.png)
KP Unpacked
Join serial entrepreneur KP Reddy for conversations and discussions around innovation, technology trends, and AI for startup founders, innovation catalysts & investors focused on the built environment (and beyond!)
KP Unpacked
Ambition, Risk, and Building Your Dream Team
What happens when ambition meets risk aversion in the high-stakes world of entrepreneurship? Imagine building a media empire or owning a Formula One team—these aren’t just pipe dreams for us. We share personal ambitions and dissect how these big visions shape our behaviors and decision-making, especially when resources are tight.
Ambition isn’t one-size-fits-all, and our discussion takes a historical detour, reflecting on iconic figures like JFK. We ponder on the societal versus personal definitions of ambition and how life’s circumstances—like family and finances—can play a pivotal role in shaping or stifling our grand plans.
Risk-taking in business isn’t about recklessness; it’s a calculated dance, as illustrated by legendary entrepreneurs like Fred Smith of FedEx. We unpack the nuanced balance between risk and reward, emphasizing the importance of understanding financial incentives and pressures.
To read the original post on LinkedIn and connect with KP, go here:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kpreddy_how-do-you-think-about-the-correlation-between-activity-7273022705929486336-zxF6?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Ready to level up your strategy and solve shared challenges with industry leaders? Join us for a one-day Mastermind meetup on February 25th in Phoenix, arizona. These quarterly meetups are your chance to collaborate with top minds from AEC and tech industries and explore innovation strategies that can transform your business. Experience firsthand what our Mastermind program is all about connecting with peers, tackling shared challenges and gaining insights you can't get anywhere else. Each meetup is hosted in a new city, bringing fresh perspectives and unmatched networking opportunities. Don't miss out. Visit kpreadyco slash events to learn more and secure your limited spot at a Mastermind meetup. Today you are listening to KP Unpacked with KP Ready a weekly dose of insights for innovators and startups from the built environment and beyond. Want more discussions like this? Join KP's exclusive online community, the Catalyst Network. To learn more, visit kpadyco slash Catalyst Network.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome back to KP Unpacked. My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm a senior advisor at KP Ready Company and this is my opportunity every week to ask our founder and CEO, kp Ready hey, what were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn? I'll say that a little bit tongue in cheek, but it is a fun time for me to sit down with KP and really kind of pick his brain about what he has written on LinkedIn. And if you're not following him on LinkedIn, you should be. If you want to know about the AEC world, about innovation where things are headed, circular economy and all things innovation for the built environment, you should be following KP Ready on LinkedIn. So it's KP Ready R-E-D-D-Y. I am joined today, as always. Probably not a surprise to you after that introduction, but I'm joined today by KP Reddy. Hi, kp.
Speaker 3:Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 2:It's going really well, and this post that we're going to talk about today. It's short and sweet, I know because we've talked about it a little bit where it came from, but I think it's a super intriguing topic here, so I'm looking forward to kicking this around and also understanding the backstory about this. So let me start out. It's one sentence post. If you scroll through KP's posts on LinkedIn, most of them are not super long, but a one sentence post is pretty rare. So I'm going to read it and then we're going to jump into it. So it goes like this how do you think about the correlation between ambition and risk aversion? All right, what, uh? What was it that inspired you to write that?
Speaker 3:We'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 3:So, jeff, what is your ambition?
Speaker 2:that we'll get to that in a second. All right, so, jeff, what is your ambition? What is my ambition? Yeah, well, my ambition, as you know, uh, my ambition around here at kp ready company is to, is to build out, basically, a media company, kp ready go okay, so my ambition is doing a formula one team okay, that's ambitious.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So if you think about, you know, I'm not in the business of judging people's ambition, right. However, when their ambition doesn't align with right how they're behaving, then I threw a flag on the play. Okay, so I'll give you a good example and then we'll talk about like, uh, and, and it came from a different place. So if you're a startup and you have 12 months of cash left and you're really ambitious, it's like either unicorn or die, right, which is uh, if you're venture backed, that's how you have to kind of think, right, and you're not sure if you're gonna, where the net, where the month 13 of payroll money is coming from right do you reduce expenses in month one to try to last longer, or do you actually cut your burn rate in half and say fuck it, like we're either doing this or we're not doing this, and if it's not happening, I'm going to move on to the next thing and figure it out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right. So someone that is thinking unicorn, thinking big, they'll actually say you know what? Let's just burn through twice as much money and figure out an outcome in six months. A less ambitious person actually says yeah, let's tighten some stuff up. I'm going to take a pay cut, let's give ourselves some more runway. And the point is like runway for what? So, uh, your son plays baseball, right, so are you swinging for a home run? Bases are loaded. Are you swinging for a grand slam? Are you like leaning into the pitch so you can get hit?
