The Host of DBDL
Brad Johnson
Where It Started
Brad’s Story
I was driving a truck before I was old enough to have a license.
My dad would stand in the bed throwing hay to the cattle while I crept along in low gear, barely tall enough to see over the wheel. That was a normal week on our farm outside Minneapolis, Kansas. Two thousand people, lived on a dirt road. There was no minimum age for work in our house, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t love it at the time. But it’s where I picked up the two things I still run a business on. Working hard is a resource you actually control. And in a town that size, you treat people right, because your mom hears about it before you get home.
Football taught me a lesson I’d actually need later.
I played college football at Emporia State. On the last day of spring ball my junior year, I tore my ACL. I was crushed as sports had been everything to me at that point in my life. I took a medical redshirt season, worked as a student assistant coach, and did the hard work of rehab. I came back, made the all-conference team, was named a COSIDA Academic All-American, and our team reached the playoffs for the first time in DII program history. More importantly, I learned a life long lesson. Adversity isn’t always chosen, but each of us has the opportunity to decide how we want to respond to it and the outcome on the other side.
I got into this industry at twenty-six, and I started in the trenches.
Day one was reading an annuity brochure. Day two was a hundred cold calls a day. What followed was over a decade working alongside some of the top growth advisors in the country, seeing what worked across firms all over the map and, just as importantly, what didn’t. I believe you’re the average of those you decide to surround yourself with. By that logic I was very lucky to learn many of these lessons first hand from the advisors I served.
I married my high school sweetheart, Sarah.
We’ve been together since high school, married more than twenty years, and we have three kids. We live in small-town Kansas and most of my evenings are at a sporting event or convincing my wife to catch a sunset with a nice glass of wine. One of our family values is, “Johnsons are committed to making memories.” Some of our favorite family trips have included Italy, Kenya and we’re always committed to having passports that actually get used.
Do Business. Do Life. isn’t a tagline.
Somewhere along the way this industry decided that building a high growth business and having a life were two separate projects. I don’t believe that, and my reason is a selfish one. As I got older and my family grew, I knew missing the moments I couldn’t buy back for the singular pursuit of more money wasn’t one I was willing to make. Then I started noticing the same tug of war in almost every advisor conversation I had. They wanted to grow something real. They just didn’t want to sacrifice everything else along the way.
That’s why I pour so much energy each week into the Do Business. Do Life. Podcast. If these episodes can help just one listener or viewer out there level up their business and their life, that’s an impact worth having. So consider this my invitation towards having the “yes/and” approach to business and life vs the “either/or.”
A Proud Member of
Triad Partners
It’s very difficult to outperform the core group of associations you surround yourself with and this is what truly differentiates Triad’s approach.