How to Build a Purpose-Driven Business in Your 50s and Win Steve Distante's Story #173

Welcome everybody. This is Jeff Duden and we are on the home front. If you started your entrepreneurial journey collecting horse poop and selling it to suburbanites, became an accountant, so now you could deal with other people's crap. After migrating to financial services, becoming a bit disgusted with the culture of profit over purpose. Eventually founding Vanderbilt Financial Group, which grew to billions of assets under management and became the de facto leader and authority of Impact investors. And today, if you have built a 360 acre farm for the sustainable purpose of growing Palawania trees, you, your name can only be the innovative Steve Distante. Welcome, Steve.

Thank you for having me, Jeff. Yeah, that's. That's pretty fascinating. Was that an AI rendition?

No, I write that nice. Yeah, that is, that is a. A hole initiated AI.

So there's, there's. Let me think. So we're 400 acres now. I acquired more property.

Okay.

Which is really cool. It's not that. So you gotta understand. And where we are in Georgia growing these trees, they're called Polonia. I know they, they're spelled a little weird. All right. Polonia trees. In Georgia, if you have a thousand acres or more, you can call yourself a plantation. So it's like this bigger is better sort of thing. As you grow, you just keep wanting getting contiguous property if possible. And yeah, it's my honor to be on here. I've been an entrepreneur all my life and I just always seek to understand myself better. And you know, as you and I both know, Australia was formed, except for the indigenous people, by the prisoners from England. Right?

Correct.

And so what now happens to the people that are there? It's. They produce entrepreneurs and criminals. Which is pretty damn funny, right?

Yes.

And so it's interesting, I don't know if you saw where I was in prison about a month ago talking to about 120 inmates or I don't know what the PC version of that is. Formally incarcerated? No, they are currently incarcerated. Who. Who knows? Right. But talking to them, and the truth is most of them had a lot of the DNA of an entrepreneur. And I believe that the way we use our energy is what matters. So I just got off a two week 14. It was actually 16 days we were away. I went with my son and my farm manager to get our pilot's license. Because I own a plane, but I have a pilot that flies me and my son wants to be a charter pilot. So my favorite words for entrepreneur land, and I actually am now in the process of copywriting that that name. Entrepreneur land is wouldn't it be cool if, right? You know those words we use, those magical words we use? Wouldn't it be cool if. And so we went to a two week immersive pilot school. You know how long it takes to get your pilot's license?

Usually like 18 months.

That's. Wow. I was gonna say a year. Two years. But you nailed it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And when I was, I was Tony Robbins friend for about a year. You pay for that, right? Sure. So you get to hang out with Tony and so on. And he was totally into immersion. Have you ever gotten into immers? Immersion into something?

Not, not, not intentionally.

Yeah. So the way we use our energy and focus and drive is what makes us as entrepreneurs successful. And if we can harness that in a huge way and be able to understand our DNA, our drive, it just brings us to a whole new place. But I dove in deep real quick. But I, you know, I'm, I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to be on this podcast and talk to fellow entrepreneurs, because I think there's two types of entrepreneurs. And I'll go back. I love stories. And the reason I wrote these books, because I have three books now. Pitchology, the Art and Science of Raising Capital for Entrepreneurs. Once Upon a Time in Entrepreneur Land for people like us Adults, and then Entrepreneur Land for Kids. The reason I wrote the books is because the fable format resonates so much with people.

Is Once Upon a Time targeted towards adults. Is this like a Flintstones?

So there's two different versions, and I've got one version which is. It's got some, some art on it, which my daughter did, which has got three Little Pigs, BB Wolf, Big Bad Wolf, the owl, Dean the Owl, who's Dean Jackson, by the way. And that was made for adults. And we start with Story of Stone Soup. And the Story of Stone Soup in the adult version has Joe Polish in there saying, you know, every time I get an entrepreneur that wants me to give him money, I think of the song this Story of Stone Soup. You know, they don't have anything, but they want to take our money and do something with it. And I'm like, yeah, that's true. And. But the truth is, entrepreneurs with resources don't often need anybody else, but we learn to be very resourceful because we're always climbing up. So back to my analogy of entrepreneurs. I like stories to be able to demonstrate. So I was recently working with meta glasses on my farm. And you know what the meta glasses are, right? You put them on Ray Ban makes Them and such. Couple different varieties. Because we have people from Mexico there under an H2A program, this agricultural program, and I could never talk to them properly. I couldn't really explain what I was doing. So I got these meta glasses, and it would do a live translation, which was amazing.

Is that visible? So you see it in the lens, or does it talk to you in your ear?

It talks to you in your ear. And then whatever device you're using, an iPhone, whatever, it's typing it also.

Okay.

And you have this back and forth, which is a lot more amazing. But the point of my story for this one is I found this. It. When I. When I was looking at it, I found this feature called Be My Eyes. What the heck is this? I'm curious, right? We're curious. We like to, like, you know, look at things. Maybe it's a beehive or maybe it's whatever. But Be My Eyes that allows people, like, with meta glasses to be able to see through the cameras for blind people and tell them what they're looking at, help them. And so there's 9 million volunteers for Be My Eyes. And there's. I'm now one of 800. No, I'm one of the 9 million. And there's 800,000 blind people who are visually blind, meaning they can see limited things. And I can jump on their iPhone or whatever and turn on their camera and say, what am I looking at? Or, how do I do this? Or how I do. How do I do that?

They can ask. They're. They're asking the question. And you're helping them?

