Latest / MountainWest Capital Network: Welcome to the Winners' Circle / How Kajae Built a Global Workforce | Garrett Blood on People-First Leadership

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How Kajae Built a Global Workforce | Garrett Blood on People-First Leadership · MountainWest Capital Network: Welcome to the Winners' Circle

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And so a lot of companies are like, you know what?
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: We want someone that wants to grow with us and
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: is loyal. Utah has an entrepreneurial spirit that I look
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: at like the founding fathers had. That's my whole thing.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I love finding people that say, you know, I can
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: do hard things. Give me a challenge.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: You are listening to the Mountain West Capital Network podcast,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: your gateway to the winner's circle. I'm Sherry, the executive
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: director of Mountain West Capital Network.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: And I'm Jason, president of the Mountain West Capital Network
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: and managing director at Protivity. Every episode, we sit down
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: with Utah's most visionary business leaders to uncover the ideas, risks,
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: and wins behind the state's fastest-growing companies.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Mountain West Capital Network is best known for the Utah 100,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: our flagship event that recognizes the state's fastest-growing businesses. But
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: behind every number is a story, and that's what this
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: podcast is all about.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: You are not just tuning in to hear what's happened.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: You're stepping inside the winner's circle to understand how it happened.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Today, we are thrilled to be joined by Garrett Blood,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: the founder and CEO of KJ, a global staffing company.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: KJ connects U.S. companies with skilled professionals around the world
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: with a particular focus on creating meaningful, economic opportunities for
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: its international team members.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Garrett is originally from Southern California with a background in skiing,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: wake surfing, movie watching, and travel. Before he founded KJ,
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Garrett founded a company called Arctic Zero, a low-calorie frozen
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: dessert brand that grew to be carried by thousands of retailers.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: His background spans entrepreneurship, sales, marketing, operations, and organizational leadership.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Garrett attributes his desire to start KJ to his experiences
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: living in Mexico and traveling internationally, where he met many
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: talented people with limited access to economic opportunities.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Garrett's leadership philosophy is to put team members first, to
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: build a strong company culture, and demonstrate that a company
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: can pursue both profitability and making a positive social impact.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: KJ has grown rapidly over the years. We witnessed this
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: firsthand and was ranked number 204 on the Inc. 5000
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: in 2025, which reported KJ at a 1,886% growth of revenue. Wow.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Garrett has been married to his wife, Jacqueline, for almost
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: 24 years, and they have five awesome kids together.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: Garrett, welcome to the Winner's Circle.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. So we've
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: got something in common.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: We're both from Southern California. Maybe we can start there.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: Maybe you can highlight what lessons, how did that shape
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: who you are today, just being raised in Southern California?
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: You know, I think it was the, I mean, living
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: in Utah now, I really appreciate the weather more than ever.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: And it's one of those things where people talk about
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the weather, but being able to go outside, 12 months
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: out of the year in a t-shirt practically it was
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: kind of nice you know and I just remember Christmas
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: morning as a kid being able to go and do
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: things that most people couldn't do you know they're shoveling
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: snow on Christmas morning and.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: We like to shovel snow on Christmas morning.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: I'm with you man it's the best right right and
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: yeah it's just it was just it was just it
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: was good it was good as a kid growing up
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: in the 80s and 90s in in California That's great.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Well, we are lucky to have you here now. And
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: you've been here for what, for the last 13 years,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: you said?
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 13 years.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Actually, what first moved you to Utah?
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: So I actually sold my, I had an ice cream
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: manufacturing company, and I sold it to Nestle.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Just a little sale there.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: It just kind of moved, ended up coming to Utah.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And I have family and friends here, so it was
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the right fit at the right time.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: The only thing holding me there in California was my company. Okay.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: So let's go back to the beginning. What inspired you
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: to first create KJ, and then how did that come about?
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I served a mission for the Church
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Mexico. And being
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: in Mexico and being surrounded by the happiest people that
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: had nothing was pretty inspiring. And I noticed that on
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: my mission, you had such incredible talent, whether they were
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: engineers or accountants or what have you. They were incredible.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: And in my travels, I would notice the same thing.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Brilliance was just sprinkled everywhere. And so I'm a big
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: believer that brilliance... talent and strengths are perfectly and fairly
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: distributed around the world, but opportunity is not. So the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: goal was to create a way in which to take
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: that brilliance and combine it and find amazing companies here
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: in the U S I could appreciate it.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: And maybe walk us through, you know, even before KJ,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: you know, you had significant, you know, operational and leadership opportunities.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: How did those roles prepare you for building a staffing company?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, so, you know, we're the summation of all our
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: successes and failures. And I had a ton of failures
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: as a kid and growing up that you never know.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: You know, kind of the running joke was people would
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: ask me, what do you want to do when you
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: grow up? And I'm like, I don't know. I love
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: to do so many different things. How do I choose
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: just one? I almost felt like it would have been
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: so great early on if someone said, you know what?
