He Built a $110M Company by Giving Everything Away

90% of our current revenue comes from third-party affiliates. We have about 600 affiliates that generate us about 600 appointments a day right now is how the business is growing. When you go into a relationship, what happens sometimes is you can get stuck thinking strictly just about the transaction of the business relationship. If I can take a relationship from a soft 2 to an 8 in a matter of weeks just by finding ways to always add more value than I take. Instead of thinking, what is it that I'm gonna get from this person in this relationship, you can think, what is it that I can truly give and then give fast. I want them looking at their phone by the time the call's over and be like, wow, you've just solved that problem for me. And I found as I've done more of that, it's back to what you just shared a little bit earlier. If you let that giving train just start to happen, regardless of the transaction and you feel it inside, you've already won. But then when you let God, karma, the universe start doing its work, it puts more opportunities in front of you.

Whether it's a struggle, it could be something they're very passionate about, And within 24 hours, I think that's the key, because that's the surprise. You're like, "Oh my God." It's not like 3 months later they get this thing.

I've noticed every time I've seen him at events, he wears the same Nike Air Force 1s. This is clearly important to him. And I buy 15 pairs of these Nike Air Force 1s in these different colors. Oh my God. I handwrite 15 or 14 different quotes from 14 different billionaires on the lid of the box. I send one pair of shoes every single day for 15 days. And I just know that like every time he opens that front door, he's like, "Again?" Again, last shoebox was a quote from me. Serve as much as you can to as many as you can as often as you can without expecting anything in return. And if I could show you guys or play the voice note or show you the text message that Eddie sent me, this was the most intentional gift anybody has ever given me. Our relationship was already at a 10. It's like, how does it get any better? It gets better. You never know who has the treasure map to your treasure. You're one conversation away from one thing.

Steve Harward is the founder and CEO of Prime Prime Corporate Services, launched in 2012 to help entrepreneurs protect assets and minimize taxes with strategic guidance. Under his leadership, Prime has grown into a 9-figure business. So that's over $100 million, as you all know. Serving over 170,000 entrepreneurs and known for his relationship-first approach. He prioritizes generosity, trust, and purpose-driven leadership. He oversees partner development, and leads with a vision of long-term success through giving. Okay, I'm so excited for you all to hear how he has built his incredible enterprise. Above all, Steve is driven by family and a mission to make a lasting impact in the lives of others. Welcome!

Thank you.

I'm so excited that you're here and to share your story and your amazing accomplishment, what you've been able to do with your business in a fairly short Time. So, how are you doing this morning, first of all?

Amazing. Can I just compliment this room? Like, I've been a part of a lot of masterminds. I've spent, you know, north of half a million dollars a year to be a part of masterminds and part of groups, 'cause I understand the power of connection and relationships. And just listening to you to allow them to stand up and brag at the first session that typically most the masterminds, they make it all about themself, and you're making it about them. I just want to compliment that. I've seen a lot, I've walked through it, and for you guys to stand that bragged, I know that was uncomfortable. Good job standing up and bragging about what you've accomplished.

Oh, it's all about them. It's all about them. Thank you for recognizing that, and we're so happy that you're here, and congratulations on what you've built, scaling a 9-figure company. So, you're over $100 million, is that right?

That's correct, yep, between 3 different brands, $110 million last year.

Amazing. Let's give it up for Steve. And you have over 400 employees, is that right?

Yep.

So when you look back, what was the first pivotal decision that shifted you from being a smaller business into a larger enterprise?

I think it's, one, it's probably a series of a whole bunch of small events, right? So like trying to think of one specific moment, as I think about it is a little bit hard for me, but if I was to try to narrow it down, somebody just talked a little bit about letting go and not being in the support email or not being in the client. There was a moment, full transparency, up to $22 million in revenue, I ran the support email and I did all the payroll for my company. And when you can just do the math for yourself at where you're scaling of what that might look like, and by the way, I'm basically a high school dropout, so I should not be doing anything around the accounting side of the business. [LAUGHTER] Just to be clear there. But I was so particular with wanting to make sure that that stuff was done right, and I feel like the minute that I started giving up those areas of responsibility, when I handed the support email over to my COO, when I handed and I hired the finance manager and the CFO and the team that arguably was smarter than me, right, in that area, and it was a hard moment, but I feel like if I could attest it back to one thing that was pivotal going probably from like 20 to 60 and then beyond, it was hiring people that were far smarter than me in those areas and willing to give up margin in the business and knowing that that's gonna, you know, that payroll and that cost feels heavy at first, but once it catches wind and catches steam, it pays off.

Yeah, do you all hear that? Are you hearing that? Absolutely. And now you've built, an entire business model around relationships. And this is what excites me so much. They hear me talking a lot about strategic partnerships and the value of relationships. It's my favorite thing, is to build relationships. It's the most rewarding, and I know you feel that way. What is the core philosophy or habit that's allowed you to turn simple connections into long-term, powerful, high-value strategic relationships and partnerships?

