Ron Worley is a successful business owner, real estate investor, mentor, and self-made millionaire who follows his own code, The Worley Way. He is a proud dad and husband living in Colorado. He refused to accept his early situation and took action that lead to a life-changing reality. His ability to understand the environment, measure risk, and turn uncertainty into opportunity has made him millions of dollars.
Ron is also a podcast host, Sons of Ditches, which you can listen to on Spotify. And his successful book from Ditches to Riches. Read more about Ron and his book here: Home – Ron Worley and on Instagram @ronaldlworleyii
Transcript:
Dominic- So thanks very much for coming on the podcast today.
Ron- Thank you so much, Dominic. Pleasure. We’ve had already a good conversation, haven’t we?
Dominic- Yeah, it’s been fun. I often think that, you know, when I have a chat to some guests. This is one of those occasions when I think we should have been recording 10 minutes ago, where some funny stories come out. Ron Wally is a successful business owner. He’s a real estate investor and mentor and a self-made millionaire, who follows his own code called the Wally way. And we’ll unpack that during our discussion today. He’s a proud dad and loving husband, and they all live in Colorado, refused to accept his early situation in life and took action that led to a life-changing reality. One’s also a podcast host podcast is called sons of bitches, which you can listen to on Spotify. And he has a successful book called ‘From Ditches to Riches. And it’s really popular, and we’ll link to the book in our show notes. But Ron, you’re a self-made business owner, you’ve launched 11 businesses and four retail locations. And you’ve done this through developing your own code. And that sounds really fantastic. But it hasn’t always been that way has it? Can you maybe talk to our listeners about- where did you come from? Tell us about your history.
Ron- Yeah, man. So, it’s never been perfect in my world. I grew up in a family of hippies, which you know, back then the hippies smoked a lot of reefer and listen to good music. And my father was actually into Harley Davidson. So he, he was in one of those little biker gangs. And the things I learned at a young age were quite atrocious. In fact, I started smoking weed when I was two years old. My parents thought that would be a good idea to help me go to sleep. So really my addiction career started at two years old. Now it stopped at 30 years old. But in between, there was just Hell, I was lucky. I’m lucky to be alive. I had three suicide attempts as a full-blown alcoholic, a full-blown drug addict. By the time I was in seventh grade, I was looking for any high I could get at that point. And, you know, it’s not like I was a guy on the side of the street with a needle sticking out of my arm. But, you know, I hung out with the worst of the worst and found my way to drugs to alcohol every weekend, which ultimately ended up ruining a lot of my careers. I was supposed to be a football player, I was quite good at football and went off to go play football in college. And I made it you know, a year before I got kicked out. And another year after that before I got kicked out of college again. So the choices I made at a young age, or the choices that were made for me, really, they ruined my life forever. But I say that and you know, I thought it was all over at 30 years old, I was homeless. I just had my second rollover car accident where I was picked from the car that was my gonna be my fourth DUI, but it turned out that he didn’t give me one that day, luckily for me, and so I was really on a one-way path to death. And that was it for me. I woke up from that car accident in the hospital and decided that I was going to change my life. And I certainly did. From there. Let’s see, that was 2003 Gosh, it’s been 18 years. So 2003 I got sober I started working on getting my kids back, I got a job and really at 30 years old, I was starting over like I was 18, you know, whatever job I could get I took there so I can get a one-bedroom apartment so I could see my kids, it’s all that mattered. That sort of mentality carried on into running my own business. I started bail bonds, my mother and I were in business together and she welcomed me back once I got sober and got my life together to partner up with her again. So that was a pretty quick jaunt. Probably in the first year, I was already back to making six figures a year. But I had to do it the hard way. You know, I was working two jobs and pretty disciplined at that point, you know, okay, my focus is this, I’ve got to be the best father I can be to the children and I have to be the best. Everything has to be perfect. Any sort of chaos in my life, life at that time would take me back out and have me drink and party and do that kind of thing. And that’s where I didn’t want to be. So that sort of discipline actually helped me change into this business-minded person, I went from being pretty carefree to hunker down and just being, you know, a badass in business, trying to get it done and trying to try to make some money and give my kids a new life or a different life than what I had. Fortunately for me, my kids were all under six years old. And so they don’t remember any of this time in their life, or when dad was a freaking loser. So that was kind of nice. That pretty much takes us all the way to the point where I get my kids back, and then life changes from there. A couple of years into sobriety, I’ve met a police officer name is Aaron Brady, and she’s the love of my life. And somehow together, we make fantastic businesses. She’s just like me, very disciplined, very hard working. But on the flip side, I’m very carefree. And she’s more she’s black and white, and I’m grey all over. The way it always goes, man, I always say, hey, that would be really cool to own that business. Let’s open this. And she goes, No, we’re not doing any more businesses. We’re not doing anything else. And then I talk her into it. And then she makes it so that it’s safe. When we do open it. You know, she asks all the questions and makes sure I’m not just flying off the rails. When I have these ideas.
