It’s our pleasure to bring to you, our interview with Jonathan Cronstedt AKA JCron. JCron is the president of Kajabi and is a passionate advocate for online learning. We discuss his unorthodox approach to finding mentors, the importance of stoicism in his life and some hard truths that he’s had to face to be able to grow to where he is today. You do not want to miss this one.
JCron Social Media: LinkedIn
Kajabi Social Media:
Date: September 29, 2020
Episode: 22
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Jonathan Cronstedt, a Leader at the Executive Level in Finance, Digital Marketing, SaaS/EdTech and Direct Sales. He is Currently the President of Kajabi.
Subtitle: “He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.”
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-22-jonathan-cronstedt-your-time-is-valuable/
In this episode of I Know this Gal…, Norman Farrar introduces Jonathan Cronstedt, a leader at the executive level in finance, digital marketing, SaaS/EdTech and direct sales. He is currently the President of Kajabi.
Jonathan Cronstedt, or JCron to those close to him, is a dangerously dedicated executive strategist. He discussed his unorthodox approach to finding mentors, the importance of stoicism in his life and some hard truths that he’s had to face to be able to grow to where he is today.
If you are a new listener to I Know this Guy…, we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!
In this episode, we discuss:
Part 1
Our favorite part of recording a live podcast each week is participating in the great conversations that happen on our live chat, on social media, and in our comments section.
In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:
Join our discussion network here!:
Jonathan Cronstedt 0:00
It’s really something that the broader ability you have to find common areas of interest that you can talk about, the faster you’re going to be able to build rapport with anybody that you get to know.
Norman Farrar 0:21
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know this Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know this Guy, wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, like kids want me to say something about ringing a bell? What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden Farrar 0:55
All right, so who’s this JCron fellow?
Norman Farrar 0:58
Well, you remember Todd Snively?
Hayden Farrar 1:00
Yeah, of course.
Norman Farrar 1: 02
One of the most transparent stories ever.
Hayden Farrar 1:06
Yeah, it was pretty wild.
Norman Farrar 1:08
Yeah, it was pretty wild. He introduced me to Jonathan Cronstedt, better known as JCron, and he’s gonna be on the podcast this week and I think he’s gonna blow everybody away.
Hayden Farrar 1:19
That’s amazing. I can’t wait to hear what he’s got to say.
Norman Farrar 1:22
Yeah, me too.
Norman Farrar 1:25
All right. So I like to introduce my special guest, Jonathan Cronstedt better known as JCron, how’s it going?
Jonathan Cronstedt 1:33
Oh, man, any better than I be two people, sunshine here in Southern California and the same homes still sheltering in it.
Norman Farrar 1:41
Yeah, you guys in California still have pretty strict restrictions, huh?
Jonathan Cronstedt 1:45
It’s changing day by day. Orange County’s fared a little bit better than Los Angeles. So we’ve been really fortunate in that regard. But one day, we’re not going back to school. The next day, we are going back to schools. Nobody really knows. It certainly feels like it’s changing regularly.
Norman Farrar 2:00
Can you tell us a little bit about what made JCron, JCron?
Jonathan Cronstedt 2:06
Sure. So I’ll actually weave how I ended up getting the nickname into the story. But my story starts like a lot of people. I moved to Southern California when I was 15, came from the Midwest and was really introduced to just a level of access that, for me, was motivated. I had never seen half of the cars that we see every day on the road here in Southern California and the oceanfront homes and everything. So it had 15, it sort of really prompted this, like I really want to do something. I really want to go big with it and it prompted me to really seek out my first job, which was in sales at a company called Fletcher Jones Motorcars and Fletcher Jones was the world’s largest Mercedes Benz dealer. I believe they actually have more Mercedes coming out of there than they do in Germany and it was this giant giant dealership that really, really enjoyed getting a chance to kind of hone my sales skills and it prompted me to then go into the mortgage business. I was at Fletcher Jones for two years, got really tired; admittedly, of selling cars to people that were my age at the time. I was in my early 20s, like 20, 21 while I was in college, and these guys my age were buying these cars, I couldn’t dream of affording and I’m like, What do you guys do and they’re like, Oh; I’m in the mortgage business. I don’t even know what the mortgage business is. So long story short on that one ended up in the mortgage business, in three years started with a company that was brokering in California that grew to banking on our own lines, and 26 states. I was the VP of sales for it and I was like, oh, my gosh; I have arrived like a perfect job, never want to do anything else. I’m good. Bury me under this desk and then 2007 2008 happened. Nobody ever told me that the industry that you earn your income from could disappear, that real estate could go underwater and before you knew it in 2009, I’m bankrupt. So I literally went from oh my gosh, I’ve never made so much to oh my gosh, everything went back to the bank and bankrupt, what do I do now and that’s really where my journey in this world of marketers kind of began, because in the mortgage industry, I had so many people marketing to me for their sales systems and it was where I was introduced to the concept of information marketing, which was the term back then that nobody really uses today. They’re just creators, or they’re just entrepreneurs, knowledge entrepreneurs, anything along those lines, but back then it was information marketing, and Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer, were really the two guys that pioneered that industry and so saw these guys selling into the mortgage business, hey, use my sales system and I was like, Well, this information marketing thing could be cool. I’m going to do that. So I went over to Gk ICS website, and I ordered what was back then called the whole enchilada, and it was like $13,000 and it came to your house in like five giant boxes like filled up the whole front door of my house, and they’re nothing but information products and that this was back when it was CDs, DVDs, workbooks, again, stuff nobody uses today and that shows up in my house and they start tearing into this and the first product I opened was Dan Kennedy’s Platinum insiders mastermind from like 1995. It was the recordings of a mastermind he had, and I’m listening to it, and all of a sudden, I hear the voice of a guy named Joe Polish and now many of you may know Joe today. Joe has been the connector. He’s gotten some of the biggest names ever into these mastermind groups, guys like Sir Richard Branson, and giant, giant entrepreneurs and this was back when Joe had a carpet cleaner mastermind and he sounded really funny on the CD and I was like, this guy sounds