Unleashing Your Super Powers – Interview With Daniel Ruke

 

 

Daniel Ruke, everybody just calls him Ruke, is the founder CEO of blinkStyle.com, a very cool media company. He talks about unleashing your super powers and intentionally designing your own unshackled life. Ruke discusses purposefully figuring out how to make money from what you love doing and what you’re good at, because those are your super powers.

Ruke is an Artist, Author & Inventor. He’s Described as a Creative Entrepreneur and Artist who Transforms Visions into Reality. Ruke has worked with Intellectual Properties of Disney, Marvel and Chico’s He started his first company, Ruke Illustrations, 2 Decades ago and grew it into Blink, a full-service Creative Marketing Studio. After great success, he upped the fun by jumping into the Video Game Industry, first representing them and then creating them. In 2010, all the experience and talents were combined to create Game Nation, an Experiential Video Game Theme Park and Resort concept. RUKE became an Inventor, in 2016. He received a Patent for “A System and Method for Providing a Multi-Players game Experience” in a physical space, bringing video games to life. He enjoys spending quality time with his family playing Video Games, Legos or working on miniature sets and worlds inspired by Star Wars.

 

 

Listen To The Episode Here

 

Unleashing Your Super Powers – Interview With Daniel Ruke

 

Today, I’m really excited to have here on the program a good friend of mine and a guy that I’ve learned a lot from over the years. His name is Daniel Ruke, everybody just calls him Ruke. He’s the founder CEO of BlinkStyle.com, a very cool media company. Ruke, thanks so much for being here, thanks for the taking time. I know you got a busy schedule.

Thank you, my pleasure. Happy to be here.

Good. Let’s talk a little bit. First off, tell me how did you get going, how did you get started in marketing? You’re self trained, aren’t you? Didn’t you learn this on your own?

Marketing, yes.

Tell us about that.

I loved drawing as a kid, drawing little pictures. In kindergarten, I drew my first picture I call it, because the teacher said, “Hey, draw this picture of George Washington,” while she had to do some other things. When I did that, I realized I got lost because I’m an extreme introvert. I know you know me otherwise, but I really, really am. I got lost. The whole class was hovering over me and it freaked me out but I noticed I did something they didn’t do and I also noticed the attention that I was receiving was positive. At that moment in time, I actually found my place in the world and that was an artist. My parents were cool enough to put me in private art lessons starting from the third grade until I graduated to as an illustrator.

Starting my own company right out of college, I was doing a lot of illustration designing, branding spaces and all that great stuff. But I realized I was the only one that could do that. In the spirit of unshackled I said, “What in the world else can I do so it’s not all about me?” All reliant upon me because I was 100% shackled at that point. I also wanted to grow in revenue. I’m painting on walls and designing spaces was very limiting. Those clients had a bunch of other things that they needed done for them as services. That led me on the pursuit of marketing. That’s why I shipped my illustration company to a full service creative agency.

Because as an artist, you can only do as much as you have time to do yourself.

Exactly.

Forget about even going out and trying to find new business. Even if you have a line of people at the door, you can only earn as much revenue as you’re … Or either you’re going to get paid a whole bunch of money for an occasional piece of art or you’re going to be painting all the time. Your stuff is so cool and so stylistic and so futuristic. It’s really fun. I remember the first time I saw your stuff, I thought, “I didn’t know I had any friends that were this talented really.” You got started right of college, you realized pretty soon that you needed to be able to scale. Once you decided to be a business owner and you want to start building your marketing company, how did that go? Did you hit a speed bump? Did you start to move along and all of a sudden, did you ever hit a wall? Do you ever have that moment where you thought things were going fast and then boom, you hit a wall?

First of all, when I started doing the media company, there was so much to get my hands into. It kept me very, very interested and focused because there was so many things that I can play with and actually allow me to be more focused. It kept my interest. The first speed bump was just getting started. I actually said goodbye to my family, believe or not.

What do you mean? Your folks? Were you married at this time?

Side note, I went on the first date with my wife while I was doing that illustration company in transition. I said, “Look, I don’t want to date anybody, I’m going to transition. I’m trying to figure out my real career here to get serious,” because I knew I would be something. I never left her and I married her, literally walked down the aisle three months later after our first date.

You’re really, really good at putting people on hold it sounds like.

You got me.