Dominic- That’s great. We all need we all need someone like that in our life.
Ron- Heck, yeah. Yeah, she’s cool.
Dominic- It’s even more great when our children are so young that they don’t remember when we were losers. And they only see the older, more polished versions of us.
Ron- my stuff lasted until I was pretty old. But I talked to people that are in the mid 20s a lot. And when I asked them the same question, how old are your kids? Blah, blah, blah, don’t worry, they won’t remember that. It’s always the same thing. They’re like, think about if they if they lived in your head? What if you had kids when you were like 16? And you were in high school? What how dumb would they think you were, you know, we all grow up. And, you know, hopefully, it’s before our kids see too much. But, you know, that just makes us smarter when we raise him.
Dominic- You spoke about drug addiction and self harm, which is difficult for anyone to overcome at any point in their life. But an addiction starting at two would seem almost impossible to overcome. And you’ve talked a lot about in your books and in your podcast about building a life based on trust and bravery, family freedom. I also know you’re not someone to blame others, but trust and family and freedom. How do you define family and what a successful family is and what trust is?
Ron- Yeah, so that’s a great question, actually. Because I had to actually, I met a guy named Jim Hensel. Who does basically I call them my man coach, but he helped me find refined purpose in my sobriety, he helped me understand because I nothing was making sense. What I thought trust wasn’t for me. What I thought, you know, hard work, bravery, these kinds of words. They didn’t resonate with me in the same way that they resonate with others. Of course, I can’t trust women. My mom got me high. When I was two years old, there’s no way on Earth, am I ever going to be able to trust a woman in a traditional sense. So yeah, I agree. What we did was we sat down and came up with 10 values. It’s so much I said, I make it sound easy. It’s a 16-week deal and but at the end of the day, I came up with the Worley way. There are 10 values that are in my book, and really, I had to redefine what each value meant to me. So yeah, family is not the same for me, family, is anybody that loves and respects my values, and has values themselves. So if they can’t act, right, if they can’t love me, or my family or anybody in it, they’re not part of my family. I put it on a great big poster because I was so proud to have these 10 values in my life Finally, something like a code that I could follow. And it was very important that, that I showed my family that and so it was almost like instantaneous, I put this huge poster on our wall. And I’m like, that’s what we’re doing. And my kids are like, what, they’ve already got values because I’ve been teaching them things. And I didn’t even know it. You know, I wasn’t intentional, it was just what was coming out having this code especially for boys, I found, it gave them some sort of boundaries in their lives when I wasn’t around. And I thought I thought that was important. So that actually worked for my employees, too. And so my wife and I came up with values that were specific to our company. And actually, that’s like, the second or third thing I do every time I start a company, I go ahead and come up with some values for the, for the company, specific for the industry, we’re in Usually, it’s highly important because it keeps the employees within their set of boundaries. When you’re not around, I do this thing where we talk about hiring to your values. And I actually would hire people, according to our values, make sure that they as closely as they could represent themselves to our values- if that makes sense.
