We welcome Garrett Blood—a three-time entrepreneur, CEO and founder of Kajae, and a leader whose mission-driven approach left our whole team feeling deeply moved. This conversation is anything but typical. Garrett’s origin story begins in Orange County, where he went from limos and luxury to losing everything and starting over as a 12-year-old entrepreneur. His journey moves through business triumphs and setbacks, a breakthrough ice cream venture, and finally to Kajae, a staffing company built on the belief that opportunity – not talent – is unequally distributed across the globe.

What unfolds is much more than business talk – it’s an exploration of resilience, leadership, human connection, and the power of putting people first. Garrett reveals how Kajae lifts individuals from poverty to middle class and why he refuses to compromise his values, even turning away clients who don’t align with his mission. The stories shared go far beyond the numbers, touching on transformation, gratitude, and the kind of impact that resonates at a human, not just organizational, level.

Get ready for vulnerable stories, laughs, and eye-opening moments as Shari Levitin, Brent Adamson, and Garrett Blood dive deep into what it really means to lead with purpose—showing us that better people make better salespeople, not the other way around. If you care about connection, culture, and authenticity, you won’t want to miss this conversation.

👤 Connect with Garrett Blood:

✅ Website: https://www.kajae.com

✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettblood

👤 Connect with Selling Isn’t Everything:

✅ Official: https://SellingIsntEverything.com 

✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SellingIsntEverything 

✅ LinkedIn (Shari): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharilevitin

✅ LinkedIn (Brent): https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentadamson 

✅ Brent’s Latest Book, The Framemaking Sale: https://www.theframemakingsale.com/ 

Selling Isn’t Everything is produced by Chris Stone at Cast Ahead:  https://CastAhead.net 

Welcome to today's episode of Selling Isn't Everything. Our guest today, Garrett Blood, is not only a 3-time entrepreneur, not only the CEO and founder of KJ, but the most mission-driven, culture-creating human I think I have ever met. There is not a single person, including our producer in the back room, that wasn't in tears when he talked about all of the people he helps. With his staffing company because that's how much he cares. I can't wait for you to listen. Better people make better salespeople, not the other way around.

What's hard about selling isn't selling, it's interacting with other people.

We can't take the glory for being great if we won't take the responsibility when we're not. What could we have done better?

Human connection can be the greatest source source of strength. And I think that's pretty powerful.

So I gotta tell you how, um, I met Garrett. We, we've only been friends for 12 days, right?

Something like that, right?

Yeah. So, um, Brian, I mentioned to you, um, I think you know Ryan Bott, who he is. He was CRO of the Year at Silicon Slopes. Great guy. Now president of, um, his own, a different company. And Ryan's like one of these guys that is a real connector and brought a lot of people together. And I just texted him randomly one night, how's the number one CRO in Salt Lake City? Because he won CRO of the Year a few years back. You know, very flattered that he texted me about it, told me about it.

And, and within like 5 minutes he says, are you going to the Silicon Slopes event tomorrow? And I'm like, oh, I forgot. It's not on my radar. He says, well, I got a VIP ticket for you. You're coming to the Edison Club. Meet me there. And then come to Valters for dinner, which you cannot get into Valters for like a year. So Ryan must have some pull. He said, and I'm gonna be with 8 amazing individuals.

And so one of those amazing individuals is Garrett, and I got to sit next to Garrett at dinner and I, I was just transfixed with our conversation. It was so good, personal, professional, telling me about, uh, his company. And here we are 9 days or 10 days later, and this gentleman's on our podcast.

And now you're friends. Real quick, the one thing I take away from that, Shari, is that your life is significantly more interesting than mine. But that's amazing.

No, you use that self-deprecating humor often, Brent, but I don't know that that's the case. I think I would credit this with Ryan Bott's ability to connect and Garrett's ability to, you know, tell a hell of a story. So, With that said, um, Garrett, I, I really just wanna start off,

um,

with your origin story. And I know that sounds so boring in a podcast, but my God, you have an origin story. And you started with like when you were 10, 11 years old in a way that most people don't. Like, I wasn't born a poor child in the ghetto. It was exactly the opposite. Can you share with our audience a little bit about your origin? Story and how you became an entrepreneur?

Absolutely. And by the way, Shari, when we got to, we got to sit down the other night, that was amazing. I, I was gonna say Ryan Bott's an amazing connector, and every person around that table was just so incredible. And I was so blessed to be sitting next to you and get to get the chat. So feeling is absolutely mutual. So in terms of origin stories, it's kind of funny. I, I grew up in Orange County, California. And in just a really great household, for the lack of a better word.

I mean, it was just very— my parents were great, my siblings were great. I was the oldest of 4 kids, and my dad owned a lot of things. And when I say a lot of things, he owned a lot of exotic car dealerships. He owned hotels in other countries. He owned hundreds of condominiums around the US. He had planes, he had jets. Boats. You know, he was on TV a lot.

He was a 6-foot-2, larger-than-life guy that looked identical to Tom Selleck, drove the same Ferrari, could bench press 420 pounds with a body weight of 195. Just, I always tell people, if you've ever seen the movie, the Ocean's Eleven movie, played by, was it, is it Anthony Garcia? I'm trying to remember, the casino mogul. That was my dad. Very charismatic, very on top of things. So for lack of a better word, he was this, he was a baller. And he had this incredible kingdom, if you will, this empire that he had built. And little by little, some mental health struggles started to creep in. Ego started to creep in, I think a little bit more.