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: You should be a dentist. And I'd be like, okay, great.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I'll be a dentist. And there it is, right? You just,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you're a dentist your whole life, right? But that was,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't have that. My dad was an entrepreneur and
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: he owned, growing up in Orange County, he had car dealerships,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: exotic car dealerships, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls, you name it. And
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: he had a limo company, and he had hotels in
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the U.S. and around the world, hundreds of condos and
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: real estate, gold mines, went to school in a limo.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: And just crazy.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Isn't everyone in California go to school in a limo?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Orange County, I mean, it makes sense. So it was
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: one of those things where the planes and, you know,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: just different things. And I didn't think anything of it
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: as a kid, but I just saw my dad always
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: working hard and He was very into health and nutrition,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and we'd go to health food stores, and I'd be
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: sitting on the floor reading manuals about nutrition and vitamins
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and proteins, which kind of led to one of my
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: other companies after that, my ice cream company, and just
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: got that bug of entrepreneurism from my dad. And then
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: at an early age, started actually a window cleaning business
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: when I was nine. followed, my uncle had a successful
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: business and I was watching him clean windows. And I thought,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: you know, this would be a great way to save money.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: And for me, my goal was to pay for a
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: And I knew that that was the way to do it.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: And I wasn't going to cut lawns. And I figured
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: this would be a different way to do it. And
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: little by little, it was one of those things where
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I was able to add customers year after year to
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: the By the age of 12. I had industrial, residential,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and commercial companies that I would do on a weekly basis.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: And yeah, so it was kind of fun.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. I'm picturing hiring this nine-year-old to clean my windows.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking back to when I was 12.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I don't even. I think lemonade stands.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Maybe. I just wish I had more pictures of it.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I have one picture of me standing on the bucket
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: to reach the very top of an optometrist office that
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I did every week.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I think I was about 10 in the picture and
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: you just see me. With my squeegee and everything else
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: working on it. And that's just, that was the shtick.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: It was, my company was GB Enterprises. Enterprises. Yeah, GB.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Care of blood. I love that.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: So, as we're talking, KJ isn't the first company you founded.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: You founded several companies over the years. You mentioned your
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: ice cream company, which wasn't just any ice cream company.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: In reading about it and knowing about it as the
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: third company, most popular brand is that what it.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Was third best-selling frozen dessert product in America so after
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Haagen-Dazs number one Ben.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: & Jerry's then it was you so Arctic Zero you
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: know why not yeah I love that so what was
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: the biggest lesson that you've learned I mean there's lessons
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: all along the way and there's there's lessons that you
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: learn positive lessons and there's lessons negative lessons but like
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: What stands out to you and any stories that you'd
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: like to share? We have a lot of listeners that
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: are curious about what you've learned.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: You know, it's what year, you know, is kind of thing.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: I think at a young age, when I was 12,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I learned how to deal with hard things.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: So I remember when I was 12, my parents divorced
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and my dad's entire empire that I knew crumbled literally
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: within just a matter of a year. It went forever.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: doing anything and everything anytime you wanted to, we don't
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: have money for that. And, and it was, it was
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: interesting to see the toll that it took on my parents.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And then they ultimately divorced, but being forced out of
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: our home, by the sheriff's department because we hadn't paid
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the mortgage in a year. And we're out on, I'll
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: never forget standing outside on our front porch, neighbors looking
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: at us with all our stuff on the front porch
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: and on the lawn and waiting for you haul truck
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: to show up and not knowing where we were going
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: to go. Cause there was, there was nothing. And if
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: it wasn't for grandparents, we would have been homeless, literally
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: that van down by the river. And, um, And my
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: mom took some of my siblings one direction and I
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: went another direction because I was in junior high and
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: they were in elementary school and different schedules, different times,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: different locations. And so we lived apart for a bit.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: And when they divorced, I was forced to sell my business.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I sold it to a guy in his 30s, which
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: was kind of funny. So I always say my first
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: exit was when I was 12. And so then I
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: had to rebuild it when we moved to San Diego.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: But I just remember going from, you know, we were very,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: very wealthy to welfare poor. And I remember like literally
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: there's a song by Everclear, a band from California that says,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: no one knows the joy of a welfare Christmas. And
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I know what that feels like. And so
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: just that disparity, that differential, I know what it's like
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to have it and not have it. And so I
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: think going through those hard things really shapes someone to
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: kind of look at the different dynamics, whether it's business
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: or how to interact with people and that kind of thing.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: And the rise and fall of an entrepreneur.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's, you know, he, my dad, he got
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: into some, he was very accessible and accessible to the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: wrong people. And so vices take over and addictions take
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: over and You know, we go to a boxing match
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: in Las Vegas and he's spending $ 50, 000 on a bet.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. And
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: that's in the 90s. So it was probably like putting $ 200, 000
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: down on red type of thing. And fortunately, I never
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: looked at that and thought, wow, that's impressive. You made
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: you doubled your money or something like I look at that.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't want to have anything to do
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: with any of that stuff. And, uh, but you know,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: you learn from those things and, um, but yeah, it's, uh,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it was, it was a tough time of my,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: in my adolescence. I was the oldest of four. And
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: so it was a matter of, okay, now I've got
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: to create a new business to pay the bills because
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: my mom, um, wasn't earning anything. And so I, I
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: became the breadwinner and when my parents divorced, my dad
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: fell into depression and drugs and all sorts of stuff. And,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: To this day, he's homeless and we can't find him
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: in Orange County somewhere. And we've looked and we've looked
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and we've looked. We know he's alive because we get,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: it sounds bad to say this, and it's kind of funny,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: that we get people that tell us there was a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: sighting of him, but we cannot find him to save
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: our life. But it's just interesting how mental health can really,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: really affect folks. And so you have someone that was sick.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: He looked like Tom Selleck, drove the same Ferrari. He
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: was 195 pounds, could bench press 420 pounds.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Jeez.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Specimen of health. Brilliant. If you ever watched the movie
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Ocean's Eleven with Andy Garcia's character, that was my dad
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: in terms of charisma and energy and everything. And so
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: you see this complete fall. It's like mind boggling that
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff happens. And so you've got this,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: you know, he had master's in mechanical engineering and all these,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: you know, all these entrepreneurship, I mean, entrepreneurial careers. And
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: it's just amazing how, you know, it could be here
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: today and completely gone tomorrow. But anyway, not taking things
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: for granted, basically.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lesson, an important lesson to learn when
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: you're 12. But also, you know, the fact that you
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: were able to be so industrious at that age and
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: just obviously something was instilled in you as a child that,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: you know what, like, you can do something about this.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: That's incredible. Like how proud your mom must be. Um,
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: and probably your dad too, but, um, that they, they,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: they've seen that in you over the years.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: It's just interesting. Uh, you know, the, the different, the different, um,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: things that I grew up with seeing and it's like, okay, that's,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I like that. Let's, let's borrow that skillset and not
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: that one over there. And, and, um, through trial and error,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I guess you could say. And, um, but yeah, my,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: my mom actually lives here in California. I'm sorry, here
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: in Utah. Got me thinking California. So yeah, my siblings
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: are all here now. The only person that's kind of
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: still there is I've got a couple of cousins and, and, uh,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: aunts and uncles and my dad basically are left in California.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: So try to get the rest of the cohort out
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: here eventually. So, yeah.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: Sounds like your grandparents played a pretty significant role, you know,
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: I'm sure over the years have had a massive impact in, in,
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: in your upbringing and just helping you through this. Did you,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: any comments on that?
