Born to Stand out: Ben Kjar story

Doctors told Ben Kjar's parents their boy would live a different life. Born with Crouzon syndrome, a rare facial difference, he was told he would never play contact sports. He learned early to answer, "Watch me." Kjar went on to become Utah Valley University's first NCAA Division I wrestling All-American, a world champion wrestler, an international speaker, and a real estate investor who has flipped nearly two hundred properties. On this episode of The Franklin Planner Podcast, hosts George Wright III and John Harding sit down with Kjar ahead of the January 23, 2026 theatrical release of *Standout*, the film about his life.

What makes the conversation so useful is that Kjar doesn't just tell his story. He lays out the exact formula he used to set goals, the daily non-negotiables he still keeps, and the lesson he learned when fear caught up with him one minute before a world title.

Kjar describes *Standout* as what you'd get if you married the movie *Wonder* with *Rocky*, except that it's a true story. He couldn't control the surgeries, the trach, or the mouth wired shut, and he couldn't control how people saw him. Wrestling gave him one thing he could control: one person versus one person. When coaches called for twenty pushups, he chose to be disobedient to average and do twenty-five or thirty. He had spent years praying to wake up with a normal face, to fit in, to be average, before he understood he wasn't created for any of that.

The title comes from the hardest moment in the film. After an adult tore into him at a grocery store, a young Kjar went home and tried to find a way to take his face off. His mother broke into the bathroom, cried with him, then stood him up in front of the mirror.

I see somebody who's different, who's born to make a difference, and you, my friend, are born to stand out.

Kjar has studied top businesses, athletes, and teams, and he says the ones that do three things clearly and consistently achieve roughly 95 percent of their goals. First, call your shot, and make it so clear there's no mincing words. As a high school sophomore he wrote "3XSC" on his arm and had it embroidered on his letter jacket: three-time state champion, permanent, not dry-erase. Second, put shot callers in your corner: people who know the goal and hold you accountable. Third, set a shot clock. A marathon in fifteen months, fifteen weeks, or fifteen days demands three very different plans.

He first ran the formula in junior high, when his dad asked what goals they'd set. Kjar, a junior varsity wrestler, announced he'd be Centerville Junior High's first three-time district champion and go undefeated doing it. By the end of ninth grade, he had. Kjar says the planner already supplies the shot clock; the missing piece for most people is writing the goal down and the names of their shot callers beside it.

Kjar's pet peeve is the fan in the stands with popcorn in hand. When he lost at region his junior year, his real supporters came out of the woodwork, and they weren't cheerleaders. His principal skipped the school assembly to be in the wrestling room with him. His teammates said, "Tomorrow morning at seven, I'm gonna be there. You want to come with me?" Those are the people in the foxhole. He challenges successful parents the same way: when was the last time your kids saw you do something hard, instead of hearing you tell them to?

Kjar's rule is that non-negotiables get scheduled the day before, never the day of. Sunday he opens his planner and writes down everything for the week; each night he checks the next morning again. The morning workout with his wife, phones left outside the room, is on his calendar as a meeting from 8:15 to 9:15, and callers are told he's busy. A lot of people say non-negotiable, he notes, when they mean "I'll try."

Every goal he sets runs through what he calls his Crown Code, six points he literally wears on his shirt: faith, family, fitness (mental and emotional included), finance, fun, and fulfillment. When free time opens up, he goes to priority one and works down the list. It's the big-rocks principle Franklin readers know well, with the rocks named and ranked.

Ten years after his singlet was retired, Kjar was the dad in the corner whose kids had never seen him compete. A speaker at Russell Brunson's event said one of the most insidious forms of child neglect is parents not living their dreams, and it rocked him. He entered a national tournament, his kids watched, and his daughter started yelling "champion of the world," a goal he had never considered. He went to Greece, got sick, reached the freestyle final against Azerbaijan, led with one minute left, and then fear of failure arrived. He lost. He was afraid to return to the apartment, only to find his three kids wearing his silver medal and running around with an American flag, still yelling champion of the world. Days later in Greco-Roman he had one more shot, and his only commitment was that he wouldn't stop.

Goals are so messy. Goals are so dirty. Goals are so unorganized, but if we just consistently go after it, somehow those crazy, messy goals become accomplished if we just commit to not stopping.

*Standout* opens January 23, 2026 in about eighty theaters across Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and other markets, with T.C. Christensen and his son Tanner producing and *Napoleon Dynamite* director Jared Hess involved. Theaters will expand it based on how many seats fill that first weekend, and a nonprofit, Utah Smiles, has agreed to earmark every donated dollar toward putting the film on more screens. Kjar's real goal is the little Bens out there, including the ones whose differences are internal and invisible, the way a film about Tyler Wilkinson once changed his own life.

As a father of three children adopted within thirteen months, Kjar learned that kids sometimes listen but always watch, and how you live becomes their default reality. If you play at 70 percent of your potential, you're lucky if they do.

You will not live your best version of you if you are trying to be somebody else's version 2.0.

• Open your planner and write one goal so clearly there's no question what it means, then set its shot clock on the calendar.
• List your shot callers on the page beside it, and choose people who will do the work with you, not cheer from the stands.
• Schedule tomorrow's non-negotiables tonight, and treat them like meetings, phone off.
• Rank your own version of the Crown Code and spend open time on priority one first.
• Let the people who watch you, especially your kids, see you attempt something hard this month.

Kjar says Crouzon syndrome turned out to be a gift, not a curse, because the empathy it gave him changed him and everyone around him. When you buy into the idea that you were created to be you, not someone else's 2.0, you show up relaxed, passionate, and purposeful, and the emotional obstacles shrink. You don't just manage time. You lead your life.