Yeah. All of a sudden it says, be My Eyes is calling. Oh. And then it picks up, and then I can look at their phone if they give me permission, and they'll say, hey, you know, I'm. I'm looking at this tool, and I don't know where the on button is, and I don't know. Okay, go to your right. Yes, Put it a little up. There you go. And then they can. You know, it's amazing. But the reason I bring up that story, Jeff, is years ago, I was helping a entrepreneur masseuse a person, a woman who had this massage parlor. No, it's not a massage parlor. It was a place that she did very professional massage, osteopathic, whatever. And she said, you know, men don't typically become. Aren't well received in the massage world. And she goes, I can't find any masseuses to work with me. And I said, you know, here's an interesting idea. Blind people often have higher senses in another place other than vision. And we dove deep into this rabbit hole of being blind, and we got in touch with the. I think it's the lighthouse or something like that. And they started explaining to us there's two types of blind people. There's born blind, and then there's later life blind. And the challenge is that the people who later in life are blind don't know. They always want to do it as if they can see. And the reason I bring that up is when an entrepreneur starts, you got people like me. I don't know when you started, but I started at 6 years old. And it's in my DNA of. Of being unemployable, right? And it used to be dysfunctional to be an entrepreneur. And now, you know, first everybody wanted to be an athlete, right? Professional athlete. Then everybody wanted to be a rapper. Now the professional athletes and rappers all want to be entrepreneurs, right?

So we've become cool and influencers. Yeah, they want to be influencers.

There you go. But everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. But there's the born entrepreneur, and then there's the, you know, recently entrepreneur. And the recently entrepreneur is really, really scary. It's a scary place to be because they're used to other people making up the rules. Other people's money, as we call opm, right? So other people's money, it's. It's a scary place to be. And so once upon a time in entrepreneur land are fables and lessons for people to understand the journey of entrepreneurship in a way that allows them to really experience a fable. So there's a shopkeeper who is back in the early days, years, decade, centuries ago, and he's a watchmaker. And his buddy, who is up at the till, you know, with making money, taking the money in, slips a piece of gold in his pocket, and he looks at this, and he finds out that his buddy has become more than his 5050 partner, which he wasn't in all revenues. And he's constantly struggling. And it's a tale of caution, because entrepreneurs are vulnerable and susceptible to being stolen from. It's not if.

It's when, I don't know. An entrepreneur that's been in business for decades that doesn't have a story where they were embezzled from or stolen from. And it's family members, it's their executive assistant, it's their bookkeeper.

Was my best friend. It was my best friend. A million and a half. He stole a million and a half dollars for me. And then the irs, IRS taxed me on the money he took because I didn't put him in prison.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. So these stories are cautionary stories. And you'll love the way Eric goes through his series, the Guy who's the Watchmaker. And then he discovers, and then he finds the, the, the town group of business owners or shop owners, the Shop Owners association, which for me is eo, the Entrepreneurs Organization. Right. Where he's able to actually go and talk about what's going on. Because I consider theft from people who we work with. I don't call anybody employees, although they are, because everybody has a choice to come to work with us. But the people we work with often feel entitled to. You know, it's just a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more. And man, is that friggin painful when you have to actually do something about it.

Right?

I call it. And it doesn't sound so sexy, but I call it entrepreneurial rape. Nobody wants to talk about it. We're embarrassed. We feel so stupid. And the reason I became an accountant was because I had this one professor in college that said accounting is a language of all business. You get this stuff, you'll get it all. And I did it because of that, because I would fully understand or better understand in an immersive way how to understand numbers. So now I'm the smartest guy in the room when it comes to numbers, usually with my accountants, with everybody, because I can understand, I think, in numbers. So the, the aspect of being able to know your numbers and so on is really important. Most of us are flying blind. So Entrepreneur Land for Adults was my personal memoirs. And they're all stories you know and love. There's three Little Pigs and BB Wolf is named BB Wolf because he was born to a litter of five puppies. And in my story, because I'm making it up, a wolf was born with four other puppy siblings. And that wolf, they didn't know he ate more right Than all the other. The other puppies. His mom never knew what to do with all this energy that he had. And he was named bb BB Wolf because it was baby blue. Because he was born with his umbilical cord around his neck and it made him a blue wolf. That's my story. I was born with my umbilical cord around my neck and I was dead basically. And Dr. Stephen Burgess, which is who I'm named after because if from an Italian family, it's usually Joe. It's, you know, there's like you, you get named after your uncles and Your brothers, whatever, your father and so on. I got named after my doctor because they were so grateful. And. And these stories are stories which are cautionary tales. But our appetite as entrepreneurs is insatiable. When we dig into something, we become obsessive about that particular thing. And B.B. wolf, who later got dubbed Big Bad Wolf by the pigs. Right. Well, B.B. wolf was named Big Bad Wolf because he was an entrepreneur. The reason he's pounding on the doors is because he's got a business and he's got opportunity, but nobody, you know, everybody misunderstands our energy and our drive.

Yeah. And most many times, people aren't home. They're just not home for it.

Oh, God, no. Yeah. Our energy is overwhelming. I got taught this by Tony also. You have to kind of level off to where that person is. Yeah. Because come in as ferocious lions, and it's, like, overwhelming for most.

Right.

But the born blind and recently blind or born an entrepreneur and recently an entrepreneur really resonates for me because we have so many people now that are starting businesses in their 40s, 50s, 60s. Yes. And it's scary. Like, whoa, you know, franchise model is a great model because somebody's done the thinking about the. The. The model of how it could work best, and then you've got proven case, and you've got, you know, a lot of that thought going on behind it. But even, you know, Colonel Sanders started as a franchisee of somebody else and then started his own. He broke out.

Yes. You know, in his 50s.

