From Minimum Wage to Millions: How Keala Kanae Built A $140M Empire With Perseverance & A Mindset Shift (Inspirational)

What if your self-doubt, procrastination, and failure weren’t setbacks—but signposts pointing you toward your life’s true purpose?

In this powerful inspirational/motivational episode, Reginald D sits down with Keala Kanae—CEO and co-founder of Inspirean, a leadership training company built for entrepreneurs and professionals. Keala Kanae shares his raw and remarkable journey from earning minimum wage in a coffee shop to founding a $140M coaching and leadership business. Discover how Keala turned over a decade of failure into fuel, why mindset matters more than tactics, and how aligning with your true values—what he calls The Power Code—can unlock unstoppable momentum. If you’ve ever felt like giving up, this episode is the reminder you didn’t know you needed.

Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a high achiever stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage, or someone seeking deeper purpose, this conversation will equip you with actionable insights to align your values with your goals, tap into resilience, and pursue success with clarity.

You’ve tried everything—books, courses, mentors—and you’re still not where you want to be. The problem may not be “out there.” In this episode, you’ll learn how shifting your internal mindset, rewiring your values, and discovering your Power Code can be the breakthrough you’ve been waiting for. If you’ve ever felt stuck, defeated, or out of alignment with your purpose, this conversation will speak directly to your soul—and your strategy.

What You’ll Gain:

• A clear understanding of how to overcome 11+ years of failure and turn adversity into momentum.
• A powerful framework for aligning your goals with your inner values to eliminate procrastination and imposter syndrome.
• The truth about why skillset without mindset leads to burnout—and how to build both to unlock long-term success.

Hit play now to discover how Keala Kanae transformed pain into power, purpose into profits, and created a legacy designed to last for generations.

Keala's contact info:

Website: http://www.thepowercode.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kealakanae

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@realkealakanae

Keala Kanae, Power Code, overcoming failure, purpose-driven entrepreneur, mindset and business, business podcast for entrepreneurs, resilience success story, how to stop self-sabotage, holistic marketing, Real Talk with Reginald D, faith-based motivation, personal development podcast, Appl

Transcript

Reginald D: Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D.

Today I have Keala Kanae

He is a CEO and a co-founder and that has an inspiration and leadership training company built for entrepreneurs and professionals.

Welcome to the show.

Keala Kanae: Hey, how you doing, my man? Thank you for having me.

Reginald D: Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to hang out with me for a minute.

Keala Kanae: Of course, bro. I mean, I appreciate the invite. I've listened to several of your episodes here, probably close to a dozen now,

you know, and before we even dive in, I just want to take a moment to like remind your audience, like wherever they're listening to drop you a little five star review.

I don't know if people realize like how much work goes into a podcast, like how much, I mean you, you hear the end product and it's, you know, a 30, 45 minute talk, but people don't realize.

I like, as an example, I've wanted to start a podcast for the last like two years and yet the amount of work that goes into it hasn't been something that we've been able to squeeze into our overall agenda, you know.

So I respect the work that you're doing, man, and I hope that people appreciate it as well. And leave you a review.

Reginald D: Thank you so much. Thank you so much, brother. So, Kealo, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood and where you grew up?

Keala Kanae: Yeah, you know, I grew up in Hawaii and I think that on the surface a lot of people listening will, you know, they'll think of. If you've never been to Hawaii or at least not spent considerable time there, you might think of like, you know, the palm trees and turquoise waters that we see in advertisements.

But that's not the part of Hawaii that I grew up in. I grew up in,

you know, right down the street from housing projects. You know,

my dad,

my mom cleaned homes for a living. She was a housekeeper. My dad worked labor for a living and we lived in a small, I want to say as my parents, my brother and I, and I want to say we lived in about a seven or 800 square foot little two bedroom house right down the street from the project.

So we grew up with humble beginnings.

The neighborhood that I grew up in was a rather violent neighborhood. Like domestic violence was a pretty common thing inside of my home, inside of, you know, I was just, it's.

I didn't know that it was anything different really growing up because it seemed to be the thing that we experienced as kids, like in,

in the neighborhood. I remember sitting in the windowsill at my house, probably seven or eight years old, watching as my neighbor's boyfriend broke into the house and kidnapped her daughter right across the street from us.

And then the, you know, the cops showed up, and there was this search that went on for days to try to find him and the daughter. And eventually she was returned.

But, like,

I didn't know that that was something that I didn't know that that was out of the ordinary, if that makes sense, you know,

and so I think from a pretty young age,

I knew that I wanted something different.

I wanted to change my.

My stars, so to speak.

And,

you know, thankfully,

you know, hopefully, if I get the opportunity to share some of, you know, what's made that possible, you know, I've gone on to do quite well,

so eventually launched my own companies.

Last company I had, we took to over 140 million in sales before I exited that company in 2024.

And now I'm focused full time on serving entrepreneurs and high achievers and professionals in achieving their dreams using some of the same, you know, mindset tactics and neuroscience that helped me create mine.

Reginald D: Man, that's awesome. And the crazy part about it, you was talking about how you grew up. You know, we look at Hawaii like paradise,

you know,

that's how we look at it, actually. We don't know anything else but paradise. But I guess they know every.

Every state has its own problems and they have their own things that's going on.

So, of course,

y' all, can you walk me through your journey from earning minimum wage at a coffee shop to becoming a successful entrepreneur?

