00:02
Dasarte
Welcome back to the Advisor Journey, and today you are in for a treat. We have the executive formerly known as Ron Carson here with us today. And literally, I just met Ron. I've spoke at his conference. I've seen him in passing, but I've never met him. Right. And it was such a beautiful occasion to just hear Ron talk about his evolution as a business owner and. And more importantly, his evolution as a person. In this episode, we talk with Omani now about finding balance his visionary business Carson wealth and designing his own life. When I think about just the evolution you should have as a business owner, Ron kind of encompasses it. Right. We start as one thing, and through trials, challenges, successes, failures, we become something else. And hopefully that something else is better. You don't want to miss this episode. 

 00:52
Dasarte
Tune in now. Ron, thank you so much for joining us here today. 

 01:01
Omani
Hey, it's so nice to meet you. Is it now? Is it Dasarte? 

 01:05
Dasarte
It's Dasarte. First try. 

 01:07
Omani
Oh, my gosh. 

 01:08
Dasarte
Thank you so much for joining us here today. I know we haven't met, but, Ron, when I say that I have geeked out over you and like, reading about you in preparation for this episode, that would be an understatement. 

 01:20
Omani
Thank you. 

 01:21
Dasarte
I know that we have a lot to talk about today, but before we kind of get into the meat and potatoes, I think in light of your most recent transition, I just want to talk about that. Right. You've recently transitioned into a new stage in your career. How is that going for you? 

 01:38
Omani
You know, it is amazing. I mean, I. So everybody around me thought, especially my wife. We've been together for 42 years, and she says there's no way you're going to really be able to step down. Because I've been talking about it for three years and it's gone. It's gone really smooth and. And it's allowing me to. I always viewed my life in two phases, like life up to age 50 and life after. And I figured everything up to the age of 50 was in preparation for my. My other life I was going to live. I always somehow knew there was going to be another life, even though I couldn't articulate what it was. And, yeah, so the step down as CEO and a step up into the chairman roles really allowed me to do what I used to do. 

 02:29
Omani
And that was when I first started this business. I got to spend all my time on creativity, building something. And then as Jason could probably relate to this, as your business gets bigger, you find yourself in all of these meetings, all of the time which is not what I'm good at. It's not what ignites my passion. And so now I'm able to really go out quite a ways and work on what I'm calling the ultimate human experience for the future. And I actually had a chance. I just spoke at Park City to a group called Patel, and it's Fortune 1000, CEOs, entrepreneurs, a lot of brands you would know of, and just shared what I'm up to. And they're like, I would do that. I would sign up for that. So, yeah, it's gone well and I haven't really missed a beat. 

 03:18
Omani
Cause I really prepped, you know, for how I was going to be spending this, call it the back half of my life. 

 03:26
Dasarte
I wanted to mention that I had a guy come into Sacramento, where I'm based out of Northern California, and he works for Carson. He was going to get his mba. And I asked him the same question. I was like, ron's leaving. Right. Obviously it was a big deal within Carson. And he said, I'm so happy for Ron because I've watched the evolution from Ron, you know, making sure you had a tie on in the office, to now Ron sharing wisdom via Ron Sense. Talk to us a little bit about the learnings that you had over your tenure as the captain of Carson. 

 03:59
Omani
God, there's so many of them, the learnings. Well, first of all, that comment there is. There's the run of my life and there's the Omani of my life. And the Omani. Can I just give you a brief. I want to share the. Why the Omani? So I've been doing, you know, my. My calling, I really feel, is to. I want to try to change the world from the inside out. And I really believe. Because if we look at leadership today, it's. It's like. To say it's piss poor is a dramatic understatement. And so as I got doing a lot of this work, I feel we got to. We got to get back to our roots. And that's the indigenous culture. And so I held a retreat at the ranch few years ago and had eight, really leaders of the indigenous nation. 

 04:48
Omani
Between the eight chiefs, from the Eskimos to the Aztecs to Lakota, it represented like 80 million indigenous people worldwide. And as part of that, they inducted me into the Lakota tribe and gave me my Lakota name, which is Tate Omani. Tate means walking into a stiff wind. Tate Omani means that. And I just shortened it for Omani. So when I think about the free Omani, it was Ron. He was operating. My operating system was fear and scarcity. My parents went broke when I was 17. Everything I did was push, push. I pushed everybody around me to an insanely level. I didn't like me. I don't think anybody liked me. They respected me, but they didn't like me because I was. I was. I was literally the hardest driver that I knew. And I took a lot of pride in that. 

 05:39
Omani
And I had this feeling that no matter what happened, it was a house of cards and if I didn't push harder and faster, it was all going to come crumbling down upon me. Then I started doing some therapy and talk therapy and meditation and all that stuff would not work. But I met a gentleman in California named Karosh. Actually, my therapist referred me when I said, this isn't working for me. I'm not getting anywhere. And I had gotten to a point where I just had. We had never been feeling joy, but I was starting to feel desperate because I kept thinking, in all those years of operating fear and scarcity, that, man, if I had $10,000, I wouldn't feel this way. And then it was a hundred and then it was a million. It was 10 million. 

