Did you believe your dreams would become reality?
Ralph: You know, I do believe my dreams will become reality. I look back to 1992 when I first started the Heroes program. I realized that was something that God wanted me to do. I just saw the huge amount of work it would take, and the massive amount of investment of time and money.
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Read More...20. Rationalizations are generally convenient evasions of reality and are used as excuses for dishonest behavior, mistakes and/or laziness.
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Ralph Zuranski: Well, what is your definition of heroism?
Dave Kekich: It is probably a couple of things. Facing your fears and acting in spite of them would be one. Standing up for your convictions when faced with adversity would be another one. You talked about being wiling to die for your principles, and that would certainly be one: one I hope most people won't have to take.
I say walking the talk, when you have a lot to lose. Doing the right thing when it is not popular. I would say that all those things go into making a hero.
Ralph Zuranski: Did you ever create a secret hero in your mind that helps you with life's difficulties, especially after you had your injury?
Dave Kekich: No, no. I never did.
Ralph Zuranski: Who are the heroes in your life now?
Dave Kekich: My heroes are almost all dead. But there are so many of them. Giordano Bruno was one of them. He was burned at the stake for heresy, and he was a scientist.
Thomas Jefferson was one of them for me, and Thomas Paine, and Sir Isaac Newton, who is probably the most important person who ever lived, who based his work on his breakthroughs and his work on the amount of property that has been affected. Basically everything that is electrical or mechanical stems from his integrations, and Einstein.
There are a lot of people who are alive today, without naming them. Basically they are people who rise to the top with humility and integrity, and people who set positive roll models. And my heroes tend to be scientists and business people.
Read More...Well Ralph, what’s next for “In Search of Heroes™?”
Ralph: Well, next is to do the In Search of Heroes book that I’m working on right now, the answer to In Search of Heroes on the Internet. The second book will be In Search of Heroes in Medicine with all the answers kids need to realize, and parents too, that can help make such a big difference in the health and lives of themselves and their kids.
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Read More...19. Use leverage with ideas (the ability to generalize is the key to intellectual leverage), work, money, time and people. To maximize profits, replicate yourself. Earning potentials become geometric rather than linear.
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Ralph Zuranski: That is amazing. Well, how important is it to believe that your financial dreams will eventually become reality?
Dave Kekich: Most of what I want to accomplish depends on wealth generation, and huge wealth generation. I know I am not going to be single-handedly solving aging; I am going to make an impact on it though, and I know I don't need to do all the research, but I do know what needs to be underwritten now that isn't being funded.
And that is going to take an enormous amount of money over time, and I believe that will happen, so that is very important to me.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, why is it valuable to know exactly how much money you want to have in your bank account, by when?
Dave Kekich: Getting back to focusing on raising money, my focus is on a venture fund. We have a foundation, and we have a venture fund, and we have a roadmap, a scientific roadmap on aging, and we have costs involved.
And in order to follow all that roadmap and reach our goal, we have to know how much money we have to raise by a certain period in time, and how much after that to raise in a certain period of time. Just looking at these goals and writing them automatically makes you visualize them, and you have got to make them explicit.
But when you visualize explicit goals, it really helps you to bring them to reality, at least much more surely and much faster.
Read More...18. Find out what works, and then do more of it. Focus first on doing the right things, and then on doing things right by mastering details. A few basic moves produce most results and income.
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Ralph Zuranski: Well, was there anyone who gave you the will power to change things for the better in your life at that time?
Dave Kekich: Not exactly at that time, but right around that time. And his name was Wallace Ward, and he had a publishing company, and it was interesting. I read a lot of things he published, and they were very inspiring, but the most motivating thing to me was a questionnaire that their company sent to me.
And one of the questions on there was, "Do you still get regular aerobic exercise?" But it might have been just exercise, but I think it was aerobic exercise. And I hadn't been working out, and I used to work out six days a week, and usually seven days a week, and I lifted very heavily three days a week.
I ran very hard and very long four days a week. Then I went from that and getting hurt into doing nothing. But in my mind I was a long distance running, body building fanatic. In reality, I hadn't worked out in a couple of years.
So, I didn't know how to check that box. So I knew if I put down no, it would be something that I don't see myself as. If I put yes, I would be lying, so I checked yes and started working out that day. And I haven't quit since.
Read More...Who helped give you the will power to change things in your life for the better?
Ralph: Well, back when I was thinking about committing suicide, even though I had material possessions and money, drugs and sex, it brought no happiness. If it wasn’t for God offering me that free gift of salvation, eternal salvation and giving me the grace that I needed to make the right decision, I would be dead.
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Read More...17. Life operates in reverse action to entropy. Therefore the universe is hostile to life. Progress is a continued effort to swim against the stream.
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Ralph Zuranski: Well, when was the lowest point in your life, and how did you change your life afterwards to win a victory over the obstacles you were facing at that time?
Dave Kekich: Well, the lowest point was my injury. I lost basically everything I had, emotionally and physically, and relationships. Well, they actually endured over time. I lost my business, and my attitude. Primarily, that was the worst part. But there really is no magic bullet or quick fix to overcoming obstacles.
