Episode 218: Fireside Chat - How To Get Out of Your Own Way

And so there's something that happens around in business about it's a team sport. We're in this together. And the fact that you're a partner, we're going at it the same way. I'll give you an example of something just because we're given financial examples. If you're the sole owner of your business, 100% equity, there's zero oversight. Basically, you can go in there and strip $10,000 out of that account in a heartbeat. Who's holding you accountable? Your bookkeeper? So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. In today's episode, we recast a podcast that I did on the Bright Vibe Podcast with Matt Lilly. I think I did this back in early March, I think is whenever this podcast released, and hopefully it will serve all of you along your journey in small business. So without further ado, here's a recast that I did with Matt Lilly on his Pod, the Bright Vibe Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Autopilot Recruiting. Join over 1,200 State Farm agents in putting your recruiting on autopilot. Any successful insurance agent will tell you how important team is. Finding those rockstar team members doesn't happen when left to chance. It happens through consistent recruiting. You never know when you're going to lose a team member, and the key to an incredible team is constantly searching for the best talent. Autopilot Recruiting is a continuous recruiting service where you'll be assigned a recruiter that has been trained to recruit on your behalf every business day. This recruiter will take over and revamp your career plug, send out assessments, do pre-screen phone interviews, and schedule your in-office interviews. All you need to do is to show up and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This ongoing service is extremely affordable and a no-brainer for taking your insurance agency to the next level. Listeners of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast Go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. Again, autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started.

Bradley Hamner, welcome to the show today.

Matt, it's great to be with you.

Yeah, great to be with you. We talked pre-show, we have a lot of stuff we could talk about. We can talk about business, entrepreneurship, leadership, personal development. You have a website and a business that's called Business Growth Curator and Business Growth curator.com. But the one thing that I had the biggest question about is you have something on there called the Rainmaker's Dilemma, and you talk about this Rainmaker's Dilemma. If you don't mind, we'll start there and then we'll back up and find out who you really are. But let's start with— let's start with what is Rainmaker's Dilemma?

Yeah, good question. All right, so really what we mean by that is how your greatest strength as an entrepreneur can become a debilitating weakness in your business. So I think that there's— I see some books behind you. I'm a pervasive reader. I've got a lot of books in my library. I love to read. I've learned so much. And there's a kind of a prevailing ethos out there that you should focus on your strengths and then delegate all of your weaknesses. Okay, well, here's what I think for founders, business owners, entrepreneurs, specifically if they're less than $1 million in top line revenue, maybe less than $2 million for sure too. Is that they hear that and they go, okay, that sounds good, I'll do that. Well, what are they good at? A lot of them are naturally gifted at sales, business development, being with the customer, customer service, those type of things.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah. And so what ends up happening, because that was the thing that they did to get the business off the ground, right? You had the energy to start it. Well, the thing that actually helped you to start that business and get it off the ground and get it to where it is today $500,000 in top line revenue, $750,000 is exactly the thing that ends up standing in the way for you to be able to really grow and scale that company. Right. So what ends up happening is you end up running out of time as the business owner or founder. And a lot of them hit this, in some cases metaphorical and then in other cases literal brick wall. Okay. Like, I mean, they just burn out completely.

Okay.

And so, I mean, I'm not the first person to talk about burnout in business, etc. It happened to me. Okay, so for everything that we do and everything we create, I'm patient zero, right? I was the person. So really, I think about me, the spreader.

You're the spreader, you're patient zero.

Exactly. Yeah. And so, but yeah, I mean, that's what we mean by the Rainmaker Dilemma. And we think that, how do you go from being the Rainmaker to the architect of your business?

And certainly, yes, the thing that, you know, I went through some— I've gone through a lot of executive coaching and executive training as a participant, and they, they say over and over, the thing that got you there is also the thing that won't take you forward. And the first time I started hearing about this, the ADESES life cycle of a business, right? So you get to a certain point where those very things that you're super good at that made your business start, to your exact point, are also the things that don't allow you to, I would say, scale. And then through the leadership training and the books and everything I've read, it's the philosophy I adopted later in my business career was How can you replicate yourself or how can you replace yourself? You know, if I'm not constantly figuring out who can do my job, then guess what? My company can't grow because I'm always the bottleneck, right? I'm always the, the one keeping us from growing because I think I have to do this thing. And I think that's a kind of— I think it's a misnomer. And I've heard it so often from small business owners and entrepreneurs. Well, I'm the only one that can do that, right? Well, I'm the only one that really knows. Or, well, if it's going to get done right, I have to do it. And it's like, get over it. I mean, in my own opinion, I'm like, get over yourself, right? Because you're, you're just being arrogant and you're being stupid, not, and you don't even know it, but it's like you can find somebody to do it better than you. I don't care what it is. There's somebody on the face of the earth that can do that one function specifically you're talking about better than you can. Because they're a specialist in it. Right. And how, what do you run into? You know, cause you're actually coaching idiots like me. So what do you, what do you actually run into?

I think everybody really gets the idea of being able to level themselves up, delegate tasks off of them. The problem is, is they won't slow down long enough to be able to actually figure out how to do that and then how to train someone else. A lot of the founders, entrepreneurs, are terrible trainers. I mean, they just don't know how to train people, you know. They're like, oh my gosh, I got to put together this— again, system. Like, right, they're like, yes, I need to have systems, but But I don't have time to do that, so I'm just going to go Rain Make. The story, it's effectively a lie that you're telling yourself, is one day, one day, one day, one day. Okay, if I can get it from $20,000 to $30,000, I'll be good. If I can get from $30,000 to $50,000, then I'll be able—

all my problems will be solved, all my problems will go away.

It's like, no, the further you want to go, the faster you want to get there, actually the more problems that you're going to face along the way, you know. And so I do believe in using money to buy back your time. And, you know, you had mentioned about VAs and we talk about certainly that. So, so I think that people get the general idea. I think when it comes down to it's the application, it's the implementation, the execution of a philosophy is where the biggest difference is. Again, if you're doing $10 million in top line revenue, look, you've got a team, you've probably got a C-suite of people around you, right? This doesn't apply to you.