Keala Kanae: I'm gonna do my best to summarize that journey. I mean, you know, the people hear that last leg of the journey and they think that that's the journey, right? So, you know, 2012, I'm working in a coffee shop for minimum wage.

And that's after,

you know, 12 years of trying just about everything that you can think of, right? I joined more network marketing companies than probably most people can remember.

You know, I tried multiple different businesses, and I was just felt, you know, met with heartbreaking failure after embarrassing,

you know,

plunder one after the, under after the other after the other for quite some time. And I went to college, I went to school, I got the degree,

you know, got my bachelor's degree in psychology. Thought that at some point I might be a psychologist. Realized while I was in college that that really wasn't what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing, that I really,

you know, wanted to have control over my future. My financial destiny, be an entrepreneur, build something of my own, create something with my own two hands kind of a thing.

But I got the degree, got out of college,

and you know, fast forward six years later, I'm working in a coffee shop for minimum wage, living in my mom's spare bedroom in her little thousand square foot apartment with a 500 credit score,

eking out a meager existence.

And that's when I found affiliate marketing.

And affiliate marketing is where I made my first million dollars. So, like, over the course of the next three years, I made well over a million dollars as an affiliate marketer.

As a byproduct of that,

lots of folks, you know, were asking me to show them what I was doing. Like, how was I running ads, how was I building sales funnels, how was I, like, what was my copy strategy, what was my email marketing strategy?

These sorts of things. And so I started dropping courses. Initially, this is before courses were as popular as they are today,

But I started dropping courses that people would buy, and eventually that just kind of organically turned into a coaching business.

And from 2016 and 20,

just after Thanksgiving of 2016, we launched and opened up our coaching program to the public. We scaled that from zero to a million dollars a month in revenue in four months.

So by March of 2017, we were doing over a million dollars a month in revenue. Went on to take that to 2, 3, 4, as much as $4 million a month.

Over 140 million in sales total again before I exited that business in 2024.

So that's kind of the short version of it, and, you know, happy to dig into any more details that you find, you know, that you feel would be most beneficial for your audience.

Reginald D: Yeah, that's amazing, man. It really is. Because,

you know, when you do things like that,

it's two things. Time and passion.

You know,

you know, that's what I look at it, you know, but with passion, first you got to want more. Then the time it hits right when it's supposed to or whatever, you take advantage of your moments.

That's why I tell people you got to take advantage of every moment. Everybody looking at the big picture,

but every moment is going to get you to where you need to go if you take advantage of each moment. So you experienced 11 years of entrepreneur failure before final success.

What were some of the most impactful lessons during that period?

Keala Kanae: Ooh,

that's one. Unpack. How long is this interview gonna be? We gotta. We got a week or so.

There was a lot of lessons along the way,

and the Reality is that, you know, for 11, 12 years of failing,

the reality is I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for that. So if I had it all to do over again, I would do it all the same,

right?

Because,

you know, there's a reason that there's that 1%,

you know, climbing to the top of Everest. The only reason that climbing to the top of Everest is remarkable is because so few people can do it.

And so when we want to achieve something big, it's supposed to be hard,

it's supposed to be difficult,

right? And so that 12 years that I struggled, that was, you know, the fire that forges the character necessary to become the person to build a nine figure company down the road.

And so I think that's probably the biggest lesson that I got is that, you know, those challenges are a necessary part of the journey. So often we want to embark on some sort of a journey or an adventure, but we want to avoid the pitfalls, we want to avoid the challenges,

right? It's a very common human trait that we seek that we, we have this fantasy that we can have one side of life without the other side of life. Right.

That we can have. They can be always positive, never negative, always kind, never cruel, always peaceful, never wrathful, you know, always happy, never sad.

And the reality is one that would defy physics because equanimity is essentially the, the language of the universe. And again, that's just, that's physics,

right? So for every,

you know, there's a, there's a balance in the universe and we can measure that, we can see that. And so we don't get to have the upsides without the downsides, you know, and so if those failures have taught me anything,

it's that they are just as valuable, potentially, maybe even more valuable than the successes that we find along the way.

You know, so often, like, you know, I'm a parent and we want to, as parents, we tend to want to give all of our children all of the advantages except the advantage of disadvantage,

right? If it weren't for disadvantage, I wouldn't have the fire wasn't for the disadvantage I had growing up. If it wasn't for the violence in the neighborhood, if it wasn't for, you know, the challenges that I experienced as a child and even inside of my own home, then I wouldn't have the fire to go build something different,

to do something different. The reason that we have so many rags to riches stories is because it takes most people hitting rock bottom rags before they have the drive Willpower, determination, and fortitude to create the opposite, the riches.

And so I was watching a interview from.

Oh, geez, I'm just gonna slip my mind. Jensen, Jensen Huang. He's the CEO of Nvidia.

And I apologize if I'm getting his name wrong at the moment, but I was watching an interview with him recently. He was speaking at Stanford University,

and he says,

you know, you graduates at Stanford, obviously I'm paraphrasing. He says, you Stanford graduates, you have high expectations, and you should have high expectations. You go to of the brightest schools, you're surrounded by some of the brightest minds, you have some of the brightest curriculum, you have great opportunity.

He says, we have Stanford graduates that work for us at Nvidia.

And the challenge with high expectations is you tend to have low resilience. And unfortunately, low resilience is more important in the world of success.

And so he said, what I'm about to say next might sound contradictory, but I wish upon you much pain and suffering, because that's what it takes to build resilience.

And I was like, man, like this,

you know, if that doesn't hit, I don't know what does.

