Sam speaks with the Co-founder of KAD Consulting and Owner of LaMar Coaching, Keegan LaMar. Sam and Keegan share their thoughts on what makes Colorado a hub for entrepreneurs, discuss the differences in how each generation approaches the intersection of work and life, and go into detail about why an abundance mindset can sometimes be the key to unlocking business growth opportunities and long-term success.
Resources from the episode:
Episode transcript:
[00:00:00] Sam Chlebowski: Happy Thursday, everybody. And welcome back to designing growth. Keegan LaMar, how are you doing this week? What have you been up to?
[00:00:10] Keegan Lamar: Oh man week has been good. It’s the end of summer everything’s starting to change. So this time of year is really interesting for me because I played college football and this time of year is very nostalgic for me because all the football starting up I think the start of fall is when the first episode of hard knocks Hits HBO. And so it’s been fall for me for a few weeks and it’s just been a hot fall for a few days here and there out in here in Colorado But it’s very nostalgic for me.
[00:00:38] Keegan Lamar: And if you’re a CU fan, like I am, like I know you are too. I mean, this is a very exciting time. We’re getting ready to see the buffs back in action with a new, coach at the helm and really see what all the marketing hype has been about.
[00:00:51] Sam Chlebowski: Got to get my mandatory Skoooo buffs!
[00:00:54] Keegan Lamar: Let’s go buffs, baby.
[00:00:57] Sam Chlebowski: That’s awesome. And if you hadn’t figured it out by now, Keegan and I have the same Alma mater. Keegan, you are actually the second CU alumni that I’ve had on this podcast. The first one uh, Jake Hurwitz a couple of weeks ago. We had gone kind of through school. I think he was just a year younger than me.
[00:01:15] Sam Chlebowski: What year did you graduate by the way?
[00:01:17] Keegan Lamar: I graduated in 2015. So now going on what, nine years ago, roughly.
[00:01:23] Sam Chlebowski: So literally the exact same graduating class then, which means that I would have seen you play, because that timeline lines up like perfectly with my graduating year.
[00:01:33] Keegan Lamar: Yeah. I mean, there’s a difference between seeing somebody play and wanting to see somebody play. We weren’t very good, I mean, we didn’t walk away with too many victories back then and it was a bit tough, but someone’s got to pave the road for everybody else to have some fun.
[00:01:48] Keegan Lamar: And hey, I even paid my dues to the dirt to a conference. That’s probably not even going to exist here soon. And it’ll be funny when my kids get older to be able to tell them dad played in the PAC 12 and they’ll be like, what the hell [00:02:00] is that? And I’ll be like, it’s this random thing that happened for roughly 10 to 12 years.
[00:02:06] Keegan Lamar: And uh, and dad was, part of the inaugural football team that got to go get their butts kicked for the first few years in the league.
[00:02:14] Sam Chlebowski: One thing that I think is interesting about the University of Colorado is how many people that I know who…
[00:02:22] Sam Chlebowski: Wound up becoming entrepreneurs within like the last couple of years. Would you say that’s something you’ve seen too? It just seems like there’s such this high concentration. Maybe it was just the people that I knew, but I feel like there’s a ton of people out there that have chosen an entrepreneurial path after their first one, two or three jobs out of college.
[00:02:42] Keegan Lamar: Yeah. So it’s a really interesting concept because I mean, a lot of people could chalk it up to the university of Colorado. Is there something in the water there? I think there’s definitely something in the water here in Colorado in general, because you look at Boulder it’s arguably one of the hottest startup company hubs in the entire world.
[00:03:01] Keegan Lamar: Especially here there’s a ton of technology companies that have moved in. I mean, you have Apple and Google and you had Twitter for a while and you have all these different types of industries that are right in Boulder and in the surrounding areas of Boulder. You have a lot of different businesses out here.
[00:03:18] Keegan Lamar: you’re just more exposed to business and startups and a whole bunch of other things you’re not going to be exposed to it a lot of other places. So, the university of Colorado is positioned in a really interesting geographical location because there’s so many businesses that are just readily accessible and, people are just seeing, and it’s just part of the news of Boulder of, new tech startup.
[00:03:41] Keegan Lamar: It seems like almost every month or, you know, at one point it was, it seemed like once or twice every week. And now it’s slowed down obviously a little bit because not everybody can afford, the average home price of a million dollars and in Boulder, or can afford to lease something in Boulder.
[00:03:56] Keegan Lamar: Cause I’ve grown up in Boulder, I was out here in 1993 [00:04:00] and I was born in 1992. Um, and to see Boulder go from this. Old kind of almost. Old Western feeling town that, really got its roots in just the outdoors. running scene in Colorado, especially in Boulder is massive.
