Boundaries for Entrepreneurs (with Jackson Calame)

[Dana] (00:01)
Welcome friends, whether you’re out on a walk, running errands, or relaxing at home. It’s wonderful to connect with you. Joining us today is Jackson Calame. Now Jackson teaches visionary entrepreneurs how to unlock sustainable revenue growth and expand their legacy by becoming a power brand in their market. Now, 96% of businesses fail within the first 10 years. Jackson teaches businesses not only how to avoid failure, but how to win by becoming a true leader in their market. Jackson, welcome to Phoenix and Flame.

[Jackson] (00:48)
I’m excited to be here, Dana, this is gonna be fun.

[Dana] (00:50)
This is amazing. If I have my information correct, you are head of account management for e-rational marketing, founder of J Cal Digital, which is an agency and partner for massive revenue growth, also founder of Passion Pro and founder of First Class Business, not even to mention your podcast, VisionPros Live. Is this all correct?

[Jackson] (01:19)
There’s certain gaps in there that are okay to talk about. And yes, founder of First Class Business, founder of VisionPros Live, point-20% owner at this point, stakeholder of e-rational marketing. I was part of that team in 2017 and was the head of account management to build out the client fulfillment journey of how to take care of these clients while we were becoming one of the 50 fastest growing startups in Canada. So, as part of that, I every once in a while sit in on a board meeting. But they’re good without me. They’re good to go. And that’s the goal, right? Is to help these founders be able to have their cake and eat it too. Richard Branson has like 200-something cakes, you know, and he’s doing great. And so does LeBron James. So we can maximize life, right? It’s not about grind and hustle. It’s about being able to do the things that we love.

[Dana] (02:05)
Yes. You know, I’m attracted to you on multiple levels here. One of them…

[Jackson] (02:22)
I’ve heard that more than once.

[Dana] (02:25)
So the first one I’m thinking, and I’m just going to kind of toss this out like spaghetti on a wall and we’re just going to kind of figure out whatever we want to talk about. But one thing is, since I am a visionary entrepreneur myself, I know what that feels like. I know what that journey feels like. I know the wonderful amazement, the joy of it. And I know, and I’ve also screamed and yelled and thrown things and cried and sobbed and literally curled in a fetal position. I’m not gonna lie about that. I said that on one of my podcasts, because on Phoenix and Flame, I’m very transparent and I want my guests to be, because we’re all there, we might as well just talk about it. We might as well say, yeah, I literally crawled into a fetal position. And this is something I learned one time doing that: your shoulder starts to hurt. You’re on the floor and you’re crawling in a fetal position and you’re like, I just can’t do this anymore. Then what happens is you start getting bored and then you start getting hungry and then your shoulder’s hurting. And so you’re like, well, I could stay in this fetal position for the next hour, but I’m just kind of hungry, I’m getting kind of bored, my shoulder’s hurting. I think I’m just going to get up, you know? So when you’re an entrepreneur, it’s so wide open and it’s amazing and joyful, but also all the other things as well. So I’m attracted to that in you, and really I’m very fascinated with you being a founder of all of these businesses. But you started, and again, if my information is correct, you can tell me if I’m wrong, but if I have my information correct, you started out with a degree in Latin American studies at Brigham Young University.

[Jackson] (04:14)
Oh.

[Dana] (04:16)
And so I’m really impressed with you right now and I want to hear the journey, because that’s what Phoenix and Flame is about. What happened, and what were the pitfalls, and what did that feel like? The tagline for Phoenix and Flame is pushing through even when you feel like you’re sitting in a pile of ash, pushing through and transforming. So I want to hear this journey of yours and what were the…

[Jackson] (04:36)
Absolutely.

[Dana] (04:43)
…positions that you were in where you felt like, I can’t do this anymore, and yet you did. How did you do that?