Okay.

That's why specifically all of my clients do less than $2 million in top line revenue.

Right. Yeah, they do. And I've been— I don't mean to cut you off there, but I've been thinking about that as well because I've got companies that I've founded that do a lot more than $2 million in revenue, and then I've got companies that I founded that do less than $2 million in revenue. And as an entrepreneur, I also see, I think, what you just said, which is once you get to that $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 million worth of top-line revenue, you can pay for resources, you can pay for good coaches, you can pay for good consulting, and you can hire people. Like when we were growing, we were growing a healthcare company at the time, we got to certain point where we realized that we were kind of suffering from founder syndrome, which is we were great entrepreneurs, we were great rainmakers, right? We love to go out and do deals. Let's go build another building and hire, you know, and all that. But man, we sucked at scaling. We sucked at all the infrastructure and all the systems. And so we literally, through coaching— because we could afford to pay for coaching, right? We paid close to $100,000— well, $75,000 to $100,000 for really good consultants and coaches.

Yep.

And they were like, If you don't listen, you're going to go off the track. Well, most people, to your point, doing $2 million or less a year in top-line revenue, they're not going to spend $100 grand. They don't have that kind of money to deploy for that type of insight, right? And so I think it's so important for especially like the work you're doing, really, because that's where all the growth in America comes from. That's where all of our freedoms come from. In my opinion, the bulk of them come from small business and entrepreneurs who are in that zero to maybe $100 grand a year to that $2 million. I think that's a whole society and community of people that really need to come together more and learn from each other.

Yeah, absolutely. Not only can you pay— if you're at $5, $10 million, can you pay for great coaches, consultants? I think actually even more than that, the people on your team— there is a massive difference. I'm just going to call it like it is. There is a massive difference between the skill set of somebody who's at $50,000 and somebody who's making $200,000.

Yes, totally.

This is a big difference. Okay. You hire somebody on your team and they're making a quarter of a million dollars because they're capable. They have capabilities. They are coming to you and telling you, man.

Yes. Yes.

This is how we're doing this. Right. That's great that you did it this way. The opposite.

But we're not going to do it that way.

We're not doing it that way.

I, I'm laughing because I do remember the first literally in the office. That I was in when we hired that guy and that guy was scaling us. I was pulling in the parking lot and somebody called me and they needed a check. And so I was calling our accountant, you know, now we have an accounting department. I was calling our accounting department. I was like, hey, I need that check cut for $2,000 or whatever it was. And they said, okay, well, we'll get that for you on Monday. And I was like, like, what? I was like, I was pissed off for like a little bit. And then I was like, oh, this is working. Yeah, this is where they told me no, this is the first, you know, they—

yes.

And so I was just laughing. I didn't mean to cut you off, but I was just like, yeah, I remember when that happened to me. That it was like for a while there was a big contention between how we got here and how we were going to have to move forward. And there was a lot of internal butting of heads. So you're right, that person that comes in at that integrator, that operator, that COO, that whatever you want to call them, right? They come. It's a different animal.

They are. They have experiences and skill sets that has given them the experience needed to be able to justify them making $20,000 a month, $30,000 a month. And they're coming in and saying, this is how we're going to do things. And you're learning things from them.

Them, right?

Whereas in the early days, as a business that's doing $30,000 a month, as an example, people are, are bought into your vision. Yes, but they're sitting around going, what are we doing? Like, you know, you got to tell us what to do. And so you're kind of air traffic control a lot of times. And so you can't go hire that person at $20,000 a month in my example because that's your entire budget of the entire—

right, right, that's all your profit, right?

Right, exactly.

Top line. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And so that ends up becoming like, oh my gosh, how do I do this? And so, yeah, how do you make the mindset shift and then the literal shift in our eyes of going from being just the rainmaker of your business to becoming the architect of your business? And so that's skill set, that's mindset, and then that's actually some tools. That's some literal tools of how to do it. I mean, there's business owners we work with that financially do really well. Let's say they do maybe $800,000 in top-line revenue, but their financials are a mess. I mean, they have no idea. They don't know what their profit margins are, right? They don't know how much they're paying. They don't know how much they're investing in.

They don't know their true financial KPIs, right?

They don't have any financial—

yeah, right.

Yeah. And it's a skill set that they can learn. I mean, they clearly— they're smart enough.

Yeah, that's something you can learn. You're right.

Absolutely. Yep, no question. That's just one example.

And, and so, well, let's back up. So we jumped right in because a lot of times I just like to jump right into a conversation.

It's like midstream.

That's great. A But let's talk about your background. So how did you get here? Why do you care about business? How did you get the education around kind of seeing those differences in different levels and where you personally can be most effective in people's lives? So just give us a little bit about your business background. Let's start there.

Mom and dad, both small business owners. My dad is still a small business owner to this day. He's in the farming operation. He does about $5 million in top line revenue. I had really bad allergies, so I was never destined to be a farmer. No, I was never going to be a farmer.

What's he farm? I'm curious because I'm from farm country. Now you're in Iowa, is that where you're at? I'm seeing Alabama. Alabama. I'm sorry, that's a—

that's an Auburn helmet.

That's an Auburn. Oh, I apologize. And I know that's probably a big— I got Alabama.

I hear out the people here, Alabama, they're like, you're an Alabama fan? Like, no, Auburn.

Like, right, you're in Alabama. That's not a West Coast accent, it's what you're saying.

That's not— it's not— not a West Coast.

Okay, so What's your dad grow? I'm just curious.

Wheat, soybeans, corn are his main ones.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And is he in Alabama?

He is, yeah. Northwest part of Alabama.

I didn't know they grew— I didn't know they farmed. Yeah, I know this is a little— I'm in Kansas, so this is farm country. I grew up like driving, and I had allergies too, which was always interesting to work on the farm.

Oh, okay. Allergies are in Kansas, and I know Kansas, uh, so I'm actually coming up there to visit some of them, so I'll have to find where you are and we'll go have a beer.

Where are you headed?

Wichita.

Oh my gosh, that's— yeah, exactly where I'm at. That's—

no way!