[00:04:16] Keegan Lamar: You’d have Olympic athletes coming in training at my high school when I was growing up and you would see you know, the Kenyon marathon runners would be. Training right outside of my neighborhood. And you’d see them all the time, or you’d see cyclists everywhere and you’d see mountain bikers everywhere.
[00:04:32] Keegan Lamar: So it was a very much an outdoorsy type of place. And to see it go from this outdoorsy, dare I say a little bit granola type of feel to it, to this technology hub it is today It’s light years different than me growing up. And every time I feel like I go back into Boulder it’s almost like a brand new city.
[00:04:51] Keegan Lamar: I think CU is in a really interesting place where I don’t think it has anything to do with the education that you might be getting
[00:04:59] Keegan Lamar: every once in a while you’d have people come in and they would talk and they’d be a part of, startups or entrepreneurial ventures, or they’d even be venture capitalists themselves. So you got exposure to it naturally. But I think it has a lot more to do with the culture here in Colorado, from a business perspective, where the thought process around Colorado really is, you can start a business here and you can bring your ideas here and you’re going to have access to a lot of different types of markets.
[00:05:25] Keegan Lamar: It seems really interesting that the culture of Colorado has really put kids in a position to think more about that naturally because they just see these types of startup businesses.
[00:05:36] Keegan Lamar: Everywhere. And you get, businesses that you’re just not seeing anywhere else in the country
[00:05:41] Sam Chlebowski: Yeah. And I would agree that it, it does extend even past just Boulder and that one sort of microcosm of technology of ingenuity of the sort of startup world where it gets mentioned a lot of times within the same sentence as Silicon Valley. But I think [00:06:00] that it extends past that because I mean, even look at our governor, Jared Polis.
[00:06:04] Sam Chlebowski: I think that’s a really great example of like who the people of Colorado vote for Jared Polis, I don’t know if you know this, but he was the founder of, It was called either Flowers Today, but they were acquired for like 500 million dollars a couple years before he eventually started his political career.
[00:06:21] Keegan Lamar: That speaks to just businesses here in Colorado. You can honestly start what feels like anything. There’s no dumb ideas out here. Even though there are a few dumb ideas here and there. But it really feels like you can bring any idea out here and you can find your footing somewhere.
[00:06:38] Keegan Lamar: There’s a lot of business culture out here and there’s a very strong emphasis when it comes to new businesses, startups, and new ideas to try and bring.
[00:06:47] Keegan Lamar: Just a lot of technology and business money into the state.
[00:06:51] Sam Chlebowski: all of that aside, but Along the same lines of starting businesses and new businesses.
[00:06:57] Sam Chlebowski: Can you tell me a little bit more about your business, what you do now and what led you to start this business?
[00:07:04] Keegan Lamar: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’ll talk about the two businesses one of which that I own, the other one that I co owned. So, and of course we talk about startups and people having that kind of mindset. And obviously here I am with, two businesses under my belt. like I mentioned earlier, I played football at the university of Colorado.
[00:07:19] Keegan Lamar: And while I was there like any college athlete, like any high performer, you reach a point where mentally you start to. Struggle with the fact that every single day requires you to be your absolute best and human beings are not always designed to wake up every single day and be it, their optimum mental state or anything like that.
[00:07:40] Keegan Lamar: There’s too many factors that are going on. And so me, just like probably over 90%, probably even more college athletes when you’re playing in college you struggle mentally because you’re. You know, Spending 40 hours a week playing your sport, You’re obviously a student and you’re trying to keep up on your coursework.[00:08:00]
[00:08:00] Keegan Lamar: You’re trying to do well in school. And then on top of that, obviously everybody has family, everybody has friends, everybody has a social life and everybody also needs to try and earn some kind of living in some way, shape or form. And so There’s this belief that college athletes, you know, they have everything kind of red carpet rolled out for them.
[00:08:17] Keegan Lamar: At the end of the day. College athletes have to put in just as much work as every other student when it comes to their education and their studying.
[00:08:25] Keegan Lamar: And so I was one of those athletes that at some point I, I knew, I wasn’t performing at my best because I just had so much going on and see you at the time did not have the resources to help student athletes understand how they can try and get ahead of some of these challenges. They had resources for, you know, a sports psychologist or a sports therapist, people who could deal with.
[00:08:45] Keegan Lamar: Individuals who really are struggling and have maybe a mental condition that is causing them to not able to be functional on a daily basis. But we didn’t have anybody who really could help student athletes go from a functional, I can go through every day, normal to an optimal. I’m absolutely crushing it in everything I do.
