In this episode of Tactical Empire, John Ragno opens up about his journey from public service to starting his own mental health practice and vending business. He discusses the key mental health challenges men face, including self-worth, anxiety, and finding purpose in life. John shares powerful insights into balancing logic with emotion, overcoming struggles, and the role of community support in healing and growth.
In this episode of Tactical Empire, John Ragno opens up about his journey from public service to starting his own mental health practice and vending business. He discusses the key mental health challenges men face, including self-worth, anxiety, and finding purpose in life. John shares powerful insights into balancing logic with emotion, overcoming struggles, and the role of community support in healing and growth.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to John Ragno
03:03 Transitioning from Public Service to Private Practice
06:06 Understanding Men's Mental Health Challenges
09:09 Self-Worth vs. Self-Esteem: A Deep Dive
11:50 Strategies for Managing Anxiety and Excitement
14:45 Finding Purpose and Balance in Life
18:01 The Importance of Community and Support
20:54 Navigating Logic and Emotion in Problem Solving
23:58 Future Aspirations and Goals for John Ragno
@shawn_rider_ (00:01)
What's up tactical empire. This is Sean. We are joined by one of our inner circle guys. His name is John Ragnos. He was actually a referral from another inner circle guy, which we always appreciate getting referrals. The interesting thing is we normally know nothing about these guys when they entered the group. but if they are an arm's length away from someone that's already in the group, ⁓ we have full faith that they're going to come in and learn the system, learn the.
the foundational principles that we believe in. And then the first time we went to a meetup, John was there and I was at a coffee shop and he walked in like we knew each other and that we were buddies and I to ask what his name was because sometimes it's tough to know who's who. So John, I appreciate your friendly demeanor at the meetup and walking up and introducing yourself to me. So welcome to the show, John.
John Ragno (00:51)
Thanks for having me.
@shawn_rider_ (00:52)
Perfect. Let's just dive right into it. Tell the people like who you are, what you do, kind of lay the foundation for what your life looks like. And then we'll kind of dive into some of the deeper topics of what you have going on what you're working on.
John Ragno (01:06)
Yeah, so I have been a career civil servant more than anything else. In the last couple years I made a change. I was working in public schools for a long time. ⁓ Decided that wasn't really for me. We can get into details of why public schools doesn't work for a lot of people anymore. ⁓ But I decided I was going to move into my own private practice. So I've been managing a ⁓
my own clinical mental health practice right now. ⁓ As I was deciding to leave, I thought I needed something else. So I started evaluating businesses, finally settled on going into vending, which I bought a route from somebody else. And then I've slowly been upgrading it and adding to it and going from there.
@shawn_rider_ (01:58)
Okay, can you tell the people, are you married? Do you have kids? What does life look like outside of your work?
John Ragno (02:04)
Yeah, married high school sweetheart. We've been together over 20 years now. We got two kids, eight and 10. Honestly, my family life is everything to me. That's rockin' and rollin'. I think as a therapist, feel like that's where I put my effort towards most in life. So yeah.
@shawn_rider_ (02:31)
Effort towards family or effort towards just helping others.
John Ragno (02:36)
I mean, helping others is kind of all of who I am. So it's like, as I kind of branch into business, helping others is kind of still the biggest part of what makes up me. know, like you said, coming up to you at the coffee shop, like to me, got, like, the best thing, the best ⁓ day to me is going and talking to people and just getting to know people, no matter who and what the situation is. ⁓ You know, it's...
I feel like it's odd to say ⁓ nowadays, but I love people. ⁓ I genuinely want to help people figure out the best way for them to live their lives, which is different than what it is for me.
@shawn_rider_ (03:10)
you
Sure. ⁓ Well, us introverts definitely appreciate you people, people, you people, people that because we would not go up to other people in public to introduce ourselves. We appreciate you. So how does that work in, you I don't want to say juggling personal professional life, but therapists, right? You're there, listen to other people's stories. You're there to help them, guide them, maybe give them some perspective.
John Ragno (03:25)
Yeah.
