Latest / Your Thoughts Your Reality / What Survives Business Failure? | Legacy — The 10th Silent War | Ken Wimberly

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What Survives Business Failure? | Legacy — The 10th Silent War | Ken Wimberly · Your Thoughts Your Reality

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: What does success mean when the thing you worked hardest to build doesn't work?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: For veterans, entrepreneurs, leaders, and high performers, achiever achievement can become proof that we're moving in the right direction.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: The rank, the business, the income, the win, the next goal.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: But eventually life asks a harder question.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: If the achievement disappears, what did the experience build in you?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what are you still leaving in the people around you?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because legacy isn't only the thing that succeeds, sometimes it's what survives the failure.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Today's conversation is about legacy, the 10th silent war, and what it means to redefine success around family, service, purpose, and especially the impact that keeps going even when the original plan doesn't.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Your Thoughts, Your Reality with Michael Cole, the podcast that shines a compassionate light on the journey of veterans battling through life's challenges.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Michael is a dual elite certified neuroencoding specialist in coaching and keynote training presentations, dedicated to guiding military veterans as they navigate the intricate pathways of post-deployment life.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Join him as we delve into the profound realm of neuroencoding science, empowering these brave individuals to conquer universal battles, procrastination, self-doubt, fear, and more.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Together, let's uncover the strength within you to re-engage with families and society, forging a new path forward.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: After military service, he built businesses across real estate, restaurants, technology, and franchises.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Ken created Legacy Journal to help families preserve memories and life lessons for future generations.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And after the company failed, and roughly$800,000 in investor and professional personal capital was lost, he rebuilt restructure, help, family, and a renewed sense of purpose.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Today he's co-founder and chief visionary officer of Laundry Love, a community-focused laundromat brand built around service, families, and childhood literacy.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Ken, welcome to your thoughts, your reality, my friend.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me here, but look forward to this.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh tell us a little more about yourself, if you will, and really kind of the path that brought you here.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you said it first and foremost, it's it's family man is my life.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and so married to the girl my dreams.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was my second marriage.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: First marriage was yeah, just not what it was meant to be for me.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: And but it was the path.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look, we've with two wonderful, amazing children, and led me to my wife, Amber.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: That again, girl my dreams right now.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: I've got three kids, Grace Knox and Kai.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what drives me in everything I do is being a leader and servant for my family, and and the second to be a servant to others.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so I entrepreneurially, I've been a lot of different things today.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um I run a laundromat company, and that's it's such a great way to be of service in the world, to have both a thriving business and an outlet to do good in the world.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's the the business outside of business.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: I love outdoor, you know, outdoor adventures, hunting on Texas ranches, just uh spending time with the family, golfing, traveling, enjoying life, and uh traveling and seeing nature.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that sounds horrible.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love it.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's nothing like being out in nature, right?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: It just to reset yourself both emotionally and physically, it's fantastic.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to tell you, uh, you know, we didn't talk about this before we got on the air, but your your journey was similar to mine.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I found my love of my life on my second try, and I had two kids uh previously.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's interesting we have that that in common as well.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love it, man.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Ken, you enlisted in the Navy during the Gulf War, and and you said, what was it, that service helped sharpen your focus when you returned to school.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: What did the Navy teach you about success that still matters?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And what did you later have to unlearn about achievement?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a lot there.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, for for one, Navy taught me about success and and helped me to okay.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I I'll back up a little bit first.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: I I went to military school in high school.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I I went to Kepper Military School at 12 years old.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'd watched the movie Taps and said, that's what I want to do.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up in an unstructured environment, single parent household, and just didn't have a lot of structure.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I saw that.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: I went to military school was what I needed.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it was one of those rare kids that actually asked to go to military school instead of getting threatened to go by their parents.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so that put structure in my life.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: But then I get out of military school, I go to college, and again, it's unstructured.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: I can do whatever I want, have a good time.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so college for me in those first few years was not as focused as certainly my military school time was.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: I graduated valedictorian of my military school when I was 16 years old because of a lot of the structure that was in place.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: So then I go to college.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like the first school I went to at Texas AM, I made a 1.2, failed out, went to junior college, kind of got my grades back up, ended up at TCU, and was, you know, a kind of a BC student when I was there.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I was doing fine, just going.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Then we, you know, we go to war with Iraq in Gulf War I.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: I went and enlisted in the Navy the next day and shipped off that summer.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: And when I was in the Navy, it once again kind of put in place structure, organization, discipline in my life.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it got me back to where I needed to be.