Speaker 3:That's like the spectrum of things you can do Right, yes, Right, you're sitting there and you're at the plate, and so I think, like in life, not just founders, everyone has to make these decisions. You can bunt your way through life, right, right, you can be the guy that can always get on base like solid single, you know, just knows how to funk it right in the right spot, perfect. And if you look at like batting averages and all that stuff, right you'll. We see this stuff, right, we see. You know, it's kind of funny, baseball is a very statistical kind of thinking sport.
Speaker 3:By the way, they took all of that from cricket from all my Indian friends. It was ball bar from cricket. But the point being is those are the decisions you get to make on an everyday basis. Is those are the decisions you get to make on an on an everyday basis, whether it is walking up to you, know you? You see jeff bezos at a conference. You try to walk up to him, knowing the security might just throw you on the ground, right?
Speaker 3:I mean, it's all these decisions we make every day, and the spectrum of decisions are do I want to just like lean into the pitch and get hit, be a good actor? Or I just want to like grand slam or go home? And those are like the spectrums of decisioning that needs to be made. So when I'm like, hey, I want to own a formula one team, that's how I think. Like that's how I think in my days, right, um, like I got mad the other day and you know it drives my friends and family. And saying I'm like, hey, you know, nfl teams are allowed to sell up to 10 of their equity. It's like private equity. People like, why isn't my phone ringing? I want to own part of an nfl team, because my theory is, if I own part of an nfl team, I'm on the path to owning a formula one team sure, okay, right right.
Speaker 3:So, and the fact that I get mad about that, and, of course, my kids are like dad, you don't have that kind of money. I'm like that's the problem. We got to work on that like we need to have that kind of money. You know what I mean. So, and some people will be like you're insane, right. So my someone might look at that and go kp. Like you're insane, right? Someone might look at that and go KP you're out of your mind. However, am I? Am I out of my mind? Like I'm either like going to do it and die trying or I'm just not willing to bunt my way through life. But that's my life, right, that's not everyone's life. So when people say they're ambitious, I don't think being ambitious is a binary, a binary type thing right I asked you what your ambition is.
Speaker 3:Cool, awesome, jeff, and I'm trying to support you in your ambition right on this damn zoom call, right like here we are.
Speaker 3:It's not for me, it's for you. You're welcome, right, right, but that's fine, that's like your life, that's your life, that's the life experience you want. So I'm never like here to say everybody should want to own a Formula One team, because if everybody wants to own a Formula One team, I'm probably not going to ever own a Formula One team. Right, not going to ever own a formula one team right. There are definitely people smarter and more talented and more access to capital than me, but they may not be as ambitious as me, right? And so I think, like checking this is this one seems like checking your ambition, and one of the things when I talk to founders, I want to hear a little bit of ridiculousness, right, want to hear a little bit of ridiculousness, right, we think general motors is doing it all wrong.
Speaker 3:I'm going to start a car company and put general motors out of business. Sounds insane, right? Sounds insane. Or is it right? Right, think about everything, elon. I mean whatever you think about el Musk I'm not going to get into debates about his tweets or whatnot but the dude with Tesla, he had two months of payroll left. And put all his PayPal money into it.
Speaker 3:He could have just not done that. He could have been like I'm just going to sit on my PayPal money getting 5% interest on it. Right, I got $100 million in the bank. I can get $5 million a year just doing nothing Instead, almost like bankrupts himself.
Speaker 2:And so when you hear the stories and of course there's urban legends behind all these stories I don't think anyone can doubt that the elon musks of the world are ambitious, right? Well, you know, and as you're saying that I'm thinking, of course he's got spacex and you think about, okay, when, when kennedy in when did he say it? 68, 67 said we're going to put a man on the moon, that's not like, oh, we're going to build a more efficient car, we're going to escape the Earth's atmosphere and send a human being to a different rock in the solar system. Yeah, that that's, that's big thinking. That that literally changes the world, uh, changes the course of history, opens the door to all kinds of things.