[00:09:05] Keegan Lamar: So, when my playing days were done this, still stuck with me, trying to understand why things were the way they were, why I struggled and how I could have possibly changed the outcome if I could go back and do it again. And so, after a few years in corporate America and I was, still dealing with not feeling really fulfilled with the work that I was doing.
[00:09:24] Keegan Lamar: not being in a position where I felt like I could wake up every day and be super fulfilled by the work that I was doing and really curious to get out there and see what I can learn. I had conversations with people who I thought were doing really well in life. And these were people who were executives in their own right, owning their own businesses.
[00:09:40] Keegan Lamar: And At least to me we’re pretty much crushing it. And what I felt like most. Parts of their life. And after having conversations with them I was recommended by a number of them to actually go and look into life coaching. at this time I assumed life coaching was only something that Tony Robbins did.
[00:09:58] Keegan Lamar: And I was like, I’m [00:10:00] not him. And I don’t know what you’re talking about. And. When I asked why they had recommended that I go and look into it, it’s because they said, what you did for me over this hour and asking me questions about how I operate and who I am and why I do what I do is the stuff that performance mindset coaches and life coaches really excel at.
[00:10:19] Keegan Lamar: So I went and spent a year and got certified and gained a bunch of tools and the first thing I did was try and understand everything in my own world understanding how I operated, what made me tick why I did anything, what I can use to motivate myself, what are the things that make me feel fulfilled, what are the things that make me feel aligned with the work that I’m doing, what makes me happy and what pisses me off.
[00:10:42] Keegan Lamar: And. In finding all that stuff out about myself, I realized there are a lot of people out there who probably deal with some of the same stuff
[00:10:52] Keegan Lamar: you know, my goal has always been since day one that I’m going to find success by helping other people find success. at the time, when I first said that, on my graduation day, because I got the question, everybody asks, what are you going to do with your life now that you’ve graduated?
[00:11:05] Keegan Lamar: that was the answer that I puked out because I was part of the 2% of my graduating class that didn’t have a job coming out of college.
[00:11:14] Keegan Lamar: So I started Lamar coaching and the initial goal was, just reach out to some of my teammates who I played with some people who were in the business world that I knew and really reach into my Rolodex and contacts lists of people who I just wanted to go and learn from and. See if I could use some of these skills to potentially help them.
[00:11:34] Keegan Lamar: And that’s been a fun business and it’s where I find a tremendous amount of joy because there’s something about when you can help somebody overcome. A challenge or accomplish a goal or that feeling of leveling up in just any part of their life.
[00:11:53] Keegan Lamar: And you have the honor of being a part of that journey it just kind of ignites a fire within me that just makes [00:12:00] me super happy.
[00:12:01] Keegan Lamar: And so I’ve been doing that for a long time. And the. Other business that just a couple of years ago, me and a really good friend of mine started is called CAD consulting. And so, me and my business partner, his name is Daniel. we had worked at a company together on a number of different projects, you know, working on million, 2 million software platforms.
[00:12:19] Keegan Lamar: And he and I. became really great friends. And we stayed in touch after he left the company and he’s a young dad. I’m also a dad of two kids and we just stayed in touch and, we had built a lot of trust between each other. And one day we were just having a conversation and we asked each other if we would at all be interested in doing business together and the goal of it was Start thinking about a business that he and I could go into that would allow us to go and spend more time with our family in the longterm
[00:12:51] Keegan Lamar: being a provider for our family, but being able to build something that allows us to go and be with our family more than we’re not. cause I think that’s one of the big things that a lot of people are starting to feel the stress of as in today’s day and age, especially millennials and Gen Z, they think a lot about the work life balance.
[00:13:09] Keegan Lamar: They think a lot about if I’m giving you time, in my life to help this business move forward. I need to feel like I’m getting something out of it. And you have this crazy wave of individuals within the Gen Z realm that will simply not work with a company because they have simple nine to five rules because, for them, it’s too much of a sacrifice to not be able to build a family and not be able to have a social life, There’s plenty of people who think, Oh, these kids are soft or this or that. I think they just care way more about being able to create memories with the people that they love. And obviously I feel the same way and it doesn’t mean you don’t put in a ton of work. It just means you don’t have to put in the work from 9 AM to 5 PM in order to accomplish that.
[00:13:54] Keegan Lamar: I So, we started CAD consulting because. Me and Daniel had, a [00:14:00] knack for understanding how fortune 500 and 100 companies. Build out software platforms.