“I’m sorry, I can’t really ditch you now, let’s get married in three months.” That’s perfect stuff. Keep going. I’ve met your wife and you made the very wise choice. Good for you. You started going, but you say you left your family. Tell us about that.

I borrowed $100,000 from the bank, we had our first house as well. Victoria was just born, my first daughter. This all happened within a three year period of time by the way. I said, “Look, this is what I want to do. If I’m going to make this successful, I got to do this now.” Otherwise, when they’re older, I won’t be able to so I have to commit to the family more. I worked seven days a week from five, six o’clock in the morning until midnight every day.

You’re gone working and doing the business.

Yeah. I came home every night but I just said, “If this is what we want and those are your goals and these are my goals, this is what’s going to take to do it.” I shackled myself really, really hard. I got my first employee, which helped with that but I did that really for about three years. By the third year, my company was finally profitable. That 100 grand last me a while clearly. I was finally profitable and then I immediately started taking Fridays off. I only work four days a week. How’s that for a reward?

That’s great. You’re working four day weeks, which put you in that elite class. You went and got an employee and over that three years, did you bring on more people? In other words, you and a key person or contractors. How did you do it?

I didn’t really have a plan. I’ve sat down with my bookkeeper and my business advisor every week and they said, “This is how much you spent, this is how much sales you have. What’s your plan?” I said, “I’m going to overdeliver, do more than I promise and go make more sales.” They said, “Great. Go keep doing it.” My trajectory was going up. First of all, I started with nothing so of course it was going up. I hired my first employee that hopefully that could do sales for me to be the artist because I’m still that artist mode, I really wanted to grow but then I also had to do sales. I had to shift, I had to be very flexible and I used the resources around me. It was just instinctual at first.

Great. You did that, you started finding people, you started growing. What was that moment? What happened when all of a sudden, you go, “It’s starting to work.” What was it when all of a sudden the lights came on and you’re like, “You know what, this business is going to do well.” Because you’ve been doing this for a while now. Did you ever hit that moment? Are you still in that space where you have to go, “I have to keep reinventing myself?”

First, that was a very hard period of time. I remember sitting down in another agency in my town. Just to give them an attitude, this is how I roll. I would always do great promotional stuff for my company, always had great stuff. I would print these expensive, very expensive books, some of the most expensive ones you can do because I also had a printer who loved me. The first thing I’d do is I would take it and I put it on a desk of my competition in that town. I’d walk in, I’d go, “I just want you to have this.” Which set the tone of my attitude. That actually caused that person to write me a letter as an offer to buy my company. I never saw that letter.

I did have lunch with them and they were becoming a client of mine. Several years later, they go, “I love you. I’m glad we’re working together but I just want to ask you this question. You never responded. That actually kind of offended me.” I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about and I probably would’ve sold to you if I saw it.” It was hard, Aaron. It was really, really hard. I’m glad I didn’t see it. But I finally got a bigger tenure client that covered our base amount of money we had to make. You and I have talked about this before, predictable income. That was the first time I had predictable income. That’s when I said, “My gosh, we’ve made it.”

There’s something about once you do know that the bills are going to be paid and you can start forecasting, makes a gigantic difference. Right now, you’re teaching a lot of fast things. We’re going to come back to your personal story here. I want to tell you about some of the things that you’re teaching your clients, and I know you’re teaching around the country. You’re talking about world domination, which just sounds like something you talk about. In particular, there’s something that you’re teaching an interesting perspective on something that I teach in The Unshackled Owner Class. I talk about identifying your superpowers and knowing what you’re great at and what you’re not great at. You teach a whole thing about unleashing those superpowers. Can you just talk about that a little because I think that is such a cool idea of unleashing your superpower?

The World Domination session, by the way, it was something that we perform internally. Everything I teach on stage, I do internally with my clients. I make sure it works, it makes them money and we like it and we enjoy it and then I start letting the public have it. World domination is really about marketing. Before you really start marketing and finding your super niche, you got to know where you sit. I describe my superpowers as creative, empowering and entertaining. Everything we do is creative, that’s obvious. Also we’re empowering because we teach this stuff, that’s one way we do that but we also help our clients and entertain them and make you laugh.

The reason why that’s so important, I think those, the three words, your three brand words, your superpowers replace in a Twitter world vision statements, mission statements and all that, especially when millennials don’t relate to those things. They don’t even care for the most part. I boil it down to three things. What that allows me to do and it really helps me to unleash my superpowers to be unshackled, it tells me what my talents are. Before I hire someone, I look at them, I go, “Are you creative? Are you empowering? Are you entertaining?” Because that’s our brand culture.

