Yeah, creating something at and nothing to so you can get something of value done whether it's for you or for somebody else. I believe is inside all of us. It's just a matter of our risk tolerance of what we're willing to take a bet on. In a world of career uncertainty, there is one variable you have total control over yourself. Welcome to Forever Employable Stories, where expert digital transformation consultant and successful entrepreneur Jeff Gautel will share conversations with unique and inspiring individuals who have taken charge of their professional lives, leverage their expertise, built an audience, and future-proofed their careers. So you can learn how to do the same. Here's your host, Jeff Gautel. When he was a boy, Alden Mills wanted to play basketball. Consistently supported by his parents, Alden pursued basketball despite being called that explicitly for having log legs, not conducive to a long-term successful basketball career and being diagnosed with asthma. Never wanted to give up easily, Alden took up rowing and boarding school to propel him into an athletic career that landed him in the Naval Academy. As a member of the elite Navy SEALs, Alden took on leadership roles that he eventually translated into entrepreneurial success. Most recently, he has turned all of that experience into motivational content he shares in his books and his motivational speaking. During our chat, we initially discussed entrepreneurship, and so Alden said, "There's no gene for entrepreneurship. If you're building something of value that someone else will value, you're being an entrepreneur." Understanding this key characteristic has enabled him to build a Forever Employable career. It's a realization that you can provide value in any context, whether you're building a company, leading a Navy SEAL team, or sharing your experience and learning with others. At the core of his success and as a focusing tool, Alden always took a servant leadership approach. How can I serve somebody else? In doing so, he was giving it all away as I discuss in a book, whether it was entrepreneurs in Spain, his four boys, or charitable organizations every time he helped somebody else, and ended up coming back to him in ways he never expected. Check out Alden's story and learn how he became Forever Employable. Alden, it's a pleasure to finally speak with you. A lot of folks probably won't know this because they don't know that it's not a commonly known fact. But you and I, well, I live in Barcelona now, and you live in Barcelona for a while. And I believe we overlap very, very briefly, like a month or two. We got here in July of '17. In you folks' lifts. Yeah, we left July of '17, but we should start with Ola Kedal. Ola Kedal. Go Estas. God, this is about as far as I can take it. I think that the couple's got a lot more to do with that. So it's a pleasure to connect here. Sadly, we never got to connect in person here in Barcelona, but I've heard a ton about you, and I've read a ton about you as well. And to kind of get the folks oriented into kind of your background, can you give me a brief bit about yourself and your career? Kind of what got you up to this point? Okay. Cliff Notes version went to the US Naval Academy. I only bring that up because explains why I ended up having to serve right after that. And served as a Navy Facilplatoon Commander for 12 years. Seven of that, seven and a half active, and then another five in reserve. And went to business school in between that service time, and then came out and started my entrepreneurial endeavors out in San Francisco. I'm from Massachusetts originally. And eventually founded a series of entrepreneurial companies. One that I'm most known for is called Perfect Fitness, which were then at the perfect push-up. And lots of other fitness products, but also started businesses in security and pet food. I'm currently having a pet company, but my real passion from Perfect was moving into what I call content entrepreneurship. And that's in the speaking, writing and coaching platforms. Amazing. Amazing. So much to unpack there. And I'm looking forward to, by the way, I used to work for a guy who was in the pet food business as well. His first entrepreneurial venture was, I think he was an exporting dog food to Japan, which was really like. Yeah. My thing is we are currently importing cat sushi from Japan. That's the name of our brand. Really? Tuna Bonita for example. Interesting. All right. So I've written a stupid call for ever-employable. And in the book, I talk about several qualities that help folks become forever-employable. In other words, they get out of this rat race of chasing the next job, the next promotion, the next pay raise. And instead, jobs find them. In your case, and what I know about you and what you just described briefly, I pick up a lot of emphasis on specifically three of the qualities that I talk about there. So self-confidence, entrepreneurialism, and reinvention. Those are at least three things that I see in your career so far. And I want to look at each one of those separately and ask you a question. Maybe you can share a story about each one of those. So the first one I want to talk about is self-confidence. Can you share a story from your past that really helped you develop your self-confidence? As a content entrepreneur, there's a lot of that coming forward