Right About Now with Ryan Alford - How To Be Unstoppable with Self Made CEO Rick Jordan

Starting point is 00:00:00 When stupidity sets in is actually when you're aware of that, that you're not putting in what you have. You're not showing up and you choose still not to do so anyways. Yeah. Don't get yourself down for only having 40%. 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 1 million downloads a month.

Starting point is 00:00:29 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? Welcome to Right About Now. We like to say if it's radical, we cover it. There's nothing more radical than my friend, founder and CEO, Rick Jordan. What's up, Rick?

Starting point is 00:00:55 What's shaking, man? It's good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for being on. Awesome to be on. I like that this was like a pleasant surprise today. Yeah, exactly. What's happening? Dude, it's, 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. It's, I'm still the one that gets to do this. You know what I mean? So it's, there's not a lot of people

Starting point is 00:01:29 that do. And then that's what grounds me, dude. Exactly. It is interesting. That's funny. You bring up like, sometimes we do things that are really big and a lot of people don't do, but, and you go through that journey and you want to think that you're enjoying it and appreciating it. 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. You probably do that a lot like I do.

Starting point is 00:02:05 It's in those moments. You go from a couple million in revenue to now eight figures in revenue. But even breaking that million the first time, you don't fully realize that. So I'm trying little things. It was like last year, I did my first $2 million deal in a single deal, like a sale. And I bought myself because I already promised myself I'm going to buy McAllen M. I'm a big Scotch fan. I always have been, especially at McAllen. And so I still have that bottle. It's a $6,000 bottle of McAllen M and that was meant to

Starting point is 00:02:37 savor the moment of it. And not everybody has to do this, but it's even like the watch I'm wearing today is a Panerai. It's a limited edition. edition that'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 panerai boutique is i think i got the one for you you know i'm like what's green dude it's that's like green is money but it makes sense for going public you know but in a way it's like i was matching it and it's i try those little things to 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.

Starting point is 00:03:15 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. Let's give them some highlights about who is all in Rick Jordan. Yeah, that came up. I was thinking back, like when I figured out what's my core value, who am I?

Starting point is 00:03:36 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 tech executive business owner all this cyber security expert ai expert all of that and so that's 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 agent in Chicago in 2003 when they launched that. And I rolled out the entire nation of Canada, literally teaching them how to sell.

Starting point is 00:04:10 And I would teach these individual business representatives. This dude was in my car, and he'd only known me for a month. And I started to, I don't even remember what it was about, dude. I just started going off on something in a very good way. And I'm like, man, I'm sorry. I just get passionate. He's Rick. What I know about you so far is that anything that you actually put yourself into, you just go all in. So don't apologize for being passionate about it. That's who you are. This was a guy that I was training. So I remember going through that exercise of who am I back in

Starting point is 00:04:42 2018 and that popped in. I'm like, that's who I am. Whatever I do, it's giving whatever I have to that. I've refined it a little bit, dude, because you and I, dude, 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. We go through those things and 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.

Starting point is 00:05:17 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. It's a funny example, but maybe I only have 40% today. like maybe I went on a bender last night with some tequila or something like that. It's 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 talked to Grant Cardone just recently and on the show, he's been on my show now a couple of times, but like

Starting point is 00:05:56 he talks about it. He didn't frame it that same way, but it's the same thing. What you're saying doesn't matter how you feel. It doesn't matter whether that's 40%, whatever. Just show up. Like showing up, like doing it. Because so many people just cash it in. 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.

Starting point is 00:06:19 And again, it doesn't mean we're always at our highest self, but you show up and you get 40, whatever, 100% or 40%, whatever that is, that's a lot of the battle 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. We can go on mindset talk all day but it's let's be real about it it's a 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

Starting point is 00:06:54 when stupidity sets in is actually when you're aware of that that you're not putting in what you have you're not showing up and you choose still not to do so anyways. Don't get yourself down for only having 40%. Beat yourself up for not showing up or not giving that 40% 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, you just had a freaking, you just went public, dude. Let's talk about the business a little bit. Like leading up to the big day. I was just talking with another company that went public, Vocodia. They're an AI call center based company.

