Starting in the real estate industry to stay closer to home for his family, Aaron Kennard had the confidence in himself to achieve his goals for the benefit for his family. Aaron later started Truly Amazing Life to help others keep a positive mindset through the “thick and thins” in business life. He now shares with others his beliefs of physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, and financial freedom. Aaron believes that we strive daily for more freedom in each of those areas until the day we die.

Good is not good enough! A Good Life is a tragedy. To settle for good is to sacrifice our birthright of amazing! – Tweet This

Subscribe To Our Podcast on iTunes – Video / Audio Only

Takeaways:

“Stand against all mediocrity!” – Tweet This
“Stop settling and start living!” – Tweet This
“Don’t have the fear of being judged for what you love.” – Tweet This
“People are attracted to the confidence you have and believe in!” – Tweet This
“This is a Truly Amazing Life and it deserves to be lived that way.” – Tweet This
“Don’t pummel yourself daily with self-criticisms, self-doubt, self-loathing.” – Tweet This
“All things have purpose, and you will find the good in everything that shows up in your life.” – Tweet This
“Get into a positive thinking habit, and create meaningful friendships through your business.” – Tweet This

Resources We Shared:

The Think and Grow Rich Action Pack by Napoleon Hill
Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Stone
The Positive Thinking Secret by Aaron Kennard

Connect With Aaron:

Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Google+
Website

Listen To The Podcast:

Read The Transcript:

Brian: Hello, hello and welcome to CatalystMLM. I'm Brian Swichkow and today on the show we have Aaron Kennard. Aaron is a husband and father of three, he has built a very successful real estate business and he also created the truly amazing life; and he is the author of The Positive Thinking Secret; which is an awesome e-book. I love my iPad. But we met at New Media Expo and I think unbeknownst to either of us ended up sitting on a couch in Star Buck, both of us had the flu, and that was the thing that we really didn’t know, but we ended up talking for probably four hours. And the thing that really fascinated me about you and impressed me about you was your transition from the real estate business to the truly amazing life. And we’re gonna talk about that in a bit, but thank you so much for being on to share your story. Aaron: Absolutely, excited to be here. Thanks for having me Brian.Brian: So, I am currently in the new CatalystMLM offices, and it’s not entirely setup; which is why we have sound damping foam over there and no couch over here. But I think it’s actually kind of fitting. I was laughing about it when I realized this, is that, you know, the office is in studio stage of transition, but your entire story is about transition. And so before we get into the big like “Oh my God” piece that really just blew me away when you told me; tell me more about how you got started. And tell me about your entrepreneurial beginnings. Aaron: Yeah, so back to the beginning of real estate and things? Is that what you’re referring --? Brian: Yeah, Absolutely.Aaron: So I used to-- I came from a sales background; I was doing door to door sales, hiring door to door sales trainers for three or four years and got kind of burned out when I had young kids on that. I didn’t like the traveling so sitting up sales offices in multiple different cities and traveling a lot and had two young kids and didn’t like that. So I was looking for something new; wanted to find a way that I could be in my hometown all the time, always kind of had this desire to look at real estate. But then one day my cousin gave me this book: Millionaire Real Estate Investor. I read it and I quit my job like that week, and decided I was gonna become a real estate investor. I was trying to quit my job for like, six months, but I just didn’t know what I was going to do next. I read this book and it tipped me off, it made me realize, that my limited beliefs regarding real estate investing, like I thought that I had to have a lot of money to invest. And this book just kind of opened my eyes and made me realize that I could just borrow the money from people and go invest in property. So, I quit my job like that week, went and started raising money and started buying houses. And then it-- that led to, over the course of the next six or seven years, buying a couple hundred houses and flipping them and a bunch of rental properties and things and kind of a big story. A lot of ups and downs in the real estate business, tons of lessons learned, lots of debt incurred, lots of success and lots of challenges and failures, so -- Brian: Yeah.Aaron: -- that’s the short version of how I got into it though. Brian: That’s amazing, and you got into the real estate industry with no experience in real estate and no money, but you still got people to invest in you to invest in the properties. I mean, what was the process of that? Because so many people are like, “Oh, I don’t have experience with that no one would ever, you know work with me”. It’s that limited belief. Aaron: Yeah, it’s totally a limited belief, and it’s simply a matter of having a business model that makes sense to somebody and being a trustworthy person, that they can trust. So, I -- and you have to have that confidence in yourself that you can do it first. You have to sell yourself and so I had to become sold on it myself and I actually had a lot of limiting beliefs that stopped me from raising capital up front. Which is really interesting, I did get some initial early successes just from family members, who already trusted me and who I could go to but I had a really big challenge raising money from people until I made this affirmation that I was like “Okay, everyday I started repeating, I have two million dollars of investment capital available at my finger tips” and I -- but everyday that I would repeat that I would get frustrated and annoyed because I didn’t have that and I was struggling and struggling to get it and to ask people. I was like, avoiding asking