013: Solving Billion-Dollar Problems – Jim McKelvey

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Jim McKelvey 0:00
One of the advantages that is happening right now, is that because the world is in such chaos, because we’ve got so few things that work like they used to, our brains become way more receptive to new ideas. And if you’re in the new idea business, if you have this new cool thing, now is a fantastic time to get people to notice it. We’re working on a zoom conference right now, a year ago, I was doing you maybe one or two of these a week. Now I’m doing one or two a day, right? The acceptance of that is partially driven by need but it’s also partially driven by the fact that people are more accepting of this sort of communication, because we’re the pandemic we don’t have any choice.

Tony Maree Torrey 0:41
Welcome to the Legacy in the Making Show. I’m your host LA’s foremost Success Coach Tony Maree Torrey, I interview leaders and influencers who have gone beyond the superficial markers of success and claimed true fulfillment by leveraging their positions to create positive and profitable changes in their businesses and beyond. They share their stories and offer real world boots on the ground experience. That translates into practical advice to apply to your own journey. I invite you to this injection of wisdom and inspiration so you can prevail and leave your own legacy.

Tony Maree Torrey 1:23
Hello, legacy makers. I am so excited to introduce you to the guests I have today. His name is Jim McAfee and he is the founder of square payment systems. Jim is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, philanthropist, and an artist. He co founded square payment systems with his partner and Twitter co founder, jack Dorsey. And Jim still serves on the Board today. And in case you don’t know before square came along 5.2 million small businesses were paying 45 times what large enterprises were having to pay for credit card transactions. And that was if they were lucky enough to be qualified to actually process credit cards in the first place. So in 2011, his iconic pod reader the square payment reader design was inducted into the Museum of Modern Art. This is how much change that small piece of plastic and some smart tech made in the world. Jim is what I would definitely call a true renaissance man. He has created launch code, a nonprofit that trains people to work in technology, and Third Degree Glass Factory, a publicly accessible glass studio and Education Center. He lives in St. Louis, and he was appointed an independent director of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Oh my gosh, Jim, you are certainly no slouch. And definitely an amazing legacy maker. Even your artistic expressions get turned into something that changes the world for the better. which drives you.

Jim McKelvey 3:11
I guess it varies day to day. But typically problems typically things that I see and I want to fix. And I know that sounds pretty negative, but it’s a it’s sort of a wonderful way to go through a day remedying things you think are wrong. And so that’s what started square. So it started third degree with what started launch code. And it seems to be that sort of the sort of common theme in the stuff that I do. Typically, I will wander around until I find a problem that I really care about. And then I’ll put a team together and we’ll Square was a problem that I had because I couldn’t take payments as a small artist, the studio that I built was because I needed a place to work and there were no studios glassblowing requires about $100,000 a quarter million dollar investment just just to get the material melted and you know, get the studio together. So there’s sort of this common theme with me of I find a problem. And then I put together a team to try to fix it. And sometimes we fail. Sometimes we succeed, but it’s always a it’s always problem focused.

Tony Maree Torrey 4:03
I love that. And one of the things that I noticed in your book, which I need to call out to everyone, the innovation stack. This is one of the most profound business books I have ever read. I love the way you have redefined entrepreneurial ism that calls us to a high level of originality in our problem solving. And perhaps you can share with people your definition of what an entrepreneur really is.

Jim McKelvey 4:29
It’s a great question, Tony Maree because the the definition that I needed to write the book so first of all, I didn’t even want to write a book I I generally don’t like business books, and I didn’t want to write another one. But I found this thing that I thought was just super, super powerful. And then I basically got a homework assignment from Herb Kelleher, who was one of the people I interviewed for the book, Herb said, Look, you got to write this and so out of respect for her, I wrote it but in order to write the book, what I realized was that I needed To have a word to describe a business person who was not copying what everybody else was doing. And if you look at the world of business, most business is and should be copied from other working models, right? So you’ll want to open up an accounting firm, like there are many accounting firms who have best practices, you should probably find those practices. And and, and copy them. You know, that’s, that’s how it works. But what happens to the business person who doesn’t have anything to copy in other words, he or she is doing something that has never been done before. And therefore there is no model for that behavior.

