Sparking Success with Aaron Opalewski

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (00:00.11)
Welcome to Sparking Success with Aaron Opalewski, Aaron brings you conversations that spark innovation, cultivate leadership skills, and pave the way for your business success. In each episode, we delve into the dynamic world of business and leadership, exploring strategies, insights, and success stories that fuel your professional journey.

Well, hey everybody. Welcome to Sparking Success. My name is E .J. Swanson and I am here with my good friend, Aaron Opalewski. This is Aaron's show. Aaron, welcome. We're so blessed to have you today. Love to be doing this, man. Amen. It's great to be here with you. Amen. You know, this is our very first podcast for Sparking Success. And today what we want to do for each of you listeners is take some time, go through and build a bit of the authority, why you should listen to this podcast. Now, as we do that,

I want to just give you a brief overview. Aaron is the CEO of Spark companies, hence the name Sparking Success. And through his journey as a leader, as a CEO, as a managing partner in a number of different organizations, Aaron has just had a ton of success. And his deep, deep, deep desire is to share that with each of you. And Aaron, what I want to do today as we kind of launch this podcast is just step back and take some time, be able to share with people.

why they should be listening to this. And I think as the host of this show, one of the most important reasons to do that is to be able to establish the authority, the track record that God has allowed you to have throughout the years that you've been serving, that you've been doing all these amazing things through your journey. And as we do that, I just want to start off and just hear about the early years of Aaron Opelouski, kind of your upbringing. Will you just dive right in?

And as you do, will you take a moment and just a couple of minutes and share about your upbringing with us? Yeah. Well, first off, I'm excited to be doing this with you, EJ. We've been friends now for a long time. Yeah. And had our own journeys, and here we are. So this is exciting for me personally to be doing this with you. And I'm just grateful that we get the opportunity to do it. I agree. I'll start with you said at one point that you know,

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (02:19.822)
God has allowed this to happen and that's a good place to start. That's the truth. We'll get into a lot of stuff on the podcast, but none of it happens without his desire, will, all the glory to him on it. Yeah, he's directed both of us in so many specific and intricate ways. And both of us, we won't skirt around it. We're both men of faith.

And as we are we rely on him for a ton of things and he's guided each of your steps along this way for sure absolutely and by no means am I any I mess up every day on this and I'm sure we'll get into a lot of that maybe even today right yeah, but You know just extremely grateful for What you know?

my relationship with God has meant to me and how that's been kind of revealed over the years and kind of taken on more part of my everyday life compared to just knowing that like kind of the difference between right and wrong and where I might have been off path, like at least I knew I was off path. But as God's kind of brought me back onto a path and kind of show me what that is, my relationship with him has also grown, which has been a cool thing. By all means. Hopefully we get to talk.

Oh, we will. I'm sure. I'm sure. So back in, you know, the growing up days for you, Aaron, you grew up in in Michigan, as you did give us a little bit of that journey. Yeah, grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, and moved around a lot as a younger guy, ended up in Detroit area in seventh grade. And then we kind of cemented our stuff here, even though we moved a couple times, you know, being down here.

But by the time I hit seventh grade, I think I was in like six different schools. Had to make new sets of friends like all along. And there was a lot of things going on in that time in my parents life that I didn't completely understand. But all I knew is that, hey, we're moving again. You know, I have friends. Okay, now I have to go make new friends. And at the time that was hard for me. Now I look at it as a huge blessing because it allowed me to be around.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (04:39.374)
different people in different areas of the state. We didn't move all across the country, but all over Michigan, pretty much. And it just exposed me some different things that made me kind of put myself out there and at a young age, kind of prepare myself for some of the things that I had to do in sales like every day. And I didn't know that's what was happening at the time, but even when I got into sales, I don't think I looked at it that way. But looking back on it like,

years down the road as you get more perspective, I'm like, man, that really set me up to be more prepared to walk into an environment where you experience a high amount of rejection and you have to go into new situations and learn how to kind of be comfortable with that or deal with that. Yeah. And that, that shaped you in a unique way. And as it, it did, um, it led into a ton of success. And as that success,

kind of builds off of one another. You built success, I'm sure, in relationships, starting them, having to restart them. And as you did that, it does sound like it's a huge part of the foundation of what you have been able to build over the years. So you go through moving up to seventh grade. Did you love school? Did you hate school? Were you good at school? Were you? You always say to people, are you an academic? Are you an athlete?