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: So my grandfather was a, he was a, I say
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: he was a baller. He wasn't a basketball player. He
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: was a tennis player, a tennis pro. And when I
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: say tennis pro, he was like ranked, but he wasn't
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: a tennis pro. And, but he was actually a school teacher.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: He was a mathematician. And he, Super brilliant and just
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: an incredible hard worker. Like he could outwork anybody. And
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: so I just always really appreciated that and saw that
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: for what it was. And very disciplined, hyper disciplined. And
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: one of the other things that I just loved, he
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: used to always say, never handle things twice. I always
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: love that and it resonates with me today. So I
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: love that.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I say that all the time. I don't know where
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: I first heard it. But yeah, never handle things twice.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Tell me, I was looking at KJ a little bit
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: more today, and one thing that stood out to me was,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: it said something about that you interview around 200 candidates
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: to hire the top three for a client. So what,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: first of all, how, but how does that process work
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: for you? And are you still involved in that process?
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't do the interviewing part anymore. 200 is
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: a lot. It's a lot for one position. Yeah. And
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: so if you've got 20 positions you're filling a month
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: or 30 positions, you start doing the math and it's like,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: how is this possible? Right. And we, it's a fun process.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And when I say fun, like we've really dialed it
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: in over the years. And one of the things that
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: was really frustrating for me is I remember one time
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: couple of times actually in the last 25 years applying
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: for a position. And if you're not a brilliant resume
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: writer where you don't know how to write it in
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: just the right way, or you didn't go to that
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Ivy league school to pick up, to pop up on
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: the sensors, you might get passed over completely. And I
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: used to always think if I could just get in
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: front of the person doing the interview, I'll get this job.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Like I'll sell myself. I'll tell you why I can
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: get this job. But if it doesn't reflect that in
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the resume, sorry, you're going to the bottom of the
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: pile because it doesn't say Stanford. It doesn't say Harvard
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: on it. Or it doesn't say that you were the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: chief technology officer for a company or something like that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: at a major brand. Maybe it was Google or NVIDIA
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: or something. And I got tired of that. And I
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: thought we need to put more humans in front of humans.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: I want humans in front of... HR just says HR.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: People forget the human in human resources.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: And.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And what I hate, I literally hate it, that HR
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: is looked at as, well, we have to have this
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: department because it's our liability protection, right? Like we need
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: to figure out how we can pretend to care about
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: our employees. I'm doing air quotes when I say that
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: because they're really focused on just their bottom line. And
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: they forget that your most important part of your company,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: the most important asset, if you will, is your people.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And so you got to give all your people the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: right shot. And so what we do is we interview
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: face-to-face these individuals. Now we use AI to call it
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: from a thousand applications down to 200. And then we
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: have some very quick rapid fire type of interviews. Usually
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: sometimes there's a lot of video there. And so maybe
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: they got 60 seconds or 90 seconds and then it
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: gets narrowed and narrowed and narrowed to the point where
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: we then take it down to 50 and then we
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: take it down to 10 and then we take it
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: down to the best three. And so in some cases,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: like we had an accounting position once that got 5,000
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: applications from 30 countries. And so taking that down. And
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: so if you can imagine the creme de la creme
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: of the most brilliant people you've never heard about before.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: And so we always tell companies. companies will come to
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: us on a Monday. And so we trademarked a phrase,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Zoom on Monday, talent by Friday. And so they'll come
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: to us and we say, what does your dream hire
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: look like? And they give us this laundry list. It
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: was a terrific. We're going to find. between 300 people
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and we're going to narrow it down and we're going
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: to introduce you to three of the best people you
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: never knew existed from 30 different countries this Friday. You're
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: going to meet them. You're going to ask them questions,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: get familiar with them. And whoever you love, give us
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: the thumbs up. In some cases, they'll hire all three.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: It happened a lot. And we tell them, you give
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: us a thumbs up. And on Tuesday of the next week,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: they're in the trenches working with your company dedicated to
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: you 40 hours a week. And they're not shared with
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: any other company. There are team members, but they work
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: dedicated to a client that we have designated. That's been vetted.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: We don't just allow anyone to have our people. Because
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: there's too many people that they've got the idea of offshore, nearshore,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: like virtual sweatshops. And that, you want to see me angry?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: That's where you go. Because people are like, oh, you're offshoring,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: you're nearshoring. Oh, I get it. No, no, no, no, no.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: We are not the race to the bottom team. type
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: of company, we pay our people five to 10 times
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: more than a living wage. So they literally go from
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: poverty to middle class in 60 days or less. And
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: we've done that 100% in the last five years within
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: those 60 days for every single person on our team.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: That was the conversation that you and I had when
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: we were talking about you as an emerging elite company.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: As I remember you saying that, I was like, hold on,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: say that again.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: And it's But on top of that, they get full medical.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: They get full dental. They have paid time off. They
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: have paid maternity. They have paid paternity. We have a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: clinical psychologist on staff for mental health. We have an
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: English expert linguist on our team if they want to
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: remove an accent, for example. They want to up their
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: English game even more. Then we have continuing education initiatives
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: with Thunderbird University and ASU. We have monthly AI trainings
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: where they come together, like accounting. will come together, all
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the accountants on the entire team, and they'll learn new,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you know, new trainings on AI with just accounting because
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: it's completely different than our mechanical, electrical, civil, or we
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: even have nuclear engineers on our team. And it's completely
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: different from our graphic designers or video editors or supply
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: chain analysts, you know, with like Harley Davidson and stuff.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Like they're all very, very diverse in terms of their roles.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: And so AI has to be very customized to each
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and every one of them. I'm a big believer that
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: AI is not going to take their job. And I
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: tell them this all the time, but I said, the
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: people that leverage AI will. So you have to be
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the ones that have leveraged AI so well that you
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: have to be in their trenches all the time. And
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: you become irreplaceable at that point.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: You know, I would love to explore just a little
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: bit on that point that you made. So the ability,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: so that skill to leverage AI is, And then what
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: other skills do you see? Because obviously the soft skills,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: and we've talked about this in previous podcasts, the soft
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: skills are becoming even more important, right? So maybe highlight
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: those two or three things that are just absolutely essential
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: to differentiate one person versus someone else. I love it.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I think it's so interesting how everything's come full circle, right?