[Jackson] (04:51)
If you have your childhood blanket nearby, it’s time to grab it. All these fun accolades to start with. Again, we live in a market, Dana, where so many Instagrammers and influencers look like they have the perfect world and perfect life. And I went through that phase where I had that. I wasn’t faking it, we had highlights for our life. At the same time, real life was not just the highlights, right? The things I just talked about. Now let’s go back to the real accolades. Junior year of high school, I told my mom, “Mom, I’m either graduating early or dropping out. Take your pick.” I graduated early. Not because mom wanted me to, not because I was on my way to summa cum laude or whatever they call those, I still don’t know what those mean. I was ready to go and I needed to move on. I needed to find my freedom, my opportunity to figure out who I was. So I graduate early, I go to Brigham Young University. I got a 4.0 in dating. I got a 0.33 in everything else.

[Dana] (05:39)
Mm-hmm.

[Jackson] (05:57)
That’s hard to do, by the way, you really have to try. That’s what I did all day. I think I went out with 27 different girls within my first three weeks of being at the school. And I thought that was like everything. My ego was to the roof and I was excited to… I grew up with my mom and five older sisters, so I’m talking about pretty wholesome dates.

[Dana] (05:59)
You said you got a 4.0 in dating?

[Jackson] (06:26)
And I wasn’t doing what your typical Netflix-and-chill guy does. But I was having a lot of fun. I was playing pool at night, I was playing Ultimate Frisbee during the day. There was something called a class I probably should have been in. I went to my girlfriend’s classes more than mine once I did establish a girlfriend. I wasn’t there for the right reasons. I didn’t know how to use the university ecosystem, I didn’t grow up with that understanding. And then I go on this mission, I’m going to fast forward a lot, I go on this mission.

[Dana] (06:29)
Gotcha.

[Jackson] (06:55)
I’m down in Uruguay for two years. I have this incredible moment where I’m not in fetal position, but this little boy walks up to me who looks like my oldest nephew and he’s starving. And I knew this kid, I had been working with his family for a while and he asked me for bread and I didn’t have anything with me. I couldn’t take him into town, it’s like 9:30 at night, we’re rushing home, we’re not supposed to be out that late. And so I have to send him home, and my nephew… he ducks his head down and walks around me, and I’m like, I’m starting to panic and starting to, you know, I’m really shaking at this point. I’m looking down, I’ve got a nice shirt on, a nice tie, nice shoes, a nice backpack. I felt so filthy because of how clean and how rich I was compared to my starving nephew that I just sent home. I’m thinking, okay, tomorrow I’m gonna go to the rice fields.

[Dana] (07:43)
Hmm.

[Jackson] (07:52)
That’s how you can get an easy job here, I’m gonna make some money. I’m gonna make enough money to open one of these little computer stores, because that’s what people do here, they open these computer stores and they rent computers out, and I’m gonna make enough money to teach this town how to make an economy work. I probably didn’t know the word “economy” at the time, I just knew it’s what I needed to do. And whack, I felt my face go to the right. I heard a voice that said, Jackson, why don’t you go home? Take advantage of your education for once. Learn about business and help as many towns like this as you possibly can.

[Dana] (08:27)
Ooh. Mm. Mm.

[Jackson] (08:30)
And I couldn’t argue with the logic and with the idea that the plan was better than mine. I did argue, because that’s just who I am, I like to understand the why. And I said, but isn’t that selfish? I didn’t want to abandon that town, I don’t want to leave and go back to all the privileges that I had in America, I wanted to stay in the fight. But I didn’t get an answer for the second question: isn’t that selfish?

[Dana] (08:42)
Yes.

[Jackson] (09:00)
I just knew I needed to come back and do exactly what message I had received. And so I came back and went back to the BYU School of Marriott Business trying to weasel my way in. I’m a smooth talker, I can figure that out. And this counselor didn’t laugh at me, didn’t condescend at me, but he did say, lovingly, with as much of a no as possible, “Son, I’ve done some stupid things in my life too.”

[Jackson] (09:30)
“…and I had to adjust my path. You’re going to be fine, or you aren’t getting into this school.” And so I walked out of that. Now my dad, who had started to pay for school, had a $50,000 debt from somebody who didn’t pay him. He probably didn’t deserve the $50,000, just putting that out there. But here I was, no possibility for grants, no possibility for scholarships, and in those days I’m not even going to get into the business school anyway, but that’s what I’m supposed to do.