[00:14:06] Keegan Lamar: what we wanted to do was help growing businesses close the gap from a technology standpoint, between where they are and where their biggest competitors in the market are. The thing that has been really interesting is, rather than honing in on a very, very specific portion of the technology stack or anything like that, we focused in on a certain type of person that we work really well with.
[00:14:26] Keegan Lamar: That has been worth its weight in gold to us. And I think our clients also feel the exact same way when they work with us. They feel like we understand them and we bring them into our family. So it has been an absolute joy so far. And the crazy thing about all of it is I feel like I’m just getting started and which just means there’s a lot more work, but there’s a whole lot more fun that is a part of the road ahead.
[00:14:52] Sam Chlebowski: Amazing stuff. And thank you so much for sharing that story. I have, by the way, a ton of things I want to go into. The first thing that stood out to me when you were talking about sort of the foundations of your coaching business, the phrase that I kept hearing in my head was abundance mentality, a rising tide lifts all ships, and if you are helping the people that you work with you are there supporting your family, your friends, your loved ones, that’s going to be a net positive for you personally.
[00:15:22] Sam Chlebowski: And, obviously there’s value in helping the ones around you and the people that you love just because it’s the right thing to do. But I think that in business, it can be so easy to have that scarcity mindset In my opinion, and from things that I’ve seen, it can be really detrimental to the things that you are building and the companies that you’re growing.
[00:15:42] Sam Chlebowski: So.
[00:15:43] Keegan Lamar: It’s interesting you bring that up because in order to understand scarcity versus abundance or fixed versus growth mindset, however you want to put it we have to understand that. It didn’t come from nowhere. It has been something that has been a part of society for a long time. And you think, back to [00:16:00] when our parents were growing up, if you’re a millennial or Gen Z, your parents are either baby boomers or the generation after that.
[00:16:06] Keegan Lamar: Right. And the opportunities that were available to them is like this, fraction of what we have available to us today. So
[00:16:15] Sam Chlebowski: Way harder to start a business
[00:16:17] Keegan Lamar: way more difficult to start a business. You couldn’t go and get funding from anywhere, right. You had to go and like ask a bank and like do a presentation.
[00:16:25] Keegan Lamar: The bank had to, you know, approve you with like a red stamp. Whereas nowadays you can start a business with like a hundred bucks. And all you have to do is go and get an LLC. And there are people like, I want to be an executive. And I say, well, the cheapest way to be an executive is go anywhere and register a business name and give yourself the title of executive.
[00:16:45] Keegan Lamar: right? So, the previous generations had a very difficult time, being able to one, get a job because you had to dress to the nines, walk into an office building, go and look somebody in the eye, shake their hand and build a really. Great relationship with them in order to even be considered for a job offer.
[00:17:04] Keegan Lamar: And you’d be sitting in a lobby with 10, 20 other people who are possibly going to be getting called in for interviews. Nowadays, you can just go onto LinkedIn and just click apply. You don’t, and then most of the interviews nowadays, for the most part are held like this over a video call. And more often than not, people aren’t going to be asked to go into an office for an interview.
[00:17:25] Keegan Lamar: People are hired without actually ever seeing the person in person. Right. So, the scarcity mindset was just because there actually was scarcity. There were a lot of people in the marketplace. And there were not a ton of jobs. You had to go down pretty traditional paths in order to get employment.
[00:17:45] Keegan Lamar: There were not a ton of free thinkers back then. And the people who were free thinkers had a very tough road. And if they broke through things were amazing for them, but it was one in kind of a million or more chance that your idea was [00:18:00] actually going to take hold in the marketplace. Whereas nowadays the amount of opportunities that people have, you can go and play video games all day long and be paid millions of dollars every single year to do that because people just want to watch you.
[00:18:13] Keegan Lamar: Play video games and, previous generations will be, we’ll say that’s insane. That’s ridiculous. I can’t believe people would pay to watch somebody play a video game. And then that’s the same person who would go and spend 10, 000 on season tickets for their favorite sports teams. And the concept is the same.
[00:18:30] Keegan Lamar: You’re paying money, time, attention, and your resources to go and watch somebody do something better than you. Cause it’s not that you can’t play basketball or that you can’t play football, it’s just that you want to pay to go see the best in the world. Go do it. So when it comes to video games, it’s not like I can’t play video games too, the difference between me and someone who has paid millions of dollars every single year to go and do it.
[00:18:52] Keegan Lamar: Is a pretty big gap. so it’s the same concept. It’s just applied to so many different areas of life and it has exploded the amount of opportunity that people nowadays have. And there’s so many people who run into now the. Do I even go to college question, right? Back then it was such a badge of honor to go to college.