 06:15
Omani
And then I started realizing, oh, my gosh, it's like there is no number and I'm not getting this. This feeling by having, you know, continued milestones that I'm hitting. And so my mom then passed away, which I was super close with. I was truly a mother's boy. I feel her all the time now because I was really down and out. Even though people on the outside looking in thought, oh, he's got the perfect life, you know, he's been successful. And I did a psychedelic journey underground at Topanga Canyon, which is la, and with a doctor that one of the most respected doctors in the. On the world in the planet today is very well known. And it totally shifted. It gave me. I had no spirituality. My parents were atheists. 

 06:59
Omani
And for the first time in my life, I was like, oh, my gosh, there's something else out there. And it put me on this to shift my operating system to love and abundance. So Amani is love and abundance, and Ron stands for fear and Scarcity. So when you use Ron, it literally, I. It has that. I hated going to school and I was looking like being away from my mom. And to this day, if I walk into a cafeteria or school and I smell that, like that cafeteria food, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I hear Ron. It brings up the fear and scarce and Hero money. It means a love and abundance. So, you know, there's so many lessons. This was a long winded answer to set this up. 

 07:40
Omani
There's so many lessons that I learned and trials and tribulations from the early days. And I embrace everything that happened as ingredients to make me who I am today. And, but it was, you know, the punchline is there is so much opportunity in financial services today like I've never seen in my career. We have a massive shortage of advisors. People's need is as high as I ever as I have ever seen it. When I have this massive gap and just showing up today, there's more opportunity than any one person could probably possibly execute against in their lifetime. 

 08:25
Dasarte
So I'm not going to use the R word. I'm going to say the executive formerly known as blank. You can fill it in. But let's talk about that guy. All right. 

 08:35
Omani
Yeah. 

 08:35
Dasarte
Early in your career. So we can paint a picture for the listeners here, what were some of those early challenges? And you mentioned that brute force and fire was one of the ways that you push things along. But how did you overcome those challenges in your own words? 

 08:50
Omani
Yeah, so my biggest two challenges were I had no money. And when I say I was broke, I was truly broke. I had lost about $10,000. I actually lost, had 10. I lost 12 in a cattle contract that went bad. Cattle futures contract that I had to take delivery on. So I had no money. And I was young. I mean, I was 18 years of age. And so the only asset that I had was a phone book and a phone and an insurance contract with Amoco Life Insurance. Universal Life had just come on the scene in those days. And, and the one thing I could talk was weather. I could talk farming with equipment, with farmers. And so my strategy was to cold call every night names out of a phone book. 

 09:37
Omani
I wouldn't work today with caller id and I would literally go through and if it was a Wilford or a Helga, I would call them. If it was a Tim or Tammy, I wouldn't because that meant they were young and they had no money. And if they were older, they had a lot of money and they were headed in CDs. And I'd go out and talk to him about buying annuity or, you know, there were some insurance concepts. And that was for about six months. And I did not like being an insurance guy and I was trying to sell. I truly was an unconscious incompetent. I didn't know what I was doing, but I really didn't know. I didn't know. I mean, I was being told, here's how you go out and just sell insurance and you can make good money. 

 10:15
Omani
But the how I was desperate. What happened was when I call people and then show up in these small rural either farms or some of these small towns, a lot of times people wouldn't let me in. And so I got out of desperation. This is where love affair marketing was born. I remember one Valentine's day because I'd had a couple of people that would come to the door and you know, like, I get this feel got me the appointment, but it didn't get me in the house. And I went to the little drugstore and I bought like 10 of these candied hearts. And so I showed up and I'm like, happy Valentine's day. And they were so taken back that I brought a gift that day. Emotional reciprocity. Love affair of marketing was born emotional for us. 

 11:00
Omani
I got to see firsthand the power of emotional reciprocity. And that was my very first secret is do something nice for someone that didn't expect it and they will give you a little bit of time, you know, to talk to them. And then I could relate to people, you know, so once I got in the door, sitting around the kitchen table, you know, were able to talk about all the things that were non financial because I didn't really know anything, you know, financially, because I had no training. And that's also a big issue today. It doesn't take much, you know, to be in this profession, but it was really how I got my start. 

 11:32
Dasarte
Hey, Ron, you. I'm writing notes here. I think this is a masterclass. I have a question. You said something that stood out to me. You, you said I made the call, right? Like I called the Tims and tammies. They had no money. I called the older folks. They did have money. One of the things that despite being broke, despite being young, that stands out to me is that you made the call. 

 11:52
Omani
Yes. 

 11:52
Dasarte
And there are a lot of advisors right now that want things to happen, but they're not making the call in whatever way that is 20, 30 years later. Right, let's talk about that confidence and talk about how important it is for you to get repetitions on a thing that you may not need, not even know how to do. That sets you up for bigger things. As we go into talking about Carson and just the evolution of your firm. 

 12:17
Omani
Boy, I think you just, you nailed it right there. To start day that just making the call, like just picking up the phone and having a conversation with somebody separate you from, you know, we live in, and we live in a world today where someone wants to send an email or they sit around and they do digital marketing and they expect some people are going to come to them and quite frankly, a little bit will. But nothing like if you pick up the call or you put yourself in front of opportunity and if you're willing to get out and hustle a little bit. And I say hustle, you know, spend some of that energy being around people and listening to people and even, you know, then on the phone call, listening and caring. 

