Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - How To Be Unstoppable with Self Made CEO Rick Jordan

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Starting point is 00:00:42 Beat yourself up for not showing up or not giving that 40% that you have. That's the stupidity that can hop on. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? It starts right about now. Hey guys, what's up?

Starting point is 00:01:15 Welcome to Right About Now. We'd like to say if it's radical, we cover it. There's nothing more radical than my friend. Founder CEO, Rick Jordan. What's up, Rick? What's shaking, man. It's good to see you. Good to see you.

Starting point is 00:01:28 Thanks for being on. on how things. I like that this was like a pleasant surprise today. Yeah, exactly. And what's happening? Dude, it's a good, it's a good world. And I tell you, the things that's grounding me these days is, you know, anybody I talk to is like within all the chaos of taking a company public, continuing a personal brand. It's like all the hardship that comes about it with lawyers and auditors and everything else in the SEC.

Starting point is 00:01:54 It's, I'm still the one that gets to do this. You know what I mean? So there's not a lot of people that do. And that's what grounds me, dude. Exactly. It is interesting. It's funny you bring up, like, sometimes we do things that are really big. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:02:10 A lot of people don't do. And you go through that journey. And you want to think that you're enjoying it and appreciating it. But then, but you don't pause often enough maybe not to soak in all doing so great, but more like am I really getting the full impact of what this means and what it is and all that. I do that sometimes. It sounds like that's what you're experiencing a little bit. For sure, brother.

Starting point is 00:02:33 You probably do that a lot like I do. It's in those moments. You go from a couple million in revenue to now eight figures around, but even like breaking that million the first time. You don't fully realize that. So I'm trying little things. It was like last year, you know, did like my first $2 million deal in a single deal, like a sale, right?

Starting point is 00:02:53 And I bought myself because I already promised myself. I'm going to buy my, McCallin M. I'm a big Scotch fan. I always have been, especially of McCallon. And so I still have that bottle. It's a $6,000 bottle of McAllen M. And that was meant to savor the moment of it. Not everybody has to do this, but it's even like the watch I'm wearing the day as a Panter Eye. It's a limited edition. It's six of a thousand. And I bought it when we went public as a milestone piece. It's got like a green gradient face. And the guy had it like tucked away in the back of the panoride boutique. I think I got the one for you. And I'm like, what's green? That's like green is money.

Starting point is 00:03:28 And it makes sense for going public. But in a way, it's like I was matching it. And I try those little things to savor those moments and actually zoom out a bit to be an observer of actually what's happening right then. I'm not good at it all the time, but these little milestone things help me out a lot. Yeah, I love it. So I know you're all about going all in. So let's set the table for our audience. Let's give them, I know we could talk for two hours about your background.

Starting point is 00:03:56 Let's give them some highlights about who is all in Rick Jordan. Yeah, that came up. I was thinking back when I figured out what's my core value. Who am I? And this was like 2018. And it's because you try to go through the things like you're talking about in the bio, right? It's like speaker, author, entrepreneur, tech executive, business owner, all this cybersecurity expert, AI expert, all of that.

Starting point is 00:04:20 Those are like things about me, but it's not who I am. And I started reaching back to I was training a salesperson when I was working with Best Buy. Because I was the very first Geek Squad agent in Chicago in 2003 when they launched that. And I rolled out the entire nation of Canada, literally teaching them how to sell. And I would teach these individual business representatives. This dude was in my car. And he'd only know me for a month. And I started, I don't even remember what I was about it.

Starting point is 00:04:49 I just started going off on something in a very good way. And I'm like, man, I'm sorry. I just get passionate. Rick, what I know about you so far is that anything that you actually put yourself into, you just go all in. Don't apologize for being passionate about it. That's who you are. This was a guy that I was training.

Starting point is 00:05:07 So I remember going through that exercise of who am I back in 2018. And that popped in. I'm like, that's who I am. Whatever I do, it's giving whatever I had to that. I've refined it a little bit, dude, because you and I do, We've had our, we both had our ups and downs, right? Good days, bad days, great revenue, no revenue, losing cash, no income, getting laid off, any sort of legal trouble or anything like that pops up, taxes, whatever.

Starting point is 00:05:36 We go through those things and it's, you get knocked down a bit. So that definition for me nowadays is if I've got 100% to give today, I'm giving 100% today because that's all in. If something really shitty happened yesterday and I've only got 40% today, like maybe I went on a bender last night with some tequila or something like that. A funny example, but maybe I only have 40%. Relatable. Yeah, exactly. If I've got 40% to give today, and I give that entire 40%, whatever reason that that 40% is only there for, that's still all in for that day. So it comes to like compassion for yourself in those moments as well. Whatever you have to give is what you should give. And that's what qualifies you for being all in. And it's, that's so interesting. I talk to Grant Cardone

Starting point is 00:06:21 just recently. And on the show, he's been on my show now a couple times. But like he talks about it, he didn't frame it that same way, but it's the same thing what you're saying. It doesn't matter how you feel. It doesn't matter whether that's 40% or whatever. Yeah. Just show up.