No, no, Wichita. Okay, I'm sitting right in like the middle of Wichita, Kansas.

No, seriously, I have one of my really good clients, and actually one of my associate coaches is in Wichita.

Would you be able to say the name of the company?

Yeah, we can talk offline.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah, we'll talk offline. I'll tell you who it is.

Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. That's so— and it was such a small world.

It is.

And that's a— yeah, that's That's part of what I'm noticing. The older I get, the more I notice that your network of people that you surround yourself with and that you engage with is super critical to the quality and the ability for you to get things done.

Oh, 100%. I do believe in the mantra, your network is your net worth. I do believe that. You know, those little phrases get thrown around a lot, but that's one I do believe. Yep.

Yeah, I totally agree. Okay, so I probably— I got us off topic. So your dad's a farmer, you're from Alabama. You're both— your parents were entrepreneurs. Yes. Okay.

All right. So the biggest thing around the reason I say that about my dad, and obviously you being in farmer country, you'll relate to this, is that the thing that I picked up from my dad the most, and I'm so grateful for, is the value of hard work. Yes. Work ethic.

Work ethic. Work ethic.

Absolutely. And listen, here's the thing about that. I caught it. I wasn't necessarily taught it. I just watched my dad.

Yeah. You were around. It was your life, right? You just—

it was my life.

All the time. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's— so he taught FFA and agriculture at my high school from 8 to 3. He'd come home and I'll tell people he changed from his Duckheads at the time to his Carhartt overalls.

Literally put on his good clothes.

He did. But then if it was, if it was harvesting season or planting season, they would be in the fields until 2, 3, 4 in the morning because that's what they had to do, right? I mean, that's just what you do.

Yep.

And so, and I saw him work 7 days a week and he's still to this day, as much as his son took preaches taking time off.

He does not listen to this at all.

So I picked that up from my dad, and I'm so grateful for that. So I started my business in 2010, and I mean, I just went to work. I mean, I started with no customers. I had very, very little money, specifically about $40,000 that I had saved mostly from a house that I had sold a couple years prior to get the business off the ground. And I went to work. I mean, I, you know, was obviously the primary salesperson. And I'll tell you a quick story about financials. So if you see my degree behind me from Auburn, I got my degree in finance.

Oh, interesting.

So you would think small business father. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Small business father, degree in finance from Auburn University, that I would understand small business financials. Third year, my accountant says, congratulations, you made your first profit. I said, fantastic. How much was it? And I was using— this is so embarrassing, but I've just said it enough now. I was using Quicken, not QuickBooks.

Yeah, no, I get it. Yep.

I was using Quicken at the time.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I had about $100 in the account that day. He tells me this and he says, you made $32,000 last year. And I said, fantastic. Where's that money?

He said, right.

Well, you spend it. Spend it. I said, what does that mean? I don't understand. I have $100 in my bank account.

Right.

He said, well, that was profit. It's not cash. I said, what are you talking about? I don't get that. And he's kind of, you know, being an accountant. And I was so frustrated. He said, then by the way, you owe the IRS $9,000. I said, wait a minute, I have $100 in my bank account, right? I made my first profits, $32,000, and I owe the IRS $9,000? This is something just like, screw this small business stuff, like I'm out, you know? And so, but that was a dead true story. I ended up having to borrow the money to pay my taxes.

Yeah, it's a really bad deal.

That's part of my journey.

It's why your education— yes.

Yes, part of my, my R&D, I guess, you know, for others. So anyway, I mean, it went on and I ended up actually really burning myself out in 2014, 2015. I was truly like my father, burning the midnight oil. I mean, we, you know, getting the business off the ground, we were doing well sales-wise, but I mean, financials were really struggling. I hit a brick wall myself. I mean, I actually ended up going to— I didn't know what a panic attack was. I was having attacks. I went, saw an internal medicine doc. I went, saw a cardiologist over a period of time, and they were like, no, you're fine. You need to slow it down. You're gonna, you're gonna burn yourself out. And so look, I wish I could tell you, Matt, that that day walking out of the cardiologist, all my life, you know, changed dramatically. Well, it did, but it was a lot of slow steps.

Yeah.

And it wasn't just like one thing. It was like, okay, what do I do? Because the thing I'm doing now is not working. I need to begin to change. And so that was a 3 or 4 year journey. I ended up getting around some really brilliant entrepreneurs. I really at that time found— I didn't even really have that word entrepreneurship, but I just got around other people that were doing some really big things and it was inspirational to me. And I really began to fall in love with what I now would say is the business end of business. And so since then I've started several other companies and I didn't have the language around at that time, obviously, of, oh, I'm rainmaking. That's what I'm doing. But now looking back on it, that's obviously what I ended up doing is I started to transition and build. You know, I hate just even throwing out systems and processes, okay? Because that gets thrown around so much. You know, I told you before, like, I hate like, like surface level stuff. But I did begin to say, okay, my mindset has got to change and I need some tangible tools.

Yep.

To run my financials. I need some tangible tools of how to build a good sales process. I need to know how to set targets and priorities in the business. How do I measure? How do I create a scoreboard that actually works? I kept switching compensation plans for my team members all the time. Okay.

Right.

I didn't have growth tracks in place for my team, so they would come in and then they were like, I've been with you for 2 years. Am I just going to do this for the rest of my life? Like, those type of things really mattered. I needed to create more structure into the organization because it was just a free-for-all.

99.99% of the time, that's how entrepreneurs do it. They just kind of get in. It's kind of like they get in, they start swimming, they get some success on the sales side or on the customer side, and then they figure it out as they go along. And I think the ones that are able to figure it out sooner scale faster and build bigger stuff and more impactful stuff, right? They do.

And I'll even say— I don't mean to interrupt you there.

No, go for it. Go for it.

I also think that's why— so like one of my mentors, his last 7 companies has scaled to $1 million in ARR in 12 months, right? I mean, he is just like, okay, you know why?

He's got the template. He knows how to— yeah, he knows how to dial it in. He knows— he does, you know, 1 1 17, right?

