J.J. Levenske
speaker
141 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
J.J. Levenske’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I want to create 20 millionaires. And so do you. You know, that kind of thing. That legacy, if I could leave that behind, that would make me happier than looking at my own balance sheet personally, right? Because it's like, wow.
You know, if you can take that person that came from nothing and allow them an environment where they're fostered into growing that, that has a higher meaning to me going to my grave than looking at what I'm handing off to my kids for an inheritance, right?
Well, it's funny you say that because I always tell people that I really didn't discover my entrepreneurship until I was in, you know, I'm 52 now. It was probably only the last five to six years. And it's funny because I was very conservative all up and through my 40s. For what? Because then I realized what you finally had realized. Fortunately, at a younger age, it's like, hold it.
I could redo this tomorrow. Why am I worrying about, why am I concentrating and worrying about protecting that? That isn't shit, right? Come over here, invest in yourself, invest in your people, blow it through the roof. If you fail, get back on the horse and start over again. Yeah. And it's funny because it takes a good swift kick to kind of realize that.
And if you're wired that way, it's almost empowering. If you live in fear of it, well, then it's disabling or whatever I want to say. And you know what I'm talking about is you see people either they have it or they don't.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny you say that. And without patronizing you... you know, when I first met you, we talked and just for audience sake, we actually came through your tour and you did a great job and your team did a great job. And it's funny because I still, in our weekly meetings, your name still comes up. Well, what would Tommy do? But my point is, I have a point here.
The point is, is that when I was your age, I don't know if we had
the mentor protege type relationships that we have now through media through the ability of you know whether it's ken goodrich you you know if someone came to me and asked the same thing would i open the doors absolutely because just like you allowed us to come into your business i would allow someone else to come in because that's kind of how the new world works right but when i was younger we really didn't have those opportunities everybody was like this right oh yeah
I mean, you you had to, you know, unless you were part of the mob, you weren't getting in. Yeah, I agree. And so I think, you know, for the young entrepreneurs that are out there, ask, ask, ask and be humble. And people will give you more information than you can even even tolerate. But then what you do with it, that's the special sauce.
It's almost the two ends of two... It's the end of both spectrums. It's super small and super big, but not as many middle, at least through my lens. So what did you see out there? I'm just curious. I've never done business. Well, what it was, was it was because... How would I describe it? I was in the large, the extremely large, like multinational. And I'll never forget.
Let me talk about the exit time because I think this kind of puts context to it. My direct mentor and boss came to me and said, JJ, You were doing all the right things, okay? But I'm going to give you some advice. Get the hell out of here. I go, what? And it kind of, like, it kicked me in the nuts, right? Because I was like, I loved it. Like, I was traveling all over the world, over the country.
I was given responsibility. You know, I kept taking it, succeeding, failing forward too, you know? And I made mistakes. Don't kid yourself. But I always kept grinding and working. Basically, I just outworked them. I outworked my British counterparts. But he said, here's the thing. You will never grow any further because you're not a Brit. And we're still a British company at the end of the day.
Now, that was 25 years ago. So have things changed? Probably. But at that time, in the 90s, it was still, I don't know what the word is, secular prejudice, whatever. Sounds like a union. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But through his advice, he was an outlier in his company. Well, then it gets even weirder is because he was not from that part of England where the company was based. He was an outlier.
So it even gets back to that. Like, are you from Manchester or Birmingham or London, right? And you're talking about, forget black and white and racial type segregation, just where the hell you grow up. Which soccer team is your favorite team? It's like...
But now we were just, we were just back over there this last year ago, about now, and touring. And it felt a lot different from when I was over there before. I wouldn't say it's more Americanized, but there's been, you can tell there's been a lot more entrepreneurship over there, right? You know, ever since the globalization.
Well, then leave.
Yeah, but that's at your discretion and in your means.
Well, it's again, without patronizing you, it's funny because I had the attitude, I think the same as you until I read your book that was hard to verbalize it where it's, it's create a brand and create an ethos around your culture and organization where people are calling you to come work for you. Not you recruit. You shouldn't have to use Indeed or Monster or anything, right?
Who's the, is it Jody? Jody Underhill. Yeah, you're marketing. Right. Rabbit hire. Yeah. So when you look at that, if you can, back to what you were saying, is if you can execute on your culture to where people want to come to you, you've already beat 90% of your competition, maybe 95.
Showing 61–80 of 141 · page 4 of 8
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