[Jackson] (10:01)
What the heck do I do now? And I found network marketing around that time, and I started to learn some principles of business and success and some great Darren Hardy and Jim Rohn and John Maxwell stuff. And I realized that they’re not going to let me into the business school, I need to find a business owner who’s willing to take a chance on me, and I need to learn how to professionally beg my way into doors and get opportunities. And so I went to Brigham Young University…

[Jackson] (10:31)
…and I studied Latin American studies. I speak Spanish because of my time in Uruguay, and my second failed marriage. So these accolades, these trophies, right, people can get addicted to, or care what they want about the authority or the influence and all of that. You know, again, I’m a single father of four. I’m twice divorced. I do my best to honor the two mothers of my children. I love being a dad more than anything in life. And I know the importance and value of this call to help people, in this case, as I mentioned, the world of Latinos, but our program opportunities now has launched in India and it’s launched in the Philippines as well. And I live very much to help and serve the individuals who don’t even know that LinkedIn exists. How fortunate are we?

[Jackson] (11:28)
They don’t even know that Canva exists. They don’t know that Upwork exists. They don’t know that they can get a job on Fiverr. They’ve never heard of programs like that. And we can help them understand those programs exist, and we can help them grow from a dollar a day wages to four to five dollars an hour. That gets me up, that gets me excited, that’s what I love. And in the India, Philippines, and Pakistan situations, I haven’t worked outside of Sri Lanka. Most of the people I interview from there, Dana…

[Dana] (11:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Jackson] (11:57)
…they cry in my interviews. They cry and they say, Jackson, we’ve never had an American, I’ve never had an American listen to me and treat me the way that you have, with the respect, care about me as a person. And I say, on behalf of my country, I am sorry. And I understand, and I was like that too at one point. I treated my VAs with the same virtual abuse that so many others do, virtual abuse, which is…

[Dana] (12:13)
Wow. Yes.

[Jackson] (12:31)
…let’s treat them like we bought them at a Walmart, like a pair of shoes, and let’s discard them in three weeks if they don’t end up being perfect at what they do, and just hire the next five-star rep, right? I know it’s harsh, I know that’s a very hard thing for some people to hear. But yeah, and the phoenix process, I was meditating on this morning, Dana, I love your podcast, I love that you gravitate to this. This book changed me…

[Dana] (12:43)
We’re being honest, yeah.

[Jackson] (12:54)
…in so many ways, this boundaries and marriage book, right? You can see it looks like a dog ate it. No, that was just me carrying it everywhere and trying to digest this book, and I had to tape it all back together, and make sure that… this book is so powerful. And I had to learn a lot about healthy boundaries. And I’m thirty-six, I feel like a phoenix, like a perennial phoenix, a couple of times a year. I get to go through that burning process and reinvigoration…

[Dana] (12:59)
Uh-huh.

[Jackson] (13:24)
…of soul and spirit.

[Dana] (13:26)
Well, let me ask you this, Jackson, because I’m listening to you describe your journey up to this point, and you mentioning boundaries. I find myself wondering how you set boundaries along the way so that you could protect your passion, because it comes through you, I can see it, I can feel it. And when you’re privileged enough to get into a position, that’s how I feel about boundaries, and I have my own story about why I’m passionate about that, I’m not going to get into all that right now. But when you have a passion like that and you want that so much for other people, you have to set boundaries, because if you don’t, you’re not going to realize your passion. So I’m wondering, Jackson, how did you have to set boundaries along the way so you could protect your passion and you could keep funneling your energy into it?

