How Dale Hensel Turns Struggling Entrepreneurs Into CEO's To Run His Businesses

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

All right, welcome back to Bacon Wrap Business. This is Brad. And if you have just stumbled across the podcast and you saw bacon and business and you think, I like both of those, but what the heck is going on? Welcome to the podcast. This is my platform where I reach out to some of the most successful, inspirational, ambitious, knowledgeable experts that I can find so that I can systematically pick their brain for purely selfish reasons and allow you to listen in like a fly on the wall on conversations that I want to have anyway with people that I really want to talk to. And I let you guys listen for free. Aren't I nice? I kind of joke, but I kind of don't. This is a tremendous way for me to find some of the information.

That I am personally using not only in my own business, but in that of my clients. As a business and marketing consultant who works with multiple types of companies, it's always in my best interest to keep on top of the most cutting edge strategies, the brightest minds and what they're doing so that I can share that with them. And I love sharing it with you as well. I also love it when you guys share with me. So if you're a subscriber, you've heard me say this before and if you're not, obviously become a subscriber, you can always hit that little button on the itunes machine and you can always reach me@askbradakenwrapbusiness.com I do get a ton of emails from you guys. I love them. Some of them are filled with some of the sticking points that you've got in your business. Maybe you've plateaued, maybe you need some fresh ideas or a second opinion. Send those to me. Maybe you just have a guest recommendation or a topic recommendation. And that's how I come across a lot of my folks. So don't hesitate to reach out to me@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com today. I am excited to bring on a guest that I have known probably for at least 10 years. And he and I were business partners way back in the day on really one of our first online marketing business, a software called Pigtones stood for politically Incorrect GPS tones. I met Dale through a mutual acquaintance. We became good friends, we became business partners, we've kept in contact and even though we're no longer doing business together today, I've watched some of the stuff that he's done and he's always impressed me with his ability to not only create money in various number of industries, but to go really big and not think small. And he's inspired me to do much of the same. So Dale's background, I'll let him go into it a little bit, but one of the reasons I brought him on to talk to you today is because we were just having a conversation recently as we were catching up and he mentioned that what he does now for a living instead of building businesses is he creates CEOs for the businesses. And I was really intrigued by this, especially after a recent episode that I did with Mark Winters, the co author of the book Rocket Fuel, talking about the.

Integral relationship between the visionary and the integrator, the person who gets the things done. I thought this would be a perfect follow up to Dale and let me go ahead and bring him on and say, hello Dale, welcome to making rap business, brother.

Brad, it has been a lot of years since we've really had a chance to sit down and talk, so it was great to catch up. But thanks for having me on.

Yeah, man, my pleasure. This has been a long time coming. I remember when we first met, you were running. It was a public company I think at the time that you were still running. And we met through Susan Stageman and kind of hit it off. You got me into her taking neuro linguistic programming class. We bonded through there and then through Pigtones and the ups and downs of that. But.

I know your background pretty well. Why don't you give us kind of a short version of that's probably hard for you, but of what you've kind of done over the course of your career so that people understand why they should kind of listen closely. Because then I'm going to dive into some really selfish questions.

Awesome. Well, get as selfish as you want. But here's the 30,000 foot view of my history.

Hitchhiked around the country for a while, went up to Alaska, became an Alaska commercial fisherman for about five years when I was a very young man.

Moved back to Idaho at some point, started buying up apartments. I bought up like 250 apartments in like two and a half years. Starting with no money, no credit, didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I didn't know it was impossible. So I did it anyway. Moved to Dallas, bought part of a 400 unit apartment complex there.

Ended up getting a pissy match with the city of Dallas. Learned my lesson, learned a lot of stuff. Then started buying non performing mortgages. Thought that was a great idea after 911 to get into something that when I saw the banks would be crashing. So in 2002 I took a company public, ran that for about five years as CEO, growing it to the point where in 2007 we were buying as many as like 300 houses a week and sold my position off and then moved retired kind of to New Mexico and, and realized after a few years I sucked at retirement. Came out of retirement, built another online business with a couple partners here in New Mexico. I think we sold about $75 million direct to consumer over the last four years online.

Now we do assisted living, buy distressed real estate and do our online stuff as well as got some software and some other deals, investments and so on and so forth. Floating out there, a bunch of different things.

That's awesome. I love it. And we know we could go down many rabbit holes and talk about those. But one of the, as I said, I kind of want to just jump right into the heart of this. It's not so much about real estate, it's not about supplements, it's not about any individual business. It's about the bigger picture, about how you've kind of stepped away from just being the, I guess the business owner and the tactician to really just being either the deal maker, the person who identifies the opportunity and then you bring in people to run it. And really specific. We were talking about one of your most recent businesses, how you brought in a CEO to run that. I know as a business owner myself who has struggled with being too much in the weeds and rolling my sleeves up and just saying I'm going to just go do it. It slowed me down because it's kept me working in the business as opposed to on it.

I want to, I really want to dive into. I don't know the exact first question to ask, but it's the mindset. Yeah.