[00:19:11] Keegan Lamar: And now you see every single year, the rate of people who come out of college and never use their degree is going up it because there are too many jobs for a school to teach students exactly what they could know in the marketplace, that’s actually going to serve them. And you don’t have to learn accounting.
[00:19:28] Keegan Lamar: You can either hire somebody to do it or you can automate it. And with new platforms and software and all these other things.
[00:19:35] Keegan Lamar: And so we have to understand that. Today’s society where kids in today’s society have a little bit more of a growth mindset because they think they have a billion options because they do. And in order for them to be respected in thinking that way, we also have to understand and be respectful of the fact that previous generations had scarcity, had real scarcity in the marketplace.
[00:19:59] Keegan Lamar: And obviously there’s a [00:20:00] trade off. They had a scarcity mindset, but houses costed like 12 raspberries back then, and nowadays they’re like, why don’t you have a home? And it’s like, I’m sorry, I don’t have like 5 million to go buy a home in California. It’s just, me and my eight roommates are trying to just make ends meet here.
[00:20:16] Keegan Lamar: So it’s really interesting the evolution of how scarcity versus abundance mindset has really started to make changes. And I mean, I personally feel very lucky that, I almost feel like I hit a little bit of a sweet spot being able to not only create businesses and be able to take ideas and run with them.
[00:20:36] Keegan Lamar: But I also didn’t have to be in a bidding war to have the home that I’m in right now. And so I feel overly blessed with where I’m at
[00:20:44] Sam Chlebowski: I love that analysis and it was really compelling for me to hear you describe the way that mindsets have shifted, our parents generation, yes, had that scarcity mindset that totally existed. And then I can see it even right now with.
[00:21:02] Sam Chlebowski: Millennials, like you, like me, where it was kind of this shifting point, and then the youngest generation, they’ve gone fully into that, abundance mindset. And it’s a factor of so many things that are occurring around them within the period that they are growing up and living and working, starting jobs, starting families, starting businesses.
[00:21:23] Sam Chlebowski: The college point that you called out was really interesting for me to hear too, because I see this in my youngest brother. I’m the oldest of four and he said college. No way. And he is actually doing an internship right now. In aquaculture. So he is working on various farms in Maine. Oyster farms, things like that and is, working on the docks, working on the boats, working with these people to learn how to do those things to be able to, if he doesn’t go right into work at something like, an oyster farm could [00:22:00] go and start his own business and have the tools that he needs to do that.
[00:22:03] Sam Chlebowski: The other thing that came up for me when I was listening to your analysis and this is a little bit more specific to entrepreneurship, but one of my favorite podcast. I listen to it almost every week. Startups for the rest of us. The host of that show, Rob Walling talks a lot about.
[00:22:18] Sam Chlebowski: Freedom, purpose, and relationships as kind of a driving factor of entrepreneurship. When you are looking for all of those things, it often leads you down the path of entrepreneurship. You want the freedom to have a flexible schedule. You want purpose. You want to feel like you are bringing value to others
[00:22:36] Sam Chlebowski: and then the last part is relationships if you don’t have freedom, it’s really hard to have relationships and sometimes you have to choose two of those, there are points in your life and your career that you can make conscious decisions that put you in a place to have all three of those things at one time.
[00:22:56] Sam Chlebowski: And I remember growing up. And hearing people talk about us, millennials, at one point we were called the me generation, I remember, which it was just like, come on. But I remember hearing that and being like, I promise when I grow up, I’m never going to be that person who looks at the generation under them.
[00:23:14] Sam Chlebowski: And just because they’re different, just because they want to do things differently, paint the entire group of people in that generation as. lesser or not capable of the things that I am or don’t want to work as hard. I very consciously never wanted to do that. And I hear even now, it’s so funny. Some of my friends talk about Gen Z, talk about the younger generations, like they don’t want to work and they don’t want to do this.
[00:23:40] Sam Chlebowski: They don’t want to do that. And I loved how you called out that. No, it’s not that. They just value different things because one of the amazing things I’ve seen from the generation right after us is that they are really entrepreneurial. They’ve grown up with YouTube. They’ve seen Streamers go from having [00:24:00] 10 people watch them a night To 100, 000 200, 000 they’ve watched people start businesses out of the brands they built and then get to a point where that person who was the brand can remove themself from that and there’s so many things that they do differently that I think we can learn from if we just pay attention as we can learn from our parents I think that every generation has things to teach you and you I think that that’s really at the heart of why I loved your analysis of that so much.