Some vices started to creep in, and before long, he started to lose everything that he had. We used to go to school in a limo, for example. And so just crazy stuff. And he started losing more and more of his empire, and before long, I remember, you know, fairly young being forced out of our home by the sheriff's department with all our possessions that we, that we had out on the front grass of our house. And we were being evicted from our house with nowhere to go, waiting for a U-Haul truck to pick us up to take us where I didn't know we were going to end up. If it wasn't for grandparents, we would've probably been homeless living in a van down there by the river. Basically, it's kind of where, where I kind of look at it today.

Not only did this happen, right? And I can't imagine like going to school as a young boy limo and what, what that, the repercussions of that were. But, but then you said something that was really amazing is now your dad's gone and there you are, you're used to a lifestyle. This is all you know as a 12-year-old. Like you grew up with, like everybody has Planes, Trains and Automobiles, you know, it's like that line from the, the movie, what are all these people doing in my airplane? Uh, the David Siegel film, right? And, and that was your world. And then you became the responsible child, and I think you had a lot of brothers and sisters, and didn't you start your own window washing business at 12 years old?

Yeah, I did actually. It was, you know, I, growing up, I saw my dad, I was there in boardrooms and deals and different things, and I just really loved, you know, the interactions. And I had a, I had an uncle that was a window cleaner. And one day I asked him, I said, how hard is it to learn how to do that? And he, he taught me how to do it. And before long, when I was about 9 years old, I started going out and getting, finding clients and knocking on doors of commercial buildings and kind of establishing a route. And then before long, I started getting residential. So I had industrial, commercial, and industrial clients, and I'd wash their windows on a weekly basis in some cases. And so by the time I was 12, I had grown that to 60 clients.

It was hard for me to actually open up bank accounts without a parent's signature, but I had checks coming in, you know, on a regular basis. So, which was kind of funny. And then my parents ended up having the, you know, they ended up divorcing when everything went crazy. And I had to, I was forced to sell my business and ended up selling it to a guy in his 30s. So that was my first exit was when I was 12.

And then there was one more, like, 'cause you're, You know, a real serial entrepreneur, right? Like there, I always love on LinkedIn, people say serial entrepreneur.

I'm like, what's that mean?

Right?

Groups like, what does that mean? And, and, but you're a real serial entrepreneur. And then can you fast forward for us? You go to college. I think somebody takes all your money. Um, but then what I remember is then, you know, you're obviously, you know, bodybuilding and doing all this. And then there's like an ice cream escapade. And an encounter with Amazon. If you could just, I, I think it's important for the audience to, to see this, this whole progression of an entrepreneur who starts at age 12.

Oh yeah, absolutely. So I, I ended up, I was saving money. I was gonna go on a, a mission for Elias Church and went to Mexico, lived in Mexico for 2 years in really poor situation. And it was, for me, it was kind of a, kind of a respite from craziness living at home with my mom and my stepdad and my siblings. And paying those bills as a kid while I was in high school and got home after 2 years and, you know, I had some goals in place, met my wife, we were in school and I'd always crave ice cream after the gym. And I thought, you know what, I'm gonna negate everything I just did in the gym if I eat this right now. And why can't there be some type of healthy ice cream? You know, something I can eat 10 o'clock at night and feel guilt-free about it. And nothing existed.

And so one day I thought, well, how hard would it be to take a protein shake and make it into an ice cream form? Basically simple enough, right? And so bought a frozen yogurt machine, buddy of mine, and we started dumping a bunch of stuff into it. We discovered that there's 1,000 ways not to make ice cream. And so finally, kind of the 1,001st time, made it. And we made it, it was fat-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, diabetic-friendly, 150 calories per pint. 20 grams of whey protein concentrate, 8 grams of fiber, all natural clean ingredients from start to finish. And it tasted good, most importantly. And so we got into 1 grocery store, then 100, then 1,000, then 10,000, then 18,000 grocery stores. So it was Haagen-Dazs is the number 1 ice cream in America, pint.

Ben Jerry's was number 2 and we were number 3. And so we were the first to put a calorie count on the front of a package. And so we wanted to disrupt the entire market. And so our product was called Arctic Zero. And the first protein-based ice cream. And I remember one time Amazon was experimenting with getting frozen products through their network. And as anyone knows, Amazon can get product from point A to point B faster than anyone on the planet. And they were experimenting with ice cream and we said, all right, well, they approached us and we said, let's try it.

Why not? And for me, I was looking at it from a strategic standpoint of being able to take product from point A and sending it to a buyer on the East Coast., in point B for a record low in terms of price. 'Cause for me to send product from San Diego, California to New York overnight was like $120 just on the shipping side. And so packed in dry ice and all that. And so I thought, well, if I could partner with Amazon, I could basically sell it to myself, but put the, the destination location as one of the buyers wherever in the country I needed to get it to, to lower my cost to acquire that customer. And that's what we did. And happened to be that we had a couple of influencers that loved our product and would talk about it regularly to the point where Amazon was selling so much of it at one point, they owed us a fortune. And when I say a fortune, it was a small GDP of a nation. And 'cause we were net 60 terms and we were moving about 2 to 3 FedEx trucks every single day with product.

We were using about 10,000 pounds of dry ice. Every single week just to satisfy the needs of Amazon at a certain point. And it got to the point where they owed us so much money. I said, you know, we cannot continue with Amazon. They're gonna bankrupt us, single-handedly bankrupt us. And we're in states nationwide. And it was just one of those things where I contacted our point of contact, I think it was Teresa. And I said, Teresa, I'm turning off the spigot..

