Baking Clarity into Your Brand with Authenticity and Purpose with Rich Kozak

“If we can imagine it, God can make it real. God’s power moves mountains.” ~ Rich Kozak

In this episode of The Remarkable People Podcast, host David Pasqualone interviews Rich Kozak about finding clarity in life and business. The conversation covers Rich's upbringing, his early ventures, and his journey through various careers including marketing and international branding. Rich emphasizes the importance of clarity in achieving success, both personally and professionally. He outlines steps for individuals to envision their thriving state and identify key impacts they want to make. Practical advice is given on defining and languaging a brand to ensure it connects authentically with the intended audience. The discussion also delves into the role of faith and purpose in driving one's life and career. Rich provides actionable steps for listeners to gain clarity and align their efforts with their true calling.

• 00:00 Introduction to the Episode
• 01:37 Meet Rich Kozak: The Journey Begins
• 02:03 The Importance of Clarity
• 05:13 Rich's Early Life and Family Background
• 10:52 Teenage Ventures: From Painting to Music
• 15:02 College Years and Early Career Choices
• 22:12 Corporate Life and Realizations
• 42:58 Transition to Real Estate and Personal Challenges
• 48:42 Choosing 'Show Me' Mode
• 49:02 A New Career Path
• 49:33 Unexpected Opportunities
• 52:14 Embracing Faith in Business
• 53:14 A Life-Changing Conference
• 56:26 Integrating Faith and Business
• 57:35 Defining Your Brand
• 01:12:33 Steps to Clarity and Impact
• 01:31:41 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

SHOW NOTES & LINKS: 

• Website: https://richbrands.org/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richbrandsrk
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richkozakrichbrands/
• Rich’s Podcast: https://richbrands.org/thebrandyouwillbecome/

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Transcript

Baking Clarity into Your Brand with Authenticity and Purpose with Rich Kozak 

David Pasqualone: Hello, friend. Welcome to this week's episode of The Remarkable People Podcast, the Rich Kza story. This week we're gonna not only hear about Rich's life, but we're gonna go through how he found clarity in his own life and how important it is that we all have it in our businesses and our lives, not just in the branding, but in what we live in.

Every day so we can make a positive impact in all that we do for God's glory and for your joy. So at this time, get your pen and paper. Be ready to take notes unless you're driving, and then make sure you not only listen to this great advice. Rich gives, but you do it. Repeat the good each day so you can have a great life in this world, but most importantly, an eternity to come and please share this with your friends.

Share this with your family. Pick at least one person to share this episode with so we can help as many people as we can around the world continue to be [00:01:00] motivated and inspired and grow. We love you and get ready for this Remarkable episode right now.

Welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast: The Remarkable People Podcast, check it out,

the Remarkable People Podcast. Listen, do Repeat for Life,

the Remarkable People Podcast.

David Pasqualone: Hey Rich. How are you today? Hey, it's a blessed day.

I'm glad to be here, man. We're glad to have you here. I just told our listeners a small bit about this episode and what to expect, but right direct from the source himself. If our listeners commit to sticking through your episode, what do you guarantee they're gonna get that they can take [00:02:00] and apply to their life to be even better?

Rich Kozak: Boy, am I glad you asked me that upfront. The missing piece in so many people that come hear me speak and come to me and say, Hey, I want to talk to you more, is clarity. It's clarity and how they say to those they really wanna serve. Hey, here's what I see for you. It's clarity in what their heart tells them.

These are the people I can really impact and I can see it, and I really want to, it's clarity that's missing. So when they talk, when they show up, when they know they're headed to a higher level, their brand falls flat and, and they don't make it and they don't know how to do that. And clarity is the missing piece.

So what you're gonna have is an understanding of what it takes to have clarity where there wasn't any, so that you can come alive and attract [00:03:00] and step from a even more successful work that you do or business, or maybe you think it's a calling onto a platform that's made for why you're really here.

Praise God. 

David Pasqualone: Amen. Amen. We all need that in our lives at different times, more so than others. Yep. So ladies and gentlemen, we are gonna take a quick affiliate break. It's gonna be like 60 seconds or less, and then you are gonna hear from Rich about his life, how he became so passionate about this, and the practical steps that you can take to find and apply. Clear your life right after this.

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See you in the next episode of The Remarkable People Podcast. We love you and wish you only the best. Let us know how we can help you. [00:05:00] Ciao.

David Pasqualone: Alright, rich, we're back. We set the expectation. Clarity is so important. The Bible says, where there's no vision, the people perished, but he the keepeth, the law happy as he. So in your life, let's go back to the basics. Where were you born? What was your upbringing like?

Good, bad, ugly. Pretty, pretty ugly. Where did Rich start his journey? 

Rich Kozak: Well, I've been blessed all along, but I, I, I was, the fir I was the first son of the first son of immigrants. Okay. So my dad was the first child of a couple born that came from what is now the Czech Republic Czechia. They came from Moravia in 1907.

He was their first child and I was his first son. So he studied math, he studied music. He got three degrees and he was 35 when he had me. So he and my mom were both teachers, [00:06:00] professors, mom taught music and English and dad taught music and math. And I was born in Southern West Virginia where my mom had grown up and my dad had ended up, he was raised in the Pittsburgh area because of jobs and people he knew and because my mom's family was down there in a little college named Concord College in Athens, West Virginia until I was four and a half where my dad moved to Penn State where he had gotten his doctorate degree and started teaching.

Kids how to be math teachers in high school. He loved that. He loved to teach. So I was raised, mom was Southern Baptist. Dad was Presbyterian in a church outside of Pittsburgh that had one service in Czech every month, and one service in Italian. It's like, you know, there was a bunch of ethnic groups around there that had come over and, and [00:07:00] settled with their own people.

And and so they decided they would pick a neutral turf. So they became Methodists before, before the Methodist created the open heart, open, open minds, open doors motto. Anyway, so raised in Southern West Virginia and Athens. Going to a Methodist church down there. And then when we moved to State College, Pennsylvania, where Penn State is the main campus, the university park we were members of St.

Paul's Methodist Church for years and years. And beautiful hundreds of people, you know, thriving university town, half university, half rural. It was an agricultural college when it was created in late 18 hundreds. And I grew up empowered. So I would say, wow, is that a little violin I found dead? Set it out for me.

Yeah. Do you want to play it? Yeah. Well, you can't play it until your mom teaches you piano. Okay. So I learned piano, [00:08:00] and then I learned violin. And then, you know, I play violin, but I'm playing ba baseball and I'm sneaking out a violin practice to go play baseball. Okay? A normal kid, all right? But every time I said, geez, I'm really interested in that.

You know, I, oh, I got, I got into junior high school and. And they had tryouts for a play and it was a community theater, real active. And I tried out and I got the lead. So in seventh grade I got the lead in a community theater play and I immediately, I wanted to be an actor. So it's like I was doing theater and every time I got interested in something, my parents would just support it.

Not everybody's that lucky. I had parents who were really uplifting, thank God, and, and really supportive. And they took me to a lot of rehearsals and a lot of sports events and a lot of, a lot of things back in the day. And. With dad you know, both my parents had graduate degrees. They're both pretty firing on a lot of cylinders, [00:09:00] so if I had ever, ever had trouble with math, dad was there to help me out.

Mom was there to help me out with my English. Matter of fact, she, she lived to 101, bless her heart, and she lives up there in the corner of my office and she corrects my grammar when I'm with clients on Zoom. It's Remarkable. You know, I'll hear this little southern voice like Now, Richard, I want you to tell your friend, David, that that was up.

It should be a predicate. No. Or it. It's the subjective tense, you know, whatever. Right? So you know, I had one sibling, my sister was three years older than I was, but I seemed to want be the one that was doing everything that was getting attention. So I will tell you, I mean, one of the things I think played a role in who I am and how I, you know, grew up was that I, I moved into a northern town from a southern town.