people at all costs. I talked to one of my mentors and he pointed out all of this negative crap that was going on in my mind that I was supposedly begging for money from people. And it was interesting because I had some MLM experience in the past that had cast negative beliefs because of my failures in that and being involved in a couple of MLMs and not succeeding. And having approached my family members and felt awkward about it and things like this was actually clouding my ability to raise capital in this other business; interestingly enough. And when he exposed that to me, and said I was just afraid of getting a no and that I was also thinking that I was begging and that I was associating this with a different type of-- it was a different business model that had nothing to do with it. Brian: Right.Aaron: And from the past, you know, once I realized that he said, “Now, realize that that’s just a lie that you’re telling yourself”, that your not begging you -- these people actually need you; because no body gets 10% return on their investment, it’s very rare, they’re all getting like 1% in their IRAs and all this stuff. I was like, yeah, they do need me, they’re actually kind of -- I mean without me, they’re getting only 1%. I’m their solution and one of their only solutions. And so once I flipped that frame around, and then he said just go get 50 no’s and I went and did that. And I couldn’t do it though, I went and committed to do it but then everybody started telling me yes and so literally within the next month I had 2 million dollars available. Brian: Wow. That’s awesome. Aaron: Yeah, so it was like the power of affirmation which lead me to the coaching, which kind of lead to this breakthrough of limiting beliefs. And I had -- every since then I just had more capital then I’ve had a need for. It hasn’t been a challenge at all to raise capital but that’s -- Brian: That’s awesome. And that’s, I mean you’re right, that’s a testament to the power of affirmations and I kind of always, you know the people -- and I used to be one of them who look at affirmations and be like, that doesn’t work, you know, saying something is never gonna have an effect on my life. And there’s just so many people, story after story after story in every which way. It could be health, it could be finance, it could be business, it’s just, they do, they work. And they work really well. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: So tell me about the MLM experience that you had, not the experience specifically, but how that lead to that negative belief. What was your experience before when talking to family that put that in your mind when you went to raise money. Aaron: It was just the failed experiences of having put my passion out. I believed in this business or this product and then it not work out. And then so I was you know, feeling like a failure in those regards in a couple of different businesses that I think I’d tried. And so when I would go to talk to somebody about a new business and I was associating with the old one I was hesitant to even go talk to them. I didn’t even want to go approach my family and friends because I didn’t want them to think “Oh, here’s another -- here’s his latest thing that’s just gonna fail.” You know, that was what I was doing in my own mind. Brian: Yeah.Aaron: And it was a totally different business model and again, it was coming back to, look this is a legitimate business model that these people absolutely will benefit from. And I don’t need to be associating with anything from the past and that changed everything. Brian: And I think it’s important to note that, you know, it is, it’s a different business, but it’s also a different you. Aaron: Yeah, different me, different -- and it’s just -- Brian: And that’s a different investment entirely. Aaron: Yeah, it could have been a different MLM business and it’s still not related to the old MLM business. That’s kind of the point you’re saying. It’s like -- Brian: Well, I mean the business is one piece, but it really is you and I mean, you know, I, myself look back on what I did and why people said no to me. And I’m like, “I would have said no to me”. You know, because it -- Aaron: Yeah. Yeah.Brian: But now if someone comes to me it’s like, oh wow, you know, I want this person to be working with me, and you invest in the person. And that’s, you know, people I think have that fear that they think that people are judging based on the business opportunity, but they’re not, they’re judging the whole package. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: Which is the business opportunity and you, and if you have that mindset, even before you have that success, which you did -- Aaron: Yeah.Brian: -- people just start throwing money at you. Aaron: Well and the biggest part of it is, is your belief. It just comes out in every single thing that you do. And I clearly didn’t fully believe in my own offering, I thought my offering was this -- I thought I was trying to get people to do something that was only benefitting me and it wasn’t helping them. So that was my context, right? When I switched it around and made myself realize that they need me way more than I need them. Then I fully bought into that. I was like, “that’s true; they do.” Every single person that I talked to has these IRAs or the majority of people they have all this money that’s earning a really low returns. I’m like the only game in town that they know, that could actually offer them a secure safe way to earn 8 to 10% return on their money. And when I flipped that around, it changed my belief inside and once I had that belief, that confidence, then when I’m talking to people, even -- it’s just all the body language, everything that happens, is different in that they’re attracted to that confidence and that belief because they can feel it. Even without the words that you’re saying. But I didn’t, I literally didn’t have the right beliefs before and so it would exude this lack of confidence. Like, I was needy, instead of being confident and them needing me. And I think that’s the whole root that you want to get to, you want to get to the point where you don’t need anybody, you