Jim McKelvey 5:36
And we don’t have a word for that in English. But it turns out that we used to the economist, Joseph Schumpeter, about 100 years ago, basically coined the term entrepreneur, it had been in sort of usage, but he was the one that really clarify this definition and applied it to those who were doing new things. And if we differentiate what we can copy, from what we have to invent, it’s a very interesting line. Because the rules for copying, which we all know really well, because we’re all raised to be good copiers. As a matter of fact, if we’re not good copiers, we never are born, because part of our DNA is to replicate and replicate and replicate using a bunch of biological copying. And you know, I’m just copying my parents and your copies of your parents. And like, the fact that you have an immune system is not like you invented the immune system, your immune system has evolved over millions of years. So we’re really going to copy. But it turns out, we’re not really good at the opposite of copying, which is when you can’t copy, what do you do. And so to write my book, I needed to use an archaic definition of entrepreneur, and basically call the difference out between somebody who is doing something that is completely unique to the world and somebody who is doing something where the world already knows how to do it.

Tony Maree Torrey 6:53
That’s so fascinating. And I think that one of the things that’s really interesting about this, and maybe one of the reasons why we don’t have too many models, is that oftentimes people that do break new ground, don’t always end up being the ones that actually bring that solution to the world. Sometimes someone else comes along, copies that idea and executes on it better. And I think one of the things that is very unique about you and about the square story is that you did come up with the original idea, and you executed on it better than anyone else could even better than what as you pull the world’s most dangerous company, Amazon could do. So that’s like a fascinating part of square story.

Jim McKelvey 7:35
Well, you’re definitely right. There are a lot of great inventions like the mp3 player, which wasn’t really popularized until Steve Jobs got ahold of it. And they’re not with the iPod. In squares case, we were lucky because it was jackin. Me, I was the guy that basically came up with a core idea. But then Jack’s actually very good at executing, which is why he CEO, and I’m not like I’m not a good person to run a company, I’m a good person to start a company. The partnership has worked really, really well. And to this day, I think most of the credit is to jack and not just jack, but we’ve had a whole team of people who were running this thing, the question that I’ve always focused on, is, what do you do when you don’t know what to do? In other words, at the beginning, until there was a formula until there are best practices, you’re in this world of chaos, you really don’t know if what you’re trying is going to work, or it might work and have some disastrous side effect. And you have to be very, very nimble and work and live differently in that zone.

Jim McKelvey 8:29
And so the reason I wrote this book was because that’s the area that I’m familiar with. And that’s the area that I think most people never discuss. And the reason my prime aphasia argument for the reason we never discuss it is because, look, if we discussed it, we would have a word for it. Like if if this was something that business people talked about, if this was something that that was, you know, sort of in the common consciousness, we would at least have one word that we could use. And what I started to write my book, I realized we didn’t even have the language. So I apologize to the readers. But I, you know, I spent like the first two paragraphs, essentially dusting off this old definition of entrepreneur, because I need to be able to draw that line. Because that line is it’s very significant. If you’re on one side of the line, you know what you’re doing. And if you’re on the other side of the line, you don’t, and most people when they get up to that line, and and reach the edge of what humanity has figured out, they stop and they say, Well, you know, I’m not qualified, I’m not qualified to do this thing. And you know, your whole life. You’ve been trained to wait until you’re qualified.

Jim McKelvey 9:33
So I mean, like this afternoon, like soon as we go, I’m going to go up and I’ve got to fly a plane this afternoon. And I’m a qualified pilot. I have been trained for 10 years I study I’m, I spent a ton of time, essentially copying from better pilots, memorizing FAA regulations and doing all this stuff. And I’m a qualified pilot now, but the first pilots, Orville and Wilbur Wright were not qualified like they couldn’t be because you The airplane didn’t exist. So there would no way they could have gotten in that cockpit and say, Well, I got this welder because I’m a certified pilot. First of all, it would be ludicrous to have a certification. But secondly, it’s also impossible to be qualified at anything that has never been done before.