Well, let me start with. So let me tell you, you and I had touched upon the. How I was approaching the CEO gig differently. And so let me explain that and that will probably generate some questions for you. Cool. All right. So I've started and run, I guess about 15, 16 different businesses at this point. And as I've done it, as always the CEO myself, I've learned how to be a really good CEO over the years and how to make a lot of mistakes because I've seemed to have perfected that, it seems. And I've learned all these really cool things. But over time I learned how to delegate to other people. Well, one of the things that I've really learned in the last several years is how to delegate earlier to people who are going to be the leaders of the business and then step back and be the. I'm kind of like the kingmaker instead of the king anymore. I don't want to have to wear that heavy crown when I can be behind the scenes and make other people be really cool. CEOs groom them, invest in them, invest in their education, help them become really, really effective while in the background acting as both a safety net to them and as their investor. They end up with a piece of equity, they end up with an opportunity to learn and then they get to run the business and they work. And I don't have to work quite as hard, I don't have to sweat quite as much, and I don't have to stay up quite as late freaking out when things do or don't go right in the. And I get to sit back and kind of take a little bit different tact and be a little bit more strategic, be a little bit more hands off and be a little bit able to do deals in the background that facilitate and help the business grow in massive ways. So it's like coming in almost as an angel investor into another group, except in this way I am putting the business together. I find the CEO usually an inexperienced or an inexperienced CEO or somebody who's had their own business or been successful or failed a couple times and I will take them and put them in my business and, and then inform and encourage and become their cheerleader. It's almost like being an angel investor into my own businesses first, but I get to hand pick everything without having to do everything.

Yeah, and you said something, you said a lot of good things there. Like number one was how to delegate earlier. Because it's one thing that everybody thinks, okay, I'll start the business, myself included, start the business, I'll get it going and I'll get to a point where I can then afford to bring in that CEO and that person so that I can step back. The problem is that's kind of a moving target. You, you get in it and it's always feeling complex and you're always running around and by then you're so busy running the business you don't have time to kind of step back and go just Recruit and put as much time and effort as it takes into that. And that's one aspect, but then the other one you kind of hit on, which was good. It's very easy to see how this could be done if you have, you know, if you're filthy rich and you can throw a lot of money at hiring the most experienced CEOs and bring them in and that's like, yeah, that's great. But what I liked about what you said is you are able to bring in not totally green, you know, just people off the street, but they have some experience. But not necessarily the most high priced people that you can bring people in early enough so that they're affordable and start to groom them early. Because that's what I think most of the listeners can probably also.

Identify with because most of them are small business owners, I imagine. I don't think there's a whole lot of billionaires listening, except for a few. But.

That'S really where I want to go into. And I know, for instance, my listeners have heard me talk about the coffee business that we started about six months ago. And I'm already at that phase where I've been great at getting it launched and getting it up. And now we're starting to hit that phase where we are, it's the management of the business. It's off the ground, it's creating revenue. But I absolutely loathe the day to day, the operational crap. I want to be able to step in for the big deals, for the big marketing strategy, et cetera, and find that person that I can groom and bring in early not only for this but for the other ventures. Because that's the one thing that I. That's the next evolution of me as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, exactly. And so let me tell you a little bit about some of the example like a CEO bring in and how I structure it and what it looks like. And then you can ask me specific questions and we could even use your, for selfish reasons, your stiletto coffee. What would I do in your position that would be different than you would do first? One of the things is that this came out of actually something else I had been doing for a little while. I had been coaching CEOs when I was in retirement. It was kind of expensive. I'm a thousand bucks an hour, 50 hour or 100 hour blocks, period. They have to be doing 10 million or more a year before I would even take them on as a client. And I'd try keep it down to two or three clients a year.

I would coach These guys, and I'd watch their businesses go from, say, $10 million or $50 million and up, and I'd go, wow. I go in and I know exactly what to say to these guys so that they get unstuck and they leap off this plateau they'd been on and they just climb in value. I thought, God, it'd be great if I could get a piece of that.

So I started coaching smaller entrepreneurs and saying, hey, listen, I'll take 5% or 10% of your business.

To coach you or mentor you. And that started turning into kind of like an investment portfolio of mine, which was great, but also sometimes they were just like complete idiots, and I couldn't reach them and I couldn't get through to them. So the deals don't work when you have an ineffective CEO. So I realized, what if I were to actually coach somebody from the ground up and put them in? And that's the genesis of this idea and that I've been doing for the last several years. So I went from coaching this $10 million or a year CEOs down to investing in smaller people and kind of being like a seed investor, both with experience and cash.

So what happens is I find somebody. This is my favorite person to find. Somebody who's ambitious, who just got their ass kicked. And I'm talking about somebody who had built up a business and it failed for reason. It was like their first business, and it failed. So what you end up with is somebody who's ambitious, wants to be their own boss, but realized that they were overwhelmed, couldn't do it themselves, or they sucked at some aspects of the business versus other. Like, you're like what's known as tip of the spear or point of the plow, where you are like, you want to be in there and start stuff, but you don't want to be there to plow. You will plow the first furrow into a field to say, hey, there's opportunity here. And I've set the pace, I've set the direction, I've set all of these things, beginning things. But you don't want to be there every single row that you plow. Correct. And you don't want to be there every year replanting the same field. You're just bored. Not much different from what I do. In that case, being the tip of the plow and looking for green field opportunities. Here's what I do with somebody who has failed. They've already had their teeth kicked in. They know that it didn't kill them. They realize, wow, Nobody jumped out from underneath their bed and ate them. They didn't go to jail. Because a lot of people really think if I fail, I go to jail. It's an unconscious thing.

It's.