And so that 12 years,

you know, I wouldn't trade anything for that 12 years. And at the same time, do I think that every person has to go through 12 years of pain and suffering?

Not necessarily, you know, along the way.

And so the second biggest lesson I would say that I took away from that is realizing that the part of the reason that I struggled for so long is because I kept thinking that the solution to my problems was somewhere out there in the world,

right? That if I just found the right mentor, the right product, the right economy, if we had the right. If the right, you know, president was in charge, if the right politicians were in place, if the right compensation plan existed, if the right,

you know, customers came along, if the right this, if the right that, like something out there needed to change and if I could just, you know, get lucky enough to find the thing,

then one day I would succeed.

And as long as I held onto that story, I was a victim of circumstance. I was a victim of my history and a victim of circumstance.

And it's hard to,

you know, it's hard to change something that you won't first take responsibility for. So how could I change my outcomes if I wasn't willing to accept responsibility for my outcomes?

And so it took my girlfriend leaving me. We had been together for four and a half years. It took her leaving me. In 2009,

I came home One day from being at a barbecue.

And there was a stack of photographs sitting on the bed in my.

I was sharing a room. I was sharing an apartment with three other people at the time.

And so sitting on my bed was a stack of photographs. And I walked up and I remember thinking to myself, like, what, What? Where did that come from? And I picked up this stack of photographs and as I looked through the stack,

all of the pictures were torn in half. And at the bottom of the stack of photographs was a note that said, picture me out of your life.

And it was from the woman that I'd been with for the last four and a half years. You know, and I thought that we had a future together.

And that was a life changing moment for me because, you know, initially I thought, oh, we'll figure it out, we'll get back together, whatever.

Fast forward, three weeks later, I've moved back in with my mom.

Couldn't afford rent with those friends, so I'd moved out, moved back in with my mom. She's not answering any of my calls, any of my text messages.

I'm starting to realize, like, oh, I think maybe this is really the end. And there's this moment that I can remember. I'm pacing up and down, I can remember what I was wearing.

I could take you to the spot that I was standing when it happened.

There's, I'm kind of taking an inventory. I'm pacing up and down the hallway in my mom's apartment and I'm taking an inventory of everything going on in my life.

And there's this moment where it all clicks and I realize, oh,

what if it's me?

Right? Like, I start looking at everything going on in my life where I'm not happy, not fulfilled, not getting the result that I want. I, you know, I'm considering it a failure.

And I start to realize the only thing that all of these things have in common is me.

And you know, that's a painful, that was a painful realization at first.

And it's the most freeing realization I ever had because there's this moment where it clicks as well that if it is me,

I can do something about me.

And for so long I wanted to do something about my brother, my girlfriend, my,

you know, job, my company, my co workers, the economy,

you know, the comp plan, whatever it was. And it was all these things. And so my success was subject to, to something else out there taking place.

But if it was me,

then I could do something about me.

And that moment changed my life. That's when I, you know, began down the road of personal development.

I started to study neuroscience and psychology,

spirituality.

And I kind of got the inclination over time that there's rules to this game that we call life.

You know, there are,

you know, laws like the laws of physics, the laws of economics. There's laws to this game.

And if you can learn the rules, you can win the game. But it's hard to win a game, you know, if you don't know the rules.

And so I dedicated the next 15 years of my life to,

you know, mastering or self mastery.

Ultimately,

it's worked out really well for me. And now my business is just the practice of sharing that with other aspiring entrepreneurs. That was a long winded answer, man. Sorry.

Reginald D: Yeah, man, it was good.

It was good because you gotta understand one thing. You know,

people go through life and they're trying to change stuff that they don't own.

Keala Kanae: Yeah.

Reginald D: Don't fully own.

You know, I can't change, you know, my friends, my, you know, my cousins or whatever the case may be. One thing I can change and look at is me.

I own me. When it's all said and done and when you understand who you really are, and when you get yourself in a place that you say, hey, man, this is it.

I'm going to do this. And I've been there, man. You know, I'm like, man, I'm going to do this because all I got is me. Sometimes I put it in my mind, all I got is me.

You know,

if I show up,

everybody else going to be all right.

You know,

I'm carrying people on my shoulders, man. If I show up and do me and make sure I'm strong enough and I'm good enough,

then everything will be all right.

So, Keanu, let me ask you this. Can you tell us what the Power Code is?

Keala Kanae: Well, as a matter of fact, I am glad you asked.

Yeah. So the Power Code is something that I've developed over time through, you know, years of study, working with different mentors,

and let's take a. I'll take a step back to really.

To really help land the message.

Right.

What if I told you that procrastination,

self sabotage, imposter syndrome,

self doubt.

What if those aren't problems? What if those are actually the secret to discovering your life's purpose?

Like, what if that's actually a hidden message about your life's mission?

That would be antithetical to what we normally hear, right? That's like the exact opposite of what most of us have been likely indoctrinated to believe.

And so everything I'm about to say next, it comes from two major fields of study, axiology, which is a study of value,

and teleology, which is the study of purpose.

And so when we observe, like, through the lens of axiology, we can observe that every human being has a set of values that governs our life.

So when I say values, by the way, I'm not talking about social ideals. So oftentimes people will think, well, I know what my values are. It's honesty, integrity, fairness, justice, equality, these sorts of things.

And that's all great and good,

and at the same time, that's social ideals.

In other words, that's what, you know, as a society, we feel like society ideally should be.