That’s your company, that’s not necessarily Daniel.

It is.

When you said it, I thought, “These sound like him,” but you don’t need a bookkeeper like an accounts receivable clerk who’s creative, empowering, entertaining.

First of all, not everybody has a fan in that. But I do need my bookkeeper to be not creative but they have to have a good attitude because books are ugly sometimes. Books are beautiful. They have to empower me because I expect my bookkeeper … This is how I run my company today and this is contrary to artist, every Friday, I receive a report and we look at the numbers of what people owe us, when people pay us, what the cash flow looks like, what QuickBooks looks like. This is empowering, they give me recommendation on what to do with the money. “Let’s pay this. This is going to be next week. Let’s go ahead and pay this person. This person’s awesome, pay them early.” That kind of stuff. That empowerment from my bookkeeper is very, very important. We do joke every once in a while, but we’re not creative.

You don’t need that. You don’t ever want the books to be creative, you always want them to be very specific and factual. That’s great. Go deeper on this. How does somebody, from your perspective, I love what you just said about in a Twitter world, in other words, when people want things fast, our attention spans short. As a matter of fact, I’m sure millennials, we’re twelve minutes into this interview, I’m sure millennials have already checked out. When you’re talking about identifying and unleashing superpowers, go a little deeper into how do you like somebody to find that? What’s your advice for them? How do they know how to unleash it? Just go a little deeper on that topic.

To touch on it, just like you said, here’s the deal, when you’re the visionary, if you’re a solopreneur or let’s say that you’re more than a solopreneur. You really are in the leadership visionary role at your company, you need to know where you fit. It’s absolutely okay for those to be a lot of your desires. The reason for that is the company relies upon you. It relies upon on your energy. I say creative, empowering, entertaining, if a product doesn’t fit that, I don’t do it. If one of my main employees don’t fit all three, I don’t do it. Some can fit two. But they only fit one, they can’t do it and we won’t do it because it’s a distraction to our brand, to our energy, our physique, our culture, the whole nine yards. As the leader and visionary of my company still, it’s very important that those focuses are there. Now, when I know I’m that, I do hire people who support that and roles that aren’t my genius. Now, I know where I am and I also know who else to get.

That make sense. The first thing I do when I go into work with somebody face to face is, and I hope this isn’t offending, but I say, “What are you great at and what do you suck at?” People have got to get super clear on what they’re good at and what their superpower is and then they need to delegate out the stuff that they’re not good at. You’re right, if something’s too far out of your wheelhouse, you’re better to say no to it because you’re not going to be able to have a good, I don’t know, good conversation, good communication, how would you put it? Why is it important to have people that fit inside the … Let’s say it this way, they’re on the same vibration as you. Why is that important?

I think understanding your superpowers, one of the most powerful things that it does, it allows you to get rid of distraction. It’s three words you can judge because you’ve defined what those are so you can say, “It doesn’t fit or it does fit.” Because that fits your energy. Creative, empowering, entertaining is what everybody at my company loves and believes and acts like. Those who don’t, we now can go, “This is where you need to fit.” The whole energy and the whole thought process is all there. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to give you a link where your audience can actually download the process to help develop this and two other bonus things that are very, very important to me.

Part of the process is looking at what you like to do. Do you like to be innovative? Do you like to be creative? Or maybe you like to be more structured? That’s important to understand. Others is, how do you like to be perceived? Another one I’m discovering is, what is your clients really complimenting you on? “Wow, you’re this. Wow, you’re this.” That gives you some outside feedback. Part of it is, what do you wake up in the morning and you’re most excited about doing? Also, what do you hate doing? I have an outline, several questions that your audience can have that they start asking of themselves to narrow down several brand words and finally narrow it down to three.

That’s great. I’m super excited to go through that myself. I love all that. Let’s say if somebody comes to you and there’s money in this deal, somebody comes to you and says, “I’d like to hire you. I’d like you to do some stuff for me.” You meet them and they’re a little too stiff, too squared. If they don’t feel like somebody that is going to be part of that creative, empowering and entertaining, does that matter or does it only matter to you guys perform this?

100%, it is. Because they’re toxic for us.