Dominic- Yeah, it does. It’s a great point. And you know, I encourage our guests right now. But right now, pause the podcast and have a listen, think about, you know, what are the five most important values in your life. And if you don’t instantly know if you can instantly say what they are, you know, I’d say you spend the time to identify them and get into a Google search. And you’ll find a whole bunch of different lists about 4050 100 different values and identify what your most important ones are. Because living your crumb grew in life means living comfortably and being happy. But that requires you to live consistent with your values. And most often, when you have that uncomfortable feeling in your chest, or you’re feeling down, and I’m not talking about clinical depression, but you’re just feeling uncomfortable with your life. Often that’s about incongruency. And might be that, you know, you grew up with people and your university friends, and maybe you all got into finance, and you’ve been living a life around finance and making money. But maybe if you did your value check, you’d realise the most important values to your fitness, family loyalty, love travel, if something along those lines. And if you did that your whole life, none of those are about money. And of course, I need money to do some of those things. But this is maybe I’m on the wrong path by pursuing, you know, doing 18 hour days working for a financial firm, it is such a great activity. And I remember doing that several years ago, and I’ve come back to it. And, you know, you sort of figured out I, of course, this will be any activity until you sit down the list of 40 values and go, Wow, now that one’s not important at all. Not important, who would ever put that down. And then of course, those values are important to some people, but then you sort of know you look at your values and go, who would not have loyalty as one of their values. But a lot of people that’s not in their top five if other things are most important to them than loyalty or respect or so I think it’s a really fantastic activity to do.
Ron- Yeah, and you know, for. So for all intents and purposes of what I try to do to help somebody right off the bat, I tell him if you’re ever going to start a business, if that’s what they’re in for, or if you’re ever going to try and get that big promotion at work, you have to find your purpose, what you’re designed to do, and it’s already there, we’re not like looking for it, it’s there, we’re designed to do things, it’s just usually not anything that you think it is. And so I really work hard to separate that. So it’s not just find your values, it’s find your values, find your be the beat the capital B capital E, and, and that’s your talents, values and purpose. And then separate that from what you do. Now your do should help you help you guide yourself towards your B that should always help your B be a focus, but you can’t just be you have to do as well. And so the bees and the do’s and, and all that’s really important. And if you’re not aligned with both of those, you’re not going to be successful. You can look at any millionaire out there and their dues are specifically aligned with who they be. And and that’s what we’re trying to do and they do it I don’t know if they did it on purpose. But this is something you can kind of go back and look it up all of them and just go Yeah, you know. And some of the richest billionaires in the world that their dues what they do every day is is by design they they mean to be doing it. By the way I don’t ever want to be a billionaire millionaire is fine with me. I think it takes way too much work to be a billionaire. And I don’t want to work that hard.
Dominic- Yeah, no, no, I think you’re totally right. And so many people you know if we look at the Tim Ferriss of this Well, you know, they talk a lot about identifying what it is you want, and then pursuing that. But you know, you really need to understand your values and what it is you want to pursue. And then you’ve got really clear actions, you’re not just being active every day, you’re being productive, and you’re actually moving towards whatever your specific goals are. Absolutely. You said one of the first things that you do when starting a business is to define the values, what are the risks associated with running a business in congruently, or blindly without knowing what your values are?
Ron- So yeah, when you start a business, you do a SWOT analysis, you do a business plan, I think it’s equally important to come up with your values plan for your company, this is going to help you design the people that you hire, understand who your customer is, on a deeper level. And I found this out, actually, through one of my companies, we were just starting a retail location. And we had this really good customer that would come in once a week and buy a product from us. And I said, Man, what is this guy doing? Right? He spends so much money in here, we need like, 50 of him every week, right? And so I actually did a study on him, like, what did he do for a living? What kind of jokes? Did he tell? What did he talk about when he came in? What is his family? Like, we just would ask him all these questions, and he didn’t even know he was like, are, you know, we were finding out what this guy was all about. And so then I would go out in the community and try and find more of him, you know, we were out looking for Wilson. And then Wilson was, I won’t give his first name. That’s his last name. And he’s a cop. And so we went out into community and tried to find more people like him, and it kind of dawned on me that, oh, wait a minute, he’s a lot like me, you know, I’m, I attract who I am. And if I want to have good customers, I have to be a good person. And again, my business is an extension of who I am. So I really have to have my stuff together. So it’s highly important when you’re starting your company, to make sure you have your values in place. And this will help your company just start off correctly. And and actually, you’ll it’ll help you design your business plan if you do it, right.