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I got out of the Navy and went back to college, I mean I was 4.0 after that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: I was dialed in.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't the the parties and the fun I was after, I was after the education.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I finished up 4.0 and and it really helped me to to focus.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you, when I was in the Navy, one of the things that I got frustrated with was the just hierarchical system of kind of rank and file, if you will.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: And what I what I saw there is there were, I had three years of college when I enlisted in the Navy.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: There were people that had, you know, one year more of college that were officers and in in the Navy that, I mean, I felt so much more competent than some of those people that were leading me.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Man, there is no way that I can go leapfrog them.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas in civilian life, if I went out and thrived in a company, I could rise to the top of the ranks.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it and it was not on a timeline or from passing certain tests and and time and service.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was from my efforts and my achievement.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so for that, it was really, really important for me to I wanted to go into business where I could be rewarded for you know what I brought to the table instead of kind of time my task.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I love that.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, it's it's funny when we look back on our lives, you know.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I do 10-year increments generally, but you could do two for that matter, and the things that brought you to where you are, you know, I think it's it's super important for people to reflect on that.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I love how you told that story.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, with you built Legacy Journal, and I want to talk about also how you pivoted that and what you're doing now as well.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: So you built it because you wanted parents to preserve, you know, memories and lessons and you know, moments for their kids, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Before we before we talk about the business failure, which again, for me, I don't believe business is a failure or anything in life is a failure if you learn something from it, so you so you succeed in the next journey.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: But what did becoming a father change about the way you thought about the word clicks?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start there.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I became a father, first of all, I think I was 32 when I had my daughter, and or when I when my wife had my daughter.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's fair.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was 32, and even that, which is a little bit later in life to start having kids, I didn't feel prepared.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: I felt, I mean, I was lost.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I am not ready for this.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: And but man, when she came and it held her in my arms, it it it was everything.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: So then I really, really wanted to most importantly started living into the better version of myself so that I could be that for her.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then my son came 17 months later and same thing.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then I've got two kids, and I started a process, and it was decades long, it still goes on today of just slowly improving the man in the mirror so that I could show up for who they needed me to be.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: And to, you know, because I want to think about legacy, it's it's how am I serving others?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: How am I serving?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it starts for me with my children, my wife.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: How am I serving them?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, in order to do that, you got to first take care of the person inside.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: You you cannot be a leader to others unless you're properly leading yourself.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it starts with a little leadership of yourself, and that's been it's constantly a journey for me.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: So becoming a parent meant a lot.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we talk about the legacy journal project that started honestly as just a process I was doing for my children.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: I had been journaling for my children.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: Let's see, Grace was a little over a year when I wrote my first journal entry to Grace.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: Knox was still in the womb when I wrote my first one to him.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just a process that I wanted to do to capture moments, memories, lessons.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when when you've got kids, life is busy, it feels crowded, and it moves fast.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so I I recognized really through the advice of a friend early on in my parenting journey.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Man, yeah, things are gonna move fast.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: You need to slow down and appreciate them and remember them.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, how am I gonna do that?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, you know what, I can I can journal, I can write down a little thing.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: And this was yeah, this was what 2003 time frame when I started this.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: So this is pre-iPhone, pre a lot of you know, a lot of electronic things.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I just started in a simple word document, is what I did.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I started, I said, once a month was gonna be my plan.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: I would just slow down once a month and write a story of what was happening.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: And some of those stories were just me gushing about how much I love my kids and how cute they were and the things that they're doing.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of first, obviously, in those first few years: crawl, walk, play, first birthdays, different things.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would document these, these first.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then as the years went on, it was, you know, documenting really sometimes it was struggles.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about, you know, not everything is easy in life.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would write often about the struggles I was going through, the decisions I was having to make that I didn't know the answer to.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And like I'm talking about, this is what I'm hoping the outcome is, but I don't know what the outcome is going to be.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm making the the best decision I can with the facts at hand and you know, praying for the right outcome to come out.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would write about those things.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then eventually I figured out that you could put like photos in a Word doc.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started putting photos along with it.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then I started telling many, many other parents about the process I was doing.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, hey, I'm doing this.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: You might think about it for your own kids.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: And more and more parents started doing it, and they'd send me pictures of their own journals that they're keeping for their kids.