I had an accent, and I moved into kindergarten and I talked funny. Nobody I don't remember being made fun of, [00:10:00] but I, I, my dad had me tested and I could read, and he moved me up a grade early. Like they moved me from kindergarten to first grade because I could read. I don't think socially I was ready. So I was a little on the, you know, if we were playing on the playground and I got hit by the dodge ball, I was the guy that I.

You know, it was a little bit sensitive. What I learned to do was to please adults. And they liked being a good student. They liked musical performance. They liked humor, they liked a lot of things. And I learned to do things that adults liked. And so I was a really good student. I loved to be a good student.

I loved to take tests, and I did well at it. I, I, I was very blessed and, and you know, had a good student record. So when I turned 13 to, to get us into kind of my professional life, [00:11:00] when I turned 13, I said to my dad, you know, I wanna make some money. And he goes, this is Pennsylvania. You, you know, you have to get working papers at 18.

You can't go get a job. So he goes, you need to learn a trade. A, a good immigrant advice. Okay? And he said, tell you what, why don't you paint my house? I'll, I'll, you know, go down to the paint store, learn everything you can. I'll pay for everything and paint my house and then I'll tell some other professors and you can paint their houses.

So within a year, I had created a painting company and I was hiring friends of mine to do, to do paint jobs with me, right? And so at 14, somebody came up to me and said, Hey, you know, you sing in the acapella choir. I've heard you got a pretty good tenor voice. You wanna sing in our rock band? In our soul band, is what he said.

And I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, we have a soul band. We play soul music. And I was like, well, what's soul music? He goes, I'll tell you what, I'll [00:12:00] bring you some records. Okay? So, they wanted me in the band, not just because, you know, I could sing, but also because I did business. And so I booked our band filet of Soul.

By the way if you ever saw the photos it was pretty atra. It is 14. Okay, now I'm in 10th grade, but 14 years old, so we're 14, 15-year-old kids wearing silver tuxedos. Of the very few people of color in our high school, there was a woman named Sherian White, and she was from out from Atlanta.

The woman could sing pheno and she played a sax. So we got her in the band too. And we were doing Temptations and Smokey and Aunt Marvin Gay and Tammy Terrell. And then, man, I was like, and I was booking us in all the Penn State fraternities and sororities. I ended up booking all the other bands. I created a booking company and then I went to Harrisburg and signed up with a, a group down there so I could book their bands.

I mean, it's like, so I was, I was running [00:13:00] businesses as I was going through high school and playing and I sometimes I was playing in the bands, like the soul band I played in the band. There was a big horn band I played in it just doing when music shifted to Blood, sweat, and tears in Chicago and, and and then I just backed out and let them do all the gigs and book bands.

'cause I would show up at all the fraternity parties and give them my check and take their check and, and make sure that, you know, that everything always worked out.

David Pasqualone: And let's pause there quickly. So would you say your dad and mom, they were super supportive. Did they have that entrepreneurial mindset or is that just how God wired you and they were encouraging you to follow it?

Rich Kozak: I'm thinking it jumped the generation. Okay. I, dad didn't tell us much about his family, but he did say his father raised rabbits for show. He raised mushrooms in a cave outside Pittsburgh. He was a, he was a mason, a stone mason, so he, you know, built walls and stuff. And he described a moment [00:14:00] when his father was moving a piano from the third floor of a church down to the street by himself with just ropes and pulley.

And he said it was at that moment, I realized how brilliant my father was. So the feeling I go and, and when my dad died and all his pe people, his people came over to the funeral, I asked him every kind of question. I couldn't found out. My grandfather had gone to a trade school 30 miles away from where he was raised so we could get more skills.

And then he left to come to the United States so that he could build a future. So, you know, you don't do that if safety comes first. So I believe that he was the risk taker. He was the entrepreneur. His name was Andrew, as was my father's. His, he would, they would've called him Andre in the Czech, in Czech, in Movia, Andre, and, yeah. So so, [00:15:00] so you're booking bands, you're making things happen. I'm book and I'm getting great grades and I'm booking bands and, and and I gotta pick a, I gotta pick a university. Well, dad's a prophet Penn State. What that means at then was if I wanted to go to Penn State, if I could get in. But that wasn't a problem because of my grades.

If I could get in, I would pay a quarter of the tuition and I could stay at home. That was significant on a assistant professor's salary. So mom went to Columbia. Now she was from a little town in West Virginia and I have no idea how in the world that happened, but she went to Columbia and got a musical mu music, a piano performance master's degree.

And I said to dad, because Columbia's a, you know, high end school. And so I said, Hey, I wanna go to Columbia. And he goes. I'm not signing it. I I'm not signing the app. You can write all [00:16:00] day. I'm not signing it. And in those days, you know, you kind of needed your parents, your, your parents' support. And he said, you have no idea what you want to do.

So just keep doing your business. Stay here, save your money. And when you figure it out, you know, then go do it. You know? And bless his heart, he saved money. And literally what happened was I went to college at Penn State. I kept booking bands for one year. I took some of that money I'd made, I traveled in Europe for an entire summer, backpacking like 10 and a half weeks all over the place.

I studied Italian for a year before I went there. So I studied French in high school and Italian dad was really good with languages and I got that too. And when. You talk to people and you listen to people, you start to realize there's more than one way. And our way is not necessarily the only [00:17:00] way, and sometimes our way isn't the best way.

And you start to get worldly and build a worldview and get perspective. That com combined with being a person of faith, faith being the common denominator that unites us worldwide is a. Is a invaluable perspective. So when I got back I, I, I was, I felt like a different person. I felt like I was on a whole nother level and I, I had gotten this taste of, of, of, you know, other cultures and everything, and I decided, okay so I was playing in a band at the time that was like Crosby, stills, Nash, and Young, a lot of, lot of four part harmonies, contra, Punto guitars.

I was doing the vi, I played violin and viola and mandolin and percussion. I was kind of the, you know, the embellishment guy, but I was also doing all the business. So we cut our own album. We went on the road first year, and I dropped out of college. [00:18:00] My dad was a college professor and I dropped outta college, but.

He had written charts for dance bands back in his day, back in, in, in West Virginia. And he, every summer he, he'd take the band to, and they would do gigs at white sulfur springs in Rehoboth Beach. And so when I said, Hey, we have this opportunity, they would come and listen to the music we were doing.

And I said, I'm, I'm gonna take a leave of absence. He said, well, sounds pretty good. How many verses what you're gonna destroy your life. Okay. So imagine how many people could tell their parents to a professor that you're gonna leave school as a senior with a 3.7 and just, and go play rock music. It wouldn't go over well in most families.

I had these parents who were like my mother, like, well now don't play in too many bars darling. 'cause I don't want it to rub off on you. You know? [00:19:00] And I want you to find the right girl. And my dad's saying, well, you know, just, you know, keep your head to the ground and you know, so we create an album, we release it, we travel for several years.

Couple of us decide, we, we, we don't really want to do that for a living. So we pick a end point. The band breaks up, I go back to school. I did the gare, I finished my degree in marketing and international business. I even took some graduate classes and then I hired on. 'cause when, when you have, when you're confident because you've run a business and you know you're a few years older than most of the other kids, doesn't take you long to do well in interviews.

And I mean, I've been doing radio interviews with the band for, you know, the whole time we were on the road. 'cause we would, I did all that, you know, line lining, all that stuff up and, I got a great, I got several great job offers. One of them with a, a really big tech [00:20:00] company. Old tech telephone tech.

Remember this was like 1978 and they said We have to start in August. And I'm like, well, my wife and I are backpacking in Europe. Oh, can't do that. You're gonna have to be there on report day. And I'm like, thanks. I'll, I'll be in Europe. Okay. So yeah, I wanted Denise to have that same out of the country, you know, worldliness, get, get the taste for that because I wanted to live outside the country.