In his 50s, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. He was too old for all of that fried chicken to really catch up with them. So he had a. He had a long life. So how old were you when you started the Vanderbilt Financial Group? And. And what. What triggered you to. To start it?

Great question. So as, you know, as an accountant, you got to do your time. Right. Audit experience and so on.

That's right.

And I took my opportunity and then realized I really wanted to help real people, not, you know, corporate America. I was doing audits for kkr, which was a big. It still is a big M and A firm. I worked for Deloitte in the World Trade Center. Deloitte, Haskins and Sells. So I was. I was living the life of, you know, corporate America. But that's not where my soul is. My soul is with people who work for their money. Not opm, not other people's money. People who really wanted to make a difference. And I found myself as a junior partner in a small accounting firm, being able to sit with clients and realizing that that was great. Being able to help. Let's call it just working people, right? People who work for W2 or so and then some small businesses here and there that really got. I got a thrill out of that. And my dad, God bl soul. He. He's gone now a couple of years and he had. I always gone to him for some advice and I said, dad, what would you do if you were me graduating, you know, from your accounting, your accounting degree? You know me. He says, you know, the baby boomers are coming of age because they have lots of money to invest. If you can somehow get into that business, that would be great. So I ended up going to this small accounting firm and bringing them a robust opportunity to. To offer investments to these clients. We made millions of dollars. It was great. But they had different plans. They didn't want to grow, they didn't want to scale. And if you know me, exponential growth is in my DNA mindset. That's just who I am. And so I ended up opening a small. An office which was being abandoned by a manager that had a whole bunch of financial advisors. And from there I ended up acquiring. So I ended up buying a bank, basically a broker dealer, the business that was legally able to do all the business. And now Today I own three broker dealers, two RAAs, done lots of acquisitions. And so that's kind of been my journey to where I am. And the farm ended up being something that I did as a result of acquisition, a capital raise that I did.

Okay.

I raised ten and a half million dollars for a company called World Tree. And they grew these Polonia trees. And they would partner with farmers and the farmers would their first. This is the magic of a tree. You plant them and when they. In 10 to 12 years could be 11. You can't even put your arms around them anymore. And you cut them down and they grow back from the stump.

What's the origin of that tree? Where are they from?

That's a great question, because I'm about to do battle with. Well, maybe RFK Jr. Will be able to help me out. One that they are found. To answer your question, they're found fossilized in the United States. So they were here. That's proven. However, they now grow them in China, Japan. You've seen this wood too. It's been used in a lot of things. If you've ever seen those little red ornate boxes that are. That are carved out from Japan or so they're like, you put jewelry and stuff. That's Polonia wood, okay. Because it's Such a great wood. It's called a light hardwood, the aluminum of hardwoods. Nice. But you also find them in Africa. You find them in Europe. Germany's got them. I was just in Germany for Oktoberfest and I visited at Polonia Farm.

Now, because they grow so fast, are they considered an invasive species?

That's a great question. And that's the thing that we're getting off of the invasive species list. This, this. There's one species of the tree which is called A tomentosa, which is, which is on the invasive species list. Right. But I call it the Rodney Dangerfield of all trees. They don't understand. They get no respect. They don't get what's going on here. These trees draw down about 11 times more carbon than any tree on Earth. They will take the soil and because of what it does, make the soil black. I've got red clay in Georgia and it's turning my soil so much more fertile because of the way the leaves will decompose and such. But it got put on the invasive species list by George W. Bush and, I don't know, some monkey business going on here because it was growing. These trees were growing in national forests, and the only way you could get them out of national forests is to put them on the invasive species list.

I got it.

And at that time, there was a blight in Japan. So somebody cut down a whole bunch of trees, shipped them to Japan, where they were selling for five times the amount they normally sold for. So in a very long winded way. Yes. One particular variety of this tree is on an invasive species list. And the reason it is is because somebody made some money on it.

Anytime we go to politics, the first thing I think of is like, okay, let me follow the dollars. Let me see how quickly I can get back to the dollars.

You know, if I wasn't going to get received incorrectly by some of the world that I'm in, I would have, I would have written this, this meme, which is White House renamed entrepreneur land. Right. I mean, what's going on right now? Yeah, it's insane how much is going on in the White House right now. So, Elon Musk, if you Google Tesla's biggest fan, I'm the first hit. Okay, I've got the 2010 Roadster. I've been a fan for a long time. I adopted my license plate says USA Fan. I just got my 10th Tesla.

Well, and all of this goes back to you. It ties to sustainability and impact. You have an office building, beautiful office building. That's built from some really interesting sustainable materials. You. You did the Palawana trees. You did the Polonia trees. I need to write. I need to write that phonetically. The Polonia trees. You know, you. You took your entire fund to impact investing, which, by the way, I've been involved in some of that. When you, when you have a charter around a capital raise or a fund that has certain goals and certain charters along these lines, like, there are funds earmarked from institutions and family offices and billionaires for the purpose of saying, okay, I want to make money, but I have enough money. And oh, by the way, I mean, what, 75% or of the world's billionaires have decided they're going to give away 90% of it before they die because, like, you know, the game is making it. But then once you, once you've made a certain amount of it, you can't unmake it. I mean, you just can't. No matter how you, you know, you've. You've spent your whole life learning how to accumulate and how to protect and how to diversify and tax strategy. So now you're set up and then you realize it's like, what's going to happen to this when I'm gone? And you're. Then they're like, well, it's going to either ruin my kids or, you know, something. And so they end up giving it, you know, signing a pledge where they're giving it all away. And many times they want that to be around an impactful purpose, whatever's important to them. Sustainability, continuity of our planet, continuity of our country. You know, you know, any of the issues that they. They believe to be the biggest and the baddest issues, the wolves in the hen house, then they're going to allocate their billions of dollars towards that. So I can understand why Vanderbilt was successful.