 12:59
Omani
And that's probably one of the biggest characteristics today to being successful is care about the people that you're trying to serve more than caring about what you're going to get out of the transaction. You know, building the relationship, dripping on people, not looking for the quick sale. Now, that was me in the early days, but I've since learned that if I could have, you know, I'm often asked, what would I tell my younger self is? Take time, be patient, build relationships, because they will endure for most of your professional career. 

 13:35
Jason
I love that I've just been sitting here grinning and listening to you. First, I think I've only ever known the Omani, even though you didn't have that name given to you yet. When we first met, you know, you were still going by Ron. And I think this is, you know, five years ago or maybe a little bit longer. But you've always been Omani to me in the sense that, like, you've always been kind and listening. And it's really interesting to me that the things you're talking about that worked for old Ron, you know, way back in the day that, you know, it's that love affair marketing. Maybe it's an intentional thing that you've carried now, you know, 20, 30 years later. But, you know, like, that was the very first impression I ever got, you know, when I met you. 

 14:21
Jason
And I think sometimes people wonder, how did I meet Ron Omani? Carson? Like, I just cold messaged you on LinkedIn. Literally, like a picture. He'd went out for a jog or a hike or a walk out by the pier in Marina del Rey, California. I was living there at the time, and I was like, I've known of this guy forever. That was my. Now's my shot. You know, people talk about taking their shots or their shins. I was like, I'm going to shoot him a Note and see if he's willing to get together while he's in la. Anyway, serendipity happened. We end up becoming quite close and I've always just known you as Amani. So I love to see, like this phase of your life where you're really embracing it and owning it, because it's been in you clearly, the whole time. 

 15:00
Jason
You know, it's just been more raised to the surface here recently. One of the things I think, like, it's really. 

 15:07
Omani
Jason, can I just interject? 

 15:09
Jason
Yeah, please. Yeah. This is conversational. Man. 

 15:11
Omani
That week. That week was a week I was with Karoch, really. So I was in Venice. So that was the very beginnings of my healing. And you caught me at the end of that week and I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to be like. I was. I totally could see my shift was starting to happen and I had like the most incredible week of life up to that point. And then I happened to meet you and we just connected at that little coffee shop in such a beautiful way. But I don't think I've ever shared that with you. But you were there at ground zero. 

 15:45
Jason
That's so cool. So this is probably what happened, you know, at the time, of course, I had quite long hair. So, yeah, Omani gets this message, right, From a random guy with long hair and Venice Beach, California with a company called Altruist. And he's probably like, I think the universe is telling us something. 

 16:01
Omani
We're supposed to be very beautiful. 

 16:04
Jason
So thanks for sharing. I think, you know, obviously our listenership, the folks who tune in here, it's. It's mostly financial advisors, but it's also other entrepreneurs, people maybe in fintech or in tech in general, a number of people that are investors and, you know, kind of venture growth, equity, so forth. 

 16:24
Omani
But I think a lot of times. 

 16:25
Jason
When we have guests on like the common theme, we talk about this sort of the name of the show is Advisor Journey. And a lot of it's like their growth in their business and just their growth in their personal life. We've had this. One of my favorite advisors, if you ever chance to meet him, I think you'd love him. And his name's Jeremy Walter. You know, he just has that same ethos, by the way, like care so deeply about his clients. I mean, it's like at a level that I haven't seen many advisors to the point where he just quit taking any new clients because his realized that I have these people that have trusted me. I'm going to Take care of them. And I have my family, you know. 

 17:03
Jason
Jeremy posted today on Twitter he keeps every summary updates with each of his four kids. The 18 boxes, I'm not sure if you've seen that, but it's essentially, you have 18 summers with your kids and each year, each summer he checks off on them and just gives them a good visual, like, I've got this many boxes left, this many summers left, you know, where they're still kids, you know, they're not adults yet. They're still under my roof. He's really shaped his life, but I'd love for you to maybe, you know, share some lessons because obviously you've went from like hardcore Ron, growing this business Iron fist. I've only really known the Omani, but clearly I think he's always been there. 

 17:38
Jason
I'm curious, like, how you think about ambitious entrepreneurs that really want to go do important things and balancing that out with like, you knowing thyself, caring for your family. There's so many things about you I don't think the world knows. I mean, like, your passion and care and love for your family, your friends, your community is like, at a level I've. Yet I've seen very few people there. But you've also accomplished some. One of the most impressive businesses that our industry's ever seen. And like, I think there's a lesson in there. Like, how do you. Is there, like, would you do it the same way as Omani or what would you do differently? 

 18:12
Jason
Like, how would you find that balance to still achieve a lot, but do it in a way that, you know, is full of abundance and balance and health and kind of relationships, you know, that you would value today. 

 18:23
Omani
Yeah, Jason, that's a great. I love the. I love the matrix of the 18 summers that really, I mean, that really hit me between the eyes. I just, by the way, I just celebrated my daughter and I. Chelsea, my oldest daughter, is 35. We just, ever since the kids have been 4, we do a one one trip with just her and I. And so were, we just got back from it on Monday. And so, you know, think of 31 trips and I hope to do them for the rest of my life. Scott Ford and I wrote a book called Sustainable Edge. And the whole premise of the book was that. And that was when I had found balance, that balance leads to growth leads to balance. And that. 