are willing to serve them and bless them, but you don’t need them, they need you. And then when you go about your business it’s just, whatever business you’re in, people are attracted to you that way.Brian: Yeah, and before we kind of move to the next piece; which I want to get to, but you talk about needing, you know, they need you versus you needing them. What about when you have that mindset of that they need you but then they still, you know, I don’t want to say no, because it’s kind of a simple thing, but they just, they’re not interested and you still do want to help them because they do need you. How do you react to that? Aaron: Well, you just can’t force anybody to do anything. I mean, if they don’t want your help and they’re -- I don’t know, move on. It’s like go talk to enough people, some people will want it some people wont’. If people don’t want your help you can’t help them. Brian: Yeah. And that’s something that I think-- it took a while for me to learn was, you know, kind of being emotionally unattached to the outcome.Aaron: Yeah.Brian: You know, be hopeful but accept the fact that it may not happen. And if it doesn’t then -- Aaron: Be willing to give your service and your best to everybody that’s ready to have it but not everybody is in the position that they can benefit from it, want it, need it, whatever, at that point in your life. Brian: Absolutely. And so, you built this up and I believe it was your third daughter, right? Aaron: Yeah, so I have a son and then I had three daughters, yep.Brian: Oh wow, okay, so, and she was born and then another transition occurred. So you transitioned out of your sales job and into real estate and then you had another more life transition. Tell me about that. Aaron: Yeah, so, just before she was I had this, actually this epiphany where one night I had this sore throat for about a month and it lasted for a month and I was looking for what the advantage to this pain was. Because I believed that statement by Napoleon Hill that he said “Every adversity carries the seed of an equivalent advantage”. So I was having this sore throat that wouldn’t go away and I was seeing doctors and one night in bed I thought -- I was frustrated trying to go to sleep and I had this thought come to my mind, why don’t you just say thank you for five things every time you swallow. Instead of thinking about the pain, think about what you’re grateful for so I did that and I started feeling really good and then I did it again the next time I swallowed, thought of five more things, and I just started feeling awesome. And as compared to moments earlier I was feeling lethargic and weak. And that experience shifted. This was in December of 2011, six months before my daughter was born, kind of a pre-cursor to that. That is shifted my whole perspective, it made-- it was like this epiphany where this truth of that principle to Napoleon Hill spoke and had finally sunk in for me. And I literally was like, over come with joy and empowerment where the next morning, I slept really well. And the next morning I woke up and I swallowed and I did the same thing again, all I could do was say thank you. I was like on cloud nine, I said “Thank you for this sore throat”, I was so grateful for the pain in that moment because of what it had taught me. And I was like, this pain can come or go because now I’m gonna use this pain as a reminder every -- I have a built in alarm clock every time I swallow, to make myself feel amazing by saying thank you. And it was just like, how easy is that? I can turn every single adversity to my advantage and it was like this, ah, it was amazing. It was a life changing moment for me. And that shifted my gears so over the next course of the next few months, I was just on this high of life. Like, I -- and it turned into me wanting to share that with other people and creating this business called Truly Amazing Life because that was the essence of what I felt life was. It like opened my eyes as to how amazing life was and how we’re in control and we get to decide to see it that way. So I started teaching these things and it came up with, I have this poster, which you can see if you’re looking at the video -- Brian: Yeah.Aaron: -- behind me on the wall. It’s, that came out over the next course of the months out of this why. I was asking myself why is life so amazing? I was trying to capsulate this so that I could remember it forever because I felt so good and I was on such a high that I never had any bad days and everything was like, it just, everything was shifted for the better. But that poster came out and it became these 12 pillars of a truly amazing life, which I started teaching. And then in the core essence of the message was that literally everything is conspiring for your benefit and that you can turn everything to your advantage. It’s kind of another morph on what Napoleon Hill said, but that became kind of my mantra in life and I started teaching that. And then on July 28th my 4th daughter was born, or my 3rd daughter, my 4th child, and it was an intense day. She was born breach, surprise breach at home and it was super intense. It was like, everything turned out perfectly well but it was really stressful. And the very next day my body, I came overtaken with this pain, in my bowel, in my butt; which turned into this disease over the next course of the next three months. Basically from that day forth I started having massively increasing pain and to the point where a month and a half later I was diagnosed with this disease. All sort of Kleist Crohns and my body was loosing weight fast and pretty much within a month and a half I was bedridden, I couldn’t even walk. And I had lost like 30 pounds. And it was like the flip of a switch overnight. My body went, I went from this high of life to all of a sudden in this painful disease, not knowing, lots of fear, and a new born and four other kids at home. And this really, really just like somebody flipped a light switch and our life became like this walking nightmare all of a sudden of just crazy intense circumstances. So that was what happened. I mean the bases of that though was that the moment that started, I