It. But you can't do it all at once. So I'm a capitalist first, environmentalist second, an impact investor always. Meaning, what's the heart of the person who is raising the capital? Or I can invest in what. What do they represent? You know, is it about making money or is it about making an impact? Is it about being able to solve a world problem? That's what's important. As our entrepreneurial energies are concerned, if you're just going to take the same widget and do it over and over again just to make money, well, great, that's fine. But, you know, the highest level of leadership is inspiration. When you can be an inspiration, all the people around you that you're leading. One of my stories is Bite, Growl, Lick, and it's the evolution of Inside entrepreneur land, Both versions. And the reason is that bite is manipulation, where we manipulate our people just to do what we want to do. It's because I pay you, damn it. Right. That's the manipulation part. Then there's motivation. What can I try to trick you into to make you feel like you're doing something amazing, but I'm going to be the primary beneficiary. And then there's inspiration.

And is that.

That's. Yes, that's. That's showing a little love.

Okay, that's also HR claim. But I digress.

I lick my people. What am I gonna say?

As long as it's in the handbook.

Exactly, exactly. But that's, you know, it's lessons learned. Yeah. I manipulated. I'm motivated. And then I found being able to create a movement that's bigger than yourself, that's beneficial to many more, is an incredible opportunity. So.

Well, if you apply this to the White House, it's gonna have to be a Bite, Growl, Lick, sniff.

So, yeah, we're gonna have to figure that out. Yeah, we have to figure that out. And we'll. I think things will calm down once we start seeing results or so, but, you know, there's always people that are doubters. Wait a second. Everybody who's listening to this podcast now, I want you to hear this. Everybody's going to tell you you're out of your mind for doing what you're doing. There's going to be a small group of people who have decided to take on a challenge for the benefit of themselves, their family and others.

Yes.

And there's going to be very few people that say, oh, yeah, you're going to be put. Putting all your wealth into something, call it a franchise, call it a business opportunity. They're gonna say, are you nuts? You're 50 years old. You're gonna lose everything. And guess what? That's because they've never taken any risk. And they're talking to themselves.

Well, let me tell you. Okay, here, let me give you a list of those people. Number one, financial advisor. Anybody who goes to their financial advisor and says, should I invest in a business? They're like, no, don't take your money from me. I'm making money on your money.

Don't risk it between the lines, people.

Yeah. Don't risk it on yourself. Then. Spouse. Right. Comfortable. You know, doesn't want to upset the apple cart. You know, maybe. Maybe. Or maybe not. And then, oddly enough, it Goes to like father in law, you know, like parents usually kind of want some believe in their kids and they'll say, you know what, give it a shot. If you fall down, maybe I'm here to help you get back up. But it's the in laws that are, that don't believe in the, in the son in law or the daughter in law, whoever's doing the business. But yeah, I mean there's a, as soon as you hear, well I talk to my. And you know, you can tell like they're, you know, not only. And what did we learn at our last 100k group, Steve was about internal and external locus of control. They're basically saying, I'm not going to take responsibility, I'm not tough enough, I'm not curious enough, I'm not motivated enough. I mean I've got, you know, I mean if you've got some kids or some people you're responsible for, my gosh, how motivated are you to succeed? And you don't get the next opportunity in life until you succeed in the one that you're currently in. Like that is the, that's the Willy Wonka ticket. It's whatever, however small business you can start sewing patches on elbows, it doesn't matter like whatever the business is, and that's one of the lessons in entrepreneur land is you know, the grass mowing story, right? And it's like, you know, it doesn't matter where you start, it's just whatever it is, how small it is. If you succeed in that and you're in the game, the next stop, the ball will be thrown to you and if you've done the work, you'll catch it and then you move on to the next level, whatever that is for you. And you know, it's, but it's, you know people. But if you, if you believe in yourself and you say, regardless of circumstances, is it the right time in the economy to start? It's always the right time to start a business because the economy is cyclical. When it's going fast, you might have some advantages. When it's going slow, you might have other advantages. But like it's, you're going to be, you're going to have a business that's, you're going to have a business which is a hedge against inflation because your prices will roll with the prices. You're going to have a business that is, that is going to take advantage of the tax code. You're going to have a business that is, you will, if you're good enough, you will no longer have to trade time for dollars. I mean, the core benefits to life come from business ownership. And then there's people. There are people in your circle that are. That, you know, are not willing to risk what they have of you to let you take the opportunity for a greater life for everybody. And then after. It works, right. Everybody loves you.

Oh, you're so lucky.

No, everybody. Everybody loves you when it works. Did you ever think. And I'm like, well, I did, but you didn't. If you remember back.

Wait a second. Everybody loves you. I'm gonna correct you.

Well, because when I live. I live in a bubble.

Yeah. But friends. There are. There are friends and family that will abandon you. Sure. Or. Or look to you if you don't give them the money. Give them money.

Jealousy is a form of love. It's just different.

I don't want to dive into that right now, but I don't know. That's a rough one. That's a rough one because you find you. You find there's manipulation that happens there as a result of. Of success.

Well, the. Here's the problem. When you see somebody that's successful, that was where you were, and now they're there. You're you. It's hard for you to find blame in that person to make yourself feel better. So they love what you've done, and they hate that they didn't.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

All right.

I got.

We can.

I got it.

We can argue about that later.

