Costco Aisles or Life’s Insights?

Watch the episode here:

• Discover the surprising wisdom found in everyday places like Costco.
• Hear how a simple shopping trip turned into an unexpected life lesson.
• Learn about the importance of staying active and engaged, no matter your age.
• Gain insights from the entrepreneurial spirit of a 70-year-old who still thrives.
• Be inspired by stories of resilience and longevity from an older generation.

What’s shakin, hey, I’m Rick Jordan today, we’re going all in. I like Costco. I love shopping there. And it’s just a weird thing that I have to call me a dork. I don’t care. It’s just I love going there. And one big thing that I love going there for is they always have this amazing scotch, that’s typically Glen Ross. And if you know me, if you follow me, you know, I’m a huge, frickin Scotch fan. Right. In addition to that, it’s also humorous to me, because I’m a speaker, and I’m a cyber and AI expert. I’m an entrepreneur and investor, and also the CEO of a public company. And this is hilarious to me because I still go to Costco, right? It’s like the normal everyday stuff I always do. I remember a photo a while back that one of my assistants took because I was, we have a lot of televisions up in the office with reach out. And they show KPIs, they show a bunch of other things like presentations when we need to all of that, and I was picking up new TVs, and here’s me like lifting TVs right onto the Costco flatbed. And he got a photo of that it was pretty cool. You know, just so it’s like, hey, still, I obviously roll up my sleeves. But it doesn’t matter. No joke, it doesn’t matter. If you think like you get to this point in life to where it’s like, you’re successful. You don’t do that stuff anymore. 

Your everyday life goes on. And I talked about this, like when I took the company public, right? It was like still the same thing. I’m still at my desk, I’m still replying to emails, and I’m still doing all the things of everyday life. Because I don’t truly think that there’s this quote-unquote, thing that you’ve made it ever, right? I don’t believe in that. I never believe in that. Though. I do have a propensity to actually spend too much time at Costco when I go there. Just because I like seeing all the new stuff because I bring this one-time buys and everything. But today was different. Today was actually special. So I go in there and I’m just kind of looking around like the electronics area as I typically do. And it’s really like they’re in the alcohol. Those two areas are the places I gravitate towards. And there’s this gentleman there. His name is Wayne. And I just started talking to him a little bit. And he looks at me, he’s like, You look like you you work out. I’m like, Well, yeah, I do. He’s like, you lift iron. And I’m like, Well, sure do. Dumbbells. You know, that’s basically a lot of what I do bodyweight resistance stuff. And dumbbells, you know, that’s, that’s how I stay fit. It gets my heart rate up, everything looks like that’s good. He’s like, I, I tried to stay moving. 

You know. And that’s the key really to a long life as I tried to stay moving. I’m like, I would agree with you, man. And, you know, when I look at him, he’s he’s overweight, he’s probably got about 40 pounds to lose. And at the same time, you look at his face, and his face actually looks really, really young. And he’s like, Guess how old I am. And I’m like, Dude, I would say like 54 or 55 years old, something like that. He goes, I’m 70. And I’m floored. I’m absolutely floored because this guy, I mean, we were we have been talking for a while just about anything, right? Just about anything under the sun. Turns out this dude is 70 years old. He has been retired already, right? If you want to call it retired, this is just what he does. He works full-time at Costco. Yeah, he actually owned a business as well, which was intriguing to me. He had a fire restoration service that he owned for many, many years. And he was even talking through this and talking about Yeah, you know what I actually did. I mean, just listening to this guy was incredible to me, I stood there, it was well over an hour that I talked to Wayne, at Costco. And I’m gonna give you some of the tidbits of the stories that he was telling. And I love doing this. And I need to I need to emphasize this today. Because if there’s no other point you get from this because it was a lot of good things that Wayne said, a lot of amazing things that Wayne said. 

