This episode elucidates the profound journey of Jonathan Dawson, a distinguished entrepreneur whose evolution is emblematic of the intricate relationship between personal growth and professional success. We delve into the essence of true impact, emphasizing that before one can effectuate change externally, an internal transformation is imperative. Dawson shares his experiences, beginning from his early aspirations to the pivotal moments that shaped his identity as a leader in the automotive industry. The discussion further illuminates the principles of stewardship and resilience, underscoring the importance of nurturing one's values and maintaining a human-centric approach in business. As we explore the unique culture established at Dawson's dealership, listeners are invited to reflect on their own paths towards becoming better versions of themselves, ultimately fostering a community built on authenticity and mutual support. The discourse presented in this episode encapsulates the essence of personal development and entrepreneurial journey. Commencing with the host, Adam Marburger, the conversation unfolds to reveal the significant impact of Jonathan Dawson, a guest whose contributions extend beyond mere business acumen to encompass profound personal growth. The dialogue probes into Dawson's formative years, illustrating that his aspirations were not initially aligned with those of a conventional entrepreneur. Instead, he was driven by a desire for autonomy and the need to transcend the limitations of his upbringing. This perspective highlights a pivotal theme: the internal groundwork that precedes external success. Dawson's narrative is imbued with reflections on goal-setting and the realization that success is not merely a product of luck but a cultivated skill set, one that can be learned and refined over time. As the discussion progresses, it becomes evident that the fabric of Dawson's philosophy is woven with insights on resilience, adaptability, and the importance of community in fostering success, ultimately leading to the overarching message that authentic human connections are at the heart of meaningful achievement.

Takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the importance of building authentic connections with individuals, which fosters real conversations and understanding.
• It discusses the necessity of internal development before external achievements can be realized, highlighting personal growth and resilience.
• Listeners are encouraged to discern between genuine stress and stress stemming from unmet expectations, emphasizing the importance of emotional intelligence.
• The conversation reveals the significance of curiosity over confusion, suggesting that a curious mindset can lead to opportunities rather than obstacles.
• The podcast articulates that success is a learnable skill, which can be cultivated through understanding patterns and recognizing the clues left by those who have succeeded before us.
• Lastly, the episode underscores the value of stewardship in business, advocating for a customer-centric approach that prioritizes meaningful experiences over mere transactions.

This is Adam Marburger.

And this is humans that build real conversations with real people.

Not just about what they've built in the world, but what had to be built inside them first.

No hype, no shortcuts, just humans doing the work.

Humans that build.

Real people.

Real work.

Welcome to another episode of Humans that Build.

I'm your host, Adam Marburger.

And this show is designed to help individuals become better versions of themselves.

And the goal is ultimately to make an impact.

And I've got somebody here today that's not just made a massive impact in my life, but making an impact in multiple lives on a daily basis.

Welcome to Humans that Build.

My dear friend, Jonathan Dawson.

How the heck are you today?

Well, my default answer is super fantastic with plans on getting better.

But it's especially true today because as soon as I wrap up this call, I'm hopping with my family on a plane.

We're going to Park City.

We're going to enjoy a long weekend with my daughter skiing and things like this.

So I'm doing great, but the day is going to get better.

Yeah, knowing.

So I'm going to start here then.

So knowing that you're going on a family trip and you're a high level entrepreneur, multiple ventures, are you one of those entrepreneurs that can completely shut it down on trips?

Are you going to be.

Not on any email this weekend, not returning text and phone calls.

Be honest, Jonathan.

The truth of that is it depends.

It depends on the guidelines set at the expectation with my wife.

If we agree that this is a trip that is a getaway, but it's the work, you know, still getaway.

If we bring our laptops, that's that, that's the answer.

Right.

If we don't bring our laptops, that tells.

That's the how we know.

So if she packs her laptop, then it's okay to respond to things and get stuff done.

Coming out of our most recent venture that you and I went to, you know, the NADA conference, there's a ton of follow up and things that are owed and so we gave ourselves permission to get caught up on this trip.

So mostly the trip is for my daughter.

She's six and a half right now and she loves Utah.

Loves Utah.

And so it's her favorite place on the planet.

So really we go there for her.

So we'll get some stuff done while we're there this time.

What a beautiful.

Utah's beautiful.

Yeah.

To your point, Adam, other times, yeah, it's complete disconnect.

I shut off the brain and I'M just chilling.

Well, I don't blame Maya at all because Utah is probably one of those beautiful places I've ever been as well.

So let's just get right to it.

I mean we're going to, we're going to talk about a whole lot about business, but I want to go back in time.

Let's go back to young Jonathan Dawson.

Jonathan Dawson, in middle school did you have these dreams and aspirations of being this elite automotive guru?

I mean, is that where you plan to be when you were a young boy?

Was that the story?

No, no.

I would say early in my life I was exposed to ideas that began to shape the direction of where I live now, my world now.

But it was not like a clear roadmap.

I never had early in my life, like I'm going to be in the classic sense like an astronaut, a lawyer, whatever, like that.

I didn't have that in my early, early life.

And I really didn't have any clear idea of what I wanted to be until I became kind of a teenager and was around again, 15, 16, 17.

And that's when I thought, I thought I had a clear vision for my life at that point.

But if you go back to middle school and earlier than that, what I knew is that I knew I wanted money and I knew I wanted what money I thought brought, which was freedom.

And so that was the main thing I wanted.

I grew up in a house where, you know, we didn't have a lot of abundance.

We had enough.