Or are you just this anomaly where you're good at both? I can say for me, I was not an academic. What did that look like for you? School road beat me up. It was tough on me. It beat up my confidence. The area that it helped me out in was on the sports side. I went through success in sports as a little guy. Little guy meaning young?

Both young and I guess I was usually the shortest one on the team too. So I guess both. But I was the best player on a lot of my teams in grade school. And when you're first getting introduced to sports, and then when we moved down here, I started going to bigger schools. And I remember I made the basketball team, but I was the last one to make the team. I didn't have very good tryout. And I didn't know anybody. And a lot of the people had played together.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (06:57.998)
And frankly, like the speed of the game down here compared to where I was playing was just different. OK, took me a couple of years to get accustomed to that completely. But by the time I had hit high school, you know, in 10th grade, you know, I ended up starting on varsity and having a good high school career. Like I don't have this great sports story, but I did learn a lot from that time. And, you know, what I was able to accomplish like at.

school level so that ended up being it for me and I had some offers to play small like D3 or even below D3 levels where you don't get scholarships. That wasn't in the cards for me I didn't really want to go into a ton of debt and you know that was tough for me to kind of meet my end of my competitive sports career and it led to me getting into some trouble but that was a part of the plan and you know kind of

push me on towards what was next. Yeah. And just because I know you and many of the people, maybe even today who aren't familiar with you as well, I'll pull something out even there. You within business and certainly as we've known each other through those years, tenacity and grit is a huge part of who you are. You are an extremely hard worker. As you work hard, you also lead hard. And I'm sure that's probably why.

Coaches kept you on the team until that you know everything Within your skills matched up to that 10th grade year where you made varsity you really started moving Would you say that that's true? Yeah, I mean The way that I ended up having success in sports was being the hardest worker on the team Yeah, you know that started like at that frame that you mentioned or that time frame It was coming in first in every sprint

being a pass on defense to the max. Like I was either gonna fall over and die or I was gonna beat you. And that was just my mentality. And that again, served me well in sports at that level. Didn't bring me to the next level to where at the time like I was hoping it would, right? But later on, a couple years later, once I learned that I could apply that in the business world, it was like a light switch. And...

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (09:23.63)
Man, once I got that figured out, it was awesome. It was an empowering thing. Yeah, take us there a little bit. So post high school, you said you had some opportunities to play at some smaller colleges and stuff like that. You chose to do that, or you didn't choose to do that? I didn't choose to do that because I didn't get offered any kind of full scholarship or anything like that. I didn't have very many people recruiting me. I don't want to spend the whole time on that, but I got to.

play with some great people my senior year and one of the guys who's passed away went on to become a Combe County player of the year.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (10:03.214)
I don't talk about this a ton, one, because Robbie's passed. I miss him, because he's become an important part of my life, because I did start and play at a high level in 10th and 11th grade. And then Robbie came in and actually started. And I played like sixth man my senior year, which was pretty tough for me. I haven't talked about it a ton. But that's taught me a lot of lessons on continued success and that there's always someone better. And...

He went on to do some amazing things the following year. Like we could talk about it another time. But man, I just learned a lot from that period of time. And then I had a gap of four or five years where I was trying to figure out, you know, I got into exercising, which was great for me. Good release of my competitive nature, you know, some anger, you know, compared to getting in fights and stuff like that. That was a better release of that.

And it led me into recruiting and all that kind of stuff. Like that was good, but I was still missing the like team competitive. Like it didn't completely fulfill that gap that I didn't have from playing competitive sports anymore. So let's rewind a second because since I know the story, but the listeners and those who are watching may not. You took that competitive edge.