 19:04
Omani
And there used to be a quote that I use, and I still believe it to this day, sometimes you got to give up balance in the short run to have the ultimate balance later on. The, the tricky part about that is when you get in this mindset, working all the time, it's hard to get out of it. You know, when you get in this really unhealthy cycle. And I was in it for, and I would do things cosmetically like these one one trips. The reason I bring it up was one of them. But when I would go hang out with the kids and, you know, especially when they're little, I was so depleted, I was so exhausted, I was so mentally and emotionally unavailable that it was really going through the motion. And another thing I did is I brought in a gentleman. 

 19:51
Omani
His name is Dennis McMillan. He just retired from Carson like a month ago, but I brought him in so I could, quote, unquote, take summers off. And, you know, but again, I was going through the motions that, you know, I was getting up super early, working lots of hours, taking the kids to a few things, crashing. I was working just as hard. And so my message here is once I, I found some balance, shifted that operating system, you know, I thought, well, if I don't work as hard, I'm not going to have nearly the results. And just the opposite happened. Once I invested in relationships, I took care of myself. You've heard me say, be selfish, to be selfless, it really is a, it's probably a bad term, but really take care of the golden goose first. 

 20:36
Omani
Then you can really be there for everyone. Is you can't have it all. Society tells us you got to pick one or the other. Actually, there's a really powerful symbiotic relationship where there's a continuous renewal of ideas and energy. And then, and through the blueprinting process, something we teach on our coaching program is you can't have the perfect life, but only you know what it is. You have to decide what that is for you. And a lot of times people say, I don't want to start down that road because I'm not sure what is. We'll take a guess at it today, because if you never start towards that, then you're never, ever going to ever get started. So picture what it would look like. And Jeannie and I actually went through this exercise a few times together. 

 21:22
Omani
Like, if there were no limitations on time or resources, how would we live our life? And I would say we're living it that way today. But even when I was going hard, when I started finding some balance and I got this energy and this flywheel spinning. It was. I was getting enough sleep or before I was hardly ever getting any sleep and somebody listening to this go. I still get messages from him like three or four in the morning, which is true, but I might have went to bed. I mean, Jeannie, I go to bed like 8 o'clock at night. So, you know, we're. And I need about six hours of sleep. I gave up drinking, give up coffee, you know, so rest, sleep. For those listening all the podcasts like they're 100 true. 

 22:03
Omani
It's these most critical ingredient to your success because if you're not healthy, you can't be successful. And so really taking care of the vessel. So yeah, the, the. There is a expectation that if you don't just grind really hard and I think, you know, law firms and all these kind of models where you just got to grind really hard for a long time to prove yourself is a fallacy. 

 22:27
Dasarte
Amani, I want to kind of piggyback on what you said. You said something you said even when I was hitting it hard. Right, Right. So let's go back to the beginning of starting Carson, right? Hitting it hard. What did that mean? To really begin to have this visionary idea of what a financial firm could look like across the country. What was your vision? Explain that to us first and explain how you built it brick by brick. 

 22:52
Omani
So hitting it hard was I would typically get in the office around 6am and I would work till around 7 8pm at night. And I did that. And I, when I say worked, it was just me. I didn't have any assistance. I didn't have anything. And I would get in my car because I didn't, I couldn't afford an office either. And I would have, I put 56,000 miles on my car the first year I was in business. That's, that's over a thousand miles a week. Lost my driver's license too. I got 16 points. You're allowed 12 in Nebraska. But I was so efficient at piling them up that by the time they took my license, I was 16. And I was just, it was just grinding. But learning the process. I talked about love affair, marketing. 

 23:38
Omani
The other thing I learned out of necessity because I didn't have any money was passion prospecting that I, you know, I played call. I played college football. So I could relate on that level. Farming. I could relate on that level. I was a pilot, so I had learned to fly, you know, years earlier. We had a really small plane that we flew around. And so that passion prospecting is I could attach myself to all of these passions that other people had, and it was really easy. And that's why I actually took up golf. I was a terrible golfer, and I. And everybody loved to play golf in those days. And if I had a client or someone that played golf, say, who do you know that would benefit from what I do that you can introduce me to on the golf course? 

 24:27
Omani
Introduce me to. We could go fly somewhere. Introduced me to let's go to a Husker game. And so passion prospecting, I still, I think a lot of advisors don't utilize it nearly as much as they can when they're out there. And they're just doing the traditional kind of digital marketing, you know, dinners. These things are expensive and they're probably not having a lot of fun. So let's combine it with things we already love. And when you and you share something with someone that they love and you love together, you automatically build a trust, a higher degree of trust than you ever could and any other kind of setting. And then it makes it really easy for them to introduce people to you. And then the third component of that growth was systemization. 