Speaker 2:And you know when we, when we think about where we are right now the AEC, space, aec industry we were talking about this in the last episode. Actually, you know the kind of the, the echo chambers, and you know this is the way. I don't know that we actually said this in the last episode, but this is the way we've always done it, right? This, these incremental changes at some point's, just I'll, I'll keep my comment to the the aec industry at some point.
Speaker 2:If we stick to these slow, small, incremental changes, there are portions of this industry that are likely to die versus being ambitious and completely changing business models and aiming to put a man on the moon, so to speak in your jfk example.
Speaker 3:What else did jfk do? He got cut. He got assassinated. Is that? Whole maryland monroe thing. What else has he done? What else has he done? What else has he done? Economic policy Do you remember any of that?
Speaker 2:None of it comes to mind.
Speaker 3:Why is that? Because the bold ambition is what stands out Right, and that can be putting someone on the moon, or Marilyn Monroe, quite honestly, right. I mean he had to walk up to Marilyn. You know what I mean. Like this is the guy that had some level of ambition. A little bit. However, you want to judge.
Speaker 2:Right, a little bit yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Jackie Onassis, I mean like yeah he had ambition, right, marrying a billionaire's daughter, right. But when you reflect on JFK, like those are the things we remember. Do you remember what interest rates were, like? I don't know any of those things, right, but it's just that ability to have you know. So I think that's one of those things. You know where people and what it was. Someone made a comment to me. They said they were ambitious and my first reaction was like no, you're not, which is my fault, I shouldn't. That's actually not true. It's true if whatever my definition of ambition is compared to theirs.
Speaker 3:The reality is, everybody is allowed to live their own lives the way they want to, right and if. And that's why I asked you, right, what is your ambition?
Speaker 1:I didn't ask you if you're ambitious right right and that's where all this is coming from right, like I didn't ask you if you're, because, if I said, are you ambitious?
Speaker 3:and what would you have said? I would probably say yes and then I would say oh, which formula one team are you gonna buy?
Speaker 2:it's a trap. It's all a trap, it's a trap it's all a trap.
Speaker 3:I mean, those that know me know like every conversation with me is a trap, but I think that's that's how, that's where this comes from right and I think I think for me, like my ambition isn't necessarily your ambition sure.
Speaker 3:Well, it shouldn't be right, and but I think where either your ambition is driving your risk aversion or your risk aversion is driving your ambition, and that's the correlation, right, because you're probably like KP, this is what I want to do and have a good quality of life, and I'm at a certain age, and blah, blah, blah. You'll have whatever your reasoning is around it. But if you're like, hey, I want to build the next CNN or whatever, right, I want to build the next box media, then it's like second mortgage, the house man, that's what it takes.
Speaker 3:That's what it takes, and I think, while we don't talk as much about the people that second mortgage their house and lost everything, there's plenty of those Plenty. If you read my second book, what you Know About Startups Is Wrong. I talk about it all the time. I haven't had all winners in my life, right, I've struck out plenty of times, but I think I've done a better job. Now, when I fail at something is like rewatching the game tape to go, oh, this is what I probably did wrong and let's not do that again. Right, let's not make the same pattern of mistakes, but so I think that's something people should just think about. Right Is your risk aversion. Some of that's situational, some of that's psychological.
Speaker 2:Sure yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, I mean, you have kids that are graduating or in college and they said, Dad, I want to do X, Y, Z. Right. Right. You're like oh yeah, go do it Right, right. And then like life happens Right, you know, mortgages happen and kids happen and other sometimes other priorities happen, right I mean I graduate.
Speaker 3:When I graduated, I would say most of the guys that graduated me with me, actually a couple of more like, uh, come to our events and stuff, uh, I think, uh, people don't know it, but like I've known these people since college, they're like unsurprised about the trail that I've blazed right and the things that I've done and bouncing back from failures, and like they're just like unsurprised, like, dude, it's in college. You were like that. In college you were hustling, right, you had three jobs and three businesses. In college you were hustling something all the time, unsurprised, right, unsurprised that you're doing what you're doing and so. But a lot of people, they I'm surprised that you're doing what you're doing. So a lot of people, they're just not interested. They have other interests, right, but I wouldn't say even those other interests and ambition.
