Episode 1497: Interview with Jackson Calame About His Epiphany About Business That Came from Mission

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1, 497 of the Inspired Stewardship

[00:00:05] Jackson Calame: Podcast. I'm Jackson Calame. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to recognize that love is a verb is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, I

[00:00:38] did a deep dive on humility yesterday morning. I love that word because we've ruined it in the English language. It's not what it, it's not, it doesn't mean today. It means self esteem today. No, it's a full appreciation of oneself. But in this study that I did, and I posted it on Twitter for those who want to see that, it talked about xenophobia and xenophilia.

[00:00:58] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for [00:01:00] joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:31] In today's podcast episode, I interview Jackson Callum. I asked Jackson about what he discovered on a mission trip and how that led to his epiphany about business. Jackson also shares why faith is an integral part of all he does, and Jackson shares with you what you need to learn and lean into to be successful in business.

[00:01:52] I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living. Assemble the puzzle of your calling by mastering your [00:02:00] time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about that book over at inspiredlivingbook. com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it as well as purchase a copy there.

[00:02:15] I'd love to see you there. Get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Jackson teaches visionary entrepreneurs how to unlock sustainable revenue growth and expand their legacy by becoming a power brand in their market. 96 percent of businesses fail within the first 10 years. Jackson teaches businesses not only how to avoid failure, but how to win by becoming a true leader in their market.

[00:02:42] Welcome to the show, Jackson!

[00:02:44] Jackson Calame: Thanks, Scott. I'm happy to be here.

[00:02:46] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. So I talked a little bit in the intro about some of what you do now with working with entrepreneurs and helping business owners, I've had the pleasure of talking to you in a couple of other [00:03:00] settings, so I know some more about the story and I wanted to share that with the listers as well.

[00:03:04] Talk a little bit about. What came before? What brought you to this point? Why is this work the work that you feel is so important for you to be doing?

[00:03:15] Jackson Calame: Huge. I appreciate that, Scott. Originally, my, my entrepreneurial spirit kind of kicked off young, and I used to do a lot of different, I used to love little fundraiser things that kids did.

[00:03:26] Selling the candy bars and going door to door and asking people to contribute to whatever magazine had whatever thing they might want in it. And I always lost to Kevin. Kevin always won, man. And, to put the unfair perspective on it, Kevin's dad worked in a corporate office.

[00:03:46] And his dad just left the candy bars on the table. Constantly by. And at the same time, that's what entrepreneurship and delegation, right? It's all about is learning how to who can work with you to get more done. [00:04:00] My parents, my dad's an entrepreneur. My mom's an entrepreneur. My stepmom's an entrepreneur.

[00:04:04] My stepdad's an entrepreneur. My grandparents on both sides are entrepreneurs. So I grew up with a, an appreciation for all the pros. That come with entrepreneurship and I would venture to guess that most of them and my other family members who are entrepreneurs all held a considerably high amount of debt as well.

[00:04:22] They didn't know quite how to be the Richard Bransons of the world. The Mark Cubans, Mark Zuckerbergs, my grandpa did super well, but I didn't come along until he was already in his eighties. And I'm well wound down. So it gave me a unique perspective where I got to see what could be possible.

[00:04:41] And I had to figure it out for myself. What, where am I going to go with this? How am I going to use this? And to wrap that up, I went to Uruguay on a mission after getting a 0. 33 GPA in college not obviously a very good student not knowing much about, again, I want to be a basketball player.

[00:04:59] I didn't want to do [00:05:00] anything besides sports and sell candy bars I was a musician. So I'm on this mission trip, loving the people, helping the people out, really dedicated to this process. And I had a very strong moment that if we want to go into later, huge epiphany. You need to go home, take advantage of your education for once, learn about business and help as many towns like this as you possibly can.

[00:05:24] And that epiphany, that moment in my life shifted everything and I was, when I saw what was going on in Uruguay and how many, how much, how the struggle is real outside of this country and how the people that I loved were suffering tremendously that inspired me to realize I needed to, for some reason, get into business and start taking life a bit more seriously.

[00:05:45] So that's what led me here.

[00:05:47] Scott Maderer: A lot of folks, I think, have that feeling sometimes of, when they do things like mission trips and that sort of thing, it's almost like a segment of your life or a [00:06:00] part of your life. And then, you come home, you work, you go to job, you. Run your own business, whatever it is, that's another compartment and that's separate.