You’ll meet people sometimes and they bring your energy down, it doesn’t matter how much they’re willing to pay you, if they take away the creative part, it all just becomes static or statistics or what? How do you determine if somebody’s a bad fit?

First if you understand, I understand what my superpowers are. I understand how well I perform. I know the zone that allows me to perform. Therefore, I’ve created an atmosphere and I’ve surrounded those like me that really help me with that energy. Again, you should hire complement people, you don’t hire yourself because it’s all you that’s in a vacuum. You don’t want that. These common beliefs, these traits, these goals, empowering, creative and entertaining, people need to be able to buy into that and support that.

When I look at the new clients, if they don’t fit that, they will not gel with me and my teammates because our processes, our company, our brand, our culture, everything is geared around that. Does it mean that they have to be a creative kind of company? No, but they have to be creative thinkers. We’ve launched banks but the president of the bank was very entertaining, the bank was doing great things for the community so that was empowering and we interjected the creative part. In fact, we did so well, Aaron. Check this out, we did so well launching this bank that they wrote me and my team a check at the end of the year as a bonus, going, “Thank you. You made us so much money.” How’s that? A tip from a bank.

Wow, that’s so cool. That’s right. I think that’s the whole idea. It’s not an industry, you don’t have to shy away from an industry, you just have to find people. This is what I want the listeners to think about. Part of being unshackled is that you’re not trying to be everything to everybody. You’re putting a flag in the ground saying, “This is what I stand for. This is where I live. This is where I can really serve people. I’m not trying to just chase every buck that’s out there.” I’ll tell you, the more you chase after money, the more it runs away from you. The more general you get, the less successful, my experience is the less successful you’ll be. I love that you’re saying, “Look, we’re looking for customers that fit this mindset,” but you could never do that if you didn’t identify who you were first. That’s why it’s so critical.

Listeners, got to think about this, you’ve got to take time to know who you are and why you matter in the market. It sounds like we’re going to have some stuff for you at the end of the interview here that’s going to help you do that. Remember, it’s not about being busy, it’s about being very intentional and about very specific in knowing exactly what it is you’re working on and not letting yourself, I love what you said Daniel, not being distracted, not having all that white noise that’s keeping you from doing what you’re really great at doing to unleash the superpower. It’s really great, great counsel, great advice. Thank you so much for that.

When we talk about unshackled, just for fun, I want to ask you this. I’ve been to your home, you invited me recently to your home. I had lunch with your family and we just had a great time. You were excited. You wanted to show me the house, you wanted to show me your office there at the house but you also took me out in the yard to a special treat. Tell them about that and why you’ve created this place for you and your family.

I think I’m wildly successful not because of the cash but because of the environment and the life that I designed. Part of that design is that I have special places on my compound and we have special times that we come together as a family to have creative time and talks and all that stuff. Part of my DNA is really family. I got four daughters, been married for over 22 years, something like that. That’s all that can take my attention. What we created when we bought this house was there’s this great tree and there’s five different hammocks and there’s some chairs around it. We call it the talking tree. It’s where we come together to have conversations.

I love that. You walk out in the yard and there’s this great big tree and there all these hammock chairs and maybe one reclining hammock. You guys all come out there and you say, “We’re going to go out there,” and you’re going to spend time with your wife and kids there. Maybe pretty soon a son-in-law or I guess he probably joins you. My point is, that kind of an intentionally designed life is a big part of what I believe makes you unshackled. In other words, you take time, you don’t say, “I’m so busy running and working and providing,” that you lose track of the things that really matter to you. In this case, your time out spending quality time with your wife and your daughters.

How did you come to that? How did you get yourself to a place even while you were trying to grow a business where you said, “But I have to stop now. I can’t just keep doing this all the time. I’ve got to have a business that can either make enough while I’m there or they can work while I’m not there so that I can do this other stuff that I consider to be highly valuable.” How did you get to that confidence? How did you make that, draw the line in the sand and say, “This is more important to me than something else?”

I think it’s understanding seasons. I think it’s important for us to recognize what season we’re at and owning those seasons. I’ll give you a good example, one of the practices I had, I feel like I disconnected and disappeared from my family for about three years. I really didn’t, but mentally, I was somewhere else. There was one commitment that I kept and I keep until this day, is I put in intentional time. That intentional time, one of it was as soon as my daughter hit preschool, I went every Friday to hang out with her and her friends and played with them on the playground for an hour. Elevated to today, I got two kids in elementary school right now, I go eat lunch on Fridays at their school.