@shawn_rider_ (03:45)
how does that translate to what you're trying to do in your own life, right? Like you went from being in a public school system as counselor, therapist, whatever it may be, into private practice, therapy, into, hey, ⁓ I'm gonna run a vending machine business on the side, which we could argue that that helps people, but a business is there to support the business owner as well. So how do you juggle or ⁓ kind of flow from
helping others to making sure that these things also benefit you as a human being.
John Ragno (04:18)
So the vending to me was not, nobody wakes up and is like, I want to do vending. It's like, many people are doing businesses that they never thought that they'd be doing? ⁓ To me, ⁓ think that vending itself ⁓ is a logistics company that meets hospitality. It's kind of like when we think of the Airbnb world, it's not necessarily just real estate, it's hospitality just as much. ⁓ And so.
I thought that it was a really good thing for my wife and I because we both left working in public schools at the exact same time. ⁓ Yeah, so it was a challenging year. know, lot of change that happened there. ⁓ But I thought that that was something that kind of matched like some of the other parts of my personality, like as far as being able to systematize things, ⁓ to come up with some strategies. So it kind of gave me a little bit of itch that way.
@shawn_rider_ (04:52)
jeez.
John Ragno (05:13)
I don't think that this is probably the business I'm going to end up with. It's going to be one of those things that I'm going to build and do well for a while and then be happy with where it's at or maybe it goes away and somebody else takes it over. ⁓ to me, think trying to help people, getting into business, I think that helping people works just the same way. As an owner, when you have employees,
@shawn_rider_ (05:27)
Mm-hmm.
John Ragno (05:41)
they're part of your family just as much. You care about them, you want to see them do well. At least, not everybody may think that way. But for me, I would love to be able to have ⁓ a business one day that I had enough employees that I'm worried about their livelihood. Because ⁓ to me, think that that's kind what makes the world go around, is that we're all working towards a common good ⁓ to everybody else.
@shawn_rider_ (05:49)
Sure.
Sure. Now we have male listeners, we have female listeners, but at the meetups, we have the male inner circle, right? So it's a bunch of men. And we had discussed, you and I had discussed ⁓ struggles that we see in men in today's world. Why don't you just start ⁓ brain dumping or word vomiting, some of your general thoughts on working with men in mental health and just counseling and therapy and.
And what are some of the common denominators and struggles that you see from men in particular? And then we'll kind of see where that goes. And we're gonna talk about strategies on what you help them implement. But what do you see as some common denominators that men particularly struggle with in the year 2025?
John Ragno (06:52)
I think that the idea of what a man really is has kind of changed quite a bit in the last 20, 30 years. I think that when we were at the meetup, you and I had talked about the idea of perfectionism being on the rise since like the early 90s. And it's been a pretty steady ⁓ research ⁓ field ⁓ of going into that. There's some people that are really good into that space already. ⁓ But I think that ⁓ men in particular are really honed in on to that because it's
⁓ as much as, know, men really do struggle more with self-worth. And I think one of the biggest things that we see in counseling is that people are really working towards their self-esteem, which is different than self-worth. And I think, you know, in the group we kind of do talk about like knowing what your value is, but a lot of people end up working on their ⁓ self-esteem, which is all done through comparison.
So it's like how our ego is built, how we get that internal drive. All of that is really good. ⁓ It's helpful, ⁓ but it can't be the sole part of what makes up our identity. And so a lot of men are trying to be everything, do everything. ⁓ You had used a quote once during one of the, or a piece of research that ⁓ millennial men are using, are having three times as much time with their families. ⁓
I hadn't heard that one, but it totally makes sense ⁓ based off of what I see. ⁓ Men are trying to be more and do more and be everything, and there's just only so much that one person can be. And so at a certain point, men are getting so burnt out. There was this piece, I can't remember where the research was from, but it was like men around age 35 generally start burning out drastically, and they start getting adrenal fatigue where they're
@shawn_rider_ (08:32)
Thank
John Ragno (08:47)
their energy levels drop down. Like nowadays we equate that to lot of testosterone stuff. But realistically it's that they've been grinding for such a long period of time trying to be everything, do everything, and then all of a sudden they realize they can't. ⁓ A bulk of my practice is ⁓ younger men. So like a lot of that are coming out of college ⁓ and they're feeling kind of lost right now. And so they're not exactly sure what to do. ⁓
@shawn_rider_ (09:10)
⁓
John Ragno (09:16)
School has been going well. School went really well for them. They did okay in high school, did okay in college. And then all of a sudden now there's no roadmap for it anymore. And so I think that one of the things that I work with them a lot on is that battling the difference between anxiety and excitement and how to use those two to get to your kind of full potential rather than just letting them be a barrier.
