181 - Navigating the Multifaceted Approach to Business and Personal Development with Nuclear Networking's Tyler Horsley

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Tyler Horsley, you are the CEO and founder of Nuclear Networking, which can be found at nuclearnetworking.com. Thank you so much for joining me on Listening with Leaders.

Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Tell me, tell me a little bit about you personally and then how you got into the work that you're doing today with Nuclear Networking.

Sure. So, yeah, me personally, where I'm at currently, I'm one of the partners at DRG Invest in Denver. It's a Denver-based private equity firm and currently acting CEO of Nuclear Networking, a business growth agency. Where I got my start, I actually came from federal law enforcement and intelligence, which is a weird jump.

Really? Yeah. Story.

Yeah. So DHS, IRS, and military contracting started nuclear networking. It actually does. That's for a longer story, but it does transition from an investigative skills standpoint, just reapplying that to competitor deconstructs, market opportunity, and more. So, but grew this to $5 million in 5 years, sold it to the firm that I'm now at. And have been passively growing and selling companies, typically 2 to 5-year windows for the past half a decade. So I just love building and growing companies.

So when you say talking about building, growing, and selling companies, elaborate on that a little bit.

Yeah, so far, and just to give some context, I worked in M&A for about 2.5 years on the buy side primarily. And then of course, naturally, I actually facilitated my own exit with the program here. But I love learning, man. So I mean, like, that's just kind of the key takeaway of try to fall in love with the journey of learning and exercising and refining everything that I learn rather than just trying to chase the next gold medal. And so that tended to just mentally work out for me a little bit better versus just living through sprint after sprint mindset. And so all of my acquisitions have been a little bit differently, a little bit different from investing in existing businesses, doing process optimization, AI integration, and then basically, you know, integrating marketing and operational efficiencies to grow those. But my favorite model thus far is finding rockstar operators who only are limited by the barrier to entry into business where I can invest in them capital, resources, and marketing, and they can operate the entire— maybe we'll integrate EOS or some sort of a methodology for them to operate on. But basically just growing those businesses up, getting 2 years P&Ls on the book, which now qualifies me for SBA 7, and then I have them buy me out. And so I'm in a race because I want to build the most successful company possible in the shortest period of time so that I get the highest multiples on exit. And it's a really good deal for them too because it's cheaper for them to pay SBA pro rata over a 10-year amortized loan than it is, you know, to pay me, right?

Yeah. So, so how do you find these rock stars?

That I don't have down quite yet. Luckily enough, I've been, been blessed, luckily enough to be a part of and intentionally be a part of, you know, really high performer communities, EO, YPO. This, this last acquisition we did was actually a luxury retail hot tub store. So I'm into everything from federal law enforcement to marketing to hot tubs to supplements. I know it sounds strange because I should and I probably will at some point in time have a niche, but really I lead with data-first approach. And if there's search volume and there's no competition in the area or low, and I know I can just blow it out of the water from a marketing standpoint, I just need to find somebody with the same or similar values who's willing to either A, has business acumen or willing to learn and take direction and who's relentless and Those are the individuals I usually try to find and work with and invest in. And they've been in my personal network, which I think is a statistical anomaly.

So, yeah.

So what is it?

What is it about you that's unique about you that makes you so successful at what you do?

3 things come to mind. Massive amounts of pain, failure, and experience.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm only— I mean, at the time of this recording, like, I just turned 36. And I've gone through two careers, major health issues, lost a lot of money in certain areas, learned things the hard way in a lot of areas. At the same point in time though, I've done everything I possibly can to surround myself with mentors who have built and sold multiple companies. A couple billionaires have blessed me with their time and I just shut up and listen. And if I'm able, I can ask questions. So I think that's allowed me to kind of accelerate or condense time and achieve quicker. But I, back to the falling in love with learning, I love learning. That's something that typically if I learn something that's interesting to me, it sticks. And so I'm fascinated with a lot of that mapping. I guess secondarily from a profiling standpoint, working for the government, it does help quite a bit in the sales realm. Just being able to kind of anticipate people's needs, have higher EQ, And frankly, doing a lot of work on myself around— that gets super deep, but like my brokenness, how that shows up, and just learning the mechanics of how I act, why I act. And then that helps me better understand other people, which, you know, converts into better leadership and more.

So, yeah, I mean, there— what I've learned, I mean, I'm a— my work professionally is a very sophisticated peacemaker. And what I've learned is that when you can when you begin to understand how people work, right? Especially when they're in conflict, there's really a very limited repertoire of behaviors. Yeah, what looks like chaos really is not chaos, it's just normal stuff. And it sounds like you're going through the process of learning all that yourself, and you're seeing, you're seeing the patterns over and over again.

That's one of my favorite things in life, is like putting people into archetypes, studying behaviors. And, um, we, we might have a lot of similar Yeah. Yeah. Interest there.