 25:10
Omani
I remember in order, because I realized how powerful love affair marketing was early on. I wanted to build a database of. I had these questionnaires I sent out, and I can't. I don't have one in front of me now. But a few years ago, I'd seen one of these. I had a dot matrix printer. There was all kinds of. There wasn't spell check in those days, so all kinds of grammar errors and everything else. With my clients, they actually, if I would have gotten this kind of thing today, I would have fired me as a client. But I would ask them, you know, like, what's your favorite book, your favorite restaurant, what's your pets, names? You know, every bit of information I could get on these clients. And I would randomly. And all of this time when I'm driving around, there was. 

 25:56
Omani
It was a few years later that the cell phone came out. I had one of the first cell phones, by the way I put it, was $4,000. Think of this. It took up half my trunk. And it was. Phone calls were over a dollar a minute. But I would. I realized the power just connecting with people. So I had, you know, this phone and I would just check in with my top clients and I check in with prospects. Even though I had an outlandish phone bill, it worked. And it worked because I was able to connect, stay Top of mind. And I really had, I had no leakage in my day. If I wasn't, you know, listening to a motivational tape, I wasn't meeting with a client or a prospect or making a phone call. Then I was sleeping or eating. 

 26:44
Omani
That's pretty much the only thing I did in those days. And you know, I was selling product. So there wasn't there in the early days, there wasn't a lot of additional service. You're selling an insurance contract, you're selling a mutual fund or something simple. It wasn't until later I was actually going through the CFP program. I got my CFP in 1994. So remember, I started in 1983. It wasn't until the 90s that I realized I truly wanted to be a real financial advisor. That was my term. And I was actually in Hawaii with my previous, what the company called lpl. It was. LPL was super small at the time. And I remember they were going to come out with this program called SAM Strategic Asset Management. 

 27:31
Omani
And I remember coming back to the hotel room telling my wife, I said, you know what, there's this program. I don't have to charge commissions. I can truly be an advisor. I can truly sit on the same side of the table as my client. And I was like super excited. I go, this is going to be huge for our business. I got to tell you, I was like the only one in the room. There was one other person that thought it was a good idea. Everybody else said, this is the worst idea I've heard. No one wants to see what I'm charging them. And I think LPL in those days was like one of the top alternative sales shops, you know, in the country. They sold a lot of high commission stuff. 

 28:09
Omani
And so, you know, this was by my first glimpse into what the RIA world could look like and just how powerful it could be by being an advisor, by doing real planning, not just proposal planning where you put a plan together, you get the money, but comprehensive, proactive planning that allows us to show continuous value to the people that we're working for. 

 28:32
Dasarte
That is ton of gems right there. And it takes me back to one of the things that you said earlier, which I took a note of. You said imbalance in the short term helps you to have balance in the long term. Right. And I think you just gave us a good picture of what imbalance in that short season look like for you. Now I kind of want to talk about the long term. Right. When did you know that you were on to something. What were some of those first milestones that made you to think, like, hey, I'm doing it right. I'm no longer in a disparity mindset, and I have a business. 

 29:05
Omani
I don't know if there was, like, a moment. It was gradual, but. And this came a lot later in life where I really thought I had something that was. That was true business. And that's when we had Longridge come in, was our first private equity company, and they. They actually bought part of my business. I'd had. I'd actually done a deal prior to that. I had sold. I had sold 40% of my coaching business to Pacific Life. And I think this was. This was in the late. Late 90s, early 2000. So that was the first time I actually had done an event. And I felt good, but I didn't really feel like I had, like, a really. And I was one of their largest producers at the time, and so I didn't feel like that was real. But when I did my. 

 30:02
Omani
My first private equity deal with Longridge out of New York, shout out to those guys. They were awesome. That was. That was when I go. I really built something. Jenny and I had taken off, and Jeannie's been with. We've been together 42 years. She's been with me from the very first client. She used to go on some of these, and my kids, too. They still talk about some of the meetings we used to go on when we first. When I was first grinding it so hard. But I remember walking through the gates of Augusta. We just gotten a wire for a partial sale of our business, and both of us, we couldn't have solved any more problem. It's like, hey, we built something that we have this outside validation that it's really worth. 

 30:43
Jason
You just said that you walked through the gates of Augusta, by the way, I think I saw that scorecard in your office. 

 30:49
Omani
And you. Yeah, well, that was a. That was later. 

 30:52
Jason
You must have got pretty good at some point, because you had a good scorecard from Augusta at one point in the office. 

 30:56
Omani
Yeah, no, you're right. I got. I got to play with Billy Payne, which at the time was the chairman of Augusta. And it was. It was such a. We played for two days, and. And, you know, in those. Those days, I was a golf fiend. So, you know, that's the holy grail of golf, you know, playing Augusta. 

 31:15
Dasarte
So let's talk about the vision of Carson. I think it's important for advisors to have vision. It's really Important for you to have vision with anything that you do. And it's interesting as you talk about yourself as the now Omani, it seems like you build these different ingredients to your perfect life. Seems like you've done the same with your business. Right. So was Carson coaching? Carson partner is always a part of this sort of vision. When did you start think to think about it that way? 

