After 20 Years He Walked Away and Rebuilt Everything From Scratch with Dustin Hillis

If you could choose only one business skill to be a superpower, which one would you choose?

One business skill to be a superpower. I would say it is being coachable.

Okay. Interesting. I didn't have that on my list. Tell me about that.

Yeah. Um, you know, I think, I think that a lot of people have work ethic. I think a lot of people have charisma. I think a lot of people have all kinds of skills, time management, detail, et cetera. And I've worked with thousands of team members in every department. So this isn't just in business development. I'm talking marketing, operations, executive suite, whatever it is. It is the rare human who is eager and curious to learn, to grow, to hear feedback, and not only hear it, but to seek out the feedback and to want to be coached, to want to grow, to want to learn. And when I find those rare individuals who ask really good questions, um, or even if the questions aren't that good, just the fact that they're asking questions, uh, separates them from the pack. And, and then not only are they asking the question, but then you see them, uh, change and, and they're constantly iterating. You know, I think somebody can figure out most things if they're willing to be curious, to ask questions, to listen, to think, what am I currently doing and how do I apply the thing that I've just heard to my current situation? And so that's how I define being coachable is doing all of those things.

Dustin, I think that's such a great answer, and I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't have it on my list as I was thinking about what my answer would be. I coached my son, my oldest boy in football from the time he was 7, and I was always amazed that he would ask for feedback. What do you think? What do I need to do? I mean, like unapologetically just, and I'm like, he really wants to please, but I've seen that in his career, how fast he has accelerated through the various phases to be already an executive at 28 years old because he doesn't have an ego that he has to be right. He just, he wants the right answer, but it doesn't have to be his. And if he's not doing it right, the worst thing for him is that we're doing it wrong and I'm, I'm doing it wrong longer. So it's, and it's, is that, do you believe that being coachable is innate in people? Are they born with it or is it something that people can learn?

Great question. I, I do think it's a superpower and I, and I think that, that some people naturally come about it. Easier than others. I do think it can be learned. You know, honestly, I think if it doesn't naturally come to you, humility is one of those things. Be careful if you ever pray for humility because God will give you the answer to that prayer, but you probably won't like how it gets delivered to you because usually it's pain and suffering that creates that humility where Yeah, the life, life is going well, you're kicking butt, you're doing things, you're achieving. And that's not when people are the most coachable, is when they're crushing it. When people really seem to get coachable is after life just knocks you down into the dirt and, and you're having to get yourself back up and you're trying to figure out what to do next. Usually that's when people are like, all right, that didn't work. I need to find some people that can help me get to where I want to go and not experience that pain again. So, for the listeners, if you haven't experienced that, if you're younger in your career, hopefully a conversation like this could kind of trigger, oh, maybe I should be more humble, put my ego on the shelf, talk to somebody that's gone there, done that, and learn from people that have come before me. And if that is possible for you, that's more the innate, like you just kind of get it. Otherwise, just keep going. Just keep living. Just, just, you know, watch what life will do. And eventually I think that, that, that humility comes from, from pain. Uh, honestly. Yeah, for sure.

Was Southwestern Advantage to books what Cutco is to knives? Uh, Sure.

Specifically educational reference guides. I think Southwest Advantage, you know, taught me a lot. And really it's a people business. So I would say that the books are the most revolutionary books ever, but the training is. And so what you learn as a young 18-year-old kid, Most people don't learn that level of training till they're in their late 20s, early 30s, and they have a big, you know, boy-big-girl job. And some people never learn it. But they teach you time management. They teach you self-discipline, personal accountability, goal setting, positive attitude, positive affirmations, how to overcome rejection, how to problem solve. And then they throw you into the toughest environment known to man. I mean, selling door-to-door 80 hours a week, straight commission, 1,000 miles away from home, right? That's about as hardcore as it gets. And there's a 30% attrition rate in the first week. So it's like the military. It's like, you know, look to your left, look to your right, one of you won't be here. And that's kind of what it feels like your first year doing that.

Who were you selling to? Were these business-focused type books or were you going residential door-to-door?

Residential door-to-door. Moms were the main purchaser. Um, so, uh, think of kids, uh, reference guides. So math, science, history, social studies, and they're like a homework helper guide is what really what they are.

Okay, that's, that's fine. Is the company still out there today?

Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's kids knocking on doors every summer and, and, uh, there's a strong European presence. So a lot of, of, uh, folks from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, um, fly over to Nashville, get trained up, and they go out and knock on doors.

