Kelly Cardena's mission is to make everybody happy next on Expert Talk

Expert Talk is sponsored by PodNation TV, the Podcast to Broadcast network. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. You know where you are Expert Talk with me TGo and as always, you know, I love bringing experts. I love bringing cool people and I love bringing fun this episode today. Let me tell ya, come here this episode today. Fun. Cool,

really nice, understands people and motivates people to understand themselves. Today. I had the privilege of meeting this young man, not too long ago at an event called Prosperity Camp. And he immediately became my family. It was like, I found him and I've been looking for him all my life. Kelly Cardenas is here today. We're going to talk about a little bit of everything,

but most of all, we're going to have a lot of fun. So sit right there. We'll be right back. Like I said before we went to break, I've got the coolest dude on the planet. I mean, even as hair is cool. His logo is cool because it's kind of about his hair. This is Kelly Cardenas. I can't believe he's on the show.

What's up brother. Are you out there? I am out here. Thank you so much with all that buildup, I feel like I should be wearing a Cape and a Speedo, something like that. I talked to your people man. That's what was supposed to happen. What's up? Go, go get dressed. I, I Was feeling bad about myself after seeing Allen.

So, I mean, he's the sexiest man alive. If you don't know who he is, Allen Estrada the sexiest man with the nicest head on the planet. Yeah. They know who he is. Cause we're doing the 9 @ 9. They know he's the rude producer that cuts me off all the time, but I love him. He's my brother.

And he takes care of me and I take care of him. It's awesome. So let's talk about you, sir. Let's talk about the fact that you so cool. You rode into the coolest event on the planet, on the coolest bike. What's up with that? Well, my Mom taught me from a very early age that it was okay to just be yourself.

And you know, here, here was this event, one of the number one networking events in the whole country. And you know, people, I knew people were going to show out, they're gonna come into the Mercedes. They're going to come into Benz. They're going to come into Rolls. They're going to come in all these things. And I thought,

what better to come in on a bike because ain't no one going to be waiting for that one. And also too, it just, you know, I wanted to ride my bike. My bike makes me happy. It takes me back to being a nine year old kid. And when you're a nine year old kid, you're happy. You're joyous. And you have the tendency to make a lot of friends.

You got that, right? You got that. Right. So let me ask you something. Cause you could have done anything in your life. You could have been anyone in your life. And I think you truly are the most authentic. You, you can be. What brought you to the point where you started your, your salons? What made you decide to go in business and be an entrepreneur in the first place?

Being An entrepreneur? I mean, I heard it early on and I wanted to be one because it sounded like manure and it was funny. We were eight years old. My Dad said an entrepreneur and we, me and my buddy Will shout out to Will Simmons and we thought it, he said manure. And we were like, he's dodo? Like he said,

dodo, so I didn't know what it was, but we ended up selling now and laters in, in school. My brother did, he showed me, showed me kind of the way we had to mow lawns when we were growing up. And honestly like, I really never wanted to be the lead guy. I never wanted to own my own company.

I always wanted to be the number one guy for that guy. And then 15 years ago I got released from my job on my day off like Craig from Friday. And I decided I wanted to cut away the fat and honor all the people who had got me to that point. And that was the point when I made the decision that I was going to do my own company,

but I wanted to make it better than I had ever seen in my own situation. Just competing with me, not competing with anybody else. So what was the first business you started? So the First business that, you know, when you're a kid, you do all the things, right? You mow lawns, you do all the stuff we have lemonade stands.

e I was, what was I? This was: 2006

I had all this stuff and then boom, on a Monday when I'm not working, I lose my job. And I called my Brother and it was a, it was a huge thing for me, a big, big Brother, Rob, I called him and I said, Hey man, I'm going to downsize my life. I'm going to sell the G wagon.

I'm going to sell the house. I'm going to get a smaller house. He said, you're not going to do any of those things coming from Lompoc, California. Like we did living in a one-bedroom apartment with five people. You are not going to go backwards. You are going to work hard and elevate your income back to your lifestyle as opposed to dropping your lifestyle to your income.

And that was a changing point for me. And then it was just full steam ahead. We got locked in. We went after it and made a lot of mistakes along the way. And I appreciate everyone out there that I've made a mistake with. And I appreciate you because you know, it was just trying over and over again until we, until something worked,

You know, I was going to ask another question, but by you saying what you just said, I've got to kind of veer off the road a little bit and ask this question, we're supposedly coming out of COVID, but then there's this Delta variant we're not even going to talk about, but people are now being forced to come back to their office.