[00:24:33] Keegan Lamar: And the thing is kids these days do they wake up and they think, am I going to go through today while trying to keep my brand image intact with the person who I want people to perceive me as, because Gen Z and younger are walking around with. Cameras on them all the time. It’s how they communicate with each other is through content.
[00:24:58] Keegan Lamar: Number one, that’s one thing everybody can learn from Gen Z and younger is, content just has to do with pick up the phone and record something and just do anything. It doesn’t really matter. Whereas our group millennials want to do things really professionally. And we want to, dot the I’s and cross the T’s.
[00:25:15] Sam Chlebowski: Oh my god, I struggle with
[00:25:16] Sam Chlebowski: it all the time.
[00:25:17] Keegan Lamar: Yeah. And while we’re thinking about it,
[00:25:19] Keegan Lamar: Gen Z has already created 10 pieces of content and is, lapping everybody else in the content space. So they do that incredibly well. But they also have to walk around understanding that they are judged.
[00:25:34] Keegan Lamar: So everybody thinks Gen Z has it. So easy. I think a baby boomer, if they grew up with Gen Z kids, they would be crushed by the amount of judgment, that comes into their world because, baby boomers and, millennials and, older generations than Gen Z were able to fly under the radar if they wanted to.
[00:25:55] Keegan Lamar: And could just have these great personal relationships with people. And that’s all [00:26:00] that mattered to them. And they didn’t have to worry about somebody holding up a phone, to them whenever they did anything and worry about their entire image being potentially changed. I mean, I fortunately am in a position where I don’t have to worry too much about people all across the globe seeing something embarrassing of me because I’m a dad.
[00:26:19] Keegan Lamar: I already embarrassed myself enough.
[00:26:20] Keegan Lamar: I do that enough to myself already. So it’s really interesting I think younger generations can learn from older generations, the value of a handshake and the value of a deep conversation. I think older generations can learn from these younger generations about how to get off your butt and actually do something.
[00:26:41] Keegan Lamar: Even if it seems like. It’s not physical, it’s more digital, but that’s the world we live in we’re in a digital age. Everything is digital. The way that we communicate, the way that we brand ourselves, the way that we do almost anything is through a digital medium and these kids are growing up with it and they’re masters at it.
[00:26:58] Keegan Lamar: So we can learn something from each other.
[00:27:00] Sam Chlebowski: It feels like we, in a way, went really deep into these conversations of, history and psychology,
[00:27:09] Keegan Lamar: Yeah. I didn’t expect it to go there.
[00:27:11] Sam Chlebowski: they all circled back around to what we started this conversation with, which is just, general ideas about, entrepreneurship and how you got to where you are. But I think there’s a lot of lessons for anybody listening to this. If they’re like, I think I might want to be an entrepreneur, that they might be able to take away from this.
[00:27:31] Sam Chlebowski: So thank you.
[00:27:32] Keegan Lamar: Of course. Yeah, I didn’t expect it to go down this rabbit hole, but, I love talking about this kind of stuff. And I think having conversations like this, allow me to almost reaffirm myself that these are the things that matter to me. you know, even pulling it further out, these are the things that matter.
[00:27:48] Keegan Lamar: Both of us are dads and we’re husbands and,
[00:27:52] Sam Chlebowski: comment, by the way, about how because you’re a dad, you can’t get embarrassed, I was over here like [00:28:00] cracking up. My son is seven months old, and that’s already happened. It’s
[00:28:04] Sam Chlebowski: like, I don’t know. It literally took like a month and then it was just like, all right, can’t be embarrassed anymore. And I think it’s because maybe you’re so sleep deprived that like there is a time where, you’ll pull it back together eventually, but there is a couple months in there.
[00:28:18] Sam Chlebowski: At least there was for me where it’s like the way that I looked, how I was dressed, all of that stuff, even showering like went out the window because somebody’s needs. Came before mine, and there was somebody that was more important than me who needed my help.
[00:28:32] Keegan Lamar: And it’s amazing. What we can accomplish when something like that happens in our lives. When you become a parent, there’s a necessity push of having somebody else’s needs your own. And when you have somebody else’s needs come before your own, It’s interesting to see where you go as a human being.
[00:28:49] Keegan Lamar: And obviously when it’s your own kid it’s, it’s a natural, like, yeah, I wouldn’t think twice about it. Everybody’s like, Oh, put your own, even little things such as if you’re on a plane with your kid and they’re like, when the mass fall, put your own mask on before assisting other people.
[00:29:04] Keegan Lamar: And you’re just like, I know my child. And if those masks come down, I’m putting theirs on first and I’ll deal with wherever I’m at after I put their mask on.
