Unstoppable Success Podcast — Cleaned Transcript

Guest: Kenneth Kollasch

Host: Jaclyn Strominger

Recorded via Zoom — September 3, 2026

[00:00:02] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Okay, so we are recording. Fantastic.

[00:00:05] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Right.

[00:00:09] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Welcome, everybody, to the Unstoppable Success Podcast. I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger. And I am excited to share, as you know, on this podcast, we have amazing guests. We talk about their success, they give their tips, their wisdom, their insights. We also bring in leadership, because we all know that each and every one of us is a leader, whether you like it or not — you are a leader, and leadership is the key to one of the Unstoppable Success principles. So today I get to welcome to the podcast our extraordinary guest today, and I will say, extraordinary success rarely follows a straight path, and Kenneth Kollasch turned down a professional soccer contract to build a life with his wife, Caroline. Together, they became international ballroom dance champions. He later served as a pastor, became an extraordinary, amazing entrepreneur, and published his book, Beating Average: A Story to Extraordinary. Today, Kenneth is a certified business coach. He's the founder of Kenneth Coaches — God, I cannot say that ten times fast, right? And as a third-generation entrepreneur, he brings personal experience, practical insight, and genuine passion for helping small business owners build businesses that they absolutely love. Please help me welcome Kenneth to the show. Welcome! So glad to have you here today.

[00:01:35] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yes, thank you, thank you very much. Wow, I should literally take you everywhere — that was the best intro I've ever gotten. I need to have you copy that. Yeah, send that to me and I'll forward it to my wife, Caroline, and that'll be great.

[00:01:48] Jaclyn Strominger: 

So, Kenneth, tell me — success, right? So how do you define success?

[00:01:56] Kenneth Kollasch: 

So for me, success is defined in actually being fulfilled in the life that you've built, and it's pretty much as simple as that. I've felt success at a variety of different places in my life and felt very unfulfilled, and looking back, I don't know that I would call that a success. So there were certain moments that seemed like a mountaintop, but they weren't necessarily to me. And so, yeah, my wife and I have kind of come to this place where fulfillment is the measurement of success for us — whether that's more money, less money, more businesses, less businesses. It's kind of a personal barometer within our own selves that we measure.

[00:02:37] Jaclyn Strominger: 

I love that. So let's talk about your success. You have had many different, for lack of a better word, careers.

[00:02:48] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah.

[00:02:49] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Right? So you started off — you had a grand plan, I guess, to be a soccer player?

[00:02:58] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yes.

[00:02:59] Jaclyn Strominger: 

So tell us a little about that — that journey of going from soccer to not soccer.

[00:03:05] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, well, it's something that I knew when I was three years old. My grandpa's an immigrant from Mexico, and I thoroughly adore — I mean, my grandparents and my parents are my absolute heroes. I love both of them, and they've been a great inspiration to me, my grandfather especially. I sat on the couch when I was little, and somewhere around, honestly, three to five years old, I kind of captured this imagination of: I'm either going to be a professional soccer player, or I'm going to own a business one day, like my parents, like my grandparents, because my grandfather owned everything under the sun — TV, radio, DJ, Mexican restaurants, I mean everything. And my parents went into franchising. So, yeah, it's a crazy thing, but from early on I knew that those were the two paths I wanted to choose. And inevitably, when — I think it was 2012 — my wife and I had met, and I had gotten offered this professional soccer contract in Brazil. I remember my grandpa — I took him to give him the good news. We're sitting at this Mexican restaurant right after a soccer game that I took him to, and our team won, we had sideline seats, it was amazing. Basically the whole thing is building to this climactic moment: I'm gonna tell him I'm finally a professional soccer player. And I told him the good news, and he looked across the table with a tamale on his fork, and he said, "Kenneth, is that what you really want?" And I was not expecting that. I was expecting him to jump up and down, take pictures with the whole restaurant, celebrate with everyone. And, yeah — he was the first one to help remind me that what I really wanted, and what I had always talked about, is I really wanted to be a present dad, and I really wanted to be a husband that was really there with my wife along the journey, and not just glorified roommates. So he kind of reminded me that the path I was choosing — professional soccer — wasn't necessarily going to give me what I thought it was going to give me. I was going to be away from my family for about fifteen years, injured all the time, and getting traded like cattle from team to team. So, yeah, it's one of those things — you gotta have people like that in your life who are willing to tell you, even in the climactic moments of seeming success, that yes, you've built a really amazing ladder, but you're probably ending up on the wrong roof. And for me, I'm so glad, because my wife and I are eleven years into our marriage and thirteen years together, and obviously I've enjoyed a lot of other things since then. But, yeah, walking away from soccer was all about having the right people speaking into my life and reminding me of what really was success for me, and not just what I had gotten caught up in in my own imagination — what I thought was gonna happen, even though it wasn't really gonna be like how I thought it was.