I wanted to be an expat. If I'm going, you know, fortune 50 and going corporate, I want them to pay for sending me around the world. So so she comes with me and the, her only complaint, bless her heart by the way. My wife's name is Denise, and I've been doing my branding work defining and languaging brands for 49 years going, and I've been married for 49 years and 54 Valentine's days.

You can do the math on [00:21:00] that. Amen. So, yep. Praise God. I'll tell you what, I'm the luckiest man in the world, and so here's a woman we recently married, we married before I graduated, and her only complaint was, I mean, I have to put everything I'm gonna wear for six and a half weeks into a backpack.

Yeah. That was the only complaint. So on the way home, on the flight, I asked the, you know, I asked the question, well, honey, do you think you could live outside the country?

And her response was, well, sure, but why would I want to, my parents are in Philadelphia and my sister is in, you know, for a living. And you know. I am like, well, that's not gonna work out all that well. Alright. So we had written our own vows and she had literally written, I will follow you wherever you go and wherever your wherever your work, you know, lead your career, lead you.

[00:22:00] She actually wrote that into our vows. I didn't ask her that, but she was like, well, yeah, I couldn't live outside the country, but why would I want to, you know, so it's now, it was up to me to make the right choices. So the I went, I hired on with a Fortune 50 company and by God's blessing they put me, I wanted to do international work.

Right now, this is a Fortune 50 company, was a,

I had 44,000 employees and sales offices all over the place, and they put me in Grand Rapids, Michigan of all places. Not a place where a young couple would sew their wild oats. Okay. It's a nice place to come back to if you have a family, but it's not a rocking city by the name of, however, my, my first corporate manager had [00:23:00] run the international division of this company for 12 years in Loon, Switzerland.

So he was worldly, his wife played piano. I played my violin with one of her students at a recital. It's like her kids sang opera. It's like they had been in Europe for 12 years. It was perfect 'cause my dad was not corporate and here was my other dad, my corporate dad. Who was telling me, here's the way it works.

You gotta go in the corporate and go through the chairs. Well, what does that mean? So I go from a set of parents who were extremely uplifting to a first boss who is not demanding. He's just uplifting and caring. And he's a deacon in his, in his Presbyterian church. Okay. So these are not coincidences.

You [00:24:00] know that and I know that. But it, I wasn't saying that at that time I had to get, I had to do a lot of self-development work later to, to be able to realize it. You know, things happen for a reason, and here I am being prepared, but I didn't know I was being prepared. I thought I was being prepared for a corporate, you know, an upper level corporate job.

But it, it, after seven years, two years in Grand Rapids and then they transferred me to California to work at a factory with a marketing manager. I said, I wanna be in marketing, I wanna do international, and I'm getting everything I'm I I asked for before anyone else. Got it. So I was, I really kind of had the kiss, say, once I landed here in California.

The job itself was somewhat repetitive, although it was, it was a mind game because these were [00:25:00] engineered products. Everyone was different. They were made from a print, from a, you know, three dimensional blueprint and, and you had to price them. And the, and the people that were purchasing them were aerospace people like Boeing and McDonald Douglas.

And so I was negotiating with them and talking to the plant about what it would cost to make them. So it was part product manager, pot mar, part marketing manager, part pricing analyst. It, it was multiple dimensions. So they had put me in field sales for the first two years, and now I'm in another side of marketing field sales and understanding how purchasing works and how purchasing agents work.

And when you don't have enough to sell them what all they want. Now you have to unsell my two years. We're unselling, we were on set aside for all the products that we sold and I had to keep the clients happy but not allow them to buy as much as they wanted. What a crazy, stupid sales job is that my [00:26:00] job was to get as many of the designers of Tool and die in Western Michigan on a jet plane, on the Alcoa Company Jet, fly them back to Pittsburgh and have them trained in how aluminum works differently than steel and how you design the dyes that forge and stamp aluminum so that you don't have problems down the road.

'cause they were steel guys. That was my job not selling. And so I got 17 of 25 on the plane. Hmm. Problem is, and it, I didn't think it was a problem. Remember I said my boss had sent me into Pittsburgh and to go through the chairs, well go through the chairs means you meet people at different levels so they know who's coming up.

Right. And they have a feeling, they have an attitude. So when the bo, when the upper people say like, well, do you know this person? They go, yeah, [00:27:00] I remember interviewing with them. You know, so I'm going through the chairs and the executive vice president's secretary, let's call her Sally. I'm like, I bond with Sally.

And I tell her, you know, I'm supposed to get these guys on the corporate plane. She goes, oh, you know, just call me. I'll get the corporate plane for you. I'm like, well, thank you, Sally. That's so sweet. You know? Yeah. I'll be glad to call you, you know, when everything gets lined, I, I should be about, you know, three months.

Okay. Well, when it came time, I called Sally arranged the corporate plane. It came in into Grand Rapids. We flew, you know, into Pittsburgh. I got back, we were back. I am in my office and my boss, I, I hear him on speakerphone and his boss, who was kind of a egotistical power player, he ran the Detroit office.

Big money, was yelling him, yelling at him that he wasn't asked for permission to use the corporate plane. [00:28:00] And he had me come in to explain how it worked. So, and I didn't know that I'm not a corporate guy. I didn't know I wasn't supposed you. This was one of those indications that maybe I didn't fit in the corporate environment.

'cause I've always made my own rules when there weren't rules. I just make 'em sometimes even when there are rules, I make 'em. I had called Sally, well, Tom, the manager man, he was quite put out. But when my boss and I apologized and I pleaded ignorant and, you know, and told him how successful it was and how it's gonna make all of us look good and boost the numbers in his district, you know, whatever, you know, he kind of settled down, but it, it was one of those early warning signs.

And 

David Pasqualone: yeah. And if you don't mind, rich, I [00:29:00] wanna stop and talk to the listeners about something because a lot of people in the world tell you you need to be an entrepreneur to have full freedom. And not everybody's wired to be an entrepreneur. And some people like, I'm gonna work my, you know, 30 year gold watch still and they're gonna work up through a corporation.

That's not for everybody either, but where you're meant to be, how God built you is where you should be. But one thing I really want to talk about is a lot of companies, they want to be able to hire people who they can control and who they own. Mm-hmm. And you know, we can make more money, we can make more things, we can make more friends, we can't make more time.

So I think it was a key decision you made in your C career path that when they said, Hey, our job, this was the other company, our job, or your trip to Europe, you chose the trip to Europe. That was a key fork in the road. Right? 

Rich Kozak: It was. Yeah, I was, I sort of surprised myself that I had spent all my savings in the rock band.

You know, we were [00:30:00] investing and everything turned out right. Well, we got our money back by selling all the equipment and the motor homes and the trucks and the stuff, you know, and kinda like broke even. But my, my comment to myself was, I'm gonna learn on somebody else's money now. Right. But, but notice the, notice the connotation.

It's like, I'm gonna learn, learn what I'm gonna learn about life. I'm gonna learn about how it works on somebody else's money, but that doesn't mean they own me. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And I just wanna encourage the people, our listeners. That, you know, sometimes we really want to job bat and we want to change. And a lot of times the motivation is we just don't wanna be where we're at.

So we jump at the first opportunity, but really evaluate what's going on and look at the whole situation. And like for Rich and I, we trusted Christ our savior, and we believe in praying and, and looking for God's guidance and leadership. But if you don't have peace about the move or there's red flags, like, hey, you do this, or else that might be a sign the, your whole time at the company's gonna be like that.

Would you [00:31:00] agree or disagree, rich? 

Rich Kozak: Absolutely agree. And my situation was, I did interviewing with a lot of companies and you would recognize almost every one of their names. I mean, some of the largest names. 'cause I, I could, I kind of had the kiss you know, I had experience. I'd been my own business.