was teaching people, I was still teaching and I was having this desire to basically shift into teaching and making this company that was, had this mission of helping people live a truly amazing life and experience what I was experiencing. And now my life was shifted and like kind of flipped on its head. And all those beliefs were thrown in my face. I was looking at this poster on my wall that says “This is a truly amazing life” and I was just experiencing like hours of pain, up all night. Like, in the bathtub to try to relieve pain and just excruciating like, it’s hard to describe. But this burning hot pain and like pain in my bowels. I couldn’t sleep and just loosing weight and kind of starving. And I had a good look at that poster, wanting some moments to like literally to rip it off the wall. Because I was like, what? But I would only experience that feeling for a few moments and then I’d be like, yeah, it’s totally true. This experience also is here conspiring for my benefit. And I think I was prepared to receive this really, really intensely painful experience in order to be able to really teach that message. I mean it was very clear to me from the moment that happened that, that’s why I was getting it. That was one of the benefits that was going to come from it. And it was going to be an amazing benefit. So, that’s essentially what happened. And then I can short cut you to the end result of that if you want to. If you want me to get into that.Brian: Yeah, because I remember you were, you had woken up one night and rushed to the hospital and just not knowing what was going on. Aaron: Yeah, so, I had -- like I got diagnosed with this disease. I was just loosing weight, it was just really fearful and really painful and really hard on my whole family. Emotional trauma, my wife and my children were all experiencing this sever emotional trauma from it. My wife was amazingly strong through it all, but she had her hands full. And with a brand new baby, three other kids, and now a sick and dying husband. But yeah, I was rushed off to the hospital one night and had my colon removed because it was like exploding, it had perforated in like four places and I would have died that day had they not done it. And I thought I was gonna die, it was really intense. I mean, this short of conversation doesn’t do it justice.Brian: Yeah, yeah. Aaron: It was a super intense day. They saved my life through the surgery but I wasn’t healed and what happened over the next course of the next month was I was in the hospital for like a month after that. Not recovering, not healing, tons of bowel pain until finally I got out. And then it wasn’t until I found this Naturopathic Doctor who showed me what to eat, and what not to eat that, within two days after learning those things and changing my diet, all of my pain went away and I’ve never had it since. And I never had any drugs or medication since, even though they told me it’s a chronic disease and it will never go away. And it’s gone and I don’t have any pain or symptoms since I fixed the diet aspect and the supplements aspect of it according to this doctor. And I went on to heal and gain all my weight back over the next -- I was down to like 127 pounds, I’m a 6’2 guy, I was like skin and bones. And I gained it all back and over the next couple months and have just been great ever since. And I went on to write the experience because during that whole entire episode I was still writing and blogging and journaling about this belief that I knew that this experience was here for my ultimate good and that, and because of that belief that brought me all of these really amazing experiences with joy in the midst of this intensely painful life threatening circumstance. Like literally there was so many days where I was in tears of pain and momentarily later in tears of absolute joy, like ecstasy joy, in the midst of this pain. Which is really hard to describe, but I ended up writing a book about it, like you mentioned, call The Positive Thinking Secret which kind of complies my notes from those time and shares that whole story in detail. And essentially teaches the message that everything is conspiring for your benefit. I’ll give away the secret right there, that’s what it is. But you’ve gotta kind of, I mean, you understand that a little, a lot more deep if you read the book of course.Brian: Yeah, Absolutely. Aaron: So that’s essentially what happened. I wrote that book when I, once I was finally better. It took me like a month, a couple months, to recover after that because I was gaining my weight. But once I had strength I wrote that book and then kind of just resumed the mission of helping people live a truly amazing life. And since then have released this product called Five Mental Mastery, which helps people on a daily basis kind of retrain their thought habits according to these principles, and so that’s now what I’m involved in for the majority of my time in addition to continuing to run the real estate business, so.Brian: Right. And that’s -- I’ll get back to the real estate business, but the -- because I have a specific question about that. But, I mean, the book that you wrote, and I remember there is another story attached to that. And you were telling this story before I had read the book, but when you got started with it you wrote this entire book and you gave it away for free. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: And people were reading your story and they were also getting this amazing insight and empowerment and they were learning the same things that you learned. But then they started connecting with you and you burst the Truly Amazing Life community. Aaron: Yep.Brian: And people started working together. So tell me a little bit about that transition and did you expect that to happen when you released the book? Aaron: Did I expect what to happen? Brian: For it to turn into such a community. Aaron: That was the plan, yeah. That was the goal. My goal was to create a community, create a tribe of people that believed these principles and my goal has always been from inception to help. My mission in life, my achieve game is to help people live a truly amazing life; to stop settling for mediocre every single day to stop settling and start living. Truly amazing, to believe that that’s possible, regardless of their circumstances, that no matter what pain, no matter what financial hardship, no matter what you were born into. Every one of us has the birth right of being able to live in complete joy, live a truly amazing life. That’s always been my vision is to just unite a community, to unite as many people as I can and that belief and to spread that and to help people embrace that. So that was my mission. My plan was to -- well I wrote the book, to share that story, because I believed it would be impactful. I felt really compelled to share it. I knew that I had, had that experience for a reason. I was, it was very clear to me, that it proved, it like took all those beliefs for the refiners fire and proved them without a shadow of a doubt to me. Like, I think I had these doubts before when I, like when I knew it but I wondered what people would think who were experiencing sever pain. I literally had that thought before I went through that and I had that conversation with my wife. I was like, what are people gonna think who are dealing with so much worse things than I’ve ever though? Like how can I tell them that everything is conspiring for your benefit? Well, anyway, be careful of what you ask for, but I got this experience that I’m super grateful for even though it was the most intensely hellish painful thing I’ve ever done because of the impact that it’s now going to make and is making. And so yeah, that was the plan. I published the book and I gave it away for free on Amazon just to not limit it’s exposure in order to get it out there as much as possible. The price recently has gone up to I think $2.50 or $2.99 or something. Brian: That’s so expense. Aaron: Yeah, so. I still, I like keeping it pretty cheap, to do that I have the audio and the paper book-- back available too. But you know, I put it out there and I put links in the book to my website so that people could come and could get on my email list and could -- that I could communicate with them and I could interact with people and start to gather and help people more; because, a book is one thing, but I’m now making myself available. I put this; I write a daily email called The Truly Amazing Daily, where I write my insights on these principles and my thoughts as I’m living right now on how to live a truly amazing life. And so that list is growing rapidly, I have people coming on and a lot of it coming through that book. But yeah, that was the plan always from the get go. And so, now we’re about to launch The Truly Amazing Life Mastermind. I’ve kind of launched this pre-launch team where I’m going to be doing these daily trainings every month of the year going over the habits; these 12 habits of living a truly amazing life; which is essentially embodied in those 12 colors. And so the master mind is kind of like, we have this Facebook group where we can communicate and talk and it’s really cool. A lot of people are communicating a lot and making friends with like minded people that are positive and that believe these principles. And soon it’s going to launch with this monthly training in the next couple months or as soon as I have it ready; soon as I have the time to complete it and as soon as I get that thing done. It’s a lot of work to do to -- Brian: Yeah.Aaron: -- finish preps, so. Brian: And let’s, I want to jump back to the real estate business for a second, and then go back to exactly what you’re talking about there. But, the two are connected, is that, when we first met, the way that we met, and I think it’s relevant, is that we were at New Media Expo and I got up on the microphone and asked a question. And the question was about kind of like how to manage large processes. And I kind of got an answer from the speakers and then you approached me afterwards and we ended up sitting down on a bench and talking I think within five minutes. I was like this is a cool -- I mean within a minute; I was like, this is a cool guy, within five minutes we were sitting on this bench. And I was, you know, you heard my question and you’re like, I think have an answer. There’s this guy and he talks about the difference between a project manager and a process manager. And like that was all you had to say for me and it just blew my mind, I was like “Oh my God, I’m doing it wrong.” And -- Aaron: Yeah, and I kept talking but you didn’t need mind work so, you were good, you were like, you can stop now you don’t need to tell me anymore. Brian: Yeah, and that -- but yeah, we still talked for like, six hours. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: And so, the thing that, I mean, it blew my mind because of what I was going through at that point and it greatly helped me with Catalyst. But you’ve been growing Truly Amazing Life, but you’ve also been managing your real estate business and you’ve done that through automation and through outsourcing. And tell me how that started and what struggles you had and what successes had in doing that. Aaron: In getting built up the real estate business to work, to run smoothly, is that what you’re? Brian: Yeah, to run without you, yeah. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: With as little of you as possible. Aaron: Yeah, so I still run parts of it, but it was, yeah, it was systems and people. So, the process was-- it wasn’t instantaneous, it took time but it was just initially me doing all the running around to all these properties and me realizing like I gotta get somebody else doing stuff. I have to replace myself so I can work on higher leverage activities. And it didn’t come easily, really it took years to go about to -- The first thing was just like hire one person to do -- I hired a guy to do just one simple task; which was just to run around and take a bunch of pictures of properties. And what I did was as soon as he accomplished that task, well, then I gave him one more. And as soon as he was doing those two well then I gave him one more and slowly over the years this transitioned to him and now he’s running the whole operation, and has