[00:29:14] Sam Chlebowski: Oh my god, It’s so funny. I like heard that I was on a flight a month ago,
[00:29:18] Sam Chlebowski: and I heard that I’m like, I’m like, no way!
[00:29:20] Keegan Lamar: I’ve ever heard.
[00:29:21] Sam Chlebowski: Not a chance in the world am I putting my mask on first. And I know that there’s a reason for that, so I don’t lose oxygen, pass out before I’m able to put it on my kid, but like, I don’t think it would be possible for
[00:29:34] Sam Chlebowski: me to do that first.
[00:29:36] Keegan Lamar: And it’s amazing what happens to us when in general, we think about how can I do something for somebody else? And that becomes your initial thought, whether you’re an entrepreneur, whether you’re, working corporate America, when you think, how can I bring value to somebody else? And it doesn’t have to be as extreme as, I’m going to get on this plane.
[00:29:54] Keegan Lamar: And, you know, if we lose cabin pressure, Oh, I’m going to do something good for somebody else. It doesn’t have to be that [00:30:00] extreme, but it can be in the little things doing something for somebody else. I and I have a lot of different ways in which I think about it, you know, I think about it as, can I make three people smile today?
[00:30:11] Keegan Lamar: Can I be the reason three people smile today? another one being, how many texts can I send this week that lets somebody know I’m grateful for them, right? These are things that when you think about it as how can I do something good for somebody else? You start understanding what you’re actually capable of doing.
[00:30:29] Keegan Lamar: And you start realizing that a lot more opportunities start coming your way because you value doing something for somebody else over doing something for yourself. And that can even come with, creating content or your business or whatever you can be in it to make money.
[00:30:45] Keegan Lamar: But if you’re in it to say, I’m going to provide value first. And if I get paid to do it, then this would be a fair exchange of that value. That’s also fine. A lot of people think, well, if I put everybody before myself, I’m going to be poor. No, if you put other people’s value in terms of what you can give them, that is valuable over what you’re being paid, first and foremost, people will pay you so that you can’t fail.
[00:31:09] Keegan Lamar: They will pay you enough to where you can do that for life because you’re providing value to people. And obviously there’s more money floating around nowadays than there ever has been. And that’s true every single new day that comes around. So there’s plenty of money out there and everybody thinks, well, if somebody else makes money going back to where we first started, right.
[00:31:28] Keegan Lamar: the scarcity and abundance, there’s money for everybody. it’s just, there’s not money for people who only are looking for money. There’s money for those who want to create value for other people. And you can create value in a billion different ways. I promise you that.
[00:31:39] Sam Chlebowski: man, thank you so much for this absolutely amazing chat. I would love to have you back on in the future because I think that there are other topics, maybe not Even tangentially related to what we talked about today that we could go even deeper into. So I’d love to have another conversation in the future. With that, we are just about out of time here, but I do want to ask you two quick [00:32:00] questions before we go.
[00:32:01] Sam Chlebowski: First one, first one’s a business one. Second one is kind of a fun one for the business.
[00:32:06] Sam Chlebowski: One. If people want to learn more about you, your businesses, what you’re up to, where should they go?
[00:32:11] Keegan Lamar: Yeah. A few different places. Number one, you can go to my coaching website, which is called Lamar coaching. com. It’s just my last name. L a M a R coaching. com. I have on there a couple of testimonials from my first ever client, my first ever professional athlete, client amazing stories and even more amazing individuals.
[00:32:32] Keegan Lamar: And those are people who I was absolutely blessed to be able to work with. And I wanted to highlight them while I was just getting started part of my journey. These are the people that I was lucky enough to be able to be a part of their journey with. And, the second place where people can go and learn a little bit more about what I do is with KAD consulting, which that website is called. KAD stands for Keegan and Daniel.
[00:32:55] Keegan Lamar: I know it’s not very, it is what it is. At some point we’ll probably rebrand as we keep growing.
[00:33:01] Sam Chlebowski: Get it started. Don’t get hung up on the name like you said earlier.
[00:33:04] Keegan Lamar: I will say this the process of coming up with that name took about three hours and me and Dan and I keep saying me and Daniel and I the literary people of the world are going to have my head.
[00:33:15] Keegan Lamar: We spent about three hours and I have it recorded. Someday I’ll release it where we were coming up with our business name and we were coming up with. Every name potentially in the book. We were frustrated, we were laughing at names. And then the very last one that we came up with we’re like, what if we just did like Keegan and Daniel, it as just KAD consulting?
