, basically banned the banks from keeping the money. Let's see, seriously they deduct it from one person's account one day and take a few days to send it. There's no need beyond the fact they get to keep the interest in the middle. That's right. And in the UK, they're like, no, that's not acceptable anymore. So yeah. It's an immediate transfer. And I think most of Europe, if I don't know about elsewhere, but I think most of Europe with the I band system is basically the same as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, as we say, you can get a sofa delivered to your door faster than you can get payment, you know, received for goods and services that are processed. And so it's we've got to flip that model. You shouldn't be able to have a couch delivered faster than payment, you know, gets sent, you know, uh, with the via the Czech ecosystem. So you stated it, you nailed it. And you know, everyone always asks you like, why is it that you know Europe and and other areas of the world, I mean, I mean, even third world countries that can move funds much quicker than we can in the US? And you know, unfortunately, the the US uh having infrastructure in place ahead of time actually became now the problem is that we've got so many legacy systems and technology in place that introducing something new is uh it disrupts too much, whereby those countries that did not have as much infrastructure in place, much easier for them to adopt the new technology and systems or you know get rid of uh the old legacy and and mandate it. So but then you're exactly right. Uh at the end of the day, uh corporate dollars and and perhaps even some greed can always drive you know delays in the indecision making.
SPEAKER_01Excuse me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean I think of something like 7,000 plus banks in the US. But you also have but even things like credit cards. So the rest of the world introduced chip and pin 25 plus years ago. America started introducing chip, what, probably 10 years ago? They forgot that it was called chip and pin for a reason. Yep. You still go to a restaurant and they expect you to give your credit card. I live outside of America, in the last three months I've been Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, US, Bahamas, and Panama. Literally, the US was the only country I had to carry a credit card on me. Because everywhere doesn't I mean, number one, they take Apple Pay, but number two, they they don't expect you to give a physical card. Like in America, they expect you to give a physical card, which most of the world worked out that was just asking for fraud, like waiters taking it to the back and cloning it.
SPEAKER_00Can you imagine what would happen if a waiter took your credit card to the back outside of America? You get jumped.
SPEAKER_01You'd you take them down, you'd chase them down.
SPEAKER_00What are you doing? No, you're exactly right. I mean, I mean, you even think about what it took. I mean, we we were selling Apple Pay and NFC technology back in 2000, I think that launched in 2014, like to the mass markets. And that's actually how we became one of the largest distributors of hardware was I was like, well, how how do you sell you know point of sale systems so well across the country? It's like, well, we're not selling really a point of sale or we're selling an experience, which is this NFE, NFC, Apple Pay experience. And um, we were able to get a lot of the early adopters of people that like kind of saw it and like wanted it to happen, but we got all these these systems and units out there, but no one was using it. Like it was literally less than 1% of all of our transaction volume was coming via NFC and Apple Pay. And this was also when there was a lot of commercials on the you know, tap to pay that were going on with MasterCard and all these different celebrities. No one was using it. And then um, I mean, it took it took COVID to happen. And the second that COVID hit, then all of a sudden no one wanted to touch anything. And now they remembered that, oh, I can just, you know, it broke that habit and it forced that habit to happen. And then it also forced, you know, the restaurants and those establishments now to, all right, I gotta come to the table because no one wants to touch anything, and we got to get this, you know, to go. And and it we said it pulls us forward at least five years in terms of technology adoption around payments through that. So it's tragic that it had happened that way. But when you look at something that was a tipping point in America to really gain that adoption, that was it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean the view is the technology was there. So no one had to invent anything, they just had to actually start using it. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00Which how many times has that been the case? Yeah. But again, every time he has to be correct. Like, you know, it's like you can have the best idea in the world, but if it's if if the world's not ready for it, it's just it's just sitting there for a while.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. But America still, even though with all of that adoption, even with the acceleration of COVID, in a restaurant, they still expect you to give them the credit card one of the time. Still behind the game. We are still behind the eight ball, no doubt about it, for sure. There's opportunity. There's a lot of opportunity there, for sure. That's that's definitely where where you got lots of opportunity. That's it. You got the knowledge. That's exactly right. And tell us a little bit about uh family.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned you got three kids. I do. I have a daughter that is um she's 19 and she's attending uh TCU university for the first time, um, which has been um really exciting to have her, you know, leaving the house, and our only girl uh was a little you know gut-wrenching and nerve-wracking, but she she's made her way, and you know, her her mom and I are both, you know, we're we're in our new routines as well. And then we've got two boys. Uh one's uh, I guess, 17-year-old and then an almost 15-year-old. So they're both in high school, junior and freshman. So I do see the uh the end of the runway, the proverbial runway, at least to them being at home now. And so that's also you know been very uh influential in some of my decision making as of late in terms of where I spend my time and how I spend these next, you know, four or five years for sure.