@shawn_rider_ (09:41)
Yeah,
I wanna come back to that, but I don't wanna jump past something that you said there about self-esteem and self-worth being two different things. Can you just dive a little bit deeper there on self-worth? You kinda mentioned self-esteem is bred through comparison, but kinda go deeper there and then how does that differ from self-worth?
John Ragno (10:01)
Yeah, so the model that I kind of work at, it's like if you can imagine a three-way Venn diagram, you've got self-esteem, you've got self-compassion, and then at the bottom you've got self-confidence. ⁓ self-compassion is all about acceptance and understanding, kind of the way that you, the biggest thing that happens within there is kind of your internal dialogue. What's being said.
So like in therapy, a lot of times I'm listening to the words that are coming out of people's mouths rather than anything else because it's the choice words that we use that help us, like help me be able to see what's going on internally because it's like I'm not a mind reader but I can certainly pick up on the words that you're using that give me influence to how you're talking to yourself, how your, what lens that you're looking at things through. So like one therapy modality is schema.
And so it's like what lens do you see the world through? And so a lot of times within self compassion, you can kind of see what the world that they see through. The last one was self confidence. So the idea behind this is like, we talk about it in the group a lot, but it's like this idea of like taking reps. It's not necessarily a matter of like having to have it be successful, but sometimes you're just taking reps towards getting better.
and that better does not actually have to be a qualifier or anything like that. It's just that you're taking reps at it. So like, if your swing's off in baseball and you go into the batting cage, you're working at it, you're just going at it, rather than just having all the judgment or like, ⁓ I did good reps, I did this or did that. Like, we all have those days that we go to the gym that feel like just shit, you know, like you're going, you're feeling sluggish or whatever like that, but the point of it is that you're going to take the rep. And so,
rather than comparing to, I should be here, or I would be preferred if I was in this kind of state, you're just taking the rep and going at it. And so where that comes in helpful a lot is with people with anxiety, is that if they can start to take a different purview, a different lens, and then they can start taking reps at that mindset. So a common one to think about is like,
Think about it as like the situation's a vector point. You got this piece in the center and then you got away and towards. And so if you are taking reps towards the person that you want to be, that's pieces of self-confidence rather than self-esteem, rather than it just being I need to make this successful. And so I think that a lot of men really struggle with I need to make this successful rather than I need to take the reps towards what I want to be rather than where I need to be right now.
@shawn_rider_ (12:46)
We could go ahead and end the podcast right now. That was really nice. So when you're sitting on the other side of the table and you're talking to men, you don't fix this in one session. I don't know if you meet with most of your clients weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, but how do you actually work men, especially listeners that may not work with you or may not have a therapist? Again, we do everything. So where the hell do we have time to sit down and talk about our feelings, right? What are some things and tactics that you use?
pun intended for the tactical empire, right? They're trying to build the life that they are going to feel most fulfilled in, not perfection, but fulfilled, right? We will all have struggles, but struggling and suffering are two different things. So what tactical advice do you build upon? And it may be layers, but where does your mind go when I ask that question?