Starting point is 00:07:34 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, not really. I'm like, 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 a reverse merger that I have to communicate with. I've got to keep up to date on things.

Starting point is 00:07:58 I've got to keep informed so that they continuously invest. And when you see that, they hop onto the vision just like any other investor would. They hop onto the vision just like any employee would, anybody on my team. In the company, we've got 78 people now growing from where we were

Starting point is 00:08:14 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:08:37 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. Only 3,500 are actually listed on NASDAQ, which is where we intend to go in about a year, uplisting from OTC to NASDAQ. Some of it's mind-blowing, but it's like it takes a minute to really come back down to reality and be like,

Starting point is 00:08:59 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. Is that process been messier or cleaner than you thought it would be? Sometimes we would go into things and what's going to be messy. So like,

Starting point is 00:09:27 you're not that surprised. I don't know. Like as far as expectation versus reality, where did we fall? Yeah, dude, it's a lot messier than what I had ever thought it would be. And there's stuff that you can just never even predict that just comes out.

Starting point is 00:09:41 But it's, if you go into this, whatever comes up, I'll handle it, but you're going to be okay. The process it is 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 but the years leading up to that you know there was a dude i knew that graduated from wharton business school right Arguably the top business school

Starting point is 00:10:05 in the entire United States. You look it 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, 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 goes, there's the rule of threes that they teach at Wharton. I'm like, what's the rule of threes. 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 for real. Because I thought it was going to be like six months or a year or something

Starting point is 00:10:43 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. 3X baby. Exactly. Yeah. You talked about grand.

Starting point is 00:11:10 Let's throw that in. I wrote the 3X book. Okay. Yeah. The 3X. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:15 Plan for the bet. Or let's say hope for the best plan for the worst. You got it. Yeah. 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:11:36 Jordan, who's a mutual friend of ours too. He's got like the straight line system and it's not at the shortest path is to get from point A to B. He's talking about sales. But when I look at it as 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 got something that knocked you off over to the left, it

Starting point is 00:11:56 takes more time and effort, dude, to backtrack and get to where you were to continue to execute on that original plan. Yeah. Every time you get thrown a curve ball, you have to continue to execute on that original plan yeah every time you get thrown a curveball you have to re-evaluate what doesn't change is your end point whatsoever and that's why i like everything that i thought would happen would meaning like we went public it's there was no no sacrificing compromising that whatsoever but when we'd get knocked off track it'd be like cool let's re-evaluate because now the best plan, that straight line, is to go to that destination from where we're at currently.

Starting point is 00:12:31 Not go back to where we were and proceed down the original plan because something knocked us off that plan, probably for a good reason. And I think that's part of 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. And they do, they hear it like fundamentally they do, but at the scale and size and that things like that happen, it's hard to convey the nimbleness you need to have in those moments. Yeah. It's very hard, especially when you've got a large team because you're the vision caster, right 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

Starting point is 00:13:32 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 it's you can easily isolate yourself i know you know this too and try to lean on your own talents. You can go fast by yourself, but you go far with other people. Bingo. Circle that. Yeah, exactly. Triple that. It's a, 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. And I've seen that in the past couple of months, in the past year or so, as we've been going through this process, is keeping them with their spirits high to set

Starting point is 00:14:21 the expectation like this is going to not look like what we think it's gonna look like we're still gonna get there but it's there's only so many hits and some people just don't want that dude and that's okay yeah and that's fine but it's whether you're here or not and dude i love every single one of my people whether you're here or not i'm still gonna 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. 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,

Starting point is 00:14:59 it's like the personal brand it's I'm in the it space, right? I have been for years. 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. Oh, man. A guy, huge, like muscular dude.

Starting point is 00:15:20 Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. He owns an IT company. That's cool. Yeah. I'll have to reach. 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 on our podcast network. He's become a good friend.