another person under him. So it’s just kind of like this systematically taking one job off my plate and handing it to somebody else. And not try to bite off the whole thing all at once. I’ve tried that in the past where when I initially started the business I went out and hired like seven people and I had this huge overhead and it quickly became this train wreck and none of them were doing an efficient job at what they should have been doing. And I had this massive overhead and I had to shut the whole thing down because I was quickly going to just crash the whole thing. And really loose a lot of -- I mean, not be able to complete all these projects. So I had to basically let everybody go, get really lean and then start over again and do it slowly with hiring one person and systematically giving him things and just doing the rest myself as efficiently as possible. But then the result is now I have, because of just taking like, every month, taking one thing off my plate and either outsourcing it to another person. Like I got rid of my real estate license at one point and hired a real estate agent that was huge. It took off like 10 hours a week of paperwork and phone calls, off my plate. And didn’t hardly, it’s actually saved me money, which was kind of fascinating. You would think, I thought it was gonna cost me money and it actually ends up making me more money because he’s, it’s better to be a -- to have-- well anyway. It’s details, but it, yeah. It-- so I outsourced that but that’s been the process of doing that just like systematically for that business and so now I’m in the same process of doing that with the Truly Amazing Life Business. Like I’ve hired one assistant and I’m working on getting her up to speed on doing just certain tasks and it just takes time and it’s, I wish it was a lot faster. And I think when you’re an entrepreneur, when you’re out there in the business, you always wish it’s a lot faster and maybe some people can do it a lot faster than me, probably they can. But for me, it’s kind of like; it’s this, sometimes agonizingly slow process because I’m a really fast mover. I wish it was like, I’m impatient, I wish it was all done now, but I’ve learned through my impatience over the years and how much money it’s lost me on different things. Yeah, I have to be more patient. Brian: You talked about hiring all these people and then having to scale down and kind of start over, and I think that I did that exact same thing, after talking to you. And it really clicked with me, I mean, I had done it and I was in the process of doing it, but it really clicked with me when I bumped into a friend that was a project manager and had just gotten hired with this company. And they were having them go through and do every single type of job in the company, before they could actually manage a project. Aaron: Wow.Brian: Because if they were going to manage the project, they had to know, what the people that are working for them were actually doing. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: And I think that that’s kind of a similar structure, but, you know, in some degree in reverse where you have them do the job and then you hire the other people to do those same jobs. And then you just keep moving that up. And that’s the exact same structure that should be used in Multi-level Marketing; because you have to, when you recruit someone you have to train them. Because if you don’t train them, then they just, they don’t know what to do and they fall out, and they don’t see success. So it’s very valuable to do that and to see it and to be patient with it. Aaron: Yeah, you, because people don’t just get trained immediately and they’re all of a sudden good with one sentence. I mean, you gotta, it just takes time. It’s like; I always come back to the planting of a field; like the farming analogy, because it’s the best one. You just don’t grow a big thriving field of fruit or corn or whatever it is, in a day. It just takes time, you have to plow the field, you gotta plant the seed, you gotta water it, and things grow and it’s just the same thing with people and training and they just gotta be patient with the time and that’s one of the, that’s been one of my biggest challenges, is the person being patient. But it’s so important. Brian: And so, let’s get back to Truly Amazing Life because you, I mean the content that you write, I mean everything that I’ve ever seen from you and in the book, and your articles. I read an article the other day. You know, it’s inspiring, but it’s inspiring in a sense where it’s also actionable. And the content is amazing and it kind of, as you were saying that it reminded me of a quote from Tony Robbins; which was one of my favorites. It’s “everything in this world needs to be sold before it moves.” Doesn’t matter if it’s a product, a service, or an idea, it has to be sold. And I know that you encountered some trouble with marketing that, even though the content was phenomenal and amazing, you know, a lot of people have this misconception that regardless of what something is; be it, you know, product, a service or an idea. They think, oh well, it’s just so amazing that people are gonna, you know, eat it up and it’s gonna go viral, to use the cliché word. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: So, what has been your experience with, you know, kind of trying to get it out there and struggling with that and learning from it, and moving forward? Aaron: So, looking for kind of challenges with marketing and getting the word out there and stuff? You know, it’s -- I -- it’s hard to capsulate that all into one challenge per say. It’s been a big long slow process. Again, requiring lots of patience, like, just knowing that nothing happens overnight, and it seems to -- you hear of all these overnight success stories that seems so fantastic and it makes you want to be that because I’m impatient, right? But it’s-- Brian: What is it? Overnight success takes about 15 years? Aaron: Yeah, something like that. So for me the marketing, I mean, I’ve put a thing out there. I basically just gave away everything away for free at first. Brian: Yeah.Aaron: And even then, it was