We weren't poor, we weren't poverty, we weren't living, you know, like patient to patient like that.

We were middle class America.

You know, we had, there was four of us in a car.

And so, you know, when you have four kids in a car with, with, with your parents and there's six of you in the car, you're all on top of each other all the time.

Back to course this before you had to, had to be buckled up all the time, you know, but, but like I just wanted my space.

I wanted my own stuff because I had a younger brother and I had an older sister and then I had a younger sister.

So like I never had like, you know, you never have like your own stuff.

My toys, my brother would always touch my toys.

It's like I want my own space, I want my own toys, I want to share a room with my brother.

So all I knew early and when I was about 12 years old is when I got exposed to the work of Tony Robbins.

And so at 12 years old that's A major pivotal couple, pivotal things happened in my life at that time.

But one of the major pivotal things was I got exposed to goal setting and I got exposed to thinking about life in the form of patterns and pattern recognition.

And the very simple principle that you know, that I know many people have heard, but, but that it's true, is that success leaves clues.

And if you follow the clues, you're likely to end up where those clues lead, which is to success.

So the concept that success was a learnable skill, that you could learn to be a successful something, and that it by itself was its own separate skill set, independent of any skill you're developing.

For example, in any one town, there is a plumber and there's a successful plumber.

They're both plumbers, but one is struggling, one successful.

There's a lawyer and there's a successful lawyer.

This lawyer struggles.

This one's successful in any field.

There's a car salesman who struggles, there's one who's successful.

There's a dealer or a business, like there's a baker, there's somebody baking pies and cakes.

One struggles and one successful.

Independent of the skill set, which is the knowledge of a skill, is the development of the skill set of success.

It is of itself its own skill to be developed.

And I learned at an early age that you can develop and learn success as its own skill set.

So I became fascinated with that early and started studying what does that look like?

And that was like I said, 12 years old.

So now I have a couple things that are helpful to shape my narrative of my life.

Please.

You know, when I was, When I was 15, I was living in a small town in Washington state.

The law had just changed that allowed, allowed you to get a GED at the age of 15.

So you get a general education diploma that was equivalent of a high school diploma.

So me and a bunch of my friends took that at 15 years old.

I was, I was homeschooled basically from the age of 13 to 15.

Then at 15 I took my GED and I started college at 15.

So by the time I was 17, I actually moved out of my parents house.

And I was now entering into my junior year at 17 years old in college.

Then when I was 18, I got my first real estate opportunity.

So I bought real estate at 18 years old doing owner financing.

And my very first deal, I had three houses and two lots on my first deal.

We can explore these if you want to, but this is just kind of the progression.

So then by the time I was 19 I flipped those and I got 16 more rental properties.

So I was 19 now and I was generating passive residual income from that while going to school, while doing door to door sales because started door door sales at 17 years old.

So during that entire kind of shaping of my life, it was then that I started to know with certainty that I was going to be some version of an entrepreneur.

I was going to create wealth through and create freedom through solving problems and generating revenue.

So that was kind of those pivotal shaping kind of seasons where started to come together for me.

But it all started back when I was a kid, got exposed to the idea of goal setting.

Wrote down my goals at 12 years old.

I wrote down the goal I wanted to make.

I wanted to make $100 that year.

Back then.

Today if you say $100 to a 12 year old, they're like, you know, you can't buy, you know, anything with that.

But you know, when I was a kid, 100 bucks was a lot of money.

Might as well be 100 bucks was a thousand bucks or 10,000 bucks.

And so I had, you know, my next year I was going to make that.

I was going to make, you know, 250 bucks that I was going to make 500 bucks.

And I had mapped out from the time I was 12 to the time I was an old man at 25 years old.

At 12 years old, I wrote down all the way from 12, 13, all the way to 25.

Because I thought by the time 25, you're like an old, you're an old person, right?

And on my 25th birthday, I was going to make $100,000 a year.

And then I went from there and I went to, when I was 40, I would make a million dollars a year at the age of 40.

And again, this was a 12 year old writing this stuff down.

My first new car was going to be a Lexus.

And I wrote that down at 12 years old.

Because in my mind watching commercials, Lexus symbolized success, achievement arriving.

You know, if you, if you had a Lex.

My parents had never had a new car in their lives.

So this was all like the beginning of shaping that vision, casting and believing that you could, you could shape and create a future.

Yeah, I'm going to, I love that.

I'm going to.

The fact that you're 12 years old with that type of ambition and the fact that you were in college at that young of an age.

And we were, I was just talking to an individual about real estate investing just literally 20 minutes ago.

The fact that you were buying property.

That young of an age is fascinating to me, to be honest.

So I knew.

I want to clarify something, because you called it ambition.

It was not ambition that drove me initially.

It was pain.

It was annoyance.

Annoyance.

Remember, I had brothers and sisters.

I wasn't driven by ambition.

I was driven by annoyance.

I don't want my entire life to be surrounded by people I can't control, Spaces I. I can't control and things I can't control.

So it was more in the beginning.

It wasn't so much ambition.

It was really just annoyance.

And for some people, that's what it takes.

It's the old expression of sick and tired of being sick and tired.

It's like getting fed up with being fed up.

Right.

You sometimes have to come to a point where you're like, I'm not going to keep just living like this.

I'm going to do something about it.

And that was, yeah, 12 years old.

I was just like, I don't want to live this way.

You want your own toys, you want anybody touching them.

So I love that.

I'm going to throw a minor curveball at you real quick.

I do this every show with everyone, just to kind of set the framework.

This is.