[Jackson] (14:16)
So many ways. We have so many opportunities to do that in life. And I think oftentimes we allow fear or doubt to overcome that. I’m literally praying and thinking through right now what’s going to be most important for the audience related to that. That’s a big boundary for me, right? I need to control my mouth, control that, I need to bridle that passion and let me steer it. So the very first instance I remember related to that, I was actually teaching a sales class and they said, “When did you learn how to sell?” And I thought through my career, and then I realized, you know what, when I was three years old, I remember running through the master bedroom, master bathroom, master closet, because I heard my parents screaming at each other. I jumped over the bed, pushed them apart, and I yelled just loud enough for them to hear: stop yelling. Anybody else with an alcoholic father could have had a very different outcome than I did, that could have gone very bad. And my parents, they did stop yelling, they talked to me about it. I remember that, and I don’t remember the rest, I know it calmed things down, right? That was my first instance of having that type of influence. That was a boundary. I said, I can’t do this, I don’t want my parents, my family to be going through this. And I’ve been a mediator for a lot of friends and family throughout life, and I’ve had the gift of being able to turn to love when it’s least desired, right? When it’s like, I don’t want to love in this situation. They say, when should you pray? The moment you don’t want to. When you don’t want to, when you feel like you can’t meditate, when you feel like you shouldn’t, when you just want to use your vengeance, your revenge, in most circumstances of my life I’ve taken that opportunity to lean into love. I know fetal position very well. My first marriage was falling apart, and I won’t go into the details on that, but I found myself doing lots of dishes, doing seven loads of laundry, any kinetic therapy that I could to kind of distract myself. And with my young kids asleep, going to the closet, crawling up in fetal position and just asking God, where are you, man? What’s going on? Why is my marriage going like this right now? And it is in those moments, though, where we don’t have our friends by our side because it’s too late, or we choose not to turn to alcohol, or we choose not to distract ourselves with a Netflix movie, we choose. I had to choose. I will never take back what took me to that moment to get to my certainty and knowing who my creator is, and knowing that I belong. It doesn’t matter what. And then I found that TED Talk years later, a couple of years later, that says everything we know about addiction is wrong. And that TED Talk is mind-blowing, he tells us in that talk, he proved scientifically that when people knew that they belonged in society and life, if they belong to a community or something greater than just themselves, we would not have a problem with addictions. And I could feel the power of that, because I was like, I unlocked that super key: it doesn’t matter who wants to throw me out, nobody can stop the fact that I belong. So those are some elements of boundaries. And you have a beautiful assessment on it, I’m actually sending it to my team right after this, right before we jumped on. And that assessment on the power of no, that’s an incredibly important boundary that a lot of us, especially the people-pleasers and the givers of the world, don’t actually use. We talked about it and we made great strides last week as a team to talk about the power of saying no, because who wants to say no to a multi-entrepreneur, alpha, driven, and passionate? And I’m like, team, it’s okay, it’s all right, you can tell me no. In fact, they get excited when they tell me no.

[Dana] (18:33)
Ha ha ha ha! Well, you know, we’re talking about when we get kind of caught up in the people-pleasing and keeping the peace and this kind of thing. If we’re setting healthy boundaries, we’re going to ensure that we’re going to be able to keep going. Because when we’re wrapped up in people-pleasing, we’re so focused on this other person being pleased with us, which, by the way, their pleasure is technically in their brain, which we can’t reach, so…

[Jackson] (19:06)
I tried.

[Dana] (19:07)
Whether they decide they’re going to be pleased with us or not, okay, you do you, dude. It’s just like, but we, when we have that boundary, we have this freedom to continue going, because there will be, and I’m sure you’ve run into this and I’m interested to hear your experience of this, there will be detractors. There will be those people in your path that will say, who do you think you are, what are you doing? And whether it’s…

[Jackson] (19:35)
All the time.

[Dana] (19:37)
…other people that are saying this, and there will be, because they don’t really believe in you, they don’t believe in your vision, they don’t know what you have in your soul that you can feel in there. But you also have those voices in your own head, those doubting things like, are you really delusional? I’m pulling that out of my own, because I’ve got a keynote coming up next month, and there’s a part of my mind that’s off to the side going…

[Jackson] (19:46)
Yes. Yes, you do. Oh yeah. Oh, that’s a good word. Oh.

[Dana] (20:05)
…but maybe this is all just a farce, maybe this whole thing is just one big delusion, it’s not really going to happen, you’re just making this up in your head. And so we have those voices, but also the people in our lives that when we’re moving forward, they are detracting there for whatever reason, lots of reasons, they’re saying things that are not being supportive, and that kind of resonates with that doubt in our own mind. And that can pull us down into a spiral. So…

[Jackson] (20:24)
Lots of reasons.