And she's like, what are you talking about? I go, you're gonna single-handedly put us out of business. And she's like, what? I go, I know we're number 57 of 552,000 food items on Amazon. So a top 100 product, and we're moving more product in frozen than anyone else in food, but you're gonna put us out of business. And she goes, no, no, no, no, no. Don't turn it off. Don't turn it off. Give me 30 minutes. And said, okay, we'll give you 30 minutes.

And she goes, I'm gonna talk to my, my senior vice president of grocery who's over all of this and just see if we can get something figured out. So she goes and she talks to him and he goes, he sees the amount and he goes, holy smokes, I can't authorize this amount. You know, I know they're a top 100, but this is so much money. I have to get clearance, basically get, get the thumbs up from, from Jeff. And so back in the day, so she go, he goes and takes it to Jeff. And this is all within, you know, 30 to 45 minutes. And it has a conversation with Jeff Bezos. And Jeff Bezos says, you know what, we owe them.

This is a huge amount. Okay, what I'm going to have you do is you're going to send a check to them so that they get it first thing in the morning, send it priority so they have it in hand. As for everything up until this point, everything that we owe them, and I want you to move them from net 60 to net 15 terms. And so we got that next day, we got that check in the mail. You know, I mean, it was hand-delivered to us. We went down to the bank, deposited it, was there instantly. We were good to go. So to this day, I joke that I've debt collected Jeff Bezos.

If that's not an origin story like

you read about, I mean, well, you

know, so, so, Gary, what I've been taking notes, 'cause it's also interesting, but what I guess the, the, the one note I got right in front of me is simply how did you get from there and all of that, you know, this boom and bust and this, you know, there's lessons there I want to dig into about resilience. I've got to imagine there's lessons there about leadership where you essentially become the Sounds like perhaps the man of the family is you as the older brother with 3 younger siblings, and you're responsible to some degree for their wellbeing. And that's gotta be form, that's gotta shape your mental model. And I'm just wondering, maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're doing now, which is so interesting, and then tie the thread from where you came from and all those different various lessons and all those life lessons to how does that get you? I guess what I'm trying to, I mean, I can guess, but I'd love to hear your version of like, How does all that, I put that all in a package, put a bow around it and say, and that clearly explains why what I'm doing now today, or, or does it?

I don't know. You know, it's, it's, it's the whole, you know, you were the summation of all our positive and negative experiences. And, um, I learned something different in each stage of my life. And more than anything, it's the failures. And I always say, you know, it's, it's the, you know, the here and now everyone wants what they see everybody else having, but realizing, not realizing that it's patience, right? It's, It'll all, it'll happen eventually. And just one drop in the bucket at a time before it spills over. And I just, I remember kind of looking at my dad and going, how hard is it to get to that point? And not seeing the journey that it took. And what I'm doing today is totally different than ice cream or windows.

I own a premium staff augmentation firm. And what that is, is we take brilliant, amazing people. From 29 countries and we pay them 5 to 10 times more than a living wage. So they go from poverty to middle class in 60 days or less, and all while staying remote in their own country, giving them full medical, full dental, a ton of different benefits. But they're, it's not a charity case. They have earned it. They are amazing individuals. They have typically MBAs, master's, PhDs, advanced degrees from top schools.

Same, same as they also have Fortune 500 corporate American experience and they have English like a C2 level near native English. And so they're the best of the best, the top 2%. And so I'm a big believer, and I had, I had mentioned this to Shari, that I'm a big believer that brilliance and talent, exceptionalism, they're perfectly and fairly distributed around the world, but opportunity is not. And so my focus was to help people lift where they stand in their respective countries and basically connect amazingness with opportunity here in the US. And so companies here get to benefit from the fact that they have someone that is full speed ahead. They're a rockstar, they're loyal, and they're grateful. They don't have entitlement and they want simply an opportunity to do amazing things. And so then, then we have companies on the other hand that are tired of the entitled, I want 6 figures out of college.

I don't have any experience, but dang it, you're going to also give me free massages on Fridays type of a mentality. And being able to save tens of thousands of dollars per year, in most cases around $100,000 per hire. And what's different is, and people always say, well, Garrett, you're taking these amazing jobs away from Americans. I said, no, actually not. We're actually augmenting. I said, it's the clear coat on a car basically. I said a lot of these businesses need a way in which that they can scale and they don't have enough gas in the tank, if you will, to be able to go out and hire salespeople or boots on the ground local. But now they can because now they freed up enough cash flow to scale their companies to then be able to hire the people that they need on the ground where they're at.

And so my focus is to help people lift where they stand in their countries and at the same time see what I can do about lifting those in those areas. For every person you take from poverty and move them into middle class, it actually raises 10 additional people around them. And so that's, for me, that's the nation-building component that I think is best done individually in each country, as opposed to saying, well, we're going to have a lottery and have them have people come to the US. We've got to actually strengthen and fix a lot of the issues that are going on in some of these countries. And the connection there to, to my company called KJ, by the way, KJ stands for the names of my kids, Kate, Ariana, Jack, Alexa, Ethan. I have 5 kids. And it means gift from God in Jamaican. And, uh, and it was a 5-letter domain.

I got it from, I got it from, uh, GoDaddy. I think it was like $12, you know, it was the best 5-letter domain I could have ever found. And that it was a word, you know, I, it could have been something really derogatory in another language or something, you know, and I would've been up a creek. But I had a lot of experience at Arctic Zero, my ice cream company, working with different people in other countries and designing certain things and just that interaction. And then in college, I had a, I had a, I, my degree's in organizational leadership. And, uh, I remember taking a class once that was called managing cultural differences. And I thought to myself, I'm never going to use this. This is, this has got, this is like the person that has to take calculus and they're an art major, you know, they're never going to use that.