John Ragno (13:41)
Purpose. So if you figure out your purpose, know, Nietzsche said that if you can figure out the why, you can endure any how. And ⁓ if you can figure out why you're doing something, it gives you a great
layer of, it's not just motivation, that's something that's going to keep you going forward. If you can go back to that, you know, it's like we think of like in business you have your mission statement or like your vision board or vision, you know, whatever that is, you can go to that. And so I think for many people that's the kind of the piece that I try to work with people on the most. ⁓
Gandhi used this quote of keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words, words positive because you behave, behaviors, behaviors positive because they become your habits, habits positive because your values, because they become your values, values destiny. And so I kind of take that approach towards things. Like I already talked about the idea of words, the ones that we use. So like that's where we're building the foundation. But it's also backwards design. So for me, I want people to be able to come up with, it sounds like a really morbid activity, but
Come up with your eulogy. What do you want people to say about you when you're no longer there? And then you backwards plan it. If you know what you want people to say about you when you're gone, you have that choice every day to be that person. And so that goes down into your values. That goes down into your habits. That goes down into your behaviors. And so if you can think of it in that way, it all feeds down. And it's not necessarily for the idea of legacy, but it's a matter of how you want to live your life.
@shawn_rider_ (15:16)
I like that. We'll add that into the next meetup as an exercise ⁓ noted. So what does, what does John Ragnow do for himself? Right? Each of these guys come into the group. talk about, ⁓ you know, time blocking morning routines, you setting your laying your days out, what type of day are you going to have, you know, free days, buffer days, work days, as, as Dan Sullivan would say, ⁓ what are you working on and how do you put yourself in?
John Ragno (15:21)
Yeah. ⁓
@shawn_rider_ (15:45)
not what are you working on? me let me back up a second. What do you do regularly that keeps you ⁓ straight and narrow for lack of a better term? I'm sure you have bad days, bad thoughts, things like that. But like, we put these guardrails up and very we should kind of ebb and flow between like our our ideal lower limit and our ideal upper limit. What do you do? Do you prioritize physical activity? Do you prioritize meditation, journaling? What is it for you?
John Ragno (16:14)
Yeah, so, you know, like we use the four F's. Like I've used a different exercise for many years. ⁓ So it's like in counseling, it's called the balance wheel. I'm sure you can look at anybody can look it up. ⁓ But it's basically like you have a circle and it breaks up into like different functions of what your life looks like or what you want it to look like. And it's like kind of a measuring tool. And what I look at is not necessarily how well things are going in it.
So it's a one to 10 Likert scale and it has different areas and different facets. ⁓ And for me, I've changed how it looks over the years because different things need different levels of attention or different things need to be kind of monitored. And so what I do is I do that, I used to do it monthly ⁓ where I would track my attention towards these things ⁓ because...
sometimes like you said, ebbs and flows, like sometimes you get a great opportunity in career or finances and you just have to take it. And it's gonna take a lot of your attention away. But I know for myself, I can't live with being a 10 at attention to one thing for too long because something else is gonna suffer. And so for me, it's all about a balancing act. And so like, I feel like that's one of the things I do really well is that having the awareness of what
what is kind of running out a little bit of a deficit and then trying to bring my attention back to it. Because it's okay that it gets out of whack for a little bit, but it's not okay if your family's at a three, four months on an end. But if it's like you have to, before going into vending, I was a general contractor and ⁓ there was times where I had big jobs that I was making big money that I had to
I had to take that and my time was taken away. But I knew on the other end, I would have to allot for some time for getting back to my other things. ⁓ So it's not a real like crystallized answer because it varies for me. So like right now in this season of where I'm at, health and fitness is kind of taking a little bit of a step back. ⁓ You know, I've had a lot of health issues ⁓ for some years and now I'm kind of trying to get that back. ⁓
you know, ebb and flow. That's not a real solid answer for you, but it's more of another technique.
@shawn_rider_ (18:41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm looking at this balance. Well, I've actually never heard of it. So I pulled it up here. Is it is it kind of like the circle that has spiritual allergy, ⁓ health, energy, career, business, money, relationships, lifestyle, hobby, personal growth, social friends, okay.
John Ragno (18:54)
Yeah. Yeah. And so like
I'll change it. So like ⁓ I can't remember what we did. It was a couple of weeks ago. But ⁓ we were talking about what could we do. One thing in each of the areas. And like one of mine was I wanted to be fun. I wanted to be a little bit more fun in my family. And so like that was something I started tracking within there. How much attention was I putting towards being fun? And then it became something. OK, I got to put my attention to this.