A lot of people talk about, well – this is a life-changing event and so forth. And when you see a life-changing event, usually a lot of things have led up to that to lay the groundwork for it. And when you see a certain breakthrough, they almost always follow slowly building a foundation for that breakthrough.
Now, if there was one breakthrough in my life that changed my life and got me back on track, it was when I decided to hold a fundraiser for spinal cord injuries. And I was working with the Spinal Cord Society at that time; I had a local chapter.
I held a drug-free power lifting event back in Pennsylvania, a small town in western Pennsylvania, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. We called it, or I called it, the Eastern United States Power Lifting Championships. And it was the first positive thing I had done in a couple of years.
I mean, I pretty much vegetated after my injury, and I put together this event, and it turned out we had people from all over the East Coast, and some people from the Midwest came to this relatively small town, and we got local newspaper coverage, all local, lots of local radio coverage, and sponsors.
And after it was all over, I realized my brain still worked. And that yes, it got me back on track. And I didn't go from stagnation to being in the stratosphere that day, but gradually it got me going, and I had ups and downs after that, but mostly ups. Overall I am way ahead in many ways now than I was when I was hurt, or before I was hurt.
Read More...When was the lowest point in your life, and how did you change your life path to one of victory over obstacles?
Ralph Zuranski: I decided to turn away from my faith. I still remember the first day that I didn’t go to Mass. I decided I would go surfing instead. I was sitting out in the ocean and it was the time of the movie Jaws and I just kept on thinking about this big giant shark opening up its mouth and just consuming me, like the whale consumed Jonah.
Sitting out on my board as punishment for turning away from God, and when nothing happened like that, that sent me on a spiral on getting involved with sex and drugs and rock and roll, and psychedelics.
It completely evolved into a situation where I was smoking pot all the time. I was living with a guy that was into coke and all the horrible things involved in freebasing coke and I saw all that. Ultimately it led me to a point where I was just so depressed and I was ready to kill myself. I still had that problem with depression. Even though I had money, sex and drugs I was just so depressed.
The idea of training a child in the way they should go and when they are old they won’t depart from it. I know my parents were praying for me and spontaneously at the lowest point of my life when I was ready to kill myself, out of the blue, subconsciously I started saying the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary.
That seemed to put me in a situation where I was able to find my relationship with God as either accept the free gift of salvation or just kill myself. Thankfully God gave me the grace and the faith to make the right choice.
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16. Competence starts with guaranteeing your work.
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Ralph Zuranski: Would you experience service to others as a source of joy?
Dave Kekich: Yes, I do. But I actually try to do it profitably. And the reason I do that is it is more durable. One example is the life extension pursuits I have. We believe we have a pretty strong team, by the way, and have a really strong group of scientists on our board, and we have a very strong management team and a really strong team as advisors.
And things aren't just automatically going to happen, because of the law of accelerating returns. Well, they will happen, but they will happen when people make them happen if it is not something that is on remote control.
And we think we are going to make it happen a lot sooner, and by doing that we believe we are going to be able to save millions, if not tens of hundreds of millions of lives of people who were dying prematurely. Now, if you try to do something to save yourself, and try to extend your own life, you just aren't going to be able to pull it off.
There is just, you don't have enough resources. In order to make this work you have to make it work for the world. You better make it work for humanity. And that is what I mean by durability, and that carries over to all kinds of other things.
You have heard the old adage over and over about you can give a man a fish and you can feed him for a day, and you can teach him to fish, and you feed him for life. That is a philosophy I like to follow. It is more sustainable, and again, it is more durable.
A lot of people want to be a martyr. They stand up and they say, "Well, gee, I am servicing others," and often that is self-defeating, because you run out of resources. In order to give you have to create, because if you are not creating, you won't have anything to give.
Read More...15. If it's not proprietary, it won't work. Pay only on performance. Proprietary interest is one of the most powerful forces ever known. Whatever you reinforce or reward, you get more of.
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Ralph Zuranski: Are you slow to reverse or revise an important decision?
Dave Kekich: I am slow, but I am willing. Once I make a decision, then I have thought it out. Hopefully, I have thought it out, if I do what I say I should do. But once you make a decision, if you do it the right way, it is probably right, but it is not necessarily right. You should spend more time changing it than you did making it.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, how were you able to overcome your doubts and fears? It must have been pretty catastrophic when you got paralyzed.
Dave Kekich: Well, it was, and I didn't overcome it at first. I ended up just facing them. But not just fears from being paralyzed. It was fears from making a sales call, or fears from asking somebody out on a date. There are a lot of fears we face in our lives.
I mean, you just have to face them. But when you do, you are going to find most of your fears are over-hyped. They really weren't that bad.
Ralph Zuranski: Would you readily forgive those who upset, offended, and oppose you?
Dave Kekich: I think for the people who upset, offend or oppose me, there isn't anything to forgive. There is always somebody that is going to oppose you. You have different opinions, and people feel just as strongly about theirs as you do yours.
So just because they are opposing you doesn't mean there is something to forgive, and people offend other people all the time. It is just their nature; I don't think it is anything to forgive. People upset you from time to time. I think the thing that is a forgivable offense is when you are cheated, you are lied to, you are stolen from, and you have physical harm.
Or when someone does those things to somebody you love. That is a whole different category. And in those cases I try, but I have to say it is very difficult.
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