Oh, outstanding. So you join this organization, somebody says, you know, you say, how do I, how do I win at this game? And they say, well, everybody else is gonna be selling 80 hours a week. You need to sell 85. Everyone else can have this many pitches. You need to have more pitches than them. So you, you know, like my, I consider myself and a lot of my success being too stupid to fail. Like, just do it. And so, so you went out and did it. You, you set this record. Who was it in the organization, or when was it, when they looked at you and said, this is talent, we need to try to get this talent into our organization? Did you go straight into Southwestern or, or what was it like from your path selling as a college student to moving into the organization full-time?

Yeah. So, you know, before I answer the question, you said something that, that, that I've always found interesting. You have to be dumb enough to be smart enough to be coachable.

I like that.

Yeah. So, so you have to not let your— you have to not let your ego think you know it all. And right, you have to accept you might be dumb enough to be smart enough to listen to somebody. And I think I definitely had that my first year going into it where I just heard, hey, this is a 150-year-old company. They're handing me a script. They're telling me this is how you do it. And actually, I went through this funny filter my first year. And I thought, even out of selfish reasons, this guy on stage telling me how to do this job, I'm pretty sure he gets paid if I do well. So it'd be really dumb for him to show me how to do this and it not work. And so I kind of went through this psychological thing going, even if this guy is not having my best interest in mind and he selfishly is looking to make more money, He would probably tell me how to do it right. And so I might as well do it exactly how he says to do it. And so my first year, yeah, I did have a conversation with the manager. His name was Roger. And you did a good job of kind of replaying it where he said most people work 80. My goal was to be number 1. So it was like 2,000 first-year salespeople out there. And I was trying to figure out, how to, how to do it. And it's funny because I actually didn't do any prep work before that first year of training, which most people came in knowing the sales talk or having some, some level of training. And I came in cold turkey. So he tried to convince me to stay an extra week because I couldn't get through my approach, which means knocking on the door and having the words to say to get in the door. And And so not only did, did he try to convince me to stay another week, then on top of that, I'm saying, hey, also, I want to be number one. And he's just like, what a joke, you know? And he said, well, okay, if you're going to try to be number one, everybody's working 80 hours a week. You have to work 85. Everybody else is doing 30 demos. You have to do 35 per day. And so I was just dumb enough to be smart enough to actually do it. And I went out and worked 85 hours a week. I went out and did 35 demos a day. And because I didn't have the whole script memorized, I asked one of the senior people, hey, out of this big long script, which one's the most important part? And they said, oh, the close is the most important part. So I actually flipped to the back and I memorized the close first before I knew the demo, before I knew anything. So Once I got actually out in the field and, and I would like just take out the books and hand it to Ms. Jones, she would start looking at it and she'd go, oh, it has math. And I was like, exactly. And everything else works the same way. And I'd go right to the close. And, uh, I found that later that was, uh, you know, accidentally a really good thing to do is most people talk too much. Most people oversell, they go past the buying line. And I never experienced that out of sheer just I didn't know the rest of the script. My second year, a guy followed me and I ended up— I finished number one my first year out of all the first years. And then my second year, I had a team of 8 people and a guy that had been working with the company for 10 years shadowed me my very last day, my second year. And at the end of the day, I said, hey, man, what did you get from the day? And he goes, That was the craziest thing I've ever seen. He said, you just sold more in a day than I've ever sold in a day in my 10 years of doing this job. And he goes, you have no idea what's inside these books. And he just shook his head and he goes, if you ever take this serious and you learn the actual demo, you actually learn the product, you take it serious, you're going to break the company. 'What is the company record?' And that was the seed that was planted in my head. And I remember driving home from Texas all the way back to Nashville going, number one, what is the company record? Number two, that's interesting that he said that. That sounds like a fun thing to try to do. And then I just got focused on that goal and spent the next, you know, offseason studying how to break the record. And then I did it.

So did you have an early entrepreneurial experience in your life or early exposure to an entrepreneur?

Yeah, my dad started a company.

Okay.

