Glenn Jacobs: WWE Chokeslam Legend KANE Turned Mayor [Business, mindset, entrepreneur, disruptors]
Rob is joined by wrestling champion turned Mayor of Knoxville County, UAS Glenn Jacobs, otherwise known as Kane. Glenn takes us through his epic 30-year career with WWE, his successes and failures and how he ended up running for office and winning! Tune in today for this insightful interview with an industry legend.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Q.What would you say you most identify with? (In reference to his many different job titles e.g Professional wrestler, Actor and Mayor)
A.I don’t know if I could say anything is more important than the other. I think that all too often we judge people by what they do instead of talking to people and taking them that way.
- Is there any part of your journey/career that you enjoyed most?
- I really enjoyed wrestling, it was wonderful to be out in front of crowds and it is very gratifying when people come up and want to shake my hand. That is amazing, touching people's lives emotionally. Now in a different role, I am having a lot of fun in a different way, I feel like I am having an impact on my community.
Q.How did you get into becoming Mayor?
- I’ve always been interested in government politics, one day I woke up and thought that I can run for office, and win. It is the idea that you can have an impact on your community and you can’t always make things turn out certain ways but you can certainly have an influence on how they turn out.
Q.Have you had this vision of having many different careers from an early age?
- My life has been very much like how Mike Tyson described “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. Every time I’ve had a plan to do something it fell apart and other things popped up. I do think, having a goal in mind is very important, but life is very complex and you have to be flexible and realize that life won’t always go the way you want.
Q.Do you have any fear of failing in a career?
A.Failure is a huge obstacle. I have failed at a lot of stuff, the more you fail the more you realize that that's not the end of the story, you’re going to be able to come back from that and go on. In many cases, failure is a positive, because if you never fail then that means that you did not try and you’re not stepping out of your comfort zone.
Q.How did you settle on the character ‘Kane”?
A.We talk about failures, I certainly had some. There is no prescribed path to get to WWE everybody does it differently. I would drive 200 miles to work for free just to get experience, it wasn’t much fun! Eventually, I networked and worked my way u and was able to sign with WWE. I had several characters that weren’t very successful the character Kane was then created for me and that was my big break. You have failures, but on the way, you learn things and I was able to prove to WWE that I was an asset to the company.
Q.What made you succeed in that career for thirty years when other people only last a few years?
A.I was very fortunate, I didn’t get hurt very often. It’s also about your attitude, having the right attitude takes you a long way realising that you’re contributing to the company. Too often people go to their employer and ask ‘what’s in it for me?’ what they should be doing is asking ‘what can I do for my company?’ That is what makes you valuable. My ability to put my company's interest first was why I was able to stay around for so long.
- What changes did you want to make as Mayor and what is your vision?
- A couple of priorities that we’re working on are mental health and substance abuse in our community similar to many other communities across the USA. Those two things are at the root of other issues that we’re facing. Another thing is looking at how we can prepare our workforce for the rapidly evolving global economy. If you look at all the things happening in the global economy, innovation has become the driving economic engine and how do we prepare our workforce for that and take advantage of that?
Q.What is the best advice that you’ve ever received?
A.I am the one responsible for my life and nobody else is. It doesn’t matter if things happen to me that ain't my fault, I am the one that is going to have to deal with it, and I have to take ownership of things.
- Is there one thing wrong with the world, that you would love to change?
- We don’t talk to each other. We scream and yell and each other a lot and we all have a different viewpoint, and we don’t listen enough.
Q.What does the word disruptive mean to you?
A.Concepts and ideas which come in and disrupt the current economic paradigm, but actually end up improving it.
BEST MOMENTS
“In life a lot of times, the things that happen to you, you don’t have any control over. What you think are tragedies at the time, really turn out the be the best thing that could’ve happened to you”
“I’ll wrestle anyone if it’s for a good cause!”
“My toughest opponent was dealing with how to overcome the fear of failure”
[Business, mindset, entrepreneur, disruptors]
VALUABLE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE HOST
Rob Moore is an author of 9 business books, 5 UK bestsellers, holds 3 world records for public speaking, entrepreneur, property investor, and property educator. Author of the global bestseller “Life Leverage” Host of UK’s No.1 business podcast “Disruptors”
“If you don't risk anything, you risk everything”
CONTACT METHOD
Rob’s official website: https://robmoore.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robmooreprogressive/?ref=br_rs
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/robmoore1979
ABOUT THE GUEST
Glenn Jacobs is an American professional wrestler, actor, author, businessman, and politician. He began his professional wrestling career on the independent circuit in 1992, Following his debut as Kane, Jacobs went on to become a three-time world champion. Outside of professional wrestling, Jacobs has made numerous guest appearances in film and on television and in March 2017, Jacobs announced that he was running for the mayoral seat of Knox County, Tennessee as a Republican and on August 2, went on to win the general election.