Tony Maree Torrey 10:14
One of the things that is really interesting about what it is that you’re sharing there, when I look at it from a human needs psychology perspective, and I think one of the reasons why we have so few people who really are the ground breakers in this way is because you have to be able to live with a massive serving of uncertainty. And most people like especially in this day and age, where people’s sense of certainty has been rocked, big time, most people are really grappling to feel more certain in this world. And so to be able to step into that space, where you don’t even know what’s coming next, because it’s never happened before, you have to have a really high tolerance,

Jim McKelvey 10:55
well, yes, or you have to be just unwilling to die. Interestingly, so the book, the book is not the story of square, I mean, I use it as a case study. But the book is really a story of hundreds of other companies that have exhibited the same behavior, where they cross that line, Mm hmm. And then ended up creating something that dominated the world. So if you look at the biggest bank, the biggest furniture company, the biggest, you know, pretty much anything, if you trace it back to the roots, you’ll find this, this same phenomenon occurs. And I thought that was interesting, you know, your comment about how one prepares for this, it would be nice to be prepared for a rough journey. But it is sufficient to simply be unwilling to quit, unwilling to give up.

Jim McKelvey 11:39
Actually, one of the reasons I chose the story of IKEA as one of my sort of classic tales, is because the founder of IKEA, openly admits to crying himself to sleep at night, and to being terrified and to being just haunted with all these ghosts. And he was not a bold, adventuring person. He was a pretty meek and shy person, he was quiet. And he talks about this, simply by choosing to do what he did, he was forced to do all these other things. So for instance, compra, when he started, IKEA was basically got on the wrong side of the furniture industry in Sweden, so he was selling furniture very cheaply. And so they banned him from art from all the furniture fairs. And so he had to invent, he had to react to that by creating his own furniture fair, he basically built the first IKEA store as a warehouse showroom, which was the first warehouse showroom on the planet. But he had to do that only because he was kicked out of the furniture fair. So if he’d been allowed to go into the fair, you wouldn’t have IKEA stores. Likewise, they later kicked him out of the country of Sweden, which was to say that there was a boycott organized so that none of the manufacturers would work for him. So he was literally driven out of his home country, and had to go elsewhere to make his furniture. And again, that led to more improvements.

Jim McKelvey 12:54
So here’s an example of a person who wasn’t willing to give up and he might not have been bold. But I’ve had some friends that have been in combat situations. And if you talk to somebody who’s been in combat, a lot of times they’ll tell you, they’re scared, but they keep functioning because it’s your life if you don’t. And I saw that parallel again. So if your listeners are sitting there thinking, Well, I’m not that sort of person. Well, look, many of us who walked these adventures paths are not seeking adventure, we just happen to be on the path. And there’s the rhino and running.

Tony Maree Torrey 13:26
I love that my dad was a colonel in the Australian Army. And he tells a story, when he was posted in Papua New Guinea to two interesting stories, actually, one of which was when he nearly drowned in quicksand. And really the same, that same kind of tenacity like he just wasn’t willing to give up. And eventually, when his head was under the quicksand, his feet made contact with a tree root, and he was able to make his way through. And what he did was he actually dove down he was prepared to go all the way under in order to get all the way out. And then the other story, he tells us how he performed and an appendectomy. Oh my god, using a first aid instruction book. Oh, it wasn’t on himself. Wasn’t that hardcore, But on someone else who survived to tell the tale.

Jim McKelvey 14:14
That’s amazing. That’s so that’s like, early. That’s like the early version of YouTube, right? I’m sure. A friend of mine hates doctors. And he, he sets his own broken bones. Oh, wow. That’s Yeah. And he breaks. Like, this is like this is this is the people I hang out with. But he hates doctors. So he’s just like, I don’t need a doctor. Just give me some gauze on a duct tape on 102 years is so so funny.

Tony Maree Torrey 14:38
Well, there’s a very important question that I have to ask you. And that is, what the heck happened to Bob? Did he get to process credit cards? And is he living a life of luxury somewhere now?