SPEAKER_03It does put things in perspective. I definitely changed as uh as I got closer to to that, becoming an empty nester and now an empty nester, hence why in the last three months I've been traveling. I don't yeah, I don't have a home anymore. It's crazy. I'm a digital nomad. Why not? You know, the kids left home. I thought, you know, I can work from anywhere in the world. Why why not uh why not do that?
SPEAKER_00Oh, there you know, it's it's it's fun and and you're you're exactly right. It's like we've already, you know, the first that first semester we were spending uh I don't know, at least every other week almost it feels like, you know, in Fort Worth, Texas, you know, for some sort of event, an excuse, frankly, just to go see our daughter and be in that lively, fun town. And I'm like, okay. It's like the second the boys are gone, the only reason we're going home is because the boys are there. So the second those guys are gone, I'm gonna be just like Leo. We're gonna be uh, you know, out and about and and everywhere, you know, home. We're not gonna have a home anymore.
SPEAKER_03I remember my son saying to me, he left home, so I guess 18 months ago he went to college. And, you know, probably two, two and a half years ago, he said to me, You you can't wait till I leave home. And I said to him, I said to him, that's not true. I'm like, Toby, I love the time we spend together, and I'm in no hurry for it to end. And when you leave, I'm out of here. The two can coexist.
SPEAKER_00What what do you what do you miss the most about your kids not being around?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I I mean I'm very close, both my kids, and I used to spend I mean my daughter, whenever we're together, so I had two weeks with them over Christmas New Year, my daughter started every day early with an hour's walk. My son at uh 4 30 in the afternoon, one of the nice things that came from COVID is we got into the habit of working out together from 4.30 to about eight o'clock. We were together six nights a week, either weightlifting or boxing, and then we had dinner, we watched some TV together, it became a loved that routine, and and we still keep a very similar routine when we are together, but obviously that's a lot less often. Yeah, I mean I I love the time with the kids. In fact, I'm seeing my car my son uh I'll be running in March the uh Tokyo marathon, and uh my son has spring break at the same time, so he's gonna come join me.
SPEAKER_00Oh that's for now running, no. No, that would breaks down the body. Those guys do that just pounding on the body. It's not a lot of fun. No, I'm running. So it's not. He's not running. Then hats off to you. Same thing.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I'm I'm I never used the wrong marathons. Uh just over a year ago, I ran my first marathon. I did three last year. This yeah, I did Berlin in September, then I'm doing the World Seven Majors. And then this year I've got Tokyo, London, Chicago, and then next year Boston, Sydney, New York.
SPEAKER_00That is, you know. Kudos to you, man. I can't imagine. I hear the the dark the dark alleys of mile sixteen through twenty. I think my bird is just really uh quite the grueling, you know, uh set where you're like, is this ever gonna end? And then you can kind of get it. I mean it depends.
SPEAKER_03You can you could the funny thing is you can hit the wall at any point. Yeah so you know, my first mountain, I hit the wall at mile seven eighteen point seven, and I pretty much crawled the rest of it. I still made it in just under four hours, but pretty much crawled and sweared and hated every second of that last few miles, and then finished it and loved it. Touched wood my second and third, I didn't hit a wall. But you never know. And yeah, you know, that's that's the challenge. I mean, people can hit the wall in mile 26. There's a guy who's done a bunch of ultra marathons that I know well, and marathons, and and he said to me, I think he was running the Chicago marathon, and he's like, literally at like 26, he hit the wall, and he crawled that last point two of a mile. And he still hit one of his best times, but he was like, Yeah, it you you never know. It's when the muscles just say to you, What the hell are you doing? What are you doing? Are you crazy? Absolutely. Ugh, that's nuts. What do you like to do for health?