When they were in their private school in Fort Myers, I spent the whole day there because I had, again, a couple of kids there. That time on Fridays is dad showing up in their environment, their rules, not my rules, not my house, showing how much I care because I’m there and that makes up for how many times, like there’s been a time when I was on the road for three months straight. It’s that intentional purposeful time that I set aside for them and quite frankly, even today, we have theme nights where every night, as family, we do XYZ. We used to Minecraft Mondays, it’s now another video game. Tuesdays are typically movie nights.

It’s that intentional time that we come together that we know we’re there for a purpose. While it might be here and there, it makes up for all the other hours that I do work. I work seven days a week by the way today, not necessarily in the same business, but maybe some future stuff. I also play all the time. It’s not like I work anytime.

It’s really true. When you get to a place in your business where your business isn’t running you anymore but you’re running the business and you have flexibility, where you can do things like you just described. Most of the entrepreneurs that I’ve ever met, and certainly I’m in this camp, because we’re not clocking in any place, we work when we need to or want to work and then we play when we need to or want to play. It doesn’t matter what day it is or that it’s eight to five. I totally get that.

Let me ask you this, what do you consider for Daniel Ruke, what do you consider an unshackled life? How would you counsel somebody? You know the stuff that I teach. If you want to be in a position where you’re not not working, you’re not retired, you’re not up fly fishing all the time or playing bingo. I’m talking about where you have control of your time and your money and your business works even if you have to be away from it for a time. How would you describe an unshackled life for you and how would you advice people, what couple of things should they be doing to get to that place as you see it?

I think part of being unshackled is you start interjecting more things that you want to do that’s about you. One way that I sustain my unshacklability is that, I have every day plans from a mentality and from a season perspective. Let me tell you what that is, Mondays are my business days. Mondays is when I go over my books, I do the payables, I meet with my team meeting for the rest of the week. Anything that’s internal, that’s what Mondays are. When I show up Monday, I know what I need to be. The Tuesdays are my production and introduction to client days. Wednesdays are my meetings with my clients. I know Wednesdays what I got to show up on. Thursdays is my production time and possibly closing sales because people like Thursdays to be closed on. Here’s what’s important Aaron, Fridays is my dream day.

Tell us about that.

Understand, I show up every day and my team shows up every day at the right time, by having that calendar, I’m no longer frantic. When I wake up on calendar, I go, “I know what I need to do today and it’s all dealing with the internal business. I don’t let the other bleed in. These four hours are production, I don’t let the other bleed in.” I now know how to show up and I can control that. I schedule around that. When I told you I work seven days a week, understand when I get my Friday, I’m working on my future projects as an artist, inventor and author, I have a lot of dreams. That is work. I do make money out of those efforts. I make a lot of money out of those efforts. Probably I would say, probably most impactful things for my business. No, I will say that. The most impactful, most profitable things for my business and that drives my business has been developed on those Fridays is the most fun time because it’s whatever the heck I want and it’s working on my futures and they always bull you into a Saturday and a Sunday without fail.

We can say that we’re working but when you’re doing what you love to do and you’re getting to choice when you do it, that’s not really the same as what people, the vast majority of people that are out there showing up in an office somewhere or that are running on a hamster wheel in their self-employed business, that’s different than say, “Today is my dream day. Today, I’m going to just …” I love this. You said, as an artist and as an inventor. “Today, I’m going to dream.” Guess what? Rockefeller said, “Most men work so many hours, there’s no time left to make money.” I thought that was so great. They’re working so much, their nose is to the ground so much, there’s no time for them to go make real money.

It’s those dream days when you have the flexibility to go and just think big thoughts and go, “Oh my gosh, I’d never had that one before. I wonder who would love that.” You can create things like world domination or you could create things. You’ve done so many cool things. I’m excited that you’re going to share some of it with people. The point is, I want to say to the people that are listening, we want you to get to a place, that’s the whole idea being unshackled, getting to a place where you’re just doing stuff that you love to do. Everybody reveres Richard Branson who started hundreds and hundreds of companies. Most of them didn’t work but he had the flexibility to think ideas and come up with cool thoughts and then go try something. That’s what Daniel is teaching us to do on his Fridays are his dream days. They’re the most impactful thing, you said. I just love that.