Speaker 3:I kind of give people a hard time about pickleball. It's like activity, not a sport. I'm a tennis purist, but I think there are people that are very ambitious at pickleball. They're very ambitious at other things. It's not always work, they're music, they're this, they're that. Unfortunately, I'm just wired where ambition and income and money and job are like for me. That is my thing. Am I trying to grow out the longest beard in the world. I mean, I probably could. I probably could. This is, like you know, a week or two.
Speaker 2:I was going to say that's two days Two days, but so I think. Are you Santa Claus?
Speaker 3:Yeah, if I said that Everybody knows Santa Claus is brown, everyone knows this. Everybody's in denial. By the way, great skit on Saturday Night Live last weekend with Chris Rock and the Santa Claus skit. Look it up on YouTube, everyone. It's fantastic. But no, I think that's one of the things. But I think thinking about that, even ambition in like a hobby, right, like you were talking about mountain biking. If you decide one day like, hey, I'm going to go on the senior tour of mountain biking and compete, right, just stop me, just stop. The risk would be right. There'd be some financial risk. You have to buy all the right gear and all that.
Speaker 4:But the real risk is hey, here's this jump coming up.
Speaker 3:Do I kind of roll over it or do I jump over it? Yeah, do I roll over it? I know I'm going to make it on the other side. Yeah, if I jump over it, my entire senior tour mountain bike.
Speaker 2:I don't know if there is a senior mountain biking tour, but if there was right that your entire senior career might be done because you break a hip although part of the I don't know if this is is truly irony or not, but but in that example and I know you know you're, you're, you're making an example, um, you know specific to that sport, but in, in that example, the irony is that sometimes, when you just roll over it and we have this fear, right, often we have this fear of speed, we have this fear of crashing, or, oh, here's this rock garden or whatever. The irony is that oftentimes, speed is your friend, and so you may say, hey, the safer way is to roll over this and then find out, unfortunately, really quickly, that that was not the safe way to do that. Right, you know it. Everything from hey, you need you have to shift your weight differently in order to navigate it at slow speed, to there's, there's something right You're, you're going slow. The momentum is it going to carry you over that little lip at the bottom or whatever.
Speaker 2:It is right it's. It's obviously situationally specific, but you mentioned something, you know. You mentioned something. You know you were talking about our kids and being in college, and there's this thing that we do, we go, you know, take risk when you're young, and so I'm thinking, you know, as we're talking, it's like okay, well, how do we make this applicable to a startup, the leader of an engineering firm, something like that? And we could say okay, well, when you're a young firm or when you're a small firm or whatever, you know, maybe you've got some flexibility, some fluidity, you know, like the wisdom, you know telling that to to young people.
Speaker 2:But sometimes you know you're talking about buying a formula one team. The first thing that popped into my my mind was well, gary vaynerchuk wants to buy the jets.
Speaker 2:Right, that's for years and years and years, that's been his shtick is he wants to buy the Jets. One of the things that Gary Vaynerchuk talks about is hey, if you're 55, you got 20 good years of work left. So we often look at the young people and go hey, you've got a lot of runway ahead of you or a lot of road ahead of you. Take your risks now, before the the priorities change, before you know life right. But I think at the same time there there is some reality to say hey, you can, right, you can start over, you can.
Speaker 3:Oh jeff there's there's a ton of data out there. When everybody you know Silicon Valley style is, if you're under, if you're over 35, you're, it's too late for you. They want to invest in only in founders, only under the age of 35. There's significant data that says entrepreneurs over the age of 50 actually are more effective and partly it's because of the life work experience. Generally they're kind of like you're kind of an empty nester, now right, so you have more time, you have better network, you might have, you know, a little bit extra disposable money in the bank. But you know, one of the things that I find interesting I have a lot of of like half of my family is entrepreneurial, half of my family's very corporate. Like one of my cousins, I think, 35 years at proctor and gail like first job out of college and it's still there like they're all like that.