[00:06:11] And yet it sounds like in your mind, at least while you're on the mission trip, you had the call to do that other separate part in a way. How do those tie together to you?

[00:06:20] Jackson Calame: Huge. So to elaborate. So imagine you're walking down a road, it's pitch black late at night. And this kid walks up to you and he's starving and you have to deal with this all the time, by the way, when you're in a foreign country, but he's a spitting image of your nephew looks exactly like him and he asked you for bread and you have to send him home because you have nothing.

[00:06:45] That's what happened. It destroyed me. I walked her, he walked around me had sunk. I'm bawling. It's pitch black again. The two people I'm walking with KFC, but I'm like, just let it flow. And I want to go to the rice fields, make some money open a little computer [00:07:00] store figure out how to save this town.

[00:07:01] Whack! I felt my whole head goes to the side and I hear a voice that said exactly what I told you. Why don't you go home, take advantage of your education for once. Learn about business and help as many towns like this as you possibly can. So I couldn't ignore that call. I couldn't step fully into it when I got home, but when I came home, I'm sure other people have been traumatized, but I was two years there.

[00:07:21] I didn't even hardly think about the United States. So my brain is I'm on this plane and we're getting ready to land. I see below and I, and my mom was with me. She came to see what I did in Uruguay, which I'm grateful for. And I said, mom, what are those buildings? And she goes, you mean the houses?

[00:07:40] I started to cry, Scott. I said, those aren't houses. Those are castles.

[00:07:44] Scott Maderer: They're mansions. Oh,

[00:07:46] Jackson Calame: we got, I saw castles. That's all, that's what is my interpretation, right? I'm like not into the American culture. So we're driving on the highway after we get to the airport. I'm so excited to see family and friends.

[00:07:56] That's great. But as soon as we're driving on the highway, I'm like, oh my [00:08:00] gosh, look how clean everything is. We get home to my home that I grew up in and I'm looking around. So lost and mesmerized with just how rich I'm looking at the corners of the room confused because in Uruguay, they don't paint the corners of the rooms.

[00:08:15] They don't worry about it. They don't have ladders to get up there. They're whitewashing everything instead of painting too. They put cereal boxes on their wall. The cereal boxes come with like posters on them so they can decorate their houses. I get my, my, I was not prepared for America again.

[00:08:31] And it was a really strange experience that led to, again I was pretty traumatized, but I was back into life. I needed to figure out my school. I needed to figure out what, who I was going to marry, my date and how I'm going to do things, what career I'm going to pursue. And, it took certain actions of faith and patience with myself to be 14 years to build opportunities and to build first class business.

[00:08:52] It's not like it was an overnight thing. There's still a long way to go, but I show up, everybody listening to the story realizes like. All of your stories are going to be this [00:09:00] unique and discombobulated, but when you feel that call for inspiration, faith, don't ignore it. That's what I did. I just, I'm doing this.

[00:09:07] I'm going to make this happen. I'm going to lean into these things that helped me really find purpose, maximize my life and stay tuned in with peace.

[00:09:17] Scott Maderer: I think a lot of times people do feel like, okay I've got this sense of calling or direction on something that I'm supposed to be doing in my life, but we do expect it to be instantaneous.

[00:09:28] Okay, I know the direction I'm supposed to be going now. It's going to happen. And yeah, it's really not like it's always like that. And then the other part of it is, would you say that during that 14 years has your calling. Yeah. Have you refined it? So it's not that it's changed, you refined it and you figured out more about it and all of that.

[00:09:48] How has that journey been when it comes to that?

[00:09:51] Jackson Calame: Oh, I've been called delusional. I felt delusional all along the way. The greatest showman is such a great example of that. Just how nuts you have [00:10:00] to be to go the entrepreneur route. And that's why

[00:10:02] Scott Maderer: you're family and friends. Now, what about the other people?

[00:10:06] Jackson Calame: That's right. So I come back, I go back to school. I think I probably got like a 3. 5 GPA that semester. I did pretty well, but I didn't have the money for it anymore. And I didn't want loans. And I didn't know how to get a grant. I couldn't get a grant. I couldn't get a scholarship either. Not with the first round of school mess up.

[00:10:24] They told me I would never get into the business school. And so I got into network marketing and I found people who would bring me in there and I found a great place to learn principles and John Maxwell and Jim Rohn and Darren Hardy's Success Magazine and I absolutely loved it. And so I racked my credit cards up like crazy, my little college credit cards and I I think in nine months, I think I made a little bit more than 8.