I want you to be thinking currently in your entrepreneurial walk on a daily basis.

I'm going to ask you a couple of very short questions.

I want very short answers.

Okay?

So just kind of meditate on this for a second.

I hit a wall when.

Well, I hit a wall.

Win.

I'm trying to think because I don't want to sound like the guy who never hits walls, but I don't really think of myself as hitting walls because I'm much more of a roundabout than a stop sign kind of guy.

So I don't really hit walls so much as I see opportunities to pivot or adapt.

But I don't really ever feel stuck again.

One of the things, and I think this is so helpful to realize, and those of you watching, who have maybe younger people in your life, 10, 11, 12 years old, I would encourage you to begin teaching them some of these principles early.

But one of the principles that you learn when you study success is the principle essentially of curiosity, which is that instead of being confused, become curious.

You know, confusion is the wall part.

That's where you're stuck.

Curiosity doesn't have walls, though, that make you stuck.

They make you explore.

So I learned early in my life to not really look at things like, so.

So I'm not saying I don't ever have an Emotion called feeling, again, annoyed or feeling stuck.

But it's just, it's such a.

It's an activating messenger.

One of the principles I learned about, about emotions was that think of emotions as nothing more than messengers trying to deliver a message to you, right?

So when you feel an emotion, what your brain is telling you is, here's something I want you to become aware of, right?

I want you to be.

I want you to notice this.

So that emotion is telling you you should pay attention to this.

This is, for some reason, this should be important to you.

So when you feel that emotion called stuck or frustrated, right, what it's really saying is an outcome you hoped for isn't what you currently see, right?

So.

And you don't clearly see how to get to your outcome.

And so you start feeling this emotion called frustration because the thing that I wanted is not yet happening.

And you don't see a clear path to it happening, because if you felt that you had a clear path to getting exactly what you wanted and you saw that it was happening, you.

You wouldn't feel frustration, you'd feel anticipation, right?

So frustration is kind of the opposite of proper anticipation.

So then when I hear that in my head, or psychologically when I feel that in my emotional center, I feel that emotion.

It tells me you have an expectation that's not currently being met.

You now have to pivot on either the expectation or how you anticipate the expectation happening.

Like pivot either what you expect or how you expected it to happen.

And you need to pivot or you're going to continue this feeling.

Now, I learned, again, a reasonable thing to learn, I think, at an early age, which is suffering is a choice, right?

Experiences and circumstances may not always be a choice, but the actual emotion of suffering is a choice.

Now, that's hard to say to somebody who might be feeling deep emotional pain because of the loss of something, whether it's a loss of a job or a loss of a spouse or a loss of a loved one or a loss of a relationship or a loss of an opportunity.

But the truth is, suffering is actually a choice.

Experiencing pain is real, but how you interpret that pain, the lens by which you see it and what you see it through, that is an actual choice you do make.

Now, if you've never studied this stuff, you never spent any time with it.

That sounds absurd because every emotion we experience in the moment we experience it feels legitimate.

It feels like it's the right emotion.

Anytime you've ever lost your temper, you in the moment you feel Completely justified that losing your temper was, in fact, the correct thing to do.

Anytime you've done something either unkind, maybe you've been unkind to somebody, maybe even something as simple as cutting someone off and then honking your horn or flipping someone off or snapping a tongue.

Like, if anyone has ever experienced that in the moment, you felt 100% justified that that was the correct response given the context that you're experiencing.

But it was still a choice.

You still made the choice to experience it that way.

There was somebody else who might have had the exact same circumstance but experienced it completely different.

So when you say I hit a wall, what do I do?

I just.

I don't hit walls like that.

Not in the classic sense that I think your question is trying to do.

And if I do, like I said, I just.

I reevaluate and go, what's the value I'm placing on this wall?

Is that too long an answer?

I'm sorry.

It was a brilliant answer.

And.

And you sum it up too.

The only thing I can think of is I have a friend that says, I'll never feel the same pain twice.

It's a decision.

I love that answer, Jonathan.

It was golden.

Next one.

You got a lot of businesses and you do a lot of things, so I'm sure there's gotta be a stressful hour in there somewhere.

So when I'm stressed, I.

So again, this is the thing.

So stress to me, is a good indicator that a thing I want is not happening.

Right.

Again, I go back to the messaging part of my.

What I've trained my messaging center to do.

So stressed is I feel stressed.

So either there's two kinds of stress, really.

There's the stress of this is really important stress, or this is out of my control stress.

Now, sometimes those are combined.

But stress in and of itself, by itself, is not necessarily a negative emotion to experience, right?

Like you can feel the stress of something because you feel the weight of responsibility of something that's not a negative thing that you have that responsibility.

That's an honor, right?

That's a privilege, as they say.

Pressure is a privilege, right?

So in that sense, I don't interpret stress in and of itself as a negative thing.

But if I feel it in the lens again, when I start to feel it emotionally negative, again, I go back to what is this trying to communicate to me?

What is.

What is the message that the stress emotion is telling me?

And at that point, I usually switch to gratitude.

I switched to gratitude first and foremost, because again, I've developed Skills of resourcefulness.

So my first thing is I start going to resourceful gratitude things.

I go, first of all, I feel stressed, but I'm highly resourceful.

I'm resourceful in the fact that I have access to my knowledge.

I have access to lots of people's knowledge.

I have access to resources that could bring me knowledge.

Whatever I'm experiencing, there's someone who's probably experienced it, which means there's probably a roadmap or blueprint.

If I can find that roadmap or blueprint, because success leaves clues.