I think it's, you know, when you go into a relationship or you start having a conversation with somebody about the potential of making money together, I think what happens sometimes is you can get stuck thinking strictly just about the transaction of the business relationship. And for me, as I've gone on to have success, which by the way, a lot of what I'm gonna share with you guys today wasn't always exactly where I was at in my whole journey. I'm definitely on, on the far more aggressive giving side now in the business than I was when I very first started, right?

Yeah.

Because there's, to some extent, there's survival, right? You're, you're, you're having to look out for certain things in an even more selfish way. But as I've gone on and been building these relationships and identified in these bigger partnerships that I want, what would have to be true for this person to accelerate the relationship with me? And I know that if I just stayed stuck focusing on the transaction, the timeframe it takes to build that relationship can extend quite long.

Mm-hmm.

And so if I can take a relationship from a soft 2 to an 8 in a matter of weeks just by finding ways to always add more value than I take. It's something I think when I go into these conversations and in these partnerships, I listen more than I talk. And as I'm listening, people are going to tell you things in reference to their business that as you build a business or for a lot of you guys probably have resources, instead of thinking, what is it that I'm going to get from this person in this relationship? You can think, what is it that I can truly give And then give fast. That's another thing that I love to do. I love being in a conversation, somebody surfaces a problem or an area in their business, and with the years of experience that I have, I know that I probably have a very trusted resource that I can refer to. I want them looking at their phone by the time the call's over and be like, wow, you just solved that problem for me? There was no benefit in it for you, there was no ROI in it for you, but I just wanted to act and serve. And I found as I've done more of that, it's back to what you just shared a little bit earlier.

Mm-hmm.

If you let that giving train just start to happen regardless of the transaction and you feel it inside, you've already won. But then when you let God, karma, the universe start doing its work, it puts more opportunities in front of you.

Amazing. Are you all hearing that? Really? And we're gonna, you're gonna share a little bit of the strategic piece behind that as well. You talk about win by giving, and I think you're writing a book, right?

I am, The Generosity Advantage and How to Win by Giving. I'm almost done. I'm excited to share it.

It's a big deal writing a book. So can you share a moment when giving without expectation led to a breakthrough partnership or an opportunity that changed the trajectory of your company?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I have hundreds at this point, but one that's meaningful to me, and I think she's very meaningful to you, is a girl named Amber Spears.

Mm, I know Amber well.

You know Amber well. You actually just spoke at her event a few weeks back here in San Diego, and Somebody that I've wanted to connect with for a long time. You know, in my industry, or kind of in my world, in my orbit, you see the people that stick around, and when you ask about them, their reputation exceeds themself always, and Amber's always been that person for me. And the moment I had a chance to finally start connecting with her, some of our first text message exchanges, I think it was probably like the third text down, she sent me a voice note. And the voice note was about 4 minutes long, and in that 4-minute-long voice note, 3 minutes of it was her talking about her cousin Troy that was stage 4 cancer and looking to potentially pass. And as I listened into that conversation before, like, I wasn't thinking about what I could do to make money with Amber. I got stuck with this obsession of I got to find a way to serve Troy. How do I help Troy? How do I help Troy? Just because I heard in that voice note the most meaningful thing for her. And you guys will hear me talk about this. I refer to it as the heart spark moment. Mm-hmm. That if you listen long enough in that conversation, this heart spark moment surfaces. And that was Amber's heart spark moment, and in the initial part of our relationship. And when I heard that, I was like, okay, what can I do? Okay, I can write a check, I can support, he has a little 5-year-old son, I can write a check to support him that way. But I also knew that Amber had a community of people that just supported her in a big way, but she never would ask anything of them. Like, that's the person that she is. It's probably very similar to the person you are.

Mm-hmm.

And I knew that like trying to have her do something to help Troy in front of her community, she would never do it. But if I secretly did it, I could pull something off that could be meaningful. And so to make a long story short, I tracked down Troy on social media. I arranged behind the scenes to get him to Arizona to her event. And I surprised Amber with Troy in the back of the room. She was on stage and Troy came walking up to the front of the stage with me.

Oh my gosh.

—And I remember watching her. I remember just watching her, like, in disbelief that how is my cousin Troy in this room right now? And he's so meaningful to me, and she knows what he's going through, and she just broke emotionally. And what happened thereafter, I can't even try to describe it to you guys, the feeling that happened in that room, but we raised $77,000 for him on a GoFundMe within 5 minutes. It just was there. The emotion, the prayer that we said, the whole room, we brought him up to the front and one of the guys offered to say a prayer around him. And the whole room, unasked, stood and surrounded Troy, and we all placed our hands on the person in front of us and delivered the most amazing prayer that I think I've ever felt in my life. And it was that moment for me, I watched again me and Amber's relationship go from a 1, never making any money together, never doing any business, to a 12, right? And it was that act of generosity of me serving and adding value. And now to finish your question, most recently, actually this last week, Amber made a connection for me, just unannounced and unasked. She actually connected me to the CEO of a company called ClickBank. ClickBank did $2.2 billion in revenue last year, dream top 5 partner for me. And because of Amber's relationship with the CEO of ClickBank, he immediately took my call And now I can't even imagine what we're gonna do in business, but this business opportunity would've never presented itself if I didn't find a way to serve Amber the way that I did.