The point of why I do this is I love love, love talking to people that are like generations, like one or two plural generations ahead of me in life, because the amount of experience that they have, and just the amount of things that they’ve seen, has always blown my mind. I had the honor and the privilege to actually officiate my grandmother’s funeral. A while back. I mean, I think this was 2009 If I remember right, I can’t remember the exact year right now. She lived till 93. And, you know, part of the message that I get part of my talk, when I was there was just mind-blowing to me because as I thought back about what to say about my grandmother, I could say a lot of things about her her name was Maxine, right? And I could say a lot of cool things about her because she and I have a lot of the same sarcastic senses of humor. You know, and it was funny because a lot of times she and I this was my mom’s mom by the way, this grandmother and even some of my mom’s brothers would sometimes share that sarcastic sense of humor and and poke fun at my mom a little bit all in good fun, of course, you know, but to the point where all of us just it just clicked in our brains a click It was a lot of coolness. And we would joke back and forth and just get each other. She was a really cool woman. And she lived all the way to 93 years old. And when I was giving the talk at the funeral, I really liked reflecting the day before and two days before about, like, what do I say? I mean, I love my grandmother, I used to tell her, it’s like, Hey, you have to stay alive long enough to see my kids. 

That is my requirement of you you have to stay alive long enough to see my kids. And I remember when my twins were born, Richard and Ariel. She walked up to me and I probably hadn’t said in like five years, for real, you know, and she walks up to you and goes, well, I did it. I did it wreck and I’m like, What? What do you mean? He did? She goes, what you told me I needed to do. He’s like, I did it. I just want you to know that I did it. Like, okay, what is that? She goes, I stayed alive to see your kids, you know, and she was saying this funny snarky way. And I smile. Now she says, she said in this funny snarky way, but like deep inside, and he was, as I think of it right now. It was something that she really treasured and something that I really treasure because I always wanted that I always wanted her, specifically her. Like kind of all my grandparents. It was interesting. I want to specifically her to meet my kids. And she passed away just a couple years after that when my kids were like two or three years old when Richard scenario my twins were two and three years old. It was such a cool moment for me when she said that. So as I’m reflecting on my talk, for her funeral for her memorial service. I’m thinking back I’m like, What do I say about this amazing woman? I mean, I can get my perspective. 

You know, and that’s what I should do. By the way, whenever you’re giving a talk on something like this, if you have the honor, the privilege to ever officiate something like this, you know, always do it from your perspective. You know, because that doesn’t feel like you have to put on this show and say all these cliche things. You know, whenever you’re asked to speak at something like this, it’s not the purpose of it, because the people there for real, the people there will gain so much more out of it, when they actually hear the realness of whatever it is rather than, like, Oh, she had 35 great-grandchildren. And so actually, it was way more than I can’t remember how many it was, it was a lot, right? You know, however many, you know, like Dunces have grandkids because she had seven kids. And it’s, that’s not the stuff that people want to hear. People want to hear the stories, they want to hear how you felt, and how that person made you feel. And she always made me smile and laugh. And she would poke fun at me. She really likes sharpening my wit. She really, really did. So when I start to reflect about what I was going to talk about, and this is why we’re correlating it to Wayne, and why I love speaking to people that are in their 70s, their 80s their 90s, like my grandmother, she lived to 93 Is that they’ve seen so much and I’m thinking back and I said something along the lines of this that are at her funeral was like, can you imagine everything that she witnessed in life? Because she was born in 1918? Mind-blowing, right, I guess we could do the simple math and 93 I remember her her birth year. That’s cool. 

Do the math. Right. Maybe that was in 2011? Yeah, I think that’s what it will be. And you think about that. It’s like think about that she knows, right? When she was a kid, she was going through the roaring 20s. You know, and even during like prohibition as a kid, you know, and then as soon as she becomes a teenager is the Great Depression. She’s in this phase now to where she was like, you know, 15 1718 years old, and the stock market crash was 1929. I hope you know your history around this. If not, you’re gonna learn it today. Like she got to see all that just as she was entering her teenage years and forming a lot of who she was going to be for the next 70 years. Almost 80 years of her life.