and saying, look, I am an expert in this. I have these strong opinions. What's helped you shape your self-confidence over the years? Well, I got to tell you this is going to sound really disconnected, but it all started because of my big thighs. Your big thighs? Yeah. Yeah. I was the perennial, thundercise, log legs, you know, the Bacchariot Drunks, and I was terrible at basketball. And I knew I was terrible at basketball, and it was worse back then when I was at the YMCA, where in these YBA super short shorts and I couldn't jump. And then I wasn't fast and I was terrible at hand-eye coordination. And the only basket I ever scored was for the opposing team. I was just so excited. I had the ball ran off the court that day. But the reason I bring that up is I knew for fact that I had big thighs. Everybody admit that I'm all done. And then I end up going to boarding school. And the first day of boarding school, all these coaches, they line up all the new kids, freshman, right? And this one coach came up to me and he pointed out my thighs. And he goes, "Those thighs, those are roars thighs." Huh. You need to try out for rowing. I had no idea that my thighs were good for anything except not being able to jump and going slow on any kind of sport court. And sure enough, I got pretty good. It's sitting on my butt going backwards for long periods of time in the eight-door cruise. And that really built my confidence. Like I started realizing that I could use something that was a negative and turned into a positive. And it helped me roll my way to the Naval Academy. And then became the captain of the crew at Navy, got recruited to SEAL team, rode my way to SEAL team. And then won out as in SEAL team. SEAL team led me to, you know, if I can lead a SEAL platoon, surely I could lead a company or at least try. Yeah. So it was a series of cascading of events. And I credit my big thighs. Amazing. Amazing. Every one of the other person I would credit. Yeah. And I'll just throw this in there because I think it's even more important. I was diagnosed with asthma at the age of 12. And it's a much longer story. But the short version is the doctor says, hey, he needs the lead-alusac to lifestyle in mind the game of chess. My mom saw it immediately help dejected I was. She brought me outside. She would say to me again and again and again and so my dad, hey, we'll get you the medication. But nobody defines what you can or can't do but you. Right. And of course I didn't get it that day. Right. But when I finally decided to start out for a sport that I was really interested in, they were full of court press. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Amazing. Amazing. And I think we can get that kind of support network. It really does help build your confidence. This is really good. And the fact that turning that negative into a positive, ultimately is what we're talking about here. Especially when we're looking at the world today, a lot of stuff kind of going negatively in the world at the moment. And so then how do you start to rethink that? I think it's a really good way to look at it. The second quality, and this isn't really an interesting one, is entrepreneurialism. Entrepreneurialism is not a quality everybody has. But I believe everyone can develop it or has likely done something entrepreneurial in their life. Like for example, I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. I saw myself as an execution guy, not an ideas guy. But in looking back at my life, I played in a lot of bands growing up from when I was 16 until basically 26, 27. All of those bands I was in were entrepreneurial ventures. And so you can lean on that experience. And so before you started your company, what made you believe you could be an entrepreneur? Where did you kind of get that belief that entrepreneurialism was something that you could do and do well? So I have a lot of feelings about entrepreneurship. And pretty much the same that I have a leadership. And that is, I don't believe there's a gene.
there's some genetic DNA code that says, "Oh, Jeff, all done, you guys got it. Congratulations, you're an entrepreneur or you're a leader. You go over to this side and you go through that door in life." And I've watched as a father of four boys, everyone of my boys build something, right? They'll tinker with Legos or they'll build a Ford, they'll build something. And at the end of the day, entrepreneurship is about building something of value that someone else will value, right? And everything that I have built was something I personally valued, right? And in the earliest days, my parents didn't give me much of an allowance and I really valued that sewing jukebox that I wanted to have. And so dad's like, well, go catch some blue crabs and we lived out in the Cape in the summer and the blue crabs come up there. And I catch crabs and sell them. And I was like, oh, hey, I was able to buy my jukebox because I could sell these crabs. So it was more a sign of like, oh, getting some independence to go and do what I really wanted to do. And even in SEAL team and in the military, they value entrepreneurship. Some units more than others. But special operations and I know SEAL team, but I'm familiar with Delta and Green Beret and all the others. And there's a lot of entrepreneurship in all of that or maybe we call it entrepreneurship. But