And so like that took away from, I think mine that I replaced it with was environment because my environment had improved where I didn't really need to track that anymore. ⁓ And so each of those different things have their ⁓ benefit to them. know, like spirituality said, like to me, that's something that like I track quite a bit. And it's not necessarily, I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual. And I think that ⁓ one of the ways I look at that one is that how
how much am I excited for life versus how much am I fearful? So it's like this idea of fear versus faith. ⁓ I think over the years, I've had a lot of things. I'm a therapist for a reason. ⁓ There aren't too many of us that come into the field that are unscathed ⁓ of problems. So for me, I've always tried to figure out a way to choose faith as much as I can over the fear. ⁓
@shawn_rider_ (20:21)
Mm-hmm.
John Ragno (20:21)
And that's why for me, I love working with anxiety because that's all anxiety is, just fear of thoughts.
@shawn_rider_ (20:32)
Let's go into that. ⁓ Entrepreneurs, investors, business owners, high achieving corporate executives, or just anyone that views themselves as a high achiever. What do you hear from them? How can they start backing themselves off the ledge? How do you talk them through the framing, the storytelling? What linguistics and language do you use when you hear fear-based ⁓ narratives?
John Ragno (21:00)
So first is bringing awareness to it. If you can't bring awareness to the fear, because most of the time, especially men, don't recognize that it's fear. It's really easy to feel angry. It's really easy to feel sad. But people don't recognize that they're afraid. People are more afraid than anything else. And they don't recognize it. And so they displace that emotion to something else. So the ability to be able to
identify that what you're afraid of and then being able to change the lens of the narrative that you're telling yourself. Again, anxiety is all things that are based off of things that you don't actually know for fact. They're things that you're either looking towards or looking to run away from or that you're speculating on. They're not based out of fact. That's anxiety. And the same can go for excitement too. So I think that the
problem for entrepreneurs is not just anxiety, but it's excitement. it's like, I fall victim to this one just as much as anybody else is that like, you hear something and then you go and investigate it and you put a ton of time into it and then you realize either you go with that thing or you don't. So it's managing excitement and managing anxiety. so they're the same, to me, they're the same thing. It's just the narrative that goes along with it.
@shawn_rider_ (22:28)
Okay, next step in managing excitement or anxiety, right? We have awareness, we understand ⁓ trying to peel away the onion and figure out what that fear actually is. And maybe it's Socratic questioning, why do I think this? Why do I think that? Why do I think this? ⁓ But then how do we manage that? For me, I talk about like the time between like the trigger.
and then the realization and then implementing this, like stopping, like stop saying that story. And I literally do ask like, is this a fact? Like what I just said, is it a fact? And if it's not, then I need to have that internal dialogue. And it's just a conversation. So like how many people, and then this goes back to, I think it was ⁓ the happiness hypothesis, Jonathan Hyatt. ⁓
John Ragno (22:55)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yep.
and ⁓
@shawn_rider_ (23:21)
I actually I don't know why that book doesn't get talked about enough. I don't know if you've read it and if you like it. I don't know. It was impactful for me.
John Ragno (23:25)
Yeah, I do. I like his
work. think he's a little snarky, so I think that he doesn't appeal to both sides.
@shawn_rider_ (23:35)
Yeah, well, I don't know who he I don't know who he actually is. But the book I was like, this is a this is a deep, deep book that is easily readable. ⁓ And I think I think he had really good steps and explanations of things. And for me, it was like, who's actually doing the talking in your head? I was like, yeah, shit, there's like, there's quite a few people inside that head. So who's dominating the conversation? And how can I bring forward ⁓ the more logical or rational person, the person that can be a little bit more even keeled and
John Ragno (23:41)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
@shawn_rider_ (24:04)
Maybe that I mean, you've maybe heard me say this in the group, especially on the stoicism calls like I'm definitely not going to be the most excitable person you ever meet. But I'm also I'm also not going to be the most like mundane depressed, anxious person you'll ever meet to like, again, I have guardrails and there's definitely I have moments ⁓ on either side of the spectrum. But like I just try and be like, cool, and collected, not like the board cool, and collected. But it's interesting where like
John Ragno (24:13)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
@shawn_rider_ (24:33)
some big shit will happen, like big problems will happen, whether they're financial big problems or just people problems. And like, have the feelings that people have, but it takes me sometimes five minutes, sometimes five hours, but definitely a day. And I'm just like, heart rate's normal. I'm not losing sleep. But then small things I can get very excitable about. And it's like, I'm not upset about it, but like,
John Ragno (24:59)
Mm-hmm.