[00:10:49] Like they, that's not a good, and it wasn't what I was meant to do. Not a great return on investment there. No, but if I'm looking at it, like most of us look at it, I didn't, [00:11:00] I chose to see. All the education that I was granted. I chose to see the fact that I got to go to these conferences and see how they put these conferences together and the leadership and how the leadership behaved.

[00:11:10] And I got connected to a bunch of amazing people. Yeah, they all promote themselves a little too much, but I still learned so much along that path. And all of that was, it was my university. It was my ability. And one of the people that I was learning under his name is Vito Frescas. Vito talked to me about how he went into a car dealership at 14 years old.

[00:11:31] This is way back in the olden days. And he said, look, I know you've got a sales rep here who sucks at what he does. Fire him. Give me his job. I'll be your best sales rep very first month. Let's go. They hired 14 year old Vito. Vito went on to launch or open the, for his first Latino to own a Lincoln dealership in the United States.

[00:11:50] And I took his story and I applied it with getting other jobs and positions. Yeah. I went to from I went to lifetime fitness and that kind of got me in the door a little bit. It wasn't as successful as his path [00:12:00] was to get in there, but I got in and then I went to Google and I interviewed five times with them and it's hard to get an interview with Google.

[00:12:06] I had to sneak into headquarters to get the job, to get the interview. And so I was relentless, I was tenacious, I was persistent, I was loving and kind. And so I was given opportunities that other people typically aren't. But I also took sales jobs on Craigslist because Google said no at the end okay, so I just, I made sure that I stayed focused on what things matter most to me, which I know it sounds like hustle and grind.

[00:12:35] No, not at all. I've been a stay at home dad since 2010. I've got four kids, 13, They're my life. And being able to be there for the first steps or for the time my daughter rolled over, changing the diapers, being present for all that, teaching her first words and being the one who got to do that.

[00:12:54] Like, all of that mattered too. I wanted to have my cake, eat it too, and somewhere [00:13:00] along the lines I realized, wait a second, Richard Branson has a conveyor belt to cakes. How do I do that?

[00:13:08] Scott Maderer: Talk a little bit about your faith experience and how has that dovetailed with or fed into the journey that you were on in, in business? They tend to have a feedback loop in some way, shape, or form. How has that been for you?

[00:13:24] Jackson Calame: For us, it's every way, shape, and form. And so one, my faith is one in which I believe tremendously in freedom.

[00:13:32] And that all of us have the ability, you can worship, you can be an atheist, you can be an agnostic, you were all figuring it out. You can be Christian, you can be Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, et cetera. So I'm a big fan of having a very open mind and heart. I was, I'm not much on big words, but I was reading about humility just today.

[00:13:48] No, it was yesterday. I was, I did a deep dive on humility yesterday morning. I love that word because we've ruined it in the English language. It's not what it. It's not, it doesn't mean today, it means self esteem today. No, it's a full [00:14:00] appreciation of oneself. But in this study that I did and I posted on Twitter for those who want to see that it talked about xenophobia and xenophilia and how people who don't have humility tend to gravitate towards xenophobia, which is not accepting other cultures, having fear and hate for other cultures versus people who are centered around the idea of xenophobia.

[00:14:21] of humility and appreciating everything. Xenophilia is a love for other cultures and a desire to understand and find yourself in more and more cultures. So the reason why I mentioned that is our base for our company at First Class Business is love. That's the foundation. The pillars are patience, persistence, consistency, and reliability.

[00:14:43] I learned all of those virtues and principles through studying the Bible, the Book of Mormon, materials related to virtues and religious materials. And that's what allowed me to realize. And then I had my first boss at Lifetime Fitness. [00:15:00] When he hired me, he said, Jackson, he said, I can teach anybody cells.

[00:15:04] What I can't teach is character. You have character and that's why I want you to work with us. It was the first sales rep in San Antonio hired that they didn't have a degree. At that company. You, I can't teach character as easily. I can teach it. I believe very much in that. I did it on my mission.

[00:15:21] I do it with my team, but I have a easier time helping business owners grow and teams grow when they are centered and locked into their virtues when they actually emphasize and use them and live by them. And so faith is a huge component of, if I could help entrepreneurs, Turn to prayer instead of turning to me more.