Starting point is 00:15:33 Good guy. That's awesome. Yeah. Connect me, please. I'd love to talk with him, dude. It's a, yeah, it's a, yeah, I'm sure he would share the small space for you guys. Yeah. And the personal brands area for sure.

Starting point is 00:15:44 Right on. In one way, it's almost like the blue ocean because it's like nobody's doing it. But then 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, 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, need to go public because it wasn't just the fact that the company was doing well, already 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.

Starting point is 00:16:20 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 News Nation. It's all of these networks that I exist on. But then I also speak places like VCon and 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. 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. We're the first MSP, managed service

Starting point is 00:17:00 provider. The reason we're able to do that is because it's personal brand led. When I look at it, 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:17:37 And of course, I can find a lot on Kevin too. And it's like, look, that's their due diligence. This is legit. It's like speaking for you probably doesn't generate the most income for you. No. Yeah. It's everything else that it supports. It's the brand.

Starting point is 00:17:52 You got it. That's what, and I didn't know we'd get this avenue, but I'm glad we did. Like it's back to, people hear it, the personal brand thing and like it. Yeah. Some 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 00:18:16 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. 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 they'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. 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. And I'm like, 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, but you know, there's different strokes

Starting point is 00:19:04 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. It's a, I got a call from a Cuomo's producer, Chris Cuomo's producer three weeks ago. 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 i was in chicago it's like running the studio in chicago and dude 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 he saw you on Instagram. He's like, yeah, this guy's relatable. Let's bring him on.

Starting point is 00:19:45 Exactly. And 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. There's still a pecking order, but at the same 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. own call was because of my personal brand. Exactly. And to not, if not to take advantage to build for those opportunities, if not for that reason, then don't you want to control the

Starting point is 00:20:12 narrative of your, like when someone, everybody Googles everybody now, like everybody, so they're going to go search your name and 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

Starting point is 00:20:32 like in the way that politics controls it. 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 want to just control that if nothing else that's mind-blowing to me yeah what i did there's a bit of a threshold there to stay under as well and i know you know

Starting point is 00:20:52 this too it's like when you control the narrative you're you control what you can put out there about yourself yeah but then stop at the threshold of addressing every little piece of hate that's thrown at you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because you can try to that's not your narrative to control. No. Yeah. It's it's almost ignore it. And now, like even going public, it's like we get fun emails from at PR at reach out. I.T. dot 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 like whatever i'm just gonna i'll just go post on twitter again and everything will be okay yeah no i did i have to really i don't respond to most of it but sometimes we're all human it's just i get you i don't know there's so many trolls it's just and that's

Starting point is 00:21:42 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 they're trolling on. 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 divisive. What I said, which I say that kind of stuff a lot, those guys like you and I, but it's, it was just like, there's a, there was

Starting point is 00:22:09 this theme that I see with trauma and the basic premise of it. It was like, it's almost the, 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, it was an episode of my own show, but then the real post was, I just said, shut up. 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 the, some of the trolls, dude, I was like, Whoa, this was a little over the top now. Yeah, no, I it's look look we can all have empathy yeah but at the end of the day shit's gonna happen and sometimes you get a bad hand but you gotta make something out of it yeah like for sure if you want to stay in that fucking box forever or you want to like dig your

Starting point is 00:22:58 way out of it and there's enough helping hands out there they, people see that you're wanting to take control of it. Like that's, 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, fortunately, here's a question for you.

Starting point is 00:23:19 Okay. Cause if you look at what we met probably what five years ago, it's something like that. And there was a whole thing around that era about hustle culture. And it was a positive thing that everybody was talking about hustle culture. And I never really got into that speaking about it at that point or 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.