[Dana] (20:34)
…entrepreneurs like you and I are. But Jackson, I really would like to hear you kind of share some of these stories: what was it like for you, and what did they say, what have you heard both externally and internally, and what did you do about that?

[Jackson] (20:50)
Oh, sometimes it crushed me. Oh, many times it crushed me. First, Dana, I can’t think of a better topic and I better leave you to be a keynote speaker, I would love to see you keynote speak, and I hope you remember that. I hope that you go in realizing the power and value of what you do and what you’re gifting to the world. We need you on that stage.

[Dana] (21:08)
Thank you. Thank you.

[Jackson] (21:18)
Whether it’s somebody who loves you and is trying to protect you, and that could be because they’ve failed their own dreams, that could be because they don’t want to see you get hurt, they might be a healer by nature. My mom’s a healer, this probably won’t be her favorite segment ever, and I know she loves me, I know she does everything she can to support me, she’s one of the wisest people I know, everybody wants to adopt my mom. And my mom has…

[Dana] (21:34)
Mm.

[Jackson] (21:46)
…a loving tendency to try to disrupt any entrepreneurial thing that I’ve ever done, and get her son back into the safety net of corporate America. And she finally, she comes out of the movie The Greatest Showman, which I hadn’t seen, and she called me up and she said, “I think I finally understand you.” I said, “I just saw a movie about you.” And I was like, really?

[Dana] (21:52)
Mm.

[Jackson] (22:12)
I went and watched it, and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy went through everything to make this thing come to life. If you haven’t seen it, you gotta see it, beautiful, especially music-wise, oh my gosh, it is brilliant. And the backstory of Hugh Jackman, I think breaking his nose and then having to sing when he wasn’t supposed to, in the beautiful story, but like the behind-the-scenes footage of that, just what an amazing story and movie. Anyway…

[Dana] (22:21)
I think I’m going to write that down right now.

[Jackson] (22:38)
Going back: so there’s people who love you and they want to protect you, but we’re not meant to be coddled. We’re not meant to stay in the nest. We’re meant to fly, and we have to have the hard experiences. From a very young age, my cousins were drinking and smoking, we were six years old when that was going on, and I decided I wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t want to be a part of that, and that led to an extreme amount of ridicule.

[Dana] (22:45)
Hmm. Hmm.

[Jackson] (23:07)
…and bullying, and I’d walk home crying. I didn’t feel on top of the world, I didn’t feel like I was doing something grand, I was staying true to some principle that seemed right to me and was taught to me. And I don’t really know why, but I definitely didn’t feel like a phoenix, I definitely didn’t feel like I was strong, I was more stubborn than anything else probably. And it did create a stubbornness where I said, you know what, because of the way they treat me about this, I will never do this. I created a weird sense of pride, like, no, never. And I’m so grateful for that, because a lot of my family members on that side of the family are alcoholics, and I can feel that addictive pull, like, uh-uh, I don’t need another challenge in life, I don’t want that, I don’t want to risk that. So…

[Dana] (24:01)
Right.

[Jackson] (24:03)
Those are elements, but I remember a friend, in my early days of using StreamYard and diving into trying to influence people, he said, “When are you going to stop with this washed-up discount Tony Robbins stuff?” Oh, that hit deep. I immediately blocked the guy, I was like, he’s not a real friend anyway. But I pretty much stopped for a while, I pretty much said, you know what…

[Jackson] (24:34)
I made excuses, I was busy in life, I got lots of things to distract me and moved on those. And remember, I was in Uruguay, I had that experience where I knew I needed to launch this thing for towns worldwide. I went through phases of trying to launch it and pulling away, and getting home and trying to help people from Facebook. And right before going to college, I had been trying to help people in Uruguay for a month that I could no longer access, and Facebook wasn’t what it is today, you didn’t have video calls and all that, it was very limited. And I was stressed, I was traumatized, I couldn’t reintegrate into the American culture very well. I couldn’t go into a shopping mall without feeling incredibly overwhelmed and forgotten about all of it. And all I could see were all these incredibly clean houses and clean buildings, and I felt that same feeling I had in that street, where I felt dirty because of it.