It's a waste, right? And to this day, I still have the book right here.

Excuse me. Excuse me.

Oh, there it is. Top of it from Iceland, by the way. But this is the book, Managing Cultural Differences, and I have it on my desk because it tells me how to interact with someone in the Philippines and how different that is from someone in Bangladesh, as different as it is from someone in Guatemala, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia. And it's just, it's just so interesting that this book that I thought, and that class I thought was a complete waste of my time. Is probably the most important, single-handedly important class that I ever took in all my college career.

But how do you go from— real quick, is this the— you're like an ice cream guy. Yeah, right. And, and you wake up one day and say, I know, international staffing, that's what I need to do. It's like, I, I gotta imagine, you— I can see the connections, the mission-driven work, right? The, you know, the connection to the work you've done in missionary work, the, the connection to, you know, well, less the values it sounds like you were brought up with and just kind of learned, and the school of hard knocks, all But where'd the initial idea come from to start a staffing, of all

the things you could do? Of all the things. All the things, right? I get that a lot. And so, so prior to KJ, I was working at a company and their motto was to uplift humanity. This organization, very AI-centric, very focused on software. And they brought me on. I was actually, I was actually headhunted to join. The company and, and help them scale. And I really believed in a lot of the initiatives that they were doing.

And one of the things that I thought was really cool is they partnered every member of the senior staff with an assistant. And these assistants were from the Philippines and it was tremendous. I, I had someone that was an assistant that was unbelievable. Her name is May and she, she, she made things happen. She was, she, she smoothed up, smoothed out things that would've been difficult. On a regular basis. And she was fantastic. And what I noticed is she was bringing so much value to me and what it did in terms of freeing up my time and energy, allowed me to focus on my strengths rather than dealing with things that were my weaknesses.

I'm a big fan of StrengthsFinder, if

anyone's familiar with StrengthsFinder.

Yeah, I am.

Yeah.

My— Yeah.

I geek out on our culture. It is. It's so true to this day.

Oh, I love it. I could geek out. For an hour on just Strength Finder, you know, your top 5 and how important it is to focus on those and nothing else. Right? Yep. And so she, she, her, her, my bottom 5 were basically her top 5, which was perfect. Right? And, um, so long story short, I was talking to the CEO once and they were having a hard time trying to generate revenue. It was constantly, if you're in the money raising business, that's sometimes the only business that you're in, in terms of trying to grow that company. So I said, you know what? We've got a great thing here.

We've got amazing talent from the Philippines, and I think it would be great to find companies that could benefit from finding someone that they could shoulder up with, whether it's an accountant or graphic designer, somebody. And he says, that's a great idea. Go with it. So I started doing it, and after about 6 months, he came to me. He says, Garrett, 90% of the revenue for the company is coming from what you've created here. Which was awesome to hear. But at the same time, what I was having a problem with is payroll was consistently late for my people. My team was, was getting paid last.

And I'm a big, I'm a big fan of, and some, I'm sure everyone's familiar with, eaters, leaders eat last. And I felt like it was the opposite. And so when you go a day or two without a paycheck in another country, it's significant when you're hand to mouth. And then in some cases when it's a week or two weeks, it can be incredibly it can be dangerous basically. And that was constantly starting to happen. We were having, we were flush with the money, but it was going to the wrong people and to the wrong things as opposed to the team members that made it possible. And it started to really bother me and to the point where I stopped going without pay so that my team could get paid. And it got to a point where I'm, I'm still to this day owed a lot of money from that company from, from that type of stuff.

But what ended up happening was this was during COVID And so my chief of staff, I'm sorry, my, my, my assistant at the time, she, her dad who was retired military in the Philippines was dealing with high blood pressure, had diabetes and a few other issues, and he ended up getting COVID. Now what's interesting is in the Philippines, you can't just go to the emergency room. You have to have the money. You have to pay upfront in order to go in. And so it's, you know, it's one of those things where we don't deal with that here in the United States. It's emergent services, it's there, and then we talk about money later. Not that case in the Philippines and many other countries. So her, so her, her dad is, is desperately in need of, of, of care and she is waiting for her paycheck and she's waiting and she's waiting and she's waiting.

She waits a week thinking her dad's going to get better. He doesn't get better. Her dad dies waiting to go into the emergency room. I mean, waiting for her paycheck that she's owed by this American company that's putting the leaders in front of their people. And I was just, that was for me, that was one of the last straws for me. And so at that moment, I literally told, I told her, I'm like, okay, this is, this is no good. And so I literally tendered my resignation. And basically said, I'm done with this, man.

You're coming with me. We're gonna, we're gonna do something different. And with other members of the team heard that I was going to be leaving that company, they all said, well, if you go, I go, Garrett, where are we going? And then their clients of those individuals basically said, well, if you're going, I'm going, where are you going? And so before long, you know, I left and we, I started a new company and it started KJ basically within 30 days. We were profitable the first 30 days. We've been profitable every month since. Wow. And we've grown our first 3 years, we grew 1900% without private equity, without venture, and without debt. And the goal was to grow on our terms and that no one could basically tell us what we could or could not do in terms of mission, vision, and values.