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Where Like before it was, no, this is what you
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: got to focus on and you've got to be the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: best at this. And it's just very, very. And now
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: anything in front of a computer can practically be done
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: by AI. Anything that zeros and ones. I always tell people,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: if you're in front of a computer, you've got to
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: really get, you have to embrace AI like more than
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: anybody else. And because, yeah, you in the next 36 months,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: it's going to get even worse. And but my one
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: of my number one things is they have to be
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: very comfortable communicating. They have to be amazing communicators more
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: so than anything else, because that human element has to
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: remain because there's already a little bit. But there's going
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to be a significant growing backlash against AI because now
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: you're literally thinking that that thing, if you will, that
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: has no soul, has no depth. you're putting that to
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: communicate with other companies or other AIs and you're going
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: to take the human element out of it. No, no, no, no.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: The companies that are going to win in the future
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: are the companies that are warm and they have a soul.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: They literally are flesh and blood type of companies. Because
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I don't want to
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: communicate with a machine over there about certain things. It's just,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: it feels so phony to me. And so- Always tell. Yeah,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: always tell, right? And it's going to get really good
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: where we're not going to be able to tell, but
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I can't go to
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: lunch with that AI person, you know? And so it's,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not going golfing and I'm not going wake surfing
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: with that computer, you know? It's just not happening. And
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: so the human element has to be there. That communication
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: has to be there. But in addition to that, people
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: that are resilient- people that have dealt with adversity and
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: have dealt with hard things. Like I tell people all
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: the time, I go, we are so soft as Americans.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Like we have it made in the shade. Like the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: homeless in America are so well off compared to the
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: rest of the world. And that's one of the things
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: that I love is I get to meet people that
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: have done hard, hard things on a regular basis. And
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: they're so deserving of it, of having an opportunity. And, um,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting. I've got a member of my team.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Her name is Sarah. And she lives in Venezuela. And
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: she speaks four languages. Has two master's degrees. She was
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the head of creative design for the United Nations.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: All her experience, amazing pedigree in terms of education, four languages.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: But they didn't pay her anything. It was a perfect
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: example of an organization that's... Do as we say, but
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: not as we do.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And she quit that job and started working for us.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And she was, like I said, she was paid hardly
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: anything over there. Like slave labor rate wages for as
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: good as she was and amazing. And after about three weeks,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: about three weeks, she sends me an email one day.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: She's thanking me. Garrett, thank you so much. This is
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the greatest job I've ever had. And in that email,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: there's a picture and there's a picture of a bed.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: And she goes, I just bought my first bed. Mind blown.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: And you're like, you got Americans complaining that their internet's
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: not fast enough, you know? And she's like buying her
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: first bed, speaks four languages, two master's degrees, brilliant experience.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: You're like, what? This is crazy. And so I get
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: stories like that all the time from members of my team.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And you're just like, whoa. And so you just imagine
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the companies that get them, they end up hiring more
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: and more members of our team over time because they
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: are so committed to those companies. Loyalty. I always say
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: we hire loyal and grateful rock stars. That's what we do.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: So that was actually one of our official questions that
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: we wanted to talk to you about is that you
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: hire people over, is it 28 countries? Yes.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: It keeps growing. What is it today? It was like
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: 19 and it's 22. Now it's 29. I think we
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: just hit 30, actually.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Like last week.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: And then how do you find the Sarah? How do
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: you find the Sarahs of these countries? Like how?
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Human to human. You got to just, some people just
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: have that everything factor. And, you know, and I got,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I started getting really sad because we had to say
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: no to so many people. And I know one of
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: the companies that I'm on still, I've sold off a
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: lot of my ownership in that company, but I'm still
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: on it, is Hire Mango. And Hire Mango was exactly
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: like KG. But the difference is I got tired of
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the 197 that we had to say no to. And
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: so we created this sister company that would take the
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: people that were almost as amazing and give them another
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: opportunity that's better than anything else in their country. And
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: we would tell them why they didn't get hired. So
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: maybe they needed more education and now they can get
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: it through that company. They maybe needed more experience and
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: now they can get more experience. Maybe they needed to
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: work on their English. And so it was basically a
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: training ground for them to try, try and try again.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: The door would never be closed to them and they
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: could just, okay, today's not the day, but maybe next
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: year it is. And so that's the reason for that
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: company is creation.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: You know, I think you mentioned Sarah and I was
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: just curious if there were other stories. I think you
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: mentioned not a week goes by without joyful tears on
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: your team. And I just think Sarah is probably one
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: of many experiences that you've had over the years. You know,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: and I think it's obvious to me why your company
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: has grown so significantly over these years. I mean, it's
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: just amazing the principles and the vision and what you're
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: trying to accomplish.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: So maybe.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Highlight maybe another story that I think, again, touches on
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: to that theme.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I sigh like that because I'm looking for tissue. Because my... That's... I'm, uh,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: I'm notorious for breaking, breaking down in interviews and different
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: things because I start talking about members of my team. Um, the, um, yeah,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: there's a member of my team. I'm not going to
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: mention his name. Um, because this, this is a little
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: bit more sensitive. He's in Mexico city. He worked for Google.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: He is one of the most brilliant computer engineers you've
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: ever met. And he's kind of like the Elon Musk
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: of Mexico on my team. And he was going through
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: a divorce, two sons, custody issues, and he ended up
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: losing his job at Google. And he was trying to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: find work and he couldn't get it together because he
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: was just going through so much, so much turmoil with
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: his boys and going to lose them, the fees and
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the bills that were racking up. And he kept applying
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: for positions and wasn't getting them. And he's like, this
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: is crazy. I've got the education. I've got the experience.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I'm great. I can speak English so well and all
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: the things. And it was just, what's going on? And
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: time after time he was just not getting the job
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and bills are stacking up more and it's just all
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: leveled up against him and he sees a post he
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: applies for it and KJ we interview him and we
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: hire him on a Tuesday and I remember talking to
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: him last year he had been with us a year
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: at that point so he's been with us two years
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: now came up to me thanking me and he said
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: sorry if you didn't hire me on Tuesday, I was
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: planning on killing myself on Thursday. Wow. So those, those
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: types of stories, you know, he's like, yeah, I was
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: going to take my life on Thursday, but I got
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: the job on Tuesday and it changed my life. What?