Starting point is 00:06:37 Like showing up, like doing it. Because so many people like just cash it in it. Ah, I won't do that or I won't do this. Or if they're like you said, had the tequila bender or whatever they had, they'll just not do it. And again, And it doesn't mean we're always at our highest self. But you show up and you get 40, whatever 100% of 40%, whatever that is, that's a lot of the battle.

Starting point is 00:07:03 Yeah, that people just have to learn to condition themselves to push through. For sure, for sure. It's hard to get to that point because that's an awareness level too. Yeah. And we can go on mindset talk all day, but it's let's be real about it. I think that stupidity only sets in when you're, I hope. people are listening hardcore to this because this is like straight talk real talk when stupidity sets in is actually when you're aware of that that you're not putting in what you have you're

Starting point is 00:07:30 not showing up and you choose still not to do so anyways yeah don't get yourself down for only having 40 percent beat yourself up for not showing up or not giving that 40 percent that you have that's the stupidity that can hop on bingo right there that's an unlock if people can get in that frame of mind big time. Rick, talk about, just had a freaking, you just went public, dude. Let's talk about the business a little bit. Like, maybe leading up to the big day. It's, I was just talking with another company that one public, vocodia. They're an AI call center based company. They just went public on the Chicago Board of Exchange. It was cool because I got to hang out for the party. And I was telling them, like, does it feel to you any different? And they're like, no,

Starting point is 00:08:13 not really. I'm like, that that's the whole point, right? Because business is still business as usual. except now I have shareholders. I've got like a thousand stepkids that I inherited from reverse merger that I have to communicate with. I've got to keep up to date on things. I've got to keep informed so that they continuously invest. And when you see that, they hop on to the vision just like any other investor would. They hop onto the vision just like any employee would, anybody on my team.

Starting point is 00:08:40 In the company, we've got 78 people now growing from where we were even just four years ago with nine. So it's been a lot of rapid increase in this company. I still feel like a startup, even though we're public. Even though we've got the revenue, I still feel like a startup. And that's maybe something that keeps me grounded a bit, but it's like people encourage me. So anybody who's thinking about this, first, it's a very small group of people that actually go public. There's only like 3,500 companies on NASDAQ and how many hundreds of thousands of businesses actually exist in America? Well over a million, I would think, of small businesses.

Starting point is 00:09:16 3,500 are actually listed on NASDAQ, which is where we intend to go in about a year, uplisting from OTC to NASDAQ. So some of it's mind-blowing, but it's like it takes a minute to really come back down to reality and be like, dude, we're actually public right now. It starts to feel a little better and a little more real as you continue with your filings and you keep going through the audits and you have to continuously talk with the lawyers. But right away, it's like literally nothing changed from the day we went public to the day after we went public.

Starting point is 00:09:47 Is that process been messier or cleaner than you thought it would be? It's always. I don't know how what. Sometimes people would go into things and what's going to be messy. So like you're not that surprised. I don't know. Like as far as expectation versus reality, where did we fall? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:03 It's a lot messier than what I hadn't ever thought it would be. There's stuff that you can just never even predict that just comes out. But it's if you go into this, so whatever comes up, I'll handle it. you're going to be okay. The process, it took, even like in the last week, it's like the deal to do this fell apart eight times. We had to piece it back together just in the week prior to when we closed and enlisted.

Starting point is 00:10:27 The years leading up to that, there was a dude I knew that graduated from Wharton Business School, right? Arguably the top business school in the entire United States. You look at up the graduates, even Donald Trump graduated from there. There's a whole bunch of other people that did that went there. I think George W. Bush did or George H.W. I don't remember, but there's a whole bunch of people, you know, a whole bunch of names everybody knows. And there's a comment that my friend made to me, and he goes, there's the rule of threes that they teach at Wharton. I'm like, what's the rule of threes?

Starting point is 00:10:57 It takes three times as long and three times as much money as what you thought it was going to take. And I was like, dude, that's like exactly what this was, you know, for real, because I thought it was going to be like six months. or a year or something like that, but then there were stages when we raised a couple hundred grand, but that just got us through our first reg A, which is a small public offering for a private company. And then after that is when we listed, which was another two years after that. So it was like the entire process that I thought was going to be about a year and about $300,000 ended up being three years and like a million dollars to go. Three X, baby.

Starting point is 00:11:36 Exactly. You talked about grand. Let's throw that and I'll write it the 3X book, okay? Yeah, the 3X. Yeah. Plan for the best. Let's say hope for the best, plan for the worst. You got it.

Starting point is 00:11:51 Yeah. To look back and it's like everything that I thought was going to happen actually did in the best way. Because you still dealt with the stuff. And I was talking about this to one of my executives the other day. And it's like the way that I look at it because you can have a solid plan. Jordan, who's a mutual friend of ours too. He's got like the straight line system. And it's not the shortest path is to get from point A to B.