[Dana] (25:06)
Mm.

[Jackson] (25:25)
And I felt like we had all of our priorities wrong, and I was super judgmental, and I had to finally let go. And I had to just drop everything I was trying to do for Uruguay, because mentally, spiritually, I couldn’t take it. I had to figure out who I was and what I was going to do for a living, and where I was at, at least that’s how I felt, right, whether it’s a justification or a realization, I’ve learned that it doesn’t really matter. There’s this great book, “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die.” And in that book, she talks about restructuring our DNA, that trauma ends up screwing up and literally messes with our identity. And she gives a great, amazing path for how to get back to it. But the thing that really stood out to me is she said that namaste and aloha mean the same thing. And they both mean, my soul honors…

[Dana] (26:00)
Mmmmm.

[Jackson] (26:24)
…your soul. Her translation of that was, I am perfect the way that I am right now, you are perfect the way that you are right now, and change is also perfect. I would add, maybe I wouldn’t, positive change, maybe it’s bad change, I don’t know, what path do we need to take in order for our lives to move in the direction where we grow? I don’t know, maybe I need shoved in a hole like a seed and to sit in the dark for a while while I start to cultivate and grow and sprout. But that concept of namaste, I wish to help more people understand how to let go of the internal judgment, the external judgment, the acceptance that we’re good, and…

[Dana] (26:58)
Mm-hmm.

[Jackson] (27:19)
…I will always be excited to change, I will always be excited to improve. I know what that means for my life, to be able to become a better self.

[Dana] (27:27)
That, you talking about acceptance is huge. Listening to you talk, it reminds me of a quote, and I was trying to, you know how it floats around the back of your mind, you’re like, I need, I’m trying to get it, I’m trying to get it. I finally got the quote that resonates with what you just said, it was from Carl Rogers, he was one of the forerunners of psychology, and he said, “When we accept ourselves just as we are, then we can change.”

[Dana] (27:59)
Because I run into so many people that have this laundry list of things: I have to, once I’ve checked this box, once I’ve checked this box, once I’ve checked this box, once I’ve done all these things, then I will accept myself and I will accept my situation. But the thing of it is, no matter how many boxes they check, more boxes keep getting added on the bottom, you never reach the end of the list. So it’s like…

[Jackson] (28:20)
Yes. You just create new ones, or you feel inadequate still. In fact, two big stories on that. Johnny Manziel, the former number one draft pick, is currently doing a speaker circuit, I believe. There’s an article that just came out yesterday, and I look at that as a strategist, and I have my different thoughts and feelings. But one of the things that he’s training on and learning to discuss…

[Dana] (28:31)
Mm-hmm.

[Jackson] (28:48)
…is the reality that, he says, when he was on stage getting drafted, was the loneliest, most out-of-himself moment of his life, where he felt disconnected. And you hear that all the time, where people get their successes only to find out there’s a part of them that’s empty, they haven’t really aligned to their purpose. And we’re all trying to figure it out, whether we’re on the top or not. And so, in seventh grade…

[Dana] (28:59)
Interesting.

[Jackson] (29:19)
I was the section leader for the trumpets in our band, and in the state of Texas we won second in state, on my solo for “Shenandoah.” And it was an amazing opportunity, I felt so inadequate doing it, I felt terrified in the process. And then I hit second in state, and my immediate thoughts and feelings were: I’m never going to be worth anything.

[Dana] (29:29)
That’s awesome.

[Jackson] (29:47)
If I’m second in state as a seventh grader, that means there’s 50 states with people who are better than me, that means all the eighth graders, ninth graders, tenth graders, eleventh graders, twelfth graders, the college, the professionals, there’s never gonna be a spot for me in this world. I had this incredibly toxic obsession with having to be the best, and if I wasn’t the best, then I wouldn’t be worth anything to the world. I don’t know what, I know a lot of things contributed to that reality, but painting the contrast, after I had a back surgery, I was also second runner-up to athlete of the year. And so I thought I was going to have a great athletic career, anything with a ball, anything with a ball, I love basketball with a passion.

[Dana] (30:37)
What was your sport? Okay, wow, wow, wow.