So, so it sounds to me like the thing that you enjoy most about what you're doing is the fact that you're on a continuous learning journey.

Yeah, I believe so. And, and the paired with that equally is being able to positively impact others' lives. And I know that sounds like a generic philanthropic delivery, but genuinely seeing high performers who can't go get a $200,000 loan to start a retail store and don't have the credit to sign a 5-year lease. Good paper makes good friends. So I'm not foolishly writing checks, but like empowering those people, writing those checks, marketing those companies and watching them just boom outside of the return on investment, watching close friends and high performers triple their lifestyle and then having that cascade through generations in their family. That's a cool thing to see, man, because that's—

I think that's what floats your boat.

Yeah, absolutely. Impact.

Not only do you make money, but you make money serving other people. Yeah. And successful. That's right. I mean, what's better than that, really?

I'm with you.

Yeah. What advice would you give to a young person, say just coming right outta college?

Is it a young broke person like I was?

Probably. I don't know too many kids who come outta college that aren't broke.

I know. Some are blessed, but—

Oh, not many.

So assuming that, yeah, the question is young person without a lot of resources but with the intention or the GWC, the wanted part of achieving is back to that mentorship piece. If you have the entrepreneurial spark, you'll know. You're going to be a quick start. You want to conquer the world. You want to do something. You've probably tried all these weird business ideas in the past. With the limited resources you've had and you know that you could do more, you're not getting the full kick out of the 9 to 5, 40-hour-a-week normal job. What I would say is that quick start will come in handy, that aspect or those values that you have, but you could also quick start right off a cliff. So I think that, yeah. That's true. Serious. So I think I am, it's not fun because it's not tangible and you can't see something growing right away. But I'm telling you, I've, I've avoided huge mistakes by surrounding myself with first and foremost mentors who have already done it and hit brick walls at 100 miles an hour. They can save you a lot of pain. Two, learning even through YouTube or otherwise, some of these skill sets around keyword analysis, search volume analysis. You can pause this and replay it again and then Google these terms. But, um, to try to understand, does anyone care about what you're, what it is you're going to do? If you're gonna sell something, a service or a product, or start some sort of a company, there are tools out there, many of them free, to tell you, and typically marketers use these, how many people in your area are looking for these things. And then after that, learn how to assess the competition. Typically those tools will show you some of that data. It's preliminary, but it's a good start.

This is really interesting. So you're saying that you start with a keyword search and I suppose you could use Google Keyword Planner. I use Keyword Planner, I think is the tool I use. But, but do the keyword search because Google's got the data of what people are looking for.

Yes. I like ahrefs.com. So ahrefs.com.

I know the company example.

Somebody might say, well, I'm entrepreneurial, I'm gonna start a CBD company. And very quickly, if you did a keyword explorer analysis, you would find it's easier for you to outrank yahoo.com than it would be for you to rank first on Google for CBD near me or CBD. So it's like, do you wanna spend $60K a month for the next 2 years to try and make it on front page nationally? Or should you niche down and only sell CBDs for pets in Denver, you know, that thinking. So mentorship, research, and then I would go one step further before you jump in and read books like Built to Sell. Try to understand what the M&A world is because we're really good at what we think we know about our specific trade. But business is more than just what you sell and who you serve. It's also what multiples on EBITDA are you going to get on an exit? Are you ever thinking about exiting? Well, no, I'm never going to sell the business. You will exit. And I know it's dark, but it's like you'll get hit by a truck, you will sell, or the business will shut down. Eventually it's not going to be yours. So, so it's still wise to build a business that doesn't solely rely on you as the bottleneck. These are just pain learning experiences that I've picked up that I would try to assess and that I do assess before getting into business on a new model.

But really interesting ideas. So let's, let's pivot to listing since I'm, I'm big on listing. How important is, is listing in your business?

Incredibly. I think it's important in every business, but I see, I know what you're getting the tee up, but it's from a cultural standpoint. I've seen a lot of dictator-like leaders and I think under fear without maturity and experience that that's more common than not, unfortunately, just with the entrepreneurial mindset and especially the natural inclination to deflect. And/or project, it must be my staff's problem that this is all falling apart. And it's like, who hired those staff? Who hired the staff? Who sets the cultural tone? Where are your scorecards keeping people accountable? Do you have an idea what's going on in your own company? So those things, but from a listening perspective, whether it's, you know, on the, so certainly on the employee side, like just hands down, their boots on the ground, they're doing the actual work. They're gonna give you feedback. You need them to help you to be scalable and to grow. And so it's important to have the buy-in from everyone and they will have good ideas that you might miss. They really will. So, so that part's key. We won't burn over this too quickly. Super key in marriage, learning that.

Oh yeah.