If I can find that, I can probably navigate this maybe even more efficiently.

I just need to become resourceful.

So stress is a messenger to me that I may not.

If it's a negative stress, I may not be processing this opportunity through the proper lens of resourcefulness.

So then I go to my resources.

First and foremost, I pray and ask God for wisdom, discernment, and insight into what I'm dealing with.

I thank God that he's given me the stress because it reveals to me because my own weaknesses, areas of pain, areas of greed or selfishness or personal desire.

It's possibility.

I'm stressed because I'm not getting what I want, and I might be focused on myself too much.

So I just try to peel the onion of my brain a little bit and go, okay, what is at the root of this and what do I do about it?

Next question.

This is present day.

Now I don't.

Now I don't.

Again, I don't really complain about anything.

I don't complain.

I mean, anybody who's around me a lot and sees stuff that happens, and I'll even give you, again, silly examples, but that are fun to kind of share.

I'm selling one of my personal cars, and again, this is just information, but I have a Ferrari.

And the gentleman who's buying it, he said, hey, I saw that there was an accident on the Ferrari.

And that's true.

When I bought the Ferrari, it was a dream car.

I bought the car off the show floor.

It was what I wanted.

And shortly after I bought it, a lady named Jane pulled out in front of me.

And I kind of tried to avoid her, but we nicked each other.

Anyway, I told this gentleman who's buying the car.

I said, hey, here's what actually happened.

I have the video of the incident.

And so I sent him the video, and he was remarking, like, that's remarkable.

And the reason that he was saying it was remarkable is this lady just hit my Ferrari.

And here I am in a Parking lot with her, laughing with her, Talking about how it's just paint.

Talking about how I'm so glad I met her.

Asking if there's anything, I pray for her for telling her I'm grateful that I saw her when I did because it would have been a T bone if I hadn't navigated.

Talking about how happy I am this car is such a nimble car because if it wasn't such a nimble and responsive car, I would have actually T boned this lady pulling out front of me, but I only nicked her.

And so I'm really grateful that it happened in the Ferrari because if it was any other car, I probably would have slammed into her.

This is all, of course, on video right after the event.

Like, literally, this lady just hit my brand new Ferrari I just bought, you know, and here I am telling her how grateful I am that I met her.

And when I sent this to this guy who's buying the car now for me, he's like, you're bizarre.

Like, and anybody who's seen the video or heard the story, they're like, you're weird.

It's like, I just don't complain.

It's like, there's no good value in complaining.

It doesn't serve me and it serves no one else.

And it's energy that I can't.

I can't get back.

So I'm not going to invest in it.

I love that.

We need more of that in the universe, my friend.

Last off the wall on the spot question.

Now, I always.

I always look for ways.

Let's see.

Gosh.

I would say I always look for ways to encourage.

And I have a saying now that is kind of an internal mantra.

Never be too busy to be human.

So I always look for moments, especially when I feel busy and rushed, especially then.

So, like, example, at nada, you know, we're running around like crazy people and people wanted to stop me to talk to me about some stuff, and I. I paused enough.

Again.

I was running to get somewhere and it's important that I get there.

But I'm not betraying, like an appointment.

I'm not.

It's not.

It's just.

You're always busy, right?

You're always busy.

And sometimes you have a hard deadline.

You have a thing you're supposed to.

Supposed to be at, and you want to honor those things.

But sometimes you're just moving because you just move.

And you're just at a pace where you're just always moving.

And anybody coming into your space in the moments when you're moving is a.

Can be an annoyance or distraction or even an aggravation to you if you're focused on you too much.

So now I always, always want to be a person who is never too busy to be human to another person, to pause, to take time to connect.

And that's a really important thing that I'm highly prioritizing in my life right now.

Be busy because you're productive and you need to be, but don't be so busy that you miss moments that matter.

Yeah, busy and productive are two different things.

And I actually needed to hear what you just said because that's an area of my life that I noticed that I struggle with, is I find, and I'll use your example at an ada, you're a little bit bigger deal than me, Jonathan.

But I'll tell you, I get stopped left and right trying to get to my next destination and I find myself not pausing and making eye contact a little bit more than I should and showing more empathy and just slowing down.

That's something that a. I need to hear that.

But I think there's many others that need to hear that as well.

So I got a question.

So you started off, sounds like you had some success at a young age.

However you want to define success, I look at it as some success.

Anybody doing real estate deals at 18, 19, 20 years old is on their path, right?

Fast forward today, thriving companies, beautiful, healthy family.

You got it going on.

What was that first kind of like breakthrough?

Like what was that, that breakthrough that you knew you were on your way not just being an entrepreneur, but you were on your way to being a very successful entrepreneur.

Oh my gosh.

Again, if you're saying, first, I do have to go back to my early days of two things that really are anchor moments.

One is when I was in door to door sales, like I said, I started door to door sales at 17.

And I got to know what were you saying?

So again, those who are old enough to appreciate this, I was selling home electronics equipment back when DVD players were new technology and they were 500 bucks and a digital television was new technology.

And a small digital television was $3,000 for like a 30 inch, you know, you know, TV.

And so my elder, one of the elders, my church, one of the, one of the leaders of my church, he, he had a home electronics, Radio Shack style business in a strip mall.

And he got the licensing rights for Dish Network at the time, which was a new technology for satellite TV for digital programming.

And they had America's top 40, which was 27 analog channels and 13 digital channels.

And I tell you this because it's kind of a little bit funny.