Speaker 3:Right, there's that half of the family and I remember early on like, oh man, you guys take some risks, and I think that the misnomer about entrepreneurs anyway, good entrepreneurs, it's all calculated risk. Right, it's all calculated From the outside. Looking in, it's like, oh my God, these guys are just not insane, right, and it was interesting because there's this great I don't know if it's true or not, I wasn't there Fred Smith, with FedEx, was running out of money, basically, took the whole next payroll and went to Vegas Right and played roulette and won it back Right and won back enough to fund the company, keep the company going right, and whether that, who knows what is true or not, but the thing is he didn't play blackjack.
Speaker 2:Or the small table.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Blackjack fun game. But the risk quotient is just not that you can actually win money, but it takes time. But the risk quotient is just not that you can actually win money, but it takes time, right. Whereas you're late, you hit your number, you're done for the night, right. And so I think entrepreneurs are very good. I think what they get good at is taking calculated risks, and part of that calculation of risk is also kind of how they think about capital deployment. I mean, I do it right, Like how do I deploy capital against different ideas?
Speaker 3:You know, I don't want to deploy capital against an idea that's mediocre. I'm also not going to over-deploy capital against something that's really more of an organic growth thing, and it's interesting when you look at that. There's some businesses. Think about it. This it's organic growth, Think of it as a tree and capital is water you can dump all the water on it you want.
Speaker 3:You're probably gonna kill it, right? It just takes time. Organic growth businesses don't just take capital and resources. It one of the biggest things it needs is time to develop, um, whereas some things are more like you. You know, jet fuel, right, right, it's either going to like take off or blow up. That's just what's happening.
Speaker 2:It's one or the other, yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, a lot of tech startups are more like rockets and plants.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting because I'm I'm often a thesis advisor and um, most often the students that approach me about being their advisor or on their advisory team, they're wanting to do something in the realm of architect as developer, and I got some specific insights and knowledge into, into that model and I have often looked at that model and gone my gosh, why don't all architects do this?
Speaker 2:and I'm one of the very few that think like that, right there. You know well we can't do that or whatever. And the the biggest barrier between an architect and going from a traditional model to architect as developer, as a business model, is not understanding the risk. Architect as developer, the entire. The crux of the model is understanding the risk and risk mitigation. And my argument would be that it's as long as you understand and you implement, you execute on that, that risk mitigation, it's no more risky a model than the traditional, maybe less risky a model than the traditional architecture firm model, but it's that risk aversion that comes from not even understanding the risk and how to mitigate the risk that's involved.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, 100% no, and I think that's one of those things that happens, right is that? It's interesting? Because, you know, we have one of our clients, one of our advisory clients actually is going through this process right of being going from a pure architecture firm to getting into development and, and what's interesting is, um, it's a great study on aligned incentives right yeah, his incentives are not to build more hours.
Speaker 3:His incentives are to build less hours. Right, that's the incentive, um, in being a developer, right, um, and being a developer, right, and, and it's quite, it's, it's a. It's a pretty interesting study. But also, um, it's taken him a minute to understand the capital stack. Like, how does the finances work? Because sometimes you partner with a developer and like, oh yeah, we're gonna do this thing, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so cool, send me the pro forma forma. You're an architect. You don't understand how real estate pro formas work. You have no way of like, really understanding what the risk is.
Speaker 2:That's, that is a failure in your understanding of the profession if you do not understand how a performer works you want to put a survey out there on the linkedins? No, i't, I don't need to.
Speaker 3:I'm just saying like, how do which? By the way, for our early career folks, maybe we should do a workshop on financials and finances, Cause I doubt they're getting it at their jobs.
Speaker 2:They are not and you know as, as you know, I teach this in the graduate and undergraduate level they are not getting it in their jobs, they're not getting it in the academy, right, they're not at the university unless they're taking my class or a handful of others across the country. But yeah, they're understanding. The pro forma is, even if you say, hey, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like a small firm architect, or you focus on single family residential, there's still a performa per se. Your client doesn't use that word, doesn't think of it the same way, but it's there, it's still there. Move up to multifamily or health care or anything else. There's a performer there and it dictates all of the pressures on you and your work. If you don't understand that, you know you're, you're like wandering around, blindfolded somewhere.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's fascinating. There's. There's actually this like parallel and on the venture side of what I do, where founders don't know how VCs make money. It's, it's, it's amazing. They really don't know. It's like I and actually I've yet to see this happen Right, I've yet to have a startup pitch me, which is fascinating and, by the way, also, like I tell all my founders, like I literally put all this stuff out here in podcasts and like if you keep up with me, you should be able to be very well prepared to meet with me. Like I put everything out right, I've yet to see a pitch deck that says, if you put in a million bucks, here's how this is going to affect your fund. This is how it's going to affect your personal returns.