I was confident, I spoke well, interviewed well, so I interviewed with everybody I could. The reason I chose the one I did, which for me was like, it's a, it's an industrial company. It was because of the people. It was the only company I interviewed with and it sent me to corporate and I interviewed with seven different people that lived for different levels.

It was the only company I interviewed with where every one of the people were present. They were engaging with me as a fellow human being, not as I'm a senior, you know, I'm a looking down their nose, or, [00:32:00] well, we do it this way, or I felt it. It was palpable. It's like you, there are a lot of controllers out there and.

We don't ever female or male, and I'm speaking to the women particularly, we don't ever have to give away our uniqueness. We don't ever have to give away our power. Ever. We have that, you know, we, we get to hold onto that and if we give it away, we can get it back, but don't give it away. So, yeah, my signal was the nature of the people.

And I think I chose the company as well, but after they sent me out here, I was here five years, I got, so it was so repetitive for me that I got involved with outside of the company, with the American Marketing Association, which is a [00:33:00] professional, you know, group volunteers, right? And so I cre I was, remember I was into international, so I created.

The international business division of the Southern California American Marketing Association and we had events. Richard King was a, was a, the only Republican that was in the first Jerry Brown administration and he was a representative of Japan. He was international trade guy. When trading companies beca came into Vogue and we had a big thing on trading companies and he spoke.

It's like I was involving myself as a high A level as I could because of my volunteering in the American Marketing Association. And I did so well. I became, I was elected president locally and I did so well as a president out here. We did like 38 events. It was crazy. In a year that I was elected to the National Board of Directors, now that's fall.

It's all volunteer. By that time, somebody that had met me. And the a MA [00:34:00] had asked me to come and work for their agency business marketing agency. And I had, and, and so here I'm working for a business marketing agency as an executive vice president. And I'm sitting on the board of directors of the a MA and I'm flying in Chicago for four times a year for board meetings and running the, running the business marketing conference with Business Marketing magazine.

And I'm like in my mid thirties it was, and I'm just rolling with it. Okay. Right. When I see I'm blessed. It's not, it's not it's out of gratitude and recognition that just these things don't necessarily happen, just happen. They happen for a reason. And what if we fast forward to, I, I was at the agency 17 and a half years.

We worked with clients as large as $14 billion companies, public company, [00:35:00] with as small as maybe a couple a co, maybe a a hundred million where they're a software company, you know, and they're integrating software or, or laundry services or doctor groups or, you know, it was all business to business. And business to business is very tangible.

It's not, it's not, you know, you know, it's not like, please don't squeeze the Charmin, you know, it's not like a look in a line TV advertising for consumer products. These are tangible products like the next integrated chip for disc drives. You know, it's like you gotta talk to engineers who are buying this stuff about the capabilities of the pro.

You know, these are, these are tangible, you know, tangible marketing campaigns. So I absolutely loved it and. However, in the last 10 years, we became involved with a group of similar agencies worldwide who had a partnership [00:36:00] called the business Branding Network. And they eventually just called it BBN based in England and there were agencies in 21 countries at the time, and we paid to join it.

And all of a sudden I'm partners with people all over the world. Remember the global preparation of, you know, being with the backpack and, you know, studying languages and it's like. I couldn't use dispel Global a citizen, and now I are one. You know, it's like boom. And I now, I have partners in 21 countries.

I'm on, I'm, I'm, I'm, I get home late from the agency, but then I go and I email my partners in Europe and then I wake up early to see what they said. By the time I was 50, I was addicted. It became clear to me that I was addicted to my job. [00:37:00] I often call it the high pitched whine. You know, there's this and it, and it goes on in your head, and.

And it's like, it's a buzz, it's a every, you pick up the phone and it's a different industry, which speaks a different language and has different jargon. And that's a buzz for me. I love languages. Okay. I love it. And now I've got partners in 21 cars. So I got accents and I got different laws and, and, and I'm sitting on a global brand team to help a, a, a, an ophthalmological test equipment manufacturer in Heidelberg, Germany, move their test equipment in the United States where the laws are different and, and be their agency.

It's like, whoa, okay. Right. So I loved it. I, I was, and I was addicted, like the hook was in the fish and. I'll put it this way, picture this. It was 3:14 AM in that [00:38:00] nine story building at the end of Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, where my office looked right up the Malibu coast, palm trees three 14 the morning I had to leave because I had to go down to the parking garage, get my car, get through the gate, get home across, usually an hour and a half during the day, but 35 minutes at that time of the night to get home, get a shower, shave, put on a different suit, get ready, leave, drive another hour to Orange County and be in that board meeting at the $14 billion company to say, gentlemen, my name is Rich Kak from Young Company, and I'm here to share with you the vision we have of the way your clients in your future strategy will respond to your company and why.

I am shaving. I'm looking at myself in the mirror. I'm overweight, I'm losing sleep. I'm staying up all night. I just did an all [00:39:00] nighter. It's like, okay, and I'm, and I realized I'm killing myself. And this is, I am sure, this is not why I'm here, but I'm not very focused at that point on why I'm here, why God put me here.

I'm focused on being the agency guy partners in 21 countries global branding consultant, and I made a decision. I changed my prayer. Lord, I'm resigning this addictive career to reshape my life. Show me what you want me to do. I'm ready.

And I prayed that prayer for about six months, shared my decision with my good friend who, you know, met me in the a MA [00:40:00] and we set a date of August 31st. At that point, I would not be an employee anymore. We'd wish each other well and move forward, and he realized I wasn't going to some other agency and I, I, you know, I wasn't gonna make him look bad.

I was just moving on with my life. Praise God. 

David Pasqualone: So, and where was your wife in all this? 'cause that's like, obviously your life was affecting her life. W was she super excited? Was she I've, 

Rich Kozak: I've, I've been fairly successful working at an agency where I was allowed to, my pay was part based on the gross and part based on the net of the clients that I worked on.

And we had had some very good years, so we'd put away a fair amount of money, and she herself worked. She, she, my wife is a me as a social worker by [00:41:00] first degree medical social worker, by on the job training cardiac rehabilitation team person. Then when hospitals sent social work packing and all these nurses became home health people who did the discharge planning for the hospital and the hospitals kinda let go of that for about, it happened for about seven or eight or nine years.

I forget how long it was. But anyway, Denise became the, she became I, what I call the, a lone ranger of hospital social work. She, she, they would send her in, you know, Gladys is going on leave and they would send Denise in and Denise would fix all the problems and, you know, pretty up gladys's mess and, and write off into the sunset, you know, and then, and then hospitals were like, what have we done?

And they got it back, you know, they put the people back on staff and then hospitals wanted to hire, and she had worked for a hospital. She ended up working for a hospital for about [00:42:00] 32 years. And that job got increasingly administratively tedious, where the administration became more important than the client pa, patient care, you know, and the management of the insurance companies and making sure that the numbers came out right.

You know. And so at that point that I was deciding. And I talked to Denise about it and she said, honey, I want you healthy and I want you around for a long, long time. So you do what you're gonna do and I know you'll be successful. Look, you know, I said, you just asked me how I was today. I said I was blessed.

And then I keep saying I'm one of the most blessed men on the planet. I resigned my career August 31st. I get involved in real estate [00:43:00] development with an uncle of mine who has built houses. I had been doing nothing down, buying nothing down houses to offset some of my earnings. For several years now I was into real estate and all of a sudden I shift to a real estate investment.

And and we get going and I'm like, I'm, I'm pay, you know, I'm not. I'm not on my knees every morning saying, Lord, what do you want me to do? I'm running now doing real estate, and in January, do you want one addictive career to another? I didn't know that. 

David Pasqualone: Hey, wait a minute. I'm saying, is that what happened?

Like, is that, 

Rich Kozak: did you read the book? I didn't write? Yeah, 

David Pasqualone: yeah, yeah. It's just human nature. We fill a gap unless we feel it was something good, we're just gonna keep doing it. 