Starting point is 00:12:12 He's talking about sales. But when I look at it is like a strategic plan to execute on something, there's going to be stuff when you said it's messy, right? There's going to be stuff that will knock you off that track. So if you're going straight and you've got something that knocked you off over to the left, it takes more time and effort, dude, to backtrack and get to where you were to continue to execute on that original plan. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:33 Every time you get thrown a curveball, you have to reevaluate. what doesn't change is your endpoint whatsoever. And that's why everything that I thought would happen would, meaning like we went public. There was no sacrificing compromising that whatsoever. But when we'd get knocked off track, it'd be like, cool, let's reevaluate because now the best plan, that straight line, is to go to that destination from where we're at currently. Not go back to where we were and proceed down the original plan because something knocked us off that plan, probably for a reason. And I think that's part of,

Starting point is 00:13:10 and a lot of people listen that want to be entrepreneurs or early entrepreneurs. I think there's that resiliency and ability to pivot that you have to, and willingness to change a little bit that you've got to be able to roll with. That I think not everyone understands that shit happens. Oh, I know. And they do. They hear it.

Starting point is 00:13:35 Like fundamentally they do. but at the scale and size and things like that happen it's hard to convey the nimbleness you need to have in those moments yeah it's it's very hard especially when you've got a large team because yeah you're the vision caster right as the leader and if you say hey it's happening this way and everybody has their mental plan according to that and then they get knocked off base it can cause some loss of hope You know, and it's getting them back behind you because that's another thing I learned the last couple years, man. You can easily isolate yourself. I know you know this too and try to lean on your own talents.

Starting point is 00:14:16 You can go fast by yourself, but you go far with other people. Vingo. Circle that. Yeah. Exactly. Triple that. And that's the part that's probably the most taxing as a leader of a public company of a large, something big, whatever you want to call it, anything that you're doing in your life that has high impact. When you have team behind you, that's probably the most difficult task as a leader.

Starting point is 00:14:41 And I've seen that in the past couple months. In the past year or so, as we've been going through this process, is keeping them with their spirits high. To set the expectation, like this is going to not look like what we think it's going to look like. We're still going to get there. But there's only so many hits. And some people just don't want that, dude. And that's okay. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:03 And that's fine. But it's whether you're here or not. And that, dude, I love every single one of my people. Whether you're her or not, I'm still going to move forward. I'm still going after it. That's the difference. And that's what people need to see is that you are just literally unstoppable in what you're going after with your dreams, with your vision.

Starting point is 00:15:20 Yeah. How I know you've been doing a lot of speaking and coaching and other things on the side. How's that been going? It's been going good. I was telling my team this the other day. It's like the personal brand. I'm in the IT space, right? I have been for years.

Starting point is 00:15:35 There's not a lot of personal brands. bro in the IT space. No. A lot of large ones. Kelly Siegel. Her name sounds familiar. It's a him. Kelly.

Starting point is 00:15:47 Oh, man. Huge, like muscular dude. Yes. Yes. Yeah. He owns an IT company.

Starting point is 00:15:54 That's cool. Yeah. I'll have to reach out to him again. Harder than life is his, he wrote a book and then he's, he's on our podcast network. He's from a good friend. Good guy. That's awesome. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:05 Connect me. Please. to talk with him, dude. It's a, yeah, it's a, yeah, I'm sure you would share the small space for you guys. Yeah. And the personal brands area for sure. Right on. In one way, it's almost like the blue ocean because it's like nobody's doing it. But then it's, I still chose to step out of that blue ocean into this larger arena of the general public when it comes to a public company. But the speaking and everything, dude, it's, that's what accelerated this. And that's what allowed the company to go public. Because it wasn't just the fact that the company was doing well, already

Starting point is 00:16:35 profitable. Proof of concept was there. Seven figures in revenue. Everything looks great. The reason why we got our financial backers is, and they told me this a month ago, it was like four months after we listed. They're like, we don't want to blow smoke up your ass. But the reason why we back this is because you are the perfect spokesperson for a public company. You are literally everywhere. You go on TV, nationwide media, like Bloomberg and CNBC and CBS and Fox and Newsmax and NewsNation. It's all of these networks that I exist on, but then I also speak places like VCon, all of these other entrepreneurial events where people can just jump on board this train. And there's even those because my growth model is by acquisition right now.

Starting point is 00:17:21 It's a roll-up. It's making a lot of small companies a really big nationwide brand that has never existed before in this space. We're the first ones with the first MSP and a service provider. The reason we're able to do that is because it's personal brand led. When I look at, it's like Kevin Harrington's on my board. We both know Kevin. You look on the chat rooms because there's still like chat boards for stocks. And everything is the people that are like naysayers, the haters, this thing's going to tank.

Starting point is 00:17:45 We don't have filings yet or whatever and all that. But then there's others like, no, look at the team. And look at Rick and Kevin. And they like combine the personal brands there to be like, this is a powerhouse because these guys don't just put their names on the line for just anything. And then they start to find speaking videos that are out there on the internet somewhere of me or news appearances. And of course, I can find a lot on Kevin too. And it's look, that's their due diligence. This is legit.