Wow, and you did it out of the goodness of your heart. It wasn't to get something, and look what happened. Is that incredible? And I love it because you can do more by doing more good, right? Such a beautiful story, and Oh my gosh, that's so moving. Now, most business owners struggle with the trust piece of trusting their team, trusting their partners. We talked about them letting go of being on the CC on the email. What have you learned about building and sustaining trust as a leader? 400 employees, you've been scaling pretty rapidly. How have you been able to learn to let go in that way?

I'll be vulnerable, I struggle with it still. I have a hard time with it still. I mean, building a big business, it's fun, it's amazing, there's impact that starts to happen that's incredible, but that's an area that I'm still struggling with, and I still honestly battle with every day. I got an amazing team, and I think what I would say to it is—

I know a great organization for you to join, and we can help you with that.

Is this where I race to the back of the room? So I struggle with it, but I think it's letting people and letting individuals let their choices do their talking, and then acting fast around those choices. For me, once the trust is broken, it's so hard to repair. I don't know how to reel that back in. My president of the company, he made a comment to me one time. He said, "If there's 4, there's 40," meaning if there's 4 lies, there's probably 40 Mm-hmm. And that's really stuck with me, and so I've battled with that over the years, but I think that, you know, again, finding the people that are smarter than me, building true relationship with the individuals in the business. I think as you, you know, as a leader, I can have employees and I can pay them a payroll and give them their job and responsibilities and manage the KPIs and targets and all of those things, but I've also found that if I can, if it fulfills me, I can be much closer understanding who they are. The comment I make often is, I wonder what the conversation is at 8:00 at night when that individual is speaking to their spouse about the job or where they work. Right. I think about that conversation a lot. Right. And if that conversation feels like I'm in a place with that individual where I know it's positive and good, chances are the trust and relationship is really strong.

Yeah, that is— that's a great perspective to think about. What is the conversation that your team members are having late at night about their experience? 'Cause you know they are, right? So, some of you are like, "I don't wanna know. I don't wanna know." Now, your partnerships, many of them have brought in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to your company. What is the process for, determining who is a good potential partner, so they're not all spending a lot of time possibly going down the wrong road, and are there early signs that tell you that a partnership is going to work?

Probably another one I'm a little bad at.

Well, you're doing something right, let me say.

I am doing it right. I mean, I like to refer to myself also as like a rock turner-over. I have habits that started in the beginning of the business, and you know, I don't try to calculate ROI immediately, and I know that if I can give somebody conversation, give them time, give them mentorship, right? Like even for you guys, and hearing about all your mentors, and knowing that they don't have to do that. Like it's pretty remarkable and pretty incredible some of the successes that I heard in the back of the room with some of your mentors and what they've done, but yet they do this 'cause they're passionate about it, and I think for me as well, like as I'm building these relationships, I— Allison Maslan. There's times where I'll talk to somebody that has 10 new potential leads a month for me, and then the next month I'm talking to Kelly, who's the CEO of ClickBank, who has hundreds of thousands, right? And so I probably haven't managed that like I should, and it's simply because I just have a passion. If I'm on that call, and even if there's not extraction of value for that to be worth my time, there's still a value of a give, and I've seen enough wins happen later down the road that I think if I could try to quantify the ROI, I probably could make an argument to my CFO that that time was probably worth it.

Yeah.

Right? But it's something that I still struggle with, but, you know, we're getting better. We're getting more organized with my calendar. There's thresholds of partners, you know, by way of the revenue of the business and the impact they can make with us that we're starting to tier out and have some different team members take, you know, who's taking the 0 to 10, who's taking the 50 to 100, Steve's taking maybe more the enterprise-level partnerships and above, and creating a tiering structure based upon opportunity.

So you have other people on the team that are also working on these partnerships, it's not just you?

I do, I have a team of 7 in my account management team, yep.