[00:15:44] I was telling Mike, I got great strategies, but my strategy may not apply for you. That's between you and whatever you call God, the universe, call him a banana. I don't care but do your thing and pay attention to your heart and your mind. And your vision is what we're building, not my vision.[00:16:00]

[00:16:00] Everything we do is about my faith.

[00:16:03] Scott Maderer: So when you think about all of that, and again you were talking about Uruguay. I've spent quite a bit of time in South America. I went to Paraguay, Central America, Santiago, Chile, different places for different reasons over the years. And Paraguay and Uruguay are, Kind of the the neighbors down there that don't see eye to eye, but, but very similar in a lot of ways.

[00:16:26] And what's interesting to me I think I wish in a way that everyone could have that experience of going to a third world country, so to speak, or a place. That does that. I wish it was enforced. Let's put it that way. I wish they had to. I'm just definitely down with you. Where they could. Because I agree with you.

[00:16:50] I think sometimes we take, it's so easy for us to be here and see The privilege that we have and it's like a fish in [00:17:00] water. We're not seeing anymore because we're surrounded by it. How do you think that kind of formative experience applies to entrepreneurs and the way, cause again, entrepreneurs are someone a lot of times that sees the world in a different way.

[00:17:16] Do you understand? I'm not even sure if my question makes sense.

[00:17:19] Jackson Calame: Here there's a direction that's like deep in my heart. that I don't normally talk about on stages and you've given me the reverent space to be able to say it. Those of you listening in, this is a super dark secret of Jackson. So when I got back, as I mentioned, I was shell shocked, but I was also angry.

[00:17:36] I was so mad at the United States, right? Never let me run for president. Nobody's going to care now that I said that. So I'm back at BYU. And I'm walking through the business school to get to class, like each day, and every day all I can see is, man, this staircase costs more than my entire, the tire village I lived in.

[00:17:56] Okay, this door, this glass [00:18:00] door that I'm walking through, not even the whole panel of glass, but just the door costs more. than 100 of these houses, that, that could be built. And this, and so I was so angry about our obsession with wealth in the United States. I hated it. I was so upset that my people were suffering in Uruguay and I was getting to live with all this amazing luxury.

[00:18:24] And I was so judgmental and I think that held me back for a long time. I think being obsessed with that and being so judgmental, right? Coming condescending and blaming America and acting like our wealth was the problem. No, just in the same way that people can blame fire for burning things down.

[00:18:43] Fire is used for the electricity that we have, right? Water can be used to drown people. What's the good in getting mad at water and saying, Oh, we're not going to use water anymore. Like what? Come on Jackson. That's, that wasn't the way to think through this. One, one controversial individual and every politician [00:19:00] in my opinion is that inspired me on this was Mitt Romney.

[00:19:04] I was watching him do his campaigns. And I'm going to put a feather in that too. Not super inspired by him anymore, by the way, but in the race, something that happened, he had these private investor meetings. And I remember realizing, wow, I bet if Mitt Romney didn't have what he has, I bet none of them would be in that room with him.

[00:19:27] We always hear about Warren Buffett driving the same car and living in the same home. It's Warren freaking Buffett. Like people already know who he is. He's got his name on everything. Like everybody, everybody's very aware of how successful he's already been. Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't drive Honda Accords, and I'm not saying we have to be in G6s in order to be successful.

[00:19:48] But, my problem was I did not value wealth. I did not, I was not a wise steward. I wasn't willing to dive in and learn the things I needed to learn [00:20:00] through in order for God to say, Hey son, here are some resources. Use these to help others. No, I was saying, I'm not going to pay attention to God's resources.

[00:20:10] I'm just going to go cry about the problems that exist in the world. I'm just going to go tell people they should feel bad for what they're doing and how they're missing out. But. God in different ways. Some of them felt good. Some of them did not taught me that I was a bad leader. I wasn't ready to actually like uplift people and inspire people.

[00:20:32] I had too many reasons for wanting to judge the world instead of being willing to bring the whole world together, recognizing we all have challenges. We all have strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So how do we become diplomatic? and how do I learn to show God that I'm going to respect the resources that he puts in my hands and use them wisely?

[00:20:57] And I realized if I didn't learn to do [00:21:00] that, the only person who would trust me with the resources he could give me is the other side, is the adversary. And then I would be using the resources to create something that feels and looks cool, but leads to destruction, like most of the business owners that I see out there.