Starting point is 00:18:13 Yeah. It's like speaking for you probably doesn't generate like the most income for you. No. Yeah. It's everything else that it supports. It's the brand. You got it. And that's what.

Starting point is 00:18:23 And I didn't know we'd get this avenue, but I'm glad we did. Like it's back to, you can't people hear it. I got the personal brand thing and like it. Yeah. Some of people shrug it off or they think it's self-serving and all that. But like the influence and the power, like it's not, it's not always direct. Like it's like indirect sometimes. It's like it's compounding.

Starting point is 00:18:47 It's like it there's shit that I've done or been a part of and it was all personal brand or awareness driving. and I've forgotten about it. Yeah. And someone, I'll run into someone or something and a connection or something monetary, positive happens in my life. We'll just say that. And I'll go, and I'll go, I'm not even, I'll be like, I'm not even sure how this landed in my lap.

Starting point is 00:19:11 And someone will go, Tom saw you speak, or Tom follows your podcast or Palm follows you on Instagram, or like something just random like that. Yeah. And I'm like, but it checks, but it's the power that it has. and the ability that these channels have unlocked. You got to have something to speak about and you got to be authentic and you got to,

Starting point is 00:19:32 but you know, there's different strokes for different folks. It doesn't mean you have to have a certain persona, but to not be taking advantage of that. How many people don't is it's sad. Powerful, man. I got a call from Cuomo's producer, Chris Cuomo's producer three weeks ago.

Starting point is 00:19:49 And they were like, hey, Chris saw you on Instagram. You seem like the guy that can talk. about this these Taylor Swift AI deep fakes and I'm like yeah I would be the guy to talk about that cool 7 30 tonight okay just I was in Chicago like running the studio in Chicago and do there we got your name from someone I don't remember but then he saw you on Instagram is yeah this guy's relatable let's bring him on yeah exactly I'm like yeah that's cool unfortunately I didn't go on that's like the side thing I got bumped by Ted Cruz ended up going on anyway so there's still a pecking order but at the same

Starting point is 00:20:24 time to what we're talking about. It's like I was findable. And the entire reason I got that phone call was because of my personal brand. Exactly. And to not, if not to take advantage is to build for those opportunities. Yeah. If not for that reason, then don't you want to control the narrative like of your like when someone, everybody Googles everybody now. Yeah. Like everybody. So they're going to go search your name. They're going to do that. And if you aren't controlling the narrative, with like your own website, your own media and all that's raising to the top, which they will do, at least for now, your own profiles jump. And I don't mean controlling it like in the way that politics controls.

Starting point is 00:21:05 I just mean telling your real story the way you want to tell it because you're the one that's living it. To not want to just control that, if nothing else, that's mind-blowing to me too. Yeah. What I do, there's a bit of a threshold there to stay under as well. And I know you know this too. It's like when you control the narrative, you're, dude, control what you can put out there about yourself. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:30 But then stop at the threshold of addressing every little piece of hate that's thrown at you. Oh, yeah. You know, because it's you can try to, that's not your narrative to control. No. Yeah. It's almost ignore it. And now like even going public, it's like we get fun emails from at.

Starting point is 00:21:48 Yeah. PR at reachout.it.com. And it's, are you kidding me? I mean, I read some of these things. My team handles most, but then I see some, it's like, whatever. I'm just going to, I'll just go post on Twitter again and everything will be okay. Yeah. No, I have to really, I don't respond to most of it, but sometimes we're all human.

Starting point is 00:22:08 It's just, I get you. I don't know. There's so many trolls. It's just, and that's, they probably, they don't even mean what they're saying. They're just purely trying to get a rise out of you, the company, or whatever it might be that there's trolling on. Yeah. I'm sure you see that. I sure do, man. I had a real, it was about trauma a little bit ago. And you see some of the fun comments that come out of that because it was it was divisive what I said, which I'd say that kind of stuff a lot. These guys like you and I, but it was just like there's a, it was this theme that I see with trauma and the basic premise of it. It was like it's almost that like the victim hole that people fall into now. It's like, oh, my trauma, that's why I did this. My trauma, that's why I did that. And I literally said on the show as an episode of my own show. But then the real post was like, I just said, shut up.

Starting point is 00:22:58 I don't want to hear that. What I want to hear about is what you're going to do about it. Tell me about that. And I'll be compassionate and supportive. And that was like some of the trolls, dude. I was like, whoa, this is a little over the top now. Yeah, no. It's, look, we can all have empathy.

Starting point is 00:23:15 Yeah. But at the end of the day, shit's going to happen. and sometimes you get a bad hand, but you got to make something out of it. Yeah, for sure. If you want to stay in that fucking box forever, or you want to, like, dig your way out of it. And there's enough helping hands out there.

Starting point is 00:23:33 If people see that you're wanting to take control of it, like, it's one thing when versus just the woe is me mentality. Unfortunately, we've built a lot of people that are in that other camp. We have, unfortunately. Here's a question for you. Okay, because if you look at what we met probably, what, five years ago, it's something like that. And there was a whole thing like around that era like about hustle culture. And it was like a positive thing that everybody was talking about hustle culture.

