Latest / The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast / From $4B to Five Bridges: Faith, Loss, and Building Leaders Who Last | Josh Kosnick

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From $4B to Five Bridges: Faith, Loss, and Building Leaders Who Last | Josh Kosnick · The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast

• 0:00
  Put your oxygen mask on first before assisting others.
• 0:04
  Why? Because if you're passed out or dead, you can't help anyone else.
• 0:08
  If you're not focused on your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health,
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  you can't be the best for others.
• 0:16
  You always kind of have that gut feel of either something's not just right,
• 0:22
  or you're not willing to open yourself up entirely to an individual. We'll call that a yellow flag.
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  Your work should just be a piece of your identity, not your entire identity.
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  So that when you go through these losses, you'd be like, all right, I was the managing partner of this large financial firm.
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  But that was just a piece of who I was.
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  Your legacy is built every single moment of every day, not 30 years from today.
• 0:49
  It's in every interaction that you're having with a human being — it's happening right here, right now.
• 0:57
  [RICK] Welcome to another episode of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast.
• 1:06
  My name is Rick Meekins. I am your host today. And in our studio, we have Josh Kosnick.
• 1:11
  [JOSH] Doing fantastic, even better now speaking with you. So we're gonna have a great conversation today.
• 1:17
  [RICK] Man, you just made my day. And folks, welcome to the show. If you haven't done it already, please like, subscribe,
• 1:30
  hit the bell so you can get updates every time we drop a new episode. Josh, tell us who you are, what you do, and why you do what you do.
• 1:37
  [JOSH] Well, I've been an entrepreneur since I was 24. I sold my last big business in 2021.
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  I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, and it's one of the hardest things you can ever take on.
• 2:00
  What I do now is help entrepreneurs have it a little bit simpler than I've had.
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  Most entrepreneurs have two major issues — human development, otherwise known as leadership,
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  and systems and processes to help them scale and grow.
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  I want them to live their best life inside and outside of their business. A lot of times they have a very successful business, but something's missing.
• 2:35
  [RICK] How do you define entrepreneurship?
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  [JOSH] I always put out there — most people will never understand what it's like to be an entrepreneur.
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  An entrepreneur typically has employees, rent, and other expenses — responsibilities that come with it.
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  You'll never understand what it's like to be an entrepreneur unless you've lain awake at night wondering how you're going to make payroll,
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  or had to sacrifice paying some of your own bills to make sure your people were paid.
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  That's when you know you're a true entrepreneur.
• 3:35
  [RICK] You've had an interesting history as an entrepreneur. One of the things I like to do with the show is inspire people to keep going.
• 3:48
  You've had difficult times and you came back. Can you talk a little bit about that?
• 3:55
  [JOSH] I started in the financial planning world and quickly hired my first associate at 25 years old.
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  My first exit was actually a franchise outside the financial world — an Anytime Fitness.
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  Second business I exited was my personal financial planning practice, because I was asked to take over and buy out my father in a large firm.
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  I did that at age 35. My plan from 35 to 55 was to run that business and grow it as big as possible.
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  But you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. At 41, the rug was ripped out from underneath me.
• 4:50
  In 2020, we were up 30%. Things were going amazingly well.
• 5:05
  In 2021, I had a leader on my team that was causing some issues — very narcissistic, had some compliance issues.
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  If you've ever dealt with a narcissist, trying to correct issues with them is like trying to back a tiger into a cage.
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  As I'm trying to correct behavior, looking out for the culture of my 250-person organization,
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  instead of correcting his behavior, he decided to sue me — and not only from a business standpoint, but slander my name.
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  He sued me for discrimination.
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  I played football with his father. I was the only white guy on that team. I hired him, mentored him, taught him everything I knew.
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  He was the youngest appointed African-American managing director in the company's 150-year history.
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  Then he sued me for discrimination — not because I actually discriminated, but because I was trying to hold him accountable.