 31:43
Omani
Yeah. So coaching came about by a complete accident, and here's how it happened. I was the number one advisor at LPL for a number of years, and people were like, can I come out to Omaha and spend time with you? And I was, like, honored that they wanted to come and spend time with me. And so they'd come out and I would spend, you know, a couple hours, three hours showing them everything I'm doing. And then word spread and more people wanted to come out, and I couldn't say no. But I was all res already didn't have much additional capacity. And I was like, how can I. Like, how can I develop a business out of this? And so on the spot I was speaking at that was iafp. This is before it turned into the FPA in Boston. 

 32:31
Omani
And I was on a panel and Scott Hansen and Pat McLean, who have a company called Alworth, they came up to me after my talk and said, do you do coaching? And I'm like, I just. Right in that second, I go, yes. Even though I didn't have a coaching business, I don't even know if they know this. I didn't have a coaching business. And so I had several of the people wanted to come to Omaha, and so I reached out to them. So I had six people come sit around my conference room table, and literally the day before they show up, I'm creating what the material and the outline and everything's going to be for the. For the workshop. And that was the beginnings of the coaching business. And that was in 1993. And I stumbled onto something else. 

 33:16
Omani
And this is why just being out and trying all kinds of stuff, like fail fast is one of the advices. Advice to give to people. Listen, I can tell you about all kinds of stuff I did that didn't work. But I. If I hadn't tried, I wouldn't have known that. And so here I get into the coaching business, and I walk out of this weekend with so many great ideas for my own business. And so as the coaching business started to grow, is I. I would always share everything I'm doing. The reality is people like, how can you share your secrets? Well, the rally, as most people don't take the time or they don't have the systems or the infrastructure in order to actually implement it. 

 33:57
Omani
And so I had all kinds of ideas that I was able to implement, and I was an absorber of ideas. Also. The people coming through the coaching program brought a lot of new ideas and took some of my ideas and made them better, and it circulated them back. And today, Carson, coaching is still going, and it's going strong. It's not a. It's. There were years we made a little bit of money. Anybody doing this, doing coaching, right, you can't really make money. It's not a real scalable business, especially when people want to have personal conversations with the coach, which we provide. And then it was later, it was out of. I'm going to call it desperation. I was on a walk on Thompson Peak out in Scottsdale. It's. It's a. 

 34:41
Omani
It's a trail that I hike frequently, and I do it by myself, and it's kind of my walking meditation. So that was a coaching program in 1993. And then in 2010, I just lost a couple of big clients. And not because of poor performance, not because of my willingness to serve them, but because of the lack of technology that we had at LPL at the time. And. And were getting my butt. Our butts kicked by the. Really, the wires. I mean, once one of my clients had a lot of money, their expectations grew exponentially. And I was really frustrated. And I'm on this hike and I'm thinking, there's gotta be other people out there like me that. 

 35:29
Omani
Oh, and one other piece to this story is we had gone to LPL and we had all these things that we needed to have happen if were going to stay. And I was fairly naive. I mean, this is. LPO was a great place. But the reality is, I can appreciate this. I've actually shared this with lpl. As you get bigger, you realize just how hard when I'm on the other side of trying to do some of the things that they had done, I've got tremendous empathy for them and respect for what they built and what they've done. By the time I was an advisor and I was a business owner, and I'm like, I cannot. I can't believe we can't do this and we can't do that, and I'm losing clients over it. 

 36:08
Omani
And so I had articulated this vision, and I call it vaporware, because it was vaporware. I brought in a group of people to a cold February Day in Nebraska. And I said, I want you to think about a world where we all come together and we have the most incredible technology, we have the most incredible events, and we have. You know, I outlined this utopia of what a financial advisor's office could look like. And there were a few people in there, Michael David being one of them. He's dear friend to this day and one of our biggest offices. He started the coaching program when he had $50 million. Through the coaching program, he grew it to 300 million. And so he was like, anything you want to share with me, I'm in for. And so he said, yes. 

 36:56
Omani
And he says, you know, else, Ron, this is a quote that I think about all the time. He goes, I want to do this, and I want to do this with you, because I refuse to have bad days anymore. And a lot of the things that we couldn't do and we. Realizing clients were creating bad days for all of us. A footnote to the LPL thing going back, I get their whole business model wasn't to provide services for someone of our size at the time. It was really for those that were smaller and had much smaller, less complicated accounts. So I would have done the same thing that they had done so they didn't hit these targets and objectives that they had agreed to. And so we left and we started this, what became Carson Partners. And it has. 

 37:38
Omani
This was a vision that was articulated early and has come to fruition. It's been everything that we thought it could be, a lot more. And it's really gaining momentum today. And we have been attracting some of the absolute best people in our profession to really carry this to the next level. And I would say, you know, we just had our partner summit like a month ago, seeing the people that are. I can. I can spot people operating under fear and scarcity a mile away versus love and abundance. And by and large, this group is not killing themselves. They're having fun. They have joy. They have an unlimited amount of energy that they can give away and give to others because they're in a really great spot. And I think we're. 

 38:23
Omani
We're an integral piece of allowing that to happen because they don't have to sit back and worry about evaluating, you know, 20 financial planning engines or a hundred different ways that we could be doing this or that they actually know that, you know, as an ecosystem and as the ethos that we've. That we've established together. And this is really something we've all built together. This hasn't been me. This hasn't been Carson, this has been our community. And when you have the power of the community, innovating ideas and actually have the bandwidth to actually execute against it, you can build something really special. And I believe we're barely getting started, we barely scratch the surface for what we can accomplish here. 