yeah, creating something out and nothing to, so you can get something of value done, whether it's for you or for somebody else. It's just a matter of our risk tolerance of what we're willing to take a bet on, right? Yeah. And some of us don't have the self confidence that that's swim buddy that I call out my mom was and my dad just to keep whispering in her ears to say, hey, come on. Go try it. Go try it, right? A lot of us had the negative one. What do you think you can do that? I couldn't do it. Therefore, you can't do it, right? And then it just kind of keeps beating you down. I think it's very astute of you to bring the self confidence and the entrepreneurship together because they go hand in hand. They're like a port and starboard or that you're trying to row and vote by yourself. And if you only have one, you end up going in a circle. And they feed off of each other, right? The more you feel you can do something, the more you'll try and take the risk to get it done. And so let's talk about risk for a second. Look, that's a really interesting for me. In my main line of work, that's what I teach companies. I teach companies how to mitigate the risk of building products that won't succeed, the risk of building cultures that won't succeed, et cetera. How have you mitigated risk? Is there a story that you can tell, like, you're launching a company? And we're going to talk about you writing a book here in just a second, but there's a lot of stake there. I mean, as there's your time, there's your effort, there's your personal brand, there's a certain extent. Can you share with us? I'll share with me a way that you've mitigated the risk in, particularly in entrepreneurship and any kind of entrepreneurial ventures that helped you then gain self-confidence that this was a good direction to go in. Well, let me tell you. I would first answer that question by saying, I have mitigated risk very well. OK. I have made way more mistakes than I have successes. I've failed many more times. It's just people get to know about my successes, because as long as you keep getting up, right? There have been a lot of times where I was really close to just saying, all right, I'm just going to chalk this whole thing up to one massive failure and pivot completely out. And then it became the darkest before dawn kind of scenario. And then all of a sudden, the next time it worked. I will say my best kind of story about mitigating risk would be dealing with what I would call super hero teammates. They are absolutely exceptional at what they do. And one of them that comes to mind was my headed design, Ian McCall, who had worked with IDO and helped IDO-- he led IDO, San Francisco office. He was this world-class designer. And he and I would talk about risk. And the risk of not taking the risk of designing something that you have no idea how it's going to actually come out. And for people who are true, like, artisans of their craft, you have to allow a certain amount of risk of something that you're pretty much sure it's kind of failed, but they got to let experience it and go out and do it. So when we look at risk for the ideas of products, I talk about these three ideas of a product. They are an improvement, an innovation, and an invention. Vensions have no reference point. That is the most risk and requires the most amount of education. Innovations, they have a reference point, like perfect pushup. It's a handle, but now it rotates. An improvement-- we're going to reskin it and do something a little bit better, right? So when it came time-- and by the way, I just gave you 15 years of learning. Right? Right. So now that we've first started our company, and we now have over 40 patents of things, but a portion of our day was always spent on the bread and butter of an improvement-- product that we already know it's working, right? Very low risk. We guys stay on a schedule and get that product out. Another portion is then kind of once a year launch of the innovation. And those are important products in their subcategory game changers, the pervapushup pervapola. And then there's the invention. That's the one that enables everybody to keep dreaming, keep pushing, keep failing, and learning from those experiences. And we had a couple of dramatic failures that we threw gobs of money at, but we learned all kinds of amazing things. So I was OK with that, right? Now the invention, that's 10% of our time. Right. So that's how we would split out the risk of things. But there is also-- and there always is-- a great risk to never trying. Right. I would rather have tried failed many times going, OK, I'm comfortable that this is just not the Fed or this isn't the way to go and then move on. Yeah. But there is the risk of regret, you know? Do you think that this model of improvement, innovation, and invention, you're basing in the product world, is it applicable in the career world in your-- as you've transitioned to become a content entrepreneur, like you said? Those concepts applicable here as well, improvement, innovation, and invention? I totally think so. I was bumping along with the improvement category of running my business. Now, in the beginning, the business was a total invention. I'd started with an invention. That's how I got to know this. And I raised a million and a half dollars and then learned a million, $475,000 worth of ways, not