It’s like she went through the Great Depression and she saw World War Two, the start of it in the middle of her 20s was the end of the war. After that, she went through the Cold War. And she got to see all these amazing things like Elvis, come to play and like the 50s right and, and the start of rock music and all these incredible things. During the 50s and 60s, she was alive when Woodstock happened. I love music. That’s why I related a lot of it to that. Like, think about that. So it was like Elvis, you know, and then and then Woodstock and rock and roll, and then all of a sudden the 70s hits and it’s disco. Like she probably could have done without seeing that. Right, but think about all the other things in the 70s like the invention of the computer and when those got into play because she worked at a hospital. You know, she was an admission agent at the hospital that went for decades and went from admitting people on paper and charts into computers. 

When they first started arriving in the medical system. And I’m just going through these decades of her life and thinking about all of these things that she got to experience and the change in the world that happened around her that she was able to be a part of. So whenever I get to have a conversation like this, with somebody who’s that much older than me, I’m 44, as I’m recording this, right, 44, you know, Wayne was 70. And that’s what blew my mind because he looked frickin good. He looked like he was in his 50s and looked awesome, right? And you could just tell, because this guy smiled so much, too. He smiled so much as he was talking. And you could tell like, he had just like, focused on a lot of happiness in his life. So I listened to people like that, and you need to listen to people like that. Anytime you get a chance to talk to elderly people. There’s some that are very, very disgruntled, of course, you know, because that’s the thing. It’s like, I can only imagine if you like, look back at your life. It’s like, you know, if you’re 7080, which is another point, and think, man, how much time did I waste? You know, I really didn’t start doing stuff that I wanted to until I was in my 60s, you know, I worked in toil for 3040 years. And then I finally quote unquote, retired to even just kind of make ends meet with Social Security, which is going to be gone at some point here in the next 2030 years, I bet you or just made enough for my retirement, you know, or was, I just really just woke up, went to work paid bills. And at some point, I’m gonna die. 

People, it’s crazy, because it’s like, there’s so much more to life, there was he was looking back and telling me these stories with like, smiles on his face, and my grandma about all the things that she was able to see in the conversations that she and I had. And the time that we spent together, that’s what matters. So anytime you get a chance to take the time, invest the time into yourself, by just letting people who are in their 70s 80s, and 90s pour into you about what they’ve seen in their lifetime. It’s incredible, mind-blowing. He starts to tell me about his fire restoration service. He’s like, You know what I did? I’m like, What’s that Wayne, you that I bought into a franchise? He goes, and I did that for five years. And he goes, there’s a reason I did that I bought into a franchise is because I had never done this before. I had to learn the business. It was something that looked like it could be very profitable, and it ended up being very profitable for him to the point where he said that he just had too much business coming in right now he didn’t want to scale. That’s a totally different conversation. But he got to the point where he had to turn people away a lot because there was so much coming in. And I’ll tell you why he did that too. Because he almost did a white glove thing, which was amazing. I had no idea that fire restoration services could provide a white glove experience, which is another part of this episode today. Another point that I learned from Wayne, as he’s talking about the fire restoration in the franchise is like I did the franchise for five years. And then I then I went out on my own. I’m like, That’s interesting, man. 

Why did you go the franchise route versus like, because it was turnkey? They could teach me I had the foundation of corporate to give me the sales structure. Give me everything I had, he goes because Rick, it’s important. It’s important to get good at what you do. When you still have the foundation of other people around you to support you. And like, dude, I’m like, You are like speaking my language right now. You know, because I told them, I’m like, I just took the company, my company public. I’m a speaker and all these other things top 2% of global podcasts. It’s like, that’s awesome. Because what’s the symbol? So I tell him what the symbol is and where it’s trading. And I tell him the same thing. I’m like, Dude, the only reason I got there is because I’ve never done it, which is true of anything. I want you to hear this. You know, you’ve never done it until you’ve done it. That is important. Because if you’re like, Oh, I’ve never done that. So I can’t do that. No, you’ve just never done it because you’ve never done it. Just like Wayne. He had never done fire restoration services before until he did it. And he got the right foundation and backing behind them to jump into that service. I didn’t get a chance to ask him why that interested him so much. You know, I wish I could go back now but you know, and he actually told me he’s like I work here full time. Come back and talk to me anytime I’m like, That’s awesome. Dude, you’re on my Costco right down the street. 