Speaker 2:That's interesting.
Speaker 3:It's never happened. Yeah, never happened, yeah. And if you don't know how other people make money and what the levers are for them, how can you ever do business with them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, Because the value proposition, no matter who you are, wherever you are in the A, the E, the C, the value proposition is how you're going to make your client's life better. And if you don't understand that, how in the world are you pitching a value proposition? What will our on-time and accurate documents? Nobody cares about that. That's not a value proposition. But understanding how you're impacting the life of your client, that's the value proposition. I love that you know that idea. I'll take that to my graduate students because, as you know, they have to basically compete in a shark tank environment for their final um.
Speaker 3:We'll start working that into pitch decks yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, but but I think to your point in the profession and so, like, uh, you know, this conversation started off with ambition right.
Speaker 3:So part of it is are you surrounding yourself with people that have a similar ambition, both in your professional life and your personal life? Right, and one of the reasons you know quite transparently I'm moving to be near Silicon Valley is I don't find a lot of my people in Atlanta definitely not Asheville, but in Atlanta, right. The only other market I find my people are in like New York, right, my people are in the Middle East, like the people that I like socially. And you know, because it's really tough when you're thinking about you know, whatever your ambition is, you kind of become.
Speaker 3:I mean, I've been told like, hey, you kind of come off as a jerk and I'm like, yeah, I'm like maybe, but this is the stuff I care about. And if you care about something your ambitions are different and you care about something different. It's really hard for us to find something that is in common. And I think, especially when you're a founder, if you surround yourself with other founders that have an equal ambition, at whatever level right, want to own a small country to. Hey, I want to build a nice $20 million a year cashflow business, cool, hanging out with those people professionally and personally will drive the right behavior right.
Speaker 3:It becomes helpful, and I've even found it too with vendors. I've started this thing now where, if a law firm wants to do business with me, I ask the person hey, what's your ambition?
Speaker 3:Because if their ambition isn't to have their name on the firm, I don't want to deal with them yeah right, if I'm dealing with an accountant, I'm just pretty happy doing the things like, oh, you don't want to start your own firm one day? Well then, get out of here like I don't want to do business with you because, uh, and I think we, you know, we we've been looking at some partnerships for our business, right, and one of the number one things that we found in talking to people that we want to partner with, they're just very comfortable, they're very content and that's not my ambition, right, they're not going to align. I don't want partners that are happy like, oh, I get 10 weeks of vacation, love being in business for myself because I get to take all the vacations I want to take. No, thank you, I don't want to hang out with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, what you're saying reminds me that Jim Rohn said that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Yeah, so there's that lesson. But then there's how do we apply that? Well, it's exactly what you're saying, right? If you want to be this, then you surround yourself by people who are actually above this, right? If you're going to become the average of them, you better shoot higher and align yourself with people that are beyond that point and align yourself with people that are beyond that point Right.
Speaker 2:If you want to be number one in the over 50 mountain biking league you better be riding with the number one in the 30 and under 100% right. Yeah, and they're going to be like hey, jeff you can't roll over that hill, man.
Speaker 3:You've got to go faster than that. Get with it yeah, yeah, yeah, hey, hey, old dude, you better go but you know this is, this is what something I'd like you to implement right within our mastermind groups and incubator ask people what their ambition is. It's a good exercise. It is. I think it's a great exercise, you know. You know because for those that may be new to this like so, for our programs generally, people meet with you because you have to be with so many programs and you're triaging fit.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, right.
Speaker 3:So maybe one of those questions for fit in the mastermind groups is tell me what your ambition is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's super interesting, because one question I ask is who do you want to be surrounded by Right, which is it's related, but it doesn't get exactly to that point. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Because it might be to some of our folks. Hey, man, I'm doing this because my boss asks me lots of questions about innovation.