[00:21:15] And I'm not saying that as a direct judgment. but as a warning that the law of manifestation, the law of attraction is super huge right now, but there are two sources that can give you everything that you want. One is good and one is evil. Be careful, right? How you go about manifesting your successes, or you may end up creating yourself a what do they call that?

[00:21:39] A, a golden prison golden

[00:21:41] Scott Maderer: handcuffs or yeah.

[00:21:43] Jackson Calame: Yeah. Life can be very nasty. If you lean into that without.

[00:21:48] Scott Maderer: So one of the things that, that came to mind as you were talking and, of course we're we're recording this not too long after the election. It'll come out here. The election won't have been that long [00:22:00] ago.

[00:22:00] And this isn't a political question but it's relevant because it's on my mind. A lot of times especially in the American culture, the Western culture, we're so focused on rewarding people for what is wise in the short term. So I'm thinking about now like a company as you see a CEO, there's the big argument about, CEOs are overpaid.

[00:22:25] Oh, no, they're not because they bring in, hundreds of millions of dollars for the stockholders. And, so therefore they're not overpaid and, workers are underpaid. No, because they're not bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars, so they're not. And I keep looking at this going, it's almost like we're asking the wrong question, rewarding the wrong thing.

[00:22:43] It's like the value of the CEO. And it's not the CEOs are valuable, but the value of the CEO should not just be measured in what's the stockholders got, there has to be another way of looking at it. When you see business owners out there, whether they're the small business owners or bigger [00:23:00] ones, How do you see that struggle between that short term, fast profit bottom line and actually thinking about valuing people and customers and things that we're told are not really the way to build a successful business.

[00:23:16] Jackson Calame: My honest answer is I don't waste my time. Okay. And I focus on being my best self. I let all the noise. So I'm a producer, not a consumer. So I don't typically spend a lot of time consuming the noise that's out there. Cause it's just a distraction for me being able to focus in on my purpose.

[00:23:33] So if I could help entrepreneurs do that, stop worrying about it. It's, whatever's out of your control, let that go. But if you look at the market let's shift this real hard and take a bigger step back. You look at the last 50 to 100 years, And the business track path leads to 96 percent of businesses failing within 10 years.

[00:23:54] And 4 percent survive. I want people to hear that survive. That means that the odds of [00:24:00] me finding somebody who's giving business advice. And it's going to be great advice. It's less than 1%. It's pretty low. So anybody, I don't care how rich they are, how much they act like they're the oracle of life, how much they pretend they're as smart as chat GPT, right?

[00:24:15] And chat GPT is pretty on point, man. That stuff's good. You can get some great stuff if you ask the right questions. And so sometimes when we're with a mentor and we're like Bill Gates what color shoelaces should I wear? What did you do? Like why did you wait?

[00:24:29] If you had one question and one chance, why, why is that the one you went with? We're so bad at time management. We're so bad at being effective and we're so sensitive and we want to say we're so great. We're so addicted to wanting to have this ego and to wanting to build based on ego. And I don't waste my time with entrepreneurs who are obsessed with that vanity.

[00:24:52] I look for the ones who are willing to dive into humility. And say, I know that I'm accomplished in relation [00:25:00] to this. And if I see somebody better, I'll learn from them too. Like a great mathematician playing with another great mathematician. I'm not going to let the, I'm not going to let this inferiority complex defeat me.

[00:25:09] But two, I also know I really know nothing about English literature. So I better find a great friend who's awesome at English literature. And that person can help me understand. And I'm going to look for somebody who's loving, patient, persistent, which seems opposite of patient, right? Consistent and reliable.

[00:25:27] I'm going to look for people like that and accept their abundance and goodness and make time for it. I just play ball with the people that I have in my life now and focus on how do I make my life even better tomorrow while being grateful. And I say tomorrow, that's wrong Jackson. How can I do it now?

[00:25:46] If I'm, if I need to forgive myself for something, I don't need to say tomorrow is going to be, no, right now is going to be a better moment. I'm going to forgive myself because I love myself and I'm going to move into being an even better version of myself in [00:26:00] this very next instance. How fast can we get back in line with all of the goodness that's available to us?

[00:26:06] That's my ultimate goal in life.

[00:26:11] Scott Maderer: So when you think about let's say that's that business owner out there right now, that's listening and hearing this and going, okay, yeah this all sounds well and good, I, I still gotta, I still gotta put food on the table. I've still got to make this work.