What I'm talking about is the fact that every day that you and I wake up. Reginald Right. We have a finite set of resources, time, energy, and money that we're going to deploy throughout our day.

And what's going to happen is we're going to deploy those resources in direct proportion to the things that we value most, down to the things that potentially we value so little we don't even think about it.

And so our values will dictate how we invest our resources.

All of us have a finite amount of resource, time, energy, and money.

However we invest our time, energy, and money will ultimately become our destiny.

There's no way to avoid that. Right? So you don't get to invest all your time, energy, and money going in one direction and then suddenly wake up and, you know, someplace else entirely and go, how did I get here?

So our values, I'll give you an example. So let's say,

let's take a husband and a wife as an example. And this is a just a. I, I've explained this concept now to, like, thousands of people, and this is usually the easiest way for them to really grasp the magnitude of this.

So our values filter the way that we experience the entire world. So let's take a husband and a wife as an example, and I want to be clear.

You know, I'm going to give a very stereotypical example of a husband and wife in Western society. I'm not saying that this is what a husband should be like, or this is what a wife should be like, or that this is a husband's role, or this is a wife's role,

or a husband has to be a biological male and a wife has to be a biological female. Like, I'm staying away from all those social issues,

and I'm simply using a very stereotypical example. So that we can understand the actual concept at hand. So let's say that the husband wakes up every day and the first thing that he thinks about is his business.

You know, the projects in the business, the, you know, the people in the business, the finances of business, the goals of the business. Like it's the first thing on his mind when he wakes up in the morning.

When he's not working on his business. He wants to be a better leader. So he's going to seminars, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, reading books, wants to be a better leader.

When he's not doing one of those two things, he then wants to, you know, he'll focus on the family's financial investments. He tends to spend, you know, an hour or so in the evenings looking at their stock portfolios and their, their overall investments, focusing on long term financial independence.

If he's not doing one of those three things, then, you know, he'll play some golf. If he's not doing that, he'll spend some time with the kids. If he's not doing that, he'll spend some time with his wife,

that sort of thing. Now on the other side, we have his wife. We'll call the husband, Harry, the wife, Wendy. Wendy wakes up in the morning.

First thing she thinks about is the kids, the kids, health, the kids, after school programs, kids, education, the kids, you know, sports, like, and it's the kids, the kids, the kids, the kids, the kids.

And if she's not doing some with the kids, she'll finally make some time to maybe do some arts and crafts. If she's not doing that, she'll make some time to, you know, spend some time with Harry.

Now, Harry,

for years now has said that he wants to go to the gym, get in shape, lose weight. You know, he looks in the mirror, he's not happy with what he sees.

He sits in front of a computer all day trying to build his business. And Wendy, she says that she wants to be,

you know, she wants to have her own business, be financially independent, not have to rely on Harry. She's been saying that for years. But she starts, she stops, she starts, she stops, she starts, she stops.

And she keeps wondering why.

Now, Harry and Wendy, they get up, you know, this fine morning. They, you know, head out. Harry rolls over, asks Wendy, what do you want to do today? She says, let's go shopping.

He says, okay. They jump in the car, they head down to the mall.

You know, he, he grabs her by the hand. They walk through the mall the entire day. They're never more than Three feet apart,

the sun shines down on them at the same temperature, all the same people pass them by. Their environment is a hundred percent identical, but they're going to filter that environment in direct proportion to their values.

Harry's going to notice what stores are busy, what might, what might make a great investment opportunity. He notices when the bookstore has a sale in the business section. He notices that there's a advertisement for a conference that's coming to town.

It's got all of his favorite podcasters and YouTubers and they're going to be talking about investing and, you know, how to make money in a down economy and all these sorts of things.

Meanwhile, Wendy, she doesn't notice any of those things. She notices when her daughter's favorite store has, you know, a spring sale. She notices that school supplies are half off. She notices the advertisement for soccer signups.

So notice that their environment is 100% identical.

But they filter their environment based on the things that they value most right now.

So that's exactly what all of us do,

like our values actually change.

It distorts our reality.

Now, what matters most is of all of that when it comes to achievement, is again that our values will dictate how we manage our resources.

So every day that Harry wakes up,

he has a finite amount of time, energy and money. Where's it going to go? The majority is going to go into his business.

Then he has some leftover to study being a leader. Then he has some leftover to work on the family's, you know, financial independence. Then he has some left over to maybe go play some golf.

And so eventually he runs out of time, energy and money before he ever invests enough of it. And going to the gym.

Wendy runs out of time, energy and money long before she invests enough of it into going into her business.

Now, the unfortunate thing is, and this is probably something that people who are listening to this can relate to,

is that Harry beats himself up, puts himself down, undermines himself, ridicules himself, judges himself because of how he looks when he looks in the mirror.

And Wendy beats herself up, judges herself, puts herself down, destroys her self esteem because she keeps starting businesses but never actually doing anything with them.

And so they judge themselves for who they're not rather than loving themselves for who they are.

Right? The reality is that Harry is the greatest CEO for his company.

Nobody else has the vision that Harry has for his business.

Like at this point in time and juncture in his business, he is the leader that that company needs. And Wendy is the greatest mom that those children could ever have.

There's nobody else in their life that would be as dedicated, as motivated, as devoted to their overall success.

And the reality is that when Harry's working on his business,

that's when he's most alive. That's when he's most inspired. That's when he's most disciplined. When Wendy's taking care of those kids, that's when she's most alive, most inspired, most disciplined, has the most fortitude, has the most follow through, has the most courage,

right?

