[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to from caving in to crushing it, the podcast for those who find themselves immersed in adversity and choose to write their story instead of having others write it for them. I'm Drew Duraney, and I'm your host. Today's guest is Kent Jones.
Kent Jones is a son, husband, father, entrepreneur, and coach. Enjoy the show. Kent Jones, it's a pleasure to see you, my friend. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Good morning, Drew. How are you?
[00:00:37] Speaker A: I'm doing well, my friend. You know, it's interesting. I always like talking to my guests before we hit the record button, and I always like to thank the individual who introduce us. And I want to thank, it starts with Steve Ramona, who introduced me to Bill Hasse, and Bill Hasse who introduced me to you because I was on Bill's show, and I got to got to meet you. And for me, and I don't know if you've ever felt this, but there are times where there's that phrase that people come into your life either for a reason, a season or a lifetime. And I've had people in my life for a lifetime who I know. And then there's some people I've met just a couple times, and I feel closer and connected to them than I do the people I've known for years. And you're one of those people.
And so that's one of the reasons why I wanted you on. Other reason I wanted you on is because you are man number three of the men out there. There's three types of men. There are these men who go through life, and they defining moments come in front of them to give them an opportunity to make a better life for themselves, and they don't see it. That's man number one. I don't interview man number one here. There's man number two, who sees the defining moment, looks at it, and he's either not willing or able to face it, so he runs away and hides. And I don't have man number two on the show, either. The man I have is man number three. Somebody like you, Kent, who sees that defining moment at a point in his life where he is now ready, willing, and able to take it on and see it as an opportunity to strengthen him as a man and move forward and be the better version of himself. And that's man number three. And that's why you're on this show. Kent. In life, we're taught that life is linear, right? We're told by our family and people around us, and it's not malicious that if you do a plus, b plus, C plus, d, e is going to happen. So if you do the right things, Kent, all this is going to line up. And inevitably, something in the external, an external circumstance gets in the way of those letters and derails you, and you have to make a decision.
So I'd like for you, for the audience and for myself to share that defining moment or if there's multiple ones that tie together, that gave you the opportunity to say, hey, Kent, there's a better way to live. When you embraced it, you took it on, and now you are the Kent Jones you are because of that adversity. And life did something for you as opposed to. To you.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Well, thanks for having me, and thanks for a heavy question.
I have probably been all three of those men that you just described, but the defining moments really came when, you know, I like to say that I grew up in the mid to late 19 hundreds.
And the story that was told and that linear is go to school, get a degree, work 30 years, retirement, have a good life.
And I don't know if I ever bought into that 100% because I started as an entrepreneur early, building houses, things like that, but then got married and said, oh, I need something with insurance. So got into the corporate world, and shortly after being in the corporate world and having good success as a young guy in his twenties, you know, my mentor, the people who loved the job that I was doing for this corporate company, started calling me everything except an honest person.
I said that I had stole some money, which wasn't true, and I ended up proving that. But I learned a very good lesson about that timeline is that you're just, you're a piece on the monopoly board and you can get brushed off really quick.
And that opened my eyes. To pack up, my wife, my four year old and my two year old sold our house in Iowa, put everything in a u Haul, and came out to Illinois to open up a coffee shop. We didn't have a place to live. We didn't even have a spot for the coffee shop.
So that was a pretty good defining moment as a young 2020 something year old, 28 year old. And the fact is that it was scary, but we took that leap of faith.
We opened up a coffee shop called Planet Coffee in an outlet mall, late nineties. It was beautiful. It was exactly the hip thing. If you remember outlet malls for those younger people were Amazon in a building.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Absolutely everything was there and it was.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: A really cool thing and people loved it. So we put a coffee shop there, late nineties coffee's just becoming popular.
I made some bad business decisions with my business partner and ended up getting taken. Money was stolen and had to shut down the business.
And that rocked me on my heels a bit. Drew, to be honest with you, we gave everything. Two years later, we have to file bankruptcy because of the bad choices that we made and the bad guidance that we got.
And we had to start over. So now I've got my son's in, starting elementary school. We're out here and don't even have two pennies drubbed together. So I had to hustle.
Ended up believing again in the corporate world and said, well, maybe there's something to that life. And so I went into banking and had quick success in the banking industry for a local bank. That one morning I walk in and I pull up my emails. I was a branch as a district manager for this bank. And the email read, this is a tough day for us. We're letting 1100 people go.
And I called my boss, and my boss was, I said, hey, did you read this email? And then she just had dead silence.
And I'm like, oh, crap. Now at this point in the game, I've got three kids and my fourth, this is in April of 2009, and my fourth is on the way in July. Wow.
And so there was another defining moment right there. So I said, there has to be something better.
We maneuvered, hustled, stayed in the banking world for a little bit, but decided to network myself and build a reputation of who I am and how I could help the community.
And that was a big defining moment because now in northern Illinois, the joke is, if you don't know, ask can't. He probably knows them, right?
And so that worked well, but it gave me the opportunity to be flexible with my time, learning how to be a remote worker without before the pandemic.
And in 2016, then Tim Stewart and I and Ron hostery formed, two bald guys and a microphone.