I just made no argument at all. There's. There's just experiences across the board with successful entrepreneurs that no longer have a family because people are feeling like, so minimized or unsuccessful or jealous, like you said. And it's a tough place to be. You know, you could be as generous as you want. One of my brothers got really pissed because I wanted to pay for his son's tuition because I knew he couldn't. And guess what? He resented me for that.

Sure.

It was emasculating to him. So I gave his son a job for years in order to. To pay for his school, and he worked his pants off. He's great employee, but he. He. That was as a result of me not being able to fund the college.

Yeah.

And by the way, in school, in business, if we lose money, what do we call that?

Tuition.

Yes. So you know every single. And you got to make sure you don't put all your eggs in one basket. Not from a business perspective, but a risk perspective, because those tuition opportunities are big lessons learned. So when I got into the impact Investment world. You know, I had billions of dollars invested in the regular world, and now it's about a 50, 50 split between regular investments and impactful investments, which could be focused on a huge number of things. But the reality is that I didn't go all in because if you become a zealot about one thing, like I won't do it any other way, you're going to be losing a lot, leaving a lot of money on the table, and you won't, you won't stay in business.

Now, the only place that you are, in my experience, the only place that you should tip the scale in terms of risk is if it's something that you, that you have control of and that you have the time and energy to make sure that it's. And you have. Well, number three things, you have, you have demonstrated capabilities and previous success. Number two, you have absolute control. And then number three, you have the time and energy to focus to it and make sure it goes well. Those are situations where I will take more risk on. But other than that, you know, it's, you know it. You need to be very careful about giving a whole bunch of your assets and betting it on one thing that you're just going to get a, you're just going to get a statement and it's going to go one way or another.

So, yes. And I like the yes ends. I have a theory that I describe which I've proven over and over again, which is the triangle. And the triangle is. We have drive as entrepreneurs. Do you have drive? Yeah, we have this energy. Right. We got to take it out somehow. Right. We have to get it out. We're allergic to rules. Is that pretty accurate? We like to make.

Yes.

Like to make up our own rules and create unique things. This is the third one. It's the most dangerous of the triangle, and that is risk. We enjoy risk.

Yeah.

And when it's an equilateral triangle, all sides are equal. We're cool. But when we create that hypotenuse where the risk is like way over here and so on, we end up going in ways that we didn't expect. And if we don't know thyself, we don't understand our brains, we can get ourselves in trouble. So I'll give you a couple examples. Entrepreneur sells his business or her business and decides that they're going to risk all their money on some other business. Now, all of it. All of it. Because they get that juice from it. Right. And I'll give you another one. Business is going along Just fine. And you as the entrepreneur, kick some beehives just because we get our jollies from that, our thrill from that, it's in our DNA. That's what we do. So there's a very impactful book that I read by Salim Ishmael called Exponential Organizations and Exponential Organizations talks about creating your own research and development team. So that when we come back and we just discovered a shiny thing, right, and we want to pull our entire team off of, off task to go jump into the deep end of some, some folly that we have because we just saw the best thing at Genius or whatever place we happen to be, right? They have, they have an immunity to us, good organizations have an immunity to our crazy ideas. And creating that research and development team keeps our, our business on track. And then it funds the research and development so that the core business, which again has an immunity to your crazy. My crazy. I won't identify you as crazy, but I identify myself as, I got great ideas, but I got lots of them.

Yeah.

You know, I'm an idea bunny, right? I'm an idea bunny. So I have a whole process. I go through with all of that. And then to go back to your comment on do it, like go out and do your business. Nike got it right with just do it. I used to teach in a thing called Nifty Nationals. It was an internship. It was a entrepreneurial inner city kids who wanted to be entrepreneurs. And then banks would come in, feel good, they'd give them five or ten grand to fund their business, but 95% of the time they didn't start a business yet. And going in the pool is the hardest part, right? Getting cold, right? That's the hardest part. Getting into it is the hardest part. And so immersion, as I referred to before getting in it, you learn really quick when you're in it. When I took a two week school where for 12 hours a day we were either in class or flying an airplane and get my, my flight license, my pilot's license, inside of two weeks, which normally it takes 18 months, as you said, was what we did, me and my son and our farm manager, because it was important to us and I knew that type of learning would be useful. So going into a business when you have everything on the line, you will become Einstein, you'll become really, really smart. Because it's so important to you. Those doubts, what do we call it? Imposter syndrome, right? Those doubts we have about ourselves and our capabilities. Guess what? You know, I saw a guy lift a person with one arm. When she was about to get hit by a car. We have so much inside of us, capability wise, and we never tap it, we never go there.

I'm letting that soak in for just a minute. You know, we've covered a lot and I appreciate, I appreciate it for the listeners, I think it would be interesting to connect the dots between your, your sustainability, your, you know, how you've integrated your personal purpose sustainability and the businesses that you've done and maybe how that, you know, how you, how you navigate through life now and how you look at opportunities, how you choose priorities. Look, it takes a lot of time to write a book and by the way, this may be another who moved my cheese? But the numbers would tell us that it's not going to sell 10 million copies worldwide. Maybe it will. Maybe, maybe, maybe it will. But all of these things I think create. I'm big on body of work. Okay, so like every, every decision, you know, I used to tell the kids I'd coach football. There's 99 decisions that you're going to make every day, starting with whether you make your bet or not, whether you smile at somebody and give a compliment when none is expected, whether you decide to, you know, do your homework or scroll on your phone. I mean, like you're just making these choices every day, but it creates a tally and there's only two columns. It's add or subtract. So everything that you do that is, that is off purpose, off mission, off goal, off target is in the subtract column. And everything you do that's on purpose or on mission, on goal, you know, or contributing in a way is, is in the ad column and at the end of the day, week, month, and at the end of your life, like you've just got a score. So, you know, and I think entrepreneurs, you know, one of the things that we care deeply about is our time. And you know, you choose to, you've chose, you've chosen to invest a lot of time in a 400 acre farm with, you know, and you know, the economics are there, but the purpose is also there. You choose to invest time in children by writing a book and taking your experiences. Very thoughtful, very thoughtful book. Easy to read. You know, I've got, I've got this version of it, a collection of entrepreneurial, positive fables for kids. It pulls you in right away and, you know, kind of pulls you through the book. So well done, great start. And you know, and I, you know, had I my kids, maybe they'll get a copy of the book. My Kids are a little bit older now. So like, how do you, you know, you know, how, how would you inform somebody that at any stage of their career or their business building or navigating their life to understand their priorities and to integrate these things and to try to get the very best out of themselves for what matters the most to them?