He comes to me, I'm 17 years old, I'm one of the youth leaders in the, the church.

He says, john, I've had a vision from God.

Now in general, I would say, and when I tell the story, I always remind people, like, if a person walks up to you and you're not 100% confident in their character, and they start with, I've had a vision from God, you should probably run away.

Generally, generally be careful with people who start with that.

But I knew Leon to be a man of great character and a man of good intentions and integrity.

So when he said, I was at least curious, so I said, keep going.

So he told me about this thing called this network satellite TV, 40 channels.

And I remember saying to him, leon, you can only watch one channel at a time.

Why do we need 40, right?

And I remember when he said, DVD players will be in every home in America.

And I said, that's impossible.

They're 500 bucks a piece.

There's no way everyone's going to have a DVD player, right?

So this is again my 17 year old mind back then.

But I started selling there and I was the number one salesman.

He hired me.

I was the number one salesman in the entire history of the company, right out the gate.

Now, I was the only salesman in the history of the company, right off the gate.

So, so I was number one.

But I was also the worst salesman in the history of the company because I was also the only salesman in the history of the company.

So I started out being the best and the worst.

I held both records simultaneously.

And as I started doing this, I learned again, patterns, pattern recognition.

I learned how to recognize the pattern of how to approach a door in such a way that you could create and influence a person's response to you by just how you approach them.

And that was one of the first major breakthroughs when I realized like that again, success leaves clues.

There was a pattern to and a principle to what I was doing.

And you could develop that.

Which means it wasn't just happenstance, it wasn't just luck.

It wasn't just good timing that I could influence the outcome of these interactions.

And that was a very empowering thing to discover because as you continue to refine it, you notice like, you know, I now teach this stuff, but I'd say, you know, there's only six ways a human being responds to a door knock.

There's Only six ways.

Now, when I first say that to somebody, even door knockers, they're like, whoa.

And then when I unpack it, they go, oh my God, that's true.

But they never realize that even door knockers are like, no one's ever explained that to me before.

So recognizing that was a first major breakthrough, I would say, when I got my first real estate deal and I now, as, again an 18 year old, was now not paying rent because I had roommates who were paying me now, and I owned properties that gave me rent.

And so at 18 years old, instead of being the consumer paying the rent, I was now receiving the rent.

And after everything was net done, I had the equivalent of an entire week's wages in extra profit.

And I realized that without, without working, I earned a week's wage and without spending energy, I was leveraging other people's energy and I was now living free, not paying rent.

That was probably the next big pivotal thing when I went, okay, this is how leverage works.

This is how, this is how wealthy people become wealthy.

And so that was probably the next major breakthrough.

And then really, as I started developing my own business, my training and consulting business that I now have, it was probably when again, clients and people that I was talking to were saying, you know, when you hear it enough times that you get through the imposter syndrome.

Because initially when you're building something, especially if you didn't grow up around it, you weren't surrounded by success and wealth, it's such a new thing that you do feel this thing called imposter syndrome.

If you're not familiar, Google it.

But you kind of feel like, do I really deserve this?

Like, is this really going to be my life?

Am I allowed to have this?

You know, my dad worked three jobs, like he worked three jobs.

I now make more in a month than my dad makes in a year.

And it's like, wow, how does that work in your head?

You start going like, I don't deserve this life.

This shouldn't be true about me.

But when you hear enough times, edification, encouragement and exhortation from people saying, what you're doing works and what you're doing makes a difference and what you're doing is different.

That was probably the next big thing when people started saying, we've seen X, Y and Z, we know your competitors and we're choosing you, and here's why.

So that would be another major breakthrough when I started to really hear it and not just kind of hope it was true.

I want to talk about psychology but before I do that, you brought up imposter syndrome.

And for all the young entrepreneurs out there that are going to listen and watch as the up and comers, I personally dealt with imposter syndrome.

It was year three of ascent.

You know, there was some success.

And, like, I felt those feelings that you were just talking about.

What recommendation would you give the younger generation to combat that?

Like.

Like, because it's.

I don't know if every entrepreneur experiences that, but I would like to think.

I would like to think that most do.

So what could you tell the younger generation that will help them as they.

They get into that season Again?

I go back to what I said earlier at the beginning with foundational principles.

That's why it's so important to study success as a principle.

Because one of the things you'll discover when you study success is that the imposter syndrome is a natural and normal stage success.

It's a very common thing.

So one thing that happens when you.

When you discover that the thing you're struggling with is somewhat universal is it gives you some sort of.

I'm not alone, right?

It's like, oh, God, I thought I was the only one.

And the more you study something like imposter syndrome, the more you familiarize you with it, you go, oh, gosh, that was me, that was me, that was me.

And you're like, oh, dear Lord, this is like a real thing.

This is not a isolated, in my head phenomenon.

This is a human nature phenomenon of many people who have ascended to success.

You go, oh, then this is a almost necessary in some ways, step of success, which means I'm on the right path.

Like, if you're taking a step on the right path, then.

Then you should not be discouraged that you stepped on that step.

You should be like, oh, this is a step towards where I'm going.

So I think, again, reframing imposter syndrome as a natural phenomenon that indicates to you that you were not an entitled brat growing up.

Yes, that's really what it is.

It's the imposter syndrome is an indication.

It's a message saying, you didn't grow up entitled.

You didn't grow up a brat.

You earned this.

And because you earned this and because you built this, there's a part of you that feels unworthy of it because you've built something that most people could build.

Somehow you crack the code, but there's not really a code code, and you found it, and everyone else kind of has access to it the way you did, but you just Made choices that got you there, and other people aren't willing to make those choices.