I’m gonna come see you, dude. And we’ll just hang out, you know, and he was just it was cool because he was just wiping down he had like a microfiber cloth while we were talking, just wiping down the displays the, the screens of the laptops, the iPads, you know, all the electronics that were there, just making sure that they look good as he’s telling me these stories. And I’m just sitting there soaking it in. This is such an awesome dude smiling the entire way. He says Rick, it’s important to get that foundation underneath him like Yeah, man. I’m like, I’ve got people that are on my board that have done this before that have taken companies public that had been part of multiple companies that have gone public I wouldn’t know how to do it unless I had somebody to show me the way. He’s like, That’s right, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Do you know how the elderly people sometimes talk? I promised myself one time, by the way, that I would never say that phrase, you know, actually use it myself. I’m just quoting Wayne. So I’m still I’m still good within my promise to myself. And he starts talking about this is like, you know, what, I invested $20,000 into getting that franchise. I’m like, That’s it, man. He’s like, Yeah, that’s what the franchise fee was, like, man. 

Now they’re like, do you sit most front, I mean, you want to start a Domino’s or something that’s like 100 grand, just for the franchise, you know, the franchise fee whatever to get involved and, and get the rights to have a Domino’s or whatever. He’s like, Yeah, he goes, I also save some money, too. He’s like, because I saved up for years to get to this point, you know, to where I went out on my own. And, you know, it was like, $20,000, he goes, most people will finance that. But he’s like, when you have the cash, you should put it down. Now I kind of disagree with him on that a little bit. Because there’s some, there’s some good debt that I believe that you can have, like, even with what I’m doing in business, there’s debt. Yeah. But that is the thing that fuels the growth and the rent drives the revenue and keeps it going. You know, I’m a full believer in using somebody else’s money in order to make money yourself. It’s fantastic, you know, but it’s what he wanted to do. And that’s okay too if that’s what you want to do. That’s awesome, different perspectives. I just think that you can grow greater and faster with the use of money as a tool with that as a tool. So he bought the franchise five years like that I went out on my own, but I learned everything I needed to in those five years. He goes, and then that’s when my business really took off. I started hiring more people. 

He’s like, can I tell you one thing I did? I’m like, dude, absolutely. I’m all ears, man. You know, we’re like, 45 minutes into this right now. And he’s like, what I would do is I got it down so much, is that I would go on of course, these families, right, their house just got destroyed in the fire. You know, they are in essence homeless right now. Of course, they can get a hotel, whatever it is, you know, is, but their their home is destroyed. He’s like, their emotional state is just absolutely incredible. And here, here they are, you know, getting bids from multiple companies and, and all that he goes, you know, what I would do? I would sit down, you know, I’d go out there visit their home, their burnt up home. So you know what, I know this is really tough for you. Because when I just take you out to dinner, when I take your family out to dinner, that way, you guys can breathe a little bit. And we can talk about things that I want to do. Can you imagine that? Have you ever heard of a fire restoration service, doing something like that my mind was blown. Because he’s, at the moment, validating their emotions, showing that he’s going to support them. And of course, there were deals that he wouldn’t lose as well. But this like increases the close ratio, because he provided value upfront. And it was valued for what that family needed in their life. Right now. I’ve had clients ask me, it’s like, Hey, Rick, can you just come over for a second to talk to Mike? Yeah, absolutely. Actually, ironically, this guy’s name was waiting too, like, Absolutely. My man. 