[Jackson] (30:46)
I was right behind, here, LeBron James, and I was really great at soccer too. But anything with a ball, I would ride my bike with rollerblades on, dribbling a basketball with a tennis ball in my pocket and a hockey stick across my handlebars, looking for kids. I love sports, I didn’t want to do anything but sports in life.

[Dana] (30:52)
You are cracking me up, Jax. And plus you are a multitasker, you are someone who is very smart, and that’s why you needed to graduate early and you needed to move on, because your brain processes a lot of things very quickly and you get bored easily. And listening to you talk reminds me of something, and I wanted to share this, and then I want to make sure that my listeners know how to get access to you, because I’m certain they’re gonna be like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to get in touch with Jackson, because I see a lot of myself resonating in you, and that feeling of, if I can’t be the best, then what’s the point, right? If I can’t be, and seeing other people that are better, it’s like you want to be like them and emulate them and learn from them, but at the same time you’re kind of annoyed that you’re not already them. And so it’s kind of like, I remember reaching out to the publisher of Choice Magazine, it’s a big coaching magazine, it’s huge for all the coaches. And I was talking to him and I remember saying, I feel like a cup of water in the ocean. And I asked him, I said, a cup of water is worth nothing in the ocean, who gives a shit, right, it’s just a cup of water in the ocean. But you know what, to someone who’s in the desert, a cup of water could mean life. And so my question, what is a cup of water worth? And it’s like us taking our cup, and yes, there might be an ocean out there, there’s authors ad nauseam, there’s keynote speakers ad nauseam, there’s podcasters ad nauseam, there’s thousands and millions of them out there. It’s like, why do I want to jump in this, what am I going to add? All these other people are doing all these amazing things, what in the world am I going to add to that, I’m just a cup of water in the ocean. But again, a cup of water to someone in the desert could save their life. And I feel myself resonating with you, and also because a question you ask the people that come on your podcast is, what is your passion, what is your vision, and how are you pushing that? That’s kind of why we push our vision, because we are a cup of water, and yes, there might be an ocean out there, but there’s also someone who’s in the desert that needs our cup. And that’s why we push, that’s why we push through and become the phoenix and face all these detractors and our own doubts, to keep going, because of that person in the desert that we’re trying to reach, that it does matter.

[Jackson] (33:50)
Absolutely. There’s very few stories of failures that become well known. And that’s something that, while it’s kind of obvious to realize, I think what’s hard to realize is that a lot of the people who don’t make it, they focus on what I was focusing on: being better than others. And there’s no power in that, because usually you can only see who’s in the room. So what happens is you end up giving your best effort to beat that person, but then you stop trying, you never actually develop into your full potential. So I was, after a back surgery, running around a track at night, nobody was there, and it starts to rain. I had every reason to stop running, here I was, dad bod, no longer gonna break any records or anything. And it’s getting to the last lap, and I’m in the last lap of running, we all hate, I don’t think we all hate running, but most of us do, I certainly don’t like it. But I know I can just slow down, or I can go home, but I’m still hitting my pace. And I think of LeBron James, and I’m like, what would he do right now? And I realized, oh, he’d crush this lap. And for the very first time in my life, I think I was 30, 31, 32, for the very first time in my life, with nobody watching, just me and myself, I crushed that lap and did my absolute best. And I ran an extra 25 yards after. And as I’m breathing through that, I get this thought: that’s what it feels like to be LeBron James. He’s been able to do this his entire life pretty much, he’s been able to lock into that, not because of the show, not because of who’s watching, because he wants to be his best. And if I lock in to wanting to be my best and I start to do this in everything that I do in life, that’s the only way I’ll ever really tap into my full potential. It’s the only way. And the byproduct, you just feel the beauty of the byproduct of that. I was like, that’s the life I want, that’s what I want for me. No longer do I need to worry about who beat me on the tracker, who didn’t. And so now I don’t have to worry about the measuring stick, I don’t have that demotivation of, cool, I already won, no, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna make this happen, and I’m gonna do it for me. There’s a lot of good feelings that come when we start doing things…

[Dana] (36:08)
Love it.