That's a great question. So I had a quote. So I have a morning discipline. I do breath work, I do meditation. And there was a quote that came up on one of the apps I use. It says, create the life you don't need to take a vacation from. And I've done that. And to respond to your comment before, how do you write a book? How do you learn to fly? How do you do all these impactful things? It's by getting rid of the noise.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I'm allergic to emails. I have somebody that does that for me and I have this concept called the luge. And we know what a luge is. It's a sled. Right. You're doing like whatever a miles per hour. And when you're in the luge, you can't think of anything else. You just have to do that one task. So it's a mental decision and discipline to do that thing. Because the world wants to take you away from being impactful.

Yes.

The world wants to take you away from whatever it is you're doing so they can get what they want. You made a comment earlier which is follow the money. Right. So the one thing about entrepreneurs is we're very obvious and, and clear on what we're looking to do. We're looking to make money. We're not enough for profit. We need to make money. And that's the reason. And if we have a purpose that's tied to it, even the more better and the more better for everybody. And the reason why the more better for everybody is when the going gets tough, we're going to stick in it because it's more important to us than simply a business that makes money. We're not going to skip over to this business or skip over to that business. This business resonates with me. Right. And so I'm going to tough out the tough times and not run for the hills. There's times to pull, you know, to pull the plug, but the reality is we can endure a lot more pain during our tougher times. And I never feel more alive than during a crisis. Yes, it allows me. I become so hyper focused and hyper vigilant on it. People think I nuts and I am. I'm completely focused on the challenge. I'm protecting the castle or the opportunity, which is I'm developing something great. It's like my Rembrandt. It's like my Michelangelo comes out and I'm going to do this crazy thing. I'm going to create a book. And we're going to create a book first for adults, now for eight year olds. Because, by the way, they've seen that most entrepreneurs start their entrepreneurial journey at 8 years old. And where does it start? It starts usually in some introverted kid, right, who's different than everybody else, who has these crazy ideas and wants to make something come to reality so their creativity comes out through their business, which is exactly what happened with me and 8 years old. Everything is a possibility. We learn to be inept at everything. Everybody's smarter, better, better podcasters, better entrepreneurs, better whatever. We learned that at 8 years old, everything's possible. I could be a professional ball player. I could be a professional musician, artist, whatever.

By the way, that's one of the problems with the Internet is like, you know, we were. I was just too stupid to fail in things that I started because there wasn't a resource for me to go and realize how hard it was going to be. So you just start now with the Internet. It's like, well, there's already 1.8 million people doing this and there's already, you know, I can't imagine, like it's a dream. It can be a dream killer. It can be. It's the greatest resource ever invented and can be a dream killer all at the same time.

Without a doubt. Yeah. Your experience, like if you ever look up something medical, you're probably going to die tomorrow.

Oh, for sure. I'm already dead.

Exactly. And so I've developed a clone of myself which has taken all my books and taken all of my podcasts and content in order to answer people's questions, especially students. Could be eight year olds, could be college students. This might my second book, Once upon an Entrepreneur Land. Once Upon a Time in Entrepreneur Land for adults is in, I think it's 100 universities now where they have entrepreneur clubs. I'm going to talk at University of Miami shortly. And I created a clone because I couldn't be everywhere all the time. And it was really killing me that I couldn't speak to people when they needed me to. So this clone looks, sounds and says what I would say, which is incredible. So I'm using technology in order to be able to be exponentially more available to People, entrepreneurs. And who do we want to be a hero to? And you know, some of the challenges with young people, and I don't mean 8 year olds, but you know, people who start businesses in their, you know, late teens, 20s, 30s, they don't know what's important to themselves yet. They take on somebody else's crisis, somebody else's challenge. They don't make up their own locus of control. You know, are you external, are you internal? And a lot of times, you know, you see people who are protesting this and then when that protest is over, they're in another protest. Right. They're just protesters. They're not. They're taking on other people's problems in order to be able to get, you know, ignore their problems sometimes. Yeah, you know, that's just how it is. And as an entrepreneur, you can't really understand what's super impactful to yourself, to you, until you maybe have life experience. And then you can start applying those life experiences to help others. And on the point of making it impactful, you know, as we go through the business. So let's say we buy a franchise, right? We want to make sure we survive, right? Yeah. And then we thrive. And so the people who help us get there, we want to take care of them. Because if we got to pull the plug on a business, their livelihood is now in the toilet. So one of the things I'm doing right now is I'm doing valuations for a few of my companies to do an esop, an employee stock ownership plan, which I talk about in all three books, about an employee stock ownership plan. Actually in two of the books, which is where I give the company to the entrepreneurs, I get to still participate, I get to profit as well. But now everybody's an owner. And that's a unique way to create an environment, a culture that makes a difference. And if I didn't get this in, I want to. Culture is king. It's the heart of the business. What does your business represent? If it's manipulation, if it's ill will, if it's any of those things, we can smell it. Your employees know it.