[00:05:57] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Right. Well, and actually, that's a really key point — so listeners, I want you to understand that. Having the people around you — the right people. So whether it was your parents, or maybe it was a tribe of people that you put together to say, "This is where I'm going" — to almost keep you on that straight and narrow — it's really important to have that, for lack of a better word, board of advisors for yourself.

[00:06:20] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Absolutely, absolutely. And the ones who are willing to address it on the highs, and address it, of course, in the lows. Yeah, I've always strived for friendships with people, even if they were my parents. I'd love to be friends with my parents, and when I had soccer coaches, or dance coaches, or business coaches — having an established friendship and trust along with the professional relationship has always been something I valued. And thankfully, I think the friendship side of all my relationships has allowed people to tell me the truth, even when I probably wouldn't necessarily want to hear it. But, yeah, it's so true.

[00:06:57] Jaclyn Strominger: 

It's so important to have those people, and to know that those people are saying it to you because they believe in you and they want to see you succeed — versus some people might say something because either they're jealous, or, "If I say this to him, he won't do something," right?

[00:07:17] Kenneth Kollasch: 

A hundred percent.

[00:07:18] Jaclyn Strominger: 

You have to know the person, right?

[00:07:20] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, a hundred percent.

[00:07:21] Jaclyn Strominger: 

That tribe — so good.

[00:07:23] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yes.

[00:07:24] Jaclyn Strominger: 

So you turned down this soccer contract. They must have been upset.

[00:07:32] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Very much so, yes. It took me — I say a month, it was really more like — it took me probably two years to really accept the fact that I did that. There's more detail to that story, but, yeah, it was not an easy decision. What's funny is sometimes the right decisions, even when you know they're right, they're not easy. It's not easy to go from "I've worked eighteen years for this, and I've attained it," and yet feel pulled in a different direction, or wonder if I made a mistake in pursuing it the way I did. So it's not easy to change — to take your train and go from one set of tracks to another — but it is worth it to be fulfilled in the long run, that's for sure, at least from my perspective.

[00:08:16] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Yeah, well, and I would say the training you had, those eighteen years — it was never wasteful. It got you where you are now, and it made you the person you are today. So everything that we do really does have an impact on the people we become. We learn from that stuff. So I'm glad that you went through it, because you're the person that you are today.

[00:08:39] Kenneth Kollasch: 

A hundred percent.

[00:08:40] Jaclyn Strominger: 

So tell us — you shared that you stopped and had this journey — I'm assuming she was... was she your wife yet, or not?

[00:08:54] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Technically, we were engaged at that point. Yeah, technically we were engaged.

[00:08:59] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Okay, so tell me — were you ballroom dancing while you were playing soccer?

[00:09:04] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, so long story short is that I went out of high school and was immediately — I went into the business world basically because I needed to make money in order to hire trainers. So I figured, okay, I need to get a real type of career job — why not just jump into the family business? And, coincidentally and ironically, I was good at it. I did not think I would be — growing up as a sports guy, I didn't think dancing, teaching adults how to ballroom dance, was gonna be my forte. But, yeah, I essentially went and trained up in Chicago. I live in Indiana, and I trained on the north side of Chicago early in the morning before I went to work — somewhere from like 8 to 10 a.m. Then I'd drive back and work at the dance studio from noon to 10 p.m., and then my wife and I — fiancée at the time, Caroline and I — would train for our competitive ballroom career from 10 to midnight. Then I'd rinse and repeat. That was about — that was about a year and a half of that type of schedule. And long story short, I was doing both at the same time, and I had really gotten back into my dream of, okay, I'm gonna make this soccer thing happen. I was twenty-one at the time when I got the contract offer, and, yeah, it was one of those crucible moments for sure, where I was juggling both of these seemingly really successful, fulfilling careers, and things with people I really appreciated and enjoyed. And choosing the right one was tough.