Starting point is 00:23:47 Be at the office later than anybody else. Get in 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? Almost every night before I go to bed, I will pop on Netflix or HBO max for 45 minutes. That's about, cause it like clears my head. It allows me to think about nothing. And that's like a hustle

Starting point is 00:24:11 culture. You don't watch TV if you're hustling. Yeah. Do you feel like it circles that we've been in have contributed to that toxicity? I think so. And I think, but I do think in most of my, 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, not sure in different fields. I do have the benefit of being able to control that. But I think that unfortunately the narrative was push it all in and i will say it's i struggle i never got into that much of that narrative i just my stuff was just not exactly in any of that realm but like at the same time it was all around us especially five years ago for sure i know you didn't that's 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 it's this

Starting point is 00:25:09 fine line of telling people they don't have to hustle but you got to be fucking focused and you gotta you do have to work hard and you do need to have a purpose 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. Gary V, I love you, baby. I love you, baby. But your passions don't always make money and they don't always solve problems.

Starting point is 00:25:36 What if you suck at your passion? And so I will get on that bandwagon. I'm neither in the kumbaya camp or in the go- the just to go. It's balanced, baby. It's a, as Abe Lincoln said, it's moderation and everything, including moderation. You don't want too much moderation. Oh man, that's great.

Starting point is 00:25:58 I've never once told my kids, dude, that you can be anything you want to be. Cause it's just like a fricking lie. It's all that. It's my, 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. 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, he's 14 and he's 6'4", and has this insane baritone voice with this vibrato and wants to perform in theater. I'm like, freaking go for that, man. That's your thing. But if I told him, oh, you could be the best ball player ever. You just have to try.

Starting point is 00:26:42 Yeah, just try. Just have passion. All my boys love the NBA. They're watching basketball. And a couple of them are pretty good. I don't know yet. Too young. They're 12, 8, 13. So it's too young to encourage or discourage others. But I'm always at least honest with them.

Starting point is 00:26:59 Yeah, for sure. That's just good parenting, brother, for real. I know. Exactly. 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 that's coming,

Starting point is 00:27:13 but 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. 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'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 NYSE within probably two years. So you're talking six to 12 months. It's the prep for that.

Starting point is 00:27:47 And I swear, I didn't even have a chance to breathe because we closed and we listed on November 9th. 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. Now we will, yeah, we're already great. We're doing great. We're executing on the plan. We have to start getting people involved in this. I'm like, all right, let's just keep going. It was a moment of celebration that night. But then the next day 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. So like we were talking before, at first, it didn't even feel any different. Because still, if you want to call it the grind, you can call it that. But it was like business as usual.

Starting point is 00:28:31 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. The details will be in a press release after it's done. I talked about that we had another under LOI just about a month ago. And it's growing organic revenue. But it's expanding the brand really over the next year because it's 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 to the name of the company and it sits underneath rick jordan so

Starting point is 00:29:05 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 for that brand so it's an interesting interchange because then it becomes really like a symbiotic relationship rather than a codependent one yeah it's uh. Almost like a marriage, right? It should be symbiotic, not codependence. That's what it should be. It's building that team to be able to do that, putting the right people in place. It's still strategy.

Starting point is 00:29:33 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. When Netflix declined it, Amazon declined it forever back in 2021

Starting point is 00:29:48 with no chance of appeal. It was about the pandemic. I was on Brad's show, Brad Leach's show about this back in 2021. And it was laid out like an attorney. These are literally just the facts of what happened. Not about the vaccine. It was about government overreach.

Starting point is 00:30:04 And this is seriously what's shaking down right here. Stand on your little circle. If you go outside your little circle in line, then you can be arrested. That's like those things happen. And we documented a lot of that stuff. It's cool now that we can actually get it out there. But you talk about like personal brand too, man. That's one of the reasons why Laura Trump and I started talking like a year ago is because

Starting point is 00:30:24 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. 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 her won over was the movie. So it's like you talk about passion.

Starting point is 00:30:50 That was a passionate thing for me. And it turned out I'd never made a movie before. But I hired a filmmaker. I hosted it. I narrated it. And it actually turned out pretty good, especially in hindsight. So I'm excited to see where that goes, dude. That'd be fun.