Some people are saying, I'm not going, I'm going to start my own thing. You know, how important is it? The hustle, you know, how important is it to figure out your path and how would you suggest somebody starts? Well, I think one of the big things is, is to understand and know who you are. My parents taught me this very early on three,

three concepts, number one year. Awesome. My mom would scratch me on my back every morning and tell me that waking up. You're awesome. Everything you do is awesome. No matter what you do. You're awesome. Number two, you're beautiful. Don't compare yourself to anybody else. You're beautiful just as being you. And then number three is you can do anything that you put your mind to,

but just because you can do it, doesn't make it your purpose and doesn't make it right. So my caution to every single person out there that is thinking, oh man, COVID happened. I'm going to pivot, which is the big word I'm going to pivot and start my own business. Not every single person out there should be starting their own business.

Starting your own business means eating last. It means making sure that everyone else is taken care of and that you're doing it for a greater purpose than money. And if it's just the taglines, I was just watching Instagram today and I was watching a girl. And she was like, if you hate your 9 to 5, if you want to live and you need to do this.

And I was like, not everyone needs to live free because a lot of us need parameters. I need parameters. And there, even if you go into an online business, you're still gonna work hard. Like you still gonna work hard. So yeah. I mean, people tell me all the time, it must be great to have your own business.

You don't have a boss and I'm like, you've never had your own business. Because if you got 30 clients, you got 30 bosses and they all want their stuff done. First. They don't want to hear about anything else. And you work every day to the ends in Y. So you gotta learn how to hustle and understand that hustle. And you were talking before we got started today about a young man named Jeff,

what does Jeff's hustle? What's he about? I want to meet him. He gotta be on The show. What I love about Jeff Brownell, shout out to him. Jay's Barbershop, probably one of the best in the business. This guy is not a hustler. He has hustle. And the difference between a hustler and a person who has hustle is that person with hustle has a focus.

And he has a focus on being the greatest. And he's not just out there just trying to sell nonsense. He is a hardworking man. He's always been that way. And he constantly pumps everyone else up. And guess what happens? He continues to succeed. So big shout out to Jay's Barbershop in Lompoc, California. Yeah. I want to meet him.

I got to get him on the show. We're going to have to work that out. But if I don't take a break soon, you know the guy you love so much Mr. Allen, with the wonderful bald head. Yeah. He going to hurt me. So we going take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about Kelly's Book.

We're going to talk about his Salons. We're going to talk about just fun stuff that he's doing. And you know, he has a cool bike, but he hasn't even cooler something else. So sit right there. We'll be right back. Expert Talk is sponsored by PodNation TV, the Podcast to Broadcast network. Hey, I have a quick question for you.

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We're talking to Kelly. We were just about to get into the meat and the potatoes as my Dad used to say, Hey Kelly, you still out there? Yes. Ma'am. What's happening. What's happening. Okay. Before we get started, I know y'all are asking. I can see you asking, even though this is recorded, you're going to go ask the Man about his dreads.

Ask him where he, when he got them, why he got them and how come they look. So cool. So I got to ask, let's talk about your dreads. I think every single thing TGo was on accident, and this is a way of God keeping me humble because I think that if I had some grand scheme of having dreads, that they would be cool.

And then I would just point everything at me and what God told me very early on Romans 9-17. He told me that he w he put a Pharaoh in this place that when Pharaoh spoke, then the, then the people would hear God's voice and not his voice. And then he followed it up with letting me know that if I ever got to the point where people,

I thought it was my voice that people were hearing and not God's voice, he would take everything away. And so everything that I have is by accident. I started a company because I got fired. I started my dreads cause I had an Afro at the time. And I was flying back from China, about 15 hours. I was educating out there and I was rubbing my head because I was tired and it knotted up in the back.

And then I thought, ah, let's go with it. So wow. All these things, literally like everything that has happened to me, even meeting you, meeting you, I needed a charger. I needed a charger. I didn't I wouldn't have had taken my Podcast to Broadcast becoming a worldwide celebrity. I needed a charger and you gave it to me. And then we made friends.

And now here we are. Yeah. And we're going to make your worldwide celebrity too, but we're going to talk about that next time you come on the show. Cause right now we got to give a little bit of your history. Cause I could love just listening to you speak and it's not by accident. And I know you said everything you do is by accident.