He started a flooring business. It was called Hillis Metro Flooring. Okay. That's how I got tied in with Southwestern, was he moved us from Texas to Nashville and was looking for office space. And he literally looked in the newspaper. This is when people actually looked in the newspaper for office space, and there was a lease available at the Southwestern building. So he leased an office space at Southwestern. And this is a crazy story. 20 years later, my dad came to visit me when I was running Southwestern Consulting, and his face got white when he walked into my office. And I said, what's, what's going on? And he said, this is my exact office that I worked at is, is now where your office is. And so, uh, that's, that's full circle. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. He actually ended up selling his company to Southwestern. So, um, he had a come to Jesus moment. Um, he went to a, a meeting called Promise Keepers.

Yes. Yeah. I'm familiar with it.

Yeah, so I was about 13 years old and he just realized, hey, I'm, I'm working and I don't know my kids and that's wrong. And he came home and told my mom, hey, I'm selling the company and I'm going to spend time with my kids. And so he approached Southwestern, which was the building he was in, and he would run into this guy Spencer, who owned the company, in the hallway. And he said, hey, I'm interested in selling the company. And Spencer said, let's talk about it. And they bought my dad's company from him. Hmm.

And Southwestern, is it Southwestern proper that started acquiring all these different businesses? I know when you, when you joined as the CEO, I think there was 19 businesses. I think you grew that to an inventory of 30 businesses. And in technology and across many disciplines there, how did, like what was the philosophy of the company and how did it choose which companies that it invested in?

Sure. So, uh, the name of the, the global conglomerate is Southwestern Family of Companies is the, the current name. It's gone through iterations. At one point it was called Southwestern Company, and that was actually when I became CEO. One of the first things I did was when you would drive in there, there was a sign that said Southwestern. Then when you pulled up to the front door, it said Southwestern Company. And then when you walked inside, it said Southwestern Family of Companies. And so we did a huge rebrand. We actually changed the logo and we, we got rid of all the other company names that were out there physically on signs and digitally and streamlined everything and rebranded as Southwestern Family of Companies. And that was the first thing I did as CEO.

I build franchise brands and we have a platform of 5 Property services businesses. So they're related in as much as we do work in buildings and homes and we per— we're a service business. Some of our businesses have more products than others. One's a rental model. But at the end of the day, you know, when we talk to people strategically about it, they'll be like, you know, you need to be able to articulate why these companies go together.

Yeah.

And you know, buyers are looking for that. When I looked at the portfolio of Southwest and some of the things that you've done, really cool technology companies, business consulting businesses. What was the, what was the tie or what was the through line that you looked for when you're looking to acquire a business?

Yeah, so the numbers that you were mentioning were a little different. There were a bunch of different businesses that had been acquired and rolled up and kind of folded inside of different companies. And part of when I, when I became CEO was sorting through all that and Um, once, once I left, I think we had about 19, 20 companies total, uh, according to me as CEO after 4 years. Um, we, we had to, to kind of— there was a lot, there was a lot there. Um, but we, we did launch a few. I became president of an insurance company and, and launched an insurance company over the holidays. I, I got my insurance license and then recruited, I think we recruited like 300 or 400 people our first year and did over $1 million in revenue. So that was kind of while I was CEO and running the coaching consulting business, I launched the third company and was president of the insurance company at the same time. So that was a, that was a wild and crazy year. That, that was really a lot of what the book Capacity, you know, started. I started thinking, how can I increase my capacity to run 3 companies? And grow 3 companies at the exact same time. And it came down to those systems and those processes. And that's really where I started thinking, this is pretty unique. There's not probably many folks that would attempt to do this. And so, but there was a lot of things, and I'm very thankful for what I learned in that process. Definitely made me, uh, a lot of, of who I am today and developed skills in me. And, and, uh, appreciate that and, and still have friends that are, that are there, um, with the, the coaching and consulting business that I co-founded and, and beyond. Uh, you know, I, I still think that it's, it's the greatest, um, college training program, but Really excited about, uh, what I'm doing today. So I think you're, you're also blending a couple of things. Um, so I have a company called All Things New Ventures that I've started after 20 years of working with Southwestern. And I really looked at, you know, a lot of publishing companies and, and direct sales companies. That was a great experience for 20 years, but I really wanted to get into technology. Um, I wanted to get into like military drones, right? So I did a lot of research, took a year off, and thought, what are the macroeconomic trends that are heading into the right direction where there's tailwinds and not having to work so hard, do things the hardest possible way? But what's, what's something that would actually— the world wants, the market wants, and I spent a lot of time thinking about that and went to a lot of conferences, read a lot of books, listened to a lot of podcasts, like hundreds. And what I came to was artificial intelligence is the future. It's going to be bigger than the internet. Military technology is going to become a central focus of the world. And by the way, this was 3 years ago. So you look at where we're at today and it's like, yeah, that's easy. But 3 years ago, I saw around the horizon, so to speak, specifically drone technology. And then the sectors that I thought needed the most help was healthcare, education, school safety, school safety specifically with all the guns and the shootings at schools, transportation. And that was really kind of the thinking around it. And I think God works in mysterious ways. And once you set your intentions, once you set your goals, once you set your vision for your life, the world, God manifests things and puts people in your life that then, if it's meant to be and it's in God's will, then all of a sudden you find crazy experiences and crazy relationships and crazy things happening. And so I met a guy named Scott Boroff who had a publicly traded company. It was called Healthcare Integrated Technologies at the time. And, and he asked about my background and organically growing businesses, and I wanted to learn how to raise $10 million. And he said, I've raised over $1 billion on Wall Street. I'll show you how to do that if you come and help organically grow this business with me. And so that really launched becoming president of what ended up becoming Safe Space Global Corporation. Um, and so that's really the technology piece of it where you were mentioning.