[00:10:43] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Right, right, right. So I'm just gonna assume that your parents own ballroom dance studios?

[00:10:49] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yep, correct, yeah — and they had been in that business since the '90s, so it had been a good while.

[00:10:55] Jaclyn Strominger: 

So did you take over that business, or did you start your own?

[00:10:59] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Great question. My wife and I decided not to actually buy into the family business, but we did — I have five businesses right now. None of them are associated with the ballroom world, but I do a lot of consulting within that world still. Back in — I think it was 2019 — is when my wife and I started thinking, okay, well, maybe we'll do something outside of the dance world, just because the schedule and the kind of lifestyle it is was a little different than the one we wanted when we had kids. So we pivoted to, okay, well, maybe I can consult outside of the dance world and start working with normal businesses that aren't open till 10 p.m. And so it was a fun transition, going from running and being in the family business — that franchise world — to my own set of entrepreneurial endeavors. But, thankfully, I have an amazing family, they've been super supportive, and I still consult in the family businesses today.

[00:11:58] Jaclyn Strominger: 

So talk about the pivot, because that's not easy, and that is one of the things that I think — and listeners, this is something that's really key — that Kenneth has said, that there's an underlying thing that's been driving all of your changes: it's your vision for your life, and what you wanted for your life. And it's really important to know what you want, and I would —

[00:12:28] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah.

[00:12:28] Jaclyn Strominger: 

I personally like to say it's one of those things — look at what you want to do every quarter. Where are you going? What's the thing that's making you happy? What is the thing that's fulfilling you? So, listeners, if you haven't sat down and written out what your vision is for your entire life — please do it with your partner, if you have one.

[00:12:50] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah.

[00:12:51] Jaclyn Strominger: 

You're in it together — that's why it's called a partnership. Please do that with them. I mean, you have your business and your personal life, and sometimes you're not in business with your partner — not everybody is in business with their partner — but there is a business together, like your family. You're the CEO of your family, the CEO of your life, the CEO of a business, so —

[00:13:15] Kenneth Kollasch: 

A hundred percent.

[00:13:16] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Talk about the pivot — that's not easy.

[00:13:21] Kenneth Kollasch: 

No, no, it's not been easy. I've made, I think, four significant pivots at this point — income-altering, lifestyle-altering, vision-altering. But, to your point, I use a few different systems that I can maybe share about later. I totally agree that having a vision, as we call it, or having goals, or having an expectation for your life that is somewhat non-negotiable — I call it almost non-negotiable, because obviously I have made pivots in life, but it all stemmed from the fact that I was either coming back to the foundation of what I was wanting to build with my life, because I had forgotten or started drifting away from it, or I was expanding on that and trying, in a way, to enhance the vision I had. Because a lot of times the vision you have when you're twenty is different than when you're thirty, and different again when you're forty — the vision itself matures in terms of what it really means to you. I wanted to be somebody who was a great dad and a husband — that's kind of always been my thing. I grew up in a divorced family, and had a lot of separation early on, and so for me, unity and closeness and oneness within the family unit, and my friends, and my businesses — that is really important to me. And I've only expanded that with every pivot. So, for example, in my five businesses, every one of them except my consulting business has a partner. I've designed it that way because I chose early on — somewhere around when I was turning thirty — that it was worth it to me to make less money in order to be more fulfilled along the way. And I think that's a critical decision. I'm not saying everybody has to make it — some people can always just make more money with every decision, always enhancing and multiplying their income — but I've noticed in my pivoting journey that there have been times where I've had to sacrifice an amount of my lifestyle for a period of time in order to be more fulfilled along the way. In other words, I've purposely slowed down my success sometimes in order to spend more time with my wife, or go on a trip with her, or buy her something, or buy me something, or spend time with someone. So, yeah, I would say I'm not as far as I could be right now, because I've chosen to be fulfilled along the way by saying no to certain things, or slowing down certain things — even though we could always hustle culture a little more and pour more into the business, or into X, Y, or Z. So every pivot has had an art to it, in the sense that I've always balanced our current needs — our current goals and objectives — in contrast with, well, what are we really trying to do with our macro life? What is our life really leading toward? And trying to balance those two as we changed from the dance career to the consulting career, and from the business world into, in my case, the pastoral world — all these different transitions. In a way, it was more of an art than a science. I mean —

[00:16:35] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Yeah.