Jim McKelvey 14:49
No, he’s still Bob. He’s no longer living in his car. So for those of you who haven’t read the book, and don’t know about my friend Bob, I tell this story about my friend. To that he was a glassblower. Like me, he was unable to make a living. And the funny thing is, he’s a better glassblower than I am, I made a great living as a glassblower. But he was homeless, essentially. And it was because well, there bunch of reasons, but one of the main reasons was that he couldn’t sell this work. Because if you’re making something like art glass that nobody needs, and you can’t, oh, yeah, there’s Bob, and there’s Bob in his car, Bob’s car, Bob, what you can’t see that’s, it’s because it’s a black and white. Yes, you can’t see that the hood or the bonnet of the car is folded over the windshield. And that’s the car the bob drives.

Jim McKelvey 15:37
So I tell the story about Bob, because when we were building square, it was my goal, to build a system that was so easy and accessible, that my friend Bob could use it. And it was very clarifying to me, because you know, there are certain things that I just know, Bob’s not going to do, Bob’s not going to read a 42 page contract, Bob’s not going to sign anything, Bob doesn’t have a physical address. So if you need to mail them something, you’re out of luck. I mean, Bob is not going to study a software manual, they’re just certain things that I knew my friend wasn’t going to do. And he didn’t have a very good credit score. So we, we figured out a way to take this system that you know, heretofore had only been the providence of big successful companies, and bring it down to everybody, including my buddy, Bob.

Jim McKelvey 16:20
It’s funny, because you know, when I was writing this book, I had a specific person in mind. And she was a bob like i squared was sort of built for Bob. But the book was written for somebody who I probably shouldn’t use her name, because she might get upset, but very talented person, mm, intelligent, hardworking, has a bunch of degrees, highly, highly qualified, and also deeply caring. She really wants to do good things in the world. And what I noticed though, is every time she comes up to that boundary, where she can, not what she’s not qualified, mm hmm, she stops, she says, Oh, I need to go get more training, or I can’t do this. In some cases, that’s appropriate. But in a lot of cases, it’s not appropriate. Because the first person, the first human to do something, is never qualified to do it. If you’re the first, to put your name on the record, you were not qualified when you did the thing. Now, to become qualified, you’d have to have somebody who does it dozens of times, writes out a checklist, maybe has a certification program, maybe has some credentials, unlike we can make others qualified, who come behind us, but the first person is ever qualified. And it just breaks my heart to see this person who I think could be incredibly impactful in the world, quit every time she comes to that edge. And so I wrote the book.

Jim McKelvey 17:36
And if you read it, you’ll probably notice the tone. It’s basically saying to people, look, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to succeed, it is going to be scary, and you can’t change that. Here are a couple of tips that have been gleaned from hundreds of other companies and people who have walked the same path. But look, it’s still gonna be scary, it’s still gonna be uncomfortable, and that can’t be avoided.

Tony Maree Torrey 18:00
I think that there’s a lot of things that we can do for ourselves to be able to step into the fire of that and still be able to hold our own. And that really comes down to what you and I were talking about earlier, what I call the under the hood work. And I’d love it if you can share having been someone who has walked through the fire, you’ve probably got some great mindset techniques, things that you have done to build your internal resilience. What advice would you give to others who are looking to develop skills in that way?

Jim McKelvey 18:33
So that’s really interesting, because you say bonnet. And then you say, under the hood?

Tony Maree Torrey 18:38
Well, I’ve lived in the United States now longer than Australia.

Unknown Speaker 18:43
Okay, so you would say under the hood,

Jim McKelvey 18:46
I’m just I’m sort of a linguistic, one of the advantages that is happening right now. Is that because the world is in such chaos, because we’ve got so few things that work like they used to, our brains become way more receptive to new ideas. And if you’re in the new idea, business, if you have this new cool thing, now is a fantastic time to get people to notice it. You know, I mean, like, Look, we’re working on a zoom conference right now. And a year ago, I was doing you maybe one or two of these, a week, now I’m doing one or two a day, right? Um, and the acceptance of that is partially driven by me. But it’s also partially driven by the fact that people are more accepting of this sort of communication. Because we’re at a pandemic, we don’t have any choice. My probably best trick is energy management. So I am super jealous about giving my energy to things so I don’t do anything that I can avoid the drains me. I’ll give you an example. I don’t watch news. And you’d say, well, that’s crazy. You know, you’re on the Fed, you need to know what’s happening in the world. And the answer is, look, I read economic data. Mm hmm. But I don’t read the stories. I don’t sit there with CNN or Fox News. Or some angry person yelling at my year, the latest statistics, I don’t consume any news. And as a result, I feel like I’m here. Really? Okay. Yeah, um, do you do social media?