Speaker 3:I'm able to sit in, take the best ideas and say hey boss, here's what everybody's doing right and, by the way, if you do like, yeah, so I think it's an interesting thing. I mean, it's definitely been something that's super top of mind for me, because one of the challenges when you trying to have like high ambition, it's hard, it's really hard. Right, there's lots of, lots of failures along the way, right, and people that are not equally as ambitious with you as you and you don't surround your people with those people. It's really really tough to um, it's, it's on those tough days it's really hard. Like you feel very alone. Yeah, right, you feel very alone because, um, if, if, if you go hang out with your friends that are not ambitious and you had a tough day, they're like, dude, get over it.
Speaker 3:Like you, you have a great, you get this. Like you have a great life. Just what are you complaining about? I'm like I never said anything about my life being great or not great. I'm just like I'm pissed off. I mean, here's the thing, right, like sounding like a jerk. Right, if I'm in mixed company with people that have different ambitions than my own or different cadences of ambition, I'm so pissed off I'm not getting a shot at my own part of an NFL team. What does that sound?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds arrogant. Yeah, they can't relate to it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they're definitely not saying yeah man, I know that sucks right. I was feeling the same way. Nobody in that room is saying that 're like this guy who is this guy, right? Yeah, when you're the outlier, right, you're seen differently, definitely yeah yeah, and also to your point, that also means that there's a lot of people that want to hang out with me. Because they want to, you know, they want to be around someone that's probably has a different ambition than them.
Speaker 3:Or maybe a greater in their mind a greater ambition. I'm going to use the term different.
Speaker 4:But in their mind a lot of people equate it to bigger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they want to compare it or or create some sort of competition. Um, we could definitely record an entire episode on that, but I, I think that's a really great point. Again, it's the if I, I love the jim, the jim rome quote. Right, you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with, which means you have to be very careful, of course, of course and this and this will sound arrogant coming out of my mouth but you have to be careful and intentional about who you surround yourself with. Right, because there there will be right, there's that magnetism. Oh yeah, well, my five people and I'm aiming high, right, so my five people need to be up here, and it may include KP. But you're saying, hey, my, my five people are up here and it doesn't include these people down here. Right, and, and you know, and there's, it's five people you spend the most time with. So there's, you know, we're not, we're not saying we're going to cut everybody else out of our life, necessarily, but we have to be intentional about those choices.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think you're right. Like when you're at a personal level, I don't always want to spend all my time around those people. I sometimes love hanging out with groups of friends that are really just chilling Because nobody's going to ask me what I do for a living. Yeah, yeah, I do love that. Right, I mean I? Whenever people ask me what I do for a living, I say civil engineering um, because otherwise I'll get, otherwise I get pitched. Hey man, I got a great idea for you.
Speaker 3:You should invest in me, nobody's pitching you road projects no, they're like, I'm usually like, yeah, I'm a civil engineer and they just like walk away like boring nerd roads, roads, soil or underground piping yeah, zero times with anyone said that's amazing. Tell me more highways or runways. It's usually like nice to meet you, and then they move on.
Speaker 2:Overpasses or mountain tunnels.
Speaker 3:There's some great comfort in that, though, by the way.
Speaker 2:Oh man, this has been a lot of fun and it's funny because we've gone on and on and all the way around the barn and back, but it and it started with this one sentence post of yours on LinkedIn. So again, I don't know how you've gotten to this point without hearing the beginning, if you have, but these KP Unpacked episodes are my opportunity to ask KP hey, what were you thinking? What was the inspiration? Where is this post coming from? Thinking you know what was the inspiration? Uh, where is this post coming from? And so if you're not following kp on linkedin, you should be. So kp ready, r-e-d-d-y. If you're watching the video, it's right there on the screen. Both of our names are right there on the screen. Uh, ethan will link our producer, ethan will link um, these things in the show notes.
Speaker 2:But this whole conversation is about, you know, as we're recording this, you you must have posted this on LinkedIn about maybe Saturday the 14th or Friday the 13th or so of December. But it goes like this how do you think about the correlation between ambition and risk aversion? That's where we started the conversation. We've gone all over the place, but I think we've gone to some really good places here in this conversation. So thanks for listening in Again. Follow KP on LinkedIn and all the links to everything that we talked about will be in the show notes. Ethan will drop them down there. Kp, thanks for joining me today. Great conversation, all right. We'll see you. Yep, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 3:Great conversation, all right, we'll see you.
Speaker 2:Yep. Thanks everybody, We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to another episode of KP Unpacked. You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Yco, and additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash IN slash. Kp ready Until next time.