SPEAKER_00Well, I um start every morning. I am I am still doing CrossFit, and I say that because I know the beating that I put on my body every single day. But you know, I I always had a rule that I would never go to work until I worked out first. I mean, since I got out of college, and um I always have to do it in the morning, and it's just how I it's how I regulate stress, it's how I get started and get my energy going. And um CrossFit, I've just, you know, I I've been doing it now for gosh, well over ten years. And I just love the accountability factor of, you know, knowing that there are other people in the class that you get used to, I go to the same time. So it's usually the close to the same core group that's there. And, you know, when you're not there, they ask you the next day, like, where were you yesterday? And I really like that, you know, that there's that accountability fact. I like being able to show up and not have to think about what I'm gonna do as just programmed and ready to go. And um, of course, you know, it gets my heart rate cranking. You know, but the you know, these these workouts are, you know, even though it's an hour time that's allocated to it, the the intensity part is, you know, anywhere for as little as 15 to 30 minutes, you know, by and large, you know, I'm burning more in 15 minutes than you most people would in in an hour or two hours um time just because of the way we go. They're in life part of the problem too, right? Is sometimes you put so much stress onto your body um that you you're it's not necessarily what you're supposed to be doing. But I've as I'm getting a little wiser, and now don't I don't compete as hard. So I kind of try and listen to my body a little bit more and and the priority right now is not getting hurt and not being injured. I I ripped a tricep last year, not because of working out, but just had a fall on a wall that just broke. And um, it put me out for uh a year, you know, being able to fully lift um and get those, you know, tendons and ligaments back going. And so injury just you know, that's devastating. And so I'm just I'm very cautious to make sure that I don't do anything that that kills me anymore. I'm over that part, so but I like to stay active on that side, for trying to skiing. Of course, in Colorado, I try if the snow's good, you know, and I'm actually heading out tomorrow, skiing down and tell you rides. So we try and ski every weekend to the extent that we can do that during the you know January, February, um, in some of March months.
SPEAKER_03Nice. And yes, as you get a little older, the injuries take longer to repair, so you try and avoid them. As I said to say to my son, you know, yeah, you can lift a lot heavier weights because number one you got a lot more testosterone and et cetera, but but also you repair much quicker. Like if my son does an injury, he's gonna be fine a week later. If I do an injury, I'm out of it for six months. Have you um have you done any like you you look a you seem like a person that like do yoga meditation, anything like that? So I meditate pretty much every day and have for ten plus years. I don't do yoga, I should. I do do a little bit of Pilates. I was doing it weekly, I need to get back into that whilst I'm in Porto where I am, just because uh it was recommended to me by a doctor for core for my back, actually. Like he's like one of the best things that give you the support. But I don't do yoga. Yeah. Do you do yoga?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's one of those things that uh in the vein of like trying to be a little bit more mindful of of body and mobility and spine, hip, uh, you know, shoulder, uh, and and me having a lack of mobility as a result of the punishment I put on my body over all the years. Um I've committed this year to try and do Did you see I said committed and then we'll try? In the same sentence, that's terrible. The goal is twice a week to do um a yoga or Pilates type uh session work. 30 minutes, uh 30 minutes or more, but at least 30 minutes twice a week, just to and and I don't like to do the um not a really good yogi. I don't like to do like the the slow and low hold. Like I like the more power yoga where I feel like it I can get a sweat going on and it's really strong holds. I feel like I'm building muscle and for sure, you know, uh the mobility elements there. So I found that um there are definitely many classes uh and variations of yoga that you can get all you want out of it in terms of getting beat up, including I went with my daughter uh over the Christmas break to the hot power yoga. And my goodness, uh you might I thought I was gonna pass out and die like 19 different times. And the way that some of these people in that class could hold movements and like their muscle strength and elasticity was just mind-blowing to me. Um, I burnt over 500 calories, you know, in that, you know, hour session. And um, I think my body was in a little bit of a state of shock because I was so dehydrated. You know, by the time we got out of there, I was just like, Whoof, that might be a little too extreme uh for me, which uh I'm embarrassed to say, but it man, oh man, that was uh very intense uh and uh and and a good time just to be with her on that one.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, always fun. I only tried hot yoga once. I did it the problem was I did it in two end of 2019. It was early 2020. But I remember I signed up for like I I enjoyed it. Like it was hard work, and I'm like, you know, I like a hard work. So I'm like, I bought a 10-pack. I then never went back because COVID kicked off. And could you imagine it? Maybe I've still got the credit. Could you imagine in COVID going into a place where there's a bunch of people sweating and sharing bodily fluid?