You mentioned training, working out some. There was a part of that transition where you started to do some personal training. And as you moved through the personal training, you interacted with a client that kind of led to some of the next steps in your career. Rewind that for us. Talk us through that a bit. Yeah, I had, well, training was my second entrepreneurial journey. I had a tent rental company for a summer. OK.

and experienced some quick success in that that didn't last long. Short version of that is we had worked for a company a couple summers and my business partner at the time, the owners of the companies that we were working with, it was their nephew that was my business partner. And so we worked in this company a couple summers and then when I was 21, we got the opportunity to take on all their residential business. And the deal was,

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (12:24.462)
70 -30 split we used their shop we used their equipment we did all the residential work if we needed to hire any additional you know people to come on and help us with projects that we had that was on us they took 30 percent of the cut because we got to use the equipment and the the facility that they have right so warehouse scene and all that type of stuff so which was it was cool but that was a grind i i've heard you tell stories that like there were nights that

you guys just slept there because you were pulling 14, 16 hour days. My partner lived at the shop. It was pretty much 14 to 16 hours. That was a short day. And during peak graduation season at the time, we'd do some 20, 21 hour days and just sleep at the shop and turn around and go do it again. So that was cool. We ultimately only did that for one summer because my business partner really, really

Creative and smart guy, but we got the bright idea to save he got the bright idea to save fuel costs That's a good that's a good correction real quick. It wasn't my not I yeah, I wouldn't have been that smart But I didn't know you could do that, right? I'm not mechanically inclined and I'm like this is gonna work So we were like going behind restaurants and we had these big like 50 or 100 gallon barrels and we'd fill them with vegetable oil and then we're using that as gas and

cut our gas expense quite a bit. Well, the owners of the company that were using their stuff, they ended up signing off on the auto for us because we couldn't get insurance just quickly that summer, so they helped us out. Well, guess who was responsible and liable for the vehicles? They were. They were, not us. So we were probably in August, so we were deep into the year, like late August, and one of the owners,

came by us driving away and smelled French fries. And we got called out on it. And the short version just is that was the end. They gave us, they said, hey, look, no, not OK. You need to follow the contract that we signed off on for you guys. You guys weren't doing this. It was a lesson in that. We lied about that, essentially. Yeah, it saved us some money, but we were cutting a corner. And it's just not the right thing to do. Well.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (14:44.72)
They said, you can buy all the equipment and go get your own shop and you can do that or you're done. And we decided that was it. So yeah, there's a, there's a roller coaster there, right? A ton of wins. There's a ton of setbacks. And as you go through and you navigate that, you then say, okay, we're closing up shop. We're not doing the tent business anymore and life transitions. Some.

And as we continue to build that authority, every one of us as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as leaders, we have those moments, those rises and those falls, those resets and recalibrates to move forward. And you had one of those. And that led you to then what? Well, it was my first time making $2 or $3 ,000 a week on my checks. I'd work like $9, $10 an hour a job, like whatever they were. I'd just.

I'd take home, I don't know, maybe 180 bucks a week, 200 bucks a week by the time they took taxes out. And sometimes more when we were doing that in the summer, because of the overtime we would get, but I don't know, maybe like a four or $500 check max was like my biggest checks. So you start getting 2000 and $3 ,000 a week. You're like, yeah, I want more of that. And I didn't mind work. I'll work all the hours. Like, I just want to make the money. So that was my mentality. And I'm like, well, I can't.

go back to one of these hourly jobs, I'm not going to make that amount of money. Right. You tasted what was really good in that moment. And I built some confidence in that. I'm like, OK, what? And I'm like, well, I like training. I like working out. That had become my thing. And I'm going to go be a personal trainer. And prior to that, I would have been nervous about having a job that doesn't come with an hourly rate. And I had to generate my own income. But if anything, I would have been nervous.

one of the positive takeaways from that first venture was it built up my confidence that I could do something like that. So I got into training and ended up training at two different places and it worked out to be three different gyms because, you know, one of the gyms had multiple locations and I did end up getting some hours as like an assistant manager. So I had some hourly, but part of the deal that was worked out is I could train at any point. Got it. So I had a little bit of guaranteed money coming in.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (17:01.104)
And then I could set my personal training schedule as I was able to. And after about six months of doing that, I was the top trainer out of the locations. I was doing a lot of sessions. As you're doing a lot of sessions, and if you bring any energy, it attracts more people to you. And this is kind of pre -social media, or maybe like MySpace to date when that was. But people weren't really using that to attract business opportunities at that point. And...