And yeah, so that's kind of what we, we ended up doing. So in 108 payrolls, we've never been late. I usually always pay my team 1 day early just because that's, that's what I've always wanted to do. You get your paycheck before you expect to get your paycheck. It's kind of nice. And then also gave them things that they didn't have before. So they have full medical and dental, paid time off and paid maternity, paid paternity, which is unheard of for companies like us doing what we do. And then we also have a clinical psychologist with a PhD on staff for mental health, an English linguist.

And then we send teams around the world on a regular basis to go to summits.. And so we have a summit every year in Latin America and we have a summit in Asia and we fly everyone in. The only thing that they have to pay for is getting themselves to the airport. That's it. And then we handle everything else, flights, accommodations, activities, food, fun. And then speakers volunteer typically from around the world to come and speak, which is the coolest part. CEO of Live Golf, for example, CEO of LoveSac, for example, spoke to the team. Brian Blair, wealth manager expert, very connected to Elon Musk, spoke to the team.

And so all these different individuals that have such expertise in different areas imparting their knowledge is one of my favorite things because in the US we kind of take it for granted when you hear someone brilliant speaking. Whereas in other countries, they're in awe and they take notes, copious notes about everything that comes out of our mouths because they are like, wow, you're an American. You've got it, you've got it down. You know, you've, you've got the, you've got the roadmap. Tell me. And so it's something super cool that we get to do. And then usually the last night we do a gratitude night with the entire team. Super cool.

So we've kind of built this really fun culture. We know everybody's names. I do welcome calls with our team every day. Who's new? I have a conversation with them. We have leadership check-ins, but I know everyone on our team by name. I know their spouses' names, their kids' names. Likes, dislikes, short-term, long-term goals. It's important to me.

Literally, I'll be on a flight for 15 hours and I'm just studying up and reminding myself on the notes I took on different members of the team so that when I'm there, I can connect with them like we connected multiple

times throughout the year. You know what strikes me in all of this, Garrett, and it did the night I met you. If we go back to how you started, as a 12-year-old and you had a dad and the first thing you said is he had all the toys. He had exotic cars, you know, he had planes, trains, and automobiles, all the things. And now fast forward, then you've got a window washing business, then you've got a successful ice cream business, then you have this staffing business. What strikes me is when we sat together at dinner, you didn't show me a picture of a plane, of a car, right? You didn't show me a picture of even your own children, right? I, I had to ask you what you showed me a picture of, literally with tears in your eyes. I could feel it was a picture of your team and your, your stories weren't about your ascent. Your stories were about this person here came from this country and then this happened.

So the sense of mission in you, you know, on both sides to help people in this country, but mostly to help individuals in other countries, their families to know them. It's real. And I'm curious, given your background of growing up in this very affluent, kind of crazy environment, where did that come from in you?

Because it's real and it's palpable. As a youth doing different things, we did a lot of service. Opportunities, um, through church activities and things like that. I think spending 2 years in Mexico had a huge influence on that as well. Being exposed to just different cultures, I think, is a big part of it. I always tell people you need to travel and get out of your bubble of how you think life is, is, because the rest of the world doesn't live nearly as good as the homeless on the streets in the United States. I've tried to figure out ways in which I can do that with my kids, and usually that that comes from travel and just doing service projects. And I've seen so many of the haves and have-nots.

I've been there and I know what it's been like being incredibly poor, practically homeless if it wasn't for grandparents. And so I know what that difference is. You know, there's a, there was a song by a band once that I really liked in California called Everclear, and they had a song and one of the lyrics was, no one knows the joy of a welfare Christmas. I totally knew what that was like when he said that and sang that in a song, because I remember being so poor that it was like, how do we make Christmas this year basically work? And going and earning money to pay the electric bill and to pay rent and all those things that I had to wear on my shoulders. And that was really, that was a really difficult time. And I think it was just one of those things where I see struggling individuals around, not just in the United States, but specifically outside the United States. That have all the brilliance in the world, but they can't, they simply don't have the opportunity. For me, my heart just pours out in those cases.

And, and then now you've had these 3 businesses and you're obviously very successful in the business you're in. By the way, you won the award for Company of the Year at Silicon Slopes last year. Congratulations. Thanks. I assume that other CROs and CEOs and presidents come to you for advice quite often because you are a role model. Of not only building a strong, profitable kind of company without VCs, which is also rare today, but also they're extremely profitable. What are the biggest questions that you get from others on how to build and sustain a profitable company today?

A lot of times the worry is the culture piece, right? It's how do you, how do you, how do you create a culture? And my whole thing is I feel like if you're just a human being, you put the human back in HR, the human resources component. I feel like it's been— that whole department is just a liability case in terms of how they protect the company. But in reality, if they went back into the human element of things, got to know who their people are and listen to them on a regular basis, I don't think they would have half as many problems as they have in their organizations. And their ability to scale would be triumphant. In their ability to do so because they would have more buyer mentality of their, of those that work with them rather than the renter mentality. And the abundance versus scarcity component. A lot of these companies, they build themselves up so that they can scale fast and then turn and sell it for a multiple to the detriment of all their employees. And they use the word employee.

I hate that word. I don't refer to anyone on my team as such. They're all a team member or a family member. Basically, those are interchangeable phrases and words that we use. Never, we've never used it, never will. 'Cause we know everybody, no one's a number in the system. And, you know, same thing, like if we have a member of the team waiting for a new client, they're, they're on the warm bench. You know, an accountant would call them a widget or a cog, you know? And it's the unfortunate thing about a lot of those industries.