Yes.

And so what is the culture? They have a saying which is a fish stinks from the head down.

Yes.

So is it a good thing that is your business? What are your core values? Like, what do you really embrace? And I know this sounds like a really advanced stage for a lot of new to business people, but the reality is culture exists in most businesses from day one. It's your way of being able to operate. You know, so if you're operating from, let's say, let's cut this. You know, cut the. Cut somebody off because it gives us a better financial advantage. What are you teaching your employees? Right? You're teaching that it's okay to bend the rules in order to get the advantage, which is totally wrong. And so, you know, people figure that out. Most of the people are going to go start a business after your business to learn what not to do, and then they start a better version of your, you know, your business.

Like, it's never too early to be declarative about what you stand for. And if you don't create an intentional culture, you will get one by default. Defaults. And it's like you can do the work up front and you can be declarative and you can, you can create the fence within which of tolerance. What's tolerated in the fence? If you're not, you do it. It's tolerated. You're outside the fence. And. Or do you just want to start a business? And it becomes a blend of the first five people that you hire. And that's what the culture is. So whatever their expectations, norms for wherever they came from, you now. But the other side of it is once culture goes bad, it's one of the most difficult things to correct, and you have to cut the cancers out and you got to get clean margins. And a lot of that is actually the owner, the founder, the leader. What examples have you set that have now become ingrained? Culture is an organization's memory, and it lives in the stories. And the stories that you create based on your behaviors are the things that people are going to, you know, are going to tell to others, and that's going to be establishing what the norms are. And, you know, it's, it's. There's, there's, you know, leadership is art. Management is science. Success is a. Is a careful blend between the two.

I love that. I think that's so on point. I couldn't agree more. It's. It's just such an honor to be able to be on this podcast to share with your audience the journey of entrepreneurship and our journeys, because we only want to help other people. Yeah, we don't make anything by doing podcasts. Well, maybe you are. You're better than at it than me, but we don't make money doing podcasts. We just want to share with the world of entrepreneurs because, you know, the, the next business that's going to revolutionize the world is right around the corner, and if the person doesn't have Confidence. The confidence to make that happen. It'll never happen. Yeah, it'll take a really long time. You know, people get jealous of Elon Musk for all of his wealth. But you know, read Revenge of the Electric Car or watch the, the documentary when he's crying because he's about to spend his last million dollars after acquiring Tesla and he's got SpaceX in the, in the wings and suddenly he gets a contract and he can continue to survive. That's where he didn't understand his risk tolerance.

Right.

Because he would have ruined his life. I mean, you know, that, that, that balance, being able to know thyself. But again, then again, if an entrepreneur goes out of business or fails, guess what? They're probably going to be a lot more successful the next time.

They will. I'd like to. Before we get out of here, I want to, I really want to get your view on how you manage the people piece. And here's what I mean by that. So I do an owners only with all of our franchise owners across all brands. I do it 90 minutes. It's in an evening, usually on a second or third Tuesday of the month. And it's, it, it, it's agnostic to what brand they're in. It's just if, you know, my thinking is if I can engage with these people and give them the benefit of everything that I've learned, all the groups that I get to participate in and you know, just give that to them. I mean, I pay so much money to go into these groups and to get the, over the years, it's millions of dollars that I've invested in time, energy and money to be envisaged and coach and genius and every, you know, go to all the meetings and trainings and masterminds. I mean, so if I can bring the best of that, distill it down and give it to people that are early in their entrepreneurial journey. Like that's, you know, the cost of whatever they pay us in fees in over the course of the year. Like I can deliver that much in value to these people if they show up and if they're, if they're students. So the very first one I did was I listed all of the groups that are available to entrepreneurs. So I went through vistage, I went through eo, I went through ypo, I went through CEO, I went through Strategic Coach, I went through, you know, all of these different groups, all of the ones that I knew and you know, this is what they cost, this is what you get. I've never Seen that anywhere in a consolidated view, you know, But EO had made an impact for you. And there's a story where, you know, you were, you were, you had been very successful making money and somebody from EO walked in and asked you, yeah, but like, what's the point? Why do you do it? What's the purpose? What do you care about actually? And I think for you that was an inflection point in your life where you realized, I don't have to just make money, I can also make a difference. So I'd love to hear about that. But also, speaking to entrepreneurs that are listening to this podcast that are at different phases in their career, how should they think about investing the time, energy and money to get in rooms of other people that are up to something and going somewhere?