But within the proximity of that gym location, like, OK, everyone knows who you are, and they want to start working with you because they see you're getting results for other people. They get to watch you. So one of the people I trained was in recruiting. He was a director at the largest -held private staffing company in the world. I didn't know that at the time. But we did five sessions together, got to know each other. And by the end of that, he was asking me what I wanted to do long term. And.

I think I told him I wanted to be CEO someday and I was planning to get my MBA from Duke and that I was still going to Walsh College for my bachelor's at the time. I'd probably just go get my MBA next because I figured that's what you're supposed to do. Which now makes me laugh, but it is what it is. So.

At some point in those five sessions, he asked me, he was talking to me about that and he's like, do you want to interview with us? And he started telling me a little bit more about what he did. And I didn't completely understand what it was. It was like, help people get jobs. Okay, that sounds kind of interesting. To be frank with you, I was more attracted to, I saw in my head a picture of what a successful business person was and someone that had made a good life for themselves and their family. And I was attracted.

that's something I deeply, deeply desired at the time. Wow. And in those moments that spurs you on, but there was a point where you had to take a bit of a leap of faith. Sure. And that moment was he gives you the opportunity to interview. You go down, you sit with him, and what transpires next?

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (19:17.776)
I got an interview as a panel interview. I was pretty nervous. I remember pretty sure my dad tie my tie for me and, uh, you know, I was used to wearing sweatpants, like workout clothes every day. I was pretty comfortable and, you know, I ended up getting a job opportunity. They gave me an offer and that at the time they were only bringing most people that they brought on had bachelor's degrees. Okay. Have mine yet. So that was like a big thing on like, are they going to give me an opportunity or not? And I had to had one other interview at like a finance company.

and I didn't get that opportunity. I think that had come up maybe like four or five months before. Maybe even a little bit longer, but like I had interviewed one other time and it didn't pan out. So I was like, man, I really hope they give me an opportunity. I just want someone to give me an opportunity, right? So they did. And then I...

I had an understanding of what I could make, but the base salary, I think, was $33 ,000. And I had to drive 50 minutes in good traffic to get there. Compared to I was probably bringing home about $60 at the time, may amount schedule, wear whatever I want. It was like eight minutes from my house. I could get all my school done and go to my classes at night. And I was getting good grades. And I had a pretty good setup.

So it's like, do you want to disrupt that? Right. You have to make that decision in that moment, whether or not you make that jump. And you did. I did. Because I saw what kind of he had created in his life. And he was a early mentor to me. And I still remember this day, he sat me down before I started. And he's like, here's some things that good recruiters do. Here's some things that good recruiters don't do.

and that resonated with me and I still carry that with me to this day. Those are building blocks that you've established over the years. Just for a second, as you're thinking about what that conversation meant to you and if you were talking to people right now who plan on mentoring other people, what was it in that moment that really

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (21:40.08)
really stuck with you. Maybe it wasn't the specific things that you were to do. Was there like a sentiment behind it? It was the specific things that he recommended. It wasn't a recommendation. It was kind of do this. OK. But it was more in the way that it was said. It's like, do this and you will succeed. And so that was the thing.

It wasn't my full like light bulb moment, but it was the start to like, okay, like here's how you do this well. I trust this person and okay, I'm going to listen to that. And then as I got into training and stuff, you learn about, okay, here's how the KPIs work. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to take those KPIs and how do I do more than that? I'm going to do, can I do double these? As I figured that out and it worked, I'm like,

boom, this is no different than how I approach sports. Yeah, that's the was a cool moment for me because it made me feel like I could do it. I knew I could do it at that point. Yeah. Some of the things I know that, um, you know, you center yourself daily on, you know, effort, discipline, um, commitment, adversity, um, moving from adversities to success. And you faced some adversity at that position. There was a time where.

the company started to consolidate some, right? Yeah. Man, the company's at Aerotech and part of Allegious Group. And I mean, just have nothing but great things to say about the company. I learned so much there. I'm grateful for the time. At that time, I had no plans of leaving. People would be like, how did you get into entrepreneurship? What was your plan and all this stuff? And.