Okay, and can you just give us a little bit, let's say you're on a call with someone, you're listening through for the, as you said, heart sparks a little bit, can you just talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, I love hearing the journey. It's so fun for me as an entrepreneur myself, and to be honest, feeling like I just shot a little video out in the hallway of myself, like, gotta pinch myself. Here I am operating and running a 9-figure business, standing on your stage in front of your audience. It's a dream moment for me, right? So thank you again for that. I think as you hear the story, what happens in my mind, and they process what they did, what sacrifice they made, I heard somebody share that they were a single mom with 3 kids building a business and doing— like, I notate those things. I highlight those things. I make selection to make those moments of their life and their successful journey and what feels like the more important part to them as I'm taking notes on that conversation that I'm having. And one of my funnest, favorite things to do around that is serve them around those heart spark moments. If I can notate that you got an 8-year-old son and he loves Messi and I want to build a relationship with you and he loves soccer, How can I within 24 hours have a signed jersey for Messi on that front door showing that relationship that I heard you, I heard you. I wasn't looking for it just in the transaction. I heard how important this little boy, and I have a whole array of different things that I do both on the, just on the fly for myself. And maybe I can share a couple more examples, but I also have partners in a company. If you guys haven't heard of this company, you should look this company up, Giftology.

Giftology.

Yes, very familiar.

John Ruhlin, one of the individuals and one of the mentors that taught me this giving strategy and how to add more value than you take. Unfortunately, we lost him about a year ago unexpectedly, but his company has incredible resources to support companies that are growing that wanna love on relationships.

Yeah, that is incredible. So what you're saying is you listen for these, whether it's a struggle, it could be something they're very passionate about, And within 24 hours, I think that's the key, is to, because that's a surprise, you're like, oh my God, it's not like 3 months later they get this thing.

I like to act fast, and I want them to be, now, relative to the gift or what you're giving or what you're doing, obviously some might take a little bit longer, right, in that, but then there's also some fun that you can start playing into, maybe I'll share a story real quick that's a recent one.

Yeah, go ahead.

I have a friend, his name's Eddie Maloof, runs an awesome marketing company, And I've noticed every time I've seen him at events, he wears the same Nike Air Force 1s. Every event, everywhere he goes, it's a clean pair of white Nike Air Force 1s or black, and it's the same shoe always. And I weirdly pay attention to that stuff, and I'm like, okay, this guy can buy all the shoes he wants, but this is clearly important to him based upon how he's wearing these shoes. So I take quick action, I jump on nike.com, and I buy 15 pairs of these Nike Air Force 1s in these different colors. Oh my God. And then my mind goes to like, how do I make this fun now? Okay, I got the shoeboxes in my office. I handwrite 15 or 14 different quotes from 14 different billionaires on the lid of the box. So when he opens the box of shoes, there's now a quote from Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, right? And then on the shipping label, I actually put from the billionaire that actually sending him, right? Right. And then I sent one pair of shoes every single day for 15 days. And I, the thought of this happening, by the way, this is important for you guys to realize in me, is like even me just resaying it, if you could climb inside of me and understand how it feels for me to tell you this is something I did, but then I gotta live it while I'm doing it, I can't quantify the value of what that is. That cost me $1,700 and 43 minutes of my time to give myself this sense of joy of building success and having a moment of being joyful as I'm doing it. That's amazing. Then I start shipping the shoes, and I just know that like every time he opens that front door, he's like, "Again? Again?" [LAUGHTER] Like, I wanna be on the Ring doorbell camera watching his face, right? See what this is. And then the last shoebox was a quote from me, and I have a saying from my mentor Randy Garn, and he says, "Serve as much as you can to as many as you can as often as you can without expecting anything in return." And I wrote that quote, and I put my name behind it, and so the 15th shoebox, he realized it was from me, me. And if I could show you guys or play the voice note or show you the text message that Eddie sent me, long and short of it was, this was the most intentional gift anybody has ever given me. And I— again, our relationship was already at a 10. It's like, how does it get any better? It gets better. And it gets better because of the joy and the fulfillment that we have just loving on each other the way that we do. I could try to break down also all the introductions and all the— I look at my phone every day and I have partners that I feel like they've told me this. Yeah. Steve, I wake up sometimes in the morning and I think about your business before I think about mine. And just think about that. I think about your business before I think about my own.

Amazing.

Right? It's incredible and it just fuels me to just wanna keep looking for these moments, 'cause I've already surpassed opportunity and financial success in my life that if you look at my story, my history, I never should be here. And if I can balance the giving moment and being joyful while I'm having success, success while I'm teaching my little boys as I'm traveling in that journey, that's the ultimate win.

Wow, that deserves a major applause for that. That is so beautiful. Are you all inspired by that? It's actually fun, right? It's fun when you think of it that way. Now let's say, okay, now you're getting down to business, you're on a call with them, And let's say that you want to bring an idea to the table of a way that you could partner together or how you partner with companies. Can you— I mean, you don't have to go into the whole conversation, but just so they're in their mind thinking of how would I set up a strategic partnership? You know, I think— because we have all different types of companies here in, you know, consumer goods products and services and manufacturing and so forth. So, and I know yours is, you help clients with their finances, taxes, all of those things, and you do amazing work. What would be a way, you know, they've felt the bond, they've made this amazing connection, and the person is open to hearing, how do you approach that conversation?