Yeah, got it.

So today I'm doing technology, but really before that it was mainly direct sales companies.

What does Safe Space do?

Safe Space's vision is to be the global leader of multimodal AI technology. And so we have team members all over. We have an office in Hyderabad, India, is where our technology team is, and we're in 4 verticals. So we're publicly traded. So if you wanted to check us out, you could just go to your publicly traded stock ticker and type in SSGC. And we're a fully audited pink sheet company. Our goal this year is to get uplisted onto the New York Stock Exchange big board. We've checked 5 of the 6 boxes to get uplisted. And the last box to check is the $2 per share price point. And that's literally just people buying the stock is what drives the stock up to $2. And then once that checks, everything else is all right. We have $5 million cash on the books, debt-free. It's really hard to get to the New York Stock Exchange. We've done all the hard work. Now it's just people buying the stock to get it to $2 and we're there. So, um, what we do is, uh, 4 different verticals. So number 1, school safety. So we have an AI, um, pro, uh, product that, um, does weapons detection and, uh, notifies the SRO. And we have a partner that then locks the school down. It notifies 911. It routes them to specifically where the school shooting is happening. Uh, we also have a partner that has revolutionary technology and we have an LOI with them where we're creating a joint venture and augmenting their sensor to our AI that can detect weapons at distance through a building and through a car. Wow. So I'm going to say that again. We have a partnership with a company that can detect weapons through cars, specifically if it was an AR-15 from 500 feet away.

Okay, so I'm, I have a building, I put some sort of a piece of hardware on top of it. You may not be able to say, but at the end of the day, you can, you, it's like the Israeli circles of security, right? So you stop the threat.

Yeah.

You know, the first stop of the threat's going to be as far away as you can possibly get it.

As soon as a gun goes onto a school campus, this device will tell us that it is there and our AI will tell you if it's a threat or not. So then our AI takes over license plate reader, facial recognition. So obviously the cops are coming, you know, the resource officers, the school police, they have guns and we know they have guns and the AI doesn't trigger on them, but it will trigger on someone who's not allowed to have a gun on a school campus. That then sends it to a human in the loop. They click the button on their cell phone that says, yes, this is a threat. That then triggers the backend. 911 Inform takes over, locks the school down, calls 911, routes them there before they ever get out of their car. We also have a partnership with, with Skydio, so we could, if they could afford it, they could launch a drone from the top of the school and the drone could be over the car before they ever get out of the car with the prerecorded message talking to them.

Wow. Do you believe that would be a, a real deterrent to people if they know they've already been found out?

Absolutely. I mean, they couldn't even get in the school.

Yeah.

They drone over their head yelling at them. They would have, um, the school locked down. You could have a siren going off and the cops would be there in less than 2 minutes. Yeah. Wow.

Not a school in the country that wouldn't want it.

We are looking at statewide implementations, currently talking to Alabama and Tennessee, and we're well into those conversations.

Is it cost prohibitive based on what you've seen with budgets and whatnot?

What's the value of saving kids' lives?

See, you are a closer. You went right to the back page.

I don't think there's a budget when it comes down to solving this problem.

That's right.

Now, it is affordable. It is something that is within state budgets. It's just wrapping their mind around rolling it out to every school in the state of Tennessee and how to do it. So we're in those conversations now.