Let me tell you how else. There’s two things. First of all, I run, in all intents and purposes, I run an agency. People say, “How in the world do you run an agency, which have deadlines and there’s opportunities?” I always get a call at least once a week. This magazine gave us a great opportunity to do an ad. “Can you put one together by tomorrow.” Part of this, I don’t stress, I’m like, “Yeah.” One thing is I recognized a pattern a long time ago. This is also why I was able to start taking Fridays off from that perspective, is that I recognize there’s always someone who wants something from me at the last minute that’s going to disturb all my plans for the day. They’re just going to destroy my day. What I’d do is I plan for those emergencies every day. In my schedule is that time. When it shows up, I go, “Hey, I’ve been waiting for you.” If it doesn’t, I got extra time.

That’s one thing that I think people need to understand. What’s your time suck? Are you actually planning time for that time suck? Of course, you start putting patterns and get rid of this suckiness of it. The other part of this, if you heard my days, how I outline it, if like a new video game comes out, we will shut down and take the day off. I get kidnapped by my friends when they come in to town, and you did it. Let’s go, not a problem dude, let’s go. Because I know my schedule, I know the psychology of how I work. I knew exactly where to place those things I had to do during that moment and exactly where to fit them in later in the week.

First of all, you said something that I love. I hope everybody caught it. You said, when that thing came out of the blue, you said, “I’ve been waiting for you.” While this is off of the topic of unleashing your superpowers and talking about Daniel and how he’s organized his life to be less and less shackled all the time and teaching us how to be unshackled, there’s a mental truth amongst almost everybody that I’ve met who’s really successful. That is they’re waiting for and they’re open to or welcoming opportunities. They’re not frantically searching, they’re like, “Hey, I’m here and I welcome you to come in.”

Sometimes I hear people go, “How does businesses flow to you like that?” You have to welcome it. You have to make it welcomed. I love that you said it that way, “Hey, I’ve been waiting for you.” That’s another little insight guys, into the subconscious mind of successful people. They think like that, “I’ve been waiting for you.” I love that. Ruke is one of those guys, if you meet him at an event, it’s almost like meeting Cher or somebody. Everybody knows him by one name, or Beyoncé. I don’t know, Cher and Beyoncé, I don’t know if that’s your group there.

It’s very interesting how you see me.

I see you not so much as a diva but somebody definitely who’s a big enough guy to be known by one name. Here we go, let’s ask you a few quick questions and get your ideas real quick. First of all, is there a book that you recommend? If somebody wants to learn about, if they were going to start down the path that you’ve started down or they decided they want to be entrepreneurial. Whatever comes to your mind, a book that you love, that you find as your go to recommendation book?

If you’re talking about an easy read, my Aaron Young bathroom book is a good one.

Wait, what’s it called?

My Aaron Young bathroom book.

Don’t give them my book.

You say that, but you actually have proof that I read that and I read that.

That’s true. The Critical 20 by Aaron Young is a quick bathroom read. There you go.

My wife always goes, she’s like, “I see them in the shower,” because I have glass showers and your book is sitting in there, and so is your face. I sent you that picture, therefore you know it’s proof. I tell you, there’s a lot of books. I read a lot of graphic novels and comic books, I’m a big fantasy guy. I will tell you the greatest thing I’ve ever learned from someone who’s been there done that is the greatest advice I got that allowed me to be unshackled, and I think this is very important for people to understand, is do what you love and then figure out how to make money out of it.

Where did you learn that? Who taught you that?

My mom.

It’s not a book. You had a mom who taught you, that’s good inspiration. Keep going.

I hit middle school and I knew I wanted this as a career. My mom was the biggest supporter of that. Sacrificing some stuff and so and so forth because I had private lessons and all these. I hit middle school and they had these things called electives where you can do music and computer. I came home and I said, “Mom, I want to do all of these things but I don’t want to mess up my career.” I was very stressed out. It was a big deal, a huge deal and a big discussion in the household because I was very determined to be an artist. She said, “You’re worried about the wrong thing. Do what you love and then figure out how to make money with it.” Essentially, I took it all. What that says and why that has grown with me is that I always do what I love, I’m always concentrating on how to grow it and make money. That’s what I work at, not what I love.