It was a radio show on the local 101.3 FM, just a local country FM station. And we went in and did Monday mornings. And our whole intent, Drew, was to bring the world a change, because in 2016, there's nothing but hot garbage out there. People hate people, politics, all this. And we just wanted to bring good content. So we created a company called DDOE Enterprises, daily dose of encouragement enterprises, because we wanted somebody to be able to tune in and listen and go, man, that's uplifting. That's great. Much like the Mindful man movement, much like this podcast. And it blew up. It went viral in 2016 right as Facebook Live was coming. And then we. We opened our own Internet radio station, 216 the Net.
And now it's grown to where there's over 22 podcast talk shows.
We play non genre music with a reach of 35 million. So unbelievable.
It's done wonders. But through that adventure was not buying into the corporate, I guess, that narrative or that story. I don't like saying narrative, but that story we were told as kids.
And my wife and I just decided, and she is a blessing. And I love her to death because she supports all my crazy dreams and energy.
But we've created a life now I don't have to retire from. I don't have to get away from great, wonderful. And that's. There was a moment, probably around 2020, when my mentor passed away, that I realized that Ron hostry was a partner of mine.
He wrote the book. I don't know. You can see. It appears I did not plan that.
And his quote was always, life is not a problem to be solved. It's an adventure to be lived. I love that.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Not many people think like that, Ken.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And when he passed away, I realized it. And that's when. That's when God just started pouring his blessings out on us. And now I've got two great partners, we've got two studios in two different cities, and we just.
Our whole intent is to change the world one listener at a time.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. And don't say it's corny, because it's not, folks.
I often say that I want to change the world one man at a time.
There's a lot here, Kent, and I want to reach back to what I see as irony. When you were accused of being everything but honest about stealing and you didn't do it. And then you have a partner who you're working with, and in turn, he did to you what you were accused of, that you didn't do. He stole from you. And for you to keep your faith in humanity after that is a testament to you and your upbringing and the resiliency to move forward, even if you decided at one point to go back to, you know, to corporate, the coffee shop endeavor. And I do want to give credit to your wife for sticking with you.
Only we know. Well, yeah, only we know our dreams.
And so if we have a dream and we mention our dream to the wrong people, they don't understand our dream. And when I say wrong people, they could be people who just want to protect us because they don't. Right?
But to be an individual like your wife, or Anne, to be an individual like your wife, who. Who understood your dream because she understood and loved you and stuck with you through all of this, has to just pour out gratitude for you.
And I'm grateful that she did stick with you, because many times you hear men will not follow their dream because of dot, dot, dot, whether it's your initial perception that, oh, my gosh, I got to get health insurance, I'm not going to do my dream.
Whereas there is a way to find the health insurance some way, shape or form if you still follow your dream. Right. So, anyway, I just want to give credit to your wife because I think we all need. We all need that one person who is there for us because we can't do it alone.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Right. And so I just wanted to mention that. So bring me. Bring me ahead now. How you were able to become who you are because of that adversity, I know it gave you, really, your world. You're telling me I'm going to fail. No, I'm not.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: So I tell my kids and athletes this all the time as I coach college basketball as well. Another dream of mine to practice. Mindfulness. Right.
And depression, you know, and I was very depressed. Right. I didn't see it at the time, but I was very depressed when the coffee shop went under.
And it rocked me for a while, sure.
But depression, I think, is I wasn't mindful. I wasn't in the moment.
I was living in the past going, oh, if I would have made this decision, oh, I should have made this decision. I did this wrong. Why did I do this?
And the past is really that. It's behind you. Right?
The present is the gift. Right? That's why we give them at birthdays and Christmas Hanukkah. That's a present right here, right now. And the future is anxiety to me. Right. I don't know what it is.
So the ability to understand Zen, understand good Christianity, and being present in the moment has allowed me to go, I'm a better man than what I was ten minutes ago before we started this, and I'm not as good of a man as I'm probably going to be. But if I can be the best man that I can be in this moment right now and stand on my morals and ethics that I believe in and the love that I believe in and understand that God always delivers, right. Never is not provided.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Then I'm good.
And that is how it's helped me become a better business person, a better father, a better husband, better brother, and allowed me to strengthen my journey is just really focusing on that mindfulness.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Powerful, Kent. And you know what? There's a lot of lessons here, folks. And if I may summarize and paraphrase what Kent said, using some words that you didn't say. Kent, that I. That I believe you meant when you looked at the past in a way, you forgave yourself for not having the tools or the decision making capabilities at the time you made those decisions. So stop beating yourself up, right?
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Yep. Correct.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: You didn't allow yourself to be defined by the past. So, folks, if we could get rid of that, should have, could have, would have in our life and cut ourselves a break and forgive us for not having the tools to make decisions back then. Life starts right now. And that's what Kent's saying. So. So when you, when you stop regretting the past and beating yourself up, you move yourself more towards the present right now, in your present life, Ken, may I make an assumption that you are grateful for a lot of things that God's bestowed on you incredibly.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: And that lands you in the present, right?
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Yep. Absolutely.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: And it also eliminates the victim and blame mindset, doesn't it?