Well, I'll maybe just use my company as an example, and you guys individually can try to like think about how your product or your service could fit into what they're doing. But early on in the business for me when I first started it, it was identifying partnerships and basically trying to convince partners to send me their customer for me to sell my product to then pay them a revenue share of that revenue on the backend. Like that was the starting model of it. And as I looked at the numbers, And as I watched these relationships, and don't get me wrong, it was working and it was growing, there was a percentage of conversion of the customers that they were sending me that I just felt like I knew I could convert on if I adjusted my model and I adjusted the price point of what it was that I initially sold.

Okay.

Right? Anybody that's looking for a strategic partnership or considering a strategic partnership, be mindful that they're putting their reputation on the line the minute they endorse you, right? So you gotta think about that at a high level. And for you guys, maybe vice versa, the same thing, right? You got to act leery, you got to protect your customers, you got to protect your brand. You don't want to send your people somewhere and bad happens and you're the one that ultimately was the bridge to get them over there.

Yeah, that is a big deal, right? You want to protect at all costs because you've built that reputation with your clients.

And so that, and I think that's why a lot of people maybe don't look for strategic partnerships is they look at it like, I would rather not risk the business reputation for this other service or this other bucket of money. And so as I sat and I thought about that and wanted to expand in other relationships, it was like, what needs to be true with my conversions or my product where I can add so much value up front to this partnership that I make it irresistible for them to say no?

Right.

That they can't say no to the offer. And so I took my, specifically my entity creation product that we sold for $1,600 and the fulfillment delivery around it, and I said, how much money am I willing to go in the red on this product to give that partner more value for their offer. So when they do ascend the person to me, it almost feels more like a fulfillment call, not a sales call. So let me break that down a little bit more for you guys so you can hear it. So let's say that somebody's, let's use a real estate education program as an example, and maybe I'll use Pace Morby. I don't know if anybody knows who Pace Morby is or of Pace, but incredible real estate educator. He's doing a 100-city tour right now in 100 days. Meetings up with his 50,000 people that are in his community. The guy's absolutely insane.

Wow.

But what I seen in his offer is he was selling this education package and I said, well, what if I included $2,000 to $3,000 of additional value of my services into your offer and my first phone call with your customer is more of a fulfillment call than a sales call? And I watched my partnership start unlocking where it was like, wait a second, You're willing to give me $3,000 of value to include into my service, let my customer come to you, lose money on the delivery of your product and service just to build a relationship, earn trust. What I knew is my product was so good, I knew the delivery of my consultation, I knew the delivery of that product was gonna be so good that it was also gonna be highly likely that they would buy my other services, which in turn the second and the third upsell of the other services is how I generate and increase the revenue. Mm-hmm.

That's part of your cost of acquisition. You look at it, that's your marketing cost.

That's exactly right.

You're leveraging this whole other community, and you're investing in them, basically.

That's right. And obviously, you can imagine, you know, all the different ways that can start to spin. Then all of a sudden, you're holding webinars, and you're doing trainings that don't have direct call to action, but they're just educational, and they're informational, and they're adding value, and— That's, you know, if you look at Prime Corporate Services' success today, that was a very, actually now back to your first question, that was a pivotal moment. Our adjustment and willing to lose money on the front end to know that we could acquire a customer to build value and overdeliver on our product and know we could ascend them on the back end a lot easier by doing so.

That is so brilliant. Did you all get that? That is so brilliant. And also, just to this idea of the ideas, so you're very creative, clearly. You come up with the 15 shoes in 15 days. Thinking about the types of partnerships, so you're in finance, so it's, I mean, you could go and so many, you obviously work with small businesses, so it could be attorneys, accountants, well, you're doing, well, you're not doing accounting, right?

We are, yeah, we do CPA work, but I think I know where you're going.

Yeah.

Right?

So to determine who would be the right partner, because it's a lot of times it's out of the box of what you would normally think.

Yeah, I think I weirdly enough too with the product and service and, you know, I fell into, I did have a moment in the business where it was like this ability for me to like 1099 independent contractors and small business owners, that book of business is big. And back to maybe another pivotal moment in the business is I had a subset of people that I was working with and I had these goggles on and it was like, this is the only place that I can find a customer. Right, like these are the only few businesses that I think are my customer and then I opened my eyes and I was like, whoa, let me get in these mastermind groups. Whoa, what is these webinar things about? Whoa, what are these enterprise level partnerships? I mean right now we're having a conversation with Lyft, the driving company, the, you know, getting a ride and it's like they have 2 million drivers between, US and Canada, and I think just staying the course long enough, maintaining the reputation that we had, and now built for scale, we can have a conversation with a company like that, which is pretty incredible.

Yeah, so that, you know, you're thinking small business, now you've picked a specific industry that has so many, right? So once you dive deep, then you can go wider, yeah. So much brilliance, Steve, thank you. And let's see, let's talk about leadership lessons. With 400 employees, I'm sure you've got some leadership lessons. What are, and they usually come from mistakes, but can you share a couple of those?

