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Lessons Learned, Lessons Shared In Pursuing The American Dream · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  And good morning, and welcome to the second hour of the morning show with
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  Presto Scott. I happen to be preston Go Figure Show five thousand and forty
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  three. That's another Go Figure for you. Don't understand it, but I'm
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  grateful and blessed and humbled to be here with you each and every morning.
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  Grant Allen over there running the radio program, and I am joined this half
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  hour in studio by Francisco Gonzalez, an old friend of mine, not an
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  old man, but an old friend. And we've known each other quite a
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  while, but we haven't talked in quite a while. How are you good,
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  Presting, Good to be with you, and nice to be back in
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  tellhassee. Give everybody just a quick snapshot of how the intersection worked back in
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  the day. How the intersection between you and I. Yeah, well,
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  of course I worked at the James Madison Institute for nine years. Here you
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  go, and then you and I really, I think intersected more when this
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  little thing called the tea party started. Yeah, and I actually organized the
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  very first tea party here in Tallahassee, and actually on April fifteen, two
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  thousand and nine, we had over two thousand people at the state Capitol.
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  I said, I got to have one man be my keynote speaker, and
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  that was Preston Scott. And then you took it over the next year.
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  Yeah, yeah, sure we did. Oh Man, all right, Fearless
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  Journeys. You are the founder and CEO. Tell us about that before we
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  get to this book. Well, Preston, you know, over the last
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  eight years or so, I tried to get into your space, not on
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  the radio, but in podcasting. Yeah. So, I actually, as
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  I was working at JMI, I would come across a lot of great entrepreneurs
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  and business people all over the state, all over the country, and I
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  kept walking away from a lot of those stories really fascinating and saying I wish
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  more people could learn that person story. And one day, as I was
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  thinking that, I was turning on a pod and I thought maybe I could
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  have a podcast. So I started one called Agents of Innovation, and I've
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  had now over one hundred and thirty three episodes of the podcast as of this
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  date, so it's spanned over eight years. And you know, really about
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  two years ago actually during COVID when we had this worldwide pause, I was
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  working for National Review Institute at the time, and you know, I wasn't
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  doing as much traveling as I've no traveling as nobody was doing, so kind
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  of had some time to think about some of these things I was doing on
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  the side, such as writing and podcasting and traveling, and I thought I'd
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  put together a community, which is called Fearless Journeys now where we really do
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  something beyond the podcast. We have group coaching sessions with some of the great
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  innovators that I've had on the podcast. Okay, so over fifty of my
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  guests have now joined the community as featured innovators, and every month we do
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  monthly group coaching sessions. We got a book club. We're diving deep into
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  a lot of self growth stuff. But also the fun part, maybe the
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  most fun part, is we do some great group trips. So I've led
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  some group trips down to go Outamala, Columbia, Uruguay, Argentina, even
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  Nashville, and on our trips we go and we do all the fun stuff,
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  but we also meet with a lot of local entrepreneurs, so you can
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  get inspired by people. People you're traveling with and people you're meeting with that
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  live in those local places. Is the idea of those trips to find nuggets
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  in these foreign countries or is it to bring nuggets to them or both,
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  you know a little bit of both. For me, I just always love
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  traveling, and I think travel helps. Once you go somewhere, it gives
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  you a different perspective. You know. I'd done three group trips to Guatemala.
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  I lived in Guatemala by the way for a year and was teaching at
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  a free market university there. But in Cisco Metiken University, it's it's really
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  a fabulous place. But I brought some of my travelers that I'm telling you
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  on every single one of the trips. By day two or three, you
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  always hear somebody on the trip say, Wow, people really need to get
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  out and see the see the world, because this is a what I'm experiencing
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  in Guatemala right now is totally different than what I see on the news right
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  And so you know, when you think of Guatemali, you're probably thinking dangerous,
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  You're thinking migrants, people are leaving. It must be world country,
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  right, But you go there, it's a beautiful place, the most hospitable
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  people in the world, and we just introduce you to these incredible entrepreneurs and
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  so so then you get inspired and then you also you get to come back
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  and think about what can I be doing with my life, maybe something a
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  little bit different that I found a connection with someone here on this trip.