I think it was by plan. Somebodies got a plan for your path, but it's not by accident that I love hearing you speak. You Sir, go to stages all over the world and you just got picked up by a speakers bureau, Correct? Yes ma'am. Yes. Ma'am speed. Success.com, which was amazing. They called me and Robert Hirschbeck is on their mail row.

Mel Robbins, Jay Shetty. I mean some phenomenal heavy hitters. And again like I'm a, I'm a very, I'm a very blessed man. And I, I believe it's all by design. I mean, it ain't by my design, but you know, I, I keep showing up and I use three principles all the time, three principles to build any business in the world.

Number one, this is what I speak on all over the world. Number one, be kind and being kind is contributing to other people. Number two, make a lot of friends and number three, work hard. You gotta throw that in there. You gotta throw that in there. Now, before we skipped down the road and talk about a couple of other things you said,

meet a lot of people, make a lot of friends. What about the person that stands the back of the room that tries to fade into the paint and goes, well, he's not talking to me because I'm too shy. What would you tell that person? I would tell that person that you're beautiful. And I think, you know, and I tell this to,

and it sounds crazy, but I tell this to CEOs. I tell this to, you know, entry level people in companies and it's speaking life into every single person and every single event that you come in contact with and letting that person or that event know that they're beautiful. That they're awesome and that they can. And when we do that, we have the tendency to draw out the best in people.

And I love to look for that person in the back corner of the room, because that's the person that ain't trying to prove anything. That's the person that generally like TGo, who was not talking, wasn't the person jumping rah rah rah, but was the person that is doing it. So most of the time the person that's doing it, isn't talking about it.

They're just doing it. Yeah. That at that event at, at Prosperity Camp, I was literally upstairs against the wall. Nobody saw me. And you were like, Hey, look at this guy, all right, let's shift some gears. You are a Forbes contributor. What does that mean? Well, What it is, does it mean as far as I get to write for Forbes?

And you know, what it means to me is a kid from Lompoc, California, 35,000 people. It means that if you got C's D's and F's in school, these things are possible. And what I find is that again, when you go back to it, when you are really, really kind, and you just contribute to people when you make friends and when you work really,

really hard at not the grind, but work really hard at being kind, which will make friends, which will get you to work harder at being kind, when those things happen. It's amazing. And now being able to be on that stage, the Forbes stage, I, you know, it wasn't even a thought when I was a kid, but now seeing it,

it just connects you with so many people all over the world. And I've just, I'm honestly, I'm so honored to be able to be a part. Not only are you a Forbes contributor though, I mean, I've known you for less than a month and you've been associated with Forbes, not once, but twice you're out there killing it, man.

Well, I appreciate it. They did a feature on my, on my, on my career and, and, and what was so great is that headline was be kind make friends and work hard. And that's the next book that I'm working on right now. But they had the, they had the audacity with, as a business and as a high powered magazine to list out the three things that mean the most.

And when we take the time and when we connect with people, I mean, when I connected with Allen, when I connected with you, it wasn't about what can you give me? It's about what can we, how can we connect? How can we be friends? And you know what? The business will come later. But I think that if we could start to shift that way,

it'll work out so much better. I love it. Now you've mentioned that your first business was a salon and you still own salons. I do, but we grow leaders and this was the coolest thing. I had one girl that was a minimum wage worker, made it to six figures within three and a half years. And she became the highest earner in our company for nine years straight.

Another girl came onto our company four years ago in Las Vegas. And she took 50% of what she was getting, what her salary was because she wanted to do something. She believed in well, four years later, that girl and the girl who started at minimum wage actually bought the location. I'm about holding leaders, not about building followers. I want every single person in the company to be successful.

And then they can take it to that next level. And now two young ladies, two young entrepreneurs, Jen Moses, shout out to her and Shauna Martin now own the first salon and first business that was ever in my family. And now it's called Style and Grace. It was Kelly Cardenas salon, and now it's Style and Grace and they're taking it to that next level.

We build leaders. Speaking of building leaders, how important are the people within an organization? I mean, you could have great brands, but if you don't have great people, then what? Well, I, my dad raised me on this. He said that there's only one business in the world and one business only. And that's the people business. You take the people out of the business,

you've got no business at all. And it was the, it was the focal point. Since I was a kid, I hated hearing it when I was in fourth grade. But now I look at it and literally like, it, it doesn't matter what company I come into. It doesn't matter if it's a casino. If it's a dentist office, if it's a Fortune 500,

whatever it is, every one of those companies has people. And I just connect with the people. I speak life into the people and then guess what? We build the people and allow the people to build the business. You are a Coach, you're an Entrepreneur. You're a Cool Dude. You're also, you know, you are an Author. Let's talk about your book.