Dominic- You’ve mentioned purpose a few times, and I know if we have purpose, it’s a very powerful component of our lives. We also talk about purpose a lot when we’re considering employee activism. And I think most management companies nowadays are discussing creating shared purpose within the workplace. But how do you help create that purpose for you employees? Because I know that’s something a lot of businesses, especially today with, you know, me to movement and Black Lives Matters, which is, you know, really important activities and activists and issues that they’re working through. How do we bring people together to create purpose? And before we even started the interview, we know we’re talking about some political challenges and polarizations in many great countries, you know, that sort of divide makes having a shared purpose, sometimes even more difficult. How do you you create that in companies?
Ron- Yeah, so by having your purpose completely at the forefront of the company, it keeps a lot of that stuff out of the business, we don’t have politics in any of our businesses, maybe behind the scenes, when you’re talking to a manager on the side or something has nothing to do with business, but we stay very down the middle, by having our own purpose, because we’re creating another element of the business that that is the forefront. And when you do that, again, you hire that way. When we’re out in the community, which we do a lot of community work, we have friends from all over all all sorts of avenues and, and we have friends that we don’t agree with, but we love and and because we come together on the purpose, we’re here to help someone else or this you know, when we go to we do every Thursday, we go and work at the food bank, and, and all of our friends come in, there’s like 40 of us that come to this thing. And again, everybody’s from different backgrounds, and every type of person you can imagine and political affiliation to we just don’t talk about it. And so it isn’t a problem, because our purpose is to help other people feed themselves. And so when you have an actual purpose it keeps, it keeps all the junk away from your business. You know, we’re not here to do that we’re here for this purpose. And when that’s carefully defined, you’ll see a lot less bickering and fighting within the company. And when you hire towards those purposes, like when when we hire nowadays, one of the first questions I ask them is to define family, and what does that mean to them? And it’s fun to watch. Sometimes people that don’t really understand what I’m asking. They, you know, they want to give me their typical answer that they learned to talk in in college and told them how to have an interview. we flipped that upside down and now all of a sudden they’re stuttering and, and trying to figure out what family actually means to them for the first time in their lives a lot of times and then there’s the guys Did a very tight with their families and they have a very clear definition of family. And, you know, those are the guys we’re going to hire. I say, guys, I mean guys and women. And it’s important to us to have somebody that believes in family, it doesn’t matter what they politically think or feel or what activism, they’re doing that, you know, we keep all that out of our out of our realm, just through our purpose itself. Now, on the flip side, a person without purpose is just kind of meandering. And I was one of these people. And when I was opening, trying to open a business as a meander, I couldn’t, I failed. And I’ve had several businesses fail until I found purpose. And at first it was my wife, when when I came into her life, she’s very by the book, she was a police officer, so she was very black and white. And she knew every step, she was very purposeful, and everything was, you know, thought out for years, she was gonna, she had her career thought out everything. And so I learned how to do that to live within her lifespan or into her lifestyle, I had to learn how to do that a little bit. And, and being systematic was very helpful. And when I started opening businesses, I became, you know, successful businesses, I had to become systematic, it wasn’t, hey, I’m cool, I’m just going to open this business. And everybody likes me now. So they’re going to come by my product, that’s, that’s not the case, you, you know, you have to have systems, you have to have purpose, you have to have values within your company, so that you build this sort of family relationship with your employees. And that’s actually one of our always one of our values as family because that’s how we treat our employees. Now, the selfish business man side, this is probably as gross as I get, man, a person that feels like they’re part of the family will work harder, longer, stay longer, and for cheaper money, if they feel comfortable and feel like they’re in their family. So to me, that was like a no brainer, we’re gonna, we’re gonna make some families because I can’t afford to pay these guys with this brand new company I got, and you know, and then we take care of them. We have a few doctors in our past that have been through our company and moved on to become doctors and whatnot. And a couple of presidents have a couple of different companies. And so we’re pretty proud of that, you know, and they still call and come around and hang out. And it’s been 10 years, some of them and it’s pretty cool. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.