And it's, again, it's the human piece of it. And I feel like if you've, again, it's the golden rule, you know, do unto others as you'd have done unto you. And knowing your people. And so in terms of building a good solid culture, it's literally what would you do for your family? What would— if you would employ them, what would you do with them? Would you take care of them? Would you take advantage of them? Would you exploit them? And I feel like so many companies in our industry specifically are very, uh, they exploit. It's almost human trafficking in some regards where they try to pay them the very meager amount and, and charge an obscene amount of money to have this maximized profit. We're actually flip that. And so my number one priority is my team member, then the client, then KJ. 'Cause I know if they love what they do, they feel passionate, they feel secure, they feel safe, they feel loved, they pull out the stops for their client.

The client appreciates that, sees that, and then they're happy with us, KJ.

And it's a virtuous cycle. And your numbers are unbelievable that, that you were telling me. And for those that are listening, I, I mean, they need to get in touch with you, right? I mean, if they, You know, to, to fill in these holes. But the, the numbers were amazing. I, I also asked you a question. I said, okay, so walk me through this. I'm looking for, you know, whatever the case may be. You did say that the best salespeople in the world are in the United States of America.

That was interesting. But whether I'm looking for an engineer, like you said, an accountant, a graphic designer, you said that if I talk to you on a Monday, you're gonna have 3 candidates for me on a Friday. Yeah. And then I said, what's your success rate? What, what are the chances that that

client is gonna hire one of those 3? It's, you know, it's, it's over 90%. Uh, in some cases I'd say it's closer to 95%. Um, yeah, we, we trademark the phrase Zoom on Monday, Talent by Friday. And our secret weapon is speed. Uh, most companies, HR, they take months and months sometimes to, to find the right person, but by the time they find the right person, That person who's actively looking has already taken a job somewhere else. And it's just a very long, slow, drawn-out process in hiring in general. And it's built to be almost manipulative. And I just hated it.

And so what we do is we interview 200 to 300 people per position. That's not through AI. That's literally human interaction because there's things that people are not good at writing resumes, but they're amazing human beings. That if they just tell their story as to why they can get the job done, they would get hired. And so we narrow that down to the best 3. So the 197, we created a separate company for them, uh, to help them, cuz maybe they didn't get hired because English wasn't good enough or education wasn't good enough yet.

Wait, you, you just built a, there's like a whole nother company that you

just— Yeah, there was a separate, there was a separate company cuz I never wanted the door to be closed on anyone. They could try and try and try and try again. To get into KJ, to be hired, it's easier to get into Harvard Law or Stanford MBA program than it is to get into being hired at KJ. So the selectiveness allows for our clients to have the best talent in the world, but then it also, those that don't make it, it helps them and we encourage them to try, try and try again. And so we created a secondary, basically kind of a training ground, if you will, for for companies that maybe don't need someone at this level, but this level's okay. And it gives them an opportunity to excel better than what they were doing previously. And it kind of, again, it's, it's the minors for, for Major League Baseball, for, for example, the farm team. But yeah, there's 3 people that will present and we let the client ask them questions.

They give us the thumbs up on who they want to move forward with. And on Tuesday of the next week, they're in the trenches. With them dedicated to that client 40 hours a week. They're not shared anywhere else and they're getting stuff done. And we only hire people long-term. We don't do projects. We don't do anything short-term. My goal is that we'll see them in 3, 5, 7, 10+ years from now, still here, progressing, growing, and feeding their families and doing the things that we all enjoy on a daily basis.

I think, first of all, Garrett, wow. It's such an incredible story. I have so many questions, but what, maybe just a comment first, if I could, if you want to add color to it, and then a question. But the comment— so there's a, there's a very short YouTube video where you talk about KJ, and one of the things you've said about the company you've created is something I've always wanted to be able to do at a company I've created, or any company I've created, which, um, is that your clients, that is the companies looking to hire your family members, your talent, um, have to qualify, right? In other words, it's not just— it's not they show up with a check and you, you fulfill their need. They actually Did I get that right? First of all, let's just maybe stop there because that's actually really interesting. Like, it is not a lot of companies who are gonna set up a filter. Like, I, you know, 'cause I've got my own company now and I was like, you're, is your money green?

Yes. Yeah.

I mean, I'm, I'm kidding. I'm, I'm kidding and I'm kind of not, you know what I mean? Yeah. 'Cause I gotta feed my family. Right. But you have set an incredibly high bar of, tell us, could you just talk about that? You literally have to qualify to be one of your customers.

Yeah. Is that right? You know, I, I look at it, there was, I'm trying to think the expert who said it, it was a great book. And it, it, it resonated with me because I used to always think I'm the buyer in the transaction, not the seller. And so I told our team, flip it on its, flip it on its end. Yeah. We decide whether or not that client is good enough for the brilliance sitting right next to us. Oh, and if they're not, next. And you know, that's the thing is if they're gonna be a jerk, if they're gonna treat our people with disrespect, and they're not gonna be kind, not gonna have it.

Next. They can, they can, cuz they're, they probably treat their friends, family, and employees that way and so forth. But you don't get one of our team members if you're of that mentality. And so we know, you know, you, you hear companies are like, oh yeah, they've got a really difficult culture. Uh, their CEO is a little bit abrupt and angry a lot, or whatever it might be. You can hear these things, but usually in the communication, in the sales process, for example, Um, when we're having a conversation with them, if they want to start talking price, we actually will refer them to someone else. We say, if you're focused on the dollar component rather than the qualitative value that's being created here, not interested. You can't get a Ferrari at a Honda price.