So in some ways, imposter syndrome, like I said, it's a clue that you're on the right path.

And it's an honor to feel it because it tells you you're not an entitled brat.

So when you really look at it through that lens, it gives you kind of the grace to feel it.

For some people, I've heard that, like, they dealt with imposter syndrome for years.

Yeah, I would say I dealt with it for a couple years myself.

There was a point where, like Adam in the early stages when I really started to have this compounding success, like every time the phone would ring, I would think it must be a client calling to cancel now because they've discovered that I really don't know what I'm talking about.

And then I would answer the phone, it would be my client, I'd be like.

And then they'd be like, hey, man, just want, you know, we just had another record month and we're just so grateful for the.

And I'm like, oh, you know, it's such an irrational thing.

It's so irrational.

But that doesn't make it not real in the sense that you experience it.

But again, just because you experience an emotion does not mean it's valid.

Something can be real but not be valid.

And I think that's a distinction people don't understand about the way their brain works.

When you have that emotion, that emotion is real in the moment, but that doesn't make it a valid or legitimate emotion just because it's real.

And so you have to learn kind of the narrative of your mind and start to kind of like put those things to proper understanding.

Yeah, that's good stuff, Jonathan.

You know, so fast forward real estate.

You were in the retail automotive business and then you had these dreams and aspirations.

And for those that don't know Jonathan, a lot of you are going to know Jonathan, but a lot of you may not know Jonathan that are going to hear and listen to this.

Jonathan is.

If not number one, he's in the top couple trainers in the world.

I would say number one.

I mean, he is well known in automotive.

We'll talk about your dream of owning a dealership.

We'll land the plane.

Talking about Cherokee, but let's talk about psychology for a minute.

Number one, what made you decide to start the company?

Number two, what were some of the.

Because when you start something new.

Right, right.

You're by definition a rookie.

Right.

There's A little fake it till you make it.

There's that that's involved.

I know I had to fake it till I make it for probably 18 months or so when I started Ascent.

But what made you started, what were some of those little setbacks and things that got in your way when you started that I love.

So I was a trainer.

So again, circling back right before getting to the automotive industry, remember I started door to door at 17.

I did it for five years door to door for the the same company.

So once we hired our second person by default, I was their trainer because I was, I was the first guy.

So it was like, hey, show them what you did.

And then when we hired the third guy was like, hey, show them.

And because I started getting really good, it was like, hey, show the next person to the next person.

So really by the time I was 18 and the team had expanded at one point when I left the company, we had 66 reps operating in five states, all out of the same location.

And I was the trainer for the entire team.

So I was that at 19 years old I was a trainer for a door to door sales team while also being a door to door sales guy myself and also being in my real estate deals.

So that that experience of transferring knowledge that could be replicated was something that had been again birthed in me even earlier than that.

Because when I gave my life to Christ and when I started to see God pouring into me spiritual gifts, one of my spiritual gifts that I was graced with was the gift of teaching, the gift of discernment with teaching.

So even in my early age, again 14, 15 years old, I was teaching the smaller kids in church.

Then when I became a youth leader again as a 17 year old, I was teaching the 12 and 13 year olds.

When I was 19 and 20, I was teaching the 16 and 15 year olds.

So I've always had a teacher's spirit.

I love teaching truths that transform lives and helping people come to realizations that set them free.

And so even as a sales trainer for the door toor company, that was my part when I got in the automotive retail space, I did that for two years at the real estate at the dealership I was at did it for two years.

I got recruited by a training company who met me because a bunch of salespeople from my store had gone to that event and came back.

I didn't go because I was the top salesman at the time.

They didn't send me.

So but when the guys came back, I got their audio files.

This Again, how old I am, I got cassettes, right?

So I got these audio cassettes and I started listening to them.

When I got a chance to meet the trainer who had facilitated that session, I had already listened to his audio series 12 times.

And it was a 12 hour series.

So I had 144 hours of content before I ever met him.

So when I met him in real life and he was literally at a class and he was teaching, and I was sitting in the front row, I'm elbowing the guy next to me going, this part's really good.

Oh, this part's really good.

Oh, I love what he says here.

So on the lunch break, he's like, who are you and how do you know my stuff?

And why do you know the answer to everything?

And I told him, I said, I don't learn.

I don't read a book to read a book.

I read a book to know the book.

I don't listen to something to listen to it.

I listen to it to learn it.

And so I told him, I said, I've listened to your stuff 12 times.

He's like, no, you haven't.

I said, pick a cassette.

Cassette.

Eight, 13 minutes in, you're talking about this.

I just was like.

And he's like, whoa.

So he recruited me and said, come sell my training.

So I did that for him for two years.

In this case, I set and broke every record at his company.

And then it was a pivotal kind of point.

After two years of working with him, were again, enough people that knew his material and knew mine because mine was like a hybrid of everything I developed as door to door and what I had learned in the car business.

So people who were exposed to both started saying, we like your approach better.

And kind of, that's a short version.

But enough of that happened that it was like, okay, I'm going to do my own thing.

Now.

Initially, the setbacks.

You talk about setbacks.

Here's some setbacks.

Right away, when.

When I left the other guy, he sued me instantly.

He sent me a letter, cease and desist lawsuit, non disclosure, all the stuff.

Now I won the lawsuits.

He didn't have a case to stand on.

But.

But that was a setback because he literally contacted everyone that I knew and said that he was suing me.

And if they do any business with me, they're going to be embroiled in the lawsuit.