 39:04
Jason
I'd love to go a little bit deeper on that because I do think, obviously I've got a pretty good front row seat to watch how your team is built out. The advisor experience, the client experience, the talent attraction. So some huge new additions, people like Dani Fava, who we get to work really closely with, who's really brilliant and people are choosing, by the way, like in Danny's case, pretty powerful statement. Like she could have went anywhere really. And she's like, I wanted to go to a place where I felt like I could really make a big difference and that's on the forefront of technology. So I'm kind of curious, like, just, you know, I think people forget sometimes that you've been probably, you know, 10 years ahead. 

 39:41
Jason
I think of like the rest of the industry and building technology in house, leveraging and your early users of things like Salesforce and Orion and other tools. But I'm curious, like, as you think about the future, like, what are the, you know, the next innovative tools? How might those transform kind of modern financial advisor practices and client relationships? 

 39:58
Omani
Yeah. And by the way, Danny is amazing and we have, you're right, we've added some really cool people. But here I want to. This is, this is relevant to a comment Danny made. She said when she came to Carson, she was blown away by the quality of the data and the clean data that we had, which sets up the future. I, I believe is going to blow the most optimistic person's mind away by what can happen. I don't know if you saw, I mean, I think Nvidia came out with its new chip in March and then they announced on Sunday they had a new chip coming out. It's like two months, two month cycle. And I was in Mexico about two months ago and I was with an AI expert and I said to her, I said, tell me something about AI. 

 40:45
Omani
And she goes, a year ago, we could look out about two years and tell you how I was going to impact or where it was going to have an impact shows in one year that time horizon has shrunk to five months. And that was not that long ago. And maybe it's, I go, is it going to shrink into today's hours, minutes? She goes, probably, it's moving so rapidly that even though those of us that are living in it every day can hardly think about it. And I'm not a believer at all that the, that AI or technology is going to replace the advisor. It simply makes our job that much more effective and what we can do and how we can serve. And so I believe the future Jason is going to be around clean data that AI algorithms can solve for. 

 41:33
Omani
We all crave to know that someone's looking at all of our stuff all the time and thinking about how they can service even if it's on a micro level. Like hey, you can switch your cell phone plan because you're not on the most efficient plan and say you know, $11 a month, click here and it'll happen automatically. Or you can refinance your mortgage and save $300 a month today and we've pre completed the application, you've been pre approved. Click here. I mean I just think that there's like this data rich environment. If you've got good data, AI is going to allow a few firms to really accelerate from the pack. 

 42:12
Omani
There's a lot of firms that we look at a lot of deals that we look at where their data is so corrupt it's not in the right places, it would be almost impossible to mine it. And so we made a decision long ago to really invest in our data. And I think companies like Altruist are going to lead the way in this. I mean you're gonna, for us to be successful we're gonna have to be integrated with the kind of companies that have, they don't have a legacy debt to have clean stack technology and I think eventually they will replace the incumbents. 

 42:46
Jason
That's well said. I think like the idea of the insights which you'll be able to glean from having data you'll need to be able to execute on a very automated way which is kind of the application layer, get those two things working and it's fairly autonomous at that point. You know meaning like great advice, like that really great deep advice becomes highly autonomous. Then if you just had the insights and it told the advisor you have to now go do a bunch of manual work. I mean that like yes, you know what, you should do it. So you have to connect those two pieces. But it's quite beautiful. Well, I know we could probably go on well in fact round and a half. 

 43:20
Jason
We've had some very long conversations and I'm sure we could keep going here but we do have to wind things down, sadly. But I'm sure we'll talk again soon, hopefully on this podcast and obviously lots more times in person with a wrap example of something called Rapid fire Q A. So just four quick questions from Dasarte and I gives a little bit idea like the things you're reading, some of the things that you're up to. So I'll start with the first one. I know that you are like growth mindset times a hundred orders of magnitude, you know, but what are you reading right now? What's something interesting you're reading right now? 

 43:54
Omani
I just got done with Life of Andrew Jackson and it is, it was so good. 

 44:01
Jason
Beautiful historian. Yes. 

 44:04
Omani
I love history. I've always enjoyed history. 

 44:07
Dasarte
Second question for you, Amani. What personal habits have contributed most to your success? 

 44:13
Omani
The sixth most and vital one, which is this a time management thing that Andrew Carnegie came up with many, many years ago. And you know, and I've adapted it and we teach within the program. You have the six most important things each day that are related to your goals. And the vital one for the week. I actually quit doing it a year ago and I enjoyed doing it, but I can tell you I'm not nearly as productive. But as far as getting stuff done, six most, five to one. And then we have the blueprint. We're more happy to give this away too. Anybody would like a copy? We say live your life by design, not by default. Blueprint your life. 

 44:49
Dasarte
Love that. 