reality is I didn't have that plan. I did, I was entrepreneurial, right, but I thought I had found a place that, you know, I was an entrepreneur at this company and my goal was like, hey, I'm going to keep growing here because there's unlimited opportunity for growth and I'm going to go be the CEO here someday. Right. Like that's just what I'm going to do. This place gave me an opportunity. Like I'll run through a fricking wall for them. Yeah. And I did and I would have and for a period of time I was the golden boy there and

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (24:05.584)
I think the more I became that, the more that was my identity. I wanted to be that, right? Because I was willing to put in the work, and it was nice to be acknowledged for that. When they did a consolidation, a lot of the people that ran our office ended up getting demoted or let go. And when they did an outright consolidation of like 100 people in a day,

Rolled five offices into one they rolled the offices together first and then like a month later. They laid off a hundred people tough time it was 2009 and at the time I I Didn't have anywhere close to the same perspective that I have on this now I just think the person that was in charge had to go with who we knew mm -hmm and You know, he didn't sit out of our office. So naturally about

you know, our office was like 80 people and I think 75 people got let go. Wow. Or maybe it was a little bit less, but like a lot of people either got let go or got demoted. I was one of the people that got demoted and my performance was so high and I never had anything but accolades up to that point that I was pretty frustrated about that. And, you know, I stayed for another two months. I am still happy to say that when I was there, I did my job. I did not.

put in as many extra hours those last two months. And I got pulled in one day and they're just, I think I remember it somewhat, just like, you don't like me very much. And at the time, I'm like, no, I don't. And we agreed to go our separate ways. Now if that person ever listened to this or I saw them, I don't have any hard feelings whatsoever. I think they made the best out of a bad situation and they went with who they knew. And I completely understand and respect that decision.

you know, it is what it is. It's part of God's plan and that's what got, you know, then I decided to go into entrepreneurship. Right. And that, you know, there's another couple of stops along the way, but for the sake of the introduction of this podcast, now where you're at is you're running an organization, a company called Spark Companies within that.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (26:31.304)
Again, there's been stops along the way there that were very important. We'll get into those, I'm sure, further in other episodes. But as you are now, you are leading and the managing partner of nine different companies. A number of those are centered around workforce solutions. And tell us a little bit about the last 10 years with Spark companies and what you've been able to lead. Yeah, so.

I had an industrial staffing company for four and a half years prior to Spark and great experience there. I learned a lot. It was 50 -50 partners and the other partner and I just didn't see eye to eye on how we wanted to grow the business and didn't have all the proper conversations that we'll get into in other podcasts at some point on like how you set the stuff up and how important.

communication is on that between the partners and what each partner is going to bring to the table. We just were two people that knew how to sell and we just started doing that. The more it succeeded and the more we added people, which when you add people, it adds complexity. I think it just like we didn't have clearly defined roles and it was best for us to go our separate ways. That's completely fine. You can have two different businesses that operate in a -

same industry, but they want to do it a different way and both can be successful. Certainly. So yes, but then we started Spark and you know, the purpose of Spark is to help people grow and you know, we had a great run right out of the gate. We grew 800 % our first year and then 100 % the year after that. And just experienced a lot of growth early on, you know, probably got ahead of our skis a little bit and you know, success, you know.

This is from Ray Dalio, so this is not me. This is a Ray Dalio thing, but I would agree with this in that so far, my experience, success goes in loops. So it's like, you see some success, loop back, have some mistakes, you have to learn from them, again, loop, again, loop. And at 10 years, that's about what we have. We have about three of those growth, growth, growth, growth, loop, learning, kind of.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (28:52.784)
twist things around, adapt, move on, three times. So we're in an interesting pattern of that now and that like, okay, we've had three tremendous years of growth. It's been awesome. We can talk about it if you want to more, but we'll save it for other episodes. And now it's like, okay, let's not fall back into that. What can we do? And at some point, we probably will and that's okay that we're gonna.

do some things that doesn't pan out, but does that lead to future success? We have a core value, conquering adversity is the recipe to success. And that's been our experience so far. It's been my experience, been the company's experience that like, hey, when things don't work out, what can we learn from that? How do we improve? And then eventually, you hope to this point, we've been able to evolve that into like, hey, this service line or this style of.

search that we do or you know things that like hey this didn't work but if it was like this it would work better and we turn that into great successes so. Wow. Well successes I you mentioned it's I'm a little uncomfortable when I hear you say like we've been so successful and everything like right we have done some cool things I absolutely feel behind on that and that we you know should be farther along.