It's amazing to hear when it comes out of people's mouths that they're going to somehow be in trouble or they're going to somehow be a failure and nobody's ever going to talk to them again. When they realize, wow, I failed, and all that terrible stuff didn't come to pass, they still have to lick their wounds. They don't have any confidence in themselves, but they have all of this great experience. And more importantly, they know what not to do. Those are my favorite people. If I find somebody who's just gone bankrupt or a few months after bankruptcy and a few months after a business crashes and realizes that I need to find something else to do after they mope around a little bit, you can't pick them up when they're moping. You got to get them when they're ready to bounce. I find this person and I say, here's what I'm going to offer you. I paint a very specific picture. How would you like to be part of something larger that you run? You're your own boss and you have a piece of equity, but I will take some of the financial risk. In fact, I'll take most of the financial risk off of you. And they're like, wow, that would be great. And I can bring in some capital that you didn't have before. Well, that'd be awesome. And I will give you some guidance, coaching, some advice from behind the scenes so that you can get better at this business. And this will probably not be your last business. In other words, you'll go on and do other businesses yourself later and that this will be phenomenally good experience for you without the I am your boss expectations. When you give somebody the opportunity to make a significant impact in their own life, when you give them the opportunity to grow and to support them and you're not their boss, even just those mental shackles falling off of them is such an empowering thing to watch happen to people that I go, hey, look, I'm going to remove these shackles. You're not going to have them, but you are going to be like a partner and you're going to have partner level responsibilities. It's amazing to see them go, I'm ready for this. And they dig in.

Yeah, I love that. Is it challenging to find these people? Do you kind of have to stumble across them Is there a process like, you know, you seek them out? Are you watching stuff that's going on in the news? Is it anything in particular? Is it.

So I bet if you picked up your phone and you look through your phone, you would probably find several people who, you know, were starting a business last year, a year before, a couple years ago. If you call them right now, how is their business? If you just keep, you know, keep in touch with people who are in your circle, who didn't have. Who had a business, you're going to find. Well, I decided to give up on that because. And, you know, you're going to be surprised at how many people cycle through these various things in life. I mean, what is the result?

I'm not the least bit surprised because, I mean, I've done that. I've started and failed at a bunch of stuff. Right?

Yeah, me too. It's like I'm an expert at it now. Right. So the thing is, is that if you look through your. So that's one way is look through your phone. If you have a good network. If you don't have a good network, I mentor at an accelerator where I go down to a business accelerator here in town, and these businesses come in and they're like, okay, we're going to do this lean process. We're going to do this, we're going to do this. And I sit there and take them through the process and help them out and kind of like help them make realizations of where they're at and what they're. You know, they say, I think this is true, and then we find out it's not. I help them make all those realizations. In doing so, you're going to be in a room. If you look at angel investment groups, if you look at.

Accelerators or incubators, you're going to find a bunch of people or even any kind of like BNI or anything where business people congregate. You're going to find lots of people who've had some failures and sometimes most recently three, six, eight months ago, and they're in the, okay, well, I failed and I bounced, and now I'm looking for my next opportunity. You're going to find a plethora of people to pick from. You'll be really surprised at how rich the field is, especially when you come in and say, hi, my job job is to make you better, and my job is to make you a CEO of one of my companies so that you can run this thing and I can come to you and give you Advice, resources, strategy. But you're going to be responsible and it's going to be your big badge on your shoulder. Because I don't go around telling people, oh, I have this business and it's all about me and I'm all important. That's what you do when you're the first time CEO, when you've done it a number of times, you're kind of done. I've been a CEO of a publicly traded company and at this point I'm just like, yeah, I don't care. I'd just rather be the guy in the back who wears the sandals and hangs out in shorts. That's me.

Sandals and socks.

And socks.

Just to be clear.

Yeah, sandals and socks. I'm that guy, right. I don't want to be up on stage necessarily going, it's all about me and I'm awesome. I'm more than happy to be a cheerleader at this point. And that's what I found with a number of our businesses, is that if I find the right people and if I encourage them and I give them the resources and I am a big cheerleader when they're down. And when you have, you know, as a CEO or as a business owner, you're going to have these moments of doubt, you're going to have these moments of overwhelm. You're going to have these moments of, who do I turn to? Because. And that's why a lot of business coaches exist. Because, you know, a lot of business owners are going, I need a little bit of coaching right now.

Yeah.

So I'm kind of a mentor, coach, investor, all wrapped into one. And as a result, to a lot of guys or people who I approach for this offer, they're just like, holy shit, that's me. I want to be that. Can I work for you? I do this and I'm like, well, you can kind of work for me, but I'd really rather you be my partner. And here's how we're going to do it. And I lay out a pretty clear plan. I also have them understand what a Level 5 commitment is. I can't remember which book it was. Maybe it was good to great. They talked about level five leaders and I think there was like level five commitment. A level five commitment is like, you are committed to the outcome, not the how. And so, you know, if you get somebody who's committed to getting it done regardless of the obstacles, that's who you really want to bring in as a CEO. Because almost everything else can be trained. They don't have an expertise in the industry. Read a lot. They don't have the expertise in a specific strategy. Here's how to do it. They don't have the contacts. Fine, I got that. So you're looking for somebody who has a Level 5 commitment more than I have. Lots and lots and lots of contacts and experience. Those are the experienced CEOs that you pay an arm and a leg for. But you can make an experienced CEO by giving them the right mindset, giving them the right resources, the tools, and behind the scenes coaching as well as investing and believing in them a little bit. I found that after a failure, a business owner who has somebody who believes in them again is almost like they're like, I can't believe somebody believes in me. That maybe somebody more grateful. Oh, my God, they are. And there's like, thank you. Yeah.

Especially when their confidence is shot. But their capabilities are still intact.

Their capabilities have gone up several levels. Right. But they don't know that yet. Yeah.

And then, and then they're thinking, okay, I'm either going to have to do this all over again and start something and go maybe raise money and put myself out there, and now maybe I'm broke.