Dominic- That’s very cool. You know, I often look at that, because you know, some offices when you go into clients and partners offices, some some companies just have this great aura, or abandon, like, what is it? Is it the plants? Is it the music in the background? Like why is this office has got this fantastic or? And and then of course, you go into some offices, and it’s, it’s the opposite. It’s scary. So being in the USSR in 1955, it’s not a place you want to go to doesn’t doesn’t feel you would want. But yeah, I think that that family feeling and having that loyalty, and that that bond with your colleagues, I think that that’s really can be can be felt, by I heard a motivational speaker years ago. And he said, if you’re an employee, if you have an employee, and they’re negative, and they’re draining on your energy, fire them, if you work for someone, and they’re negative, and they’re draining, quit, get a new job, if you’re dating someone who’s negative, and they’re draining, leave them. And I think that’s just, you know, some people might think that’s quite harsh, but you know, I think the basis of the story behind it is really powerful. Like, you need to surround yourself with people that that are go getters that have purpose and have values and you know, really drag you along, when you’re having that down day, they’ll pick you up. And then when you need each other, you’re there for each other and you learn from each other. It’s like, with the gym and training and running. Yeah, I don’t want to I never want to train with someone who has the same fitness as me, partly because I’m very unfit. But I really liked I will only train with people who are fitter than me because I they will push me harder that will pull me and push me and it will be a much better session. And often that’s the way in life but what do you see is the risks with associating with people who are not aligned with or respectful of your values.
Ron- It’s easy, man, the biggest risk is that there’s not cohesiveness. And the customer can see that the person that walks into your store your office, your company, they can see that and we’re supposed to treat our community well so that our community will want to be in our in our business and and you can’t do that without having everybody on the same page. Man, there’s, there’s got to be cohesiveness. And you know, what, there’s a there’s a fit for everybody out there. So if my company’s not, I’m not looking for people are just looking for a job. I’m looking for people that want to grow with the company and, and be around a while and, and I learned that because we had 24. In our first retail location, we had 24 new hires in one year. And so that meant every other week we were hiring a new person and it just was out of hand and and as soon as we started doing the worldly way, and we started defining our business and who we were and what our customers All About then adding values to our employees repertoire. All of a sudden, we stopped, we were doing like one manager a year. And that’s because every we had three, three stores at the time. And every other year, one of our managers was moving out of college or something, and that their life was moving on that that changed drastically, we almost happened upon it. But it was, a lot of businesses already knew this. And ever since then, we hire that way. Even our real estate, where it’s just me and my wife, we have a real estate company, everybody that helps us, our assistants, our TCS, the people that handle our paperwork, even our customers, they come to our Thursday night volunteer nights, and, you know, they’re all a part of that they’re a part of our lives, they came to our our party for Fourth of July and, and were a part of that too, and helped us clean up afterwards. And it was just fun to see that, you know, we just made money on you a lot of money on you, and you’re still over at our house helping us do our thing. And you know, it, people gravitate towards positivity and, and I think if you can keep your, your business widely positive, happy people inside and cohesive, the risk of your business failing is much, much lower, much lower.