I'd look at some of my mentors and just, you know, not so much in a comparison way, but like,

We have a, like, I just gotta humbly say that, like, there's so much room for us to improve and get better and we've done some cool things and, you know, we're talking about specifically why people should listen to this. Well, I've gone from, and I don't talk about this a lot, like, I'm not gonna go on. I'll stop you. And for everybody who's listening, here's what I'll say right now and I'm gonna direct right into the camera here. The reason that Aaron is saying this.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (30:51.76)
is because I talked about all the amazing things that happened. Now here's the thing, a true man who is leading a team in a vibrant way blends that with humility. And as they take humility, that's what helps them continue to grow. And I know that's what you're seeing right now, Aaron. Yeah, I think, I mean, I didn't come from a lot of money. My parents are amazing. Yep. And, uh...

I'm very grateful for them. But at one point, when I owned a staffing company, at my lowest point financially, it's $6 .23 in my bank account. And we update this quarterly now for a couple different reasons, but as of my last quarterly net worth statement, it's coming in at 80 million. Now a lot of that is tied to the businesses that we've created. I'm not out sitting there with $80 million in my bank account. We can talk.

finances more and more. And at the end of the day, the net worth of the companies and all that stuff, it's only what someone will pay for it. And we're not looking to sell. We're looking to grow. We're on a mission to create 100 ,000 opportunities a year. And last year, we did just over 3 ,500, which was awesome because that was a record for us. But that's 3 .5 % of the mission. So we got a long way to go. So hey, if someone that doesn't come from a lot of money, like,

Let me be an example that you can go out and do some good things at the same time. Like, man, like I'm nowhere close to where I could be if I hadn't, you know, made some errors, right? Like, we absolutely could be farther along than we are, you know, even though we've advanced a lot, like we just could. But that's life. You're not gonna be perfect. It's not about being perfect. It's about learning from your mistakes and getting better. So.

Yeah.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (32:51.952)
There's just, I mean, people that I take advice from, hopefully from a financial or business standpoint, are much farther along than me. And there's just so much room. I mean, the owner of the company that I work with, they own the Baltimore Ravens. You know what I mean? We're nowhere close to that. So I just, we have so much room for improvement. But we have learned some things, some things that have worked for us, been successful. You know, I...

keep track of that, you know, net worth number and that's great. It's something I'm, I'm passionate about. I'm not going to lie about that, but what's most fulfilling is that, you know, at this point, like we've created other millionaires and multimillionaires and within the vision of what we're doing with the portfolio of companies, that's a big part of it is to create more millionaires, multimillionaires, generational type wealth through

our network or sorry, our portfolio of companies. Yeah. And I know that's not just your passion, but that's your wife's passion, your sweet kids. I'm sure you will instill that. And one of the best parts of Erin Opalewski is your bride. She's involved in so many different facets of all of the different Spark companies and does a wonderful job. All of us speak.

you know, super highly of her here. I don't know if we'll, actually I do know, because we've talked about it in planning out these next series of episodes, but the importance of picking the right spouse as you go into business or any type of entrepreneurship and that type of thing. And I know that's important to you. How long ago did you meet Anna? So Anna and I met,

We're coming up on nine years of marriage. So we met about 10 years ago. OK. And it's crazy to think that that's where we're coming to. So our first date was almost 10 years ago. Wow. And we got engaged after 90 days. Hold on. Hold on. Yeah. Rewind. Tell us that again. So 90 days you do. You're like, let's do this in 90 days. And so for anyone out there that's in the workforce solutions area, if you do any contingent placements.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (35:14.448)
joke around here was 90 days to direct. Nice. We'll put people on contract for 90 days. The company, I'll hire them. So that was the joke around here for a while. So yeah, I mean, just in general, we'll talk about business partnerships and how important it is to have the right partners. Well, there's no more important decision than who you choose to spend your life with. Yeah. And.