cool. Maybe he can be my mentor for information marketing and so I call up his office, and I’m like, hey, I want to hire Joe for consulting and I want to learn information marketing and they’re like, great, Joe’s $25,000 a day and remember, this is probably 12 years ago. So it was much higher than that now but 12 years ago, $25,000 a day and I said, Well, I’m broke, just finished filing bankruptcy. I will give him $500 for five minutes. If he doesn’t want to speak with me after that we’ll part ways and interestingly enough, he said yes and so we hopped on the phone for five minutes, turned into an hour and a half call and became really fast friends and he ends up coming out to LA for an event; we have a bite to eat and he’s like, I think I can I think I can help you. I think you’ll do great in this industry. I’d love to play a part of it. I’ll figure out a way that we can work on something together. So I go home from this dinner and I’m sitting at home, he calls me up, he says, Hey, I got it. I’m like, what should I do? He’s like, pack for a week, pick me up at LAX in two days. Great! I pick him up at LAX, we go to Burbank airport, and I end up on a private jet with Bill Phillips, another client of Joe’s who sold as the body for life competition, largest donor to the maker which Foundation, amazing powerhouse and an entrepreneur and I got to tag along with him and his team as we went to Harv eker seminar of the century in Aspen and I was like this is the coolest industry ever. I can’t wait to be a part of it. So that was my introduction. I moved to Arizona. I lived in Joe’s office for three months and he literally mentored me on all of the aspects of the direct response. Great! It was the coolest foundational learning I’d ever had and then, three months later, I really went to Joe. So Joe, I really want to teach the online side, the digital side and he said, well, he said, who do you want to learn it from? So I talked about this guy named Matt and at that time he was in Atlanta and Matt basically met with me and he’s like, Hey, I’ll help you. But you got to move to Atlanta. So I moved to Atlanta and lived in Atlanta for six months being mentored by Matt. While I’m in Atlanta, I end up getting a call from someone I met when I was working for Joe and a long story short here. It was Chet Holmes, author of the ultimate sales machine, another one of the most industry forming guys on this sales side of the information world and got to work with Chet for a year as a VP in business breakthroughs consulting, which was then acquired by Tony Robbins, and is now today’s business mastery curriculum. We actually did the first ultimate business mastery summit with Tony. Now his business curriculum back then he didn’t have one and then following that, got hired out of Tony’s organization by Mike Canings of Traffic Geyser got to work on the earliest online product launches for the local business marketing space, and learned this idea of product launches online. We had a ton of fun getting to work with Andy Jenkins at Mike’s organization on Main Street marketing machines one and two. In its day, it was one of the largest product launches ever coming full circle and I know the long story longer. I got hired out of Traffic Geyser by Bill Glazer, Dan Kennedy and up over at Gk IC spent a year and a half with them doing their first product launches the Dan Kennedy had ever done online. I actually got to be the guy to get Dan Kennedy to do an online product launch and then was hired out of there actually as CEO of digital marketer in Austin, Texas. That was amazing Roland Ryan Perry Richard powerhouse group, got to spend a year there, it was a spectacular experience. Then hired out of there and went into the direct response world for a little while, two years, their success magazine launching their digital education arm and then got to start my journey where I am today and where arguably, I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had in my career as president of Kajabi. So that was four years ago, bought in as a partner and president and just having an absolute blast working with the CEO of Kajabi Kenny Rueter and we’re just having a ball. So Wow! That was a massive soliloquy of crazy connections. Hopefully at some point it was interesting but Gosh, I’m gonna pause Norm because that was a mouthful of how I got here.
Hayden Farrar 10:05
Hey there guys and gals, this is your humble producer behind the scenes here at I Know this Guy. Just a quick reminder to please hit that subscribe button on whatever platform you’re using, whether it’s Apple or Spotify, Stitcher, Hemella, the Alps, Sierra 3000, I don’t know there’s a new one every day. Anyways, doing so will keep you up to date with each new episode of I Know this Guy. Thanks so much and now back to the show.
Norman Farrar 10:37
That is crazy. I’m just trying to mind map everything. So you ended up going through this whole sequence of events getting to where you are now, basically, because Joe was willing to listen to you for five minutes.
Jonathan Cronstedt 10:55
100%. One of the things that I’ve kind of said occasionally is successes, one of the only things that when you choose to buy it, you won’t know what it costs until after you’ve paid for it and so for me, I had experienced a significant amount of success in the mortgage industry and I knew I really wanted to make my career a priority and do some big things. But I didn’t know what that looked like. I had basically said yes to the sacrifices, the journey, and the hardships, whatever it took. I was ready to pay that price and for me, my journey was, I’m willing to really put myself out there to spend $500, I didn’t have at the time to find a way to build a relationship with the mentor that I knew that I needed. It’s funny, even to this day, whenever I see Joe or I see something that reminds me of him, I literally texted him, I’m like dude, owe you my career, thank you for everything, like it’s fun to be able to look back on that season fondly and still have those relationships with Joe. But yeah, it all started there. It was basically like, Alright, the mortgage industry is gone, I’m going to learn this marketing world, and I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to do it and so it was that first mentor, but then moving from Arizona, to Atlanta, to Connecticut, to back to Arizona, and then back to California, and a whole bunch of traveling between including back and forth to Austin back and forth to Dallas. I mean, I had years where I was over 220,000 miles flown in that year and so it was not an easy journey. It’s not like I woke up and it all just happened. But it’s a journey, certainly looking backwards that I feel tremendously blessed to have had those things connect up and really, I had amazing mentors before I even really knew what to look for in a mentor that I was very, very fortunate that Joe was willing to take a chance on me.
Norman Farrar 12:50
I’d like to touch on the mentors in a second. But go back. This has happened to me as well and I think it happens to a lot of entrepreneurs but going bankrupt. So how did you handle that? How did you pick yourself up? Because I know a lot of people that have gone under for one reason or the other, they get kicked in the nuts basically and they can’t get back up because they’re afraid to. How do you get over that?