But rather than what witnessing their own greatness and remarkability, they judge themselves for who they're not.

And so our values are what I call our power code.

So what you'll find is that when we as human beings, when we live by the things that we value most in our life,

we have inspiration,

we have dedication, we have fortitude, we have follow through, we have fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from filling full our values.

We have alignment,

purpose,

vision,

mission,

clarity,

certainty, confidence.

Like when there's a problem in that business, Harry doesn't know how he's going to solve it. He just knows he's going to solve it. When those children run into challenges, you know, as they're growing up,

Wendy doesn't always know what the best answer is or what, what the solution is. She just knows that she's never going to turn her back on those kids,

right?

But when we pursue our goals, when our goals.

So in this case,

Harry's goal would be to get in shape and Wendy's goal would be to start a business. When our goals are in conflict with our values or our power code,

then what happens is when we try to pursue that,

we create symptoms designed to wake us up to the fact that we're veering away from purpose, from calling.

So when Harry tries to pursue going to the gym and when Wendy tries to pursue starting a business,

they experience symptoms. Procrastination, hesitation, frustration, self sabotage, imposter syndrome, self doubt.

You know, they lack inspiration, which means the etymology of inspiration means from the spirit within.

When we lack inspiration, we need external motivation, we need accountability, we need somebody to hold us accountable, to do the thing.

So they think that they had an accountability partner. You know, he, Harry tries to hire a trainer. Wendy thinks that if she should just start a business with a friend of hers, that would hold her accountable.

So that when we look for external accountability, that's one of the signs that we're venturing away from our power code.

And so think about, like, how beautiful that is,

that our biology, our physiology,

is designed to wake us up to our life's calling,

to wake us up when we venture away from purpose. Because the reality is caring for those children, that fills Wendy's soul.

Building that business, that fills Harry's soul.

That's why they're inspired about it. And what good would be accomplishing a goal if it comes at the price of your soul?

So those symptoms, procrastination, hesitation, frustration, self doubt, self sabotage, imposter syndrome, they're designed to wake us up when we're at conflict with ourselves,

when we're venturing away from our power code to pursue goals that are in conflict with our unconscious values.

And at that point, we have two choices,

right? We can either align, shift our goals,

change our goals to match our power code,

or shift our power code to match our goals, which is what I did when I started to learn about this.

So in other words, Harry could say, you know what? I don't really care about getting in shape.

You know, screw it.

Like, if he sets a goal to work really hard on his business, you know, advance a new project,

create some, you know, a different, add a new income stream into his company,

he is very likely to do it because that's where he spends all his time, energy and money.

If Wendy sets a goal to, you know, spend,

you know, 20 hours a week of high value time with her children, no problem. She's going to do it. No problem.

Right?

So they could abandon their goals and set goals that are more in alignment with their values. But the reality is, most of us, we still want those goals.

We still want that financial independence, we still want to build that business. We still, you know, want to quit that job. We still want to, you know, make that masterpiece.

We still want to write that song. We still want to deliver that service of love to the world.

So the other option is that we rewire our power code to match our goals.

And what happens as a result is that we start to slowly,

through neuroscience, rewire our subconscious mind to achieve our goals.

And essentially that's what I did,

you know, over the course of a few years. And so I actually give away a free assessment about this@thepowercode.com so there's a free assessment. It's 10 questions.

And as you answer the 10 questions, it starts to reveal what your unique set of values is or what your power code is.

And then from there, the work really begins.

Reginald D: Right,

Right. So, man, this is real good. So in your business, you know,

you talk about,

I've heard you talk about holistic marketing.

And how does that philosophy differ from Traditional marketing strategies and what is essential for modern businesses. I mean, I've never heard of that way. You know, I looked at it like kind of one way.

I think everybody else do, you know, do this, do that,

boom. You know,

that word like that all the time. You gotta back up a punch sometimes and restrategize. But,

you know, so what's the holistic marketing?

Keala Kanae: Yeah, so that's the thing that I'm more like commonly known for up until recently. So a lot of my prior success has been around marketing and sales and leadership and business and operations.

I would say that that's like my second love, like my first love is what I was just sharing with you because for me, that's what made success possible.

But over the years, as I was building my businesses, especially starting out as an affiliate marketer, I developed this term that I called holistic marketing, which essentially means that,

you know, like Stephen Covey would say,

begin with the end in mind.

So when I'm talking about holistic marketing,

like,

and when I've consulted other businesses, one of the things that I want to understand from the business is like, what is the ultimate, ultimate place that you're trying to take your customers?

You're like, what's the ultimate product or service that you're trying to sell?

You know,

and then we want to reverse engineer all of your other marketing to lead to that outcome.

Like, so often businesses start their marketing campaigns with thinking about where the customer is at and then how to get to them.

Whereas when I'm building out a marketing campaign, I'm starting with where do I want the customer to end up and then how do I reverse engineer step by step by step, like, what are all of the epiphanies, the ahas, the breakthroughs, the ideas, the concepts, the things like, you know,

that they have to understand or that, like, what are all the ways I have to epiphanize them to be ready to make that top tier purchase. So like in my previous company,

you know, our top tier coaching program was a 12 month program, it was $15,000. You know, we taught you how to launch your own affiliate marketing business. We took you through every phase,

finding products and services to promote,

you know, running all the ads, building all the sales funnels, that sort of thing.

So in the process, we start with, okay, so what's one is I would take people through that process that I just shared with you. We'd help them identify their power code so that they would, you know, find a product or service that really inspires them.