I mean, from concept audience building, the whole thing. Like, he's got it. Well, you got to go back and know his story to realize, okay, it's not like necessarily— it doesn't have to be littered with failures, okay? I'm not saying that, but it wasn't like that, that the first business, okay, just boom, takes off. I mean, Jeff Bezos maybe with Amazon, but no, no, he— yeah, yeah, he had some failures in there, and he's had a lot of failures in Amazon.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So I think that that is where You, like you said, a lot of people start that way. And then when you start hearing about an entrepreneur that starts another one, it's like, oh, that one got better. Okay. And then the next one's like, oh, that one got better. Then they just begin to kind of stack their skill sets and then it becomes not 1 1 2, but 1 1 4.

Yep.

And then 2 2 10. It becomes a multiplying effect of their skill sets whenever they go and start another business.

From my view, that's a rarity versus the norm, is the ability to replicate success in different industries or in different— the guy you're talking about, from my perspective, he's gotten really good at the systems and the formula, and he's just applying that more than likely to business, different businesses. But he's got a set formula. He's probably— my guess is whatever businesses he's starting are probably either service businesses, or they're— they kind of stay in a certain delivery method. He's using that delivery method formula, and it wouldn't matter if it was carpet cleaning or house cleaning, you know. That's just my guess. Where most entrepreneurs, I think, get stuck in the— back to kind of the scaling. And, you know, we've gotten outside of our wheelhouse several times and got butchered on those deals, right? Because we thought we could apply these principles to this other thing And then we got there and went, oh no, these aren't— this doesn't work at all. So he's probably dialed in that there's a certain formula he's using with a certain business. Not that he could apply that same thing in every business. Just my guess. And you could tell me I'm wrong.

You are absolutely right. He has gone from service-based businesses and now he's, he's got a SaaS company that's, that's gotten about a $50 million valuation. Let me share with you something that he shared with me. That is a huge part of his success, and it has influenced me massively. And the reason I want to share this is not just because of its idea, but because it's the inverse of how I used to think.

Okay, please. Yes.

So I used to— if you go back 5 or 6 years ago, I was a big advocate. Hold on to equity. Do not give equity out of your company. You started it. You hold 100%. You're better off to go to a bank, borrow the money.

Yeah.

And the piece of equity, right?

Did that too.

Yeah, I could not be more opposite. And so I remember somebody asked him on a call. Yeah, on a call, my mentor, they said, so how long would you go before you actually brought in a partner? And he said, that's a good question. He said, I think about 6 hours. I love it.

I love it.

And he's so—

I love it.

Here's his, here's his, here's his point. Yeah, he absolutely will not start a company without a partner. Yep, right from the get-go. In fact, he thinks the ideal number is 3.

Like, this is always every— I love doing podcasts. I know you have a podcast. I love doing podcasts because I feel like in my life, the day that I'm doing the podcast with like you today, you're telling me what I need to know today. Because I agree that there's something about this 3 thing. I don't know if it's the trilogy, you know, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, or just different avatars or different person archetypes, or I don't know what it is. I was just literally thinking that the other day. It's like, do I bring on one partner in projects I'm wanting to start? And then I was thinking the same thing. It's like there's some magic, like the business that I have that's the biggest, which is a healthcare company, and we provide senior care. And I've said it many times on the show, um, long-term skilled nursing, assisted living, all things senior care, with 3 partners.

There was 3 of us.

And we grew super fast and faster than probably we should have. And we took on tons of debt and we did all— we made all the mistakes. And now we're kind of restructuring and not through bankruptcy, but just restructuring and kind of getting ready for phase 2. But it— but I did notice that there was some magic to that all for one, one for all, you know, kind of that, that thing of 3. So that's amazing. Sorry, I'm just— I'm processing Brady, I'm just processing the information, but I'm doing it live time. But I'm just like, I do believe there's some magic in the person. And for a long time I was— and still till this conversation have had some— like, do I really want to partner again? Because there also comes an expectation of accountability, you know. It's— you can't hide in a partnership. And some partnerships— not that I've been in, but I've heard of some partnerships that are really, really bad, right? People get into some pretty shitty partnerships.

Sure, no, no question.

So selecting your partners is key.

Absolutely. Well, but I mean, the ability— um, I, I, I do— I'm— I love sports. I mean, I'm a sports person. And so, you know, I played golf in college, which had this— yeah, it's an individual sport, but you were playing on a team.

Yeah.

And there's a reason why, if you, if you watch golf and you, and you listen to Justin Thomas, Tiger Woods, and those guys, they say Oh, we love the Ryder Cup. And the reason is, is because they're playing, playing not just their country, but they're playing for that team. They're playing for that team room. And so there's something that happens around in business about it's a team sport. We're in this together. And the fact that you're a partner, we're going at it the same way. I'll give you an example of something just because we're given financial examples. If you're the sole owner of your business, 100% equity, there's zero oversight. Basically, you can go in there and strip $10,000 out of that account in a heartbeat. Who's holding you accountable? Your bookkeeper? No, no, no, no. Your bookkeeper's not— your bookkeeper's going to say, what was that withdrawal for?

I don't know.

Distribution, you know?

Right, right, right, right.

Matt, if you and I started a whatever company together and I was like, hey, dude, I was looking at the account last night, where did that 10 grand go? Oh, I was just taking it out, man. We're wanting to do some stuff on our back porch. I'm like, wait a minute now.

I mean, you would think twice about doing that. Of course. Oh yeah, you wouldn't do it. I mean, I wouldn't do it unless I've got partners. A lot of stuff, you just don't do it unless— now I have had the deal where, hey, I need to take the 10 grand out, here's what I'm going to need it for for 4 or 5 days, and we'll put it back in. But I told my partners and they're like, yeah, we're cool with that. And I've done it the reverse, right? If they needed something out and it made sense, it's like, yeah. I think obviously you probably heard stories where people take it out and don't tell their partners, and that's where we have bad partners.