So. Yeah, I like that. I mean, it is kind of funny. I mean, you really made your bones in business by buying distressed properties.

Yes.

And now you're buying distressed CEO. There's patterns in everything, I tell you.

Oh, my God, there is. So to give an example, here's a CEO that I did a deal with. I came to this person, I said, all right, we're going to give you 15% of this business. Here's what we think the business will do over this period of time with all these resources. Here's what your roles and responsibilities are. I'm going to help you bring and pick your team so, you know, I can give you so they don't have to come up with all the money to do this. And I'm going to help you pick the team and I'm help bring resources to the table. Your job is to formulate your team, get them to, you know, through forming, storming, norming, and performing and get them to that performance level and to babysit all of this stuff and, you know, take care of all the details and do all this stuff and help implement all of this stuff that we're going to do with this business plan. For that, you're going to get a ridiculously low salary. Basically, it's ramen noodle. I call it the ramen noodle salary. It's as low as they can physically. And I have a really interesting conversation with them. I say, here's the thing, I don't want to hear what you want your salary to be. I want to know what your living expenses are and let's cover those so you don't starve. But frankly, I don't want you having a really nice car and doing all this stuff that's partner level stuff you get on the back end for. Right now you're going to be broke for a couple years. And I tell them, I'm really honest with it. I says, you're going to be broke for a couple years and just get used to it. But here's the resources you're going to have access to. I said if you started your own business, you would be broke for the same number of years or more.

But you wouldn't have a safety net and you'd have to do all this stuff yourself. And if you screwed up, it'd all be back on you. And you've just experienced that you don't want it. So I'm your safety net. Let me cover your living expenses. So sometimes, depending on what state it is in New Mexico, it's cheap. I think I got one harder to.

Do in San Diego.

Yeah, I know, but the idea is the same. But the thing is.

Sometimes they may have a spouse that's working so it can help offset in New Mexico, I think One of the CEOs is getting $2,500 a month base. That is a ridiculously low amount. However, they have an opportunity to earn 5% per year for the next three years. They're going to own 15%. We've already put in almost $2 million worth of assets into this deal and they're going to own 15% of those assets that go all in and the cash flow that those assets generate. So we're looking at in two years, that person's going to have a base salary of about $150,000. Okay, well that's a better start. But we're going to look to grow this for 10 or 15 or 20 million dollars. That's going to increase their income multiple times. And they have a huge amount of. They're 28, so they're much younger. They've already failed at one business. They didn't have the resources to start a business. And if they were to achieve the same level of income, it would take them years to build up that asset base or that business. And they just didn't have the experience, the confidence or the resources to do so. So this is a win win for them and for me. So in the background I get to sit back and say, how are you doing with your team? What did you learn? What black eyes did you get? What embarrassing things did you learn? I get to have all of the same discussions would as either as a coach or.

As a mentor or an angel investor. I get to have all those same conversations and they get to benefit from the ownership structure and they have an opportunity to even buy in some more. So if they say, hey, listen, instead of taking all this money off the table, I want to reinvest into the company, we've given them an opportunity to buy up to another 10%, well, that's like 25% ownership in a business that they started with nothing and we brought all the resources and everything else. That, that is a good place. Especially knowing that they're young and it's not going to be their last business. Right.

So you do like to stick to the slightly younger crowd as opposed to finding somebody who's kind of at the tail end of their career, like maybe in their 50s or something of that nature.

Well, actually no one of them I've dealt with is in their 50s and they're kind of, they're at the beginning part of their entrepreneurial career, they're at their ending part of their past career. And so the awesome part about 50 year olds is first of all, they have enormous amount of experience in a lot of things, but not perhaps being a CEO. And that's where they're ready for it. They've got the maturity for it. They just don't have sometimes the exact tactics or the know how. And that's where I come in and say, here's the process.

So that can be actually a beneficial thing as well.

Yeah, I love that. So.

Recapping so far, you know, I like, you know, finding out how you can delegate. Well, delegate earlier. How often do you do this? You know, bring them in before you even start it up? Like I got this idea, this is what I want to do. Or do you kind of get it going, get the ball rolling so that there's something that they're stepping into as opposed to just starting up.

It is a mix. Sometimes I start something and then I go, you know what, I don't need to be running this. Right. So I've gotten better over the years. So now I bring them in closer to the beginning. In fact, I prefer it's at the beginning because then.

Well, so the last two I just did both were at the beginning. One of them was a, hey, we're going to do this business model. Would you be willing to be the CEO, run this. And here's the whole pathway we're going to take for the next four years. Would you be willing to be in this position? If you can give me a level five commitment to that, I, I will give you these things. So I brought them in at the very, very beginning.

I like that.

Yeah, I love that.

So, so finding them younger, typically, if you can, somewhat distressed based upon, you know, some of the things they've done in the past where they've, you know, kind of failed to get where they want to be, but they've got some experience and they're much more, I guess, appreciative of getting groomed, etc.

And you're, and like you said, you're.

Taking the risk off of them. They've got a level five combination commitment. So you know, they're on board.

Right.

You're able to pay them relatively inexpensive. You let them vest with their percentage. So, so that's. And then finding them, it's part of it's just networking, part of it's telling people what you do.

Right.

Like when I mentioned, how do you find that you like you said, what is it? You like your elevator pitch as Well? I create CEOs.

Yeah. So I create CEOs. So I taught a class a while back about two sentence marketing. It was one of my favorite discoveries that I ever did when I was raising money. I was raising money in Dallas for buying non performing loans. And I created a two sentence pitch that structurally can be copied anywhere.

