I sat down to write my recap of this Solex Podcast episode after listening to Kaj Larsen talk about success, leadership, learning, failure, gratitude, and what it really takes to keep moving forward.

And before I even got very far, I had a bit of an epiphany.

I realized there was some important business I wanted to handle first.

Because after nearly 11 years with AO Scan, I have learned that when you choose a technology to use, share or build a business around, you are choosing more than the technology.

You are choosing the people behind it too.

And I don’t think we talk about that enough.

I started with AO Scan when it looked very different than it does today. My first system was a large mobile device at roughly a $38,000 investment. I have been here through the evolution into mobile technology, through new features, new applications and an extraordinary amount of innovation. At that time, it was the masterpieces of masterpieces created by Loran Swensen. Fast forward 11 years later, I continue to be amazed at the new versions of AO Scan that continue to created.

I have watched AO Scan change.

I have watched Solex grow.

And as the founder of AO Scan Global, I have had the privilege of helping people around the world discover, learn and build with this technology.

So yes, the technology matters enormously to me.

But so do the people steering it.

Loran Swensen: “I Will Never Be Done”

One of my favorite things I have ever heard Loran Swensen say—and I’ve heard him say it on more than one occasion—is:

“I will never be done.”

I love that.

Actually, I identify with it.

Never done improving. Never done questioning. Never done looking at what is possible next.

Always pushing the envelope.

Always looking for the next innovation.

Always asking how something that is already good could become even better.

That is my jam.

If I am going to spend more than a decade representing a technology, I want the person behind that technology to be somebody who refuses to believe the work is finished.

Because wellness technology shouldn’t stand still.

Neither should we.

*”The spark I see in Loran – the drive to never stop searching, learning and discovering,, –  is something I recognize deeply in my own insatiable nature when it comes to health and wellness. I absolutely love it. As we say in the frequency world…I resonate with that for sure. Paige Maure Wheeler

And Then There Is Kaj Larsen

Kaj brings a different kind of energy to Solex—and one that I appreciate just as much.

He loves learning. He quotes studies like they’re as simple as reciting the alphabet. I understand and appreciate that level of commitment to science-based knowledge.

And I mean he loves learning.

Listen to him talk for very long and you realize that his education did not end with an MBA or a law degree. Books, business, failure, leadership, conversations, experience—he seems to be collecting lessons everywhere he goes.

I always think…. Kaj reads all the books so the rest of us don’t have to.

Okay, we should probably still read some of them, but if we miss the good stuff, he’ll be sure to bring it up..

But I love having a CEO who has absorbed so much information and then has the ability to pull out the principle underneath it and explain it in a way that makes you think.

And that is exactly what happened in this Solex Podcast episode.

As I listened, I thought: This is one of the reasons I like the company I represent.

Not because Kaj was giving us a sales pitch.

Quite the opposite.

He was talking about life.

About losing.

About starting again.

About learning to listen.

About doing hard things.

About gratitude.

And about why the best lessons he has found are based on principles rather than steps—“truth, not tasks.”

That is where this podcast gets really good.

So, important business handled.

Now let’s get back to the episode.

Principles, Not Steps: What Success Actually Takes

Kaj’s conversation begins with a question that sounds simple enough.

He is the CEO of Solex. He is a lawyer. He has an MBA. He has built and operated businesses.

So how did he get there?

You might expect a formula.

Kaj doesn’t give one.

And that becomes one of the most important ideas in the entire conversation.

He explains that earlier in his career, he thought there must be a Step 1, Step 2 and eventually Step 10 that would lead someone to becoming a CEO, an owner or whatever their version of success might be.

Over time, he came to see it differently.

The best teaching, he says, tends to give us principles rather than steps.

Because nobody wakes up to exactly the same circumstances as somebody else.

We each have a different history, different responsibilities, different abilities, different opportunities and a completely different set of facts sitting in front of us today.

The value is not necessarily in copying someone else’s ten steps.

It is in learning the principles well enough to apply them intelligently to your own life.

And from there, Kaj begins telling the stories that taught him those principles.

It Started With a Pair of Oakleys

One of those stories goes all the way back to Kaj being a kid in Southern California.

He wanted a pair of Oakley sunglasses.

Badly.

They were nearly $100—which, especially to his father, who had immigrated from Denmark and had a very practical definition of what counted as a necessity, was a lot of money for sunglasses.

His father’s response was essentially: If you want them, earn the money.

So Kaj did.

At about 12 years old, he picked up a seven-day-a-week paper route.