You just can't. Have you, have you had to, I'm curious, have you had to get on the phone or what, Zoom call or whatever with, with a CEO of a potential client and look them at least virtually in the eye and explain to them why you don't think they're good enough for that? For, tell me more. That's dish the dirt.

I'm not asking you to dish the dirt. Oh yeah.

And this is very important for me, Brent, because right after this, I have to see if I qualify.

So now I'm thinking about

getting in line, right?

I was not expecting that. I have notes here.

Thank you very much. Sharon, I'm not worried about you for one minute. You know, my whole thing is they've got to be a human, right? If they're focused on like just constantly I, this is, this gets me in, this will get me in trouble in Utah. I'm not of the VC mentality where they just look at people as expendable. And a lot of these companies, because they're VC backed, they are so focused on bottom line that they, they ignore the human element of who they're talking to. And so sometimes I can hear that and I can feel that when I'm having a, if we're having a conversation and I happen to be on that call, I'm not on many of those calls anymore. And it doesn't go very well because I will literally tell them, I'm sorry, but you cannot have any of our people, basically. And they're like, what are you talking about?

Who says that? They're not used to being told that.

Yes. Yeah. To your point, Brent, their money's green too.

Right.

And I just tell them, I said, you know what? Our people are amazing. And I think you'll chew them up and you'll spit them out and you won't think anything of it. And I said, they're sorry, this isn't going to work, but Let me refer you to these two companies over here that you could work with. And they're like, what are you talking about? And so we literally will do that. And, and I say, you know, I'm sorry. And so it was funny is I don't mean it to be an emotional takeaway because at that moment they wanted even more.

I was just going to say, then do they try to reform and come

back and say, I've changed? They, they do, right? And, and they try to, try to make that. Make that point that everything's gonna be good. But, you know, a, a, a new broom sweeps new only so long. So, you know, they get back into the swing of who they are as a person and an organization. And before long, we have to pull our team member out and put them somewhere else. And so over the years, we've seen, you know, it work and not work. And, but majority of the time, we've gotten pretty good at kind of gauging if someone is going to actually want to be top-notch or not in terms of, in terms of a client. And it's been a, it's been a huge safety for us because to go in and out of kind of the ups and downs of hired at, being at a client and then having to go from a client to a new client, there's a lot of upheaval there.

And so we try to keep it very consistent for our team.

And, but yeah, you, you have to, you have to be deeply committed to yourself, to your principles, to your beliefs to do that, don't you? I mean, you really, I mean, that's a gut check I would imagine on multiple times a year where you have to say, do it. Am I gonna walk the walk? Am I gonna truly act out what I believe in my heart? And it sounds like every day you get up, I mean, this is mad respect because that's the, I would imagine that's not, you know, it's easy for us to hear and kind of smile and joke about on a podcast, but I would imagine those are some really tough calls that you have to make sometimes about, 'cause there's real business implications potentially at times.

Is that right? It, it, there definitely is. And sometimes, sometimes I'll be very direct with them. Sometimes I, I will kind of talk about stories of other clients and what we've done just to, so that they can kind of see where they're going. Yeah. You know, it might sound a little passive aggressive, me saying, let me give you an example of a client that we had a hard time with and this is why. And then they kind of, hopefully they pick up on that and go, okay, I get it. It's a parable here, you know, type of situation. And they make that adjustment.

But at the end of the day, the time saving and the stress saving of basically saying you're not a fit, it's okay, it's okay. And we move the other direction is I really love companies that are not, and this is, again, this gets me in trouble in Utah, that are not publicly, you know, not privately equity backed or venture capital backed because I get it when they're not dependent on that, they can actually make real decisions with a real human mind. I feel like. I'll give you an interesting example. We had a client, very successful company, and they, they're very strongly VC backed. They've been scaling, they've been growing, and the CEO would come to me. He's like, Garrett, your people are the best people we have. In fact, they make our American hires nervous because they're so good.

I go, great. They love what they do. And he goes, he goes, but I have to tell you, I have to let the 4 people that we have from your company go in this, this quarter. I go, why? He goes, we just, we just have to do it. And I go, why? He goes, don't worry, we'll hire them around February again. I go, what? And sure enough, he hires them back in February. I go, okay, that's interesting. Then the next end of the year happens in Q4.

He lets them go again and he says, we're going to hire them back in January. So don't worry. I go, why in January? He goes, well, what I have to do is I have to show our EBITDA numbers looking amazing. In Q4 showing that we've got some amazing numbers. So then we get more money, seed money from investors, and then we can hire people back in January, February. And I go, you know what? I think that is a management problem in growing your company than anything else. Your finances are so piss poor that this is what's happening to your people. I go, I'm not, I'm not gonna be party to it.

You can't have any more of our people. And he's like, what? I go, nope. I want long-term gainful employment for them, and I cannot do this with them in their lives. It's not fair. And, uh, you know, we come and we talk like 6 months later, still wants to hire people. And with tears in his eyes, he comes to me, he says, Garrett, whatever you do, don't ever take money from investment groups. I go, wow, I know exactly what you're talking about. And that's why, because if I took any money, they would say you're paying your people too much.

You're not charging your clients enough. We want to make more money for our pockets and for our exit. And I said, that's, sorry, I'm a conscious capitalist. That's how I've always rolled. You know, I was a financial advisor on Wall Street after my mission. I had my Series 7 and Series 66, and that was the thing that I hated was I had to fill out all this paperwork for a commission that was this big, but then the commission was based on basically a winner and a loser in a transaction.. And I thought, you know, this is just dirty. This is crony capitalism.