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: And as I shared this more and more, people started telling me, Ken, you should create something.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: You really, you're onto something.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: You should create something there.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what led to the creation of Legacy Journal.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then I, you know, I spent four years pouring into that, what became a company, the product, launching the company, building it.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was quite expensive to build back then.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: Today, you could vibe code that for free, basically.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: You've got you've got tools today that you could literally, you know, for a$20 a month, you know, AI plan, you could go vibe code that kind of thing today.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: But back then, it was quite expensive to build that.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: And every time you had to change, you had to go through and do things.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so it what it was.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll tell you, this was 2018 when I started that process.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: And in 2018, I was primarily in the real estate business.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was doing commercial real estate.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: I was a franchise owner of a Kell Williams franchise at the time.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I was doing a lot of commercial real estate, mostly in the brokerage, but some investment as well.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: And we, with a couple partners of mine and I, we bought a shopping center in 2018.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so one of the things we did with that shopping center to backfill it was I was looking for tenants and ended up finding a laundromat group that was that said, hey, this would make a perfect shopping center for a laundromat.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, I thought they were a tenant, they weren't, they were uh manufacturers were up, is what they were.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so that encounter ended up having us get into the laundromat business.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: So 2018, we started a we launched laundry love into as a tenant into our shopping center.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, I was launching Legacy Journal.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: And to be honest, Mike, what I thought was gonna happen is that that Legacy Journal would take off so fast and be so successful that we would use uh frankly a lot of the revenue from Legacy Journal into the funding of Laundry Love as Laundry Love would grow.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of what I thought would happen.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, life doesn't always work out the way we think it would.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: And we you know ended up with over 10,000 users using Legacy Journal, but the vast majority of them were free users, and even a smaller cohort of them were active regular user.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's in an even smaller cohort were at the paying subscribers, and so we we did everything we could to scale that over the course of four years.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: It was a total investment of just right around 800,000.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: 300,000 of that was you know, personal funds, and another half million was investor money.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, early 2022, we finally saw the writing on the wall, and we just weren't getting the traction that we thought we were gonna get.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: As an entrepreneur, you've got to believe.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: You have to believe in what you're doing, like just passionately, you you got in, and I did.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: I believed it until the last moment, and I finally I just thought, look, this is I can't go raise more money for something that is not working the way we thought it was gonna work, and it just didn't have the traction.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so I made the decision to shut that down.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was honestly one of the hardest days of my life that I had to call every single investor that invested with me and let them know that it wasn't like a real estate deal that went bad, and we, you know, we didn't you know make the returns we thought we were gonna make.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna get all your money back or some of your money back.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: This was it went to zero.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so that call is I had to call each investor, let them know that you know, man, you had made this bet and it went to zero.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm so sorry, and I did everything I could to make it happen.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I was keeping them updated.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: They had monthly, you know, alerts that went out, keeping them updated, but you know, it was very interesting to me that each one of those investors were so kind and gracious, and they each told me they said, Ken, we 100% believed in this product, believed in you and what you were doing.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: And we knew it's a tech startup, right?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: A tech startup is has a high degree of risk.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Most of them fail.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, We knew what we were getting into.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: I wish it would have worked out, and I certainly wish we, you know, we would have had a 10x return on this, but it's okay.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: And we'll be here for you next time.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was Grace is a beautiful thing, that's for sure.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: When you know, and especially when people know your heart and you know that you weren't, you know, some shady guy, you know, trying to pull crap and you're taking vacations on yachts you rented, you know, why everybody's losing money.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's that that's you know a beautiful end to this to that part of the story, you know.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I yeah, well, I'll tell you that the as gracious, gracious and graceful as they were, it still hit me, it hit me hard.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: It it it put me in a really rough point personally in my life for you know between six and twelve months.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, it was I'd call it touch and go for me.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: It put me in one of the darkest spots of my life, and it took a lot to to to dig out of that, to to to come out of that and feel back to normal again.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Susan and I went through a similar thing, and honestly, you know, that's what's launched the podcast and and all of the other things I'm doing now, because at 50, 51 years old, I asked myself, what do I want to do when I grow up?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so so I absolutely understand how hard that is to shut down the dream, if you will, even when it's an amazing idea, and and to to talk to the people that believed in it, believed in you even more so.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I absolutely feel that, man.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the beautiful thing is that neither of us stopped.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the difference between successful people in life and in business, all of those things, and people that become a victim in their own minds and go the opposite way.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So congratulations to you, my friend.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I love that.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like that's what I tell everyone is is there's something to be learned from every situation.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and certainly, yeah, the failures teach us more than the successes because we don't study the I don't think we don't go back and post-mortem the successes.