Starting point is 00:31:04 Because now it's after. When's that launch? Yeah. When's that coming out? Geez, when it gets on Apple TV, probably like six months. Okay. Yeah. We completely finished it back in 2021.

Starting point is 00:31:15 But now that there's a little more, there's 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 working with Apple to negotiate the deal and all that? Yeah. There's a distributor that's going through a friend of mine, David Meltzer, who I know too. Yeah. He's helping me with that.

Starting point is 00:31:32 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 of weeks ago and he's, it's not that hard of a process is we'll just walk through it. I told him about it. That sounds pretty cool. I'm like, it is pretty cool. cool like i would we were filming in the middle of san francisco and it was like a zombie apocalypse there was no cars no people in 2020. yeah just a dead city it was the weirdest most eerie thing i've ever experienced in my life like seriously like you

Starting point is 00:32:00 were watching the walking dead man crazy it's. It's fucking crazy. It's crazy. You know, I was never in it. I had visited a couple, but it was always in more, I don't know, right-leaning areas 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. So he got to see a lot of that stuff firsthand. He was doing some behind-the-scenes footage with just a small DSLR camera and excited to come with. Because the restaurant in the hotel was just like a Westin or something. It wasn't open because of the lockdowns.

Starting point is 00:32:41 So we called a place down the street that was really just a bar just to order curbside delivery for burgers, like burgers and fries. 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 it. So yeah, we're here. Pick up for Rick. You have to wait on the curb. I was like, what? 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 oh my god this is yeah you're lucky you didn't get like uh

Starting point is 00:33:12 court-martialed over there real 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 gonna have memories of that shit in 20 years and like we're gonna be like it's gonna feel like alien territory i hope because the government's gonna have a hard time ever enacting anything like that again for sure for sure they don't know i don't not to get too political but i just think that i don't think anybody's gonna tolerate that again i hope not there's stuff we see these days with like with transgender political issues that might pop up

Starting point is 00:33:51 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 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 have a multiracial with other people too, of people standing up in my wedding years ago. And 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 and how really that was just a for-profit business model. Yeah. You know, it's, yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:39 It doesn't matter what it was called. Exactly. It was just a sham. Yeah. Yeah. It is not about about it has nothing to do with race it's just there was this total she 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 like for sure on all sides of gender and race to all that of course we race and all that, of course. No one supports that. But that's not really what the point is.

Starting point is 00:35:08 The point is, is someone leveraging something that is or isn't true to make profit and then being ingenuous about it? I 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 and i have no issue saying this whatsoever there's just sometimes it was even like a couple years ago i'm like dude 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 yeah on all sides of this thing that's why i stay out of politics for the most part.

Starting point is 00:35:48 It's a freaking circus. You can go buy 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 a side here. This is just, some of this is just, I don't know, idiocy. I'm with you. Yeah. Rick, what's, where's this plane want to land? Like what's a guy like Rick Jordan? Like what, what's happiness and all that stuff look like at the end of the rainbow? I did. I, it's like the interview question. 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?

Starting point is 00:36:30 Yeah, man. Money not ever being a concern. I just see it as a tool. 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

Starting point is 00:36:53 New York, which my daughter wants to move there when she's 18. She's a badass too with her voice, with her acting abilities. Same with both of my sons. If that's what they want to do, then I want to be able to support that for them 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 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 to a private equity company, private equity firm. And I saw him like a year ago,

Starting point is 00:37:25 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. Of course you benefited, but so many others, you built a community within that. And he goes, actually, he let, 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, it's, 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,

Starting point is 00:38:10 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 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. It, it, cause you, you always, the journeys are, are kind of everything. We,

Starting point is 00:38:51 that's one of those things that too, that sounds so fucking cliche, but it's true though. Like it's cause once you never really land the plane, it's like you do, then you're probably dying. Like it's like, yeah, that's fine for a lot of people, but it's But like, it's like- Or even retire. Yeah. That's fine for a lot of people, but it's for me. I take hints off of Kevin for something like this. He's in his mid-60s and it's like, he never retired, obviously. And so now he's moved into a lot of mentoring. And at that point, dude, because that's 20 years away for me,

Starting point is 00:39:20 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 it. Maybe not once, but also three times. Probably by then for sure with your trajectory. Yeah, but I love the three times. Probably by then for sure. Yeah. With your trajectory. Yeah, but it's, I love the dummy tax. Yeah. I've paid a lot of that.