Tony Maree Torrey 20:12
I do do some social media mostly just to promote me. Well, yeah, and I’m consume a lot.

Jim McKelvey 20:19
So that’s interesting. I mean, I have some social media accounts. Basically, I got them to promote the book. But they’re all run by authors. And I was talking to one of the people who runs my facebook account, which I’ve literally never seen. And she’s like, Oh, yeah, you’re getting flamed every day for something that’s squared off. And you know, somebody, somebody lost a money in a chargeback or something, you know, somebody’s angry with us for some reason. And I’m like a de facto customer support line. But beyond that, even without square, I find that there’s certain things that I do that just drain me. And so I don’t do any of those. And the result of that is I end up with a higher level of energy in just a just daily life. And then when I come, I guess, a problem that would normally Stop me if I was sort of drained and depleted, hopefully, I’ll have the reserves to keep going. And for me, it’s all about how do you keep going, like, in the old days, I used to work, I should do anything for a buck. Like if I needed to pay the rent, I was willing to just do just crazy stuff to make money these days. I don’t have to do that. But I found that money, surprisingly, wasn’t really that that motivating to me, because I’m actually working more now than I did before. squared on the IPO and all that other stuff.

Tony Maree Torrey 21:27
Yeah, I completely understand that. I think that willingness to keep going, has a lot to do with being pretty clear on what your purpose is on life. And so when I work with my CEOs, one of the foundational things I do is I make sure that they’re really clear on what their life purpose is, what their mission is, what their values are all those foundational pieces, because I believe that there that’s the walk that you create. So then when the going does get rough, you’re still really clear on what it is you came here to do. And it allows you to keep on moving forward. And then I love what you’re saying about being so jealous of your energy, because that’s another piece that I work with them on is like so often, what it takes to have a startup, once you’re moving further forward, you don’t have to do the things that you were bootstrapping, back early in the day where you were wearing multiple hats, sometimes it’s a real wrestling match to kind of tease them away from those pieces, even though they’re depleting of their energy. So I love that you’re so cautious of that, because I think that that allows you to really bring some amazing gifts to the world. So Jim, what’s your favorite project that you’re working on right now? And how have you applied the principle of the innovation stack to it?

Jim McKelvey 22:42
So I’ve got two projects that I’m working on right now. One is I am trying to design a new set of drinking glasses. I mean, just, I got inspired. I’ve been in the studio for the last couple years much. And we got this beautiful new crystal. It’s this Swedish crystal. It’s just I mean, if you’re a glassblower, you appreciate it. If you’re not a glassboard, you probably wouldn’t care. But it’s just got this beautiful refractive quality. And most of my work has always been colored. And now I’m working in clear, I’m making a lot of clear stuff. And I’m trying to get these these glasses that have waves in them. And it’s a it’s a really difficult, physical challenge to make these things. It’s just really tough. And that’s been consuming a lot of it sort of creative energies. The other thing that I’m working on is diapers.

Tony Maree Torrey 23:25
So you’ve just come out of the diaper phase with your well,

Jim McKelvey 23:29
Ryan. No, it was funny. I didn’t think much about diapers, even when I was changing my daughter’s diapers. But then a friend of mine told me that there was a huge correlation between diaper usage and the start of poverty. And basically, about a third of us families struggle to pay for diapers. And if you think about the cost of a diaper diaper costs about 25 cents in bulk, which means that if you’re not rich and not shopping at Costco, or Sam’s, or some sort of wholesale thing where you can buy like a bale of these things, and stick it in your minivan, you are probably paying north of 25 cents a diaper.