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: We we do go back to post-mortem the failures, and we really look through those, and we're like, man, what looking back, what do I see now that I could have possibly seen then?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: What changes could I make in the future based on what I've learned here that would make me more successful in the future?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, in everything I do, there's always seasons.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care where you are.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's easy to look at the highlight reel.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: You can go look at social media, and everyone looks like they're doing so great because of what they're they're posting for the most part.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: But every one of us has seasons of challenge going through.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: And look, sometimes those challenges are in business.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, I I'm thankful if the challenges are in business.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: I can overcome any of the business challenges.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes they're in in your relationships, in your key relationships with your children, with your spouse, sometimes they're your health relationships.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I'll take the business challenges all day long over some of the others.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: And but you know what, a a I I I meditate each morning and I use Insight Timer for a app to meditate.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and something came up yesterday in my in fact, I I screenshotted the picture that came up because it's so important.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: This is uh is a quote.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: They have a quote each morning that comes up when I when I open the app.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: So the season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success by Paramahansa Yogananda.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's such a great thing for us to remember.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: That is fantastic, yes.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so anyway, that all always something to be learned from the moments of failure.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: And some look, I'm not telling you every time I have it, okay, great, now it's time, but what are my lessons learned?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: It takes some time to get through it.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like in certainly you go through you know things like I went through it in in some ways for me, it was like the like the death of a child.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh not quite as impactful as that, but it was I had poured my identity into that business, I poured everything into it, and it it was it was rough.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: But after you know, that that season to get through the grieving, if you will, of that, then there's a lot to look back for and and learn through.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: And like even today, we got through things right now that like, man, this didn't work, that didn't work, we made this mistake, we stepped on this landmine.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: What can we learn from those things?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And we get stronger each time we implement our new learnings, we get stronger, we get better, we get more fortified for the future.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I I again we can have a whole podcast just on this subject right now.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely, I absolutely agree.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when we when we look back, and you're right, I want I want to actually say this first.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: There is a grieving process when it's something that matters in your whole heart like that.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: There absolutely is.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's again when that reflection, when you are able to move past the grieving process of when you can see the light again and learn, and oh man, I did this.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I you know I should have did this instead, and that's gonna do my new business, or whatever the case may be.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I absolutely love that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: I want to digress just for a second.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: When you were talking about your when you started the legacy journal, and you're just doing it for you, you know.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious to to know two things.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: How old are your kids, if you don't mind?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not okay.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: 23, 22, and 10.
• 21:37
  unknown: Okay.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So have you shared that with them?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, I'm so glad you asked this.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um so okay, so what I did so the the reason for me doing this when I started it was that when when my whole thing was when they graduated high school, it's gonna be my gift to them.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's 18 years of your life through my eyes.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so you can You can go on to YouTube.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: You can look for Ken Wembley Legacy Journal or Ken Wembley The Gift.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you can go watch when I gifted it to my daughter.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it is such an amazing thing.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, yes, I've gifted it to my daughter.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: I've gifted it to my son, my older son.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: I still I still write in theirs periodically.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like my 10-year-old, I'm still on that monthly routine, writing once a month with my 10-year-old.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: With my older kids, now I've more shifted to if there's like wisdom or advice I continuously want to pass on to my my kids.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm going to be in that father role.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: The role shifts when they get older.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's you know, it's much more of a friend role, advisor kind of role.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: And but there's still wisdom I always want to that I'll like look, I learn every day, every single day.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: I will continue to learn until the day I die.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: And certain things I'll get many times from reading books, and I want to share those concepts with my kids.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I'll I'll journal to them still because here's the thing I know even though they have access it access to their journals today, they do not look at them frequently.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it's reality, they're not gonna look at them frequently.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: But when I am gone, I promise you, they're gonna read every word in those things and it's gonna matter greatly when I'm gone.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it always for me, it was it was two things.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: One, it was a stopgap that if you know, if if God called my number early, you know, was gone you know, before they reached maturity, or or like it could happen tomorrow in Kai's pen.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: But he's gonna have hundreds of stories I've written to Kai, sharing my love for him, my thoughts, my hopes for him, just documenting that you know, he's playing baseball right now, and I'm documenting his his baseball, his coaches, how they pour into him.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: But he'll read those.