Dominic- Totally as you were talking about your highs, it made me think about interviewing a new member for the team. And the manager asked me if I could sit in I was I was that managers manager. And I asked if I if I could sit in and support them with some of the interviews. And I said I would. And one of the candidates we interviewed and then it was a good interview. And she performed very well the candidate. And then at the end of it, she started to tear up a little bit and it was a little bit awkward. You know, we’re in a small room, just the three of us interviewing or talking, talking. And, and she just apologised, she goes, Oh, look, I’m really really sorry. And she was quite young. She’s early 20s, mid 20s. And she says, Look, I’m really sorry, I don’t mean to cry. I just I really love your organised like, I genuinely love your organisation. I love your mission. I’ve been following you guys for so long. When I saw this job opportunity come up, I jumped on it, I would just you’re just being interviewed is really just it’s been really, really rewarding for me, I just, I just want to thank you for your time whether I get the job or not. But you know, I this is just a great and rewarding experience for me. And yeah, we thanked her and she left and I looked at the manager and I said what do you what do you think? What do you think of this potential candidate should be reporting to you? And the manager just sort of rolled her eyes and goes, No way. Like, clearly she’s crazy. And I went, Okay, let’s have that we look at it from a different point of view of loyalty, like, okay, she cried in an interview. But is that the worst thing in the world? Like, you know, the worst thing someone could do in an interview? What sort of an employee Do you think she’s going to be? Do you think she’s going to leave work at 4pm? Or do you think she’s going to leave work? When the job’s done? I think, you know, if there’s a difficult task and everyone else’s, you know, burying their head in their computer pretending to be busy. What do you think she’s gonna do? You know, let’s look at it from a different way. And you know, that that manager was arming and hiring. So I sort of supported them to make the correct decision. And we gave her the job. Yeah, she was one of the best employees, when everyone else was groaning and humbling. And when there were issues and problems, we had to deal through big projects that were behind schedule, you know, everyone sort of under stress. She was always this ray of sunlight. And always like, Good morning, Dominic, how are you? Is there anything I can help with? Your rock star, that attitude that it brings into the into the team is just so so valuable.
Ron- It is man and this is the first time I’m going to tell the story, but I just heard it, and I got goosebumps from your story. So I have to add to it. So my son, and I’m always just so proud of my kids, my son’s about to graduate college. He’s 21 years old. And he gets an interview at a lending company here in the area, the largest one in the area. He sits down with the owner, he’s the 21 year old kid, everybody else is in their 30s 40s. It’s a great job, long shot to get it. And he sits down and they asked him his questions, blah, blah, blah. And they said, Hey, what do you have for questions? And he goes, what are your values? And this is after he spent the interview. And he and he used his values to describe himself, which is like, spot on with what dad taught him. And, and they’re just blown away by this kid that comes in and just talks about real values. Not Oh, yeah, I’m going to college to be this and that. And the other. No, no, he’s talking about what how he’s a family kid. He’s, you know, this is what he’s all about. And then he turned it around on their heads. And he said, and what are your values? And they were stumped. They didn’t have any. They didn’t have a clue what he was, like, they had no answer for him. So they hired him on the spot. That was it. He got the job. And now they have they’re working on their values. You know, they’re they’re working on setting up their own values for their company. And, and you know, this kid, we’re talking about a guy, the owner of the company makes 10 million a year and he doesn’t have values in his company. And he’s constantly turning over, you know, people and my, my young kid goes in and, and I just thought it was brilliant. You know, they hired him. same scenario. Like, this kid is gonna be a badass dude in our office because he just, he had enough gumption to do that, you know, I was pretty amazing for him anyway.
Dominic- Yeah, great. He had the courage to do that I regularly whenever anyone speaks to me as well, people reach out and go, Hey, I’m looking for this job. Can I use it as a reference? Or can you look at my CV? Have you got any pointers? And one of the first things I always say is, yeah, this is a fantastic opportunity. I’m really excited for you, this is great. But make sure you interview the company as well. It’s a two way process. It’s a two way process. You know, how many of us over the years have gone? I hate my job, I hate my current role. And if we lost a few key questions during this selection process, we might have avoided that. Now I know, when you’re looking for a job, you know, often we we feel like we have to accept it or Okay, it looks okay. But I think there’s so much value in really interviewing the company that’s thinking of hiring you because they need something as well. They’re not interviewing you, out of the goodness of their heart. They’re interviewing you because they need something from you. And I think it’s really important that we understand what our potential employer or potential clients and customers are actually wanting from us before we get into that relationship and asking what their values are. I mean, is there a better I can’t think of many better questions in that at all.
Ron- Yeah, yeah. And it makes you think, if you don’t have any sure have to think about it. So it you know, in my opinion, you’re absolutely right. And, and honestly, when when somebody comes in and knows about my company, it makes the interview go so much quicker. So much, you’re more at ease, because you’re not just trying to, you know, that person actually wants to be there. And you know, it. And boy, if you can stump me in an interview, you’re hired, dude, that’s great.
