Jeff Dudan talks about lessons from his business coach, who scaled Husqvarna North America, on pruning relationships that don't match your next level and building a career around purpose and values instead of just chasing money.
Questions this episode answers
Husqvarna North America to $530 million (from about $29 million).
Nine years.
50.
Chapters
When I sold my business, I had this great business coach who had built Husqvarna North America, to 530 million from, like 29 million. And he was the perfect coach for me. I had him for nine years. And he said, whatever it is you choose to do next, make sure that you drive deeper and deeper inside of your purpose. And so I do that. Like, I'm one of the reasons that we're, you know, I mean, I exist to inspire entrepreneurs. Like, that's a big part of what I do. And now, you know, we inspire, we entertain, and we educate entrepreneurs, because I believe that from a purpose perspective, that any time that there's a shrinking middle class in any country, that that is. That is the. That is a horrible situation, and it never ends well. So as we see wealth get, you know, the rich people getting richer and then, you know, people. The wage people, you know, struggling to increase what they have versus inflation and all of these different expenses, you know, that's a. That's a. That offends the middle class. It makes it smaller. So, you know, the big. I sold my company at 50. And to your earlier point, which I really, really appreciate, Jake, was that you said, you know, it's a crime to just take everything that you've learned and go run away with it and, you know, take it to a golf course or take it to a fishing boat. So I looked at it and I said, well, what do I have? And that's a really good exercise, by the way. And this guy built Husqvarna. He said every $100 million, that they would get friction, they would get entropy, and they would have to take everything and put it out on the curb and only bring the things back into the building that would get them to that next hundred million dollars. So as you go through these seasons of your life, you've got to take stock to be able to put everything out there and clean. Some things don't come back. It might be relationships, it might be habits, it might be beliefs and these types of things. And then you only bring the things back in to the kind of new, improved you that are going to get you to that next level of kind of where you want to go. So, you know, as you think about, like, what you decide the impact that you want to make in the world is if you know what goes. You can say what goes on the billboard, you can say what's going to be on my tombstone. What are people going to say about me, you know, my funeral. You can do all of those types of things. And you know, you need to have those needs to be some direction and intention with the impact that you want to make. And then you just start working backwards and, and that starts to, that starts to really inform your thinking about what you do. And you know, like I, I don't, you know, you, you know, you've got to trust that your purpose is informed by your beliefs. And then the rudder that you have in your hand is consistent with your faith and the impact that you want to make. There does need to be alignment there because if you, if you just leave it, you know, and then, and then you've got to trust that if you work as hard and you, and you, you make decisions against the values and you living pushing deeper into your purpose, there's going to be things that's so clear to you that might have been opportunities where you might have made money or you might have done it, but you know, those things are out because it's not aligned with who you are and where you want to go. And then I think then it becomes, well, if that's my purpose and these are my values, then who do I need around my table? And that really accelerates you. Like I said this thing, and it was just something I thought of this morning. It's this elevator concept. You get on at the ground floor and then you're in some certain floor of a building and you're running around, around, but at some point you're going to say, I've got to, I got to get to the next level. So then you get back on that elevator and you go to the next floor. And now there's a whole new set of relationships, networks, opportunities, skill sets and all those things. So now you run around on that and then you just, you know, then you go to the next floor. And what I found in life is there's always another group to get involved with.