SPEAKER_01No, especially hot yoga. That'd be like that would have been the worst. That's where we would have definitely been ostracized from society for the case.
SPEAKER_03But I seem to remember I enjoyed it. So maybe I should try it again, and maybe I should follow your example and uh and and maybe try to think about doing some regular yoga role.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's like, you know, you point about like doing hard things. Like, why do I like to do cross because it's hard things? Like that sense of accomplishment when you're done with. It like that ho high yoga session, that was that was a hard thing. Uh not sure I enjoyed it as much, but you know, it's it's certainly one of those things I'm like wow, like that if you want to get you know done, uh that's one way to do it. And your point about those marathons, um, you know, you you you alluded to the fact that like you hated uh miles 18 through it's 26, right? Isn't it total 26 total?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean that's also the other problem, by the way. The 26.2 is if you take the shortest point, which you don't usually because you stick to a place on the road, which means that actually it's more like 26.5. So you're looking at your watch thinking, I've only got point two to go. And then you're like, I'm a 26.2, how the hell am I not finished yet?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's gotta be that's gotta be agonizing. But you know, the good news is just building it up so that when you're done, you've got that sense of accomplishment and to go do it and sign up again at the darn finish line.
SPEAKER_03You talk about, and I I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but I'll I'll say this one again because I do love it, because you talked about that sense of accomplishment. And I'm gonna actually read out something that somebody actually said on my podcast a while ago, but it was a quite a famous speech, I think, at Harvard, talking really about the whole wall. And it's like uh you uh you have to be able to roll with the punches, you have to be able to follow your dreams. The wall isn't there to stop you from your dreams, the wall is there to see how badly you want it. It's there to keep the other people out. If it was easy, it wouldn't be as meaningful and everyone would do it. The wall is there to test how much you want it. If you're able to overcome the wall, that is what makes a marathon finish so satisfying. You had to take your fear and doubt and stare it in the face. And I just love that. I think it is, to be honest, you could argue that's life in many ways. And yes, that's talking about a marathon, but that might be you doing your hot yoga. That might be, you know, your CrossFit, pushing yourself that a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's uh I'd argue that that's probably life for high performers, you know, is constantly looking for the wall. And people that are maybe a little bit not like us that aren't all right there. I had a conversation. Um I'm I'm part of an organization called YPO, Young Presidents Organization, and uh it's you know a group of CEOs and executives. Really, it's a it's a worldwide organization. But we had a a little uh small dinner gathering and the spouses were included in this. And one of the the wives said, you know, she goes, I absolutely love these YPO events because I get to come and listen to you all just banter back and forth about ideas. And basically what we're doing is we're talking about our own you know proverbial walls, you know, of like what we're trying to do, what our struggles are. And you you're supposed to go deep, right? Like you talk about the the 10% that you don't want to talk about or that you can't share with anybody else. And so it's talking about obstacles or achievements that you also don't want to, you know, do be too boisterous about for a myriad of reasons. And and so she's like, I just absolutely love these because you guys like take this for granted. Like I come from an upbringing and family whereby, you know, my parents didn't have grand ambitions of challenging status quo. Like they showed up, they appreciated their job, they liked getting their raises that they could calculate on an annual basis. They knew what their income was gonna be on a week to week, month to month, year to year basis, and they knew where they were gonna be, where they were gonna get that income from, barring, you know, some extreme events. It's like your guys' world and your definite, you guys, once you get settled, you immediately have to go try and disrupt again. And you're constantly looking for how to do more, achieve more, change more, have greater impact. And she goes, just to let you know, like that's not normal. And so, you know, when you when you talk about it, you know, I do see that as a wall. Is that you know, I and I drive my wife crazy and God bless her for this, but it's like, you know, whenever things get settled, like I'm now trying to look, okay, how can we go challenge? What's the next, where's the next wall that we can overcome? Where's the next obstacle that we can go do? It's why I've got silver edge again. Is okay, that was great. That was a fun exit. We have the opportunity to get it back. Where's that wall? How do we go conquer, you know, this new element of making life easier to do commerce for businesses? How do we remove the friction from being able to pay and get paid? You know, that like there's a reason why there's there's so many checks out there. It's a pain in the butt to go deal with, but that's the wall, right? So let's go solve that problem and go help people out. So thanks for sharing that. That's great because that that really sums up a lot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I I love that uh you're in YPO, great organization. Little old YPO didn't quite join in time, but I am a member of uh EO. Okay. Almost nine. Very, very similar organization. In fact, I spent last week in uh Panama at an EO event, and they you know, very similar idea. EO liked to call it the 5% instead of the 10%. Yes, exactly the same. Yeah, same theory. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's it. That's exactly right. EO's a fantastic organization. Same thing. There's a lot of crossover too.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, always fun to go deep with these things with other entrepreneurs. It uh makes us some interesting discussions.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And uh what do you like to do for fun? Well, uh, as I mentioned, we're going skiing this weekend, so I love being able to take advantage of uh of that. I do I live on a golf course, um, although when I'm you know in these startup businesses, I don't get to golf nearly as much as uh I would like. Although I did put a new indoor simulator into my house for I think I'm trying to perhaps buy my youngest son's attention a little bit more. But he loved golfing in Colorado. You just can't, you know, you have to, I mean, six months out of the year, it's well, that's a little hard. It gets cold and you can't go outside and you you gotta you gotta come around it. So simulator was a great way also to address my midlife crisis, perhaps, and give me something to do, change up the house. So uh I like I like hitting golf balls. I love fly fishing um and being out there and and then travel. My wife and I uh we love traveling together. Um, and it seems like when we get open weekends or big blocks of time, love to go to Europe and love to see the the the world and and um we you know, Mexico is really convenient, you know, for people that are west of the Mississippi. I mean, I can be in town in Mexico in less than two hours and uh be at a great spot, be on the beach and be in an environment totally opposite of what's behind me. And so we love to, you know, go do that and just uh create new experiences and memories. So love, love, love, that's what I love about travel. There's always something new, new to do. Or, you know, frankly, um, you know, I have to I have to unwind a little bit too. And so sometimes just being able to see and not have to think. Oh, I guess we're always thinking, but at least not have to do as much um is is healthy for me to kind of do a little bit of a reset. Usually it takes a few days to really get unplugged, but once I get past day three, then I can I can go into a nice mode of chill and relax for a few days, and then I'm anxious to get back and go at it again.
SPEAKER_03So And as entrepreneurs, you know, we we we all have a habit of working too much. The to-do list is never done. But how do you find a balanced life, you know, looking at the uh sort of you know, the work, the family, health, bit of fun?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it clearly you have to be very intentional about it. You know, I'd say when I was, you know, my late 20s, early thirties, I had an executive coach that literally um, you know, made me plot it out. Like I had to write it out on a calendar, my day, and show, okay, well, how does my like what are my priorities? You know, first, well, my priors, my faith, you know, my family, my business, my friends, you know, and then the community. Okay, well, let's look at your calendar. Wait a second. You know, you're not even close, like your faith, but you once, once, you know, one time on Sunday, you know, good enough for you. Is that a priority in your life? Like, what does this look like? And so I, you know, I had to now sit there and say, okay, like how do how does Bible study, how do devotionals go into that? And then time of my wife, I had to put dates, uh, date night, especially when the kids were young. I mean, as you remember, you know, kids have been those toddler years, it's crazy, right? Like it's like you look at each other through bloodshot eyes, like, how are we gonna get through the day? You go to sleep and you wake up and it's like repeat all over again. So I think, you know, it's very intentional with calendaring. And and now I don't have to do the calendar as much. I probably should. I don't, but in my mind, I just have a routine whereby I know that I'm going to start out my day with doing morning devotionals and having that prayer time, which is, I think, a lot like your meditation time. I know then I'm gonna do a quick check on work just to make sure there's no fires that I'm not need to prepare for. Then I go to the gym. I should probably not do the I I don't get distracted by work fires generally to compromise the gym. Go do the time to get my physical component and element done early in the morning. And then after that, I uh will come home, make sure everything's good in the household. And it used to be like get the kids out to school. Now that they're they don't need that, they drive themselves. So now I come back and you know, check in with my wife and see what's going on, and then it's go to the office, you know, and get in and start on those calls. And then it's, you know, kind of rinse repeats. I guess the point of saying all that is I I now have it programmed automatically that you know I can touch my spiritual life, my mental uh well-being, as well as the physical health, you know, early on in that day, and it's fairly calculated. And then where I probably needed to be better is the date nights with my my wife and being intentional about that. But we do spend um I don't eat out like alone or I don't I don't do a whole lot of business dinners anymore, which is really nice for the time being. And so I've got a lot of I love doing um actually her cousin said he he passed away of cancer and uh he kind of sent a tribute video to all of us because he knew he was, you know, dying, and he said, like, don't miss dinner, like was one of his like lessons or I guess words of wisdom that he imparted on all of us. And I always took that to heart. He's like, Whatever you do, like don't miss dinner. Like there's no time like the family dinner at home and like being there and being present. I drive my my boys crazy now. What do we have to go? We were dinner last night together. Like, why do we have to be dinner tonight together too? Why do we have to sit around the dinner table? And um, I don't know if I'm doing it right or wrong, but I sure you know value the time of the getting at least 15, 20, 30 minutes with them of their attention to just connect and bees. Um that's kind of the way I approach it.