Dominic- Yeah, I actually remember my first job interview, I wanted to ask a girl out at school, you know, I think I was about I think I was about 12 at the time, and I realised I didn’t, I couldn’t ask my mom for money. And so I was like, Oh, I’m gonna need money. If I’m going to take this girl on a date. And I didn’t know what even a date men, I just knew that I’m going to have to buy some roses, I’m going to have to pay for a dinner, I’m gonna have to take it to a movie, at least in Australian culture, the expectation is that the man would pay at least for the first date. And I thought, well, I can’t ask them for that. We’re gonna have to get a job. Nice little to have your and so on the way home from school. I just stopped in it, the first news agent that sells newspapers, they just went up to the camera and just went, Hey, are you looking to hire anyone? And it happens to be the owner who was working the cash register that time and you guys I am actually did you see the the job in the window? And I know I didn’t Sorry, I’m just I just thought I’d come and ask you. So what sort of job we’re looking for. And I said, I’m just looking for money. So what jobs have you got available? Right? You’re not looking for a job, I’m looking for money. He’s like, Okay, I’m looking for someone to deliver papers. And I was like, oh, and even I knew at that age, that’s a typical job for a young boy, young girl to have. And I went awesome. That’s great. I can deliver papers. And he goes, Okay. And he goes, we’ll come back tomorrow. And, you know, he asked me what school I went to, and a few questions like that. And I said, I have got a question for you, when you sort of taking a bit of backing away. So can you tell me how many papers Do I have to deliver? Like, how far will I be riding the bike? And he’s like, he still looked at his face screwed up. And he’s like, no one’s ever asked me that question before. And I was like, Oh, it’s just and you see that innocence that a 12 year old has and I just went, Oh, if you’re asking me to deliver papers, it just feels like a logical thing that I should know how many papers I need to deliver, and how long is it going to take you guys? That is such a good question. I was like, Oh, just just seems like a logical thing to ask. You know, if we can take that, you know, maybe make it a little bit more complex. But I think you know, we should all be doing that and when we go through the interview process and just the whole process of life shouldn’t be asking those questions but I for anyone that’s thinking maybe a video grab of our conversation they might see I didn’t have to wear beautiful is the is the right word, but they might see a picture of a man with a bloodied face and bloody fists and bloody bandages. But behind your head. In your book, you talk about taking problems into the ring? do you explain that concept to our listeners? What does that mean?
Ron- Yeah, man. So I used to, I used to take my problems with me everywhere. I wore them on my sleeves. I was highly emotional. And, and when you’re emotional, you’re not thinking properly, you’re reacting to the emotion rather than thinking. And so I came up with this way when problems happen I had, I could only deal with the problem in a certain setting. So if I was driving down the car, in the car down the road, maybe I was headed to work or anywhere else. That’s where I was allowed to think and deal with my issue at the time, the problem, the emotion, whatever it may be. Usually, it’s a negative emotion that we’re dealing with. And, you know, that’s when it’s time for me to roll it through my head, possibly work it through my values most of the time, work it through my values and get to a productive consensus of how I’m going to handle that situation. It’s not okay to do that. in the workplace. It’s not okay to do that at home, with the wife or the kids. You know, those are all inappropriate places, and that’s where I was carrying my luggage into the house and I’d take it out on my kids and my wife and my employees, and then I’d be in a foul mood and, and people would have to be, you know, walking on eggshells around me and, and I didn’t like that. So now we, you know, I put it in the ring it that’s my personal time to deal with it. I’m fighting it out in there. And that’s why I use the ring is because, you know, it’s a battle sometimes some of these things. I mean, I’m telling you some of the things I deal with in my head from what I grew up with, and, and some of the abuses and things that I’ve been through in my lifetime. They’re still there, they’re prevalent in my life I have to battle on almost daily, and that’s okay. But it’s where do I do it? And how can I be appropriate about this. And now I’ve actually taken it one step further, I put them in the ring, and then I box them up. And once I baulked him up, man, I’m not allowed to open the box. And when I say I box him up, I put the negative emotion, you can physically do this, or you can do it in your, in your head, put the negative emotion in the middle of the box square. And then around the four sides, find four values, your values, preferably, that will help you defeat