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big believer in leading by example. You know, I tell my kids, or don't tell my kids, I show 'em, don't tell 'em, right? It's you gotta show up and you gotta work. I had many partners and friends that I seen their businesses fall apart, their partnerships fall apart, people internally in their business leave and go start a, you know, copycat company of the business. And as I watched those things happen, I seen patterns in people that I think they stopped staying on the grind, they stopped staying in the commitment, they stopped letting their employees feel seen and heard. And so for me, one, it's a passion that I have, I'm one of, for sure, the hardest workers in that building. I mean, if you looked at my calendar, if you looked at how I operated, I work harder today than I ever have. Well, now arguably I don't have to. Why? Because I've been able to fall in love with what it is that I do. Two, I want to show the team and give them back what they gave me, right? They gave me an opportunity of a lifetime, and so I got to find a way now to help make sure that I bring people along with me. One recent exercise that I did, and I didn't know what it was going to make me feel like, but it was incredible, and back to letting your employees feel seen and feeling heard and giving them a safe place to be themself is one night Sunday I went into the office and nobody was there. Uh, it was dark and, uh, I actually just went around to the individual cubicles of the employees that worked there and I sat in their chair and I closed my eyes and I envisioned being them working at this company. And then I opened my eyes and I looked at their desk and I look at their pictures and I look at what it is. And I just watched my level of appreciation knowing that this individual's choosing to work 8 to 10 hours working 10 hours a day building my dream, that then just created more motivation for me to do better and more for them. And our company, like our, you know, whether it's our healthcare benefits, whether it's our bonuses, whether it's our, all these additional things, we really love on our team and love on our leadership in a very big way. We want the company to succeed, but we know we're not where we're at without the team.

Amazing. That is beautiful. I love that. Thank you. Let's see. Often companies, when they are growing so rapidly, when they're scaling, it can really break a company. And so we talked about earlier of letting go of the old bar to catch the new one. Are there internal systems or cultural foundations that that have allowed you to surpass that $100 million level without losing quality, without, 'cause you do, you see companies that grow pretty quickly and then you're seeing bad reviews and so forth, and I know that's not the case, and we'll talk about reviews in a minute for you. How are you keeping that level of delivery as you grow? Have grown?

I think it's, you know, I've had painful moments in the business, specifically in areas of the tax side of the business. That's it. That's if anybody's in the tax industry, it's a hard place to scale, it's a hard place to grow. And so we've, we've took our lumps, we've took our bruises, but I've just continued to find better partners and better operators that I know can operate at the level of my expectation of fulfillment and delivery. You know, it is an area that if I think about Prime's You know, and personally for me, I've been doing almost the same thing every single day for almost 20 years. I was thinking about this last night, like I've woke every morning for the last 20 years almost doing the same exact thing mentally in my mind of what I'm seeing and forecasting and wanting to build. So I think that's the first thing I'd say is that, you know, we want to go there, we want to go fast. But remember, time plays a factor into this.

Yes.

And it's, and it's, it's time with also maintaining the right reputation. You know, Prime, something I'm proud to always say is that we have the same one merchant account from 13 years ago, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars later. I have the same A+ rating with the BBB from the very beginning of the business. We get thousands of reviews. And I think just obsessing on the delivery of our product and what the customers are saying and hear what they're saying and making adjustments around that has really allowed us to be this far down the track, having this level of success that we're having. Mm-hmm. Because that was something for me specifically, and now the team's grabbed it even stronger than I did, where the reputation and what customers and clients said about us mattered. And I think when you build a business on partnerships like I did, interesting enough, it held me even more accountable to pay attention to that. You know, when you're running paid advertisement or you're paying Meta or you're paying Google to drive your customer, in the event you don't deliver the product and service at the level they hoped for, there's really not anybody other than the online platforms for them to complain. For me, it was not only the online platforms where they can complain, but it was also my affiliate partners. So if all of a sudden one of my high-level partners are having customers that are complaining about their experience with me, I'm putting that partnership at risk. And I think that forced the behaviors internally in the company to obsess even at a higher level.

So most of your client acquisition is through partnership. Is that correct?

Yeah, 90% of our current revenue comes from third-party affiliates. We have about 600 affiliates that generate us about 600 appointments a day right now, is how the business has grown.

Is that incredible, you all? That is amazing. And let me talk about— let's talk about reviews for a minute, because you have like 8,000 5-star reviews.

Real ones.

Real ones, yes. Thank you for that distinction. And you have a process, because we talked about this, and how you, the team is involved, and you really garner those reviews. Can you share that?

Yeah, I think the fun part of sharing this story, by the way guys, is I get to highlight my mother. And my mom works for me, and she's worked for me for 13 years, and she only works for me because she's so stubborn and won't just let me take care of her. She's got to add value, right? She's got to contribute. And I was— my grandma got diagnosed with Alzheimer's and dementia, and we had to change roles for my mom to work at home and to take care of my grandma. And as we did that, we were thinking of like, how could we better use my mom's skill set? I'm like, Mom, you love talking to people. You're proud of your son. You love our product. Why don't you just be kind of like my customer review lady?