Rich Kozak: Later. When my mom was in the rest home and I was talking to her and I said, mom, so when you reflect on all the bad things I did, you know, and she goes, darling, I only remember the good things you did.

I'm trying to prove that I, I am. [00:44:00] I am a lucky guy. Okay. However, I resigned the job. August 31st is the last day, January 21st, that next year. Denise and I are in Florida at a conference. It's one of these conferences where all these heavyweights from the self-development industry, including real estate, but also self, are all speaking for a week.

And Denise, she, she did not, she was an interested in contending it, but her parents were vacationing in Florida, south Florida. So she was gonna stay with me for a few days and then go down with them and then I was gonna come down and join her. We get there the next morning, we get a call, your house is on fire.

Our neighbors call, your house is on fire. Our two sons who were 21 and 18 at the time were okay. They were out front in their, you know, underwear with the hose trying to fight the fire and the cops were trying to pull 'em off that and we flew back home. And now I didn't have a [00:45:00] home and I didn't have a job.

Ru row. Okay. Alright. Well let's get right to one of the major points. Adversity is part of life. And I don't think you heard me say the word lucky. You've heard me say the word blessed. I believe there's a difference. Okay? And we're blessed sometimes by adversity. Sometimes people are blessed by picking the wrong job because of what they learn.

I have a, I have a fellow who is my financial planner who went Wall Street from school. His dad encouraged him, smart as a whip. He's on Wall Street, literally running a fund. Young guy. And he [00:46:00] realizes he's m where the money's coming from and where the money's going. And I, that's all I'll say 'cause I don't want to diss any industry.

And he said to himself, I'm not doing this. And he moved across the country and became a financial fiduciary, which means every transaction he suggests is in the best interest of the client. That's a big difference than running a fund on Wall Street. So sometimes our decisions lead us down a dark path or a path that is not intended to be our final path, but we learn sometimes we learn what, what to do.

Sometimes we learn what not to do. The people who come into our lives for a moment, like an airplane ride or a bus ride, or for a season like a client. Or for a lifetime [00:47:00] come in for a reason. It's, it's one big connectedness. And so I believe I'm blessed and I say it very confidently because I look back and I realized that everything I've done, everything I did from creating my businesses as a kid, to creating businesses as teenagers, to playing in a rock band on the road and running the business and writing the contracts and hiring the roadies and dude, you know, whatever, and set up setting up interviews and to interviewing and going Fortune 50 and going through the chair, everything that I've done prepared me.

To do what I'm doing now. It gave me the perspective and the confidence and the experience and the stories and the language or languages. Okay? And I don't mean French and man, I mean the words, [00:48:00] every industry has its own language. Somebody comes up to me and starts talking about semiconductors. I'm good.

I had a semiconductor client. Paint good. I'm good. Doctor groups, absolutely. Construction and engineering fine. It's like you can't, it's difficult when you're head of new business at an agency for years. It's difficult to pick an industry that you haven't studied and prepared and pitched. All of this has prepared me to do what I do today.

And so when I said, Lord, I'm reshaping. I wanna reshape my life. Show me what you want me to do. I'm ready. I turned. That was when I was 50 years old. I am still in Show me mode. You got that. And I, I, I strongly recommend if you're listening to this, that you choose show me mode. Here's what I meant when I said it.

It was from [00:49:00] my perspective of control. I am resigning this career. I am making this decision. I am controlling what's happening here. I'm gonna work on real estate now. I am going to do, but I, I, I, but, and, and I'm telling God. I'm telling God, get that to me. Show me what you want me to do. I'm ready.

Although new people, new language, new. New activities like rebuilding a house. Like someone at a con at a self-development conference who heard me say, I don't do branding anymore, but if you ever need help, call me. I as a gift, I will help you because I can two years later calls me and ask me to help him build his brand as a, as a holistic doctor who can see people's energy fields and realize where the discontinuities are and understand there's [00:50:00] something wrong somewhere, specifically in their body.

It's like, are you kidding me? There's somebody who does that. That's what this guy did. And he'd been doing it for years and he asked me to be his branding guy and I was like, I was in show me mode. And the response in my heart was to look up and say, Lord, am I supposed to be paying attention here? He brings a woman over to my house who we're down in the lower level, and she walks across, underneath the bottle, brush trees away from about a right angle away, and she, we can't see her.

And she comes back and she goes, you know, she had, she was, he described her as one of the world's most effective meditators. She helped people who had heavy pain after injury to use meditation, along with allopathic medical remedies, to, to deal with the pain and sometimes to undo it. And she also was a [00:51:00] member of meditative groups worldwide.

This was all new to me at the time. I had to like, look words up and ask for books, you know. But anyway, she goes, she comes back and she goes, you know, you have fairies in your trees. I will tell you that the agency guy was just about ready to say, yeah, and I'm George Washington. Right? But I, what I said was, because I'm in chummy moon, how do you know?

'cause I never saw the fairies, right? I never saw the ies. I just saw trees. She looks at me like, because I saw them note to self, some people see fairies register that I didn't know that was, I'm supposed to know that. I don't know, but I'm in show me mode. Okay, so notice that the show me mode was me thinking I was [00:52:00] still in control.

I made the decisions. I even said to, I used an imperative tense show me that's telling God what to do. You know, I'm not sure that's what we're here for. But anyway, over time I got involved in some other businesses. I told myself, I am not gonna be idle. I'm gonna, I, I want residual income. So I got involved with multi-level marketing companies and I found what I absolutely loved was a company that allows you to.

Purchase your own, all of your own mo most all of your own household utilities. So your phone your cable, you know, you're, in some states it's been your, your electricity or your gas you know, all these things and get a commission on it and share it with other people and they get paid when they pay their bills.

It's [00:53:00] like it seemed like the most common sense thing in the world to me, and it's residual. And I will tell you that I did that years ago, and for 10 years I had a residual income from that business. I was at my 14th international training. It was in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was Sunday morning and it was right, it was the church service run by the independent partners.

You know, it's like the company doesn't do that. It's the independent partners that, that have the praise band, and they, it's, they do it all. And they, they bring in this, this biblical pastor from Las Vegas, and he knows this company like the back of his hand. And he speaks to the heart and soul of the people who are there, and it's all biblical.

And at the end of the sermon, they do a soft altar call. Now I was raised sitting around the [00:54:00] TV with my Southern Baptist mom and my Presbyterian dad watching Billy Graham in, I think it was black and white. Okay. But. Well i's Billy Graham and they play the music and people come up and they kneel. At this stage here, I'm at a multi-level marketing convention train, international training, international training, and, and they say, Hey, for all you people and there's 25,000 people in the arena.

Most of them are probably not churched, quarter of 'em are probably in their T early twenties. Or mid, early to mid twenties and they say, Hey, if there's anything going on in your life, and do you know anybody that doesn't have things going on in their life? Okay, if anything's going on in your life, come on up to the side of the stage.

Let us give you some literature. Matter of fact, we'll pray with you and come on up and, you know, we'll bless your life with the prayer and a [00:55:00] little, some literature read. And I'm up there. I happen to be in the way, way up in the rafters with some other people. We said we're gonna sit up there. And so we're way up there.

It could've been a 15 minute walk to the stage. And I'm stood, I'm standing up and I'm thinking to myself, wow, what a beautiful company. It's an outreach mission for Christ. But they don't say it. They don't wear it on their sleeve, but look at what's happening here. People who are not church people who need the Lord in their life are being handed the word.

It's like, wow. Even if you were raised in the faith on one hand and your business is over here on your other hand, and they weren't connected, and I realized that was me. You had my business. And then I had my faith, but they weren't connected. And in that moment I started [00:56:00] walking to the stage,

telling them, asking myself, what am I gonna do differently? Because remember, I resigned a really good career. I made a ton of money and I was in the midst of making a ton of money in real estate. And I'm blessed and I am keeping my faith and my business apart. Now I'm gonna jump ahead two decades and say I have a client who's in Texas.