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  The company did their own investigation, knew I had done nothing wrong, said they'd help me — then a month later, terminated me.
• 6:48
  This was 2021. The George Floyd situation, BLM — it was all hot press. They didn't want their name dragged through the mud.
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  Not only was my whole business taken away, my name was slandered. I was in the pits of despair.
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  My wife was more worried about people reading about the lawsuit than I was — because anyone that knows me would know that's not me.
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  I was more worried about: what am I going to do next? My dreams and purpose and life were just ripped away.
• 7:32
  I've learned this over the last few years — it doesn't matter if you have a happy exit or a sad exit with your business,
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  you go through the five stages of grief. Because you're giving up your baby.
• 7:55
  [RICK] How do you deal with that? Your identity is being stripped from you. What was your process? How did you work through it?
• 8:10
  [JOSH] You've got to go through it. There was a six-month period where I was negotiating my exit with my former firm — a Fortune 100 company.
• 8:22
  I made a decision: I was not going to make any quick decisions. I was going to spend the summer with my kids and my wife.
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  We had a great summer. But then I got them into school. I'm a type-A individual, very purpose-driven, and I was going crazy.
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  I had to sit in it and think about all those shitty thoughts. I had to sit in the weight of the emotions.
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  My coach at the time encouraged me to journal. I said, you just want me to write down all my shitty thoughts?
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  He said: you are never going to have these exact emotions again. Capture them. Work through it.
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  There were a lot of evenings I'd spend by my fire pit, overlooking the golf course — a bourbon and a cigar in hand.
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  I was journaling, praying, actually working through it. You get through the stages of grief and you get to acceptance.
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  One of the smartest things I did was create a T-chart. On the left: what did I love about my previous world?
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  On the right: what did I hate or dislike? Then I asked myself — what if I could design a world
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  where I only did the stuff that I love and eliminated the stuff on the right side?
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  I love helping people build visions bigger than they think for themselves. I love the entrepreneurial space. I love leadership.
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  And I started to build a business plan around coaching, developing, and speaking.
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  My wife said she didn't want me traveling all the time — we've got four young kids.
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  So: what if I bought a property where people could come to me instead of me traveling? That's where the 80 acres and the farm came in.
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  Those six months, as brutal as they were, were a true blessing in disguise to work through that process.
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  [RICK] How strongly did you believe things would go from that really bad place to you reinventing yourself and being successful again?
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  [JOSH] Even when the emotions were at their rawest, I kept leaning on — God, you must have some big plan in store for me.
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  What I saw was God wasn't up there looking down over us. You get into that pit and you realize God's actually right there with you.
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  He's walking with you the whole time. You feel his loving presence in that pit of despair.
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  You carry the Holy Spirit inside you, and that Holy Spirit connects you to God. When you're in that pit, on your knees — he's right there with you.
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  I knew we were going to be okay financially. I was in the financial world. I was very good with our money.
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  Don't outspend your means. Be smart with your money. You don't know what's going to come around the next corner.
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  So many people are scared to climb the mountain because they may fail — not realizing all the lessons you learn climbing the mountain.
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  Over my almost 20 years in that business, I learned how to sell, recruit, develop, build culture, run strong financials.
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  I didn't forget any of that. Now I have that foundation to build the next thing.
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  I will never lose faith in God's plan. I will never lose faith in myself.
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  God puts this vision on my heart. It's on me to put one foot in front of the other towards that vision.
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  If I take the wrong step, He's going to correct me and put me back on course.
• 13:42
  [RICK] Were there places where you're more cautious now, or are you just straight full speed ahead?
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  [JOSH] I know how to identify narcissists a lot better now. I even help business owners with interview questions and screening.
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  Narcissists are brilliant people. They're chameleons. Their true colors don't come out for months, sometimes years.
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  My coach asked me once — you've got a lot of empathy for this person that's done you wrong.
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  I said, the Bible teaches us to forgive. I'm not going to forget. But harboring resentment only hurts me.