Weekdays meant coming home from school, folding the papers, loading his bag, getting on his bike and delivering them. Weekends meant getting up before five in the morning while other kids were sleeping.

And somewhere between the papers, the bike and the collection route, Kaj started learning business.

He noticed something.

If he tossed the newspaper onto the driveway, he got one result.

If he consistently got that newspaper all the way to the doorstep?

People tended to tip him better.

That is such a simple story—but there are several business principles hiding inside it.

Show up.

Be consistent.

Pay attention.

Do the job a little better than expected.

Notice what creates value for the other person.

And then learn from the result.

Kaj says that early job taught him both discipline and the relationship between better service and greater compensation. It also taught him that difficult work has lessons in it if you’re willing to look for them.

That lesson did not stay on a paper route.

It followed him.

Learning How to Learn May Be the Real Superpower

Kaj talks about spending more than a decade in collegiate and graduate education.

But what he says he gained from all of that wasn’t simply a collection of degrees.

It was learning how to learn.

I loved this part.

Because information changes.

Businesses change.

Technology certainly changes.

Circumstances change.

And if all we ever learn is the answer to one very specific problem, what happens when the problem changes?

Kaj talks about learning to recognize patterns, retain information, combine ideas and then apply what he knows to a completely new set of facts.

That is a very different skill than memorizing somebody else’s answer.

And it circles us right back to his idea of:

Principles, not steps.
Truth, not tasks.

Every one of us wakes up each morning with a combination of circumstances that has never existed in quite the same way before.

Your background.

Your family.

Your business.

Your abilities.

Your responsibilities.

The people around you.

The opportunity sitting in front of you today.

Nobody else’s Step 1 through Step 10 can perfectly account for all of that.

But principles can travel.

Kaj describes education, experience and even unsuccessful ventures as opportunities to build a bigger library of patterns that can be applied when the next situation arrives.

And this may be one of the things I appreciate most about the leadership behind Solex.

Curiosity is still allowed in the room.

There isn’t an assumption that we have arrived and therefore there is nothing left to discover.

If you read my introduction about Loran saying, “I will never be done,” you can probably see why this part of Kaj’s philosophy lands so well with me.

Different personalities.

Same love of learning.

Leadership Is Not About Having Every Answer

Then the conversation shifts into leadership.

And Kaj says something I wish more leaders understood.

When you begin accepting that every person has their own perspective and their own set of facts, you become more capable of allowing other people to actually contribute.

In business, it is so easy to think:

Everything would run beautifully if everybody would just do it my way.

Come on.

We’ve all thought it.

But Kaj talks about learning to stop long enough to hear what another person is seeing.

Maybe the friction in the room isn’t because the other person doesn’t understand you.

Maybe you haven’t fully understood them.

He talks about taking time to hear, listen and understand before making the decision—and says that, despite how often everything feels urgent, there is usually more time to do that than we think.

That leads into one of my favorite analogies in the entire podcast.

The Leader as the Conductor

Kaj compares leadership to conducting an orchestra.

Somebody needs to hold the baton.

Somebody establishes pace.

Somebody helps keep the whole thing moving together.

But the conductor is not playing the violin.

Or the flute.

Or the trombone.

Or percussion.

The music exists because all of those people are very good at what they do.

And the conductor’s role is not to turn around at the end and pretend he personally created every note.

It is to recognize the orchestra.

Kaj talks candidly about earlier experiences when his own work was suppressed or someone else seemed to take credit for it—and how those experiences eventually made him ask a much better leadership question:

Who am I failing to give credit to?

That is growth.

He describes leadership as becoming a conductor who appreciates the genius of the people doing each individual part.

That matters to me.

Because when you have spent nearly 11 years watching a technology evolve, you know that no single person created every piece of it.

Developers.

Researchers.

Support teams.

Corporate staff.

Educators.

QLAs in the field.

Practitioners.

Customers who ask the question nobody thought to ask.

People who say, This part is confusing.

People who say, Wouldn’t it be great if…?

Innovation rarely happens in isolation.

And healthy leadership knows that.

Failure Isn’t Failure Unless You Stop

Then Kaj gets into the messy part.

Because success stories always look tidier in retrospect.

In real time?

Not so much.

He talks about businesses that didn’t work.

Ideas that failed to produce the result he expected.

Times when the outcome was flat-out painful.

But he says he has softened the word failure for himself.

Because if something doesn’t work and you learn from it, adjust and continue, the story isn’t necessarily finished.

Failure becomes final when it becomes the stopping point.