With this two sentence. It allowed me to identify in a room full of people, the two people I needed to talk to. And I just ignored everyone else and just talked to those two people. People. And so here's what the two sentences were. The first sentence was people say, well, what do you do? And I go, well, I'm a bank robber. And everybody kind of laughs. And then they go, well, what does that mean? Right. And then my second sentence does this. So the first sentence is always shock and awe. You want something really unusual, something shocking, something that's out. Yeah. Pattern interrupt, right? Yeah. That's why I call it shock and awe. Because most people understand that pattern interrupts. People may or may not know the jargon, but it's a pattern interrupt like yours. It's like I bring you fat profits or something like that. We're talking about fat content.

I'm guaranteed to make you fat.

Yeah, that, that's it. And so it's kind of like people go, what? So you get their attention for about seven more seconds. And in that seven seconds, I want to identify my target customer or have them self identify and.

Give them the biggest benefit that I bring them in one sentence. So people would say, I'd say a bank robber. And they go, what does that mean? I say I raise money from investors. So I'm identifying my target audience, investors. I raise money from investors and I buy real estate at 25 cents on the dollar. Anybody who's an investor will self identify and say, that's me, I'm an investor. And anybody who's interested in buying real estate at 25 cents on the dollar will raise their hand and go, how do I get involved? So I can say that to a room full of people and the two people in the entire room would come over to me and say, I'm an investor. How do I get involved? So it was like two sentence marketing. So exactly that. So how I would find them now is I'm looking for this distressed person. Another reason I just realized I like them distressed is they don't have an ego because they just got the crap kicked out of them. So I don't have to deal with a lot of the ego component.

Yeah, exactly.

In fact, it's just the opposite. I have to build them up a little bit and give them confidence.

So I just would do two sentence marketing, which would. The first thing is like, well, I, I make CEOs or I'm a king maker and make CEOs. The second one is I'm looking for down and out entrepreneurs who had a rough time and want to get back on track and build a new business. So that would be like a really simple sentence you could say. And you would get people coming out of the woodwork to you and saying, holy crap, I want to be involved. So it's not that hard to find them. The hard part of course, is making sure that they're the right fit for you and for the business that you're doing. You don't want somebody who's like all over the place and super visionary and no sense of what it takes to dig in after a failure. You want somebody who's had some failure but knew what they did wrong in their business and how they could. A lot of them, they just didn't have the resources. I could have had a successful business if I'd had enough money to do enough marketing to get more customers. Well, I can solve some of those things.

Right? So yeah, then you talk to them find out. I mean, then that's just a qualitative process. And we won't go into all that because that's, you know, just hiring and deeper. Yeah, deeper discussion. So then let's transition over to what that relationship is like early on. Like how? Like, how often are you involved with them? To what level? I mean, I know it depends upon the person's experience and level of familiarity with what they're. You're bringing them in to do, but are you meeting with them? Typically once a day, Once a week.

I like to bring them into the office so we have daily interaction for the first 90 days at least. To be honest, whenever I start a business, the first six months are total immersion for me and for them. While we identify the business model, we vet the business model, we say, whoops, we thought this, but this is true. When we deal with some of the big dragons and understandings in first six months. And then you go, oh, okay, we know what to do. We know that doing process 1, 2, 3, and then repeat is what makes money. Okay, do that. Right.

On the first six months, I'm almost daily interacting with them, and then I start to peel myself kind of out of there. I'll interact with them weekly. I hold them accountable. I want to see them at accounting like we do accounting meetings, because at the end of the day.

Weekly, we have to look at what the financial numbers are because we have a lot of money moving around and a lot of money invested, and we want to make sure that we don't have any surprises where suddenly we're like, oh, well, we need payroll next week, and we have six bucks in our account. We have $40,000 in payroll. We don't want those kind of things coming up. We want to be able to see that as far ahead as possible and solve those before they happen. And that's where me sitting in the background, I'm looking at the financials all. I'm just kind of touching base with their team and getting some feedback. Sometimes I can identify problems before they happen. Where the team one time was complaining about the CEO and they were all pulling their hair, and it was because the CEO was doing a behavior that they weren't really aware of. So I took them in and sat them down and said, okay, do you realize this is what's going on? This is the logical conclusion of this behavioral pattern over this period of time. How about we consider changing that? And then I can very gently suggest changes to the CEO where they just come out of the office the next day. And they're like, they're different and they're doing things differently, and their team starts responding to them differently. And so it's not like it's a big intervention from the whole executive team. It's just the CEO just keeps getting modified and changing their behavior until they get better and better and better. And so that's where I interact with them, is by interacting with the rest of their team, I can kind of see how they're doing. And for the most part, I will literally let some of the CEOs have their mistakes and kind of get a little bit of humble pie served up once in a while. And then I'll come in and say, here, let me help you with that. By doing that, I found that it's so much easier for me to run businesses that way. I can make much better decisions being kind of behind the scenes and going, huh, what needs to really happen here? And I'm not as emotionally invested in the decisions as I would be if I were the CEO. Right, right. And so it's a very interesting perspective to say, well, you sure you want to do that? Because this is probably what will happen. And here's some of your other options. And they tend to, by doing that, it allows me to give gentler advice and they are more receptive to hearing it, rather than, you must do this or you will fail. Right. Yeah.

Do you find yourself dealing more with or less with kind of like overall mindset stuff, financial issues with them, strategic marketing? Is it a pretty even mix or is it like, man, most of my conversations just revolve around getting their head straight, their confidence, this, that, or the other. I'm just kind of curious on, oddly.