So you're talking about setback.

I mean, right out the gate, it's like you start your company and then you get hit with a lawsuit and Then you have to fight in a different state with, you know, 300 and something dollar an hour attorneys.

That was a mess.

Then of course, when you're a brand new guy, you're building everything, and a lot of times you're building it by yourself.

So I'm creating my own curriculum, literally writing my own workbooks, I'm printing my own workbooks, I'm creating my own invoices.

You know, you said the fake it till you make it.

One of the funniest versions, of course, is you build your website and you say, our team, we are committed, but when you're out there, you do have multiple personality disorder in the beginning.

So it is not technically a lie when you say our team and we.

When you do have multiple personality disorder.

So.

But yeah, there is a little bit of that.

And you just kind of go, man, I gotta build something.

And then if you get, if you study success, what you notice is that you must build systems around things.

You need to optimize for systems.

So you need to find sticking points in your business, find parts where things get janky, get.

Things get slowed down, things get a little bit cattywampus on you.

And that's when you go, okay, I gotta build a systematic way of proactively preventing this from happening again.

Because if I keep running up against this resistance point, I can't get a new momentum.

And so eventually you start either outsourcing or hiring for certain areas.

You start recognizing the value of your time and go, why am I, if I'm supposed to be worth $100 an hour, let's say I want my time to be worth a hundred dollars an hour.

Why am I doing $10 an hour work if I'm supposed to be a hundred dollar an hour person?

I gotta let go of that controls.

That's the other big thing.

In the beginning, it's like you have all these controls because it's your baby and you're building it.

And how do I trust someone else with my name, my reputation, my brand, my logo, my marketplace reputation?

Like, ooh, this is a dangerous thing to let someone else be your ambassador in the marketplace.

You got to let go of some of those controls.

You got to bake into your brain some failure, some, some loss of retention, Whether it be clients or co workers or team members, you got to kind of bake in.

You're going to have something bad happen, and you just got to kind of like bake that into the.

That is a step.

So they could go back to the steps of success.

If Imposter syndrome is a step.

When I step on it, I shouldn't be upset.

It's an indication I'm on the right path.

Losing a person, even a high value person, is a step.

I've never met a high quality, high powered professional, you know, expert entrepreneur, business person who can't tell me at least a handful of people they lost that they didn't want to lose, whether it be because of some sort of disagreement or some sort of financial issue or whatever.

But losing people is a step.

When that happens, it hurts.

That's real.

But making it more than it should be is not valid because you're negating the fact that it is a step.

So I'm going to have baked into my Mike's process of success is baked into it are steps called failure, steps called resistance, steps called challenges, steps called economic changes.

Step.

Those are steps.

So when I step on a thing like that, it doesn't surprise me because I was baked into my model that that's normal.

But so I would say that's my approach with that.

I, I, Jonathan, there's so much wisdom in your words.

We could, I could sit here for five hours with you and I know you have a plan to catch and your family's a little more important than me.

Yeah, I'm going to land the plane on this conversation with this because you have done remarkable work.

You've changed a lot of lives in the automotive industry.

Multiple industries, but automotive.

You've done a lot of wonderful work.

Your dream was to own and be a dealer, principal of a new car franchise dealership, which, congratulations, you were able to get that done last year.

But you do things different and I want you to share with the world the difference between how you operate your dealership.

See, I don't want to give anything away.

I've seen it.

So it's completely off the wall, different than anything anyone's ever seen.

Let's explain a little bit about how you operate your dealership, why you made the decision to operate that dealership and the lives that you're impacting and changing because you're doing business the way you are doing business.

And I will finalize this conversation with this because this is a beautiful thing you're doing in your community.

Well, I appreciate that.

So I'm going to go to again, one of my principles that's a guiding principle, which is stewardship.

My whole life story, if I could summarize it in a word, it would be stewardship.

And if somebody gave me again the time to sit and just Kind of do the whole thing.

I would map out, go back step by step and say, because I was a good steward of this, God graced me with the opportunity to do this next.

And the door that was open here was because of the stewardship of the season that was here.

So I'm so grateful.

So part of that then includes stewardship, is acting as if you own something while knowing you don't.

Right.

That's my version of stewardship.

So I act as if I own things, but I know I don't actually own them.

And that's why, for example, the Ferrari, I act as if I own it because it is my car.

I can get in it, drive it, do whatever I want, but I don't actually own it.

So when she hit that car, she didn't hit my car, she hit a car, I get the, the drive.

You see what I'm saying?

Like, knowing that is such a huge relief.

And so when you go into something like business.

And again, I'm going to speak from my worldview and perspective as a Christian.

I want to submit my heart and mind to Christ and ultimately put myself under the sovereign authority of God.

Which means I trust that I may make my plans, but it's the Lord who directs my steps.

So I'm going to say, okay, here I am wanting this thing called a dealership, and I want to have a dealership.

Not because again, I want to own a dealership.

It's because I want to build a dealership in such a way that it becomes a beacon of light, hope and inspiration to others.

Like, I want to take the 3,000 dealerships I've been in across nine countries over my 20 something years of doing this.

And I want to say, what if they all, what if all the best things of all these places could try to live in one place?

What would that look like?

So we started by just reverse engineering.

And this is again a great strategy for anybody who's an early stage entrepreneur or wanting to revitalize.

What you're doing is really do get clear on the outcome and the vision and reverse engineer backwards.

You know, scripture says that God sees the end from the beginning.

You know, he's able to see both timelines at the same time.