Starting point is 00:24:04 And it's a I don't, I never really got into that speaking about it at that point or like saying like putting value on the amount of work that you put in. But I think a lot of people that are in our circles, that's what they would talk about, have pride in it, be at the office for later than anybody. else getting more hours because while everybody else is sleeping, you can be working. Get up at four because everybody's still in bed. It was like, what in the world? And I started talking, it's like, you know what I do? Like almost every night before I go to bed. I will pop on Netflix or HBO max for 45 minutes that's because it like clears my head. It allows me to think about nothing. And that's like a hustle culture. You don't watch TV if you're hustling. Do you feel like circles that we've been in have contributed to that toxicity?

Starting point is 00:24:49 I think so. And I think, but I do think, and I promote like work-life balance. But I think if you're working, you can work when you want to work now and where you want to work in a lot of ways, especially in North Shore and different fields. I do have the benefit of able to control that.

Starting point is 00:25:06 But I think that, unfortunately, the narrative was push it all the end. And I will say it's, I struggle. I never got into that much of that narrative. I just, my stuff will just not exactly in any of that realm. But like at the same time,

Starting point is 00:25:26 it was all around us, especially five years ago. For sure. I know you didn't. I know we see things we're on the same page that way. Yeah. And it's, but it's like at the same time,

Starting point is 00:25:38 it's this fine line of telling people they don't have to hustle, but you got to be fucking focused. And you got to, you do have to work hard. And you do need to have a purpose. us and it's i struggle of where i fall on that because i don't you don't want to encourage i don't like this crowd i don't like the follow your passion yeah gary v i love your baby i love you baby but like

Starting point is 00:26:03 your passions don't always make money and they don't always solve problems what if you suck at your passion and so i will get on that bad wagon like i'm neither in the kumbaya camp or in the Just to go. It's balanced, baby. As Abe Lincoln said, it's moderation and everything. I'm including moderation. You don't all too much moderation. Oh, man.

Starting point is 00:26:28 That's great. I've never once told my kids, dude, that you can be anything you want to be. Yeah. Because it's just like a freaking lie. It's all that. It's my oldest son is extremely coordinated. Like he would jump from landings, 10 feet up and land straight on his feet when he was like four years old.

Starting point is 00:26:45 And then my youngest son, not coordinated at all. So I'm not, we've talked about swimming a little bit, right? My oldest son was a swimmer. My youngest, never any sports. But the dude has, he's 14 and he's 6'4 and has this insane baritone voice, like with his vibrato and wants to perform in theater. I'm like, freaking go for that, man. That's your thing.

Starting point is 00:27:07 But if I told him, oh, you could be the best ball player ever. Yeah. You just have to try. Yeah, just try. Try. Just have passion. All my boys love the NBA. They're watching basketball. And a couple of are pretty good. I don't know yet. You're too young. They're 12, 8, 13. So it's too young to encourage or discourage other. But I'm always at least honest with them. Yeah, for sure. That's just good parenting, brother, for real. I know. Exactly. What's it? What are we hoping with going public and all that? What's the next six, 12 months? What's that journey again? I know you don't know everything's coming. I'm sure you have in your mind how that's going to roll out. It's still acquiring this year. We made some strategic acquisitions also in the multi-seven figure range to get us to a certain point.

Starting point is 00:27:55 That way we'd have a good foundation to go public. But it's like where we're at right now is not where we're stopping. It is, it's still, it's like a stopping off point, not even. It's just almost like a milestone listing on OTC. Then we intend to uplist a NASDAQ or NISI within probably two years. So you're talking six to 12 months. It's the prep for that. I swear I didn't even have a chance to breathe because we closed and we listed on November 9th.

Starting point is 00:28:22 No joke like November 10th. My team of external consultants and my board, it's like, all right, let's start talking about uplisting. Like, what? Like we just listed yesterday. Yeah, we're already great. We're doing great. We're executing on the plan. We have to start getting people involved in this.

Starting point is 00:28:41 I'm like, all right. Let's just keep going. It was a moment of celebration that night, but then the next day it was like right back to it. That's why, you know, like we were talking before, at first it didn't even feel any different. Because if you want to call it the grind, you can call it that. But it was like business as usual, still just executing on the strategy. And so this next six to 12 months, more acquisitions. We've got one that's coming up very shortly.

Starting point is 00:29:08 That'll be in it, the details will be in a press release after it's done. I talked about that that we had another under LOI, just about a month. ago and growing organic revenue. But it's expanding the brand, really, over the next year. Because it's a, yeah, it's being led by me, by Rick Jordan. But then I've also learned, too, the differences in these brands when you're trying to build something really big. It's because reach out's the name of the company.