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  Then he asked: how are you doing with empathy for yourself? And I just broke down. Not good.
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  Sometimes the hardest person to have empathy for or love — is yourself.
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  I'm not cautious with people because of what one person did to me. I'm still a lover of people.
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  It's like the first girl in high school that breaks your heart — you're not going to stop taking chances, right?
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  [RICK] Who were the other people around you that you were leaning into? What did that circle look like?
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  [JOSH] When you get knocked down from the mountaintop as publicly and hard as I did, you learn who was real in your life and who wasn't.
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  Think about the NFL draft — all those hangers-on around a young millionaire. That person has no idea who really cares for them.
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  When they suffer an injury, when they're no longer in the NFL, they'll find out real quick who was real.
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  The people that were there for me — Jason my coach, my wife, my parents, my mother-in-law, some really close friends — I will never forget them.
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  And I will never forget the ones that claimed to be friends beforehand and weren't there for me in that pit.
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  [RICK] What was it like when you found people abandoning you?
• 16:55
  [JOSH] I wasn't surprised. You always have that gut feel — something's not just right, or you're not willing to open yourself up entirely.
• 17:08
  That's a yellow flag. We can identify red flags and green flags pretty easily. It's the yellow flags that we struggle with.
• 17:20
  When those people weren't there, they drew a clear line for me. Now I know where you stand. I don't have to waste any time toward you.
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  [RICK] How do you know what your purpose was?
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  [JOSH] Around age 30, I recruited a guy named Carl who challenged me. He became one of my greatest friends and business partners today.
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  I would lie in bed on Sunday nights wondering how I was going to motivate him Monday morning. That forced me to be a better leader.
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  By year three, he started outproducing me. I was never envious or jealous. I was just proud.
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  In that moment I realized — I'm meant to be more of a leader than a producer. I get more joy out of leading and seeing others succeed.
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  God whispers until you don't listen enough, then he has to yell.
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  That was him ripping the rug out from underneath me, saying: hey, I've got a different direction for you.
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  Now, in hindsight, the impact I have — I never would have written the book, never would have bought the land, never would have changed as many lives.
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  [RICK] It sounds like you created a business around your passion. Is that an accurate statement?
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  [JOSH] You have to notice gaps in the marketplace. The purpose of a business is to solve a problem.
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  If you do that well enough, as a byproduct, you'll make good money. The purpose is not to make money — it's to solve a problem.
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  The problem I saw in the coaching space — there are a lot of influencers who have never actually built a business or been through the fires.
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  If I can take my passion, my skillset, my experience, and actually coach real entrepreneurs —
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  I'm not trying to pump the world full of more courses. I'm trying to have real change, get into the weeds with business owners.
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  [RICK] Tell us a little more about what you're doing now.
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  [JOSH] On the systems and processes side, I'm an EOS implementer — Entrepreneurial Operating System.
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  It helps entrepreneurs get proper structure, align on one vision, gain traction, and create a healthy organization.
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  On the leadership side, I find really successful entrepreneurs whose marriages have thinned, relationships with their kids have thinned.
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  They may have an addiction, or their relationship with God is gone — because they focused everything on the business.
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  I've built a course and community — not just a course, but 12-person cohorts, a mastermind working through issues on the human side.
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  We always studied the five regrets of the dying. The theme is always the same:
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  they regret the actions they didn't take over the actions they did take. How do we get to the end of our life without those regrets?
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  You've built a great business. Let's build a great life.
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  [RICK] Tell me how the Kairos Code comes into that.
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  [JOSH] I wrote The Kairos Code out of my experiences of learning where I screwed up.
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  When they shipped all my stuff from my office, I couldn't open those boxes for 30 days. I couldn't face it.
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  One day I got the courage to go to the basement and open them — all the trophies, accolades, accreditations.
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  I went through it all and thought: none of this matters. If I died today, this would just collect dust on a shelf.