SPEAKER_03Totally. And what's uh been a pivotal moment in your life?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think um I would I would probably go back again to uh I I was fortunate enough to run into the quote unquote success of having a business that was doing very, very well in my my late twenties. Many people standardized, probably, you know, set. And I felt like I had it all. I was the CEO of a high growth company, I had cash, I had this family of three little kids, I had a wonderful, loving wife. And from the outside, you'd think Ken had it all, you know, really put together. And what I found was I had like never been so empty in my entire life at that same time. Like I was living for myself the entire time, and I was constantly like chasing. And I thought that I was doing everything right, but I was I had it all backwards. And like what really was most important wasn't actually what was most important at the end of the day. And so there was a real accountability there that I needed to understand like why am I here? And what impact do I want to have, and what legacy do I want to have, and what significance do I want to have with those that matter most, and that being my faith and my family. And, you know, how how do I want to be revered and received and perceived, and and you know, where's my heart? And is it in power and treasure, or is it in love and sacrifice and service? And so that really changed me uh a lot. Uh and I would say it changed my my thinking and approach. It's taken years of coaching and counseling and you know, forum sessions with EO and YPO to talk about how we get better and how we continuously improve and how we continue to grow. Um, when you talk about a pivotal moment, like I I remember that being, you know, I think it was 31 years, you know, 30, it was October of my 31-year-old year, and I was like, whoa, it just hit me out of nowhere. And I was like, gosh. They always say that the male brain takes a little while to develop. And uh clearly I was definitely behind the curve, and and it took me uh you know to get into those three and say, okay, let's let's let's figure this out, pal.
SPEAKER_03So pick one piece of advice you'd give from a sparring entrepreneur.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna do two. Two, first off, is don't scale broke. And I what I mean by that is um I've scaled and I've seen many organizations try and scale when either they were undercapitalized and they didn't really understand like how much money it was gonna take, and they tried to scale and it broke them. And then I've also seen companies try and scale, and I've tried to scale companies whereby we really did not have all the peoples, the processes um in place to whereby we could sustain major scale. So if you sit there and say, okay, if you were to attain ultimate like scale and acquisition of 100x of what you're anticipating, what would happen? Like, could you handle it? And what would it look like? And what would that customer experience be like? And um even like you get pressure with private equity money that comes in, and they sit there and you just have to go, go, go, top line at all at all expenses. And I've done that and I'd burnt it, and I'm like, okay, and we're going. But the company wasn't prepared to handle that. And it and it was really, it was really um crushing. So that's one that I've told people many times in various talks that has resonated um on don't scaling broke. The only other thing is that you can't you have to you can't do anything by yourself, but you have to do everything for yourself. And um, you know, and what I mean by that is like nobody else in this world really cares about you but you. But if you think that the only way that you can get through this world is by yourself, you're gonna have a very lonely, lonely life and a lonely journey. And it's so much more rewarding and fulfilling, you know, enabling others to come along that journey with you and to support and serve them. And inevitably it always seems to come back, and I end up getting more out of that. How can people find you? You can track me down now. I mean, shoot. They know how they can find me easier than I can between the the the all the social media facets, but uh obviously LinkedIn's probably the easiest one for this audience to to get me in then at SilverEge. You can uh email me Ken at G-O-S E.io. Uh it's Ken at go silveredge.com is another another email address as well. So happy to help anybody I can.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank you. I appreciate you joining us today. Likewise, it was fun. And thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the channel, tell your friends, and please leave a review.