But I also think there’s another thing, because I know people say this but I think people hear this saying the wrong way. “Do what you love and the money will follow.” I do not believe that’s true at all. I don’t believe there’s any proof really behind it. The reason why I say do what you love and then figure out how to make money is you have to purposeful about it but also if you do what you love, the value of even do what you love, the money will follow you, if you’re doing what you love, your worst day is still an amazing day. In the 22 years I’ve done my own business, I’ve only gone home three days, three times, going, “I’ve had enough today. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I’ve only done that three times in over 22 years because I’m doing what I love.

I love that.

I think it gives you the perseverance to win, to keep going, to get up again.

I have these questions and you answered several. I’m going to ask you all of them anyway and you can remind us if you want to rephrase. I’m going to jump around a little bit. What is your favorite quote? Is it the quote from your mom?

100%, I live by that quote. The most impactful thing ever said to me.

“Do what you love, then figure out how to make money with it.” If you could go back and do something differently, what would you do? If you could change something?

That hits the bucket list. I can tell you this, Greg Reid, you said it, opinion versus counsel. There’s a lot of opinions I would’ve never listened to.

Be careful what voices you listen to. Why is that?

A great one, my dad. Let’s throw it out there. There’s counsel or wisdom or more, “No, no, no,” opinion my dad will interject. My dad’s a very successful business person but all his advice given to me were based on his limitations and his fears. They actually hindered me greatly. Some of them I carry with me today. I really don’t have a relationship with my dad. When I do, it’s based on that. Flip that, I would listen more to my mom because hers was always words of belief, encouragement, so on and so forth.

I totally get that. I love that advice.

That truly is what I would do over again. It’s the one thing. I hate to say it. Listen, my dad is an amazing man. It’s just male and male thing. His dad was a jerk to his son, with my dad and blah blah blah. It’s like this heritage thing. That’s the one thing that I would change. I would not have listened to those advice.

I think we may have got into this, I was going to ask you to give a parting piece of wisdom or counsel and talk about how can the listeners find you. What is this thing you want to give to people?

I want to give you some download pieces. If you have questions around it, I’m going to give you my email so that you can reach out to me. It’s really the three things that I think is the most important to be really unshackled. One is Discover Your Superpowers. The other one is Build Your Super Suit, really what your website should like to convert. The third is How to Protect Your Secret Identity, it’s actually a contract between you and your family. I think it’s the most important thing to ever be successful. We’re talking about unshackled. I have an agreement with my family. On every endeavor I do, we have these conversations, and even my kids.

“This is what we’re going to start, this is what we’re looking to spend. Here’s the risks involved. If it goes right, we get this. If it goes wrong, this is what happens.” They come beside me and go, “We’ll protect your time. We won’t bug you during these times. We know you’re spending time purposely there. However, this day I get this. You hear that? You’ll come eat lunch with me.” There’s a give and take but it’s an agreement. I don’t believe us entrepreneurs have conversations particularly with our families talking about, “Here’s what I’m trying to do and this is why it’s important. Here’s what can go wrong.”

I think what happens is, when things go wrong, we hold it inside, we feel guilty. That turns into anger and problems. Part of that download is that commitment, that entrepreneur journey commitment that you should have with your significant others. I think that’s one of the greatest reasons why I’m successful, is because of those true honest conversations.

I love it. Those are going to be your superpower, your super suit and your secret identity. Those are all going to be downloadable for everybody. We’ll have a link in the show notes for that. Any parting counsel? What’s your email address? How would you like them to be able to reach out to you?

I think in today’s world with so many opportunity to really make money, I think it’s an awesome time for you to take a pause, reflect on what you want because now and this time in history versus any other, you really have choices and it could be what you want. We actually have the freedom to make that and become unshackled. We have to take steps, it doesn’t happen overnight but it absolutely is more than possible because there’s a lot of unshackled people out there. I love your program for the purposefulness on that. The next thing, my email is very, very simple. It’s my name. This is my personal email so please respect it as such. I will answer you, especially if you have questions around the materials that you’re getting from the show. It’s Ruke@Ruke.com. Very simple.

I love it. Daniel, thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks for coming on to the program. I wanted to have you right here at the beginning of these interviews because I love the stuff that you do, I love the idea of superpowers and world domination. I love the life that you’ve built for yourself and it’s the life that so many people would love to have. You’re a terrific example. Thanks again for coming on. Guys, that’s it today for The Unshackled Owner podcast. We’ll see you again here next week.

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