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  What did matter was my loving wife, my kids, my relationship with God, my health. Those were the things that mattered.
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  The moment I thought I had nothing, I actually had everything.
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  But how often do we give our family, our health, our relationship with God our leftovers — because we're so focused on the business?
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  I built out the five bridges of Kairos. The goal: show up as your most authentic self — the greatest leader in your home, community, and business.
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  You're not Rick at work and Rick at home. You got to be that aligned human. You can't wear two masks.
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  If we can just shed those masks and show up with our true light — that one unique light God gave us and only us — the world can change.
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  God told me these lessons weren't just for you. They were for you to serve the world.
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  [RICK] You mentioned the five bridges of Kairos. Can you give us a little overview?
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  [JOSH] Our spiritual grounding is our foundation. Whatever your spiritual founding is — that is your base.
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  For me, it's being right with God before anything else.
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  Then: the internal bridge — your mental, emotional, and physical health. Put your oxygen mask on first before assisting others.
• 25:35
  If you're not focused on your mental, physical, and emotional health, you can't be the best for others.
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  Bridge three is relationships — the fruit of life. God first, yourself second, your spouse, your kids, then everyone else.
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  Your job is to not screw up that order.
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  Bridge four is environment — the one we like to skip to, because we're taught to be providers.
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  We get trapped in what we are, and that's where our identity gets trapped. Your work should be a piece of your identity, not your entire identity.
• 26:38
  High-level athletes go through this leaving the NFL — who am I now? Well, you weren't just an athlete.
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  The work ethic, the determination, the grit, the teamwork — that's who you are.
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  And then bridge five: legacy. The two things people get wrong about legacy —
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  they think it's going to be 30 years from today, and they think it's about the stuff they leave behind.
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  You've never seen a U-Haul follow a hearse. Can't take it with you. It's not what you leave behind. It's what you leave in others.
• 27:38
  Your legacy is built every single moment of every day. It's in every interaction with a human being.
• 27:52
  Every action you take or don't take — that's building your legacy. It's happening right here, right now.
• 28:02
  [RICK] How would you advise someone to maintain that relentless pursuit toward whatever they're defining as winning?
• 28:15
  [JOSH] John Wooden, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan have defined it best — being brilliant at the basics and never getting bored with it.
• 28:28
  A CANI mindset — continuous and never-ending improvement — combined with humility.
• 28:40
  Think about Conor McGregor. People say he's not humble. But how hard did he have to work to get to where he is?
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  How many coaches did he have to listen to? How many times did he get beaten in training and get back up?
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  Whatever his persona — he had a tremendous amount of humility to get to where he was.
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  Being brilliant at the basics, a CANI mindset, and humility — that can take you a very long way.
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  Being competitive is fine. Being hyper-competitive becomes a problem when you place your identity, your value, your worth all in winning.
• 29:42
  [RICK] If someone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?
• 29:55
  [JOSH] Find me at Josh Kosnick on any socials — I'm in control of them and I respond. Also joshkosnick.com.
• 30:08
  For the entrepreneur cohorts, visit LQblueprint.com — LQ stands for life quotient. Think IQ, EQ... I went with LQ.
• 30:20
  At joshkosnick.com there's also a free LQ assessment that grades you on those five bridges.
• 30:32
  It tells you your total score and where you're lagging — which bridge or area you need to start working on.
• 30:45
  [RICK] And The Kairos Code — can we get that on Amazon?
• 30:58
  [JOSH] Amazon, Barnes and Noble — and within the next 30 days, Audible. I recorded it myself. It was too personal a book to have a voice actor read it.
• 31:10
  [RICK] Josh, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much. It's really touched me personally.
• 31:22
  [JOSH] This has been a great conversation, Rick. Appreciate you having me.
• 31:31
  [RICK] Absolutely. And folks, thank you for watching or listening to another episode of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast.
• 31:40
  We'll catch you next time.