He's a coach. He was an IT guy working on black government projects off offshore for years, solving problems, getting rid of unnecessary code, making things work. He was brilliant and he all, after 10 years, he decided he wanted to be a coach and he decided he wanted to be a Christian business coach, but he didn't know that even existed at the time.

And he found a way to do that. And today, his business [00:57:00] helps the smallest businesses, couples, and individuals. Run really effectively, I mean, practical results and step into their calling at the same time in one person. How did he find me? Was that a fluke that he's, he came to me? No. So here we are. I, you know, when things happen for a reason, I get that idea and I'm like, wow, my business is here and my faith is here.

I'm gonna do it differently. What, what am I gonna change? And on the way to the stage, I guess the, the fact that, you know, was in a multi-level marketing company, I don't know if you've been around any multilevel marketings, but, but they all use a similar phrase. They teach you how to do the business and then many people try to do it their own way and they tell you, Nope, you didn't do it the way we told you.

Go back to phase one. [00:58:00] That's their phrase in this company, back to phase one. I decided I was gonna go back to phase one in my faith and restart my faith as a new Christian. Now, honest to gosh, that's, it seemed like the most easy decision to make at the time. But for many people, particularly if they weren't raised in the church, they can't make that decision 'cause they don't have anything to go back to.

But if people were raised in the church, raise up a child on the way shall go. And when he is old, they shall not depart from it. If they're raised in the church, they can reconnect to the God they met in Sunday school. And that's a phrase we made up for one of the clients I have who wrote a book to help people get back into the Bible.

Because they set their Bible and don't think it's relevant anymore. [00:59:00] And her total mission is to get back in the Bible. And we created a brand for her called, just say the word reconnecting to you. Reclaiming you, reconnecting to God. She's a retired HR director from the school district, but God called her to help people return to the word.

And we help make her an author of a series of books called Just a Pinch of Salt, wisdom Moments to Flavor Your Life and Your Faith. It's like, wait a minute. So she had a brand? No, she couldn't spell brand. Okay. She didn't know what marketing was it? It was by her. It was totally by faith and you know, can we take this slower?

Sure. So. Here I am. And instead of going to the big party that night, you know, to, to the team party, I went back to my hotel room, I pull, we were in North [01:00:00] Carolina. I pulled out the Billy Graham literature that they distributed and I started reading and it said, if you're new to Christianity, start on page one.

If you're returning, start on page four. And I just made a plan to do everything that it's said to do. Read John, read the acts, read Romans, go back and read this section of proverbs, go back. You know, it's like, it's like, and from that moment on every day, although during the agency days, I always did a a daily devotional.

From now on The Daily Devotional, which often had a, always had a a, a Bible verse or a couple of verse, you know, a, a bible, a citation that you were supposed to read that's relevant to the story. If it said, you know, read verses six to nine, I'd read the whole chapter, and before I started reading, I would go, Lord, [01:01:00] I'm about to read your word.

Please help land on my heart what you want to land there. Help me hear what you want me to hear and help the choice, the decisions I make in my business and in my life and in my marriage to be congruent with what you want from me.

I was still in show me mode, but on God's time. Okay, it's like now. I'm asking, what do you want from me? And I think many people, well, I know because people tell me I've never done that. We can do that. Look, if you're listening to this right now, I want you to do it. I want you to get down on your knees and say, Lord, what do you want me to hear?

I'm reading your [01:02:00] word. What do you want to land on? My heart. Why did you put me here? What is your will for my work, for this gift, for this calling, for these gifts you've given me? What is your will that I do with them? When we get to that point and there are, there's, there are ways to get there. Okay. My coach friend now in Houston, no, not Houston, he's in San Antonio area.

My coach friend in San Antonio area, my client, he helps people get their business really good and step into their calling biblically. Another client I have who's a bookkeeper, she has 15 people that work for all over the United States, specialize in different industries. [01:03:00] She wants to do more business with kingdom focused businesses.

Praise God. When we, one of the reasons I left the Fortune 50 company, I could not envision my success there. Remember, I've created things all along. I created the booking agency, created the rock band, created the brand. You know, we always name things. We create land, we create logos, we create looks and feels.

We create lines, we create language. My life had always been, if I can imagine it, I can make it real. You have that gift, and when you ask the Lord what the Lord's will is for your life, and you get a read on that and you can envision it. You can make it real. We can [01:04:00] make anything real. And when it comes right down to it, God's power moves mountains.

Faith, the grain of a mustard seed can move mountains in your life. Mountains of adversity, mountains of opportunity, mountains of relationship, mountains of financial wealth, mountains of mental and psychological wellbeing, whatever those, those part of those five pillars are that you, weak area and you know you can move those.

And

God's power moves mountains. We don't need to use our own power all the time, so, but we do get to ask. For what The Lord's will is for our business, for our [01:05:00] gifts, for if we see a calling and move on with it and trust. So here I am, do a real estate doing MLM and three people three months in a row come to me from different networks.

I'm a consummate networker. I was a regional chamber ambassador at the time in the city of industry, California. I was a member of a referral network down in Long Beach, which is an hour and a half away. I was a member of a, of a, a referral network that had chapters all over there. All over the country.

And the woman who owned the franchise that our chapter was in also owned franchises in two other states. And so, and I knew her very well, and we had talked about her brand. And so the first one was a woman from Long Beach [01:06:00] and said this is what I do today, but this is what I envision. Can you help me build a brand?

And I said to her, you know, I don't do that anymore. You know what she said to me? She said, that's not true. You sit down with everybody. When we have our mutual coaching sessions, you give us language, you come up with ideas, you're brilliant. It's like, I, I I'm gonna pay you and I want you to help me build a brand.

I'm like okay. Next one comes up from the Chamber. She says, you know, I've, I've worked in hr, human Resources for 14 years now, but I've worked under somebody else's umbrella and I'm ready to go out on my own, but I, I don't know how to build a brand. Can you help me? Oh, I had taken what I had done with the big agencies teaching the steps, the process steps of brand definition and languaging, checking in with the roots of why the brand was created in the first place, and then defining and languaging the brand they [01:07:00] must become to be successful at their business strategy.

And created a process for individuals, for lady number one. Lady number two came along and I said, well, I have this process. Sure. And then the owner of the franchisees came and said, I'm handing you a client. I think you're the best branding person for her. She was trained by a master whose name everybody knows, and she wants to open a very, very expensive yoga parlor, yoga spa, and I had to look up.

Lord Yoga. Isn't that like Hinduism? And what, what's going on?

When I finished all three, and yes, I did take their money I, I honor the fact that, you know, we are here to [01:08:00] live abundantly. I undercharged, but you know, I, I considered, I wasn't doing that for a living at the time. So, but when I finished and did it really well and really successfully, I'm sitting in the choir loft at church.

I still sing the choir by the way. Praise God. And I play violin when I get a chance because we're supposed to praise God with strings and. I'm not a drummer, so I can't do symbols, but my son, I have a son who's a drummer and he does beautiful symbols and sing. I'm sending the choir loft listening to a message, and it dawns on me in this kind of moment of clarity what I am doing with these individuals, not with big companies now, but with these individuals, helping them reach into their own heart and pull out the impacts they clearly see making when they thrive at what they already do or what they want to do.

And we write that down, [01:09:00] even write down the impacts from the lowest level impact to the highest level impact it bakes and, and do it again. Cart. Give me one. And we asked it. We asked the heart. Heart, gimme one, and we do another one. Another one. They don't have to have just one. Don't listen to some coach that says you have to have just one.