Tony Maree Torrey 24:07
Yeah, it’s like if you’re the local 711, or whatever it is to correct

Jim McKelvey 24:11
if you’re a poor person, your diaper cost is a meaningful fraction of your weekly or daily income. And if you have a child that needs to be in diapers, this is a huge burden. And this is where sort of the cycle of poverty starts. And so I was thinking about this and I thought is it possible to build a diaper that costs a fraction of what curry diapers cost? And I don’t know if that is possible, like I know it’s possible. Okay, I flat out. I will bet everything that I got that it is possible now. Can I do it? I don’t know. I don’t know. First of all, I don’t know anything about diapers. Secondly, my material science is sophomore level. I’m not really good at super adorable polymers and a lot of the technology of just you know sucking up pee, which is kind of what diapers are supposed to do. is is is something that I am a novice at, you know, I’m a hobbyist when it comes to collecting urine, not a professional.

Jim McKelvey 25:09
But I’m just obsessed with this idea of building a super, super cheap diaper. And the reason the innovation stack and all the stuff I talked about in the book is helpful is because I am trying to do something that has not been done before. Mm hmm. Like humanity knows how to make a diaper and sell it for 25 cents. That is a solved problem. If you want to do that, you can literally buy the old machines from Kimberly Clark, they’ll sell their old machines, and they typically go overseas, but like the diaper machines, they don’t get scrapped. They get disassembled and sold overseas. And they you know, they become the generic brands and stuff. There’s a vast amount of technology, that’ll make a 25 cent diaper, and there’s nothing that’ll make a 10 cent diaper. And so I was thinking, maybe that would be interesting to work on. So I’m doing research, I’m doing diaper research.

Tony Maree Torrey 26:00
That is fantastic. My daughter is 28 now, but when she was a baby, one of the things that I was extremely concerned about was exposure to dioxins and things like that. And it’s extremely tender areas of the body. Yeah. So I wonder if there are some more natural solutions that

Jim McKelvey 26:16
you could come up with what I’ve done. In the book that I find helpful, even though it’s my own book, is, I understand how rough the journey is gonna be. And I’m a little bit more prepared. Like, I want people to read the book. But more More importantly, I want the right people to read the book, okay. In other words, I want the book in the hands of the people who weren’t not for this message would disqualify themselves at some point in the future.

Tony Maree Torrey 26:40
Mm hmm. And I actually want to just pause there for a second to encourage people to buy the physical book I listened to you want audiobook first. And sometimes I’ll do that before I decide whether I’m going to buy the physical book, right. But there are lots of lovely little bonus illustrations and formulas and things in the book that you don’t get to appreciate when you listen to the audiobook. So I would just definitely encourage people to go out there and get the physical copy.

Jim McKelvey 27:07
Yeah, that I couldn’t some of the jokes didn’t translate. Uh huh. And the I wrote a book, I wrote a physical book, and then I adapted it for audio. Maybe if I’d produces an audio, it would have been better. But no, I, I had to do a physical book. So

Tony Maree Torrey 27:23
and I don’t know how to set you are very funny. Like the book is not a difficult book to read at all. It’s because it’s highly entertaining. And your cast of characters are so interesting. You really paint them. Well, for someone who has never written a book before. You’re quite masterful. I have to compliment Well, I mean,

Jim McKelvey 27:38
it was not supposed to be a book. Like it was supposed to be a graphic novel. Like I did a cartoon. Like the whole, the whole book project for the first year was nothing but pen and ink. And the reason it didn’t end up in print that way, is because Herb Kelleher who was the founder of Southwest Airlines, and one of my idols, I mean, I wouldn’t say mentor because I didn’t know him when I was starting my company. But he was my idol. He was one of these people like, oh, like someday I would like to meet her killer. When herb heard that I was doing all this stuff as a graphic novel. He hated it. He thought that I was sort of trivializing an important subject. And he said, Look, if you’re going to do it as a cartoon, leave me out. And I wasn’t gonna leave Herb Kelleher out of this. And so I re wrote it. But but it’s sort of reads like a cartoon, like if you like, if you compare what I wrote to a graphic novel, they’re pretty similar. And if you compare what I wrote to like a business book, they’re miles apart. Mm. Oh,

Jim McKelvey 28:31
I try not to get too serious. Because look, I mean, we want to have some fun. And the other thing about innovation in this process that I described, is that there’s a lot of chaos. There’s a lot of stuff that goes wrong, there’s a lot of disasters, mistakes, stuff blowing up, you know. And so like, that’s good material, that’s fun to listen to, like, nobody wants to hear about success, success is so boring. But if you can be able to tell the story of the time that the hood came off your car while you were driving across the river, or how Steve Jobs looked at your prototype, and throw it at your partner like stuff, the stuff that that goes wrong, is super fun. And so you do new stuff, a lot of things are gonna go wrong. Let’s have fun with it. Let’s laugh. I mean, please.