[00:33:36] Keegan Lamar: So it’s kadconsulting it. And so that’s the important part, the ‘.it’ So if you’re looking it up – kadconsulting.it – it tells you a little bit more about what we do, how we do it. And people can always find me on LinkedIn. Just look for me on LinkedIn. I’m an open book. I love having conversations with people.
[00:33:54] Keegan Lamar: I love helping people. I love being there for people. And so please feel free to connect with me. Ask any [00:34:00] questions that you have in. You’re absolutely right. We didn’t even dive into anything coaching related. We didn’t dive into almost anything business related. we have lots of stuff on the table that we can still chat about in the future.
[00:34:10] Sam Chlebowski: I love it. Yeah, I’m excited. We’ll have to get that on the books sometime here soon. And additionally, we will put all of the links that Keegan mentioned to his website, kadconsulting.it as well as his coaching website, Lamar Coaching, along with a link to his LinkedIn profile. Those will all be included in the show notes of this episode, so go ahead and check those out.
[00:34:31] Sam Chlebowski: Now, Keegan, for my last question, the grand finale for now, before we sign off. One for each of these categories, best thing you watched, read, and listened to. In the last year.
[00:34:42] Keegan Lamar: Watched, read and listen to,
[00:34:46] Sam Chlebowski: And you interpret that any way you want. It could be YouTube videos. It could be podcasts. It could be an article instead of a book.
[00:34:54] Keegan Lamar: yep. Yep. So, listen to, I’m a big audio book person. And so, one of the best things that I listen to I’m currently going through the Wim Hof method, which I love.
[00:35:07] Keegan Lamar: over this past year, one that really hit me hard was coaching for performance by sir, John Whitmore. And John McFarland. So it’s a book about how really amazing coaches approach coaching. And it’s really just about self improvement and self growth and how you can take really simple concepts and apply them to your life.
[00:35:28] Keegan Lamar: I will say one of my favorites to listen to is a book called it takes what it takes, which is by Trevor Moad, who passed away. just about two years ago from cancer. And it’s a super quick story.
[00:35:41] Keegan Lamar: And I actually did a couple of podcast episodes. Dissecting his book and how people can apply it to their life. And I actually asked him for his permission to do that. Which he said, let it rip, man. I love the way that you’re going to approach this. I think it’s going to be fun. Little did I know he took time out of his day to respond to me two months [00:36:00] before he passed away from cancer.
[00:36:01] Keegan Lamar: And then from a reading perspective there’s a few books that I actually got and I think I have one of them right here. I’ve got a few. And if you notice in the background
[00:36:13] Sam Chlebowski: Pokemon cards.
[00:36:14] Keegan Lamar: has a Pokemon collection.
[00:36:16] Keegan Lamar: All of those are things I’m saving for my son someday, because he’s getting into it. I’m just keeping them safe. I mean, not to flex too hard, but your boy’s got a few of these bad boys in
[00:36:27] Sam Chlebowski: ho ho. The Charizard.
[00:36:30] Sam Chlebowski: So, yeah, I can’t be embarrassed because I already embarrassed myself enough.
[00:36:35] Keegan Lamar: I a few things
[00:36:36] Keegan Lamar: that really stand out to me. Number one, the champion teammates, which this is by Jerry Lynch and John O’Sullivan, amazing book Another one, which is kind of a mastery book about yourself, which is called the mindful coach.
[00:36:49] Keegan Lamar: And then one of the best things that I watched was, a documentary on HBO about the challenges that Olympic athletes go through year after year.
[00:37:01] Keegan Lamar: I think it’s an amazing documentary about just Olympics in general. Another one is in search of greatness, which is on Amazon prime. And it’s a documentary with Jerry Reich, Jerry Rice, Wayne Gretzky, and a whole bunch of other legends of sports where they talk about what makes them great and kind of what their journey was.
[00:37:23] Keegan Lamar: And it really dissects the fact that if you want to be great, it’s pretty simple.
[00:37:28] Sam Chlebowski: Some amazing recommendations in there for me to check out because I don’t think that I’ve listened to or watch any of the things or read that you’ve mentioned. So, I’ll have to dig for the links to all of those things anyway. So it’s a good opportunity for me to circle back.
[00:37:43] Sam Chlebowski: Well, amazing stuff. Keegan, thank you so much for your time coming on chatting with me. This has been so fun.
[00:37:49] Keegan Lamar: Absolutely. I appreciate you, man.
[00:37:51] Sam Chlebowski: Take care, everybody. Until next time, my name is Sam Chlebowski, host of the Designing Growth Podcast. Have fun, good luck, and go crush it. See you [00:38:00] next Thursday, everybody.
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