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I've said I I tell people all the time, I'll tell all your listeners, like if you're listening to this, do this today.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: Start this process today because it let's say you're like, oh, my kid's 15.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: I yeah, I waited too long.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: No, if if you left, let's say you're you pass, you got two tables.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, you got a table with 10 million dollars in cash, and you got a table with 10 stories written from your dad about you.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Which one are you gonna take?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: The stories every day.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna take the stories every time, every time.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so whether it's 10 stories, but you know, if you get on a uh just a monthly process here, I mean that could be 100, 200, 500 stories by the by the time you're gone.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: And but don't worry about how many, just would just focus on the process.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look, what does Nick Samen say?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Focus on the process.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: So just get on the process here and just once a month write a story, allocate 30 minutes, and just go write.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: What's been happening?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: What do you want to pass on?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: What's been cool that they're doing or that you guys did together?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Take a few pictures and and put that in there and write about what it meant to you.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: You took them on a camping trip.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what did y'all talk about?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what came up that you didn't think was gonna come up?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what's one of those cool things and write about it?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: So absolutely.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: What what do you enjoy?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm gonna do this quickly because I want to talk about laundry love and what you're doing.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, so I also think the beautiful thing about it is for them to read it and them to understand where you were and why you made the decisions at the time, both good and bad, right?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And what they're what you're proud of and why.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it's just such a beautiful thing.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: I would have I would have invested too, my friend.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just you you also talked about, you know, don't wait, do it now.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I want to tell and people listening now, social media and and social and podcast forums later, take the action now because guess what happens when you put it off till Monday?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: You end up not doing it, and you forget about it, and you think about it for a second, you move on, and you never end up doing it.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd love that you said that, Ken.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Look, life shows up and we get busy, and there's a never a pause in data and information hitting us, right?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: So if you get the idea to do something, that a God speaking to you.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: Understand that.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if you get the idea, go take action today.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: I today I use a product called day one, D A Y O Winnie.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Day one, and it's you can do a free version of it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: The paid version is only$30 a year, and it's with the paid version, you can say photos, videos, audio files, all that kind of stuff.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: And go invest, go do that kind of thing, do it today.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you for bringing that up because I did want to ask, but I know you said you pivoted, so pivots are amazing, my friends.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: So let's let's talk about laundry love because it's not just a laundromat, right?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's so much more to it, so much more you're doing with it.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: When you talk about that, you know, we've got about five minutes to go.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I just want to people to understand all it's about, if you will.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, look, if if you're if you're from Texas or the South, you'll understand this when I say it, like, well, at Laundrie Love, we want to be the buckies of laundromats.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: And when you go into a laundry, we have it happen all the time right now.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: People walk in and they look around, they look up, down, around, like, this is a laundromat.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, ma'am, it is.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: We want, and we what we have created is a space where people can feel valued.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: They go in, much like Bucky's, you go in and someone says, Welcome to Laundry Lob, right?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: The simplest thing, like a greeting.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: We we teach our team members to get to know their names.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of these people come in every single week.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, get to know their names, get to know a little bit about the story because most people, what do we want?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: We just want to be seen.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like we just want to understand that someone cares.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to know everything about me, but just know.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I ask a little bit about you know our people.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so, but but we we provide very beautiful stores, like where you come in, like laundry is not a chore that people look for most people.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: There's these random, weird people that they love it.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: But but most of us, like my wife's one of those, she kind of loves laundry, but but most of us, like you don't love to do laundry, and it's something you're gonna spend an hour or two on.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, luckily the laundromat, you can knock it out in an hour or two.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: At home, you might spend six hours on a weekend doing laundry.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: But if you got to do that, we want you to come to a place where it feels really awesome to be there.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've got rocking chairs in our laundromat.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: So if I like a rocker barrel, we've got rocker barrel, rocking chairs in our laundromat.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: We have a children's play and literacy area in every it's not an afterthought, it's not like a piece of carpet on the ground.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: No, this is like a full-on room dedicated to children.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we've got games for them to play, books for them to read, a TV up with kids programming on it.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a great place so the parents can come in.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: They feel like it's a safe place for them, for their children.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: They're it's warm and inviting.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: It it's just a neat place for them to go.