@shawn_rider_ (25:02)
Why are these little things bothering me? like, so, yeah, go ahead. How do you think through, I don't even know what the question was there. I was just talking about like stepping out of the edge and then pulling forward that person that can be a bit more logical and rational. I don't know if that's the right phrases that you would use, but where's mine go?
John Ragno (25:05)
It's really common.
Yeah,
so this is a different therapy modality. It's another Venn diagram, unfortunately. But it's the idea of states of mind. So we have two different sides. You got your logic mind and you got your emotion mind. And where it goes in the middle is called wise mind. It's a little too fluffy for me. So I like controlled competency. And there, it's like everything's kind of clicking on all cylinders. You can make ⁓ emotionally there.
you're emotionally available to making logical decisions. you know, overlap, the goal is to try to make that a little bit wider. ⁓ But for most people, they are not balanced on what their emotional mind and logic mind is. It's like one side might be, one might be bigger, the other one might be small. And so for a lot of people, what'll end up happening is that if they tackle their life that way, where they're going, approaching it with much more logic, what'll...
what will happen is that they'll attack it with logic logic logic logic logic until they can't do it anymore and then it's kind of like the way I describe it is that it's like a sun exploding before it gets before it explodes it gets really really big and then all of a sudden it shrinks back down to nothing and then explodes so those that are really logical will go logic logic logic logic logic until they can't make sense of it anymore and then they'll break down and those become extremely emotional
@shawn_rider_ (26:43)
I mean, you didn't have to call me out, Like, what the fuck was that? Shit!
John Ragno (26:50)
It's real common one, especially for men, is that you'll approach problems with problem solving so much and then it's just problem solving, problem solving, problem solving. And so it's like, you know, when I do couples work, which I love doing couples work on top of working with anxiety, those are my two favorite things to do. Just because, you know, my wife's my best friend, loved my life, I couldn't live my life without her.
So I want people to have that in whatever way that looks for them. But one of the biggest complaints that I hear is that men always want to solve their problems. They just want to be heard. And so we constantly are logically, logically, logically, logically. Sometimes you just got to sit with, this sucks. This is what it is. How do I endure the problem that I'm in?
@shawn_rider_ (27:45)
So how do you help the men's side of that? How do you help the male that is the problem solver and the wife just wants to be heard?
John Ragno (27:54)
One of the biggest, the easiest and best ⁓ things to do is how can I be helpful in this scenario? Just ask, ask your, your significant other, how can I be helpful in this? Because they might, they may want to have problem solving. They might just want to be heard. They might want something else. And so I think one of the biggest errors that ⁓ we do is go in and with the assumption of the way that things need to be solved.
for someone else, ⁓ know, like speaking to couples, ⁓ they're like working on something like communication or intimacy. One of the things like they'll look for like tell me how to be intimate with my partner and it's like, not necessarily in a sexual way, but just how do we get increased intimacy? And it's like, I'm not going to tell you how to do that because what it's going to be is going to be different than the way I look at what intimacy looks like.
So they have to figure out ways to create what that looks like for them. ⁓ And so part of it is taking a deeper dive. And for men, if it's your logic mind all the time, how do you dive into some of that emotion? Bring it up and bring that so that it's a little bit more balanced. It doesn't need to be completely not like, you can still remain more logic minded than you are emotion.
⁓ Because I think one of the biggest problems that I see in counseling is that people try to change who they are completely and who Sean is is different than who John is. And I don't want Sean to be John. And so figuring out what the balance for you is is gonna be important for you. Hopefully that makes sense.