to get this thing to market. And so then the company became an innovation engine for me. But then over time, really people who bought the company and we were private equity owned, they were much more comfortable with the improvements because you can model those out. Oh, we keep doing this. We'll get this many more. We'll get this all over the world. And you know what? This guy, not interested in that. Right. And what I was interested-- my designers weren't interested in is like, hey, let's keep going and breaking the envelope and figuring out new things. And eventually, I ended up creating my own risk, moving to Spain, taking a sabbatical and saying, OK, it's time for me to go and reinvent myself. Right. Right? And reinvent myself was, I had ideas of what it is. And it's still in the educational phase, right? But the one thing I know is the path that I'm on now, it doesn't really matter how well it works is that I'm always going to be a part of this regardless of this. So I'm more patient now, right? This is something that is a much longer term kind of vision quest direction. And I think reinvention is critical to keeping things fresh. Yeah. Which is great. So you kind of answered my next question, which is exactly where I was headed, which is, I think, by my count, you've reinvented yourself at least four times, probably more as my guest. And it's clearly a sense of that. Now, what's interesting is you're transitioning into this world of content entrepreneurship. The first step that I outlined to becoming forever employable in my experience has been what I call to plant your flag. It's where you decide, look, this is the domain of expertise that I'm going to own. This is where I'm going to plant my flag and be the recognized expert. How did you decide to plant your flag as a team building expert? How did you come about that decision? Well, I would say when I get stuck in anything that I thought about.
in my life. And every reinvention I've had, so let's talk about it from the name of Academy, I got stuck at the name of Academy, almost didn't graduate. I got stuck in Steel Team, I got rolled back from one class to the next, which stuck. I had investors tell me that I'm basically embarrassing myself and I should go get a job because a lot of money in your ideas suck. It's over. And then I had my company and I had banks say we're going to freeze your loan and we're going to repossess your house because you coast signed on it and we won it all in 30 days. That was eight and a half million dollars that we had out of 15 million. That was lovely. Right? And then I did it again when I moved to Spain and people are like, what? You're crazy. You can say it. You're not the experience. What do you do? So in every one of those canaces, every time I got stuck, I thought about who I could serve. Who could I give to? Who could I give without expectation of return? And in the early days, that was being a special Olympics coach, the Naval Academy. That was working Easter Seals in Steel Team. That was working with the Guardsmen, which is a nonprofit to help inner city kids, some of the campus, school in San Francisco and became the president of that, which was at the worst time. But every time I got focused on something else, serving somebody else, you came back to me tenfold. I was in Spain. I linked up with local venture labs and inspired all these entrepreneurs to keep going and went to Menorca and gave all these different speeches and classes on things. And lo and behold, things just started coming back to me, right? And so I kind of forgot the basis of the question, but I wanted to give this comment. How do you decide that team building, like, planning your flag as a team building expert? Oh, right, right. So when I got stuck to this, the first thing I would look back to is who do I really want to give to? And if you look inside both of my books, being unstoppable and unstoppable teams is to my four boys. That's what I was going to give. What can I give to them? If this fails, if this just totally crops out on me, I'm going to give them the gift of what I've experienced and how I've ever been able to succeed in anything. Two things, persistence and teams. Book one, being unstoppable, it's all about persistence. And how do you really persist? You got a team up. And that's book two, unstoppable teams. And so it's interesting, you know, you call me a team building expert. But if you look at the first chapter, it's nothing about team building externally. It's about building your team internally. And so when you ask about team building, I'd say, well, actually, I'm actually more specific than that. I'm really focused about helping you build your first team. And that's the team inside of you. And that's the team of your mindset and how to lead your mindset. Because once you learn how to do that, everything else is a reflection of that. Yeah. It's a reflection of you, right? Amazing. And so the interesting thing that, so now you're branching into this world of content entrepreneurship, you've published a couple of books. Talk to me about that transition. So you're making the move. What are the activities that you've put into place to make this the next successful venture for you? So publishing books is one of them. What else are you doing on that? So I ended up publishing Beyond Stoppable in 2013. And that became