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's we're it not only that, we do something for the communities where we operate.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: So right now on West Axis and Abilene, St.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: Angelo, about to be Fort Worth, about to be a bunch of other communities as we continue to grow.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: But we want to do something for the community.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll we're coming up on Thanksgiving.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: So soon we'll be doing Thanksgiving giveaways.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we will give away Thanksgiving meals for dozens of families per location that we're at.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: At Christmas, we do gift giveaways around Christmas time.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: We do breast cancer awareness, you know, at times.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: We'll do it in many of our stores right now.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: We have a blessing closet in the store.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: So basically, we have a food pantry that we set up inside of our laundromats where the community comes and fills the pantry because they know the people coming into our locations, they're many of them are food sensitive.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're they're there, it is a tough deal.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: They don't have money to feed their children all the time.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so we set up a food pantry, they can come take whatever they take whatever they want.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we're doing something for the community every single week, month in our stores, just as a way to get back.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: We call it doing good by doing good, because the more good we do in the community, the more people love our location, the more they come in, frankly, and and and are in our patrons.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's a it I call it the tro the laundromat, the modern laundromat today, done like we're doing, is a Trojan horse to doing good in the community.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so it it's been a it's a blessing as I'm 55 now, getting older.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the second half of my life is really important on service and giving back.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: And this business allows us to do that every single day.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I absolutely love it, man.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's you know, when I when I was younger, I went to laundromats, right?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it sucked.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you go there and you're doing your laundry, and sometimes you'll talk to somebody, but generally you're just kind of by yourself and hopefully reading a book because the internet wasn't alive then, you know.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I love that what you're doing.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love it.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to talk to you about it off air, about something potentially new for veterans.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I would love to, yeah.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let me tell you.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, let's talk about that off air because we are uh uh my partner was was an Army Ranger.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: He's he's a West Point grad Army Ranger.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was in the Navy.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: We want to support veterans in every way we can, including in our, you know, those that want to franchise with us and get into business with us.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: We want to support veterans there.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: So we have a discount on our franchise fee.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: We we've got a partnership program where we attempt to marry a great operator with capital that can come in and help kind of form an alliance, they can form a franchise together.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, let's talk offline about that.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Love fantastic, man.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love it.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: So again, for everyone listening who wants to learn you know more about laundry love or you know, business work that you're doing, any trainings, or simply follow really what you're building around family, entrepreneurship, and especially community.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, what's the best way for them to connect with you?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: You'll probably like all my social profiles are on my personal website.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: So Kenwemberly.com, uh K-E-N-W-I-M-B-E-R-L-Y dot com.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: And all my social profiles are on there.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and I do a little bit on Facebook as well.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then Laundry Love, so Laundry L U V.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: So laundryluv.com and laundrelovefranchise.com will give you kind of all the the ins and outs.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you can go look at pictures, it it shows you the picture of our community events and our children's faces and everything in there.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's pretty cool.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely fantastic.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I I I absolutely love what you're doing.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm gonna be honest, when I first found out my guest wanted to talk about laundromats, I was like, huh.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: But something inside said, hey, talk to them, see what it's about.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when we did the you know, the pre-interview, I was all in, man.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: So absolutely love it.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: As we know, time is the most precious resource we have as human beings, we do not get it back.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, Ken, I want to thank you for spending this moment in time to help our mission and really make a difference.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a blessing for me to be here.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, thank you.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if something in today's conversation resonated with you, don't just move on to the next thing.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sit with it for a minute.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you got goosebumps, if you said, huh, that's interesting, sit with it for a minute and explore it because there's a reason why it impacted you.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if you know someone who needs to hear this, please share this episode with them.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's super important for the mission to share these things and of course follow and so forth with us.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can also join us at your thoughts, your reality.com where we continue these conversations around identity, transition, resilience, and especially growth.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, your thoughts shape your reality.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're out of here.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us on another insightful journey of Your Thoughts, your reality podcast with your host, Michael Cole.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: We hope the conversation sparked some thoughts that resonate with you.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: To dive deeper into empowering your thoughts and enhancing your reality, visit Empower Performance Strategies.com.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, your thoughts shape your reality, so make them count.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay inspired and keep creating the reality you desire.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Catch you on the next episode.