That's thing one, not just something that's going to make you money, but something that you're going to be excited about every day when you wake up.

And then two,

once they're clear about that niche with that industry,

then it's finding a product or service. And what's the top tier,

like highest end product that you can sell in that space? And there's places out there, I mean, there's coaching programs out there that are a hundred thousand dollars a year.

I mean, I have a buddy who sells a $250,000 a year coaching program and if you refer a customer, I mean that's 50,000 bucks commission on that.

So ultimately we're starting with that top tier package and reverse engineering from there all the way down to what's the first thing that somebody hears in the advertisement? Like, you know, when they're scrolling through their social media, what's the first sentence that they hear?

And then how do we craft, meticulously craft that journey from that opening sentence all the way to a five, ten, fifteen,

twenty five thousand dollars, a hundred thousand dollars purchase?

That's what I mean by holistic marketing, if that makes sense.

Reginald D: Yes, sir. Make a lot of sense.

So from where you come from and where you are today, can you share something with someone who's trying to start their own business and they have setback after setback, you know, how did you navigate through it and emerge stronger?

Because I know you've had setbacks through your journey.

Keala Kanae: Yeah.

You know,

one of our philosophies at both of my companies now is that success is the marriage of skill set and mindset.

Right.

So skill set is the tactical component. It's like, do I have the skills? Do I know how to advertise, Do I know how to market, Do I know how to sell, Do I know how to deliver my service?

You know, can I get my client the in the end result, these sorts of things.

Mindset is, you know, that's a term that's used a lot and a lot of people use it in different ways. But the way that we define mindset is really by breaking down the word.

Right? So mind is thinking.

Set is automatic, right? Like when you set a clock, it's automatic. It tells time automatically at once it's set.

So mindset is, in other words, is our automated way of thinking.

So skill set without mindset is a nightmare.

Right? Because you have the skill,

like you have the ability,

but you lack the character, the fortitude, the diligence, the follow through,

you know, the commitment, the confidence and so you see other people that are. You wake up every day to a world of people that are less skilled, less, Less able, but more successful.

The. Like,

there's a documentary about the brand.

And one, the name of the documentary slips my mind at the moment, but do you know what I'm talking about, Reginald?

And one basketball brand that was like super popular in the 90s.

Reginald D: Yeah.

Keala Kanae: So I watched this documentary about them and I remember, like, that was such a popular brand in the mid-90s when I was in like high school. Like, that was more popular than Nike and Adidas and all of that, right?

Like, those basketball players,

there was more fandom about those basketball players than there were about players in the NBA for quite some time there.

And so when you watch the documentary, what you discover is that the AND one founders,

they knew that they wanted to compete with the 800 pound gorilla of the industry, Nike.

But if they didn't know how to compete from a marketing angle,

because Nike already had signed all of the major athletes,

so they were looking for an edge. And what happened is somebody invited them to go watch these basketball games in the Bronx.

They get to, you know, this street basketball court in New York,

and what they witness was,

you know, unheard of to them at the time.

Like, they show up and there's literally a thousand people gathered around in this public park to watch a public basketball game. There are people hanging out the windows of their housing projects, you know, families dangling out the windows of their housing projects to watch these quote, unquote street ballers play basketball.

And what they bore witness to once the game started was the fanciest,

the most,

you know, highly tactical and beautiful version of basketball that they had ever seen.

You know, as the fancy footwork, the ball work like it was just more entertaining than anything that they had seen in the NBA. And so that was this moment where they're like, this is it, this is the ticket.

And I promise I'm getting to the point here.

So what happens is they sponsor those quote, unquote, street ballers and they create what is called at the time, the AND one basketball team, which is an exhibition basketball team.

This is like the Harlem Globetrotters, except these people can actually score points,

right?

And so the AND one, they, they take the team on tour all across America.

DVDs start going viral. This is before viral was an Internet thing. DVDs of these players start going viral.

You know, they become, they're now they're signing before they know it. These guys who were once living in the projects are now you know, they have six figure salaries,

they have fame,

they have their names on the back of jerseys. They're signing basketballs and memorabilia at champ sports and foot lockers with thousands of people waiting in line for 12, 14, 16 hours a day to get,

you know, their,

you know, jersey signed by some of these players.

The NBA takes notice of what the AND one basketball team is doing and they originally the NBA shunned that form of basketball.

They called it unprofessional.

So prior to AND one, there is no such thing as a player like Allen Iverson.

Right?

The NBA realizes that they are losing market share to AND one because they don't allow that type of play in the game. And so they start loosening the guidelines to allow more of that quote unquote fancy stuff in the game.

Nike began starting trying to look for their own version of street ballers to build a team that they can sponsor to represent Nike for that same audience. Because they're losing market share to and 1.

So and 1 in the course of about,

you know, 12 months or so becomes this global phenomenon that starts taking market share from both the NBA and Nike.

And yet we don't hear about AND one today.

And the reason is when you watch that documentary,

these basketball players,

the amount of infighting that takes place within that group,

the amount of self sabotage where they start arguing with each other about who's got what contract, who's getting paid what, you know, it's not fair. They do the work, but the owners get to make all the money.

The owner had a steak dinner, know the founders had a steak dinner, but they got pizza in their tour bus.

Like all of those things that they felt were unfair, unjust, they start fighting over that and they create this toxic environment within the organization and that toxic environment devours the organization from the inside out.

Now if you take a step back and look at that, like what did they lack? Skill.