 44:50
Jason
I can attest that. So I have a number of friends that have actually went through the blueprint process through your coaching program, even outside of financial advisors. Like, they're just, you know, they could be a surgeon or whatever and like, they're like, it's life changing actually, for the clarity, you know, that kind of gives them so pretty powerful stuff. Question 3. If you could talk to that young, stubborn, bullheaded Ron Carson, the younger version of you. It was just starting out and had to grind, you know, to make it happen. What advice would you give yourself as Omani? 

 45:20
Omani
Hire the best people you can find and get out of their way. I mean, I didn't appreciate how valuable really good people are. And I always was trying to get like a bargain. There's no such thing with talent, you know, the best available person, you want to go after them that you can bring it in. You may think you can't afford them, but you might be surprised. You can always structure a deal that works out for everyone. 

 45:44
Dasarte
I love it. And last question for you, Omani. What is a new hobby that you have recently started? 

 45:50
Omani
So you may or may not know. I, I'm, I have a farm background and we, to this day we, I, I've been a farmer my entire life and we still have fairly significant farming operation. But my hobby is to convert these farms to regenerative ag. You know, if you look at what's going on, there's a, this could be a whole podcast on, you know, glyphosate, which is Roundup and the cancer and the mono cropping and the destruction of our soil. And there's two Netflix specials, Kiss the Ground at Josh Tickle Produce as well as Common Ground. I think everybody on the planet should watch this because it has an appreciation for how we can save our planet. This climate change is real in Omaha here we had 100 degree swinging temperatures in February in a matter of 10 hours. 

 46:41
Omani
And we had one of the worst tornadoes ever recorded right here a month ago it destroyed 400 homes. And this is like ever in the United States. It was a massive tornado. I mean this last tornado we had did damage in 1975. And so by sequestering carbon, it used to be these prairies had about a 7% carbon rate and today it's like under 2 and we're just throwing herbicides and pesticides and we're killing ourselves and we're producing less nutrient dense food. And so I'm on a mission to help. Josh wants to convert 100 million acres of farm ground because that's a tipping point to where we can save the planet, provide really good food. And by the way, average farmers barely making any money today, they get like 8 cents on the dollar. 

 47:32
Omani
So this regenerative ag program that we're in the process of building out, we're going to be able to help farmers convert and they will make two to three times the income, produce better quality, better for the climate, everybody wins except for the, you know, the Monsanto's and the bears of the world. Some evil companies in my opinion agree. 

 47:55
Jason
And I actually love that you and I both share that zeal for, you know, nutrient dense, great quality food. Part of that comment early about like, you know, you got to take care of the vessel. Well, part of the vessel is the planet that we live on. You know, it's like your body too, but you know, there's the symbiosis between those two things which is pretty critical. This has been incredible. Again, I think it's really refreshing. Like sometimes we're talking to folks and it's all about a B split test and, you know, what's their latest social media marketing strategy? And I'm not going to discount that's important. People need to, you know, have tactics to grow their business. 

 48:30
Jason
But in the end, yeah, I think when just to bore our viewers one more story is kind of, again, ironic, but on my ride into the office today, just randomly in my kind of Spotify playlist, Jimmy Buffett song came on the pirate looks at 40. But I couldn't help it as an acoustic version, he did, I guess, like a, you know, as an encore performance somewhere. But, like, I actually got a little bit emotional because I was thinking about the fact that now, you know, he's not on this planet any longer, and I think about his legacy and I was like, you know, this guy left an interesting legacy. You know, he's got this music, right, that he can be remembered by forever. But it made me kind of think about, gosh, our own legacies. Like, we don't all have that. 

 49:14
Jason
We don't have music necessarily, or art. 

 49:17
Omani
Right. 

 49:17
Jason
In some cases. So, you know, all the things that we do in our work, yes, they're important. They can help people, we can serve people, we can serve clients, people's lives. But at the end, there's a legacy that hopefully we all leave that is really important. And, and to see you really embrace Omani, which I think there's a little as part of that you didn't share, but like the running into the wind part, like, stuff you're doing is really hard. Like you're going to get criticism. 

 49:46
Dasarte
It. 

 49:46
Jason
There's gonna be people who say things about you that aren't, you know, they're unfair, maybe untrue. Right? And. But you're embracing that and kind of doing it in a love and abundance way. And those who give you a chance and really get to know you, I mean, think it's really special, you know, kind of the legacy that you're trading. So I really appreciate you kind of going deep, being vulnerable, sharing more. It's been a really powerful thing to just be a participant in and very grateful for that. For everyone who's listening, please make sure you share this and subscribe to our podcast. Leave some notes and don't be a stranger too. I think that you have to protect your time. But this is a. This is a human who's like, spending his life's energy to do really big, powerful things. 

 50:29
Jason
And so I think if you're someone who's like going, you know, what I could get behind like that new hobby and regenerative ag. I think most people be very surprised how welcome you are to like more hands make you know work lighter and so anyway so please again follow along in this journey but also follow along in Omani's journey. You think it's going to be as impactful as you've been? I think the next 40 years will be even more impactful so thanks everyone for tuning in. I'm Jason Wink and my co host to start the Yarn Way. Thank you guys for joining us and Ron, thank you a ton man. It's just been an absolute pleasure. 

 51:02
Omani
Thank you for having me and so nice to be on your podcast. 

 51:08
Jason
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