He’s like, you know, I just have to run some things by you. I’m like, okay, so I drive over. I didn’t ask what it was about, you know, a vet. He was a veterinary doctor. I go in, and he’s like, You know what, Rick, my dad passed away about 10 years ago, and he was my sounding board. And here I am right. Now, Wayne was like, 60 at the time, the vet Wayne. I’m like, 35 sitting there, and I’m like, What can I give this guy and it’s like, but that’s the thing is he saw the value that I was able to bring. And I’m like, I just want to help you in any way that I can. He’s like, my dad passed away. And he was really my sounding board. So can I bounce some business ideas off of you? I’m like, dude, absolutely, you know. And when I talked to Wayne at Costco, it was incredible the amount of value that he would provide for people upfront, even if they were never going to choose him to restore their home. Now, of course, he increased his close ratio exponentially because he met them where they’re at, he met well beyond the pain point of their destroyed home, and he met their pain points of having the emotional baggage of having their home destroyed right out of the gate, just to give them value. I mean, you could see this guy just like, if you want to call it the twinkle in his eyes, he was talking about this. He’s like, Rick, I ended up actually getting a couple of homes. Right, fully furnished. 

You know, we would call them really like Airbnb is these days, right? But fully furnished. They had dishes there, you know, it actually had coffee for the coffeemaker and everything. And he’s like, I had it on my phone and I could just, you know, or whatever, he had a tablet or whatever, I could just pull it up and be like, Here you go. I’m gonna set you up in this home. Because most of the Fire Restoration Services as he told me, anyways, would have homes available. months out. Could you imagine that your home was destroyed and you can’t get into a place that feels sort of normal for months? While your home is still sitting there with nothing being done to it. He’s like, That’s the beauty of what I did is I took on less customers. It was a higher price. took on fewer customers at a higher price. But I met them where they were because it actually impacted their lives, not just the transaction of restoring their home from this catastrophic fire. It’s like I’d pulled it up, I have a couple of homes that I’d have there. And I put them up in those homes as part of my service. He’s like, of course, insurance services would pay for it, you know, their policy would pay for and everything. But it was the fact that I was the one that was providing the homes and the temporary housing for those people rather than them having to go out and find something else where it would be like an Airbnb today. But he reserved it only for his customers. Pretty friggin awesome, isn’t it? So as I’m talking to him, and just kind of like winding down and everything, it’s like, I’m picking up all these little tidbits, some, some of it’s validating what I’m already doing. 

Other things are just yet reminding me of the human connection, which is so important in any kind of business. You know, there’s always a human element. I mean, sales is a very emotional thing. You know, people, people, typically when you try to sell to them, they will, they will buy on emotion, and justify it later with logic. That’s how sales go, though you’re meeting that human connection point every single time you sell every single time you close a deal. And Wayne understood that he could provide value well beyond the actual service that he was providing. That tells you what it’s like, I want to I want to figure out something else I need to go buy from Costco now because I want to go back and talk to the guy. Good thing. I like it, right? I always I always check the scotch. I’ll see if they have a different MacAllan in or, you know, the Kirkland. Speyside, which is using Glen Ross a good one, right? And it’s like, like a 17-year pick up five bottles of a 17-year 17 17-year Glen Ross would usually cost like 150 bucks when Kirkland gets a hold of it and ends up being like $56. It’s a really good deal. You can you can thank me later for the tip. But I’m excited because every time I go back there now I’m going to look for Wayne. 

I’m going to say hey, what’s shakin, Wayne? What do you get for me today? And just absolutely allow him to be able to continue to pour into my life because this dude has seen seen seen so much felt felt felt so much throughout the seven years that he’s been on this earth. And I appreciate him for even taking the time today to just converse with me for well over an hour. He’s an awesome guy. And I hope you pick up today that this is something that you need to have absolutely needs to have in your life is almost like storytime, just like when you were a little kid right with your parents just go sit at the feet of somebody. Somebody who has been there and done it before has their own take on life and has had so many experiences that you can just sit there in awe and learn from I pulled like 18 things out today. I know you can pull at least one out do this in your life will absolutely transform. Thanks for Thanks for this today. I mean, I appreciate you sticking with me the whole episode. I appreciate you listening all the time. But this was something that really just warmed my spirit today that I had to share with you. All right now go out there. Find somebody to listen to.