the negative emotion, you know, it’s hard to come up with a great example right off the cuff. But you know, 90% of the time, if I can think about how my values relate to this negative emotion, I generally can work my way through it pretty quickly. And that ring is much smaller now man, I hardly ever have to take anything in their life is much different. But when you’re when you’re getting sober, and when you’re when you’ve had all this negativity in your life, everything is chaos, everything is just really super sensitive. And, and, you know, top of I mean, I literally was walking around an angry angry person. And, and it was just horrible to be like that. So I found a place to do it. It’s, it’s fun, at first because you literally can, you know, this is when you can be in your car and scream and yell and cry and just be mad. And that’s okay, there’s no one else around and, you know, and then you get to be normal again, when you’re around people. So it’s kind of cool. You know, I spent a whole chapter on it in my book or a half a chapter on it, and I probably overtopped it. But it is a very important tool in my life. One of the tools I use in the ring is feel filter, think, flow. So you feel something, and then you want to go ahead and you want to run it through your value system. And which causes you once you add values to an emotion now your brain is thinking instead of feeling and, and then you can flow which is go on about your day. Sort of a hot little mess there. But
Dominic- yeah, I love that. Feel filter, think flow. That’s great. That’s great. I’m certainly gonna ponder that one and play with that one a bit more. But before I let you go today, Reiner wouldn’t be the international risk podcast if I didn’t ask you, when you when you look at the horizon, when you look at the rest of 2021 and into 2022. What are the sort of risks that are on your radar?
Ron- Yeah, so we’re in my real estate game, or I’ve got a few things, few houses we’re building, I’m hoping that the market stays solid enough for me to get them sold. And so that is one of the big risks in America right now is where our inflation rate is headed, and what it’s going to do to my real estate game. On the flip side, I’m a bail bondsman been a bail bondsman for 25 years. And that also with the corona stuff, some of the jails have shut down. And so that’s sort of died off, I’ve lost about 50% of my business on there due to Corona and, and so luckily, the the real estate has picked up and the other one has died off and in right now, probably three of the four businesses I own at the moment are centred around real estate. And so the risk is going to be how well I manage the the amount of money I’ve got out there on these properties and, and whatnot. So we’ll see, I think we’re doing okay, I think we were prepared for 2022 the rates to rise to offset the inflation and then you know, that’ll be the time that the inventory comes out and the prices drop and we’ll be able to purchase at that point. But right now it’s the big money grab trying to get enough money to be able to purchase and when the rates raise, so that’s a big risk for us. I would love to keep that about values, but that’s actually what’s in my ring right now is is what’s happening in America within inflation and the cost of lumber and all that it’s really driving home prices through the roof through here and it’s it’s been quite miserable for a lot of people to just even own a home that normally could.
Dominic- You’re totally right. I mean Who would have guessed You know, when we remember, we’re talking sort of january, february 2020, when a lot of countries hadn’t even considered COVID. I remember speaking with my friend who’s, he works in intelligence, but he’s got an economics background. And we were speaking about the potential evolution and a lot of things that he was saying I can’t take credit for, you know, what was said in the conversation. But certainly one of the things are many of the things he was saying was about the, you know, the recession that was definitely going to come and the economic impact of COVID, we’re really unpacking that and talking about the the impacts and the likely evolution of it. But you know, even as the the crisis went on, I mean, Who would have guessed that this would actually result in shortages of gym equipment, it’s impossible to buy an exercise bike online, it’s impossible to buy a kettlebell or, or a gym set, and you know, guessing that the prices of wood would go up, because everyone that has kept the job is going to be renovating their houses, and the price values would actually go up, not just in America, but all around the world. I mean, I think it really paints the picture very well about risk isn’t something that happens in isolation. It’s not just a crime, or a terrorism, employee activism, or discrimination. You know, risk is something that operates and it flows in an interactive of things, which will create new risks, and sometimes new opportunities. But it’s not something that happens in a vacuum. And we really need to get better at considering one of the second and third and fourth order effects of what’s happening today.