Otherwise, it may simply be information.

Kaj puts it in practical terms: maybe it didn’t go right. Maybe the outcome wasn’t the one you wanted. You learn, try differently, pivot if necessary and carry the useful part forward.

And then he tells a story where that philosophy was tested in a much bigger way.

When the Reset Isn’t Voluntary

Years ago, Kaj says he had accumulated savings, retirement funds and investments and put a tremendous amount into a business opportunity.

And it went badly.

Very badly.

He describes reaching a point where accounts that had represented years of work and saving effectively went to zero.

Not theoretical failure.

Not an inspirational quote about adversity.

A real financial reset.

He talks about the shock of looking at everything he and his wife had built and asking:

Now what?

What struck me was the question that eventually followed.

Not only:

What can we do?

But:

What do we want to do now?

That is completely different.

Instead of making the loss the final chapter, Kaj and his wife began looking at it as a blank page.

A clean slate.

And one of the things that had always been sitting in the background of Kaj’s life was law school.

His wife reminded him.

You always wanted to do this.

So why not now?

Going to Law School at 40

By then Kaj already had an MBA.

He had children.

Responsibilities.

A life.

The version of the story we often tell ourselves at that point is:

That opportunity passed.

His wife’s version was essentially:

Do you want to be 65, 75, or 85, wondering why you never did the thing you still wanted to do?

So they moved their family across the country.

Kaj went to law school.

He graduated at 40, the second-oldest person in his class.

He describes competing academically with students in their twenties, bringing study groups home while his wife made snacks, and going through three extremely demanding years.

And yet his takeaway isn’t:

Look how miserable I was.

It is how fulfilling the process became because it was connected to a bigger why.

That is another principle.

Hard Work Feels Different When You Know Why You’re Doing It

Kaj says you can do incredibly difficult things and still find fulfillment in the process when the reason underneath the work is bigger than the difficulty itself.

And apparently finishing law school wasn’t the scene where the music swells and the credits roll.

He came home.

And got punched in the face by life again.

Metaphorically speaking.

He tried businesses.

Consulting.

Opportunities.

Interview after interview.

For more than a year, he struggled to find the consistent opportunity he was looking for.

He describes giving plasma and substitute teaching while continuing to pursue business opportunities because there was a family to take care of.

This is the CEO telling his story.

Not from the chair.

From the driveway.

The Driveway Moment

Kaj describes pulling into his driveway after yet another promising interview hadn’t turned into what he hoped.

He sat there knowing his family was inside.

And he found himself asking:

What am I doing wrong?

Then something shifted.

Instead of only looking at what wasn’t happening, he began noticing what was.

His children had food.

They had clothing.

They had a home.

Education.

Healthcare.

Books.

Games.

And perhaps something he would never have in quite the same way again:

time together.

His perspective shifted from:

Why isn’t this working?

to:

Look at everything that has been working all along.

He describes this as the beginning of a much deeper practice of gratitude.

And I want to be careful here, because this isn’t me saying gratitude is some cosmic vending machine where you insert a thank-you and a business contract falls out.

Kaj is telling his experience.

In his account, less than two weeks after that shift, a contract and new business opportunity arrived.

What mattered even more to him was that gratitude became foundational from that point forward.

Good situation?

Gratitude.

Bad situation?

Look for what can still be learned or appreciated.

Person you understand?

Gratitude.

Person you don’t?

There may still be something there.

Kaj describes gratitude as changing the way he sees the opportunities around him.

“I Want to Be in That Chair”

Another part of the story made me smile.

Long before Kaj had the degrees and long before he was CEO of Solex, he sat knee-to-knee with a CEO at a company where Kaj was working in a much lower-level role.

The CEO asked him what he wanted.

Kaj answered:

He wanted that chair.

Not literally that man’s particular chair.

The position.

The responsibility.

The opportunity to run and own businesses.

Years later, after his MBA, law degree and additional business experience, another CEO asked essentially the same question.

And Kaj gave essentially the same answer.

He wanted to lead companies.

He wanted to own businesses.

There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about that.

No pretending he didn’t want it.

No acting embarrassed by ambition.

He knew the direction.

And then spent years becoming somebody capable of sitting there.

Why Get a Law Degree If You Don’t Want to Practice Law?

Kaj tells another story about his father asking why he was going to law school if he wasn’t planning to spend his career climbing the ladder inside a law firm.

Kaj’s answer was fascinating.

He didn’t necessarily want to be the attorney handling the transaction.