Enough, the strategy and decision making processes for how to run the businesses are like, the least amount. It's almost always, especially with these, with a younger crowd and somebody who's been kicked really hard. It's almost always head space. Stuff like, I don't feel like I can do this. Why I'm right here. You're not alone, you're fine. Take the leap. I'm your safety net. And so a lot of times it's the headspace game.

In fact, this just happened recently. One of my CEOs was moping around and I could see that. So I let it go for about three or four days. And I brought them in and sat them down, says, how you doing? And they burst into tears. And I was like, okay, so obviously not well. And that's pretty apparent because you've been moping around for the last Three or four days. What's up? And what had happened is a lot of changes had happened really fast in the business where this person had all these responsibilities. And then we hired four people who took all these responsibilities off their plate. And the CEO was like, what am I supposed to do? Do I still have any value? All these responsibilities are off my plate. And so, oh my gosh.

Should I be worth it? Am I worth it? Do I deserve this? It was really a really interesting head space because suddenly the CEO I had brought in a couple people to help with the enormous amount of work to take it off their plate. And the CEO was just wondering if they were worth it anymore. I was like, oh, yeah, you're going to work your ass off. I'm just giving you some help. It doesn't mean anything about you.

That's interesting. Yeah. They started tying their value to activities.

I know, right? And a good CEO and a good business owner should be reducing their activities and removing themselves out of the business by having the business be profitable enough to pay for somebody to do that stuff for you. And, you know, people sometimes, you know, argue with me about, well, you know, nobody can do it as well as I can. I says, no, but two can. Two people can.

Right. And is 70 or 80% really good enough if it frees you up to do all this other stuff?

I know, right. So I say good. I'll get two people who are 80% as good as you and we'll have 160% more effectiveness than you. So stop bitching about it.

Right? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So it's a lot more than anything. It's head game. Sometimes it's very specific strategy, but they get that pretty quick. And it's almost all head stuff.

Do you try to make sure that they're in your location, especially in the first three to six months that.

You'Re in New Mexico. Then if somebody in Florida, for instance, wanted to be that. I know it probably depends on case by case basis, but do you much more prefer mandate that they're in house?

Well, at this point in my king making career, yeah, I prefer them local. And I don't care if they run a team outside of the state. I want them to be here with me for the first six months. Really. First of all, I develop a deep rapport with that person. And so second of all, when things, real problems come up later, we have that rapport. We can deal with those issues and we can talk about it. Right?

Yeah. You're not treating them just like an ordinary employee. That is just doing a task. Yeah. The rapport here is much more important because you're trying to get them to really buy onto the longer term vision.

Yeah. And another thing I do with all of my CEOs is I say, okay, we're going to take what your skill set is currently and we're going to figure out what the improvements are that you want in yourself. And I would like to see. And we're going to make a list and we're going to do skill acquisition. And I have a whole list here of all of the skills that I want a CEO to have as a fundamental base. And then from there we add on.

What are some of those skills?

I want them to have a fundamental understanding of business accounting. What's a balance sheet, P and L cash flow. Because they're going to be responsible for that as a partner and as a CEO, they're going to be responsible for that. I want them to understand conflict resolution and conflict management. In a team, between you and your other people, between you and yourself, between team members, how do you deal with conflict? How do you manage? I want them to have a really good understanding of people skills. So I will send them to classes sometimes with Susan. In fact, most of them I send to Susan. I probably send another 10 people to Susan in the last couple years. So the point is I want them to have a certain level of skill sets. And if you want, I can write down, I don't have it in front of me, but I have a list that I usually say, hey, get all these skills and if you don't have them, let's circle them and say, when are you going to get them?

Nice. Yeah, I'd love to put that in the show notes. That's huge.

Happy to do that.

And then some of them, like you said, it's not that you have to teach them all these skills. There's other resources that they can go learn. There's books they can learn about business accounting and conflict resolution and classes. That's just part of the entire development. As a CEO, you're not necessarily learning all the little micro strategies of how to advertise on Facebook, right?

No, yeah. No, I'm not saying go advertise on Facebook. Know what good Facebook advertising is supposed to look like and who does a good job for the right price and hire them.

Right. I've said for a long time, I try to live by this mantra, which is that I don't have to know everything if I can find the people who do.

Absolutely.

So not only do I Have a skill set. Here's the other thing. There's an app called Smartly. I love this app app.

And it's basically tiny bite sized bits of business information in an app that says, hey, do you want to understand the fundamentals of business accounting? Here's a little course on it. And they're like three to seven 10 minute long videos that are tiny chunks. So it's super easy to consume. And if you just keep dipping into the app, you're going to go, oh wow, that's a new skill. That's a new thing. I'm going to add.

Downloading it as we speak. Right.

That's a good one also. And of course YouTube has become the new college. Really? I mean, screw college. You got YouTube you want to know about? Oh, how do I run an Excel spreadsheet? How do I do some complex IRR calculation in that limit 5 minutes on Excel? I learned the calculation, I did it and I went and taught it to a couple of CEOs really quick. I was like, you guys need to know this.

YouTube has a lot of really good, fast, tiny, just in time learning pieces of information that I say, here's your resources. It's either me, this class, this YouTube, this app, this person, this whatever. I give them a list of resources and say you need to acquire the skills of a CEO. Where's negotiation 101? Where's negotiation level two? Whatever, here they are, go learn them.

I love that. That's really cool.

Right?

And it's. And I totally agree. I mean whether it's YouTube, there's you know, Udemy and of course Sarah and there's Linda and there's a million obviously other people who have info products. I mean like what you. This is. That's a conversation I actually would want to do another podcast on is just probably especially when it comes to business.