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: So I've got, uh, I've got another amazing member of
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: my team. He's in, um, he's in Nigeria and, um,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: He's got a master's in applied physics and a master's
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: in AI computer learning. And he is just outstanding. A
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: lot of people don't know this, but the secret India 2.0
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: place for tech brilliance is Nigeria. It's not the financial
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: princes trying to tell you they want your bank account
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: to send you money. It's the brilliance there. It's not
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: the one-tenth of one percent that make it, give it
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: a bad name. And so he worked, he was working
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: in the city about eight hours away from his family
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: that lived in a small village in Nigeria. And he'd
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: only get to see his family usually twice a year
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: because he couldn't afford to go back and forth. And
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: so every time he'd see them, they had aged. Any
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of us with kids, it's like, whoa.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: And so he, he applied for a position with us
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: and he was ecstatic because it was going to be
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: like five times more than he's ever made before. And
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: he got the job and yeah, he was super excited.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: And I meet every single member of my team and
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: we do welcome calls. So I, I take a page
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: of notes on every member of my team when they,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: when they joined KJ. So when I see them, we
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: can interact and we talk and I know they're, names
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: of their spouses, names of their kids, all that stuff.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And talking to him, he's like, Garrett, he goes, I
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: was able to buy, pay for Starlink and I can
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: be home with my kids and my wife 24 seven.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: So he moved out of the city and was able
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: to move back home and be there nonstop for the
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: last couple of years. He's never had to be away
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: from them ever again. Um, And then people in the
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: village are able to use Starlink that he has. And
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: so they've all been able to elevate. So anyway, sorry.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Every time I've said that story, like 50 times. And
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: every time I get like this, so I'm glad I
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: don't have any paper in front of me. It'd have
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: to be laminated.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: That's significant impact is thank you for sharing that. Being,
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: being able to share that.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that story. It, It's
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: clear that you have found a purpose in this business.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: We love talking to CEOs, founders, and it always comes
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: down to there's got to be a higher purpose. It
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: can't be just the job.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: And it's clear that you've found that and you get
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: to experience it. It seems like maybe even daily, if
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: not multiple times a day, as you see the lives
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: that you're changing through the opportunities that you're providing. Yeah.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: It's you know it's um i never got it in
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: ice cream you know my previous company my ice cream
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: company which is funny yeah um and i got to
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: change people's waistlines basically and that was very and for
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: good it was a protein kind of ice it was
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: a protein-based ice cream it was the first product to
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: ever have calorie counts on the front of the package
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and now everybody does it and um But with this,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: the feel good component of seeing people's lives change, being
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: able to do things that they never thought was going
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: to be possible. Got members on my team that are
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: having children for the first time because they couldn't afford
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: to have children. And in some ways they couldn't afford
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: because they needed fertility treatment, for example, and it was
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: an impossibility. And they just had just chalked it up
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: for we will never have children. And now that they've
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: got the means because they could get a job with
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: any company and hopefully it would pay more. Some companies
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: pay one or two times more than the regular wage,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: but they're still going to be in poverty. You took
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: them from having four jobs to make ends meet to
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: maybe three. And even then, they can barely scrape by.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: But my goal was, I want everyone to gain full-time employment,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: no more than 40 hours a week. So no one
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: on our team works more than 40 hours. The goal
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: specifically is so that they have the focus between they
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: can Everyone talks about there's no such thing as work-life balance,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, if they can spend more
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: time with the things that matter versus working, that's where
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: it's at. And so now you've got nuclear family there, basically,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: that can be home together and grow. And it just
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: changes the dynamic. And so we're able to pay them
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: more and they aren't looking down. for another opportunity. They
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: don't have one foot in and one foot out. They're
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: committed long-term. And our clients love that because, you know, they're,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: they're hired, they're trained, they're brought into the company, they
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: learn the company and they're not going anywhere. So all
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: that intellectual property, all those clients, everything is staying there.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that that's unfortunate is I've
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: seen so much career jumping and over, over the years.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of people that graduate from school, they want
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: six figures right out of school. They have no experience
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: and they're going to work at a company for four months.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: And then they're going to jump to the next one.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: And a lot of times they take that IP, that
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: intellectual property, or they take clients with them to that
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: next stop. And so that loyalty just isn't there. And
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: so a lot of companies are like, you know what?
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: We want someone that wants to grow with us and
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: is loyal. And so, you know, talking to people around
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: the world, that just simply want to feed their families,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: they're the most loyal of anybody. And they are so
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: excited for just to have an opportunity that changed the
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: dynamic of not only their lives, but their children's lives.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: And so that's the thing for me that's so exciting
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: is because I get to hear and I get to
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: see their kids growing and doing things that they didn't
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: think were going to be possible in their life. Like
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: they talk about one of the things that I always
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: ask what are some of your favorite TV shows and movies?
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: And it's so funny to hear kind of some of
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: the things that the commonalities around the world, you know,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: if you were to ask someone were to ask me,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: what is one of the most popular movies that everyone loves?