Well, the, the book Six Indicators for Business in Life, it's 117 pages. I say that could change anybody's life. Not because I have all the answers, but because I was willing to do what my wife told me to do, she told me to shut up about talking about it and go do it. So we, I sat down and I,

I wrote the book in six days. And what it is is no one would drive their car. If their speedometer was out. Not because you couldn't drive your car and wouldn't function, but because you wouldn't know how fast or slow you're going, and it would impair your, your reaction time. But most of us run our businesses, our lives and our relationships without indicators to tell us how fast or slow we're going.

And therefore we're making decisions, you know, a hundred mile, an hour decisions. And we have no idea how fast we're going. And that reaction time is huge. So these six indicators are things that I, every company that I go to, every individual that I work with, I've never found any challenges, any goals that they have, that's outside of these six,

then that can't be taken care of by these six. They're not the magic beans, but they will help you to be able to look at your life. And celebrate when you're doing good or adjust, when you're not, Wow, okay. How do people find your book? Where do they go to get it? You know, let's talk about That. So I,

I wanted to make it easy for everyone, right? It's KellyCardenas.com. But also you got your youth or your YouTuber's Kelly Cardenas. You got your Instagram people. It's @theRealKellyCardenes you got your Tik Tokers, Kelly Cardenas, the real Kelly Cardenas 23, you got your LinkedIn people. You got. And I wanted to make sure that I had a median for every one of them.

I have a paper book. I have a digital book. We have videos. We have courses, all those things, but it wasn't because I was the man. It was just because I know that not everyone learns exactly the same. So we want to make sure that we have a median for every single person. Are you going to do an audio,

like an audio book of it, or have you already done that? I am going to do an audio book and I want to, I'm celebrating this because I'm going to do the audio book, but I'm going to freestyle with it because this book is not something that I wrote in theory, this is no I wrote no, no theory, just experience.

And so I implored all these things in my company and built multi multi-million dollar national brand, not graduating from high school or barely graduated from high school. And I did that based off these six indicators. And I believe that anyone, whether you're wanting to get to a million, you're wanting to get into the multi-millions. You want to get into the billions.

I've never seen a company that won't benefit from working with it. And the simple principles that it has, which is wrapped completely around building people, You are amazing. You also have a podcast, where can they find it? Where do they listen to it? What's going on with that, that Apple podcast, Spotify, anywhere you could get your podcasts.

And you know, for me, it's the whole premise of the podcast is attitude determines altitude. I take iconic people and I want to humanize them because my kids, I want my kids to not have idols in their lives, but to have people who truly inspire them and every person that comes on the podcast, including you, when you're there, you,

they actually give advice by name to my Son, Maddox and my Daughter McKenna. And so it's amazing to see, you know, the Stephen Covey's of the world, the general manager of the Tennessee Titans. Like, I mean, you have these juggernauts and you see that all of them have the same thing in common. Number one, a phenomenal attitude.

And number two crazy work ethic. Before I let you get out of the hot seat. Cause I promised not to keep you here too long. I know you have another interview to do, you know, I mentioned at the break that you have a cool bike, but you also have a really, really super cool car. Thanks to your Pops. Cause you call him Pops,

tell me about that car. So I was in a, I was going into my senior year of high school. We didn't have much money. My Dad was, didn't have a job at the time. He was just doing odd jobs. I saw a car in the trade express and it was a 63 Impala and I have wanted that car more than anything.

Well, my Dad had saved up enough money, $1,400 to buy a work truck so he could support our family. We went to see the work truck. He looked at it. Then he took me to see the 63 Impala. When I saw it, I fell in love, but I knew we didn't have enough money to get it because we had barely enough money to be able to pay rent.

My Dad took the $1,400 and for went that truck to support our family and bought me that car. And that car has been in the family ever since everyone thought that I was crazy when I got it at first cause 63 Impalas weren't, weren't the thing. They were a Grandma car. It was a boat. But all the things that you fall in love with that are authentically who you are at some point,

all the rest of the people will catch up. Well, I can't think of a better way to, you know, close this chapter. Cause I hope you'll come back more and often. And, and like I say, your family now you're stuck with me. So I thank you so much, sir, for being on the show, you are absolutely the best and as always,

everybody, thanks for watching. I hope you'll be here next week. I'm TGo I'll talk to you next time.