Jonathan Cronstedt 13:15
It’s funny, like I can see both sides of that story where it’s like, no, I broke, I don’t want to risk it again and go through that pain again. So I’m just not going to try. That’s definitely one reaction for me and it was interesting, because I think it was because I wanted to give credit to my other mentor I had, a good friend of mine named Steven. He was the one who actually referred me into Fletcher Jones for my first sales job. When I went bankrupt, and I told him I’m like, dude, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Like, it’s almost like when you don’t have money, all you can think about is getting some money and then when you have money, all you can think about is the fear of losing the money and you just couldn’t imagine what life would be like if you lost it, and then you lose it and Stephen said, He’s like, John, you’re going to wake up, and a hot shower is going to feel just as good. A cup of coffee is going to feel just as good. You may have some seasons where you’re going to enjoy some very simple pleasures because you can’t afford any other ones. But he said make no mistake about it. This is part of the adventure. It’ll all come back around and I think for me, that bottom made me realize that the bottom I feared was something I never needed to fear. There’s this Seneca, who’s I guess one of the stoics he has a and I believe it’s Seneca if someone’s watching this, like if Ryan Holiday sees this and he can laugh at me that I misquote this because he’s the one who introduced me to it and the obstacle is the way but Seneca’s letter on fasting and festivals and it’s this idea where as a stoic he would take two weeks a year because he was a very wealthy man. Two weeks a year, he would dress himself in burlap bags, eat nothing but the status of fare and he would continue to ask himself throughout the whole period is this condition I so feared and I think for me, after a few months I lost it all, but I’m not starving, like I wasn’t eating great. I’d go to Costco. I buy frozen Oh boy, local chicken balls from Costco and Phoenix and I would eat half of the bowl for lunch and the bowl for dinner. Like it wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t having a ball. But looking back on it, it was a season that it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. It wasn’t that I am destitute, I have nothing to offer, I have no enjoyment to have, like, and it was a season where I did a whole lot more reading and a whole lot less going out because books are cheap. There’s all of these elements where you adapt. But I think once you go to the bottom, and you realize it’s not as scary as I thought it was. Now there’s nothing standing in your way that you’re willing to risk and you’re willing to play at a level that you would never have played out before because you’re not afraid of the bottom anymore. It’s almost like if you’ve ever watched the documentary murder ball and in murder ball is basically a basketball league of paraplegics, paralyzed from the waist down, they’re in wheelchairs, and they’re basically playing basketball. But when you watch this murder ball it is literally like these guys are just killing each other. Like, I mean, the crashes, the intensity, like the way they’re going after this game, is just bonkers to watch and you ask the guys like, what gives you that fury, that fire that you’re bringing this? They’re like, well, and what else am I going to do? Yeah, I already broke my neck, my legs don’t work, like what do I have to be afraid of? Like it’s fine, I’m just going to do it, I’m going to do you go for it with everything, because the thing you were afraid of, has already happened and for me, I think that to a much lesser extent, the physical challenges, I think, offer a whole lot more of an obstacle to figure out mentally, how to get beyond. So I don’t want to make light of that. But I think that there is a mental shift that if you’re afraid of something, and it happens to you, and then it happens to you, and it’s not as bad, you get to go through life, not being afraid of it and I would also say that there was a lot of learning for me and the journey that I went through a grieving process. When everything went away, at first it was everybody else’s fault. The world screwed me that no one told me that the mortgage market could go away. No one told me that real estate could go down. Nobody told me that the economy could collapse and it was the President’s fault and the Federal Reserve’s fault and Wall Street’s fault, it was everybody’s fault that they screwed up my life and then a couple of months in, it’s like, wait a second is this was all me, like, and I was an idiot. I didn’t research my industry, or the fact that it’s cyclical. I didn’t ever research effective real estate investing and how to make sure that you had a float and capital and all that stuff. I didn’t do any of my homework to get smarter and all of a sudden, I had to realize this is 100% on me and the moment that I realized that it was all my fault and all my responsibility, in a weird way, it was actually very freeing, because it was like, Okay, well, if I was the one who totally screwed it up, I can be the one to fix it. But as long as it was everybody else’s fault, I couldn’t impact my situation at all. I didn’t just get pissed about it. So that’s probably some of the encapsulated elements of the bankruptcy season that I remember the most.
Norman Farrar 18:14
Yeah, I always remember and what I tell people from my experience anyways, this is to deal with stress in general for up and coming entrepreneurs and that’s, it’s never as bad as you think. So, when you go through a bankruptcy, or if you’re going through a challenge in business, the worst thing comes to mind, but it never ends up being as bad as you think in your own mind.
Jonathan Cronstedt 18:38
The way Joe would describe it, as Joe would always say; it’s never as good as you think it is, when it’s good. It’s never as bad as you think it is when it’s bad.
Norman Farrar 18:44
Right! So let’s talk a little bit. I’m gonna go a little off track here, because you have such an amazing backstory, mentoring and networking. So, you’re not just a guy that goes out to meet somebody. You are a professional networker, and I’m talking about I don’t even like using the word guru but you’re a guy.
Jonathan Cronstedt 19:09
Please.
Norman Farrar 19:11
I know. I know.
Jonathan Cronstedt 19:13
Don’t use that word. No, my I can’t take credit.
Norman Farrar 19:19
So Hayden, when we’re doing this, let’s get rid of this only joking, we’re keeping that in, anyway.
Jonathan Cronstedt 19:25
You can absolutely keep that in. We got to have authenticity. I don’t want people to watch this and think they’re getting manicured. Screw that.
Norman Farrar 19:33
All right, you asked for it. But anyways, you’re a networker and you also work with mentors and so many people have no idea first of all what a mentor is? How to get a mentor? What a mentor can do for you, and then go on to be able to help people by introducing and be that’s not guru. How about a super connector?