But, but primarily on the client side, listening is super important under, under or through the lens of not taking things personally, using it as free consultation. If you really think about this, they're consulting and they're giving you constructive feedback, whether it's emotional or not, on how to improve whether the reality or the perception of the product or service that you sell. Maybe what they're saying is wrong, but if that's a general perception, that's something that's worthwhile to listen to.

That's important information to have. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, what, why do you think people aren't good listeners? I mean, you've experienced the same thing I have, but very few people listen.

For many reasons. So I've done a lot of work, like a lot of work. So if I pause while I'm thinking, it's because I'm like sorting out 18,000 different responses. So a couple of things come up with that. One, the most obvious is ego. And ego can't understand anything greater than itself. So you see this on media, you see this on news, shouting matches. I'm right, you're wrong. And here's the associated labels. So I don't have to respect you. And it's just really not constructive at all. It doesn't lead anywhere. And it actually, what it really does at the end of the day is it prevents the speaker who's chosen to respond that way from growing in any way possible. They will only accept data from one specific data set, which is their echo chamber, and that's all they'll ever be able to learn from, which automatically, yeah, just stunts their growth. So ego's definitely A part of that fear, fear is definitely a, a core driver for people. Fear of losing business, fear of losing revenue, fear of losing reputation. And from fear, typically more often than not in the entrepreneurial mindset comes control. So that's kind of a byproduct of fear. And so you want to force it to go the way that you want it, and then you just run over people in doing that. So I think those are two big mechanisms. And then maybe the third, giving people grace, is just lack of practice. Maybe they're new to entrepreneurship, they're new to leadership roles, and they just haven't been trained. And they're, they actually genuinely lack awareness. I've met a lot of people, I certainly have those faults too, but I've met really high performers. I'm talking like Spectrum, you know, can create a $100 million company in less than a year. And they have zero awareness of how they show up in front of other people.

How do they, how do they do that then?

How do they create a $100 million company? Because not all companies rely on human capital to grow. You can do AI, SaaS, get into a space like that with better multiples on EBITDA and exit. And so if you're a creator or an engineer, you'll see this a lot. They're not as socially capable as maybe like a salesperson, but they don't need to be. If you created a wonderful software and you're an independent contributor, and you outsource a lot of the, like, they may not need that skill set to succeed. Like, think about the biggest tech companies that exist. Even Mark Zuckerberg today, watch him try to speak in front of Congress. It's very robotic. And I, you know, with respect to the guy, but it's just different brains, different mindsets. So there's, you might have to train outside of your comfort zone to be able to work in both worlds.

Right. So I'm, how many companies do you are you working with right now as clients or companies that I own? Companies? Well, both.

So clients, probably around 150 different companies. So that's just through Nuclear Networking. That's how much— how many clients we currently have right now.

And of the companies that you own, how many do you own, if you don't mind me asking?

Somewhere in the vicinity of 19. And then I'm active in 4.

Okay, so how do you— so you've got 19 companies, 4 you're really active in, 15 you're just sort of passively back there watching what's going on.

I mean, I'm sure you're not ignoring them, but, um, yeah, so, yeah, so active, active in 4. Nuclear Networking is the baby right now, so this is my full-time, uh, by the way, intentionally working my way out of a job, uh, because my highest and best use here is as, as an educator, speaker circuits, South by Southwest. It's not day-to-day ops that kills my soul. So it just does. So secondarily, some of these other things are me empowering other operators financially through marketing, through regular check-ins, weekly board meetings after hours here, and growing and advising those. Those are more of the hands-on with the intent to sell those in 2 to 3 years. And I'm building them to sell and it's so much more encouraging. This is just me, this isn't for everybody. There's grace in lifestyle business and legacy business. This is just the season I'm in right now. But when you can talk to another non-business person and just communicate, look, we're making $100,000 a month to the bottom line, that's $1.2 million. Isn't that great? Well, yeah, I kind of wanted to get to X, Y, and Z. Yeah, but we can sell this company for 15 times our adjusted EBITDA. So like we already have, a $17 million company.

Whoa.

Yeah. We just have to do this for 2 to 3 years and show trajectory and stability, and then we can put it on the market and so on. So those other companies where I'm less passive or more passive, I'd say like 6 of those are multifamily under our brokerage here because our private equity group does a lot in real estate. I know they're well managed. They're backed by my other PE partners. We have a construction company, property management company, and a fund manager and a brokerage. So it's like, I know they're in good hands. I'll come in as an LP. I don't need to manage all this stuff. That's a great way to diversify. And I still know I'm going to get 25% IRR above. So those are good. And then I have a couple of unicorn companies of high performers that I know well in EO and YPO that are doing major things in AI and they're already working with Chick-fil-A and qualified businesses.

So, so how much mentoring are you doing now?