So yes, in eo, there was that conversation, which is a turning point. I'm reminiscing about it because it brings a smile to my face where I was able to tie viscerally my heart to my business because up until that point, I was kind of disappointed at the spirit of the people who I was serving. And I'm a servant leader, that's who I am. And I was able to take it and turn around and really go deep into the impact investing world and bring it to regular people versus just the very wealthy. And so that was a, that was a big turning point for me. And on the journey of entrepreneurship, one of the things, and even eo, EO is pretty anemic when it comes to building teams. I became very good at identifying who's. Actually, one of my future books is called who Hunter, right after that chapter that I wrote. And it's all about finding the right who's. And so as I mentioned, we as entrepreneurs like to kick beehives. It's just what we do for fun. And we do it not intentionally, but sometimes intentionally because we can, we can prove that we can. And so I have a CEO and I have a president of our company who make me very comfortable. They say I have full veto power of everything, but this is what they would suggest and it makes me very comfortable. So I have a C suite, I have a group of people that I rely on. I use a system to manage my business. Some people use eos. I use a thing called Map Management Action programs that teaches we focus on vital factors. You need to get a formula in your business that allows you to see the most crucial of numbers because if you don't, you don't know when to quit and you don't Know when to slash. And unfortunately. Well, not unfortunately, fortunately, I got confronted with a number of crisis. Crisis. However, you say that in the plural version. And over those times, I've really dove in deep and learned that you don't just fire one employee and then another employee and then another employee. What you need to do is you need to now take three of your C and D players and take them out and then A short assure your A players and even your B players that, okay, we're in a crisis. I've made enough cuts to keep us in good shape, probably more than necessary. So being willing to take the big hits because you know, when people are going through crisis, they say, okay, so when are you going to start cutting costs? So when are you going to do this? When are you going to do that? I said is going to be when you don't have food for your kid anymore. Yeah, what part. When are you going to get pushed to the wall? Because I wanted you to get to that point earlier than later. And then also understand my mindset. Am I a scarcity mindset or am I abundance mindset? Because if I'm always thinking expenses versus creating more revenue, it's going to make some stupid mistakes. I'm going to make some mistakes. I'm going to make some bad judgments.

Look, you can't slash your way to prosperity. Look, if you've, if you had a bad offensive game plan, then you need to back out of it. And that includes cuts. And that includes stopping programs or expenses or things like that. Now that's going to give you some relief. But man, as, as you're doing that, you need to be thinking about my offensive playbook. Because you can grow. You can't slash your way to prosperity, but you can grow your way to prosperity. And that's right. Then, like now you get some financial people in and they're just like, you gotta cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And I'm like, And then I'll be like, yeah, but, but, but, but, but, you know, we've got the, you know, we're, you know, and, and some of the things. Look, sometimes you start projects and they end up being too far on the horizon where you're not going to get the benefit. And maybe that's a mistake. So now you're gonna have the courage to say, that's a sacred cow. We've got sunk cost. But you know, we're gonna stop it and we're going to reallocate. The world changes every 90 days, man. @ least a little bit. Sometimes it's Imperceptible. Sometimes it's big, like with AI. But at the end of the day, you know, again that that part of the leadership is art informing by the management science and the numbers that are. That are letting the leader make the decisions. But it's no mistake that some of the, you know that the greatest leaders build the biggest companies.

That's right. They are leaders.

Yeah.

They're not doers in their company. We're the biggest obstacle in our company most times.

Well, I know we're up against it. Do you have time for one curveball and a fastball? Sure, yeah, you bet. Right or left?

Right.

Okay. All right. I'll make sure this one's going to be tailing away from you. All right, so here's the curveball, gun to your head. You've got 30 days to start a new business that you are currently not in right now. The purpose of this question is to ask an entrepreneur to open up their perception and to look a little bit, maybe look at an adjacency or something that you've been thinking about and, you know, just to see where your head goes at. We know what you do, but what don't you do that you. If you had to do something, you would do it this month?

I would. This is an easy one. I would actually create greenhouses with vertical farming and I position them throughout the country. And I would rent certain greenhouses to chefs in the area who could build very unique product that they need in order to be able to get healthier food. And then I would have food trucks that would connect to it. Yeah, that's off the top of my head.

So vertical means you could be space constrained.

So it would go up so that you could create as much produce as you want in a very small space. Yeah, yeah. Boy, it sounds fixed environment.

What a great idea. That sounds like that should exist.

It will in some places. It does. But putting all these pieces together is what makes the magic. It's like, you know, chocolate and peanut butter.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Great. And then before I give you the fastball, right down the middle. Steve, how can people get in touch with you, follow you, or where would you like to direct them? To follow the things that you've got going on.

Cool. So my website is the easiest place to go. Pitchology AI. So pitchology AI. And it's AI instead of dot com, of course. And in there, it's got all my links, it's got all my books and content that we've done. So that's probably the easiest way to do it. Of course, we're on Instagram and LinkedIn and all those other things. But the number one way. And then you can see my clone. You can start talking to me. You can start asking me all sorts of questions.

Yeah, I've got one, too. I've got my new version of jeffden.com coming out, and the clone is going to be featured prominently up in the. You know, just like, start talking to me right now. Like, whatever you do, like, talk. Talk to me while you're going through the website, you know, and it's. It's uncanny. It's. Isn't it uncanny? Like, sometimes if I'm tired and somebody asks me a question and, you know, I'm in the right setting, I will just dial up the clone and ask him that question and put the phone down and let it talk for three minutes and it answers the question exactly as I would, but better, more concise and more organized.

That's right. I forgot to mention this. I've written these books. I've now had Entrepreneur Land, both versions written in Spanish.

Oh, too. Okay.

So I did that for the workers that are on the farm and they couldn't understand the book. And then I'm like, you know what? I was actually. I know that over 50% of the population in New York, where we have a home, is Spanish speaking, so what the heck? I'm missing a big part of the market. So we just did a whole thing there. And we're going to be doing some work in Mexico as well.

Yeah, great. I'm going to get my meta glasses so I can read it.

There you go. Something like that.

Yeah. Right on. All right. Right down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life based upon your journey and your lived experiences, what would that be?

You have more potential than you ever could imagine. You have the ability to do what it is that you want to do. If it means enough to you, all you need to do is set your mind to it. You have the most powerful computer between your ears. Use it.

Perfectly said, Steve. Thanks for being on.

Thank you for having me, Jeff.

Yep. This has been Jeff Duden with Steve Distante, and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.