I just.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (35:46.448)
almost speechless on it. Like, it's just, God's blessed me way beyond what I deserve that way. Anna's just been amazing, you know, for me, she's obviously the mother to our kids and it's just, I don't know, I got to a point where I never thought I was gonna get married and God had a plan and I needed to be acting accordingly to be ready for that. You know, I, you know.

And I'll joke like in my 20s, you know, I go out, I party, and look, I get it. Like, I've done some of that stuff, right? Like, I went through, like during this business journey, right? Like, I had a couple long -term relationships, and I knew the parts of it, like, probably just weren't.

it wasn't the right person for me to marry, but what got me there at that time was that they would push on me within my work. They didn't want me to do certain things at work or got frustrated when I did. And...

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (36:53.68)
that really, if it wasn't for that, right, if that would have lined up, like, I don't know that any of us would have ever met. We didn't start dating until I was 30. And fortunately we did. And fortunately things worked out how they did. And no ill will towards any of those. It just wasn't right.

there was a push for me to not do things a certain way and work was just what we were doing and building even though it wasn't as solidified in my head as it is now. That was it. That's why a lot of things didn't pan out or went south and I'm grateful for that because it wasn't the right fit. And Anna came in at the right time for me and I'm like...

I think the right time for her, the way it's worked out. And just was a huge blessing on my life. I think it helped me to, over a period of time, get some new perspective that I was able to bring into the work environment too, that I like to think has helped me improve as a leader and as a person. And...

Yeah, just got out of plan. Yeah, that's amazing. As we wrap up this intro episode here, is there anything else that as we start talking about sparking success and the future of this podcast that you would want people to know?

I think our goal is to just provide good, tangible information that you can use. So yes, we might hit on some leadership stuff. We will. We might hit on some things within relationships or communication. We'll do that. But you hear that in a lot of podcasts. My goal with this is to kind of nail down on specific topics and be pretty open about, in my experience, what's worked. It doesn't mean it's the only way. I'm not even saying it's right.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (38:53.458)
but that's why I framed some of that stuff up. It's allowed us to get to what we've achieved today, and I think really set us up even more so for where we're going as a set of organizations. So I'm an open book on a lot of that stuff because I didn't have anyone to teach this to me right out of the gate. There's a lot of people you can learn from.

And there's people that are farther along than where we're at. But like if you're, you know, so if you're, you know, past that in business or got a bigger business than us, we might not be the right podcast. But if you're trying to set up a business, if you're in the workforce solutions industry, if you're trying to figure out how to be a high performer and, you know, have a family and I don't have that perfect, but I got to say that. Yeah. But like,

That's a priority as well, right? You can do both, in my opinion. Again, not perfect on it, but those are some reasons why I think you listen here, because we're gonna get into some actual tangible stuff that we've either deployed, wanted to deploy, recommend deploying, things that we go through with clients, all kinds of different situations we'll go through here.

And I think my words to you were, I want to be less vanilla. Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I think most people do.

Um, Aaron, this has been an amazing start. And, um, if you're listening today, uh, we would absolutely be humbled if you would like, uh, this podcast, if you would subscribe to it, if you have the opportunity on any of the channels to rate it, go ahead and get us started off strong. As you do that, know that we're hoping Aaron and I, uh, that this is an opportunity for you to grow alongside of us because we are still growing. There is no question in that and our success.

BoltCreativeStrategies | EJ (40:51.218)
is your success and your success is ours as well. So that means that down in the comments if you want to spend some time and you want to ask some questions we'll do our best to frame up episodes in the future on that. We'll do our very best to be able to even stop.

and answer some of those questions. But we would truly be honored if you would help us launch this in an amazing way by just stopping and rating the podcast. Now within that, I know that on our next episode, Aaron, we're going to talk about how you as the managing partner in nine different companies only run the day to day.

of one and I cannot wait to hear and have you share on how you do that and the success that has sparked from that. I'm looking forward to it. Amen. Thanks again for tuning in today. We will see you guys soon. Again, make sure you like and subscribe and we'll be back with you shortly.