Jonathan Cronstedt 20:00
So like, I’ll talk about the mentoring first because I do have a lot of thoughts on that and it was interesting because the gentleman I mentioned, Steve, who was my very first mentor guy that referred me to Fletcher Jones, he was like, Look, if you want to be successful, you got to learn how to sell. First step, here’s where we’re going to go. I’ve now been friends with Steve for, let’s see, I’m gonna turn 39 and met him when I was 19. So it’s been over two decades and when I caught up with Steve for lunch a couple of weeks ago, he’s now living in a beautiful, beautiful area, ocean front in Mexico and he’s kind of the man about town and loves Scott as local restaurants and everything else and so he was down at his local restaurant, a couple of young guys who kind of been in and around the restaurant were like, Hey, I need a mentor and you seem to kind of have life figured out. Steve looked at him and just said, Well, I choose who I mentor very carefully and he said I’ve only mentored three people in my life and they’ve all done very, very well. So he’s like, I’ve got a great track record, but he’s like, I don’t mentor just anybody and I think that the challenge with people that are looking for a mentor is they often approach it wrong. It’s normally approached from the standpoint of, wel someone who’s successful should just want to mentor me, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Like when I met Steve, the way that I met Steve, and this is another one of my goofy stories, is I was walking out of an apartment complex, looking for a place to live while I was in college, and there was a I remember it like it was yesterday, a 1997 black Diablo vt Roadsters. Last year, they made the Roadster and I was only in California a few years. So Diablo might as well have been a spaceship and I was like, holy cow. I got to know what this guy does for a living. So I write a note on the back of like, I don’t remember what it was in a post it note or whatever and I was like, wow, incredible car. I love to know how you built your success, signed my name, number, and dropped it through the roofless part of the car and it was the best idea I could come up with. In retrospect, it was really stupid, but it worked and so I get a return phone call from Steve and guy, British accent. He’s like, Hi is Jen there and I’m like, now there’s no Jen here, hang up and so all of a sudden, I’m like, oh, my gosh, that was probably the guy dropping the poster known as a car. So I called him back and I’m like, Hey, are you calling because you got a post note? He’s like, Yeah, and I was like, yeah, that’s me and he’s like, Oh, you’ll have to excuse me, I thought it was Jen, like a girl that might have been interested in going out or whatever. I didn’t know it was you and I was like, Well, are you open to mentoring somebody? He’s like, No, no, no, I’m really busy. Sorry, I just don’t have time. So I literally called him once a week for probably about eight months. Sometimes he would answer and sometimes he wouldn’t and every time he would answer, I’m busy. Got a lot going on. Don’t have time. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, sorry. Finally, at like week eight, he picks up the phone. He’s like, Look, if I have lunch with you, will you stop calling me and I’m like, yeah, totally, I’ll stop calling you. So we have lunch and become fast friends and that’s kind of the way that my mentoring relationship went. But I think that what I learned in the process is I could not ask somebody who has success in life for something more valuable than their time, that it is easier to ask somebody for a check than it is to ask them for time, because time is something that can’t get back and oftentimes people that are successful, they become successful so that they can control as much of their time as possible. That idea of freedom of what you do, when you do it, with whom you do it, and how you do it. Those are the things that most people I know that are successful, they guard most closely and so when you’re asking somebody to give you their time, and to invest in your journey, choosing who you will be as a mentee, and what you’re willing to do is the difference maker as to whether you will get a mentor or not and I think it’s also something where you have to be willing to be uncomfortable that you might not be an early riser, but maybe your mentor is and the only time he has for you is 5am in the morning before he starts his day. Better get up at 5am if you’re serious, or maybe your mentor lives on the East Coast, and he’s like, Hey, you got to move. Okay. You move, you do what you have to do. So I think it’s something where being cognizant of how you are showing up and what you are doing in the mentor mentee relationship is going to be key because the only question you should be asking is, how can I add value to this person? How can I add value to what they need in their life and like for me, this was a moment where I’m now working in Fletcher Jones and Steve’s mentoring me and he was shopping for a car and I was like, Well, you know what? Boom and I mean it wasn’t even a Porsche. We didn’t even sell Porsche but I’m like, dude, here is all of the research I’ve found on all of the versions, all of the options, how can I help shortcut this process for you? Like it was a constant thinking of how can I add value to their life. Because I’m asking them for the most valuable commodity they have, which is their time and for those of you watching, if you’re thinking, it sounds like you’ve had a lot of fortunate experiences, where you just kind of put yourself out there and ran into random people, you would be right. I think what’s exciting in a lot of ways about the industry that we’re all in, is it offers you the opportunity to find mentors, in a lot of places. That you might be able to find a mentor in a book, you might be able to find a mentor in a course, you might be able to find a mentor in a podcast, you might be able to find a mentor in a mastermind or in a coaching relationship that I don’t think there’s one right or wrong way to have a mentor. But to quote my dear friend, Roland Frasier, who posted this on Instagram yesterday, if you don’t know what to do, and you don’t have a mentor, you probably needed a mentor a long time ago. So that’s where I would encapsulate those thoughts.
Norman Farrar 26:04
It’s interesting, the way that you put that together, because you’re giving and so many people do the opposite. They want to take, take, and take and so I think by just a second, it’s coffee time. There we go.
Norman Farrar 26:23
Got to have my Java.
Jonathan Cronstedt 26:24
Absolutely
Norman Farrar 26:26
If I could, I’d have a cigar
Jonathan Cronstedt26:30
Oh, man. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a vise that, cigars, booze. I mean, it’s just that they pair so well together. They really, really do. Like I’m hoping at some point someday, either A, they’re able to print 3d print bio identical organs to swap them out, or B, they’re going to make booze and cigars healthy for you. Because if they pull off one of those two things, man, end game. I’m thrilled.
Norman Farrar 26:54
You know what? I knew, right off the bat Well, first of all, the first reason why I thought we’re gonna hit it off was Todd Snively, he said, you were the most interesting person he knew.
Jonathan Cronstedt 27:08
Oh shit we gotta get Todd more interesting friends.
Norman Farrar 27:12
But secondly, you sealed the deal yesterday, when we were talking for a few minutes, you asked me, how did the podcast start and I said, oh, it was out having a cigar and the next question was what kind and it was like, oh, man, another cigar guy? Yours was a Padron anniversary and mine, I was just smoking a Black pearl. But anyways, sealed the deal, I knew I’d hit it off with you.