How all the places you learn for the 5 minutes or less a day. Yeah.

For real.

To become a superman.

Yeah. The information is out there. And truthfully most of it is really is free. It's not in a book, it's somewhere, you know, it's on a video, it's on YouTube, it's on a podcast. Bake it.

It's on a podcast. Right?

The. Yeah. This is fascinating. I know it's. It's one of the areas where I have, I've just been on. I've not developed this, you know, for myself. And it was really funny. As I was rereading, I was showing somebody else, my friend JJ the book Rocket Fuel just yesterday and one of the things I was reading in there and I was showing him, it was like I just kind of came back across it because it talked about actually this is so funny. I just opened right back up to it. It says one of the while giving people more concept, it's about visionaries and integrators. So I'm a visionary, I come up with great ideas and I'm great at getting the ball rolling and I'm terrible at managing the day to day intricacy and details. And he talks about these are the weaknesses of most visionaries. And one of them he says, developing talent. He goes even in good to great. Jim Collins describes that one common leadership behavior pattern as a genius with a thousand helpers. He says many visionaries suffer from this problem. You're very bright. You likely made it this far in your own capabilities. You haven't had to develop it because you've done this all with your own brute strength. So it isn't surprising you've spent little time thinking about how to develop such resources.

He says, your gift is actually telling other people what to do. So you naturally order your young, high potential, talented leaders around and sometimes end up running them off instead of developing them. So he goes on several more paragraphs that I won't read, just discussing how important that is to make that switch into developing the team. Because as a visionary, you probably haven't had to do it in the past. And it really resonated with me as is this conversation saying, yeah, if I want to kind of evolve, that's where I need to be.

That is so true. I can't underscore that enough, Brad. I mean, you've hit it right there on the head. And here's the problem I ran across with most business owners is they go, well, I'm too busy to develop talent and I'm too busy to work on this. So I have to just keep working. And I'm going, yeah, you got a high paid job. You don't really own a business.

Because of my experience when I was in my early 30s of taking a company public, I realized, holy crap, I don't have any experience in any of this stuff. I need the experts. And so I learned I had a mentor luckily who kicked my ass and made me delegate. And as it got delegated out and as it got handed out, I realized, wow, this is a really powerful thing. So I developed that skill of delegation and it came in really handy as I started doing other businesses of I am going to delegate the business part of it to Somebody and reward them really well. And I'm going to take the, instead of taking the passive investor and hope and pray because I think hope is a terrible business model and hope and pray that the business makes money, I'm going to take a somewhat action, not totally active role in this, but instead of running around and trying to get more sales for the company or whatever, I say what is the best, most strategic thing I can do, period, to help the company. And I realized early on it was developing the right team and that meant developing the right leadership. And if I wasn't going to be the leader, somebody had to. So just by sheer doing enough of this, I said, if I develop my CEOs first, the business will, the culture will flow from them. The longevity, longevity of the business will flow from that. And the scale and the power and the consistency of the business will flow from the right person. So if I come to somebody and say, you've got the raw talent, let me develop it.

They will make me so much money I can go do other things. In fact, just as a real quick numbers example, we started up 11 months ago a new business. I brought a CEO in. This is the one that was moping around a little bit the other day and developed that person. And one year later, we now have enough assets that the business is going to generate roughly about a million dollars a year in net revenue. And it only took 11 months to get to that point, helping the CEO rather than doing the business.

If I don't show, I haven't shown up for the office like a couple days for the last couple of months. So if I don't show up, the business is still growing and doing well. And it only took 11 months to do it because I have somebody who's committed to being here every day and taking care of all the little dragons that pop up and do everything. And I'm just like, wow, this person has a 15% interest in the business and possibly more. It's phenomenal to see a business built that size and that scale. And just by helping one person out, the right person and staying out of their way, I don't micromanage. I go, let me guide you and get out of your way.

Yeah, that's, that is my, as I said, my personal goal to develop out that skill set for myself. Because I've noticed, I mean, even just as I use the example with one of the businesses that I'm running, the Stiletto Coffee with my wife, and you know, most of the, you know, she handles a lot of the, the Coffee stuff and whatnot. And obviously because of my skill set, I handle the digital marketing and the. And although I've outsourced and out tasked, I've brought people in and had people serve those little roles, I've still found myself much more involved in the day to day stuff. I mean, dealing with Amazon, dealing with this, that and the other. Even though I've got a little help and it's starting to cause that.

Frustration. Frustration, right where I realized you're the.

Genius with a thousand helpers.

Yes, exactly. And I've.

Luckily I have been talking to a couple people who would potentially be good to kind of bring on as that role. But it's someone either as a partner, I don't really know yet, it's still so early. But I even thought about reaching out to people and this is where I got stopped. It's like, okay, where do I start to reach out to those people who would come in and want to kind of take over and create?

So let's walk through this, how I would approach it. All right, so I have a coffee business with my wife. My wife would kill me, frankly. So I have a coffee business with my wife. I know my impending death is coming. I have to do something different. So I have to get my wife out of the business and I have to get myself out of the business. But I still want to retain what I've developed and built. All right, so here's what I would do is I would literally go to a couple coffee, what do you call those things, conferences? And I would show up and say, who are the fucking superstars here? Who are the best guys? And they'll say, oh, this salesman from this guy, this guy from this guy. You're going to go and talk to all these superstars and guess what? They're employees. They're employees for a big company and they're doing really well doing their thing, but they're probably yearning for more. And then you start having that conversation with some people and say, hey.