Mentoring for others? Yeah. Most of the mentorship that I'm doing now is lighter from a business operations standpoint, like other business owners. What I've been allocating my time to, because I am short on time, it is a heavy desire. Like, that's the next season of my life is to fully invest in 5 to 7 companies and through mentorship and building up qualified C-level operators and those with those potentials and grow those. And then of course, passively keep doing real estate. But what I'm doing now, the mentorship that I do is impact companies. And so religious or non-religious, these are just good labels that I use. But like the missionary-minded people, those are the people running these nonprofits. They have huge hearts for people. They can raise money. They can certainly spend it and like try to just help everyone. But what I've really seen as a niche, uh, as a need, is sometimes they're not the best stewards of their money unknowingly because they're not business people, right? They don't have business acumen. They have missionary hearts. So then you have like your kingdom-minded hearts, and those are the people who are actually raising money for these mission missionary-minded people. Bear with me through the labels again, but it's like, that's what I find joy in right now is coming alongside those companies and saying, look, great job over here. Let's also do a great job on the business side.

I love it.

And so that's—

That's a huge need that needs fulfilling.

Huge.

It is, man. It's like, if you give any money to anybody, don't you want to know that that money is stewarded well and that you get the best return on your investment, even if it's impact?

I mean, I'm in, I'm in, I'm a little bit, I got my prison, I'm a co-founder of a nonprofit called Prison of Peace. Yeah. For the last 13 years we've been training inmates in maximum security prisons how to be peacemakers to stop prison. Very cool. Yeah. Fortunately, the, my co-founder and I are both trained as lawyers and business people, so we run a pretty different ship, but we run into a lot of other nonprofits who are serving populations who struggle with their, struggle with their business side. Sure.

Yeah, they're just, they're just waiting for partnership. Yeah, you know.

So, all right, this is really cool. You're doing something. I'd love to sit by your side for a while.

I mean, come to Denver.

I'm a lot older than you are, but, but I mean, just the stuff you're doing is so exciting. To see somebody your age doing what you're doing, it really gets me excited. Um, it sounds like you're having a lot of fun. And the other thing that you just— I know you you touched on it, is you're really interested in working on your own personal development. Yeah. Trying to grow yourself as a human being. Yep.

I've gotten more leadership value from doing that than reading any book or taking any coaching. And it's really, it is, it's not functionally to put it into a little bucket and this won't be appropriate, but I can spend my entire life learning how to manipulate other people into doing what I want them to do through socially acceptable leadership means. Or I can find out how I work at the deepest level, and that actually better impacts all of my relationships and everyone I work with.

Because it's authentic. And when you're authentic, you have an integrity. And when you have integrity, people want to follow you because they trust you. I mean, yeah. Um, so are you working with coaches, or you have, you know, are you doing your self-work, or a little bit everything?

Um, I, I've been kind of A/B testing different things because traditional yoga doesn't work for me.

It's like— I can see that.

But no, I— so a couple of things. One, I recently started using a coach for the first time in my entire career, like this year.

Wow.

So only for one quarter. And it's actually going quite well. And it's more the way that I would articulate this. So one, like any business deal or any— I work in data. And so it's like, I analyzed all of my opportunities and I found the highest performer in these specific areas. He's done 22,000 coaching sessions, multi-certified, managed $3 billion plus in assets. It's like unicorn. Like, okay, I'm going to try it with this person because I, on the other hand, I've done counseling for different things in the past and that has not done anything.

Right.

Just being honest.

There are not many good counselors out there, I'm sorry to say.

Yeah, well, I can speak—

there's a reason for that.

Yeah, there might be, and maybe for different people at different levels, walks of journeys of their life. But like, from a coaching perspective and a business perspective, it's been good so far, and I'm still learning. It's like a co-pilot who can see the mountains behind the clouds. I can still fly the plane, but it's good to have another person with a different perspective. Yeah, um, yeah.

One more question, we'll wrap it up. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know unless you revealed it?

Oh man, I'm a musician and I moved to Denver and we were on the radio, met The Fray, played 93.3. We got invited to Invesco Stadium twice, which is Broncos Stadium. It's probably a different name now. Headlined the Bluebird, which is where The Fray made it. So I did that. Professionally for 4 years straight, did it well, and, and very quickly realized, uh, unless you're in an inner circle, which is a credit card company, which they call record labels, um, I just didn't— it just became really less appealing. It's an art and it's something I enjoy, but it's not something I wanted to do for a living.

What is it?

Uh, lead singer, piano, and guitar.

I'm a jazz violinist.

Nice, very cool. Yeah, meet a lot of musicians in entrepreneurship, so must be something with the creative mind.

But well, Tyler, we've come to the end of the half hour. Thank you so much, it's really, really been a fascinating conversation.

Yeah, thanks for having me, appreciate it.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag Listening with Leaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

That's @DougNoll.

Douglass E. Noll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.