Tony Maree Torrey 29:17
It’s one of the core spiritual principles, too, is a sense of humor. Right? Like they say that you’re you’re an evolved spiritual being. If you have a great sense of humor, the idea of just being able to look at circumstances, make them neutral, and then choose how we’re going to respond is a very empowering trait. The idea that we can choose our response is super empowering. And it took me a long, long time to learn that. Yeah, I think it’s definitely it’s I’m still learning.

Jim McKelvey 29:45
Like I still like my kids could still, you know, the

Tony Maree Torrey 29:49
families the best, aren’t they? Jim, this has been amazing. We’re running out of time, sadly, because I feel like I could talk to you all day long. So many things that we didn’t even get to Is there any last words? Or would you like to tell people how they can best find you?

Jim McKelvey 30:04
So as I’ve divulged, it’s not on social media? You know, don’t try to connect on LinkedIn. I’m sorry, I do have accounts. But they’re not real. They’re honestly just to keep the imposters from using my name to defraud people. Oh, oh, yeah, I’m a lot of people reach out presenting them. Anyways, it’s nasty. But without exception, I don’t use social media. But if you go to Jim mcilvain, e.com. So just Jimmy kelby.com. First of all, you can get a free copy of the graphic novel version of chapter nine. So get the cartoon version of the book, and some of my writings and some of the things that I think are important, and I apologize for not, you know, I’m not tweeting on a daily basis, even though my buddy founded Twitter, like, I, I can’t handle it. I just don’t do that. So that’s sort of what I do.

Jim McKelvey 30:43
And then you know, the other thing that I would say, to the folks who are listening, is, think about the moments in your life when you want to have a skill set. That allows you to walk past what humanity has done. The answer may be you don’t. Okay, that is a totally legit answer. As a matter of fact, that’s how most people answer the question. But they also answer it by default. In other words, they never ask the question. If the answer is Look, I plan to do what is always safe, unknown. And that’s what I’m comfortable doing. Because we all are perfect. But if the answer is, you want to be prepared to know what it’s like at that moment when things are not known. And you can’t copy, I will tell you that the people who I studied were not heroes, they were normal people.

Jim McKelvey 31:39
And maybe that’s the big message here. And that is, you know, we, we tend to look at these people after they become multi billionaires, and have been sort of held up as examples of truth or beauty or perseverance or some other logical quality. But if you look at them in the early days, when they were just, you know, sort of normal schmucks wandering around clueless, which we all are when we’re doing something new. It’s much more accessible. It’s much more connectable and perhaps that’s why Herb Kelleher didn’t like the fact that I was doing sort of a graphic novel, because graphic novels are for superheroes. And plain old books are for plain old people. And this is a book for plain old people.

Tony Maree Torrey 32:17
This has been such a great interview, I’m so grateful for you sharing your time with me and the legacy makers that listen to the podcast. If you haven’t subscribed yet folks do because you’ll get to hear interviews with amazing people like Jim, who is also a plain old person just like me and just like you and can still do incredible things and leave a lasting legacy. So thank you so much for the heart that you bring to the world gym and the ways in which you try to improve it for all of us.

Jim McKelvey 32:47
Tony Maree, thank you so much this was super fun.

Tony Maree Torrey 32:50
I’m glad you tuned in to the legacy in the making show. If you’re genuinely interested in creating positive change in your business or your life or on a more global scale, I invite you to connect with me at Tonymaree.com. That’s Tony with a Y Maree with two E’s. When you get there you’ll find the path to purpose master plan, the truly brilliant method to make sure you’re clear on why you’re here. This is the absolute critical foundation to honing your instincts and leaving a legacy you’ll be proud of. You can also find out about the Innate Wisdom Business Council which is an opportunity to evolve your vision in the company of like minded leaders and much much more. Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and we’ll see you next time