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: It's interstellar.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Christopher Nolan, for some reason, that is a movie that
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: captures everybody. They love that movie, TV shows. They love friends.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: They love the office, crazier movies, like break or shows
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: like breaking bad. They love, it's just so funny to
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: kind of hear the reasons for some of these things.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that I, I tend to
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: hear is when they watch those movies, it's American escapism
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: for them. Like that's how life is supposed to be.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: This is like, you live a good life. You get
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: to do all these things. You have choice, you have freedom.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: And I think Americans, a lot of Americans don't understand
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: how amazing our country is. They want to focus on
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: maybe what the media says and is lying about. But
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: if you were to ask people from outside the world,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: looking in, keeping their media out of the picture, they, they, they,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: they see what we're missing sometimes, like what we're just
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: literally not saying. And so I hear that all the time.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: I see that all the time. And, um, but no,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: it's just, it's really inspiring to, to talk to, to
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: members of my team in different countries and what they're
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: going through. And I, you don't even think about that sometimes.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Like I have a member of my team one time,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why we hired her Amazing. She
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: grew up in the slums of Manila. And a lot
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: of people don't know this, but one of the one
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: of the areas in the world that has more homelessness
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: than anywhere on the planet is in Manila, Philippines. The
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: entire population, let's put it this way. There's 3.1 million
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: people in Manila that are homeless. Not the population, just
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: homeless in Manila. 3.1 million. The population of Utah. Let
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: that sink in. And over half of them are under
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: the age of 10. Wow. So just picture that. But
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: like someone on my team, she is, her name is Shelly.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: She's phenomenal. She went to the top universities like the
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Harvard of the Philippines. She is remarkable. And she qualified
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: to be hired. And so we have tests and a
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: lot of different things to make sure people have the
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: aptitude and they've got the ability and English listening, learning, speaking, everything.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: And like, so tell me, tell me why you think
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: you're able to do this job. She goes, Garrett, I
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: can do hard things.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, let's go. And her, one of her
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: goals in life was to be a CEO of her
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: own company. And so she, and she, she, she's demonstrated that.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: since day one, she's been with us for about three
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: and a half years. She is, she is a fire starter.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: She is amazing. And, uh, she just makes it happen.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: And that's my whole thing. I love finding people that say,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: you know, I can do hard things. Give me a challenge. And, um,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: so anyway, sorry, I, I just monologue. That's great.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: I love that. I was, I was thinking too, you
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: have done such a incredible job of creating a company
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: that does so much for others and You have your
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: hands and so many things of it. But what creates
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: balance for you? I'm curious about that because you've got
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: five kids and And their teenage years, I'm guessing?
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Oldest is 22 and my youngest is 11.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: So a wide array of ages. So Kate, Ariana, Jack, Alexa, Ethan.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: And I say it in that order because the name
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: KJ comes from their names.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's cool.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: And it means gift from God in Jamaican. And so
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: it was kind of a trifecta. I got lucky and
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: it was a five-letter domain that was a word that
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: still existed and wasn't a misspelling. But to answer your question...
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: You know, it comes from having a really great team
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: around me. My chief of staff, May, she's been with
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: me since before KJ. And great story there, too. She
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: was part of the catalyst for creating KJ. She's based
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: in Manila. Your chief of staff is in Manila. She's
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: in Manila. She served a mission for the Church of
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Montreal. And that's where
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: she learned her English. And her English was just... So outstanding.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: At the time, she thought to herself, why am I
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: going to Montreal? And here she is. And I'm sorry,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: it's not Montreal. We have someone else that I know
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: is Montreal. She was in Toronto. And so she was
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: in Toronto, Canada. And very, very random, rare place for
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: someone in the Philippines to go, by the way. And
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: she's my stuff would not get done if it wasn't
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: for her. She's so remarkable. But in addition to having
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: an amazing team and folks on our internal team that
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: keep everything well oiled and smoothly running my wife, I mean,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: she just, she puts up with me on a regular
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: basis and my, my constant, I have a lot of
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: energy and it's not a good thing. And it's one
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: of my strengths is ideation. So my ideas are always flying.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: And so she's really good at kind of like bringing
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: me back down a little bit and just helping. Honestly,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: she makes it possible. If she didn't run everything so perfectly,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to do the things that I do.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: With your kids being so, I mean, 20, what did
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: you say, 21?
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: 22. 22.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: 23 in December. That's crazy. What do you hope they're learning.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: From you throughout this experience? You know, so they've met every,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: every year we take one of our kids to one
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: of our summits around the world so that they can
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: meet the, the team, they can experience what the team experiences,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: but also they can see the countries, you know, some
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: of these countries and the haves, the haves nots and,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: and the freedoms that we enjoy versus what we take for,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: you know, what we take for granted here. And so
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: that's been really good for them to see. They know, um,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: you know, if dad's in the office, what he's working on,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: you know, if you were to see my office, I've
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: got three big curved LED screens and my laptop down here.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: So I've got four screens and it looks like a
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: cockpit of a jet. And that's, that's, that's ground zero
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: right there for, for KJ. And I've got the greatest
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: commute in the world. It's only 30 seconds. And so
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: it's terrific. Like people are always like, you don't have
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: an actual physical office. I go, yeah, I'm going to,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: break everybody, blow everybody's mind here, but no, we are
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: a 100% remote company in 29 countries. Like we, we,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I hate to use the phrase, you know, we drink
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: our own Kool-Aid, but we do. I mean, like we literally, um,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: we practice what we preach and, uh, and we've been
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: able to grow a company number five fastest in Utah,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: according to Inc. 5000, number eight in our category in
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: the United States doing it this way. And it, uh,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to have a brick and
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: mortar and everyone has to show up on the dot
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: in order to make a company successful. It's just you
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: surround yourself with the best people and you put them
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: in those seats that they need to be sitting in.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: How impactful has it been to be in Utah? And maybe,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: you know, you have been recognized. I know the Mountain
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: West Capital Network has recognized you. How meaningful has that
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: been as well as being located here?
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I... You know, Utah's the best kept secret. I
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: always tell people, I go, people, the people.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Can we keep it a secret?
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I always tell people, you know, keep calling us the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: flyover state. I love that. Don't land because you'll want
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: to stay here.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I said, it's great for a reason, right? It's just,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: we're a very fiscally conservative state that invests in its people.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: Pioneer stock. We've worked hard since day one. I've got
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Ancestry that's been here since day one. Utah has an
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurial spirit that I look at like the founding fathers had.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: They came here and they said, okay, we got to
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: make this happen. We can't go back to England. We're
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: going to be killed, you know? And so same thing
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: with us, right? It was feast or famine. You know,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: we got to make this work. And I think that's
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: just been cultured into Utah for so many generations that
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: we aren't afraid of the word no. You know, when
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: I hear the word no, I just, someone tells me,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: they tell me no, I just look at them and
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I go, well, that means that I just can't do
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: it with you. And that's, that's the nature of it.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: And in, in Utah, amazing things are happening all the
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: time because you've got people that we've got, we've got
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of active ingredient is what I always call it.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: You know, like if you look at the chemical makeup
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: of a product, most of the time it says something
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: like 98% inert, which is like water filler stuff that
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't move the needle. and 2% active ingredient. And we
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: have an overabundance of active ingredient. And that's why I
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: think our state does so well consistently, not one hit wonders.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: I love that. It's a great response. Thank you.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: So entrepreneur at heart, since you were nine years old,
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: now your KJ is just doing such great things and
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: growing so fast and bringing so much good. What's next
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: for KJ? Or maybe I should, I actually want to
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: know what's next for Garrett Blood?
