The Action Catalyst
Education is Freedom, with James Keyes (Learning, Business, Leadership, Change)
Tue, 15 Oct 2024
James Keyes’ career has included serving as CEO of two Fortune 500 companies; Blockbuster Inc. and 7-Eleven, but he starting off working to be an astronaut. Hear how, plus find out what Einstein called “intelligence having fun”, learn about what CEO really stands for, why 7-Eleven and Blockbuster were really part of the same business, what REALLY happened to Blockbuster (and why you may not have seen the last of it), the root of all commerce, the best way to prioritize your time, dealing with change and fear, and the key to true freedom, and how James narrowly avoided the mafia…we think.Mentioned in this episode:Learn more at SouthwesternConsulting.com/Coaching/StudentsSouthwestern Student Coaching
Full Episode
I set this thing off, almost blew myself up. Didn't manage to get off the ground, but it did create quite a little fire. So I snuffed out the fire and then left. Came back and discovered I had nearly burned down half the neighborhood. So here's a kid trying to learn. And I was dubbed a bad kid in the neighborhood because I almost burned the place down.
The town survived. No one died. Exactly. Exactly.
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Today's guest is James Keyes, a longtime business leader currently serving as the chairman of Key Development LLC. His career has included serving as CEO of two Fortune 500 companies, Blockbuster Incorporated and 7-Eleven, His new book, Education is Freedom, The Future is in Your Hands, highlights his passion for lifelong learning and is out now. James, thanks for joining us. Sure, yeah.
You better call me Jim, though, Adam. I put James on the book because I wanted to be more formal, but nobody will know who it is if they call me James.
Oh no. Okay. It's a nice part about Adam. At least nobody calls you like ad. Yeah. You can't reduce it any further. Yeah. You know, I'm always curious what someone thought was going to be their life path in their early days. And then what some of the twists and turns were that caused it to be quite different than maybe what they expected.
So what path were you thinking you were on and then what changed? Yeah.
That's a really good question. I literally grew up in circumstances where I didn't even know what options were out there. Business to me was the factory my dad worked at, and I didn't want any part of that. So business was kind of dark and dirty and hard. Or the alternative was it was typing class. I remember in high school, we had typing class, no frame of reference whatsoever.
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