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  Eleven minutes past the hour here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott, Francisco
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  Gonzalez my guest here in studio. Before we get to the book, Francisco,
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  I asked off air the Fearless Journeys, who's that specifically targeting? Who
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  does it help? You know? Really? When I started it was it
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  was really geared towards thinking about somebody who wanted either is an entrepreneur or wants
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  to be an entrepreneur. And when we think of that, we think of
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  somebody who wants to start a business. Right, Well, starting a business
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  is really difficult. Believe me, I've now done it, and so getting
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  into it more and I thought, you know what most people are This is
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  going to be very challenging for most people to start a business, especially where
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  they're at in their life, maybe at this particular moment in their life.
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  But you know what everybody can do. Everybody can build an entrepreneur's mindset,
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  and so and that needs to come before you ever start a business, before
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  you ever become an actual entrepreneur. So, whether you decide to start a
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  business one day or not, building an entrepreneur's mindset can help you in any
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  career path you choose, whether in it now or in the future. You
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  just go to the website Fearless journeys dot org. Thank you just looked it
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  up Fearless journeys dot org and you can learn more there. Did this book,
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  The American Dream Is a Terrible Thing to Waste? Volume one? Did
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  it come out of all of this or what was the impetus to write the
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  book? The impetus really was as I was getting you know, I was
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  about seventy eighty episodes into my podcast and I actually thought to myself, Gosh,
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  I'm going to head one hundred episodes at some point here, maybe I
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  should do something interesting and what doing the episodes where that wasn't interesting enough?
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  Well, you know, and I actually started writing blog posts about every episode
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  from episode one, not ever thinking I was going to write a book,
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  but I said, let me one of the things. As well as after
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  you have fifty sixty seventy episodes, you get a lot of questions, what
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  are you learning, what's the common themes, what's the number one thing?
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  So I thought maybe I could actually, you know, study all those episodes,
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  study, go back and think about what are the common threads, and
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  so at the beginning of the book, I put together ten common characteristics of
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  the entrepreneur from these one hundred plus episodes. Volume one features forty five of
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  the stories of the people that are on the podcast, and I could not
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  fit one hundred stories in one book, So there will be at least another
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  maybe three volumes, I'd say, coming from just uncovering those first hundred people
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  I've had on the podcast. Who is this target the book? Yeah,
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  you know, really anybody? But I think so it makes a great Christmas
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  it really does. But I think what I found from people who have read
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  it already is it's just it gives people hope. So, whether you're a
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  young person and you're anxious about whether the American dream is still possible, or
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  whether you're somebody nearing retirement and you're not sure where the country's direction is heading
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  for the next generation, I think reading these stories will show you these are
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  everyday Americans. Most of the people in this book you probably haven't heard of.
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  Now, there's about five in Tallahassee here. Maybe some people have heard
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  of. Jamie Grant, who used to lead just until recently, the Florida
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  Digital Services He was the state's chief Information Officer. I had him on by
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  the way four years before he was in that position. Doctor Stam Staley,
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  who teaches social entrepreneurship over at FSU and is a writer and author himself.
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  Matt Farrarr and Joe Clements, who lead the Digital Technology group here in Florida
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  or here in Tallahassee. I should say, they're all going to be by
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  the way tonight at the book signing I'm doing. We'll talk about that in
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  a minute. But a lot of great other people have had on the podcast
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  that are local here, like Aaron Choy, who leads the you know,
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  the States what is it, the Florida Alliance to End Human Trafficking. So
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  a lot of great people here in tallahasse here in this book, a lot
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  of people that have come across in my life. We've got a former Orlando
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  City soccer player who now plays for the Chicago Fire, Chris Mueller. He
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  started a book club during the middle of COVID. I thought that was interesting.
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  So we've got a lot of great stories. So there are some people
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  you might know in this book, but there's a lot of people you probably
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  haven't heard of, but you're going to relate to. I think that those
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  are the most compelling stories because so many people that we know, we have
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  a preordained idea on what they're all about, whatever their formula might be or
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  their thoughts might be. It's the other stories I think they're gripping. Twenty
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  one minutes past the our Francisco Gonzalez with me, and he's the CEO founder
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  of Fearless Journeys again Fearless Journeys dot org. Easy to find that the book
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  is the American Dream is a terrible thing to waste. It's interesting you and
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  I were talking about Guatemala and the hunger for entrepreneurship and the desire to learn
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  about these principles. Are we wasting them here? You know? I think
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  that one of the reasons I titled it that was that there's a lot of
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  anxiety right now about the American Dream. I mean, obviously we have difficult
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  economic situations right now, inflation, potential recession, there's AI on the move,
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  there's a lot of displacement of jobs, there's a lot of anxiety.