He wanted to be the owner who understood enough to hire the right attorney, ask the right questions and understand what should be happening.

He describes his MBA as giving him theory around the game of business.

And law school as helping him understand the playing field and rules.

Not because he needed to do everybody else’s job.

Because he wanted to understand enough to lead intelligently.

That distinction is huge.

And again, it goes back to the conductor.

A good conductor doesn’t need to be the world’s greatest violinist.

But he should probably understand what the violin is supposed to be doing.

Kaj Reads the Books So We Don’t Have To

Okay.

We’re back to my joke.

Because toward the end of the episode, Kaj is asked what he would tell the younger version of himself—the one who wanted the chair he now occupies.

His answer starts with learning.

Books have been some of his greatest mentors.

He talks about the almost ridiculous value of spending $20 or $30 on a book that can compress decades of somebody else’s experience into a few hundred pages.

Think about that.

Someone spends 30 years learning.

They distill it.

You spend a weekend reading it.

Pretty good return on investment.

Kaj says he has tried to become a student of as many people as possible—through books, experience, observation, study and conversations.

And he does not attach an expiration date to learning.

He jokes that if he decided to get a medical degree at 80, he could still be happy doing it.

His advice is simple:

Be open to learning.
Crave learning.
Love learning.

Because then you stay a student of the game.

And here we are again.

Loran:

“I will never be done.”

Kaj:

There is no end to learning.

Now you understand why I had to handle that “important business” at the beginning of this recap.

Get Uncomfortable on Purpose

Kaj’s practical advice gets even more interesting from there.

Challenge yourself.

Do something uncomfortable.

Not because misery earns bonus points.

Because voluntarily doing difficult things builds evidence inside you that says:

I can do difficult things.

He is also very human about it.

Some days you’re tired.

Some days you want the couch.

Fine.

Rest.

Recover.

His rule of thumb is essentially: don’t let the rest turn into the new pattern.

Come back and challenge yourself again.

He describes deliberately stacking experiences where you finish uncomfortable things so that when discomfort arrives from somewhere you didn’t choose, it isn’t completely foreign.

You’ve been there before.

You’ve developed evidence of your own resilience.

Build Your “Cookie Jar”

The podcast then references the “cookie jar” idea associated with David Goggins.

Each “cookie” represents something hard you already did.

Something you survived.

Something you finished.

Something that once made you wonder whether you could get through it.

Then the next difficult thing shows up.

And instead of starting from:

I don’t know if I can do this…

you can reach back mentally and say:

Wait. I’ve done hard things before.

That is an incredibly practical form of confidence.

Not fake confidence.

Evidence-based confidence from your own life.

And this is where I think this podcast moves way beyond a conversation with a CEO.

It becomes a conversation with anyone trying to become a better version of themselves.

And After All of That? Gratitude.

After more than 50 minutes of talking about business, education, risk, loss, leadership, work ethic, learning and discomfort, Kaj is asked:

What is the one thing somebody should have in their corner if they want to get where they want to go?

His answer isn’t an MBA.

It isn’t a law degree.

It isn’t a business plan.

It isn’t a morning routine.

It is:

Gratitude.

His simplest version is almost impossible to argue with.

I’m breathing today.

Therefore, I have an opportunity today.

I’m awake.

I’m here.

So what should I do?

Go do it.

I love that ending.

Why This Matters If You’re Considering AO Scan

Now I want to bring this back to where I started.

This article is a podcast recap.

But it is also intentionally part of the broader conversation we are building at AO Scan Global about how to choose wellness technology wisely.

When you are evaluating a technology that may become part of your home, your clinic, your practice or your business, features and price matter.

Of course they do.

But there are other questions worth asking too.

This is part of why I remain excited about AO Scan.

I love innovation.

I love people who ask questions.

I love people who refuse to be finished.

And I love learning.

So when I listen to conversations like this one, I don’t just hear business philosophy.

I hear clues about the culture behind the technology I have spent nearly 11 years representing.

Solex Builds the Technology. AO Scan Global Helps You Live With It.

There is an important distinction here.

Solex Global is the company behind AO Scan technology and provides the official technology, corporate infrastructure, billing, technical resources, and company support.

AO Scan Global is the largest independent reseller of AO Scan technology and provides a well-rounded AO Scan wellness community for practitioners and users worldwide. We provide education, mentorship, and implementation support, and we cannot wait for you to JOIN US. 

That is where we help make everything practical.

How do I start?

What should I scan first?

How could I use this at home?

How does this fit into a clinic or wellness practice?