[00:16:36] Kenneth Kollasch: 

And so, yeah, I'd encourage people to really weigh the macro vision for their life against their current needs, and understand that there's a way to be fulfilled along the whole journey, and not have to sacrifice your 20s, your 30s, or your 40s in order to say, "Well, maybe later I'll be fulfilled, I just have to grind it out now." I've found that that's just kind of a fallacy. I think people can do it that way, but you don't have to do it that way — that's my point.

[00:17:03] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Yeah, no, and it's actually a really great lesson to really understand that you do need to be able to do things — why say, "Oh, I'll do it when..."?

[00:17:18] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah.

[00:17:19] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Right? Or "I'll be happy when..." The word "when" — take that out, right?

[00:17:24] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yup.

[00:17:25] Jaclyn Strominger: 

It's not "when," it's now. What are you gonna do now? If you live every day to the fullest, how do you do it? You can't put something off. Now, I'm not saying go spend a bazillion dollars and put yourself into credit card debt — right, that's not what I'm saying.

[00:17:39] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah.

[00:17:39] Jaclyn Strominger: 

But look at the things that you can do, because — what does fill your cup? What does make you feel good? Have you read the book Die with Zero? I think that's what it's called.

[00:17:51] Kenneth Kollasch: 

No, I've not. I'll have to put that on my list.

[00:17:54] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Okay, I'll send you a link to it — and listeners, I'll put a link to it too. It's a really great book, because the gist is basically: don't put off today. Don't say, "I'm gonna do it tomorrow" — plan it for today. There's a really great lesson in the book. You know, if you're gonna give money to your kids — let's say you're in your sixties, and you've got money that you're saying, "Oh, I'm gonna give it to my kids when I die" — well, give it to them now!

[00:18:35] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Why wait?

[00:18:37] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Let them enjoy it, and maybe you can enjoy it together. Yeah. I don't know — anyway, but that's, again, it's like, why wait?

[00:18:46] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, well, and it's the same for — I feel like it's the same in parenting, I feel like it's the same in business relationships. I may not have this employee forever, and there are certain things I want to say to them, certain things I've noticed in them, that even if they don't stay with me forever — I have this principle in my own life. It's kind of the inverse of "make a decision and make it right," which I know is a kind of trend saying. My inverse of it is: make a decision, you can always make another one. In other words, if I take a risk and approach this employee about a critical part of their character that I've seen and want to develop, I'm only going to have this chance once, because eventually they're probably going to move on. Same thing with kids — you only get to parent them in their teenage years, or their adult years — you're only going to get to parent them once. And so to be afraid of doing something, of giving to somebody — basically being afraid to do it today because of the consequences that might happen tomorrow — for me, I've always noticed that the future happens whether you like it or not. Eventually, the thing you fear is likely going to be the right thing for that season. Eventually your kids are gonna move out. Eventually your kids are going to have a family of their own, and they're gonna probably be around less often than they are now. And your star employee is probably going to be somewhere else eventually. There are travesties that happen in life, but to ignore what you can do today for fear of what might happen tomorrow — I've never seen it really produce anything worth really being afraid of.

[00:20:25] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Right, no, it —

[00:20:26] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, go for it.

[00:20:27] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Right, no, it's so true, and I feel like I've been preaching a lot about what you're just saying. I just became an empty nester — my husband and I just became empty nesters. And what's been really, really fascinating is it's one of those things that — what you've just said is: if you're a great leader for your team, or as a parent, you're leading your kids. I mean, at some point, you're always the parent, and the parenting role changes — you can become friends with your parents — but, you know, 1 to 18, or 1 to 21, when the time comes and they're no longer dependents —

[00:21:05] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah.