These are some of the most skilled human beings on planet earth. I mean there's, there's literally they're better than some of the players in the NBA.

So it wasn't skill that they lacked,

but it was that mindset.

You know, it was,

you know, the willingness to be,

to be confident, clear, certain, grounded,

poised, not poisoned, magnetic, not manic. You know, not let these outside influences and these outside voices change their character.

You know, they lacked the vision to play the long game because you know, had,

AND one become,

had it fulfilled the trajectory that it was on, these guys would have likely been paid somewhere close to what NBA players were getting Paid.

But it's so commonly we have this great opportunity at our fingertips, and we let those opportunities slip through not because we don't know what to do,

but because we don't do what we know we need to do.

You know, there's no secrets in life, right? Like, if you want to be financially independent, save more. I mean, earn more than you spend. Save the rest and invest it.

If you want to be in shape and live a long life, you know, eat right and exercise. If you want to have a deep, intimate relationship, never stop dating.

There's no secrets.

The only secret is, why don't we do it?

And so when we have skillset without mindset, we live a nightmare.

Because we're capable.

We have ability,

we have prowess.

We have the knowledge,

the intellect,

but we lack the character necessary to capitalize on that. And every day we wake up in a world where somebody less talented, less smart, less capable, less,

you know, spectacular has the results that we know that we could achieve,

but for whatever reason, we're not achieving.

And if we have mindset without skill set,

well, that's just wishful thinking.

That's, you know, thinking that I'm going to sit here and visualize myself into riches,

that somehow I'm going to. If I, you know, light candles and sing Kumbaya long enough and make a vision board one day, checks are going to end up in my mailbox.

So that's a fantasy.

Skill set without mindset is a nightmare. Mindset without skill set is a fantasy. But if you put those two things together, you unlock the dream.

And so for somebody pursuing. Getting back to your question. For somebody who's pursuing something big in their life, they're up to something big in their life. It's knowing that you need both,

you know, and being willing to be honest with yourself about which one you're missing. Like, skills have been important for me.

You know, learning to market, learning to advertise, learning to sell, learning to build, you know, sales funnels,

learning to lead a team, learning to, you know, dig through the. Understand how to read a P and L and a balance sheet. All of those things have been important for me.

And just as important has been the ability to look at myself and question,

why am I showing up that way?

Why am I not capitalizing on this?

What's keeping me from getting to the next level?

What am I holding onto that's serving as an anchor rather than a sail,

you know,

and it's the balance, being able to pivot between those two sets of questions. Is this an Instance where I need to learn how to do something?

Or is this an instance where I explore why I'm not doing it?

Reginald D: Wow.

Keala Kanae: Make sense.

Reginald D: Yeah. Make a lot of sense, man.

So quickly, let me ask you this one question.

All the stuff you do,

and I always think about this, for me personally,

what legacy do you hope to leave behind? And how do you want to be remembered in the realms of entrepreneurship and leadership?

Keala Kanae: I want my life to be my message,

you know,

in 2009, when that.

When Tiani, who, by the way, her and I are still together today,

20 years later,

you know, so I. I found a way to make it work.

But when she left me in 2009 and I started down the road of personal development,

I ended up attending some seminars. You know, my company now produces these very similar seminars for our clients, but I ended up. I ended up attending some seminars,

and it woke me up, you know, it lit a fire inside of me. You know, it was the first time in my life that I felt like somebody.

That somebody saw me bigger than I could see myself.

And for the first time in my adult life that I can remember, I was inspired and believed that I had something remarkable to offer the world.

And I remember feeling like I just wanted to share that with other people in the world.

Like, when I walked out of that first classroom that I went, that I attended in that. In the world of personal development, I remember thinking to myself, like, I want to share this message with as many people in the world as will listen.

Like, I want every human being to know that they're remarkable, magnificent, great, talented, beautiful, smart,

you know, brilliant, wonderful,

capable, strong, confident, clear, certain. Like, I think about the fact that.

And this is just math. This is statistics.

Every single one of us, the odds of any one of us existing on this earth is one in trillions.

Like that. That sperm meets that egg at that exact time, and then, poof. We exist. One day,

odds are trillions to one.

So there is no coincidence,

there is no mistake.

Like, I am here for a reason. You are here for a reason. We are here for a reason,

right? A purpose.

And so I believe that, like, if we feel that life is a gift,

then the way that we say thank you for that gift is that we appreciate our life.

And when we appreciate our life,

it appreciates meaning. It grows in value over time rather than diminishes.

And so there's a point in my life then, like, at that time when I first started discovering this stuff, I was still broke,

and I thought I wanted to be a life coach. I Thought initially I thought, oh, you know what? I'll be a life coach. I'll start a life coaching business. But it turns out,

Reginald, that, like,

nobody wants to be coached by a broke dude working in a coffee shop for minimum wage, living in his mom's spare bedroom with a 500 credit score.

So I went out and got rich.

You know, just to say it bluntly.

But I didn't go out to get rich because of what it would do for my bank account. I did it to practice the things that I was learning so that my life would be my message,

so that I could go from rock bottom to sky high, so that I could accomplish my goals and dreams, so I could be an example of what's possible for every person in the world who's willing to commit to the journey.

And that's what I wanted my life to be,

you know. And so today, you know, back in 2019, I went through some really big challenges in my company. I went through a partnership breakup in 2018 that was very costly.

When we went, you know, I mean, we were fighting over a 20 plus million dollar a year company, you know, so there's lots of, you know, legal battle, back and forth.