[00:26:24] How do I keep the business going now? Keep myself from being in that 96% , and be in that 4%. What are some of the keys that you think business owners need to be paying attention to?

[00:26:36] Jackson Calame: Let's jar some minds and hearts real quick. If you're the butt guy, we're gonna butt heads.

[00:26:40] Just so those of you here in playing with the words in he that has ears, let him hear, he that has eyes. Let him see. If you can't hear and see it, then your ego is blocking you 100%. And there's no reason why we can't explore somebody else's paradigm and perspective other than us being so obsessed [00:27:00] with our own problems or on and don't get me wrong.

[00:27:02] I found out today that one of my websites is down and I lost the domain. 1, 000 lost. They want it. They want me to pay 1, domain back. It is what it is. My website was down right before we came on. So it led me to discover it. I was like, Oh man. And we just, some technicalities and certain email addresses and.

[00:27:20] It is okay. And one of my team members is terminally ill. And my son had an emergency surgery a few weeks ago. And we're still working on the recovery process for that. And figuring out what the new norm is going to look like. And I can keep going. My list is deep. Why? Because the amount of people.

[00:27:37] The amount of opportunities that I have for things to go right means there's also a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong. So what are we focused on? Are we, it's not about entrepreneurship is not about conditioning ourselves to have the perfect life. It's about understanding to me, like, how do I enjoy the journey?

[00:27:57] How do I embrace and accept and appreciate, find the [00:28:00] appreciation for whatever is happening, even if it hurts, just like a bad workout or a good workout, right? I don't know what, which one's a bad workout, which one's a good one, the one that hurts or the one that wastes your time. I, it depends on perspective.

[00:28:10] So how do you do it? My invitation to you, hit your knees. Ask the supreme being. What is it for you? I don't know. Scott doesn't know. You're your own visionary. And then if you feel drawn to work with somebody like me, like if there's something in your heart and mind, that's I should really reach out to this guy.

[00:28:31] Reach out to the guy, don't be scared, reach out to the gal, but you have intuition for a reason as an entrepreneur, and if you can balance the humble art of honoring your intuition, keeping your ego in check, which is going to be easier and easier as you practice it. but no baby learns how to walk on day one.

[00:28:54] It takes time to build those muscles up, build the muscles for humility.[00:29:00]

[00:29:01] Scott Maderer: That's my hope. So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I ask you those, is there anything else about the work you do or the journey that you've been on that you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:29:14] Jackson Calame: I would say study out who you want to bring into your life. Don't use a 20 minute coffee session or zoom call. as the only mechanism to evaluate and you can evaluate fast once you have the resources of how to pre qualify and evaluate. But if you can study the combine process of the NFL, NBA, MLB, that the entertainment districts have done a phenomenal job of building filtration systems, as have universities.

[00:29:47] If you're not filtering who's coming into your life and who you're spending your time with. You're probably going to get carried in a thousand different directions and have a pretty chaotic life. So learn how to pre [00:30:00] qualify and not act like that's judging others. You can still love people and filter them to an experience that's mutually beneficial and that mutually beneficial experience oftentimes, put your ego aside.

[00:30:14] It ain't you. Stop trying to be the person who's right for everybody's meeting.

[00:30:22] Scott Maderer: So my brand is Inspired Stewardship and I run things through that lens of stewardship. Earlier, you mentioned not being a good steward of resources and stewardship is one of those words that I've learned a lot of people hear a lot of different things when I use that word. So for you, what does the word stewardship mean?

[00:30:41] And what is the meaning? What does that mean? Meaning had on your life. What is the impact it's had on your life?

[00:30:47] Jackson Calame: Thank you and I that's one of the reasons why I loved your show scott and loved meeting you I was like, oh my gosh Here's somebody who gets it Like this is one of the most important words in the planet and very few people know it And when I taught in spanish and I taught [00:31:00] about it, we use the word mayor de domo It's the wrong word.

[00:31:03] Nobody knows what that word means in Spanish. And I was like, I didn't find that out until years after I was trying to teach what it was. How do you define it? I think the key is the same key. We don't, every listening is like, why didn't you just simplify it? You can't, right? What is love?

[00:31:21] Everybody thinks they know what that means, but most people don't even know it's a verb. I think it's something that we have and something that we, we get to enjoy. I, that's how I was. So stewardship, I've once heard leadership or rather president being the president. meaning to preside and to preside means to also be an example, right?