Starting point is 00:39:50 Yeah. Some of it hurts more than others, dude. Some of it's like a little scratch. Sometimes I just lost an arm. Exactly. And it's both financial sometimes and just the mental dummy tax. The emotional side too, man.

Starting point is 00:40:04 Yes. Some of those hits entirely. They can get you wrecked in certain moments. But then it comes back. This is full circle. I'm the one that gets to do this. Not many do. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:40:16 What do you do to reset? What's your kind of routines or vacations or things? What does reset you? Yeah. It's this years ago getting my kids away like one at a time i have three kids when 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

Starting point is 00:40:43 this train's not stopping right here. So you got to keep going. But something I've always done since they were young, I tell this story a lot or teach this 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, five weeks old, you know what? I i gotta go get some deodorant i'm picking a kid and i'm 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 with a lot of conferences

Starting point is 00:41:24 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 gates, and then I'll be right there to pick you up when you land. My conference goes until Thursday, but what if you flew down to meet me on Thursday and we spent the weekend down here? Conference goes until Thursday. 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.

Starting point is 00:41:54 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? Even at 16. 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.

Starting point is 00:42:15 And dude, that's my reset. That's my grounding. I love that. That's a great lesson for people. And it's also great for parents. And it's just great for parents. It's just those micro moments. And we're all busy. Things are going on.

Starting point is 00:42:30 But there's always those little moments that you can catch and do. It doesn't have to be so, I don't know, intentional. Or even making sure you're there for the first day of preschool for somebody. They're never going to remember that. What they're going to remember and what's ingrained in 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 okay yeah you remember that but no i remember the 400 times

Starting point is 00:43:03 dad and i went to the grocery store or went down the road, whatever it might be. So I love that. 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 I can help everyone else.

Starting point is 00:43:16 I know. Rick, I know you've got a lot of platforms, a lot of places people can learn from you, see what you've got going on. Where can everybody learn more, see what you got going on. Where is, where can everybody learn more? Watch what, 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.

Starting point is 00:43:39 For stock information and company information, that's X. That's Twitter now. 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. I have to, it takes me a long time to clear out the request for, yeah, I feel you. i try to scan through it like once a week like to make sure i'm not missing anything important not because i'm like too important to respond but sometimes if you ask me a question i'll respond yeah if you just put

Starting point is 00:44:14 something stupid then i'm probably not i feel you i get them now because i added two more platforms because like those micro cap chat boards that i was on like there's one called stock twits another well-known one is investor hub i hub so. So now I get, I created profiles there so I can engage with shareholders, but I get DMS there now too. And sometimes he's not. And then there's a telegram channel for the stocks. Oh yeah. But they're picking up. They're like, why isn't Rick replying to this? And I hear, I see that. But then other people pick us like, it seems like he always talks to us on the weekends. Yeah. Cause that's when I can catch up on this. Yeah, you got clued up.

Starting point is 00:44:48 That's when I have time. Just be glad I'm doing it. No, man. I really enjoyed this talk. Everybody listening, I encourage you to go check out Rick. I think you could 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. Hey guys, you know where

Starting point is 00:45:10 to find us. Ryanisright.com. All the highlight clips, all the full episode, the audio, the video. And of course you can find me at Ryan Offord on Instagram. Blowing up there and hey, blowing up a little bit on TikTok too. So go follow me over there too, at Ryan Alford, that blue check before you could 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 ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - How To Be Unstoppable with Self Made CEO Rick Jordan

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