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  But one of the things I really positioned in this book is if you it
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  doesn't matter the economic challenges, it doesn't matter the political challenges. Those things
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  have an impact, don't get me wrong. But if you can build an
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  entrepreneur's mindset, you can succeed. And that's what these people that I've interviewed
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  and all these different entrepreneurs I've interacted with have done. They just overcome every
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  obstacle put in their way. I was going to ask you, is there
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  like a single common thread that all of these guests that you've talked about and
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  write about have you know? I say one thing when somebody asked me that
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  it is their mindset. Wait, I wasn't the first person ever asking that
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  question. It is their mindset, Preston. Like when you talk to people,
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  it's like they don't understand the idea of failure. They all have failed
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  at things. Every single entrepreneur has failed many times, but they don't get
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  down about it necessarily, maybe for a moment, but they just learn through
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  their failure and they reapply it to the next thing they're going to do well.
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  It's like the old adage being a failure is not something that we are,
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  it's that we fail. And there's a big difference. We have a
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  generation maybe two that are kind of growing up with the idea that their failures
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  and they don't understand that that's part of the process. But we've kind of
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  insulated a few generations from the from the consequences. We don't let them fail,
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  right. And so when you look through this and you find these common
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  threads, are there others that stand out? Oh? Yeah, Well,
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  the number one thing is I think every entrepreneur is a problem solver. I
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  mean, think about every successful business. They're solving some problem you have.
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  Maybe your lawn is to you know, needs needs to be cut. Someone
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  solving that problem. Right, Maybe you're hungry. McDonald's is solving that problem.
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  They got great real estate by the way, right, So it's every
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  think about as you're driving to work today. I don't care if you're if
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  you own your own business or whatever you're doing, how can you how can
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  you be a problem solver for someone today? How can you be a solution?
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  So is it as simple as saying that the entrepreneur's mindset can be fostered
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  by just looking at your life as it is right now, not beyond some
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  distant horizon, and saying, okay, help me solve issues right here now.
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  Yes, absolutely, you know, building a mindset of being a curious
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  person, right, I mean, entrepreneurs are people who are always asking questions,
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  they're discovering things. They have that like childlike curiosity. And so if
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  you can think about how how can you be a little bit more curious.
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  And by the way, maybe in volume two this might come out as a
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  new characteristic, but what is really the foundation of curiosity. That's humility,
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  understanding that we don't know everything and that there's more to learn. And that's
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  also leads me to another characteristic in their entrepreneur. Almost every entrepreneur I've met
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  lifelong learners. They whether they've gone to college or not, whether they dropped
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  out early, they understand that education is not limited to the classroom. And
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  so whether you have a college degree or not, you've got to always be
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  reading. You've always got to be studying and got to be looking at the
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  next trend. You've got to be going to conferences, you've got to be
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  networking. You know, you've just really got to be continuing to build your
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  mind in different ways. Said something there that that sparked a question, and
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  how many of these entrepreneurs have a college degree, and how many of them
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  have a degree in whatever it is that they're entrepreneurially successful at. What's interesting
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  is this was not in any purposeful way. It just sometimes happened. I
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  couldn't believe how many people I interviewed either never went to college or didn't finish,
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  and they never saw that as a failure. They just they were in
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  the process of doing something. Another attribute entrepreneurs are doers. They are people
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  of action, and they just maybe became successful as something like my friend Nathan
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  Bond, who is the head of rifle paper company. He started him and
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  his wife started a rifle paper company, a lifestyle stationary company based in Winter
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  Park, Florida. He'll be in volume two, by the way. And
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  so you know, they just they stopped. They just stopped in the middle
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  of college because they saw this opportunity and what was what was the purpose of
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  going back and going in debt? The book is the American Dream is a
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  terrible thing to waste, Volume one, five o'clock today at the Midtown Reader.
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  Huh, I hope to see you all there buying the book and getting
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  it signed. Yeah, shake my hand. Love it. Good to see
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  you, see you too, Good to see you too. Press. It's
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  such a pleasure. I'm so glad you're not wasting your American dream and you
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  are helping so many others believe in it as well. So thanks so much.
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  Look at me another one who can measure the time on a college campus
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  on his wristwatch, go figure. Thanks for coming by. Francisco Gonzalez with
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  me this morning on the Morning Show with Preston Scott.