Jonathan Cronstedt 27:39
Well, and there’s no doubt about that Norm, that’s something that for those of you that are listening, I’ve always enjoyed a very broad view of fun and interesting things. There are a lot of hobbies that I am familiar with that I don’t practice and the main reason I want to be familiar with them is that nothing builds rapport faster than common interests. I remember like, I was at a movie theater, and my wife and I were buying tickets and it was like, hey, go to this movie and the guy’s like, oh, wow, you’ll be in the same theater as Adam Sandler. I’m like, yeah, sure, buddy, Adam Sandler’s at this terrible movie theater locally to me, I bet. So I ended up going to Adam Sandler’s theater and Adam Sandler, love him or hate him. I think he’s the coolest dude ever. Like, I don’t know anybody who just gets to get all of his friends together. I don’t know if they get drunk at high, what they do, come up with goofy movies, and then get paid to make them and all be in them together. Like, if my career counselor told me that was a job opportunity, I would have done that. But when he was in the theater, I was like, honey, I really want to meet him. Like, I love that guy and he’s walking out and he’s very dismissive, doesn’t have time, doesn’t really want to talk to me and I was like, hey, what are you going to bring back the goat and he was like, you bought my comedy CDs? Like the entire instance, they change turns around and start talking to me with a smile on their face and it was one of those things that if I didn’t know that he had these small comedy CDs, long before the movies, I would have never gotten a chance to talk to them. But knowing that having that common interest or an awareness of somebody else’s path, it built rapport immediately and so I think it’s something that for anybody watching this, and I want to make sure that everybody that chooses to watch this, you’re giving Norman all your time, and I want to make sure that you leave with exponentially more value than you’re getting by giving us your time. So it’s really something that the broader ability you have to find common areas of interest that you can talk about. The faster you’re going to be able to build rapport with anybody that you get to know. So me, I’m pretty much interested in everything whether I practice it, play it or not. I’m interested. Cigars and booze Yeah, that’s a genuine interest. I love that stuff, but whether it’s books, or hobbies, trips, anything I love all of it
Norman Farrar 29:59
That’s all part and parcel of being the super connector. Not the guru, the super connector, right?
Jonathan Cronstedt 30:05
No, no, no, the super connector is Larry Benet. Larry, if you’re watching, that’s all you like, I’m just I’m happy to play along and I’m happy to know you. But no, I’m just the guy that just enjoys relationships and loves staying in them.
Jonathan Cronstedt 30:19
No, no, no real strategy applied.
Norman Farrar 30:22
Okay, so you’ve got this incredible backstory. What about a quote that you live by? Is there anything that comes to mind?
Jonathan Cronstedt 30:31
I would have to give it to LP Jacks, the master in the art of living and that has been a quote of mine for a very long time and it’s a bit of a long quote, but I’ll go ahead and read it and then we can chat a little bit about it, I would say I don’t often read it off the top of my head just because I’ll paraphrase it but I want your listeners to have the correct quote, and the quote is a master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To him, he always appears to be doing both and the reason that that quote, for me has been something that I have kept in my forefront for a very, very long time, is I believe that the way you do anything is the way you do everything is the way that Jim Rohn describes it and I think that people that seek a compartmentalized life, they might be a lot smarter than me and are able to pull it off, I just never have. I’ve never been able to say, Okay, this is my health over here, this is my job over here, this is my life, and my wife and my family over here and they all have these different compartments. For me, it really is something where I want to just be able to bring all of me to everything I do all of the time and I’m seeking a lot more harmony or engagement between all of them, not separation with hard boundarie and I don’t know if that’s the right way to do it. I don’t know if it’s the wrong way to do it. I know it’s the way that I enjoy doing it and this quote has always spoken to me as something that really embodies that individual that when you’re sitting down talking to them about business, you can see them light up because for them, it’s not just a job. Or you can see somebody that’s talking to you about their family and their relationships, and you can see them light up because it’s not just the requisite people in their life. I love that idea of how can you bring such a level of enjoyment, enthusiasm and excellence to whatever you do, that anybody that meets you doesn’t really know if you’re working or playing and to you, you don’t even think of a separation, you’re just getting up pursuing excellence and having a ball doing it.
Norman Farrar 32:51
Love it, love it. I love your passion, by the way. I mean, I’m just; I’m hanging on every word. No, really, I can tell when people love what they’re doing and it sounds like well, just like your quote says, between playing and your job, I can’t tell the difference.
Jonathan Cronstedt 33:10
Well, I mean it really is something that for me, that’s why the opportunity to work with Kenny and for Kenny and Kajabi and for all of our users that we have. That is one of the reasons why it’s so exciting for me, because Kajabi really empowers those knowledge entrepreneurs, to build whatever type of business they want, that if it’s I just want to build a part time income, that is info and training on what my full time business is. Kajabi can do that, and then if I want to build a full time, knowledge business on all aspects of it, I can do that. If I want to scale an enterprise to seven figures, eight figures and beyond, I can do that and to me, it really is a platform that empowers those knowledge entrepreneurs, with those skill sets to build whatever business they want to build. But it gives them the ability to choose, they get to design their life based on what’s most important to them, based on the goals that are most important to them and it’s one of the reasons why at four years in, I’m still more excited about what we’re doing at Kajabi today than I’ve ever been about anything I’ve been doing even four years ago, I was excited when I started. But today I’m even more excited about what we’re doing because of the transformation that we get to see in the lives of the entrepreneurs we serve. It literally is the coolest feeling in the world to get to go to work every morning and see nothing but the stories of businesses that have been started; businesses that have been scaled and businesses that are selling and have been sold that have completely transformed the lives of the entrepreneurs in them. It is just unbelievably cool.
Norman Farrar 34:46
On your website, I was checking this out the other day and you’ve got just a ton of success stories. If you get a chance, you got to go to Kajabi and just take a look at what they’re all about. Honestly, I thought you were just an educational course platform. What’s the best way to describe what Kajabi is in a nutshell?
Jonathan Cronstedt 35:09
Sure. So if you think about Kajabi, which actually is an aboriginal word that means to take flight, that’s one of the questions we get all the time is what does that word mean? But Kajabi is an all in one set of tools for knowledge entrepreneurs; it is everything you need from start to scale, to be a knowledge entrepreneur, the way that Shopify serves e-commerce for physical goods. We are that for digital entrepreneurs. So anything that could be coaching, training, consulting, courses, and products, anything along those lines that can be powered through Kajabi and to give you an idea of the scope of this industry, I think it’s something that a lot of people still today are like, wait, that’s a thing? Like people are really doing that and if you look at Kajabi, as a company, it’s now 10 years old, and it took about nine years, nine and a half years to sell $1 billion through the platform for our user base. $1 billion in nine and a half years is cool. But it’s not nearly as cool as the fact that our user base today is on pace to be selling $1 billion annually. So you look at an industry that now on Kajabi represents a billion dollars annually for our user base and their businesses. It has never been a better time to be in the world of value, giving people value digitally, giving people transformation digitally and being able to have that either be a bonus to an existing business, a business unto itself, or a business teaching others about your business that I mean, it is a very unique time and certainly one that the results can be outlandish, we’re no longer talking about the Gosh, could I make an extra $500 a month doing this, like we’re talking about seven and eight figure businesses that are now being built in this industry.
