Jeff Dudan identifies three signs of an inflection point: the right people, a real opportunity, and something at stake. He walks through four major ones in his own life, including Hurricane Andrew restoration work in 1992 and selling his business in 2019. Brent Chapman left a six-figure YMCA job to start a franchise that became multimillion-dollar.
Chapters
I had a great question from Sarah in the Navigating Entrepreneurship Facebook group just this morning, and I wanted to get on and speak to it. And the question was, how do you know when to make that leap into entrepreneurship? And how can you identify that fork in the road moment or that inflection point? And for those who are listeners of the On Home Front podcast, you know that I do talk about inflection points quite often. I had four inflection points in my life. Number one is when I decided to leave Chicago and go to the top of a mountain in Boone, North Carolina, to go to college and play football there. Number two was when I decided to cut my teeth in the insurance restoration business in South Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Number three was when I decided to sell all of our company stores under a franchise model, burn the boats, and refranchise our offices in North South Carolina and Florida. And the Last one in 2019, when I decided to sell that business that I had built over 24 years and 11 months. At every inflection point, there are generally three things that you will see. Number one, there's people involved, people that you care about, people that you're responsible for, people that you want to do something with, people that you perceive to be up to something and going somewhere. Number two, there's a great adventure at hand and an opportunity to do something great, maybe bigger than you had ever thought before. And number three, there's a risk of loss. I've never gotten anything substantial or material or without giving something up. So when I recognize that these three things or these three conditions are present, I step back and I say, hey, maybe this is an inflection point that I need to take a moment to consider, use my discernment, and make a really good decision. On side of this, I just recently did a podcast with a young man named Brent Chapman. Brent Chapman is a window hero franchisee and a top rail fence franchisee. He's from a small town in North Carolina. He went to university. He. He got out with a degree in kinesiology, and he went to work for a program at the ymca. And what this program did, it was open to anybody. It was free to anybody who was going through a cancer treatment. And so he would put fitness, nutrition, accountability, mental coaching groups. And it would just be support, holistic support for people free of charge, for people that were going through something in their life that was challenging and ultimately could take their life. And he did this for three years, and he found it to be incredibly meaningful work. He was still living in the small town that he lived in. And over that time he lost a lot of patience. So I think 22 funerals that he went to over that time. And it really started to wear on him. And the other thing was, is that he saw his future clearly. He saw that he was really good at this, that he could make a life in that. But he was going to probably live in the same town he grew up in. His income was going to be capped at whatever wage he could make in doing that job, very meaningful work. And he saw that he could probably do that. He saw other people doing that for 30 or 40 years. About this time, two things happened and this was a big inflection point for Brent Chapman. Number one, he was offered a six figure job to go and do something different, which was a big consideration because it wouldn't have all of the mental strain that was on it for helping these cancer patients day in and day out. And the other thing was it was a pretty good increase in salary. Another thing happened, a little bit of serendipity. This is the people part of it. He met a guy named Tyler Kirk and he had a friend who were looking to create at the times a labor pains franchise which is the predecessor to window Heroes. And he would have to move to Greensboro and start the business from the ground up. But he had a series of meetings and ultimately he looked at that inflection point and he decided that that's what he was going to do. So on Christmas day and I told Brent, you probably could have waited a day, maybe even a week after the new year, but he told his mom that that's what he was going to do, that he was going to go start this business and he was going to forego this job that he went to college to get a degree for and he was going to start this business from the ground up. And she cried, she was incredibly upset about that. And you know, but he just, he felt like he was called to do this and he saw the adventure and the opportunity and he was excited about it. So he took a chance and with two other gentlemen, he rented a one bedroom apartment. His bedroom was actually in the walk in closet on a twin mattress. And that's where he started his business business from. Seven years later. Today, he is the leading top rail franchisee, first year franchisee, and the number two only to the founders Mega Location and WindowHero, the number two Window Hero franchisee. Back in the day he had to save enough money just to buy a mail route and he would Spend all weekend writing seven or 800 mailers by hand, addressing them by hand and taking them to the post office to deliver them. And today he runs a very complex business doing millions and millions of dollars of revenue with dozens of employees, and he is a leader in both of these businesses. So in addition to that, Brent has recently won the Homefront Brand's Franchisee of the Year. And then he was nominated for the ifa, the International Franchise Association Franchisee of the Year, being honored in front of 5,000 people. And we've been notified, hopefully this plays in about a week. We've been notified that he's also the winner there. So you take a guy who really, you know, had a career path, had it set, and he just looked at this inflection point and he chose to go right where most people might choose to go left and pick security and safety, and then he committed to whatever it was to get that job done and to do that. By the way, Brent Chapman, 29 years old, turns 30 here in a couple of months. So he's just shy of his 30th birthday and he's already a multimillion dollar business owner with incredible success and respect. Who knows where this guy's going to end up, but it would not be for anything if he didn't take the chance to make that decision and take that risk. He gave up that hundred thousand dollar job, he saw the adventure and the opportunity he found, the people that he wanted to run with, and he just went for it. So how will you recognize your inflection point in life? When will it dawn upon you that you have one life? And failure generally in business is not fatal. So it's not going to kill you to take a chance to take an opportunity on something. If you're feeling that tug at your heart that you want to do something differently, at some point you've got to trust yourself to take chances. You want to bet on yourself. You need to ignore those limiting beliefs and that you put upon yourself and maybe take some encouragement from Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and know that it's not what you are capable of doing, but it's what you're willing to do. Again, it's not what you are capable of doing, but it's what you are willing to do. And if you're willing to take a chance and go out there and bet on yourself, then I encourage you strongly to do it. If you fail, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, you're going to be just fine because it's not going to kill you. Good luck on your journey. And drop me a note personally on any of our platforms if I can help you. Thank you.