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: So let's see.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Can we talk about it?
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: What's next? You know, probably got some like weddings on
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: the horizon here in the next couple of years. So
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: we'll have to deal with that and figure that stuff out.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Save your money. Save, yeah, exactly. But no, I mean,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: it's everything's, it's a journey, honestly. I mean, I look
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: at when I was a kid and the things that
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: I'm doing today, I would have never fathomed. In a
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: million years, I'd be owning a staff, a premium staff
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: augmentation firm and let alone know what that meant. Actually,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people are like, what's that?
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: What's that mean? And but going back, having an ice
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: cream company, I would have never expected that either. But
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: future wise, I've got a couple of different I've got
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: an idea I've been working on. It's it's something that's
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: in the tech space, which is which is huge. Can't
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: get into it right now too much, but let's just
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: say it is probably one of the most fun platform
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: ideas to bring people together that has never existed in
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: human time. I can just see it having an impact.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: And the software is done. And what's nice about having
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: access to the best talent in the world, they always
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: love projects. Mm-hmm. And so if I say this is
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: what I'm working on, I have the best and brightest
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: that are like, Garrett, we're working on it. And so
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: one of our directors of AIs, who is literally like
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk, also in Mexico, I've got a lot of
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: them around the world. He's like, Garrett, in the perfect,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: perfect accent. He goes, this is easy. I can do
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: this in 96 hours for you. No problem. And sure enough,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: He puts it together and he's like, Garrett, this is
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: the best. I love this. And the rest is history.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: And so he did great. His name's Carlos Barbosa. And
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: I have to actually probably keep him under wraps because
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: whoever is out there in the tech world will want
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: to hire him up immediately. And they'll pay him probably
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: 100 times more than I could afford to pay him.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: But anyway, he's awesome. He's great.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned, I think, A final question. You mentioned
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos and when we were talking earlier.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: So give us a scoop on.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: So, you know, early on, my dad was big into
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: lifting weights and it was part of the reason why
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: I would sit on the floor of natural natural food
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: stores and read all the manuals. And I remember coming
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: home from my mission. And I'd be working out at
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: the gym all the time. And I'd always crave ice
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: cream after the gym. And I'm like, come on, there's
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: got to be a better way here. This is so unfair.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: I'm going to negate everything I just did in the gym.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: And one day I thought, why couldn't there be like
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: a protein ice cream or something? I said, how hard
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: could it be? And so bought a frozen yogurt machine,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: started experimenting and dumped in whey protein concentrate and all
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: sorts of stuff into the frozen yogurt machine and discovered
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: that there's a thousand proteins ways not to make ice
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: cream and it was like oh this is this is
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: terrible it's almost like an edison moment where you're about
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: to give up and then all of a sudden you
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: go you know that's not half bad okay and we
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: made it fat-free gluten-free lactose-free diabetic friendly 150 calories for
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: the entire pint the goal is to eat the whole
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: pint guilt-free 10 o'clock at night and you had a
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: sweet tooth 20 grams of whey protein concentrate 8 grams
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: of fiber and it was all natural clean ingredients And
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: we ended up becoming the number one importer of lojango,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: which is called monk fruit in the United States. So
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: we were the first importer of it. And we got
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: it into one grocery store, then a hundred grocery stores,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: then a thousand grocery stores, then 10,000. And we capped
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: out at 18,000 grocery stores. So yeah, Haagen-Dazs, number one
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: ice cream in America. Ben and Jerry's was number two
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: in a pint and we were number three. And, you know,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: it was everything from It was on CNN and it
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: was on Fox and it was on, you know, Dr.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Osset.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: It was his favorite dessert of all time. The Wall
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: Street Journal talked about it. So it was just, it
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: was really cool. Be an ice cream guy. So, you know,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Whole Foods, it was the number one best-selling dessert two
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: years in a row for Whole Foods nationwide. And we
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: were getting some really good traction. Nestle started distributing it.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: And anytime Nestle puts a product on their trucks, it's
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: because they're testing it. We hear about your numbers, but
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: we want to see if you actually have the numbers.
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: So they started distributing it. And then they started having
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: the conversations about it because we were moving so much
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: more product than they were on the shelves. And we're
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: going up against these multi-billion dollar companies. And here we are,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: this little tiny little company out of Temecula, California. And
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: so fast forward, we... One of the things that I
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: was trying to figure out how to grow the company,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: it was very expensive to ship ice cream around the world.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, around the country. We did ship to Canada
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: and some different places. But it was very expensive to
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: move product frozen overnight from San Diego to New York
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: to a frozen buyer when you're a very limited budget,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: small company. And I thought, you know what?