Yeah, right, right. Well, I mean, that then gets into a whole thing of like, well, okay, well, did the person you choose to be on, be a part of your team, a character issue, and, you know, all of those things. Okay, but we also have to look at the other side to say that if you're wanting to be able to grow the company, the collective wisdom of 3 people, of the shared ownership, the shared vision, the shared camaraderie of being able to build something, doing something, having a vision, a purpose, a mission behind what you're doing, that becomes very unstoppable. Because people are bought into it. I had a call yesterday with— we're planning our retreat that's going to be in April for all of our members down in Destin, and there's 5 of us on a call. And it's like, you can't replicate that if I'm by myself with a legal pad. Like, you know, I can get fired up, but it's like, I want to share that with other people, and you can't do that unless you have other folks. And so— and let me say, listen, you have a team— like, pretty much everybody I work with has between 2 and 12 team members, okay?

Yep.

Yes, your team is a part of that. Your actual employees are a part of that.

Of course.

But it's undeniable to then say there's a difference though, if somebody has equity and they're a literal partner in the company, that we're moving this thing together, we're going to do this. And I think you can just get further faster if you have other people that are in the arena with you.

Totally.

Yep.

Well, I think the saying is, if you wanna go fast, go alone. And if you wanna go far, go with others. Right. And I think there's also safety, not necessarily safety in numbers, but I know through that partnership I've had the longest where there's 3 of, or originally there was 3, now it's kind of morphed into a whole thing of its own. But, you know, in the, especially in the beginning, you're not always gonna have a good day every day, right? There were days where I wasn't having the best day or one of my partners, and there's kind of that, if it's a good partnership and it's balanced with talent, you know, with the right talent, there's that, don't worry about it, we got it. We'll carry the weight for, you know, however, you know, you need a couple weeks. I was, you know, went through divorces with my partners where they got divorced and, you know, and sometimes remarried. And, you know, when they were going through divorce, it was really hard on them. And it was like, I'll carry more of the load, you know, don't worry about it, right? We still need your input. And then there were other times where I was like, I took off a month and went to India. And it was like, I went to my two partners and said, hey, I need some time to kind of reflect and kind of go deep inside myself. Would you guys be okay if I just kind of checked out for a month? And they were like, yeah, and you know, we'll step up and the team will step on. I was like, perfect, right? And so there's a power in that.

There is power in that. And I'll tell you, there's a guy that I follow on Twitter. He's a great follow. He's got an awesome newsletter, and he is all about the solopreneur life. I read his stuff, and he's got good content. He makes— gosh, I think he puts it out there. I think his business does $2 million revenue. So he's like, he's He's a unicorn in the sense of like he's got a few little— I don't say little, that I don't mean that. I don't mean that disrespectful. I think he has a few people that's helping him, but he truly is a one-man show, right? I look at that and I think, this is interesting, but I don't want this. Like, this is not what I want. This is not— that is not the business I want to build, okay? I just like doing business just like I like doing life with people, right? And so while, yeah, you think about, oh, he's doing $2 million, he probably has like no expenses basically, right? Right.

Most of that, you know, big share of that's dropping to the bottom line. Yeah. Yeah.

But for sure. And certainly that's aspirational. And I, again, I'm not knocking the guy at all, but I think it's like, okay, well, I don't really want that. And then also there was a time that I thought I'm going to build a $25 million company and it's going to have 50 employees. I don't want that either. I don't want that either. And where I've settled is I like the concept of a lifestyle business. 2 to 12 team members, very high revenue per person, between $250,000 to $500,000 revenue per team member. Have a small group of people who are really bought into making a difference, truly making a difference in people's lives. And then a couple million dollars in top line revenue, really good healthy profit margins. That's what I want. That feels right to me if we're talking between the two, right? Right. So, and that's really kind of what I try to optimize things for now.

And that's what you help other business owners, I'm assuming, do, right? That's kind of your, your role there. And so, so you went to college. Yeah, well, it's like, okay, we're good. Back to the show. Where you went to college, you got out, you went through the sales thing, then you had that kind of the healthcare with the panic attacks. And then you said that was kind of some steps out. What were some of those steps out of that stress and anxiety?

I like to try to give like really impactful moments that happen like down in the weeds and tell you. So there was one, I was in Toronto, I was actually at Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach.

Oh yeah. Yep.

So we're doing this exercise and that had been, I don't know, that was maybe my 4th event or 4th, you know, workshop that I'd been to. And so this guy that was really not a part of our group, he came in and tall guy. I'm tall and he was really tall and he was super fit and it was really laid back vibe. He sat right next to me. And so we're doing this exercise. It was the 10x exercise, basically, where you take your revenue, multiply it times 10, and then say like— it was the idea was get your head like thinking back.

Yes, right. Yeah.

So you've heard him, if you know Dan Sullivan, you've heard him talk about this.

Yeah.

So we do this exercise and we have the thinking time and we do it ourselves, and then we had to come together and he was my partner. And I wish I could remember his name because I'd love to go back and connect with him and tell him how much this impacted me. So we do the thing and I go first. Well, it was a good thing I went first because if he had gone first, I wouldn't have done mine.

Right, right. You wouldn't have been honest. You would have been like, and then we added another zero.

So, so I do mine and I'm like going through, and he's really like listening and he's nodding his head. Okay, okay, that sounds good. And he's asked me some really good questions, very into it. So he says, okay, so my personal income last year was $5 million, so 10x of that would be $50 million. My company did $40 million. And I said, Wait, wait, wait, you brought in $5 million personally last year?

Right?

Like, yeah, I mean, the company, we did $40 million. And I was like, I had not been like that close to somebody, you know, doing that. And of course there's people doing— I was blown away. I was like, I'm not even playing the same game, right? We're in business, we're doing the same exercise. I said, man, I'm so embarrassed to have even done this exercise. And he was so kind in the way that he then walked me through his own story and then how things inspired him. And that was a pivotal moment for me. Like, I don't remember the rest of the workshop, but I remember that moment. And so it got me to indeed thinking bigger, but it more than anything got me to thinking differently. And I started to think, man, I'm working just as hard as this guy, right? Am I rowing in the right boat here?

Right.

And so I started to think, well, what would it actually take to get my current business to that? And I started to go, I'm not so sure I can.

Right.

So it made me think I'm rowing just as hard, but he's in a speedboat and I'm in a canoe, right?