Norman Farrar 37:06
Now, what kind of growth have you had? Well, since COVID, March, April.
Jonathan Cronstedt 37:11
So I would say during COVID, we probably saw during that three month period, we probably saw a double of the interest on the front end. So, two to three times the amount of people coming in and trying the software. But what was also really encouraging is seeing the amount of existing users read double down and jump onto the platform and we saw that again at that three to 400% clip. So you had a lot of people now coming into this world. But you also had a lot of people that were familiar with this world and maybe didn’t have the time, maybe hadn’t really thought about how to make this my business? Now in this season of reevaluating everything, how do I really add value and grow and create income for my family, during this digitally focused time, redoubling down on their business. So it was certainly something that we definitely had to restructure and resource. If you think about the fact that we now are coming up on five months of virtual, so five months of being out of the office and working from our homes, which the team has done a masterful job, my hat is off and I’m extremely grateful to all of them for doing that, because it was a very fast adjustment. We’re grateful that we were built for it, but it was something where we’ve probably hired over 40 people, maybe 50 people since going virtual, so we’ve continued to really redouble down on that vision of supporting and empowering those entrepreneurs, regardless of the circumstances because we want people to be able to have a safe haven during this time of where am I going to go for opportunity, where am I going to go to build something that means something to me? We want to make sure that they’re supported and support it in a way that is far and away comparative to any other company. Whether you look at Kajabi, we were the first company of our time to offer 24/7 live chat support, 24/7 email support. We really are a company where everything that we do our first core value is the Kajabi hero, which everything starts with your story and ends with your success. It’s at the center of everything we do. So it’s really been a challenging season, in the sense of running gun offense with a whole lot going on. But it’s been an extremely rewarding one because we wholeheartedly believe the businesses that are being started and scaled during this time are going to carry the industry further than it’s ever gone into areas that it’s never been and is going to really cement what all of us do as something that the world now stands up and takes notice that, back when it was as easy as just getting live people into a room or getting live people into an office or delivering things in person. That was the season where really digital might be a thing we’ll see. Now digital is really something that is ending a lot of those assumptions about, Do you need to be in office? Now you don’t or do need to deliver my product physically? No, No, you don’t. It’s something that I think those suppositions that have now been challenged are never going to go back to normal.
Norman Farrar 40:11
I deal and I work with a lot of Amazon private label sellers and the focus is on Amazon, Amazon, Amazon. The micro brand and this is an alternative that people really don’t think about. If you’re on Amazon and you’re struggling, and you’ve just had enough with these copyright infringements, you don’t want to go down that path; you don’t want to spend it on inventory. This is something that if they go over to Kajabi, and this is a whole new roadmap for them to experience and like you said, we’re not talking about $500 a month, if you have a really good solid business plan, you can make some pretty good money.
Jonathan Cronstedt 40:56
Well and it’s really an industry that I think when people see it, you’ll know if this is the side of the industry you want or the physical product side. I have friends that have made a killing with Amazon with Shopify with physical products, they love physical products, they love building brands in the physical product space and I think that’s an amazing, amazing business. I have an equal amount of friends that don’t love physical products, they don’t love the inventory cost of scaling a business with physical products. They don’t love the logistics and the challenges that come with it and this is a business that, albeit we’ve got our own set of challenges on the digital side, there are different challenges that it’s going to require you to be the brand and you to do more of the marketing and you to be at the forefront. But you don’t have all the inventory costs; you don’t have a lot of the things that come with physical products and I even think that for some people that are dealing in physical products, there’s even a spot for digital to be a differentiator, that I think that people that are selling physical products that are fairly transformative or impactful, if you don’t have a digital component to those products. I don’t see you as being that differentiated, But if you’re selling workout equipment, but you don’t have a digital course that shows you how to use it and you’re relying on a collection of YouTube videos that are hard to find or whatever, that product experience is not going to be a premium. If you’re selling kitchen gadgets, and you don’t have videos on how to use them and suggested recipes to use them in. You’re not that differentiated, if you’re selling skincare or health supplements, or whatever it is, if you don’t have something that creates a more experiential element, and is digitally immersive, why would they go back to you unless you’re the lowest price provider and nobody wants to be the lowest price provider for and so I think that we’re going to very much see digital, really reinvent the idea of an instruction manual. The idea of how do you onboard someone using a physical product, you’re seeing a lot of this happen with fitness products in the space where you’ll see a fitness product that is coming with bonus courses on hey, here’s how to use it, here’s all of the videos to really understand it. All of those things are going to be extremely effective and I mean to me, it’s like I don’t understand why IKEA doesn’t have videos for everything. Because I mean, I know I can read the manual, but it’s like, Wait, and is this right side or the left side? Or do I flip this over or like, and I know if I do it wrong, then I have to undo it and God help me if I put a hole in the wrong place. Now I can’t undo the hole that I put there. Like, there are so many areas where if you have a digitally immersive component that is added to the physical product, it massively amplifies both the real and perceived value. So if you are on Amazon, and you’re wondering how to be differentiated, or how to really build a brand in a community, that’s something that I certainly think, would be a pretty helpful add on.
Norman Farrar 43:51
Right, agreed. Let’s touch and I’m not sure if we’ve already touched on this or not. When we talked about the bankruptcy, but what has been your biggest struggle in business and how did you overcome it?