[00:31:45] To be the leader, the one who takes the action, the one who's taking care of everybody, not the person who's controlling and domineering and directing everything and being the most cool person. Stewardship has a lot to do with that. Stewardship has a lot to do with what The E [00:32:00] Myth, Michael Gerber talks about and it opened my eyes.

[00:32:03] First, I didn't know the word. He said, he was talking about an experience of somebody handing off processes to an entrepreneur, handing off processes to a team member, carelessly to the point where the person was overwhelmed. And he says, we cannot delegate by abdication and win. And I had to look up abdication.

[00:32:20] the heck does that mean? And it means to delegate irresponsibly, like to just throw things at people instead of. knowing what we're delegating. So all you people who want to hire people on Fiverr and Upwork and elsewhere, trust me, I went that path too. That's why the book hurt so bad when I read it. I was like, Oh, I did all of these things wrong along the way.

[00:32:42] But I am impressed with the people like LeBron James in the world who at 18 years old are already like relentlessly attached to principles of success. Once I had a child, I began to be like, Whoa, I need to like really take life more seriously. There's external [00:33:00] circumstances that can help us do that, but all of it, we don't have to be impressed upon in order to grow.

[00:33:06] We have, but if we don't choose to do it, life will impress it upon us. So choose. to cultivate stewardship by staying close to people like Scott, staying close to people like me, finding out what have you figured out in relation to this? You'll find our strengths, our weaknesses, our opportunities, and our threats too.

[00:33:24] We're not perfect at it, but I do have a pretty dang near perfect dedication to finding out more each day. How do I be an even better steward? That's my focal. That's one of my big focal points.

[00:33:38] Scott Maderer: Yeah, and I think that's important to the realization of you're not striving to be perfect at it. You're striving to be better at it every day.

[00:33:46] And that, it, that sounds like somehow or another, that's the same thing. And yet those are really different attitudes.

[00:33:53] Jackson Calame: One leads to depression, anxiety, and self defeat. Where you feel like you end up building your [00:34:00] expectations up. And then you can't fulfill your expectations because they're a vice and they're not healthy versus the aspiration, right?

[00:34:08] Which is I'm okay with and grateful for what I did accomplish. What I didn't is okay. God knows that I wasn't meant to be today and I'm going to, work tomorrow. On doing the same thing, but that so many people give up on their goals because they have an unhealthy relationship with their goals and they feel like their goal should be accomplished.

[00:34:28] No, your goal, if you're setting big, hairy, audacious goals, they're designed to stretch you to your absolute limits. And yes, we can toxically beat ourselves up when it comes to the virtue of growth. But I, I, it's about the destination, like the destinations or no destination is great. But I want to enjoy the journey, man.

[00:34:50] I want to be here with you and appreciate this moment right now.

[00:34:55] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. [00:35:00] Imagine for a moment that I had this magic machine and with this machine, I was able to take you from where you are today and transport you into the future. Maybe 150, maybe 250 years into the future.

[00:35:15] And with the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life. See all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind. What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

[00:35:27] Jackson Calame: I'll go to a tangible reality on this. In Uruguay the first two little girls that I got to help with the baptism for they're sisters 14 years old. and she wanted the, she was going to give the speech, the talk at the baptism about faith. And she came and she's crying. And I went into a room with her.

[00:35:45] I said a prayer with her and got her confidence up. There's probably six people there, but to her, probably like 6 million. And I said, Hey, you don't have to do this. It's okay. But I know how important this can be for your life. So she goes and she gives this talk and it's just a beautiful job and everybody's super excited.

[00:35:59] And you can [00:36:00] see just how excited she is that she was able to accomplish this. And for the next two years, I worried about her and her sisters cause they would come to church by themselves. Mom had to work or whatever, wherever she was. And I was always worried that they would stop wouldn't be able to keep their commitments and that they would fall to the wayside and the no church members would help them.

[00:36:19] And every single month I'd get little gifts from them and little messages and fast forward more years. And Romina the 14 year old. Years later, gets a mission call to Chile, to Santiago, Chile. And the, I got to get involved with the highest level, thousands of people's lives on my mission.

[00:36:41] And I met people whose doors I knocked and they were on the verge of committing suicide. When we knocked the door we got to know families who were torn apart that ended up dying. Getting married and stabilizing their families and we helped kids get out of drugs and get back on track and get into a career.