Where is the training?

Who do I ask when I don’t understand something?

How do I build confidently with the technology rather than simply buying it and hoping I figure it out?

That education and connection layer is a very large part of why AO Scan Global exists.

Our own Master SEO and customer-path standard intentionally preserves that distinction: Solex receives credit for the official technology and corporate resources, while AO Scan Global adds mentorship, implementation, community, education and business-building support.

Is AO Scan Right for You?

If you’re exploring AO Scan, you don’t have to make that decision from a headline.

Come learn.

Ask questions.

See the technology.

Decide whether it fits what you want to do.

If you’d like an educational demonstration or want to talk with us about using AO Scan personally or professionally:

Free AO Scan Demo / Contact:
https://aoscanglobal.com/contact

If you’re ready to join the AO Scan Global community as a customer or Quantum Living Advocate:

AO Scan Global Enrollment:
https://shop.solexnation.com/energy1

Our master customer-path rules specifically reserve that general /energy1 link for joining, customer enrollment and QLA enrollment.

And if you already know you specifically want the AO Scan Subscription, our verified replicated product listing is:

AO Scan™ Subscription:
https://shop.solexnation.com/energy1/product/97

Come join us.

We’ll teach you.

We’ll train you.

We’ll help you understand what you’re using—and hopefully keep you curious enough that you are never quite “done” either.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Kaj Larsen?

Kaj Larsen is the CEO of Solex. In this podcast episode, he discusses his personal path through business, graduate education, law school, entrepreneurship, leadership, setbacks and the principles he believes have shaped his approach to success.

What does Kaj Larsen mean by “principles, not steps”?

Kaj’s point is that another person’s exact sequence may not fit your circumstances. Principles can be adapted to the unique facts in front of you, while rigid step-by-step formulas can fail when circumstances change.

What does “truth, not tasks” mean?

It means learning underlying ideas that help you make decisions rather than simply memorizing a checklist of actions. The task may change. A useful principle can often be applied again.

Why does AO Scan Global care about Solex leadership?

Because choosing a technology for long-term use or business involves more than features. Company direction, innovation, education, leadership philosophy and the willingness to keep improving can all affect the experience of the people using that technology.

Is AO Scan Global the same company as Solex Global?

No. Solex Global is the company behind the official AO Scan technology. AO Scan Global is an independent education, training, mentorship and community resource led by Paige Maurer Wheeler.

Can I experience AO Scan before deciding?

Yes. AO Scan Global offers an educational demo/contact pathway for people who want to learn more before choosing their next step:

https://aoscanglobal.com/contact

Can professionals use AO Scan?

AO Scan is explored by a range of wellness professionals as an educational wellness technology. Professional users should remain within their individual licensure, scope of practice and applicable regulations.

Is AO Scan a diagnostic medical device?

No. AO Scan is intended for educational and wellness purposes and should not replace medical diagnosis, laboratory testing, imaging or appropriate care from qualified healthcare professionals.

My Takeaway From Kaj’s Podcast

I came into this episode expecting to recap a conversation about success.

I came out thinking about people.

The people who teach us.

The people who challenge us.

The people we lead.

The people we fail to listen to.

The people who remind us of what we wanted before life got complicated.

And the people behind the things we choose to build with.

Kaj’s story isn’t a ten-step recipe.

In fact, that’s precisely his point.

It is a collection of principles:

Learn.

Listen.

Give credit.

Do difficult things.

Let failure teach you.

Keep going.

Know what you want.

And stay grateful.

That’s a philosophy I can get behind.

And paired with Loran Swensen’s words—

“I will never be done.”

—it says something meaningful to me about the people helping steer the technology I have spent nearly 11 years with.

There is still more to learn.

More to improve.

More to build.

And apparently more books for Kaj to read so he can tell the rest of us what was in them.

I’m kidding.

Mostly.

Be well and do good things.

Paige Maurer Wheeler
Founder, AO Scan Global
Independent Quantum Living Advocate
AO Scan Trainer & Long-Time Practitioner

About Paige Maurer Wheeler

Paige Maurer Wheeler is the founder of AO Scan Global and the largest Independent Quantum Living Advocate, AO Scan trainer, biohacker, purveyor of goodness, mom, and long-time practitioner who has worked with the technology through multiple generations of its development.

Through AO Scan Global, Paige helps individuals, families, wellness professionals, and business builders learn how to use AO Scan technology with greater confidence through education, practical implementation, community, and ongoing support.

Learn more at:

https://aoscanglobal.com