[00:21:08] Jaclyn Strominger: 

— you really have to, you know, it's just like, let them fly. For me, once both of my kids are really off my payroll, so to speak, then it becomes a different relationship. But it's the key point — even with your employees — if you are the right leader and you're leading people, and you don't have the opportunities for those people who are doing great things, you should be finding them other opportunities to help them soar. Or know that they will soar, and be proud of them when they do leave you, because you've done your job of getting them from A to B, and they're gonna go to B to C — or pick your other alphabet or numbers, you know?

[00:21:53] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, generosity is a great way to stay fulfilled. It's a great operating system in order to just enjoy life, no matter what the circumstance. If you've been generous along the way, it's impossible to be in lack. My wife and I have this saying: it's impossible to out-give God. There's really no way that being generous, I've seen, has led to people feeling bitter or being in some type of lack in their life. Generosity is the best operating system that I've found, for sure.

[00:22:25] Jaclyn Strominger: 

No, that's true. So talk about some of your businesses, because you've got five of them.

[00:22:30] Kenneth Kollasch: 

So —

[00:22:31] Jaclyn Strominger: 

How do you balance that, and are they related? Share a little bit about that.

[00:22:38] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, so I have my consulting business, which essentially — I work with twenty clients a year, and we double their business in two years, so we 2X in two years. It's very intense, so it's not for the faint of heart. You actually should want to grow your business and scale it, and not dilly-dally about it. So I take people through a twelve-month program, we meet every other week, and we install six systems and about thirty frameworks. It's, like I said, pretty intense. So that's what I do in the consulting world, which is primarily geared towards small business owners who are still in that phase where they're running everything, making all the decisions, putting out all the fires, and in a way kind of going crazy. And that's a ton of fun — a blast. A lot of the things I learned working in and managing that 114-year-old franchise, and growing up the way I did, plays into the things we do in their businesses. The other business I have is a production company, with partners, and we essentially create content that makes people money — we do a lot of stuff with their websites, training resources, things for their ads, social media, basically anything they're going to monetize in order to get more ROI out of their ad spend or their marketing assets. So photo, video, audio assets — that's also a ton of fun. It's called Production ROI. The other businesses are pretty unrelated — they're all boring businesses — but those two are super fun, because I love how the production company really helps the business owners I work with produce the things that actually get a return on their investment, versus just literally wasting dollars on websites and social media and ad spend and stuff. So those two tend to work the best together. The other ones — one's like a dropshipping business, that was our first business; another one is a physical product for homes; and another one is actually a media company, where we also do a podcast. So, yeah, it's fun — there's a lot of moving pieces. But I will say, I use two resources — you can find both on my website if you go to KennethCoaches.com/free. One's called Here on a Mission, and it's a digital life planner, similar to what you talked about earlier. And I use a physical planning system called the Full Focus Planner. Both of those have helped me not go insane while doing a lot of things at once.

[00:25:17] Jaclyn Strominger: 

That's right, because you need the planner to not go insane, and you need to be able to be focused on what you're doing. And that focus also helps you say no to the things that don't align with the mission and your vision.

[00:25:36] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yes. "No" is probably a word that has become one of my favorite words — not because I like saying no, but because it has given me so much more peace of mind, so much more clarity in my day-to-day work. And those two resources I mentioned help me get all the thousand things I have to do every day off my plate, freeing up my mental real estate by getting it onto a piece of paper, or into my app, and literally unloading and doing a brain dump every week or so. These two systems have literally freed up my mind. I sleep really great at night — I'm not waking up in the middle of the night thinking about payroll, or tasks I did or didn't do, all the crazy entrepreneurial problems we have as insane business owners.

[00:26:25] Jaclyn Strominger: 

No, that's great, and we'll make sure we put those links directly into the show notes, so listeners, you'll be able to go easily and grab all of those. I'm also really curious — what has made you pursue multiple businesses?