[00:36:56] I, the, I can't even quantify the amount of amazing [00:37:00] opportunities I had in that two years to feel God work through opportunities that, that he allowed me to be involved in. And now, this one little girl goes on and does the same thing for 18 months, right? And I know that's going to lead to more people doing the same, and more people doing the same.

[00:37:21] It is such a humbling question, you're considering 150 years of that? That, that's that's, every, the ripple effect of just doing one good thing, right? Just lifting one person up. has a magnitude of impact that is eternal. That people don't understand. When Steve Jobs in the movie Jobs said, we're going to make a dent in the universe, my heart and mind immediately said, I do that every day.

[00:37:55] Not ego. He does too. He just didn't recognize it. We all [00:38:00] have the opportunity to make a dent in the universe every single day to make a positive impact is what he's referring to, right? It's the change of life. I think we need to be more appreciative of the great things that we do if we want to have more peace and happiness.

[00:38:13] And so if it's something tiny that I did, I'm going to appreciate that tiny act. Something big that I got to do, I'm still going to appreciate that very act.

[00:38:24] Scott Maderer: So what's on the roadmap? What's coming next as you continue on this journey?

[00:38:29] Jackson Calame: We have five hosts of Vision Pros live.com. Now we just interviewed and are in the preliminary onboarding of two more hosts of that show.

[00:38:38] I haven't told my team this, so I probably shouldn't announce it, but Scott, I'm going . I'm launching another show and the new show will be Your Best. And that shows I love vision pros cause we get to incubate visions and help people get started on things. And we need a space for people to have visions that just aren't that great.

[00:38:58] They're still working through the details, just [00:39:00] like I was, but I need to be able to have a platform where I'm able to dive in at my absolute best as a podcast host and ask really deep in depth hard questions. And unfortunately, a lot of people in the inspirational market they like to, they're not as authentic as you would hope.

[00:39:17] They're still scared to be truthful and honest about where they're at. And I can't do a, be your best show and ask be your best questions with somebody who's going to get mad if I mentioned their book that has three reviews on Amazon. And it's okay, what went wrong with the book launch? What did you learn from this?

[00:39:34] Most people will be horrified. I'd be like, what a jerk. How could you do that to me? Delete this episode. I've had some people be like, I don't want my episode on your brand anymore because. they were pretending more than they were contending. I didn't mean to expose it, but that's my nature.

[00:39:49] I like to have very big conversations, bold conversations with great leaders. That means you talk about the tough stuff. So that's one of the big things that's on the horizon as a be your best [00:40:00] podcast. I'm going to get that launched. I've only told one person about that so far. So that's coming.

[00:40:05] Scott Maderer: Everybody that's hearing this, just keep it between yourselves. Nobody, no,

[00:40:10] Jackson Calame: I trust you all now. You guys, you run with it. Of course, I will be telling my team the, so that's a big one. And passionpro. org is building out firstclassbusiness. io. Open eyes, Latinas now has its own website.

[00:40:23] And is building out Harry's building opportunities for Indians out and just building opportunities for Filipinos. All these are entities that we're involved with in building, we just, I just every day is like my birthday, Scott, we come and we play together and we have fun and we get excited about what we're doing.

[00:40:40] And let each day bring its own new miracle,

[00:40:42] Scott Maderer: absolutely. So you can find out more about Jackson over at his sites. He just mentioned firstclassbusiness. io, or if you want to listen to his show and hear more about that, it's at visionproslive. com. Of course, I'll have links to both of those over in the show notes as well.[00:41:00]

[00:41:00] Jackson, anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:41:03] Jackson Calame: Absolutely. Those entities I mentioned, those are entities where I have strategic partners equity relations as well. People who come in and get started with us to get a feel for what we're up to. I could talk about Sharon from effortless vitality.

[00:41:17] org or heartfelt AI and what Jess is up to building that Junaid Ahmed of humble zone, home studio mastery, superjunaid. com. And now he's building a media school. for people like there's so many great all these opportunities that come my way. It's not because I can do it all. It's because I've I enjoy finding visionaries who are building amazing things and then helping them build what their vision is.

[00:41:42] And just being a mentor or resource or having our entire team do that. Together. So if you want to be involved in an environment that's built around win relationships, come and play with us.

[00:41:58] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for [00:42:00] listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor, go over to inspired stewardship dot com slash iTunes rate, all one word, iTunes rate.

[00:42:29] It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.