Jonathan Cronstedt 44:08
The biggest struggle I think would be early on in my career, I probably was way too concerned with being liked or what people thought of me. I think that I really began my career believing that everybody needed to like me, that I was the type of manager that I would not be very good at holding people accountable to an outcome. Because the moment that they couldn’t do it, I would feel like it was a reflection of me and I would just do their work for them until I literally was out of hours in the day. So I think that that desire to be liked or that insecurity of holding people accountable to results. Probably shortcutted a lot of my executive leadership early on in my career, and I think it was something that , the way that I fixed it and I don’t even know if it’s, quote fixed, but it’s in process of improving, worked with a guy named Jim Forton, unbelievable mindset coach really helps you walk through a lot of the internal wiring of your brain that is counterproductive to what your outcomes are and really helped you learn to leverage how your brain is wired and I can’t say enough good things about Jim 14, if you’re looking for someone on the mindset coach side of things, he is world class, and working with him really exposed a lot of just kind of the, the fallacies and how I was viewing the world have well, will I ever actually know if somebody likes me? Answer is no. I mean, they could tell me they do. They could act like they do, but they might be faking it, it’s like, if you’re never actually going to know, and you’re building your whole life around believing that you do know, you’re probably not going to be as effective and so Jim Fortin is an amazing resource for that big help for me in that one. I think also spending time with Dan Kennedy was pretty helpful. Dan used to always say, if you haven’t pissed somebody off by noon, you’re probably not getting anything done that day and that’s just the truth of the matter that oftentimes, you look at Steve Jobs, you look at any Bezos, Elon Musk and the powerhouse entrepreneurs who have changed the world. Joe would always say two things, Joe Polish would always say progress depends on the unreasonable man, and society advances on the backs of its neurotics and those are two things that I always remember Joe saying and I think that until I really started to connect up, the progress depends on the unreasonable man and me wanting to be liked, those two things were never going to line up, they were always going to be in opposition, they were always going to have me feeling divided in what I’m doing what I’m trying to achieve and it’s definitely not a Mac Avillion thing. It’s not a result over relationships, because in my life, I put relationships first, all of the time. But what I have begun to realize is that relationships first does not mean relationships only and that there will be times where the best thing you can do for a relationship with an employee or a business partner, or whatever it is. You need to look at that person and say, this isn’t working for me, and it isn’t working for you and the best thing that can happen is freeing you up to go look for something that will and I think that that compassionate willingness to say what Patty McCord says in her Netflix book, Powerful, she calls it a good goodbye. The willingness to give a good goodbye and say, we’re both better served. I think it’s something that’s been really, really helpful. But none of that was possible for me until I really unearthed. Wow, I can’t manage effectively because I really want to be liked and that’s not going to work well.
Norman Farrar 47:46
That’s not what I was expecting. But that’s very powerful.
Jonathan Cronstedt 47:51
I mean, hey, I figure if you really want the real answer, I should probably tell you my biggest insecurity of being liked, and that’s probably what has held me back. So I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of other ones. But that seems to be the shortcoming that comes to mind most readily.
Norman Farrar 48:07
Okay, well, let’s switch it around and see if it shocked me here. Okay, so let’s hear about your biggest success.
Jonathan Cronstedt 48:14
I would say the biggest success that I look back on that was formatively impactful was the first paycheck I ever got. When I was 16, I just got my car. My parents were like; you need to get a job. It was like, okay, all my friends were getting jobs, like skate shop, surf shops here in Southern California and I was like, Man, that would probably be a really cool gig, around fun people, chill environment, getting to know you, look at all the cool stuff for the new snowboard season or whatever and that was kind of where everybody was going and then the really ambitious ones, because I was in water polo and swimming through high school and really ambitious ones were like, I’m going to go be a lifeguard and that lifeguard, like, if you’re working at a skate shop, it’s probably minimum wage, like five, six bucks an hour somewhere in there. If you were a lifeguard, it was a princely sum. It was like $10 an hour to be a lifeguard. You had to go through certification. You got to be a lifeguard. That was a big deal and then I was like, I don’t know if I want to do that. Already swimming and playing water polo all year. I don’t know if lifeguards for me. So I’m reading the penny saver one day and that is like this little local newspaper thingy that came in the mail and I see this help one and it says help one at $10 an hour plus commission, sales job and I was like well, same hourly as a lifeguard, but it also has a commission on it. So I literally show up for this interview for Pacific Monarch resorts, a timeshare company, and they go through this two day training. I’m the youngest person in the training class by leaps and bounds by like probably at least five to 10 years and I’m sitting here wondering what in the world that I got myself into and then I got my first week on the phones and like all kidding aside, it was an actual button to dial the phone and a stack of notecards like that were the CRM and the technology that we were working with at the time and it turns out that all of these note cards were leads of people that were at a mall or whatever and it’s like win these jet skis, win this Mustang you fill out this lead that goes to timeshare company and drop it in a box and it was a telemarketing job to get people to a timeshare presentation. You got one of four guaranteed prizes, and it would either be the Mustang, a shopping spree, a television, or a three day two night trip to Cabo or whatever the timeshare was at the time and nearly everybody in their mother wins the Cabo trick because it’s a timeshare company and you wouldn’t get any prize unless you came to the timeshare presentation. Now, I don’t know if they still do it this way. Remember this is like the mid-90s. So I mean it may be completely different. Now, my first week on the phone, I got a paycheck for like $752 and I was like, on cloud nine, I don’t know that I have ever at any point in my life felt that same sense of pride, success, excitement. It was the most transformative experience for me. Oh my gosh, this is amazing! I chose a different path than all of my friends. It worked out better than for all of my friends and now I get to go celebrate by eating all of the McDonald’s and going to all of the movie theaters that I want to go to because I can and it was probably and I think everybody listening will remember that experience where you felt success for the first time and I think it’s really that drug that the moment you feel that, you will continue to chase that specific feeling in every other endeavor you have and I don’t think any endeavor will ever match up to how well that first endeavor felt. But for me, when I look at all of the moments of excitement, the accomplishment, those are the things that that one stands out above them all, I don’t think I ever felt as elated or accomplished as I did in that moment.
Norman Farrar 52:25
So how long did you stay with the timeshare business?
Jonathan Cronstedt 52:28
Oh, I was only allowed to work there three months. My parents basically had Yeah; my parents said you will have a summer job. But the moment school is back in session, you will have no job. You are all school, all athletics, right. So, I maxed out my summertime with them and a whole lot of fun. Went back to school, that was it.
Norman Farrar 52:48
So there’s a podcast out there called Ed talks by Ed Rush. You were on there recently.
Jonathan Cronstedt 52:55
I was. Rush was the man like, I don’t know, like Ed Rush was a guy that I just kept asking him. I’m like, Dude, what are you gonna do next? Like after being an F18 Pilot? Where do you go from? Like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I’m gonna be a pilot. Oh, yeah. I was a fighter pilot. What? What next man?
