Jeff Dudan borrowed $5,000 against a truck loan to start a company he sold 25 years later. He talks about resourcefulness, decision-making quality, and how his book Discernment can help you choose better.
Questions this episode answers
$5,000.
His four-cylinder Toyota truck (used in his painting business).
About 24 years and 11 months later (≈25 years).
April 16, 2024.
Click the link in his LinkedIn or Instagram bio and provide an email address to receive a copy via email.
Chapters
How resourceful are you when you're making important decisions early in your entrepreneurial journey? Tony Robbins says it's not a lack of resources that holds people back, it's a lack of resourcefulness. And I was thinking this through as I was going back through my book the Business Athletes Regimen for a Great Life Through Better Decisions. A couple people had posted online, I don't know where they got the book, maybe they bought it, but they had posted online that it had really helped them in their entrepreneurial journey. So I really apprec that and it always causes me to go back and look at the book. And interestingly, when you write a book and you haven't looked at it for a few years, you go back and it's like it's the first time you ever read it. You look at it with a fresh set of eyes. And I opened the book to this story where I was trying to come up with $5,000 that I didn't have as the buy in to a business that I would ultimately own 100% and sell some 24 years and 11 months later. So I'm sitting in Florida, I was out of a job because I had cut my teeth in the restoration business and we had decided to start this new business. So that's what we were focusing on. I was renting a house, I was living on a lake in Winter Park, Florida. So I hadn't saved a lot of money. And all of a sudden I've got this need for $5,000. I don't have a lot of credit, I don't have any cash. What do I do? Well, I looked around and I saw that I had my four cylinder Toyota truck that I had used in the painting business and had a little mileage on it, had some wear and tear on it, maybe a few paint speckles. But I didn't have any banking relationships in central Florida. So I decided to drive all the way from Florida back to Boone, North Carolina, go to the First Union bank at the time to the, to the person that was our banker for our painting business. So I walked into the bank and I asked her if she could give me the loan on the truck. And she said, well, how much do you need? And I said I need $5,000. And she said, we can do that. I don't think the truck was worth $5,000. I, I just think this was a great lady that believed in us and wanted to help us out. So I took the $5,000, I got a payment book, I gave the payment book to My brother Mike, who was running the painting business, I said, here you go, Mike. You just bought a truck for $5,000. So when you pay this truck off, it's yours. And I was actually able to get a loan, not great interest rates because of my credit, but on a new truck. So I got a new truck in Charlotte, drove back down to Florida in a new truck with $5,000, and that was the money that I used to put into the business. So here's the deal. I had no idea at that point that that was an inflection point in my life, that that business would grow to be a national company, that I would sell it some 24 years and 11 months later. But I chose to dig deep and say, look, I'm going into a little bit of debt here, but I'm a young person, I'm going to be able to recover from it. I believe in what we're doing. And my philosophy was, whatever it takes, whatever it takes to get in the deal, whatever it takes to get the money to do it so that we can just get going and we can get the work. I wasn't clear at that point that it was such a big decision in my life. Looking back some 25 years later when I wrote the book Discernment, what I realized is the quality of your decisions creates the quality of your life and the velocity of your business. And every good decision you make increases the probability of success. And every bad decision you make decreases, decreases the probability of success. Anything can go to zero and nothing is 100%. But every decision you make increases the probability that you're going to get the outcome that you were looking for. So I get very excited when young people, first time entrepreneurs, first time business builders, get a copy of Discernment. And then they reach out to me and they say, hey, I've highlighted 50 things in this book that are so critical to me, that are going to really help me make good decisions. And thank you so much for writing the book. Thank you. The models of thought in here will inform your thinking. It will also cause you to slow down a little bit. So when you're facing this huge decision that's early in your business, that you'll think about it just a little bit. And then I give you filters with which to make those decisions. So do not underestimate your ability to be resourceful and to get the resources you need to achieve the dream that you have for yourself, for your business, and for those that you care about. And if you want a copy of the book for free, you can get it by clicking a link in my bio on LinkedIn or on Instagram. Give me your email address. I'll send you a copy of the book for free via email. Hopefully it'll impact your life the same way that it impacted mine. Good luck.