very valuable for me to do that because it helped me see the value that I was giving people, and I just wanted to make sure that this was working for people and after doing that enough and getting hundreds and hundreds of testimonials of people lives changing from the free book, from the free Five Minute to Master product I was giving. I’m like, okay, so this is working everything that I’m doing here is really helping people. So okay, so let’s start charging for it, let’s start to turn it into a business model so that I can actually scale it up and take it to millions of people. Because without money flowing in, I’m extremely limited on how many people I can get it to because I can’t pay for any marketing, and can’t pay to get the word out there. Right? So it’s essential obviously, and that’s to get the money flowing eventually. And I’m right at still, just the beginning phases of that really. Just switching over, creating this monthly mastermind program that’s going to be a $20 a month group. It’s going to be highly valuable, I mean I’ve already got like 100 people in the pre-launch group that are ready to go that have said, “Hey, we’re in, we’re on the team, and we’re ready to sign up as soon as it’s ready”, type of thing. Brian: Jumped in and not even knowing what it was. Aaron: Oh, they know, I’ve explained to them what it is but they haven’t, it hasn’t been released. But they know enough because they’ve gone through the first five minute mastery training and they know how effective it is and most of them they’re lives have transformed from it. And they’re like, give me more, they’re begging me to make more trainings every month. And I haven’t made them yet. Literally they’re going back through the same emails again because they just loved having this daily email so much it’s like, this training. It’s like me speaking to them in audio for five minutes in the morning and giving them specific advise and motivation and quotes and things, specifically related to one habit. You know, that’s my whole goal is like, let’s create a habit over 30 days, let’s focus intently five minutes a day for 30 days and I’ll be here with you. And that’s the premise of the product. But I’m going to do that for 12 different habits. But it’s like, really laser focused stuff and people are really, really eating it up and they love it. And so, anyway.Brian: They’re seeing results too. Aaron: Yeah, they’re seeing massive results. I literally list 100s of testimonials of like, I have never been this happy, or thank you for teaching me how to finally, like, control my mind. Or, just so many different things, it’s been quite amazing. But, so I’m really, really excited for the next phase; but as far as your question in the marketing and how it’s gone. It’s taken me two years. Like this has been since the beginning of 2012; now we’re in 2014. I have not seen any profit from the company; I’ve invested lots of money. I’ve seen revenue, but it’s not been in excess of my expenses because I have expenses to run the thing. Hosting and assistants and like, I mean, it’s been a two year investment of time. But the reason that I’m able to do that is because this is my life’s work. This isn’t like one of those things where, you go “I need to go make some money.” This isn’t’ working after a month, okay, let’s go make a different; let’s go do a different thing. That’s what happens with most people. They get into, and it happened with me, all those times in the past we just go from one thing to another and we’re like “Oh, this didn’t work quick enough”, “this isn’t gonna work.” So I just jump over to the next thing. Well, until you have your purpose and your why and the reason that drives you to push through all obstacles, you just, you’re never gonna have any big success. Like, this I can tell you, like, this hasn’t had wild financial success yet, and that’s fine because I know that it will one day. I know where it’s going; I know that’s its going to make a massive impact because I can see it. And because I understand why I’m doing it, and how committed I am to it. And so it’s kind of like one of those things where -- So it doesn’t, it’s not wildly successful this year, or next, but someday, if I persist in it long enough, the vision will come to pass of the millions of people that are gonna be helped and be blessed through this message. And so, it’s-- I don’t know how I got onto that but it’s, it relates to the marketing. Like how long and slow the marketing is. Brian: Yeah.Aaron: I guess the reason I’m willing and able to commit to that investment and that pain is because I’m deeply committed to the mission of making it happen regardless of the challenge. So, I don’t know how it’s all going to work out in the end but I can see clearly now. We’re about to launch, and the revenue is about to start flowing in to tip us into the black; which is pretty cool. I’m excited about that because this allows us to go to the next level. It allows me to, once I have the revenue in the black, I can start hiring more people and really expand the reach and really start going more good. Because right now I’m just limited to, like, it hurts me to be limited in my marketing because there’s literally so-- Like if I tell you I’ve got 100, say 200 people that have gone through five minute mental mastery and their like intensely blessed; their lives have been transformed. Well that’s only through one marketing channel, and that’s my book. And that’s only like 100 thousand people have read my book. Well there’s millions of people on the earth that are struggling with negativity and struggling with all this stuff, that I’m not reaching and touching because they have no clue of who I am or where to find me. Brian: Yep.Aaron: And until I have the revenue to start making a bigger megaphone and getting this out to the people, I’m like, there’s all these people suffering needlessly that I could be helping. And until I have that, so that’s what drives me to get it going, is to get the revenue going so I can reach more people and help and fulfill this mission. And really it’s driven from like, I have this vision of people that are like, in crumbling buildings, and they’re