Eventually, I won.

In 2019, I had to rebrand the entire business, kind of, which is a lot like starting all over again from scratch. Even though I quote, unquote won and got the business, I had to rebrand the entire thing.

And there's this point in 2019 where I had more money,

you know, or I had made more money. I didn't have much money left after the partnership breakup. To be frank, I barely made it out of that thing alive.

And that's a story for another time.

But I had made, you know,

40 plus million dollars at that point, had already passed through my,

my bank account.

And after all of the challenges that we had gone through, I remember thinking to myself, like,

there's gotta be something more important to life than this.

Because that money didn't make me any happier.

Not one iota,

not in any meaningful way.

Like, yes, I could go to nice dinners, I could buy nice things, I could drive nice cars, I could take nice trips.

But it turns out those things don't make you happy. Like, filling your bank account is not the same as filling your soul.

And so I began asking myself, I said, you know, like, if I'm gonna go through stuff this hard,

if I'm gonna fight this hard, if I'm gonna go through this much challenge,

there's gotta be something more than money at stake.

And that's when I decided to start bottling up everything that I had learned in the world of personal development, neuroscience, axiology, teleology, epistemology,

you know, and all these different areas, psychology, all these different areas that I had studied. I started packaging it up and turning it into programs that I could deliver to the world.

And in 2022, I launched the company that I now run, Inspirian.

And I shared with my team in our annual town hall meeting.

When I brought the company to life and let them know, like, hey, this is. I believe this is going to be the future of our organization,

I said to them,

what we do every day is hard.

You know, like, as entrepreneurs, we choose to do hard things.

So by definition, life is hard because we're doing difficult things.

But if we're gonna do hard things, like, we should do things that are gonna be worthwhile.

And so when I look out into the world today, like, what's the.

What's the biggest challenge that we can solve? Like, I see a world that's more polarized than it's ever been,

more divided than it's ever been, largely made possible by the echo chamber that is social media, you know,

and our beliefs are now built by algorithms,

you know,

but wherever human beings go,

we will still be human beings.

We're still always going to wonder, like, who am I? Why am I here? What am I here to do? What? You know,

what's my calling? What's my purpose? How do I fulfill my destiny?

What work is going to be most meaningful for me? Which business should I start? Like, we're always going to have those questions.

And so,

like, I want to build a business that's important enough and meaningful enough that even as we become a galactic species,

our work is good enough to leave Earth.

And I hope this time around, you know, I hope to build something that can live a hundred years longer than me.

You know, a question that I've asked myself is, like, what. What would it be like to live two lifetimes?

Like, most of us measure our life from birth until death.

But you could also make the argument that Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Einstein, Martin Luther King,

you know, Malcolm X, jfk,

all of these people are still alive today because we still talk about them today. We still borrow from their wisdom and their message today.

And so their life has exceeded their immortal soul, has exceeded their mortal flesh.

And what would it be like to build something that can do that?

So I hope to leave that as my legacy,

and I hope to leave the world with powerful questions that continue to transform human Existence along with maybe, if I'm lucky enough, a few answers that serve them along the way too.

Reginald D: Exactly. Awesome, man. I'm going to leave that right there. That was powerful, y' all. I'm telling you, man.

So I'm gonna leave that there.

So lastly,

how can listeners follow you on social media or learn about your company?

Keala Kanae: All right, I appreciate you asking. Yeah. Best way to learn about what we do probably like the best. The thing that I recommend to most people is just go to the powercode.com and download the free assessment that's on that page and take the assessment to learn about your power code.

That automatically puts you on our email list.

There is a two hour webinar that's optional on the other side of that that we can register for the webinar. And I kind of take you through an accelerated training on the power code.

I haven't recently.

We've put a pause on it over the last year as I've made this transition from one business to the next.

But we will be getting back up and running here shortly on YouTube. So YouTube and Instagram are also a great place to find me. Keala Kanai. I'm sure they'll see my name in the description of your podcast and that's going to be the easiest way to do it.

It's Hawaiian, you know, it's only got 10 letters, but 14 of them are vowels somehow. So I don't want to confuse folks. But anyway, yeah, like, you know, I'm on YouTube, I'm on Instagram,

definitely the power code's probably the best place to go.

Reginald D: Kealo kana.

Man, this has been a moment.

This has been a moment. You so much, man, for taking the time out of your business schedule to hang out with me for a minute. I was really, really inspired.

I'm pretty sure the listeners will be too.

Keala Kanae: Thank you, man. And thank you so much for having me. And I just want to take a moment again to, you know, acknowledge the really, really, really awesome work that you're doing,

Reginald, with your podcast. Like I said, I mean, I've listened to a dozen episodes or so. I listened to your interviews and I've listened to your motivational,

like, it's just you and the microphone and you're just, you know, sharing your message of love and inspiration with the world. And thank you so much for putting that out there, man, and, and speaking hope and truth and, and care and love.

And I hope that people that are listening will take, you know, just a moment out of their day to go and you know, give you a five star review and thank you for, you know, your service of love to the world so that more of it can exist out there.

So thanks so much for having me, man.

Reginald D: All right. Thank you, brother Keala Kanai. Thank you so much for stopping by and we'll stay in touch.

Keala Kanae: Thank you, man.

Reginald D: Thanks for tuning in to Real Talk with Reginald D. If you enjoyed listening to Real Talk with Reginald D, please share and rate on Apple Podcast. See you next time.