@shawn_rider_ (29:45)
I like it. I like it. think we can dig deeper on another episode about that. But let's let's turn it and put it on you. ⁓ What comes next for john ragno? What are you working on? What do you see for the next six to 12 months for you personally?
John Ragno (30:02)
You know, I keep saying that I need to stabilize out, and I've been saying that for about six months or more, ⁓ just because leaving public education, ⁓ stable job, and then going into ⁓ private practice and then vending, I probably need to stabilize out, for, I'm all gas kind of guy. ⁓ And so one of the things I gotta look at is that, get more access to money because,
know, vending is one of those things that it's going to be an acquisition. ⁓ It's really hard to grow organically when you're starting out. ⁓ So I got to figure out how to do that. And I really at this point, I'm looking to create some more skills for myself so that I can grow in different parts of business. You know, I'm not exactly sure. I think that I'm managing excitement right now.
because it just feels like that there's so much available to me. I've got some big visions of what I'd like the next 10 years to look like. ⁓ You know, I love counseling, ⁓ but I'm only helping one person at a time, and that's just not enough for me. And so I'd like to be able to get into a place where I can help more people because, you know, I got into counseling for a reason, like I said, and so, you know, my goal is to make
the world a better place in whatever way I can. ⁓ And when I decided to go into ⁓ more of the business realm, I was reading the book for Rockefeller, the Titan book. ⁓ And it was really interesting because it was that John D. Rockefeller thought of himself as like you've talked about the steward of money. But his goal behind it was that how do I give back to the world as much as I can? Because his best job was to earn.
I'm not going to be that guy, but I want to be able to earn so that I can give back to the things that I want to see improve. Like I said, I couldn't see education improving where I was at, so I'd like to do something bigger.
@shawn_rider_ (32:14)
yeah. How can, if people actually like what you're saying here and they, which they should, cause I, I need this just as much as anybody else. How can people reach out to you? know you kind of want to scale and meet with people, but you're still currently working with people one-on-one. So, do you have an open book of business? ⁓ and if so, how can men in particular, ⁓ get a hold of you?
John Ragno (32:35)
Yeah, my Instagram is progressbrothperfection, ⁓ LLC. You can DM me there. ⁓ My email is johnragnolmhc at Gmail. ⁓ So anybody can reach out to me there. ⁓ I'm always looking to help people however I can, in whatever ways I can.
@shawn_rider_ (32:58)
Love it. John, anything good for the masses? ⁓ You know, we get a whopping billions of people to listen to our podcast. But no, we do have actually a pretty active ⁓ group of listeners. So anything that you kind of just want to ⁓ general comments that may help the people that are listening.
John Ragno (33:19)
Yeah, I gotta say I've been very happy joining the group. And to anybody that's listening, if they join this group, it's great. But I think that ⁓ the idea of community is just something that's really ⁓ important to me. Because like I said, coming from education.
public service, it's nice to be able to talk to other people about the things that they're working on and it's been very helpful ⁓ because you you're only limited by the experience that you know and having a community around you ⁓ not only supports you and to get into what you need to do gives you access to the idea of
what's out there, but it also gives that piece of accountability to other people to try to help move forward. I think that community is just one of those things that is such an underrepresented piece in society right now, so yeah.
@shawn_rider_ (34:17)
Love it. Well, you didn't have to promote us, my man, but we do appreciate it. I promoted you at the beginning that we loved adding you into the group, but you know, John is in the group. So whether you're in the group or thinking about getting in the group, I mean, these are the type of men that we're bringing in. We've told the guys in the group that we are not going to put more than a hundred men in the group with our 90 day accelerator. We are way more strict about who we're allowing to transition.
into the group. want men that are progressing forward. We want men ⁓ that are coachable and we want men that can serve and help the other men in the group and John is certainly one with them. So John, hopefully we can bring you back on again. Hopefully we'll see you in Little Rock at the end of September. We look forward to that. So appreciate you jumping on the podcast today, my man. No problem.
John Ragno (35:01)
Thanks for having me.