He can see everything at once.

So I, that's, I think because I'm created in the image and likeness of God, I have a similar capacity to imagine the end from the beginning.

So imagine the end from the beginning.

We started with Cherokee, Mitsubishi, which is the dealership I have.

We started it by saying what is the outcome we want.

What if it were true?

What would we want people to say about it?

What could we.

And we said, well, we want to be known for the experience.

We want to out experience our competition.

Because again, those who would be familiar with this, you know, Mitsubishi franchise, I jokingly say we're the.

We're the James Bond of the car business.

Because.00, 7 of all new cars purchased in America are on Mitsubishi.

So 007.

So, you know, for every 1,000 new cars bought in Atlanta, seven are on Mitsubishi.

So that's how much market share we have.

So when you're starting with a brand that has very low market share, very low market awareness, right?

It's like, okay, I'm not going to out.

I'm not going to out facility my competition, you know, I'm not going to out coffee them.

I'm not going to out inventory them, not going to outspend them on marketing.

You know, I can't do that.

I don't.

That's not practical.

What can I do that?

What can I control?

I control the way people feel because they've met my people.

So we focused on experience first and reverse engineered the experience.

We want people to laugh, we want people to hug.

Our greeting at our dealership is essentially a hug.

I mean, like, we start with hugging and it's weird.

It is weird.

We end with prayer.

Every car that we sell, we offer, and we do with the vast majority will allow us to at least do it.

But we offer to pray over the vehicle, the family.

One of our salespeople, he's the singing salespeople.

He sings a song of joy and a prayer song over people.

We have a giant wheel, six foot tall mega wheel in our show floor that's got prizes on it where people can win all kinds of stuff.

And we have high energy.

We do the poppers with the confetti.

Some people think it's nuts.

We do too.

We're okay with that.

If you're familiar watching this with Banana bowl, we're like, if Banana Ball and Chick Fil A had a car dealership, baby.

That's what we're aiming for, right?

So we want to be wacky and weird and change the experience.

And then we want to be customer centered and customer focused while still honoring God.

So, you know, we're closed on Sundays.

We're closed on many major holidays, including President's Day coming up.

Including we're closed early for Valentine's Day coming up.

We're closed on Black Friday.

We're closed on People's we're closed on your spouse's birthday, your birthday, your kids under 18's birthday, birthday, your wedding anniversary.

We're closed on.

When I say closed, I mean like I shouldn't say we're closed.

I'm saying you get to be off is what I meant to say.

So major holidays, like we're closed but for your personal if you're one of our team members and your wife's birthday is coming up this Tuesday, you can have that day off to celebrate with your wife.

You've got a seven year old's birthday coming up, that's you take that day off to spend with your kid.

What I'm saying is we make it about people first knowing that we're ultimately in the people business.

We happen to have products that look like cars but our ultimate thing that we sell is the experience.

And so that's our focus.

So we spend.

The average dealer will spend $500 a car to get a person in the door and then spend $50 a car to maintain the relationship after.

We spend $50 a car to get him in the door and then we'll spend $500 a customer in the relationship after.

So we've just, we flipped the whole paradigm and we're a relational based dealership that's a destination dealership.

We don't do any third party marketing and advertising.

We're.

We haven't bought a single car from auction since we opened.

Right now we're pacing north of 70% of all of our sales are some sort of revert, referral or some sort of endorsement.

So relational customers over 70%.

We've only been open for seven months.

We already rank on both AI and on Google searches for best car and buying experience in our county.

And again, we've only been open for seven months.

So we're on a mission to create raving fan advocates while others are trying to sell cars.

It's remarkable to see it.

It's truly, it's remarkable.

I mean I got to stop in a day, four or five months ago just see it.

I actually got to witness and tears of joy, tears of laughter, tears of joy.

People literally cry on our show floor and hugging us when they.

It's insane.

It's insane.

So it's beautifully insane.

So with that being said, Jonathan, like I said, we could spend hours and hours.

Promise me you'll come back in the future because there's a lot.

There's still.

I didn't get to a whole lot of the things I wanted to talk about but you shared some incredible wisdom.

Thank you so much for taking the time.

I know you got a plane to catch for those listen, I want to.

Close in prayer with the podcast people.

Reaches this prayer.

Absolutely, Father.

God, I thank you right now for the opportunity to have this message land in the hearts and minds of the people that were destined to see it and the people that were exposed to it.

I thank you for this burden that was given to Adam early in his life to be something different than what he was yesterday and to continue to work on what he can control and what he can develop to become a better version of him.

I thank you for this podcast, humans that build, and for the audience that will receive it.

I pray that it receives is received, God, by tender hearts and fertile ground that it will be a seed that produces much fruit.

I pray for those young entrepreneurs that might be watching this and find encouragement in this message.

God, continue to water the soul of their encouragement.

Just continue to give them dreams and visions and then God, help them develop the disciplines and stewardship to be a good steward of the season they're currently in and faithful in the moment they're in.

Because, God, that's all they have right now.

And God, as you open up doors for the people that watch this, God help us become greater lights in our cities, people of hope and people who are never too busy to be human and have moments like this in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.

That was beautiful.

Beautiful.

Jonathan, thank you so much for those listening, watching.

Thanks for tuning in to another incredible episode of Humans to Build.

We will see you sooner than later, Jonathan.

Enjoy your family.

Let's not work too much.

But you do got to return a few messages, so love you, brother.

See you soon.

Appreciate you, Adam.

Thank you everybody.

Humans that build, real people, real work.

See you next time.