[Jackson] (36:14)
…for ourselves, when we start loving ourselves enough to show up for ourselves. I wish more people could tap into that and do just that.

[Dana] (36:24)
Jackson, I think you and I can help people do that. We continue to reach out and we can help people step into their space and accept things and learn to love themselves, maybe for the first time ever. So let me ask you, now the website that I have is go.firstclassbusiness.io, is that where you want my listeners to go to?

[Jackson] (36:49)
That’s wonderful. You’re welcome to, if you’re an entrepreneur, feel free to check that out. If you haven’t read The E-Myth, you might want to start there first, Michael Gerber breaks down how hard entrepreneurship is. So if you’re looking for an easy path, firstclassbusiness.io is not the path, there’s a lot to learn before going… business is like a 300-page recipe book of all these easy recipes, but the challenge is cooking the right food at the right temperature at the right time while managing your inventory, and making sure you don’t have spoilage, making sure the guest is happy, and putting that on rinse and repeat, 200 times during the day, 2,000 times during the day. That is not easy, and so we don’t have an easy button for business. I’d prefer people start with going to our podcast, VisionProsLive.com, and becoming one of our guests, there’s a button to be our guest, come on, do an interview with us, tell us about your vision, tell us about what you’re up to. If the business world would make a transition from focusing on services and offers that nobody cares about, I mean, nobody cares about the next Disney movie that’s coming out unless they’re a Disney fanatic, there’s a sense of belonging, a sense of relationship, a sense of know, like, and trust that needs to be established first for true loyalty, for healthy relationships to exist. So VisionPros gives us the chance to potentially fall in love with the vision of the person that we’re talking to. If we fall in love with that and they fall in love with what we’re doing, now we can build a healthy relationship based on something that’s far bigger than just the services and the product, then we can figure out if doing business together makes sense. But we love hearing people’s visions, honoring people where they’re at with that vision, and then if it makes sense and they want to…

[Dana] (38:29)
Yeah.

[Jackson] (38:44)
…ask us about working with us, then we can go that route. But I try to steer people away from looking at the transactional relationship, because I don’t want somebody to buy my best side, they gotta know who I am as a whole person, they gotta know who our team is, we gotta know who they are. I’m an auditor, I’m not just a growth revenue guy. I’ve gotta make sure that when Dr. Eric Berg came to work with us at Video Power, it was my responsibility to tell him, you have the worst website I’ve ever seen. This is a doctor with 106,000 subscribers on YouTube at the time. So that was a difficult message to deliver. And that guy ate it up like a champion, he said, call me Eric. I was terrified, I let him know what he needed to know. He’s at over 12 million subscribers worldwide now. He changed and overhauled his brand on a dime based on that little feedback from some kid just named Jackson working in a role at Video Power.

[Dana] (39:16)
Wow.

[Jackson] (39:43)
But don’t get me wrong, VideoPower.com, I love Jake, Jake’s one of the best mentors I’ve ever had in my life. So anything I can do to help people, I absolutely will. And I’m looking for the people who want to align with people who are like them, and let’s go build. We’ve got 8 billion people to help, let’s do it.

[Dana] (39:59)
I love this. Jackson, I so appreciate you being willing to take some of your time and your energy and your honesty, your emotions, and bring that to me and to my listeners today. Thank you very, very much.

[Jackson] (40:17)
There’s not a stage I would rather be on right now. You have a beautiful podcast, I love everything that I’ve seen about you, Dana, and I look forward to having you on my show as well.

[Dana] (40:25)
Thank you, thank you. Listeners, I know you have heard so many things today from Jackson that has touched your soul, and you just want to kind of connect and find out if there’s something out there for you, if you can find a path for your vision, for your passion and help it to grow, then just reach out, go to VisionProsLive.com, be a podcast guest, Jackson has a wonderful team, I’ve already been on his podcast twice and it was a wonderful experience, just go and reach out and let’s just make these connections. I know that this episode is going to be fantastic. I would strongly encourage you to copy and paste the link in text, in email, put it on your favorite social media sites so that we can grow our Phoenix and Flame community so that we know that we are together, we are connected, we are not alone. I’m Dana on Phoenix and Flame.