Yeah.

Why don't you just start calling our customers? And—

They're all going, oh my God, I gotta hire my mom.

There's some pros and cons to this, by the way. But as a son and anybody that's, you know, a child looking up to somebody, it was some celebration of moments for me and my mom, and my mom did an incredible job at it. She still does it today, so if you look at my reviews and you see the name Sabine, that's my mom's name. She's still all day long calling people. I'll look at her talk time sometimes, and she has more talk time than some of my salespeople. Guys. Like, she'll be on the phone for an hour and 40 minutes later for a 5-minute review call. I'm like, Mom, what are you doing? She's like, he loved Jesus and I love Jesus. And next thing you know, it's, it's, it's 2 hours later. But, you know, with that relationship, for me, you know, that's been fun. And then we just— back to partners. I wanted to put what their customers were saying about their experience with me. Maybe this is an important distinction here too is, you know, people when you go into partnership and you're referring your customer and you're creating revenue maybe on the backend for them, most of the businesses that really care about their customers want to hear what their customers are saying. And so one of the things I do within the first 30 days very aggressively through my sales team, through my fulfillment, through my customer service, through my mom, all the layers of the business, these customers are being asked, how was your experience? And even if their experience wasn't at the level I want it to be, By asking it, you're going to learn where it was broken or where it fell through or where an individual fell short or whatever it might be. Like the magic of making the business strong is actually in hearing what people have to say. Now, you guys know most people, and maybe you're even this way, it's like leaving a positive review sometimes isn't something you race to the front of the line to do always, right? Even if you have a good experience. But if you have a bad experience and depending on your personality, it's easier to go share the negative than it is to go share the positive. Yeah. And so to try to get out in front of this a little bit for my partners, I wanted to put, depending on how many customers they were sending us, a lot of reviews back in front of them in the first 30 days where they can be like, wait a second, this customer didn't buy from you, but this is what they said about their experience and the phone call they had with you. Or this customer did buy from you, this is the experience they had, and you paid me money on the backend. Again, back to that making it so good they can't say no to it.

Right.

Right, where that customer and that feeling, so we, We've obsessed, and we now have an entire system throughout the whole business, and selfishly for me, every single day, I get a, you know what, I'm actually gonna share something. My mom texted me last night right when I landed, and this will showcase the relationship that me and my mom now get to have because she does this. Let me actually play this voice note for you guys if you don't mind.

Hey babe. Oh babe, I gotta tell you, I don't know if you remember, But there was two women that came up and visited with me when I went with you to Wyoming. And you even visited with this lady, Katherine Costner, I think is her last name. She is in Mongolia doing a mission. And she is one of our clients and got an LLC through us. But she is in Mongolia. Stephen. And she just sent me a text message to say that she was thinking of me and that she prays the Lord blesses us and she's just so grateful for who we are and just everything. And I wanna send her a card or a book or something. But I just had to tell you that, son. It blows me away. So beautiful.

Aw.

Can we give it up for my mom?

That's so amazing. Yeah.

You know, like, I think about that, and it gets me emotional. That's the relationship I get to have with my mom right now, and we get to build this cool business doing cool things, but, you know, those are the voice notes that I get to have with my mom because she's living in it and getting to experience the relationship with our customers.

Amazing. So that's awesome. That's beautiful. You really build this in, and we talked about you're actually gonna share. So Steve sent me his whole process on garnering reviews. Would you all like to have this?

Yes.

He built a whole SOP around it, so we're gonna send it out to all of you, because it's very strategic, it's super smart, and get your team around it and so forth, so.

Just remember, if, you know, they may not, seem like they're overly fruitful now, but what you can't quantify sometimes is certain customers buying from you because of a review they're seeing. And my team's made arguments to me, it's like, Steve, like most companies have 2,000 reviews. Like you're obsessing. I'm like, well, if I had 600 appointments yesterday and I have 8,000 reviews of the existing business, like I'm not hitting near the threshold that I need to be, right? And so there's also an interesting way of holding my team accountable of making sure to highlight and celebrate them because the customer had such an experience with you that they're willing to go right with you about it, right? And so just try to look a year, 2 years, 3 years down the road and what does 2,000, 5,000, 10,000— I get it all the time. I get on a partner call with a big company, because I know they're going to Google my company, I know they're going to look up to my company, and when they're doing that before our first phone call, if the platform itself shows that we serve customers at the highest level and wow, you got 8,000, did you just jump over a hurdle of a partnership that would have got stuck with them questioning the delivery of what you do. Awesome.

Yeah, wow, so fantastic. Congratulations on that. Let's see, for, has this been amazing? Seriously. For the CEOs in the room that want to build deeper relationships, and this is a room with very, very smart, giving, heart-centered people, What's the one practice that they could start today to help them build that network and ultimately that growth?