Norman Farrar 53:14
Yeah, exactly what do you do? You go into a podcast. There you go.
Jonathan Cronstedt 53:20
Now Ed is unfathomably brilliant, tremendous dude.
Norman Farrar 53:25
Yeah, fantastic and fantastic podcast but you had mentioned something about we are done with being fake. So why do you think it’s taken so long for the public to finally realize this?
Jonathan Cronstedt 53:39
I think authenticity is the new currency and I don’t know that you see the value in authenticity until you’ve been so inundated with fake that you can’t handle it anymore. I think that we are on the precipice, or I hope that we are on the precipice of seeing the reevaluation of social media that I think especially with cancel culture and like just things going on right now and regardless of where you sit on politics, on religion, on social unrest, on anything. The fact that we have these giant clearing houses of everybody’s showing their highlight reel on social, to then have everybody compare it to their cutting room floor. It’s just not healthy for a society. I think that social media, in many ways creates more depression, more insecurity, more uncertainty than any other medium on the planet and I think that we first got so enamored with it because it offered connection. It was like, Wait a second, I now have an easy way to share my life with everybody and they’re going to be so excited to know about it. But then that changed, it no longer was connection and sharing of life. It was editing of life and filtering of life and faking of life that as you got to the point where now it’s the Instagram people, I remember reading an article where there was I think it was in Russia, there was a private jet company that was leasing a private jet that never flew, it was only on the Tarmac and they were renting it for 10 minutes at a time for people to shoot Instagram photos in and on a private jet and it’s like; we now have this sort of social media jumping the shark effect, where there is very little authenticity anymore. It is all manicured, it is all filtered. It is all shiny and shown off and I think everybody out there is like, fatigued by the first photo you see of a guy with a Lamborghini, you’re like, Oh my gosh, he has a Lamborghini. The 748th photo you see of a guy with a Lamborghini, you’re like Jesus, everybody but me have one now. Same thing, private jets, photos, vacation photos, the obligatory infinity pool in front of the ocean, in some countries you’ve never been to a photo like, it has gotten to the point where I think we have just cartoon characters and I will go to a quote that Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church, I’m not sure who he got this quote from, but it’s one that I feel really embodies the way that I feel about social media. The way that I feel about the lack of authenticity, is Rick Warren said, you can tell that the sun is setting on any society, when small people cast long shadows and I believe that today, social media is a perfect example of what is getting the most views. News being the example of if it bleeds, it leads us to a season where there are a lot of very small people casting a lot of very small shadows, a lot of uninformed people providing expert advice and I think that those elements of the fakeness and I guess just amplification of the lack of authenticity, is now leading people to say, You know wat? Wait a second, we might have taken some of this a little too far, we might want to actually go back to real relationships, we might actually want to go back to a life that is judged by the content and the connections, not the cars and the trips. Like it’s just, I think it’s a reaction to how we took it too far. Now let’s bring it back and see where the actual value is.
Norman Farrar 57:31
So the pendulum will swing back a little bit.
Jonathan Cronstedt 57:34
Absolutely and speaking of pendulum, if you’re looking at how those cycles work, a great book by Roy H. Williams and Michael Drew, the pendulum theory describes how society kind of vacillates on an 80 year cycle between me focused and we focused generations. It’s a really, really exciting read. I really do think and hope and will continue to proselytize that hopefully social media finds a happy home in a vehicle that offers amplification of authenticity, not caricatures of cartoons.
Norman Farrar 58:07
So I think we’re at the end of the podcast, and man, this has been fast paced. Tons of
Jonathan Cronstedt 58:14
With a little bit of luck, no edits will be required and we’re golden.
Norman Farrar 58:18
That’s, with everything that you were saying, I don’t think there’ll be any edits. I didn’t have to talk, just take me out of there.
Jonathan Cronstedt 58:27
Now, well, for everybody listening to the podcast, it was an absolute pleasure. You’re in great hands with Norm. Just a tremendous, tremendous genuineness of our preparatory call for this and what he really wanted to talk about, and all he kept asking is just, how can we make sure that my listeners are getting tremendous value out of this and sort of have that feel of I Know this Guy, and Norman we’re talking about it, because I wanted to know how that name came up and we both were talking about, gosh, if you have a problem where you have something that you just need to solve, and you’re talking to someone, their response was going to be, Oh, I know this guy, I got a guy, I know this guy and this definitely is a unique format Podcast, where it’s very careful curating, of which a lot of other people say, Oh, I know this guy. So you’ve got a unique opportunity to sort of be the fly on the wall for a lot of people that a lot of people refer out to and I’m grateful for Todd for recommending me. Hopefully, I didn’t disappoint. If I did, you can find me on all the social channels and tell me where I let you down. But that being said, it was an absolute blast, love getting a chance to talk about what we’re doing in Kajabi, the entrepreneurs we’re serving, and how the knowledge entrepreneurs are really reshaping COVID into an opportunity for their businesses for their families. It’s been a blast. Thank you Norm for the opportunity.
Norman Farrar 59:46
Hey, it’s my pleasure. You’ve been fantastic. Now I do have one question that we ask every guest at the end of every episode is do you know a guy?
Jonathan Cronstedt 59:56
I actually know a couple of guys and I’m going to be giving Norm some options after I get off of here. I would be doing them a disservice if I gave all of them on here and one of them did not get picked. So I will leave you with that cliffhanger. Yes, you will be getting some suggestions. But no, I will not be disclosing them live because it would spoil the surprise.
Norman Farrar 1:00:18
Fantastic! Well, thanks a lot again JCRon for being on the show.
Jonathan Cronstedt 1:00:22
You got it.
Hayden Farrar 1:00:26
That concludes our episode JCron. Make sure to tune in next time for a two part interview with Larry Brighton. Larry is a public speaker, hotel, Yay and TV personality. Larry tells us the powerful story of how he really didn’t believe in himself as a kid. But working with one coach in high school opened up the whole world for him. You won’t want to miss this one. As always, make sure you subscribe to the podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts. It keeps you in the know and helps grow the show. Look at me, Mom. I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it. Anyway, that’s enough for my antics. See you next time.