Yeah.

Because of the nature of that business. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally. And I think that's a great point.

And so what it did is it started to open my eyes to other forms of business. That was in 2016, basically.

Oh, wow.

That's when my entrepreneurial career really, I felt like, started. Okay, so like I had the drive, the ambition, the resiliency, the determination, the hard work— all of those kind of elements and characteristics were in me, but I was just not applying it in the necessarily the right place. And so I started to begin to kind of see, okay, wait a minute, there's a whole nother world out here to be able to scale a company from zero to a million dollars and do it a lot faster, or go to five, or whatever that may be. So obviously just shared with you, my desire is not to build the business he built. He was a financial advisor as well.

Oh, wow. He was a financial— that's a—

wow.

Good for you. Now, that's interesting.

Yeah. So, I mean, he was a former baseball player, played in the majors. He played— anyway, he's from Canada, but he played baseball. He got recruited by Merrill Lynch and he kind of went in a traditional path. Right. And then he ended up just going out on his own. And then, of course, he ended up building the company with financial advisors underneath him. But that was the essence of it. And I thought, wait a minute, that's in a business that people can make sense of, right? So sometimes people hear, maybe as an example, Matt, healthcare, and they're like, oh, I don't even know how to start a healthcare company, right? Or a SaaS business, they're like, I don't know how to code, so I can't start a SaaS business, so forget that. So I thought, I think it was the nature of his business also too that made me think, huh, okay, I kind of know the financial services world a little bit, right? But he's just taking it a different way. And I started to feel like, okay, I could actually do this and really change the trajectory trajectory for me. And along the way, I did fall in love with coaching. I started sharing with other people what was changing in me, and I loved these kind of conversations. I just kind of started geeking out on business a lot more.

Yep.

And then ultimately, I mean, I can say this safely, I really do believe that God's put me on the planet to share my own journey, the lessons that I've learned with other people, and to put those in frameworks that people can actually use in their business and then even in future businesses. A lot of our clients have 2 or 3 companies that they're wanting to be able to grow, and they can take our concepts, our frameworks, and apply it to multiple, right? Because they're more principle-based.

Yep, that's very cool. Yeah, I love that. And so that's when— what you've been doing, it sounds like, ever since you kind of had this—

yeah, first client was late 2017. And as whenever I started doing that, and that was almost— it was coaching, but it was really more me and the partner at the time. It was more outsourced COO.

Okay.

It was really right. It was $5,000 a month to basically run their business.

That's a good deal for them.

That was a really good deal for them.

Okay. In fact, if you're still for hire for that, I've got some stuff.

Yeah, no, no, I'm out of that business. That has sunset. That That motto did not scale.

Yeah, it did not work out very well.

It did not work. Yeah.

Okay, a full-time gig, I'm making $5,000 a month. Yeah, that doesn't sound great.

I have to tell you though, there's a funny thing about that. We went to our first client, we sat down with him, his name was Frank, and we had thrown together a little PowerPoint. We didn't have a bank account, we didn't have an LLC, we didn't have anything. And I love it. He said, well, how much is it? And we said $5,000. And he was like, sounds good. He pulls out his checkbook, he goes, who do I write the check to? Right.

He knew.

We were I love it. It's gonna be a couple weeks before we cash this, you know, because, right, oh my gosh, we gotta— we don't have anything, right, right. And then we got our second client. That was our first two clients for probably 9 months because, right, but we cut our teeth really learning, okay, wait a minute, this has worked for us, but is this going to work for other places?

Okay, right.

I really fell in love with the teaching component of it, but I did realize what I missed was I wanted the business owner to be a part of it. And if they were totally removed, I was like, no, I really want to teach you these things, right? Because what's the end game for you if I leave? Okay, so we've done all of these tracking systems, right? Better compensation plans, you know, for the team members, better financial management, financial discipline. Okay, we've done all this. But if you're not here learning it, when we leave, it's just going to create a vacuum. It's going to fall apart. Exactly right. And that's actually what ended up happening. And so then I was like, I don't like this. And so I ended up, uh, starting at the time it was called the Hamner Group. And then I pivoted the name over to Business Growth Curator, and that was in 2000, 2019.

Hmm. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. It makes complete sense. And yeah, that's what I've gone through, the leadership stuff I've gone through. There's a place out of Dallas called the Stagen Leadership Institute. That's kind of, I've been associated with that for 10 years now. And, and yeah, they only work with the founder, the business owner, and then they'll work with C-suite and then kind of go out throughout the organization. But their thing is too, yeah, if you don't have the person who owns it, who has all the control, basically, if they don't understand the principles, then guess what? Why bother training anybody else? Because it's like, even if the rest of the team becomes highly functional and highly versed in this, you, you still got the dysfunction happening where the dysfunction was happening all along, which is at the top, right?

If you're completely—

if your business is screwed up, guess what? You're screwed up. And I'm saying that from knowing that I've had some really screwed up business. I didn't have maybe the intellectual understanding of what was going on, and so I had to go educate myself. I think anytime we get to the point where we stop educating ourselves is where we start having problems.

Yeah, I mean, I have a really wide funnel, is like I like to tell people. What I have to do is— and the reason I actually named the company Business Growth curator is because taking in— we, we try to curate the very best of the best stuff for our clients.

Okay.

So we'll say, for Matt, where you are, here are some of the best books to read that's best for you, the best podcasts to listen to. We're really curating the very best of the best things that we think are best for our clients, and then be able to share those resources you know, to them. Like, for instance, a lot of EOS stuff has influenced me very, very heavily.

Great stuff.

Um, it's great stuff.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, Gino worked for Verne Harnish at Scaling Up. Scaling Up— Verne learned a lot of his stuff from Jim Collins. And so a lot of stuff is passed down, right? And so I like to think a lot of the things— and I mean this respectfully to EOS— is some of the EOS methodology. I was actually an EOS implementer for a period of time. Oh wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We ran it OS and a couple of the businesses I'm involved with.