Starting point is 00:29:33 And it sits underneath Rick Jordan. So it's like elevated because of me. Then there has to be a point to also because it's a public company where it can stand on its own. And then I just become the spokesperson. person for that brand. So it's an interesting interchange because then it becomes really like a symbiotic relationship rather than a codependent one. It's cool, almost like a marriage, right? It should be symbiotic, not codependence. That should be. Yeah. It's building that team to be able to do

Starting point is 00:30:00 that, putting the right people in place. It's still strategy. I'm excited for the next year because it's now that we're post the pandemic too. It's like the movie that I made in 2020, which is a documentary is probably going to end up going on Apple TV. This is like the personal brand stuff. awesome when Netflix declined it Amazon declined it forever back in 2021 with no chance of appeal yeah it was about the pandemic I was on brad show red lead show about this back in 2021 and it was laid out like an attorney this is these are literally just the facts of what happened not about the vaccine and not about it was about government overreach and this is seriously what's shaking down right here stand on your little circle if you go outside your little circle

Starting point is 00:30:39 in line then you can be arrested that's like those things happen and we document and we do documented a lot of that stuff. It's cool now that we can actually get it out there. But you talk about personal brand too, man. That's one of the reasons why Lara Trump and I started talking like a year ago is because Eric Trump saw me on a news appearance about cybersecurity on cheddar. And I may have dog Biden a little bit when I was on there. More like it's the job of the president to make sure we're secure.

Starting point is 00:31:07 And right now this president's not. It's something like that. But then that just happened to be seen. So then it was like a show swap talk that we were talking about. But then what really got one over was the movie. So it's like you talk about passionist. That was a passionate thing for me. And it turned out I'd never made a movie before, but I hired a filmmaker.

Starting point is 00:31:26 I hosted it. I narrated it. And it actually turned up pretty good, especially in hindsight. So I'm excited to see where that goes, dude. That would be fun. Because now it's after. Yeah. What's that coming out?

Starting point is 00:31:37 Geez, when it gets on Apple TV, probably like six months. Okay. Yeah. There's just a we we completely finished it back in 2021. But now that there's a little more, it's just some other footage we have that we can add back in before it's put up there and actually make it even more impactful. How was it?

Starting point is 00:31:54 How was it working with Apple to negotiate the deal and all that? Yeah, there's a distributor that's going through. A friend of my David Meltzer who I know too. Yeah. He's helping me with that. And it's really like through the network that he has, through the distribution network that he has to get it up there. We just started talking about that a couple weeks ago.

Starting point is 00:32:10 And he's not that hard of a process. process is we'll just walk through it. I told him about it. That sounds pretty cool. I'm like it is pretty cool. We were filming in the middle of San Francisco and it was like a zombie apocalypse. There was no cars, no people in 2020. Just a dead city. It was the weirdest most eerie thing I've ever experienced in my life. Like seriously, like you were watching the walking dead man. Crazy. That's fucking is crazy. Yeah. I was never in. I'd visit a couple, but it was always in more. I don't know right leaning area. that had semi-lockdowns, but nothing like those areas. I remember curbside delivery because when we were there filming, it was great. My son was with me in 2020 and he would have been just 12.

Starting point is 00:32:55 So he got to see a lot of that stuff firsthand. He was doing like some behind the scenes footage with just a small DSLR camera and excited to come with. But when we did the, because the restaurant in the hotel was just like a Weston or something, wasn't open. You know, because of the lockdowns. that we called a place down the street. There was really just a bar, just to order curbside delivery for burgers, like burgers and fries.

Starting point is 00:33:19 That's seriously like the only thing that was open. I'm like, whatever, go there. So we walk there. It's like a block away and we walk up to the door and knock on us. Yeah, we're here. Pick up for Rick. You have to wait on the curb. I was like, what?

Starting point is 00:33:29 Like curbside. By local ordinance, you have to stand on the curb and we will come out and give it to you. This was California, of course. Yeah, of my God. Yeah, you're lucky you didn't get like a court-martialed over there. Real. No joke, man.

Starting point is 00:33:47 To be in the middle and experience that firsthand, it's like I'm especially grateful that my son was with me for a lot of that. We're going to have memories of that shit in 20 years. Yeah. Like, we're going to be like, it's going to feel like alien territory, I hope. Because the government's going to have a hard time ever enacting anything like that again. For sure. For sure. They don't know.

Starting point is 00:34:09 I don't. Not to get too political, but I just think that if I don't think he might as get tolerating that again. I hope not. There's stuff we see these days with like with transgender political issues that might pop up. It causes division right now. There's a few other things, obviously, a few sensitive topics, if you want to call it that way. Not sensitive to me. I know where I stand.

Starting point is 00:34:31 Yeah. But for a lot of other people it is and it can cause some uprising. But you're right. Even like the dude, it's like I've got one of the youth leaders. when I was in church from a kid, a black dude, stood up in my wedding. He actually works for me now. You know, it was even a business partner years ago. And I had a multiracial with other people, too, of people standing up in my wedding years ago.