[00:26:42] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, great — I think I'm a glutton for punishment, it's like a sadistic part of my nature, I don't know. No — I think for me, there are two things I normally mention when people ask about this. The first is the example I grew up with: grandparents and parents who did multiple things. So I didn't have this — and this isn't to disparage anybody who doesn't want to do multiple businesses, because it's not exactly the easiest thing in the world — but I never had this cage in my mind that said, "This is normal, only one business is normal, or only this much in your life is normal." I always had, in a way, a bigger cage — I'm sure people have done bigger, better things than me, so someone could say, "Well, you're still in a small cage." But to me, I didn't have the limitation of thinking, "I should only really do this, because this is my max, this is what you should do." So, as I've gone through life — a business starts because you see a need, and that need is something you either have an interest in providing for, or you really care about the people who have the need, and you figure out a way to help them, even if you're not necessarily skilled at it. So, for me, even though my businesses aren't all super connected now, I think it's the people I've met along the way, or the problems I've seen — I'm a massively curious person, so I'd end up finding out about things that are going wrong in places, because if you ask enough questions, you find out the real, dirty truth underneath the clean surface. And I just have this — it's probably very typical of human nature — but I love to fix problems for other people, to help free them up to live a more fulfilled life. So, like, my production company — I have so many small business owners who hate doing their social media, or their website, or their ads, and their marketing agencies don't produce any of the content for them. So I was like, "Hey, let me do it for you." And at first it just started as kind of a thing I did for friends, and then it grew into something more. Same thing with the consulting — it was, "Hey, you grew up in a totally different way, you've had this franchise experience that's over a hundred years old — would you mind helping me? My business is pretty new, I'm trying to grow it, but I've kind of failed with employees two or three times over, and I'm tired of wasting money." It always came from helping somebody else, and then helping somebody else turned into helping their friends, and helping their friends turned into, "Well, maybe I should just do this as a business" —

[00:29:19] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Right, right.

[00:29:19] Kenneth Kollasch: 

— and start helping strangers. So, yeah, it always started with being curious and not having the limitation of, "Well, I can't do more, because then I'm gonna hate my life or something." And so far, I have not hated life — it's been all good.

[00:29:37] Jaclyn Strominger: 

So, one thing I guess — when people see other people doing multiple businesses, you've probably heard, "If you're doing multiple things, how can you actually be focused on them and build?" People think, "Focus on one thing to make that work." So how do you do that? I mean, I know you've got the planners and things like that, but — share a little bit about that.

[00:30:04] Kenneth Kollasch: 

I have an unfortunate secret to share, and the unfortunate secret is that I do the same thing in every business. In other words, I have the same focus, the same goals, the same mission, although the vehicle is different and the audience is different. I am really no different — I don't have to be a different version of Kenneth, I don't have to create some fake facade in my production company to pretend to be more creative, or to be more this or that to fit the industry. My role in every one of my businesses — which goes back to that decision to be less lucrative in order to be more fulfilled — I have brought on partners to fill in my gaps, versus me trying to be something I'm not, or stretch myself too thin. So, in a way, what I've found with all these businesses, in creating a foundation where I do the same thing in every one of them, is that my focus isn't tangibly diluted in the way you were describing — because I've heard that, and it is true, I've seen people chase three rabbits at once and not catch any. For me, I had really great advice when somebody told me to basically give up the speed of making money, or the scale of making money, in order to do the same thing in all of them and have more peace of mind, more fulfillment. The businesses, ironically, grow faster that way anyway, even if I only have a certain percentage of it now instead of 100% of the pie. So, yeah, I've decided to stay in my lane and fill in the gaps with relationships — but you have to be good at relationships in order to do that. And thankfully, relationships — especially from my pastoral background — are probably the most important thing in my life, and I will sacrifice money any day of the week to keep a relationship. So, yeah, that's the short and somewhat unfortunate answer, because I don't have some trick or tactic. It's just been that.

[00:32:18] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Well, I'm glad that you brought up relationships — I talk about relationship capital all the time, I have a whole course on relationship capital, because it's a skill: building relationships, knowing where people are, the different buckets people fall into, whether it's a partnership, a referral system, someone you want as a client — there are all different aspects to it. So I'm really glad you brought that up. Just to dive in a little bit — when you say you're doing the same thing in every single business, you're obviously not going to be doing the actual production work yourself. You have people who do that part for you, right? So you're —

[00:32:58] Kenneth Kollasch: 

I have my lane.

[00:33:00] Jaclyn Strominger: 

You're the conductor — kind of getting things going, or the co-conductor.

[00:33:07] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yes.