So a lot of the things, a lot of the tools we use have a nod to—

yeah, of course, influenced by—

yeah, influenced by, certainly not plagiarized by, by no means, but influenced by. But it's like, that doesn't really work for my clients, but I get the general concept of it, right? For instance, right? And so we have a thing called Blueprint. I mean, the reason our program it's actually called Blueprint because what architects use, they use blueprints.

Blueprints.

That's why we call it Blueprint. And so we help all of our clients to create a blueprint for their business. Well, what do we think is a blueprint? Well, we think a blueprint is your 3-year vision, your 1-year OKRs, and your quarterly targets. Okay, well, you could look at EOS and say like there's some elements of that that are fairly similar. Well, then we also think you need to have your core 4 values You need to have your key results that you track on a scoreboard on there. And then you also need to have— there's 5 things that we think of whenever building a plan or your strategy to make all that happen. And so we put that on a one-pager that we want our clients to be able to say, okay, here's my 3-year, here's my 1-year, here's my 90-day, here's my core values, here's my strategy to make that happen, and here are the key results we're tracking on a scoreboard. Does that make sense?

Love it. Love it. Yeah, very cool.

We think that that's the actual blueprint of the business. Yeah, we feel like that the business owner should be able to have on his or her either printed or on their iPad or something like that.

Call it dashboard, right? I mean, it's some form of dashboard or flight plan if you wanted to call it, or— Absolutely right. And if you don't have that, then yeah, you're going to get what you get, right? And usually not the best results. No.

Well, there's not as much intentionality behind it. There's just kind of like, well, A lot of business owners will say, what do you want to do? And they'll say, well, I just want to grow. I just want to make more. I just want to make more money. I want to do better. I want to work less. And it's like, okay, but it's too ambiguous. And so we really get them to get it out of their head because a lot of that stuff lives up here, right? And what they have shared with us is that we try to lay the space or open the space up for them for the first time to get it out of their head and get it down on paper. And to be able to get it down on paper in a safe place with other entrepreneurs that say, I can relate to that. Okay.

Yep, totally.

And so they have shared things with us that they haven't even shared with maybe even with their spouse about like, right, yeah, this is really— this is what I really want to do. And then it becomes a, again, a safe place where somebody else says, hey, I respect— I get that, I get that, you know. And so that honesty, that willingness to be open in a community is really, really healthy for small business owners because otherwise it's lonely.

It is.

Yeah, really lonely. They're surrounded by a team, customers, their phone's pinging all the time, but yet they feel completely alone.

Yep.

Because then sometimes you're like, what am I doing all this for? Like, where am I actually going? What's the direction of the company? And so we really try to not give them homework in our program. We try to actually do the thing, right? We'll put timers for 20 minutes where everybody's on Zoom actually doing thinking time in that moment right there.

Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because if we don't, then there's like, oh, it's just another thing on my to-do list, which you're not going to get to. And so then from there, I think the shares where it's like, okay, Matt, we just had this question, what, what did you write down? And there's like, oh man, I never thought of it that way. That's really cool. In the different industries you've heard, I got to niche down. It's like, honestly, one of the best things about our community is the fact that people own different businesses. Right?

Right. Because then you're pulling from different industries and applying it in your own.

Absolutely. Got somebody from healthcare, you got somebody in behavioral therapy company, somebody in a recruiting company, somebody owns an insurance agency, somebody owns— all of those different things come together to say, oh, Well, I actually never thought of it that way. Sometimes it's aspirational. Somebody is like, man, this guy's really, or this lady's really getting it done. I want to reach out to them and connect with them. And then other times it's this, it's to be there for somebody who's struggling. It's like, hey, I just had my key employee leave and I'm having a really hard time with it. You know, how have you guys been able to work through that? So the community has been one of the biggest blessings that I couldn't have seen that, that coming together the way that it has. And it's really inspiring.

Yes, I love that. I love all the stuff you said. I'll amen it. I'll shout it from the back of the pews. Amen. Preach it, preach it, preacher. So I, I totally— again, today's call was totally where I needed what I needed to hear. And, well, and, uh, and I'm gonna have some questions for you offline. There are a lot of— I've got more questions for you offline than I do on the podcast.

Oh, so I enjoyed the chat.

If you've got some time to stick around. Okay, good. So, but I do want to get— so one, thank you for this conversation. It's been very enlightening. And I've noticed that the conversations I'm having lately are very almost like— I don't want to say this— almost like saying, yes, you keep going on that track. I so believe that we need to bring business leaders together, business owners together to make the better world. We got to start at home and we got to start with what we have. And I think we can use business as a force for good in the world. 100%. Once we start supporting each other, when we're not supporting each other, then it's just going to be this feeling of separation. You use the word loneliness. I've heard that so many times in my podcast here over the last month is business leaders, business owners starting to tap into that. Hey, being a business owner is lonely. Let's just get that out. I think, I think being a human being is lonely. But when you're a business owner, it's a new level of loneliness because you have responsibility for other people. You feel responsible for other people's lives. And you can't really tell other people about the stress because you don't know who you can tell, right? You can't necessarily— you don't know, you don't really want to bring that home because then you stress out your family, you know. You, you really can't tell people that don't own businesses because they don't understand. It's like, oh yeah, you're making, you know, all this money and you got all the worries. It's like, well, yeah, actually that is part of it because some days I don't make any money, right? I mean, some days I still have all of this stuff, all the bills, and don't have the money, right? And some days I do. So there's I think the conversation we're having is a conversation that needs to happen more and more and more and more and more, which is you don't have to do this alone, right? There is a place to come. There is this safe haven for you to come because ultimately most business owners want to make their communities a better community. They want to make the world a better world. They want more for their families. It's not just greed for the sake of greed. Those people aren't attracted to this conversation.

Absolutely. I have to tell you, I think this is a good place to share with your audience this. I think that one of the single hardest things to do in life, and I definitely think it is even more so for a business owner, entrepreneur, founder, is your willingness to raise your hand and say, will you help me?

Right. Oh, totally.

Not can you help me? Can I? Yes, I can.

Oh, right. Can I?

Yes, I can. Right. But will you help me? Okay, that, that, that is so hard for us to do, is to say— because we have to put on the armor. I want Matt to think I'm successful. I want you to think I got all my shit together.