Starting point is 00:34:54 And so when I say this, like, even Black Lives Matter, like not just the government control stuff, but all the things that came to light for something like that on how really that was just a for-profit business model. Yeah. You know, it's, yeah, it doesn't matter what it was called. Exactly. It was just a sham. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:13 Yeah. It is not about, it has nothing to do with race. It's just, there was this total sham. You got it. And I'm, yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of transgender organizations. It was a sham behind if the some of the things, and I'm, I don't know, there's a lot of things that are travesties, like, that should never happen.

Starting point is 00:35:31 Like, for sure. On all sides of gender and race to all that, of course. No one supports that. But that's not really what the point. The point is, is someone leveraging something that is or is it true to make profit and then being ingenuous about it, you know? Shook my head a little bit because what's viral today as we're recording this is Trump selling USA Bibles. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of ideals that he has that I agree with.

Starting point is 00:35:57 And I have no issue saying this whatsoever. There's just sometimes, it was even like a couple years ago. I'm like, dude, I'm like, you're doing good. If you just kept your mouth shut. Yeah, I know. It's hard to even support like half of the bullshit on all sides of this thing. That's why I stay out of the politics for the most part. It's a freaking circus.

Starting point is 00:36:17 You can go by a USA Bible if you want to. I know. But that's the scary thing. That's why I'm saying it has nothing to do with some of the choosing aside here. This is just some of this is just, I don't know. Idiocy. I'm with you. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:36:34 Yeah. Rick, what's Where's this plane want to land? Like, what's a guy like Rick Jordan? Like, what, what's happiness? Yeah. And all that stuff looked like at the end of the rainbow. I, dude, it's like the interview question.

Starting point is 00:36:51 I hate asking people. It's like, where do you see yourself in five years? I'm not asking that. It makes Rick Jordan happy. What will make him happy for the rest of his life? Yeah, man. Money not ever being a concern. I just see it as a tool.

Starting point is 00:37:05 I've always seen it as a tool. I've always seen it just as a math problem, but it's a tool and a resource to fulfill certain things. I want my kids to be able to do anything that they want to do and that they're good at, of course, like our previous convo. So if that means like theater, musical theater in New York,

Starting point is 00:37:24 which my daughter wants to move there when she's 18. She's a badass too with her voice, with their acting abilities. Same with both of my sons. If that's what they want to do, then I want to be able to support them. that for him 100%, which I can now and I'm grateful for that. And it's the reason why I'm doing what I'm doing right now with a public company and why I'm

Starting point is 00:37:41 taking the hits if you want to call it that way is that there's a dude a few years ago who ran a software company sold it for a couple billion dollars, right, to a private equity company, private equity firm. And I saw him like a year ago, we caught up. We had met before. And I'm like, dude, what inspired me about you that I'm trying to model is that when you sold, there was 70 people, 70 people in your organization that walked away with seven figures. Like you built this for a lot of people, not just for yourself.

Starting point is 00:38:13 Of course you benefited, but so many others, you built a community within that. And he goes, actually he smiles, looks down, he goes, actually it was 120 people. And I see that. I'm looking like, he's not even being cocky. He's not even being arrogant. He's just like giving me a fact that is, yeah, this is why I did this. So whatever it is, that's why I went the public market route because that's one of the only things that can facilitate something like that, which I have a deep desire for fulfillment, as you're saying, to do. And then as soon as when that plane lands with the public company, which it will at some point, I'll exit.

Starting point is 00:38:49 If that's five years, 10 years, whatever, just be chairman, be a founder role, spokesperson, whatever. What's the next thing that I could just rinse and repeat, but now at an even greater scale? at an exponential scale. So it's just keep going from season to season with those landings in between. I love it, man. Keep growing. You just said what I tell people all the time, like, success is not a destination. Because you always, the journeys are kind of everything.

Starting point is 00:39:21 That's one of those things that too that sounds so fucking cliche, but it's true, though. Like it's because once you never really land the plane, it's like you do. than you're probably dying. Like it's like, it's, like, you're even retired. Yeah. That's fine for a lot of people, but it's for me. It's, I take hints off of heaven for something like this. He's in his mid-60s and it's like, he never retired, obviously.

Starting point is 00:39:45 And now he's moved into a lot of mentoring. And at that point, dude, because that's 20 years away for me, is at that point, I can look back and be like, cool, who can I help that has and had similar passions to what I do and did to get them there? If I paid the dummy tax, maybe I can help them accomplish something in a year. Maybe I can help them go public in legitimately a year rather than three years. Just because I did. Exactly. Maybe not once, but also three times.

Starting point is 00:40:13 Probably by the end for sure. With your trajectory. Yeah, but it's, I love the dummy tax. I paid a lot of that. Yeah. Some of it hurts more than others, dude. Some of it's like a little scratch. Sometimes I just lost an arm.

Starting point is 00:40:29 Exactly. Exactly. And it's both financial sometimes and just the mental dummy tax. The emotional side to you, man. Some of those hits entirely. They can get you wrecked in certain moments. But then it comes back. This is full circle. It's the one that gets to do this.

Starting point is 00:40:44 Not many do. Exactly. What do you do to reset? Like what's your kind of routines or vacations or things? Like what does reset? Yeah. It's good this years ago. Getting my kids away, like one at a time.