the calling card for people like, Hey, we love what you're talking about. You've got to come talk to us. I love the public speaking realm. And I love the coaching realm. What really gets me most inspired is being that swim buddy for somebody that's never had the swim buddy, right? That's never had what I had for a child in my two parents. And a couple of wonderful coaches and a couple of other mentors along the way. I've been blessed in that environment. And I just think it's the worst thing that someone can do is like, here they are, a desk doorstep at the end of their life gone, oh my god, I finally see clearly now. I had all the gifts I needed. I just didn't have the courage to get after it. I didn't have somebody that believed in me enough so I could start believing in myself. And that inspires me. And it inspired me first, just looking at my four boys. And then every time somebody writes back, "Hegure book really helped. I'm now off doing my thing." Whatever that thing is, right? It doesn't have to be creating an Inc 500 company or leading a Fortune 500 company. It could be getting over your fear of giving a speech or jumping out of an airplane or losing 20 pounds. But each one of those then becomes like the thunder thighs, right? It becomes that little snowball of positive snowballing effect, building a cascading to the next to the next. Got it. Excellent. So look, I've got basically one last question for you. Again, it's relevant to the current state of things today, right? So we've got the global shutdown. We're starting to come out of that now because the coronavirus pandemic, all of these activities that you've been doing since you've published your first books, since you've transitioned into this content entrepreneurship kind of reality at this point. How are those activities helping you work, stay connected, improve? How are they helping work find you in all those cases? Like, what are you seeing now in this new reality that you've done to help stay working and improving? So the first thing, remember when I said earlier, anytime I'm stuck, the first thing I asked is how can I serve somebody else? We were in first four days of quarantine out here. We're now in day 66 and I was like, quarantine, quarantine. Why does this seem so familiar to me? And I'm like, oh, I know I started in this movie in a submarine. I've been in a submarine for 50 days at a time. And that's like a quarantine, right? So we're under water and you know, things can crush us down there. And literally the time I was thinking about that, I got a shout out from the current president of the guardsman. And he said, hey, all our fundraising's gone to hell in a hand basket. We're looking for ideas. And we're trying to keep the funding going for our kids for going to school. And I call them up and like, you know what, let's do a webinar. And I'll put together a speech called How to Thrive in quarantine. And we're going to do this. And it's going to be about the six essential actions I built out a little acronym called remote REM OTE. And well, let's just ask for a suggested donation of $25. You know, almost $20,000 later. And the speech went all around the country. And now I'm being asked all over the place. Will you please come talk to us about the mindset of living remotely? I'm going into that only with a thought of helping, right? Right. And remember this. I didn't create this law. This is a law of physics, right? For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Yeah. Take out the word action and put in uncertainty. For every amount of uncertainty, there is an equal amount opportunity. But when uncertainty happens, it's like this massive fraud bank that comes in and blinds us, right? But if you were to ask a blind person, are they blind? They'd say, no, I just can't use my eyes. Right. I have to learn new ways to see. That's the same thing that happens in uncertainty, right? What we used to see every day, we've got to change how we're seeing. Yeah. And it's right in front of us. And now more than ever, people need to be building their internal team, right? And then how build their remote team. So that's all I look at it. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. That's fantastic. And that's exactly what I've been talking about as well with a lot of folks. Talk to a lot of folks in the restaurant business and they're talking about how well, my business has dried up. Well, that's great. How do you take your core value and redistribute it? Listen, Alden, thank you so much for making the time. This is fantastic. I know it's going to go over great with the folks. I appreciate you being generous again and helping out. I hope to see you either here in Spain or out in California sometime soon. I like both of them and I will just say this to you. Okay, dangles will be a excellent day. Which I can ask you. What's the gracias amigo? Perfect. Hey, it's Jeff. Thanks again for joining me for this episode of Forever Employable Stories. If you enjoyed the show and learned something new, tell a friend. The best way you can help us grow is to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform and send this episode to someone you think can benefit from it. As always, feel free to reach out and connect on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you. 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