just like waiting under this, like they can’t get out, they’re trapped, and they’re calling for help. I don’t know why I had that that vision just always comes back for me. Like people are trapped in their negative beliefs and they’re calling for help all over the place and they just need help, they need somebody to help pull them out. And I know that that’s the case because every day I get emails from people with that exact affect. But I just know there’s so many more than I’m actually reaching. So, anyway, that’s what drives me and I think from your listeners standpoint, when you’re trying to get through the obstacles, when people are trying to get through the obstacles, what is the reason you’re doing it? What is the thing that’s going to drive you to overcome all those obstacles? If you’re not really clear on that, you’re going to get discouraged, you’re going to quit, you’re going to be so much more likely, it’s going to be so much harder. But when you know, deeply why you’re doing what you’re doing, from your deep purpose standpoint, when you get clear like Napoleon Hill tells us on your chief aim in life, you can then overcome all the obstacles. You can then persist through the challenges. And, anyway, there’s my little speech for the -- Brian: I love that. And, specifically you said something a ways back that really struck me. And it just made me smile. But you said that, you first said that you know that you’re going to be successful with it and you know that it’s what you want to be doing. And then you kind of followed it by saying “I don’t know how it’s going to happen yet.” And you know, but you know that it’s going to. And, that kind of struck a cord because of something you’ve said to me before; which is, if you go up in a high enough perspective everything seems trivial. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: And, it’s like, and that belief that you know that it’s going to happen; you don’t know how, and you don’t know what struggles you’re going to overcome, but you know that it’s going to. And you just have to figure a way, there is a solution, you just have to find out what it is, to every single problem. And that makes you unstoppable. And it’s awesome because of the message that you’re spreading and you do need money to spread it. But it’s the commitment that really makes that happen. Aaron: Yeah. It is true, I mean, like, the how is not relevant. It’s like we can only see, it’s like if we have a radar screen, like if you’re in an airplane or in the watch tower and you have your radar screen or whatever. You only see the things that are within that field of vision, you don’t see the whole world. You don’t see all the planes that are coming tomorrow. You only see the ones that are there right now. It doesn’t mean that those other things are not there. You just have to remain focused on them. On where you’re going and once they show up, you know, they’ll show up and you figure them out as they come. Brian: Yeah, that’s awesome. And, so, for an action step that people can take, I mean, you know, the question that I was going to ask is how people can start living a truly amazing life, but for that, I think I’m just gonna say, go sign up for Aaron’s email list and we’ll have links below. Aaron: Yeah.Brian: But the question I want to ask is, if people are in a place where they are in transition or looking to go through a transition, what is the one thought that they can carry with them that will help them overcome every hurdle? Aaron: In transition, or going through a transition. Let me think about that. It’s the positive thinking secret, so I’ll come back to it. I mean, this is the thing that carries me through every hurdle. That carried me through every hurdle that I went through in all my transitions, and was the main belief that was proven to me, like loud and clear through the experience with that pain, and that disease and that whole ordeal. Is that everything is conspiring for your benefit. So, just believe that and know that. The challenge comes, the wave comes in blasts you in the face, embrace that and be like, thank you for that pain. Who says thank you for their pain? You know it-- more people should. We all should be gratefully thanking our pain because that is there to teach us and help us and make us grow. Without that we could never achieve our desire. It’s coming and it’s all happening for our benefit so that’s the one action statement I would leave people with, is decide to believe that, and make the affirmation in your mind, like write that down. Everything is conspiring for my benefit and repeat it to yourself three times a day, with feeling and visualization. Like, stop, put a reminder in your phone. This is the whole premise of five minute mental mastery. The first module of the 12 colors thing is to get yourself in the habit of believing that one thing. So that’s the action I would leave with everybody. That’s been transformative to tons of people and for myself. And if you believe that, you will, you have such a different perspective when you believe that everything is conspiring for my benefit, it automatically is opposite of what we want to believe; which is ah, everything is out to get me. When things are happening bad and all of a sudden it starts to add up one thing after another. And you’re like, “What the heck, why is all this stuff.” Everything is out to get me is the natural thought. So flip it around, tell yourself the truth, forget the lie. Like, weed out that lie, because it’s not true. And you can turn the entire situation around so, that’s my action. Brian: I love that so much. And I love your energy and just everything that you say, it’s simple but it’s so powerful. And thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and your insights. And the Catalyst community knows that they can find links to your poster, your eBook, and everything that we talked about in the links below. And thank you so much again because I look forward to having you on soon. Aaron: Absolutely, thanks’ for having me Brian.

Hear More From Amazing MLM Leaders Like Aaron Kennard of Truly Amazing Life
Subscribe To Our Podcast on iTunes – Video / Audio Only