And I think that's what gives capitalism a bad name in America is people think of Wall Street rather than Main Street, if you will. So right there in those, those pieces of it, kind of, again, the summation of all your, your, your actions and experiences. And so fast forward, my whole goal is team member wins, client wins, we win. And what's interesting is sometimes someone will refer someone to us. And they win because we pay an affiliate commission in perpetuity. So 4 people can win at the same time. Wow. And that's what I focus on is the fact that we can, you know,

we can do that in multiple places. Gary, I mean, first of all, again, wow. And congratulations. And it's just so affirming to hear the way you're going into the world. And so thank you. Here's my question. It's a hypothetical. You're on that plane to Philippines or Latin America, wherever you're going to see the family, right? And you've got your binder with all the faces and you're working through it and you're memorizing.

And for the first time ever in your time at KJ, the binder is too big for you to memorize and get and lock in everyone's story. And you're going to show up on the ground for the very first time on the tarmac and not be able to look every one of those members in the eye and have the connection that you've had for years. My question is, are you excited about

that day or do you dread that day? You know, I'm, I'm excited and been planning on that. So my, my chief of staff, my chief of staff is May, who's been with me since the very beginning. And I've told her it's gonna come a point where I'm gonna need an earpiece and she's gonna remind me because I've filled up, I filled up like, I filled up like 6 of these worth of people's information. I take a page of notes on every member of the team. And, uh, and so, and some of it's digital, some of it's handwritten cuz I just, it's, there's, there's something about that still that I still enjoy. And, but yeah, that, that is a real worry that I, I, I have from time to time. And so we, we, we create custom notebooks. Actually, I got one right here.

Like when we went to Boracay, which is in the Philippines, and we, we've got all the different team members and stuff that were there and, and every one of them gets one of those and it's kind of a keepsake and we do a lot of fun things. And that for me is a good thing for me to review before we, we land. Yeah. We'll memorize names again and look at them and then compare 'em to my notes and go back and forth. And so there's a lot of fun things there, but I, yeah, it's, it's gonna get to that point where it's gonna be very, very difficult when we have 500 faces and I need to

remember everyone, their spouses and their kids. And that's a, and that's a, that's a good thing. Or is it not a good thing? You must be a little torn about that.

And I don't, given every, the way you're wired. It's, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's difficult. We, um, some of the original members of the KJ team, we call them the KJ originals. They're the ones that took the leap to become a part of the, of the team. And for us to take risks, it's very easy to do sometimes. For someone that is hand to mouth or doesn't know what's going to happen in another country, that is a gigantic leap. And so, yeah, it's, it's just so interesting. Like we always think about Americans, we can pile through this, we can do it.

In reality, Americans, we haven't really done too many hard things. Not knowing how to, if you're going to eat for the morning or the entire day or having food insecurity, that's a hard thing. Not having a roof over your head, that is a hard thing. Watching your family all die because you're in a war-torn country, that is a hard thing. I mean, the stories are unbelievable that I get to hear on a regular basis of the triumphs, the successes, the issues that they've had from a politics standpoint. You know, hearing my team members that lost their family because they were in Venezuela and the dictator at the time basically took them all out and they never saw their family again. Those types of stories are unbelievable. You know, the guerrillas in Colombia and the things that go on there.

I mean, these stories would just blow your mind that you get to hear. And then you get to hear the triumphant stories of we're having children for the first time because we can afford fertility treatments. We never thought we were going to be able to have kids. Or the stories of I bought my first car. I'm 35 years old and I have money now. I even bought my mom a car. She's never had a car and she's 65. And, you know, so it's these amazing stories.

You know, a member of my team in Venezuela, I shared this with Shari. She has two master's degrees in creative design. She speaks four languages. She worked for the United Nations. She was in her mid-20s. Incredible hard worker, brilliant, just amazing English. So she had the education, she had the experience, and she had the English. And she started, and they weren't paying her anything at all.

And, uh, they were just basically taking advantage of her. She was like their creative director for the United Nations. And she quit. She started working for us. And about 3 weeks later, she sent me an email once and she goes, Garrett, I wanted to thank you. And she goes, I choke up like every week when I get a story. And she goes, I just bought my first bed. First bed.

Her first bed. So Sarah in Venezuela buys her first bed, speaks 4 languages, has 2 master's degrees. Crazy experience. It's just crazy. So it's, it's— I didn't get this from ice cream. Yeah.

And Garrett, you get to wake up every morning and look in the mirror and say, you did that. She did that, but you did that too. And that's amazing. She did that, and you, and you were there to help.

That's amazing. Congrats, man.

Thanks.

Appreciate it. We have a saying in Judaism called tikkun olam, and it literally translates to our responsibility as humans is to make the world a better place. And you live, breathe, and embody tikkun olam. Yeah.

Congrats.

I mean, I— we're both a little bit in tears. At this point. Garrett, for anybody that's listening, everybody that's listening, what's the best way for people

to get ahold of you? Visit us at kj.com. You find us on the website, but if you want to get ahold of me directly, it's just my first name at kj.com. I answer every email that I get. So if it's, if it's, yeah, just feel free to send it. If it's for finding someone at KJ to, to hire. If you'd like to meet someone, just, send an email to sales@kj.com, and, someone will get to you usually within 25 minutes. If you qualify.

Yeah.

Well, someone will get to them and

then they'll, they'll take them through the next step. And then they might, then they might

say no, but that's not the— Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Typically it's not the case always, but yeah, it's, Yeah.

So anyway, it's fun. All good. Garrett, thank you so much for being

a guest with us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.