[00:17:01] Speaker B: It does. It does, yeah. Yep.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: And so that resiliency when you're in the present moment and you talked about fear of the future. It's the unknown, and that's scary. Right? You mentioned God, though. You had faith in God and getting to know you, you had a desire for something in the future to help more people and make it a better place. So what Kent has taught you, folks, is if you eliminate regret and replace it with forgiveness, if you eliminate the victim and blame mindset and replace it with gratitude, and if you eliminate the fear of the future with desire and faith, you've got yourself a recipe to be a strong man like Kent Jones. So.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: The interesting thing with the 216 creator studios and 216 the net, you know, John 21 six is where that comes from. That's when the disciples were out doing what they do, doing what they know how to do. And that was fishing. Didn't catch a fish all night. They're rowing back into shore and Christ says, hey, throw it over here. And they go, it doesn't make any sense. The fish aren't there. It's the wrong time of day. It's too shallow. It's never going to work. And he says, just throw the net on the other side of the boat, give it a try. And the about sinks the boat, right as that parable goes. So that's why we call it 21 six. Let's try something different. Don't be afraid to just try something different outside of what your common sense may say. And that's about being mindful and just obeying and saying, okay, let's give it a try.
Absolutely.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: So now, all right, so now you are who you are because of your adversity and where. Tell me more about the two radio studios, what your ultimate mission is with those and anything else you want to share with the audience of what you have under your sleeve.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Yeah. The ultimate mission, I think, is we want to become the world's number one podcast creation platform. We want to have a space where people can come and be creative.
The two things we don't cover are politics and the news.
So we want people to be creative and find their voice, and we want a platform that everybody can just tune into and get that daily dose of encouragement. You know, we've got goofy shows, we've got funny shows, we've got serious shows, we've got business shows, sports shows, you name it, you know, we've got it.
And we just want it to be that, that space where people go, huh, that was interesting.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yep. I love that.
We need more of that. That was interesting. Life is kind of chaotic and noisy, and you're giving the public an opportunity to break away from life right now and kind of give them some deep breath moments. Take that deep breath, relax and enjoy life.
We need to start working a live, not living a work.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: So, Kent, the audience has certainly grasped the essence of Kent Jones. And folks, I know that you're going to want to get a hold of Kent, and he's making it easy for you. Kent can be reached at his email at kent 200 sixteenet.com. And he's being gracious enough to offer this. The first three folks to reach out to Kentucky will have the opportunity to either be on a show or to be able to advertise on 216 creator studios.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Yep. And in the subject line, just, you know, put this podcast in there as a subject so that I know where it's coming from and we'll reach out and get you taken care of.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Wonderful. Well, Kent, before we close, because I could speak to you with forever, I've got two questions for you. I want to give you the opportunity. You're sitting down with young seven to ten year old Kent and you want to give him advice about life. What are you going to tell him?
[00:21:11] Speaker B: I just recently did a show called a Dream Quest, if you remember old Mapquest.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: And had I at seven years old, taking a look at my dream quest, everything that would get me to where I'm at today, I would never have moved forward. I'd have been scared to death. There's a lot of failure in there. There's a lot of oops, there's a lot of good times. But it would have been too big, too big for me to comprehend, and I would have been very, very scared and not move forward.
So to that kid is just keep dreaming and keep struggling and have fun along the way.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: I love that absolutely great message. And now you have the opportunity to give that a different message, or maybe the same one. To young seven. No, young Kent. Joe is the young entrepreneur, young businessman. Give him advice about business. What might you tell him?
[00:22:08] Speaker B: I've got it tattooed on my. I've got it tattooed on my arm. Can't see it.
But a song that means a lot to me and my family is the river by Garth Brooks.
And it simply says, you know, the dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows. And the dreamer is just a vessel that must follow where it goes.
And in business, it's that way. There's ups, there's downs, there's things out of your control. Pandemics, angry customers, great customers, fires, floods, tornadoes.
And if you understand that you're a vessel on that dream and just flow with it and then learn that something good is going to come out of it, but just stick in there. Don't sit upon the shore and say you're satisfied. Right. Keep in that water and keep moving.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: I love it. Well, everybody, you are the vessel and trust the process. Have that desire and faith that Kent has. Hey, Ken, I want to thank you for not just coming on, but coming into my life. There's a reason why we encounter certain people in life, and we need to embrace that. So thank you for being who you are. Please keep doing what you're doing and being who you are, that authentic self, because you are helping so many people and we realize it. All right, we appreciate you.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Thanks. Very blessed to be be on, on this podcast. Thanks for having me. It means a lot.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: You're very welcome, and it's my pleasure. Hey, take care of yourself, everybody. Be well.
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and give us a review to help others find it.
I'd like you to answer this question. Are you living the life you want to live, or are you living the life others want you to live? I'd like you to think about that for a second because I strongly suggest you live the life you want to live. If you want to learn more about what I stand for and my services and how I'm able to help many men get out of their own way, please go to my website at www.prophetcompassion.com.
Feel free to also email
[email protected] dot I'd love to have a conversation with you. Take care of yourself and choose to write your own story instead of letting others write it for.