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: Amazon.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Amazon. is like the best at shipping stuff. I wonder
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: if they ever would ship frozen. This was early on
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: when Amazon was not even really dealing with too much
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: food products. And so Amazon, we saw them at a
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: show once they started talking to us and they said,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: you know what? We only have shipped like one other
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: type of ice cream product. We'd love to beta test
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: this with you guys. We said, sure, no problem. And
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: so we started put together custom insulated containers, figured out
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: the exact amount of dry ice we needed. That we
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: could ship a two-day air and it would get there
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: in time. All these different things. And it started working
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: swimmingly well. And what we weren't prepared for is that
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: we had, at the time, you would call them an influencer.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Now they call them content creators and stuff like that.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: But this was before Instagram. Facebook was brand new. We
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: became really good friends with this influencer. And she goes, Garrett,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about Arctic Zero on my email
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: blast that I send out every single day. I'm like, great.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: She goes, no, no, you don't understand. I have over 1.2
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: million subscribers and they're active. Then I'm going to email
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: them about your product, Arctic Zero, and it's going to
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: be huge. I said, great, let's do it. She goes,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: I'm going to warn you before I do it. I'm
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: going to give you enough. You need to make sure
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: you have all your T's crossed and your I's dotted.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I said, okay, great. And because she goes, when I
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: talk about it, it will go gangbusters. I'm like, okay, great.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Kind of naive thinking, okay, well, what's this going to do? Yeah, right, right.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. She gave us the notice and we
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: made sure that our website was up and running and
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: protected and fine. We had product in stores. Everything was
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: going to be good. We had Amazon. Amazon was shipping it.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: People could buy it online. It was terrific. And it debuts.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: The email goes out. It's like 12.01 a.m. I'm awoken
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: that morning at like five.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: In the morning.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Have you seen what's going on? I go, what are
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: you talking about? And I pull up my inbox and
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: I've got so many emails and they're not the kind
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: of emails where it's like a yes or no response.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: It's like, I love this. I love this. I want this.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: Where can I get this? And it's just like all
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: of these. And it just, it's one of those things
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: where you answer one and you've got seven more that
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: just came in while you're answering one and then 12
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: more answers. by your second email. And you're like, oh no,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: this is good and this is bad. And all of
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: a sudden, I'm finding out that our website's down. And
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what? We run a new server. This is
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: supposed to be fine. This is not supposed to be
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: a problem. And so I call up GoDaddy because they're
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: the hosting platform that we use. I call them up.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: He goes, one second, sir, let me check. And he
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: drops an expletive on the phone when he looks at
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: our account. He goes, I've never seen this type of
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: bandwidth being consumed in such a short amount of time.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I go, what are you talking about? He goes, you're
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: getting almost 60 visits per second right now. I go, what?
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: He goes, I've never seen that. I've been here for
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: five years. And I'm like, okay, great. He go, I go,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: but we're down, man. And so he's like, give me
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: a second. And he's like, okay, you're back up. And
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: he goes, I put you on a dedicated this and
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: that he goes, you're, you're fine. You won't have a
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: problem again. But I knew that this could be a possibility.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: So I created a form on our website where if
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: you could not find the product online or in your
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: local store, print this out and hand it to your
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: buyer in your grocery store that's local to you. And
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: so instantly we had this literal massive following of people
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: around the nation that had this printout and said, here,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: this is the distributor that has this product. I want this.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: And that's when we exploded into so many more stores.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: But the reason for Amazon was I could facilitate getting
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: product from point A to point B by selling it
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: to ourselves but changing the address. So if I wanted
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: to send it to that buyer in New York, I
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: could buy the product, send it to him, and I
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: would pay the differential, which was the shipping, which ended
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: up being going from like $ 100 to ship it, about $ 12.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: And that's how we got it from point A to
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: point B around the U.S. really, really quickly. But when
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: that debuted and that article went out, We went through
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: tons of product. We went through 10,000 pounds of dry
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: ice a week for the next couple of weeks. And
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: so 10,000 pounds of dry ice, it's a monumental amount
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: of dry ice. And literally, if you don't use it,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: it literally goes up into smoke. I mean, it's like, oh,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: it's gone. You know, you spend all that money. It's
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: in the air now. And the problem is back then,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Amazon was a net 60 situation. So we're moving product
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: every single day. Hundreds and hundreds of orders. We're filling
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: up two to three FedEx trucks every single day. And
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: the bill that they owe us starts getting bigger and
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: bigger and bigger. And I always joke, it was like
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: the GDP of a small nation, what they owed us, right?
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Not literally, but, you know, I'm just like, that's what
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: I told someone once. They're like, you can't say that.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I'm just, anyway, maybe there's a little
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: bit of- You get the idea. You get the idea, right?
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: It was a lot of money, okay? And it got
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: to the point where they were single-handedly going to bankrupt us.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: And I called up my point of contact there. I
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: think it was Teresa- or Barbara, I can't remember what
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: her name was. And it was one of those two.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: And I talked to her. I said, hey, Teresa, I
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: am turning off the spigot. She's like, what are you
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: talking about? You can't do that. You're number 57 of 552,000
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: food items on Amazon. You are a top 100 product.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Give me 30 minutes. Give me 30 minutes. Don't turn
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: it off yet, Garrett. Don't turn it off. I said, okay, fine.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: And so she goes and she talks to the senior
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: vice president of grocery at Amazon. He goes, how much
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: do we owe him? Whoa, that's a lot of money.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I can't authorize this amount. She's like, okay, well, he's
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: turning it off if we don't come back with him
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: with something quick. He goes, okay, I got to go
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: talk to Jeff. So he goes and he talks to
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. And this is back in the day. I
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: know everything's completely different now, but they were big, but
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: they were small, if that makes sense. And talks to
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos is, who are they? Arctic Zero. Okay.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: What are they? Oh, wow. 57.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are. Okay. That's a big amount. All right.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: This is what you're going to do. And he tells
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: his senior vice president, you're going to overnight them a
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: check priority. So it's in their hands first thing tomorrow morning.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Make sure the funds are good to go, that they're
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: not going to have any issues with any bank so
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: that the funds are they're taken care of. Pay them
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: everything that we owe them as of today and move
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: them to net 15 terms. So to this day, I
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: say that I've debt collected Jeff Bezos. So it was good. Wow.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: That's amazing.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: That's incredible.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: Well, Garrett, thank you so much for joining us here today.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: It's been a long time coming and we're excited to
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: have you. We're proud to highlight all of your work
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: here at Mountain West Capital Network.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: And for our listeners who want to learn more about
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: you and connect with you, how do they do that?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: Just send me an email. Garrett at KJ.com. Two R's,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: two T's. That's awesome.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: And to everyone listening, thank you for joining us. A
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: special thanks to the LaunchPod team, Johnny, Christine, Cole, and
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: Rachel for producing our show. Zachary Reed for his vision
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: and direction as producer. Katie Brown, our operations specialist, for
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: keeping us in line and on track. And to Garrett
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: Lawson and Kevin Jessup for serving as our Mountain West
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Capital Network podcast chairs.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: And don't forget to leave us a five-star review and
• 1:00:47
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• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: leaders shaping our business future. There's nothing we appreciate more
• 1:00:54
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• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Winner's Circle.