The world is you have lots, you don't need lots. But you'll attract lots of different kinds of people with your gift. But you write down the ones you clearly see impacting and the, that you really wanna impact and, and the impacts you clearly see on them. And that clarity

is one of those claritys that you heard me say in the very beginning here that's missing. And you define and language the brand you must become to make those impacts that you've written down on those people. And here's what happens. [01:10:00] And bake clarity into your brand. Everything you say and do is congruent with those impacts.

And you attract like a magnet, not just the people whose you wrote, who you, whom you described and wrote the impacts about others who feel the clarity in the way you show up, the way you speak, the consistency you have, the confidence you have, they feel it. That clarity was missing. But when it's not missing, it's a magnet.

The other clarity in defining and language thing, a brand is what you say when you're looking in the eyes of, of a target audience person. A person you know, you want to impact their life or their business or their industry or their company. You know you can impact. You can see the impacts you're [01:11:00] gonna make and you say to them, we've listened.

To your situation and we understand, here's what I see for you. The language you use after that makes you a magnet or you fall flat. And that's the other place clarity's missing. Big companies and solopreneurs, they just aren't good at it, and they do it differently every time. And now they create confusion and misinformation and they don't get credit for what makes them outstanding.

They waste a ton of money on marketing and they think the marketing didn't work. It's not the marketing that didn't work. The brand wasn't defined in language clearly in the first place, and bake clarity into the brand. And so you show up without consistency across the board ready for the trombones, Wawa.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and let's do that. 'cause I [01:12:00] agree. When people aren't clear on what their own goals are, it's a disaster. So whether someone listening is an entrepreneur about to start their first business, whether they have a $15 million a year business, a $500 year business, or maybe there's a CEO of a Fortune 100, what are the steps we always talk about in this show?

Don't just listen to great content, but do it. Repeat each days. You can have a great life in this world, but more importantly, an attorney to come. Right. So we start off this show, rich, talking about clarity. What are some steps, 1, 2, 3, that practically our listeners can start applying to their lives today to get that clarity?

Rich Kozak: Thank you for asking me. So I think it's prudent for me to mention the book that I'm writing to share those steps. Is coming out, it'll be published very soon. And it's called Impact Driven Branding. [01:13:00] Seven Steps to Ensure Your Brand Impacts People's Lives and the World. Okay, so it's probably out of the scope of, of this podcast to go through to help you understand and be able to do all the seven steps, but I can get you started and it's easy.

The first two steps you can do with your eyes closed Boost. Here goes step one. You can clearly see the impacts. I want you to think about what you really want to do. Maybe you're already doing it, but you wanna go further. You want to go higher, you want to, maybe you want more geography, more target audience, more different kinds of clients.

Maybe you want to be global. Maybe you want translated [01:14:00] language. Maybe you want to be more spiritual. Okay? You're not done. I want you to close your eyes and picture it. When it's thriving, thriving, I'm gonna define it. Everything you're doing is successful. What does that mean? You come up, you write a course, you create a training, you create a weekend retreat, you write a book.

People say, oh my, they're well subscribed. People fill up the training. They come to the weekend retreat, they buy your book, and they say, it changed my life. They listen to you on your podcast and they, they say, oh my God. Just listening to your voice and the clarity that you have about this literally shifted my mindset.

I want you to picture it when it's thriving. That's step one. And there's one more part of step one, and you're gonna need to take a pencil or a pen and write these things down, or a digital, do it on your phone or whatever you do. [01:15:00] Okay? And write your, send yourself an email. What are you doing? You, what are you?

Hey, CEO of a Fortune 50. Great. Hey, solopreneur. It doesn't matter. What are you doing? When it's thriving, that picture you just imagined when everything you're doing is successful. Are you speaking to people in some way? Write that down. Do you have your own podcast? Are you writing a book to share what you do so that other people can do it?

Are you training other people to follow in your footsteps? Are you building a legacy of some kind that will become a legacy? And you hand off, it's like, what are you doing? And I only want you to write down what brings you joy. Don't write down when you think you have to do. Write down what you can clearly envision doing.

When you are thriving, it is thriving. [01:16:00] The brand that you stand, the things you know you really wanna do are thriving. Everything is successful. What are you doing? And write them all down. You know, take a moment, write 'em all down. It won't, some of 'em you'll write down three. Some of you'll write down 15. It depends.

But it's what you see yourself doing and you would love doing it. So if you wanna do transformational leadership retreats in scuba locations, write it down. I'm saying write it down.

David Pasqualone: Awesome. And then now people are writing these steps down. They're starting to picture where they're heading. To have a clear vision, to have that clarity 

Rich Kozak: and see themselves all sit you doing it, loving it so that they could do that for another 20 years. That's pure joy. 

David Pasqualone: Yep. 

Rich Kozak: Do you know how I know that?[01:17:00] 

'cause that's what I'm doing. I'm 72 going on 30. I love this because I get to, it's not my work, it's God's work. I feel I get to do this 'cause it's what I'm made for. And when you have that feeling, when work is love, it is a blessing. So step one, you've written those down. You might, yeah. I mean, you write 'em down all over the page, you know, everybody has a different style.

Once you get 'em all down, all three, all nine, all 15, whatever. I want you to put 'em in kind of chronological order. Like what one would you do first? So don't say, you know, you launch your tv, show it, you haven't been a guest on somebody else's show. You know what I mean? It's like just use kind of gut feel.

Put 'em in order on a list so you have a one to 19, one to three in order. That's it. Awesome. Because what you'll do. You'll put those into the appropriate [01:18:00] phases of brand development. Some of them are before the brand gets defined in language. Some of 'em are after the brand launches itself and you're reaching out to your target audiences and talking to them and showing up in their lives and saying, I'm here and I'm here for you.

The brand is here and it's here for you. And some of 'em are things that grow and expand your reach down the road. You'll put 'em in the right stages of brand development. But start with that list. I'm gonna give you step two. May I? Absolutely. Absolutely. This is critical, and this is from the guy that that has this book, impact Driven Branding.

Seven Steps to Ensure Your Brand Impacts People's Lives in the World. Does this every day, all day. I've done it with individuals for now going on, I think this is my, it's ninth and a half year Okay. Right now for with individuals. I've been doing this that long and it always works. It's, it always is successful because of the nature.

Okay, so here it goes. Step number [01:19:00] two, and you heard me allude to it earlier, close your eyes and ask your heart. You know, you've pictured yourself doing whatever you're doing. When you're thriving, there are people being impacted, people's lives. Maybe you're impacting an industry. Maybe you're impacting specific types of individuals, but you've written those individuals down.

Okay? So you ask your, you ask your heart, Hey, heart parenthesis. Please do not ask your head. I'll mention that in a moment. Ask your heart. Hey, heart, give me one. Gimme one of those people that I clearly see impacting and I really want to impact. What's the first one that the heart gives you? Write it down.

Describe. That person. Maybe it's a couple. So describe the couple. Maybe it's a woman, maybe it's a man, [01:20:00] it's, it doesn't matter. Describe what makes them the one your heart gave you.

And then ask yourself what's the first impact when you're thriving? 'cause you already pictured it. You know what thriving looks like. What's the first impact you, your brand has on them when you're thriving? Now let's talk about impact for a moment just so you get clarity. 'cause if these are steps and you get to do them, I want you to have this in your mind.

I'm not just gonna say, Hey, have fun storming the castle. Like in Princess Bride, you know, you're on your own. It, it takes a little bit more guidance here. So. What do we mean by impacts? Well look like when a car hits a wall, you know? Ouch. Like my hand hit my fist just now. Before that happened, my hands were fine, but now one is buzzing and the other one has this kinda weird feel to it.

There's a [01:21:00] moment of impact, and when we say what's the first impact, there's a moment. So what you're doing is you're writing down a description of the moment of impact, and you use, you know, energetic verbs and a adverbs like he prayerfully drops to his knees in thankfulness. She leaps with joy, celebrating.