[00:33:07] Jaclyn Strominger: 

The people that are —

[00:33:09] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah, and not that — it's not like you're not allowed to be in the production seat. It's one of those things where I love it — my partners are responsible in their lane, they're the go-to person, and in a way, if I venture into their world, I'm going to submit to their leadership. Just because I'm equal in equity, or maybe even have more equity than them, doesn't necessarily mean I have more knowledge, experience, or wisdom when I venture into their part of the business. So I've found it's to our advantage to relationally figure out and agree upon what our lanes and areas are — equity aside, red tape aside. When I venture into their world, it's not that I'm not allowed — I can come down to a production set anytime I want. However, I'm not going to pretend I'm something I'm not. I'm going to stay in my lane, and when I'm in my lane, I'm more fulfilled, I enjoy the work, I'm really good at it. And having that same type of work across all my businesses, in a way, means I learn things in one business that I can then apply to the others, because I do pretty much the same thing. So it feeds itself — every business grows better, versus me having to switch hats twenty times a day and dilute my mental energy and bandwidth. Twenty hats a day just sounds absolutely exhausting to me. So, yeah, that's the way I've found works best for me. I'm sure other people have a different system when they have multiple businesses, but that's what worked for us.

[00:34:43] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Well, I like that, and the one thing you just said that I think is really interesting — a great leader and a great CEO knows that they don't have all the answers. And that's why you have other people — your team members, your other leaders — because you are not meant to know it all, or be able to do it all. And that's where building a team, whether it's partners or team members, VPs, however you're structuring your business — if you're the CEO, or the team member, or the leader of a team, you bring people on who are going to know more than you in something, and you let them.

[00:35:32] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Yeah. Yeah, the number one characteristic I look for in people I'm promoting into a leadership role is humility, because inevitably that's the thing I've always seen ruin not only the individual, but ruin their teams and ruin client relationships. Somebody who's got pride, or who has this fallacy in their mind that they have to know it all, be the one who makes all the decisions — basically be the hero — if they're trying to be the hero, it's almost impossible to really lead in a way that's effective. So, yeah, humility is the number one characteristic I look for in people who step into roles like that, because, you're right, inevitably you're faced with a problem where you have to ask for help — and if you're unwilling to do that, and you create a habit of being unwilling to ask for help, reach out, and delegate, you're gonna fail really, really hard as a leader, and it's gonna be a long journey for you.

[00:36:23] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Right, right, right. Kenneth, I could talk to you for hours about this — so how can people connect with you and learn more about your wisdom and all the great things you have to offer? Because you've got a lot of great insight for businesses, and I can only imagine, if somebody connects and works with you, they will soar — they'll 2X their business in two years.

[00:36:48] Kenneth Kollasch: 

Come on, yeah, let's do it. Yeah, I made it really easy — I have all the socials and all the things, so if you just go to KennethCoaches.com, all my resources are on there. You can book a call with me, check out what I do in the consulting world, I have a YouTube channel where I pump out a lot of free stuff all the time. And if you want those resources I talked about earlier, I have twelve — I think it's twelve, over a dozen resources — that I call my hundred-thousand-dollar resource market, where you can get to your first, or generate your next, $100,000 in revenue with these twelve or thirteen resources. That's at KennethCoaches.com/free, and between those two, you should be able to connect and get to know me and take advantage of as much as you want.

[00:37:32] Jaclyn Strominger: 

Oh, perfect. Well, I will make sure that we put all of that in the show notes. So, Kenneth, thank you so much for being an amazing guest today on Unstoppable Success. Listeners, please do me the favor and make sure you go and get all the free stuff — click those links and go to Kenneth's website, again, it's all in the show notes. And then do me another favor — this has been a great episode, amazing nuggets, so share this episode with your friends, your business colleagues, because I know there's insights in here that they could all listen to. And do me one more favor — if you haven't already subscribed, subscribe. And lastly, we have a great program where, if you become a supporter of the show, you get special, subscription-only content, and you never know — we might be able to give some special things just from Kenneth in that. So make sure you become a proud supporter of the show so you can get the special private content that only our private subscribers get. So again, thank you, Kenneth, and thank you, listeners. This is the Unstoppable Success Podcast. I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger, and until next time — keep leaping to your greatest success.