The first word again that comes to mind is listen, right? You guys are gonna end up at the table, you're gonna have conversations. Naturally, you're gonna wanna race to say what you do and how you do it and how it is that can benefit them and looking out for yourself, which is okay by the way. Like, let me be clear, like I've built a business on transaction and have significant financial success because transaction is a component in it. And I think as we're, you know, as we grow up, as we're raised, as you know, we're taught the things we are, there's always an exchange, right? Meaning mom gives you a dollar, you buy a candy bar, you exchange. You go to the gas station, you fill up gas, you give them $30, you get gas. Like there's always an exchange in value that's happening throughout your life. But if I was to, you know, leave you guys over the next couple of days, as you listen and you engage with each other, Notate in your phones as you exchange information those heart spark moments that you heard from those individuals. And these don't gotta be hard, complicated things, by the way. I did one in Cabo. A lady mentioned that dolphins are like her spirit animal and she loves dolphins. I raced up to the gift shop and I bought this $13 dolphin statue and I went downstairs within 10 minutes and I handed it to her. And I watched this lady look at me like I was a ghost.

Hahaha.

She's like, how did you just hear me and then you're handing me this? And again, I want— like, that experience for me, I already won. I already won. Like, I think that's the trick in finding a way around giving and adding this value and looking for these small moments. Like, if you've already won by looking for and doing those things, nothing needs to happen on the back end. And if the transaction's the byproduct of it, again, back to God, karma, and universe just like doing its work. And with what it is, I promise you'll be blessed. And so look for those moments. Be intentional in the conversations that you have. Yeah. One thing I love to do when I'm in a room and I'm networking, it's kind of awkward sometimes depending on who you're talking to, I take a selfie with the person I'm having conversation with, 'cause I remember, right, you guys are gonna leave with a lot of hopefully new relationships and reconnecting with people. Take a selfie with them, throw it in your phone, save it in the contact in their number, and then go in the notes section when you walk away from the conversation, take 13 seconds and just go make a handful of notes in that notes section in their contact, that remind you, 'cause if you wanna network in the room, and Allison puts you in here for an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours to network, you wanna maximize that time, so fully acting on that stuff right then and there is a little bit harder, but once you go back to your room, and you're like, holy cow, I met 10 people, I got their face in here, right, which is very helpful, I'm sure it's helpful for you guys, it's helpful for me, and then I got the notes, and I'm like, ooh, this person likes this, or they love this, or this is their passion, or Starbucks coffee, they love a, For me, it's a white chocolate mocha. If you ask me that and then the next morning you hand me a white chocolate mocha before I get to Starbucks, I'm going to be like, you heard that?

And then there's going to be a run out of the room here for about a ton of mochas.

And just, and just serve around and have fun with it, guys. Like, that's the other thing. And then maybe as your business continues to grow or as you have the financial resources to do it, don't be shy to spend some dollars on some of those things. You know, my CFO, we have a tug of war all the time for how much money I spend on the things that I love to give. And I got to remind him really quickly, this business isn't here without this being in place, Tim. So I appreciate your comment. I'm going to spend $1 million a year on gifts and adding value to people and putting them in moments and giving them art pieces and things that hang in the main section of their house. One, so when they walk in, it's a reminder of me and the relationship that I had with them and what it is that we made. But two, it's, it's, it's my give back. Like, I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't have a business doing this at this point. What was possible and what was probable, I should be operating heavy equipment, wearing an orange vest with a hard hat, digging in a hole, trying to make $40 grand a year and barely get by. But somebody trusted me. Somebody gave me a chance. Somebody called me and said, "Hey, here's an opportunity. Do you want to come with me?" And I think about that moment. His name is Robert Tovmassian. He forever changed my life. And because of one phone call, one thing I'll leave you guys with— and I know we're out of time here, and this is maybe the take-home here— is you never know who has the treasure map to your treasure. Amen. You're one conversation away from one thing, and if you stop thinking about what that thing is to benefit you financially, but you really think about how it helps you in a compounded way. If somebody teaches me how to be a better dad, and I'm a dad for the rest of my life, what did that mean to me financially, right? What does that not mean to me? How do I quantify it financially? You can't, right? You really can't. And so I think when you're in those engaged conversations, and you all know it, you've been in transactional conversations,, and it's kind of stuffy, it's kind of icky, you kind of want to get out of it. But when you're in a place of love and true care, all of a sudden things start coming out in you, and resources start coming out of you that you just want to share, and you want to give. And let the byproduct be the money in the transaction. Let the give and the heart be the front leader of it.

Woo! This is so moving. I have to say, this guy's moving me to tears. Seriously, this is one of the most powerful conversations that we have had. Let's give it up to Steve Harwood.

Thank you.

Amazing.

Thank you, guys. Stuart.

Thank you.