Starting point is 00:40:58 I have three kids. twin 16 year olds and a 14 year old the twins are boy girl and my youngest is a dude he's a 6-4 guy my other son he's 6-1 he's the same height as me but it's my youngest man it's like you're already this tall and your arms are still like massively long this train's not stopping right here it's easy to keep going but something i've always done since they were young i tell this story a lot or teach us concept a lot is proximity and that's the best parental concept i can ever teach somebody because even when I had the twins like young one month old maybe four weeks weeks five weeks old you know what I got to go get some deodorant I'm picking a kid and I'm

Starting point is 00:41:36 taking them with me and it's I've done that ever since then and I would just swap kids so it's they've always been fans of like Harry Potter growing up because that was during their time period and then of course Disney so it was always a lot of weird like a lot of IT conferences were always in Orlando so if I would go yeah a lot of conferences in general are when I was there it'd be like When my daughter was seven years old, you think you would be okay flying by yourself? It's like your mom will drop you off with a flight attendant at the gate. And then I'll be right there to pick you up when you land. My conference goes until Thursday.

Starting point is 00:42:11 But what if you flew down to meet me on Thursday and we spent the weekend down here? And that started this thing about these trips all the time, a couple times a year. Just one kid, that's it. I spent a lot of time with them all together. But, dude, that's the reset. And that proximity, it's like even just going to pick up deodorant, which they'll still do. I say, hey, I have to go run a quick errand five minutes down the street. And now I get, hey, dad, can I come with you?

Starting point is 00:42:36 Even at 16. Yeah. Just because it's been built in, dude. And I'm telling you, it's like those car conversations are the best conversations I ever have with my kids. And dude, that's my reset. That's my grounding. I love that. That's a great lesson for people.

Starting point is 00:42:52 And it's also great, like, for parents and like, It's just those micro moments. Yeah. And we're all busy things are going on. But there's always those little moments that you can cash and do and just be, it doesn't have to be like so, I don't know. Or even like making sure you're there for the first day of preschool for somebody. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:11 They're never going to remember that. Yeah. What they're going to remember and what's ingrained them is like this concept of just hanging out, those micro moments, as you call it. Yeah. Like 200, because you're going to make 200 of those trips. in the car over the years. So that's the one time at this one thing.

Starting point is 00:43:30 Okay, yeah, you remember that. But no, I remember the 400 times dad and I went to the grocery store or went down the road, whatever it might be. So I hope entrepreneurs are listening right now, dude, because that's the balance. That is literally the balance to try to attain that. Help me. Hopefully they can help everyone else. I know.

Starting point is 00:43:48 Rick, I know you got a lot of platforms, a lot of places people can learn from you, see what you got going on. Where can everybody learn more? Watch what everything that's unfolding with the Rick Jordan show. Yeah, it's after going public, some things have had different purposes now with platforms. And Instagram by far, follow me for most of my content there. For stock information and company information, that's X. That's Twitter now.

Starting point is 00:44:14 Just because that's the direction that platform goes. And then all business would be linked in. But I'm primarily on most active on Instagram at Mr. Rick Jordan. I'm still in my DMs personally. I'm sure you are too, man. Yeah. Yep. I am.

Starting point is 00:44:29 I have to, it takes me a long time to clear out the request for it. Yeah, I feel you. But I try to scan through it like once a week. Like, make sure I'm not missing anything important. Not because I'm like too important to respond.

Starting point is 00:44:41 But sometimes it's, if you ask me a question, I'll respond. Yeah. If you just put something stupid, then I'm probably not. I feel you. I get them now because I added two more platforms because like those microcap chatboards

Starting point is 00:44:51 that I was on it. Like there's one called stock twits. Another well-known one is Investor Hub. I have, so now I get, I created profiles there so I can engage with shareholders, but I get DMs there now too. And sometimes,

Starting point is 00:45:01 hey, he's not, and then there's a telegram channel for the stocks. Oh, yeah, but they're picking up to like, why isn't Rick replying to this? And I hear,

Starting point is 00:45:08 I see that. But then other people pick us like, it seems like he always talks to us on the weekends. Yeah, because that's when I can catch up on this. Yeah. You got clued up. That's when I have time.

Starting point is 00:45:19 Right on. Just be glad I'm doing it. No, man. I really enjoyed this talk. Everybody listening, I encourage you go check out, Rick. I think you can hear it. He's a great guy. A fair voice, a true voice, an authentic voice, and a good friend. Really appreciate you coming on. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you having me.

Starting point is 00:45:39 Hey, guys, you know where to find us. Ryan is right.com. All the highlight clips, all the full episode, the audio, the video. And of course, you can find me at Ryan Alford on Instagram blowing up there. blown up a little bit on TikTok too so good follow me over there too at Ryan Offord that blue check before you can buy it we'll see you next time on right about now this has been right about now with Ryan Alford a radcast network production visit Ryan isright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities thanks for listening

Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - How To Be Unstoppable with Self Made CEO Rick Jordan

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