Everybody wants Victor Hanson here and welcome to a show
that's going to expand your mind, illuminate you, and inspire
you in ways of hopefulness and hopefulness that maybe you hadn't expected.
I've got my neighbor and friend here, Ken McElroy, who is just a mensch.
If you know that term.
It means he's got it together, knows his get together in his resolve to click.
Now, he used to have a regular job like a regular person,
and then he'd decide to have his own company,
which we're going to talk about now.
He's owned over in his company over 10,000 properties
with a goal in the next five years to go into 25,000 copies.
He's written great, inspiring books to help everybody
get a hand out, but a hand
up, although he is one of the great philanthropists of our time.
So, Ken, back when you were a corporate type guy and you were working for
somebody, were out of college and all that, and you worked even
as a laborer with your dad back at Boeing up in Seattle.
So I got your stuff down pretty well.
How did you have the courage to leave a job and start your own business?
And how can somebody else do the same?
You know, environment is stronger than well, as you know.
So Buckminster Fuller would say environment is stronger than.
Well, I believe that.
And what happened was my parents both didn't go to college.
They had incredible work ethic.
And and my mom was a hairdresser and my dad was a contract owner, as you know.
And so I grew up, you know, watching them scrap it out.
But it was just wasn't enough.
And so when I got thrust into the next level,
you know, I didn't even know what that was like.
And but then I got on that paycheck program
and then I realized the limitations from it.
I really did. I saw the risks.
I saw the risks.
And the risks to me were very calculated
returns on your wages each and every year.
If you did a good job.
Sometimes quotas grew and in size, the territories shrunk.
And and, you know, companies were growing.
So I was seeing this the corporate America was doing just fine.
And you left. Yeah. So yeah.
And I don't know why I saw it so clearly, but I did and I just said, you know,
gosh, I'm just not I'm not going to get ahead
at, you know, 2 to 3% wage growth while inflation,
you know, and back in the eighties, it was, you know, over double digit.
And then it, you know, of course,
tempered down for a while, but now it's back up again.
So I was I felt like I was falling behind.
I certainly was financially. And that's where I was seeing at the most.
So you're sitting in a restaurant and you're talking to your boss
and the guy comes over and talks to you and your boss insults you
in front of that guy.
Well, first of all, I think if you pay attention, that always happens.
Yeah, but but a lot of times the the corporate America is their job.
That's why they give you these four one KS and they give you these profit
sharing plans and they give you all of these things to keep you
there, their hooks, any kind of vesting or anything, anything like that.
The reason they trickle it is to keep you there.
So at some point, if you're there long enough, you're hooked.
You have to lose your sovereignty and freedom. Correct.
And you have a lot to walk away from.
So the whole point of corporate America is to start offering things
and build on them and build on them and build on them.
And so all of a sudden you're walking away from something big.
And so it keeps you there and you sacrifice.
And I believe your freedom.
I believe, like we've talked before,
there are two kinds of education academic, and both of us did that game.
But the more important is self help action.
How did you get into self-help?
Because you graduated college and you said you didn't like reading
when you graduate, which a lot of people out there probably an.
So I was done I honestly I for whatever reason
I believe that once I got through school I didn't need to learn anymore.
It was the worst, worst thought, the dollar.
I look back, I just you know, but but what happened was
I ended up going to some personal development stuff,
and one of them was actually at my college with a guy by the name of Frosty
Western, and he wrote a book called Make the Big Time Where You're At.
He was our head football coach.
He and he's one of the most winningest football coaches
in the history of the NCAA.
If you just Google him, you'll see he passed away not that long ago,
but he gave me this book and I took his class.
It was actually a class I could take it.
School is called Make the Big Time Where You're At.
And it was full of things that you say.
And Harvey McKay says, and you know, people aren't buddies.
Yeah, That all look all of us.
Yeah. That I look up to.
And they were all kind of,
you know they were maybe
the words are a little bit different, but it was all the same.
Like you are in control of your life and it's no one else's fault but yours.
And you got to clean up what's in here first.
And then you have to, you know, really unlearn, relearn.
And it was all kind of the same stuff.
So when I watch you or or, you know, some of the older guys like,
you know, guys like, I just love like, like Tom Hopkins
and anybody that I mean, it's kind of all the same messaging.
But basically we all have what we have from our,
you know, what we're taught or whatever, whatever we learned or didn't learn.
And that's it. That's where you are.
So it's up to you to find to that soften those rough edges.
And I just poured myself into once I once I got to
I think in school it was kind of like you have to
you have to read this book and you have to, you know, do a test on it.
But once I actually saw the freedom of being able to read
whatever I wanted to read, it was actually very different because,
you know, so now, of course, I buy books that I want to read or and
and so I just pour myself into those and, and, and what will happen
is just little by little over time,
you change just a little bit at a time.
And and so when I go to a seminar, which I go to a lot now, as you know,
or I'm reading a book, I always actually just try to take one or two things
out of the book and apply them.
That's it. In the whole book, how.
Did somebody today, given all the conundrum of problems,
the puzzles of problem, go from zero to hero in the quickest way?
What is is there a safe, quick, easy way that you see right now?
I think the best thing people could do is is study people who have done it right.
And, you know, it's it's funny, like somehow, you know, I laugh.
You know, somebody said to me the other day, they go,
do you know how much Warren Buffett gets for one hour of time?
You know, because it's auctioned, Right. It's all kind of public.
And it was like somewhere between a million, $2 million
and for an hour with him. Right.
And and I'm like, well, I could just buy his book for 25 for $25.
And that is the point.
You know, literally, you can watch these people talk,
whether it's, you know, really, really, really smart people.
You can read what they're doing.
And I'm talking about I'm still doing it.
You know, I'm still do.
I learned to meditate later in life as a result of reading.
You know, what are what are people that I admire like like Richard
Branson or let's say, Tony Robbins or what do they do every day?
And all of them said meditate.
So I start and I know you do.
I start. So I started too.
And so these are these are small things that you can do.
I don't know the reason.
And yeah, now I do.
But at the time I didn't understand it, but I just tried it and I did it.
And now it's now it's something.
I did it this morning and, and I think these are
all things that people have done they've perfected in their own lives.
That is the best way.
You know, you've got to be careful.
Are who who are your teachers.
You can't find happiness. It's in you.
It always was thinking of you as a kid.
What happens is, you know, you just have to
you have to give something up to get it back, you know, actually go acquire it
so that, you know,
so when you start to look and you start to be aware to your point,
all you're trying to do is find out what you're unaware of
and what are you doing unconsciously or subconsciously,
that is from your pre programing and, and then be aware of it.
And once you're aware of it, it's still you're no longer it's
no longer in your subconscious.
Now all of a sudden you're working on it.
That's all.
So, so you know, for me I'm always just working
on my awareness of things that, you know, why do I get up the same way?
Maybe some of us grab our phone or some of us go get a cup of coffee
and we have our little habits, and then next thing you know, you know, or
you're driving and you know, you're not paying attention, You're not aware.
There's all these things that we do every single day.
And you know, and you as you know, as if you change your habits.
And change your life. You can change your life.