She, you know,

becomes deeply grateful for the clarity she realizes in a moment. The fallacy of her ways. It's like you're describing the moment of impact. What's the first moment? Here's one more clarification. Impacts have levels. So you clearly see impacting someone's life. [01:22:00] Chances are the first impact is mental. They see something differently.

Maybe they reframe something about how they see something about themself or they reframe. Reframe how they see something about the world. Whatever that first moment, that first impact is, maybe they just awaken to a different possibility. 'cause they never thought there was one. It. It doesn't matter like you make it.

What is gonna happen to that person that your heart gave you first level? Often it's mental. And then there's a feelings that are involved and maybe you teach them a new mindset that's mental maybe then you teach 'em a new skillset. That's something else. 'cause now they're doing something. If you're practicing, when they apply the skillset now they get new results.

It goes higher and higher and higher. [01:23:00] You write down as far as you can see those as high a level impacts as you can see. Your work, your business, your gift, your calling, having on that person or couple your heart gave you, write 'em all down there they are. Take the time. The clarity comes from that. The clarity that you have about the impacts you clearly wanna make, the clarity you exude when you speak, when you show up, when you describe what happens, where you work, what happens with people whose lives you touch, what happens when your gift or your calling is taken, taken [01:24:00] on by someone because they made a choice.

That clarity is attractive like a magnet. So we just did one. My suggestion is you do at least two, maybe even three or four. Here is, but, but there's no rule. You don't need seven, you don't need anything. I have clients who have one. Most of my clients have two or three, some have four or five or six for specific reasons.

A woman in Cleveland whose brand is called Building Kids who is at website is building kids who care.com, parents building a foundation for generations. She has books and proven tools to, for parents to help build character in every child in minutes a day. The world needs that so much and she's Christian and she [01:25:00] needed to to do that.

Well. Some parents are really well educated and they just want the best for their children, so she defined them. But some parents aren't really, really wet. They don't have, you know, degrees, but they still want the best for their children. But they, they don't know how to, they don't know enough to choose the best.

It's like you have to describe different people whom you clearly see impacting and really wanna impact. So get a few down, 

David Pasqualone: two or three or four, and this is again, like our guests know, we're trying to give people a catalyst to get started, but if someone wanted to get in touch with you, rich, and continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to reach you?

Rich Kozak: You reach me immediately. You can literally get yourself on my calendar and e every coach I listen to says, do not do that. If I'm still doing it, you better take advantage of it. And I've been doing this for 49 years. People say, I should be on a [01:26:00] beach or on a yacht, and I'm on Zoom. You go to rich brands org.

That's the website, rich brands.org, and right above the fold on the homepage, it says, talk to Rich for 30 minutes. You click that and put yourself on my calendar. Now, you've heard me talk constantly here, but I'm not gonna talk constantly when I'm with you. I'm gonna listen. And you're gonna tell me about you.

Then I'm gonna share with you perspective that comes to mind, things that flow through me that I can share with you that I think will be valuable. If you're not ready to do that. My suggestion is you come to one of our free 60 minute master classes and that's, I know this sounds brutal, but when you wanna make your higher level impacts, you've got to evolve your brand.

If you don't evolve that perception that is your brand, you might never make those higher level impacts. So you gotta evolve it. Or those, that desire to make those impacts might. Not even [01:27:00] happen. So guess so. You can register at Brand first. Spell it all out. F-I-R-S-T brand first or die.com. Sorry. Feels brutal.

But look, the, the thing I always promise is straight talk. You can trust. There is no hype here. There is no funny branding language here. It is. Straight talk you can trust and deep experience you can count on. Very, very, very difficult to find that in today's branding and marketing world where everybody wants to tell you.

This will help your brand. And if you ask them, well, what are the four things? A brand must have to come alive and not fall flat. They would look at you like. Huh. Okay. It's like I'm teaching this to Fortune, you know, to companies that are $14 billion companies and they're going, branding [01:28:00] is a process. It's like steps.

Yeah. Yeah. You guys build a pipeline through a jungle. Same thing. It's steps and if you leave some out, your brand falls flat, so don't leave any out, you know? Okay. So that's two ways. One is just get on my calendar and I welcome you and, and if it's too busy, you can't get on, you can't get on right away.

Come to one of our master classes, I do two a month and signing up for Brand First or Die will get you on our list and that's a blessing. I will tell you the thing that will do most people. Immense good. And it costs a little money. It costs less than a hundred dollars. It's $97. But we do an event called branding You with Impact and branding you with.

impact.com is the registrar, you know, branding you with impact.com. [01:29:00] And we talk about what does it mean to define and language a brand. So clearly that everything you say and do is congruent with the impacts you envision making. What happens when you do that and what happens when you don't? The choice is an easy one.

Okay. Once you realize you have the choice, it's an easy choice. You can spend an entire nother year in indecision wasting. How many, one of however many years you get. 'cause we don't know how many years we get and we don't really wanna waste them. Versus getting real clarity and not only helping the business, you're in the work you do, you know the business you have right now, the calling that you're already in to be more successful.[01:30:00] 

But building a platform that makes it much easier for you to step into why you are really here, why God put you here, why you're gonna ask God, show me for your will in my life. That level, we call that the umbrella brand. That's the highest level impacts you clearly envision making with the gifts you've been given.

And that's probably beyond the work you do. Please don't think that the work you've done for 30 years is, is what you get to be known for. You do get to be known for it, but if you're not done, there's an umbrella brand. The question is, what's that umbrella? So get ahold of me. Let's talk about what's possible for the work you do, for the work you feel you wanna do, for the vision of those impacts you clearly see making [01:31:00] when you thrive.

And how do we do that so that everything is congruent and you come alive and never fall flat. Most brands fall flat. 

David Pasqualone: Excellent. Thank you so much for your time today, rich. And ladies and gentlemen, you've heard the information that Rich has presented. Apply it, get the ball rolling. Reach out to Rich. As always, we'll have links in the show notes.

The ones that rich mentioned will also be in the show notes. Connect with him, continue the conversation. And Rich, I really appreciate your time. Our listeners around the world, appreciate your time. Before we go, are there any final thoughts or any kind of lessons that you want to teach before we wrap up this episode of the Remarkable People Podcast?

Rich Kozak: Thank you and thank you so much for having me on here. You and I are made for each other. Praise God. It's a wonderful thing that we connected and found each other, and thank you for inviting me. [01:32:00] I'll leave you with two thoughts. One is speak from your heart. If you're early in your career, don't get caught up in your head.

Speak from your heart. It will reflect your genuine authenticity.

And write that down if you have to look at it every morning. Speak for my heart, speak for my heart. Speak for my heart. In the long run, you'll thank me and it'll pay off beautifully. And here's the, here's the parting thought, and I'm going to point my, my bent finger at you. Okay? If you've got this on if you've got this on video, you're gonna see me pointing a bent finger, shaking my finger at you.

But if you're listening to this on audio, you can imagine it. And I'm pointing my finger and here it is. Ready. Now is the time to [01:33:00] define the brand you will become. This is Rich Kza. 

David Pasqualone: Thank you, rich. I appreciate you. Ladies and gentlemen, pray, meditate on the things that Rich said. Once you've trusted Christ as your Savior, he has a, you have the Holy Ghost inside you.

He says, you have an unc, the holy one. You know all things. So that's when, when Rich says, listen to your heart. Listen to that Holy Ghost. And if you don't have that trust in Christ yet, I'm not knocking you, but reach out to rich eye and let us tell you about Jesus and how you can accept him into your life.

So that's it. I'm David Pasqualone alone. This is our good friend. Rich. Rich. Thank you again for being here, brother

Rich Kozak: David. What a blessing. Praise God, brother.

David Pasqualone: All right, we love you. We'll see you in the next episode, ciao!

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