Together. Yeah. Okay, we can say that's H-I-T on this show.

All right, well, I want you to think I got my shit together.

Yeah, right, right.

I'm gonna 'Put up a front.' Yep. And I can put my front up with either my EBITDA.

Yeah, right.

Or my, or my revenue, or my, or my employees. Yeah, exactly. Or my trophies, or whatever you want to put up, or my car, my house, or my trip, or my vacation, or my Instagram account, or how many— whatever it is. Okay, I want you to see that, right? And it becomes exhausting versus being willing to say, 'No, no, no, how are you really?' Right. How are you really? Uh, he's not a client, but he's a really good friend. He's incredibly successful. He's got really 4 different businesses. And one day, you know, he was— we were doing this kind of initial song and dance, and I said, David, I got a question. Because he's got— he's just somebody that people just gnawing on him all the time.

Yeah.

And I said, how are you actually really doing? And he said, dude, I'm exhausted, right? I'm really tired. Anyway, that started on a conversation. So, you know, we ended up having a— we actually ended up having a real conversation, right? Instead of like, oh, that's good, man. How's business? How's the family?

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, great, man. You keep killing it, you know?

Right.

That's what— that's what ends up happening, you know? And I just— I used to be that guy, by the way. I used to be that guy. And now I think I told you, I was like, no, man, I just would rather be real and be, um, honest. And, um, and, and, and, and, and I still struggle myself, you know, at times. I mean, there's no question it's— there's a journey.

So anyway, totally, totally, totally. Um, my closing question, uh, for this, for the recording here today, for, for the audience, is if you had— where you can, you can take it outside the scope of business. We'll just say, we'll call it, we're all, you know, there's 8 billion humans on the face of the Earth. If you had one message that you would like to impart to all 8 billion, if all 8 billion got like some type of a listening device or went to all of— everybody went to a website, you had one message you could give that was just very crystal clear and very— what, what would you want to impart to your brothers and sisters all over the world in that message?

Ideas are everywhere, implementation is everything.

Ideas are everywhere. I love it. Thank you.

We were in just information overload.

Uh-huh.

I mean, we can't— we just all have access to information, so much information, so many ideas, so many things. At the end of the day, if you're wanting to really make a difference in your business, in your community, in your life, and the life of the people around you, it comes down to implementation and execution. You got to do the thing.

You got to do the thing.

So, um, there's probably a lot of other things I could share around maybe faith or around other things, but like from a business perspective, that to me is, is, uh, for sure the thing that, uh, that resonates with me the most. It sits in my head quite a bit. I actually will share another one.

Yes, please.

Is, uh, I'll share another one that's probably more as a human or philosophical, is that— and, uh, this is not an original idea from me but it's this idea of that I want to be— I want to one day meet the man I could have become and then say, hello, old friend, I know you.

Because, right, yeah, I love that. That's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I don't want to, you know, look back and say, well, you could have become this person but you didn't, you know, because of either fear or insecurity, or you didn't play all out or whatever that may be, you know, and I wasn't there for my kids and for my family and for my friends. And, you know, so life is a lot bigger than revenue and profit and all that stuff is important. I'm not saying it's not, but right, just like we are people outside of our businesses. That's not who we are. Hey, hopefully that served all of you and you maybe learned a few things about me that maybe you didn't know along the way. Hey, big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Club Capital, Autopilot Recruiting, and Coach P Consulting. As we get into getting closer to your individual personal tax return season, I know many of you are starting to look at your financials, reflect back, and, you know, unfortunately this is time that maybe some of you, this is the first time you've actually started to look at your profitability from last year and you say, you know what, I think I need to actually get financials on a regular basis and be able to use those financials to make better decisions in my business. Go to Club Capital, go to club.capital. You can see all the services that they offer, but you can also book a no-obligation demo with someone else to get to have an idea of exactly how this works and compare it to what you're doing today. Go to club.capital. You know, there's just a lot of energy and noise out there right now around what's going to happen in the marketplace. None of us have a crystal ball, but at the end of the day, you want to build a team, a championship-level team with A players. And while we don't know what the market's going to do, and with all of you, you may have just different budgets to be able to work with. Well, regardless of what your budget is, regardless of what the market, the labor market is out there of being able to hire teams. And while it's gotten challenging, Autopilot Recruiting can be able to help put in front of you some quality candidates that you can bring on your team, whether you're working for looking for a sales acquisition person, you're working for looking for someone to be in customer service, account management, et cetera, maybe even someone to help manage some of the marketing Autopilot Recruiting can be your outsourced, kind of your secret weapon, so to speak, to be able to help you to be able to bring on some A-players, build that championship team, and make 2023 your best year. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com and let them know that you heard about them on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. A lot of times I love to think about how do you attract, how do you develop, and how do you retain A-players? How do you attract, how do you develop, and how do you retain A-players? And where Autopilot Recruiting can help you is in attracting those A-players. But then the second part is how do you develop them and how do you retain A-players? And one of the biggest things, yeah, they want to be able to make good money. They want to have a compensation plan that compensates them fairly for the value that they're bringing into your business. But they also want to develop in their skill sets. They want to be able to do more and learn that. And they may not even necessarily want to move up in the organization, but they just want to expand in their skill sets. They want to be developed, especially if you get A-players. And so you know that, and you know the difficulty of bringing on A-players and bringing on people as a whole. But then once you get them on board, you may have a, all right, this is how we train you, this is how we onboard you. But what about a regular personal development plan? Well, part of that can be with whenever you are able to put your team in front of someone like David Peterson. He and his team are going to share with you kind of the behind-the-scenes things of what's actually working today. And a lot of things, yeah, there are some principles that worked 10 years ago, they worked 20 years ago, and they'll work 20 years from now. But then there are some tactics, there are some strategies that were not even things that people were using a couple of years ago, but they're working today and vice versa. Well, David is going to be able to show you and your team so you can actually help develop them and see what is working to help them to be able to scale to 3 locations and 25, of 30+ team members in their organization, go to coachpconsulting.com and let David know you heard about him on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.