Have you ever thought of going out on your own? Yeah, but I don't have the money. Money. What if somebody did? What if some, instead of going there and saying, hey, I have this coffee company and you should buy or sell my stuff or whatever, instead of approaching it like you're a salesman and a businessman, I would approach it from, I'm looking for raw talent that I can cultivate. And so if I found two or three people there, I'd sit them down to coffee, literally and say, here's the deal, guys, I have A business. But I need a CEO and I'm looking to make one of you guys, well, a lot of money. Here's the thing. It's going to require a shitload of work. You probably have to take a pay cut for a little while. But I want somebody like you to step in and run this. If you're interested. Let's have a further conversation. But I lay out all the ugly first. I can make you a lot of money, but it's going to be a lot of work. It's going to take several years, and you're going to have to be fully responsible. Would you be interested in a CEO position? And for somebody who's doing really well or who has a lot of contacts in the business industry already, that opportunity doesn't knock on their door at all, ever at work.

That's true.

And you say, so here's what I'm looking at. I'm looking at a 15% equity position. I'm looking at growing this. And if somebody goes, I was in a business when we started at this level and we grew it to this level and I did all this stuff and I got nothing. You say, how would you like to do this again except get something in their own head? They've already started to buy into their historical past experiences. They know their black book. They know how to do it faster and better this time. And God damn it, this time they're actually going to get a piece. It would be so easy for you to find a CEO who would step in, take over. I don't even care if they're in your area because it know, because you're doing everything online, doesn't even fucking matter, and say, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to help you become the CEO I'm going to help. I'm going to hook you up with some coaching to make sure you have some resources and all the training you need. But eventually, I want you to rock and roll this sucker to $100 million and sell it to Starbucks. Dude, we just sold this company to this other company. You're going to find so much experience that is bottled up and has zero outlet of opportunity anywhere else but what you're giving them.

Yeah. And you're spot on with that. Like you said, these people who are typically just employees and they're good employees, if they don't, if they're not one of the minority who breaks out and becomes a, an entrepreneur and takes that risk on themselves, and it takes a certain type of person to do that.

Dude, it takes a dumb ass person to become an entrepreneur. I've said like stupid in five ways to start.

Yeah, you have to be like delusionally optimistic. Delusionally is the key word.

Right. So I don't take people who are delusionally optimistic. I've got plenty of delusion myself. No need to.

They're starting their own companies. It's, yeah, finding the ones who can come in and just go, you know, just absolutely honored at the opportunity to be part of a much, you know, to be a big fish in a small pond.

Absolutely. And so there's all this bottled up talent that has, that is looking for the next 20 to 30 years of working and getting fuck all. And you go and you tap into that, you're going to have a geyser of opportunity, of people and high talent come running at you. And you say, here's the deal, guys, we're going to send a 35% of the business. This much is going to the CEO. This much is going to future employees in an employee owned piece. If you are committed to seeing this thing grow, you get a piece of it and you can survive and do that, Suddenly you've built a business. Now here's your golden opportunity. A lot of entrepreneurs have the I got to own 100% of the pie or I get less. Well, that's true, but I can now own 15 pies and owning a good chunk of them. But I don't have to run any of them. They run, run the business, they build it, they're vested, they want to see it succeed as much as you do. And now you have got a loyal following internally that are not going to quit and they're going to go and build something huge.

It was Rockefeller who said.

I'd rather have 1% of 100 people's effort than 100% of my own. Something like that, right?

Yeah. Because the 1% of 100 people, you're not living it at 100 people. It could be a thousand, 10,000. Exactly. So if I can get 15 or 10, 20% of some really.

Powerful.

People with a lot of horsepower and I can hook my wagon onto that and say go, but I can have a direct influence in how successful they are because I've already done this a number of times, then me, my investors, everybody wins. The employees, the CEO, everybody wins. And I do it by actually being more generous than you would think would be sane. I'm like, no, I'm going to give a chunk away. And people go, well, you're giving all this Stuff, away I go. But this isn't my last deal.

So the thing is that.

By doing exactly this, I created a million dollar a year net income by hooking up the right CEO, hooking her up with the right, what do you call it, talent. And putting a lot of people behind this person and saying, here you go, you have the resources, you have the money, you have the connections, and then stay out of the way. They're like, I'm not micromanaged. I'm going to step up to a new level of responsibility. And then. And that's awesome.

Yeah, you're right.

A lot of entrepreneurs really think that they have to be geniuses and they have to micromanage everyone to be perfect. And if you encourage people and you are like a cheerleader and you, God, you got to bite your tongue sometimes, say, oh, I wouldn't do that. But if you can bite your tongue, they will figure it out for you and then they will get better for doing it the next time. So I will let them make mistakes and fail knowing that the next several times they will make better decisions.

Let them touch the hot stove and realize it's hot.

They only do it once. That's true.

Yeah, that is true. I love it. I mean.

This has been great. And as I said, it really plays into the conversation I had had with Mark Winters from Rocket Fuel. It plays on to, you know, it starts to solve this kind of thinking. It's this evolution starts to solve some of the frustrations that I've personally had, which is, you know, my love for the big concept, my love for being able to, like, I walk into so many opportunities and I've had to get really good at saying no to stuff, even though it's just excruciatingly painful sometimes.

But, you know, the people that I've seen who have the most success end up, you know, utilizing this mindset. Did you ever read the book? I may have talked to you about it the other day when we were chatting, but there's a book by Roger Hamilton called Millionaire Master Plan. Have you ever heard of Roger?

No, I haven't actually.

So he's got two things. I'll send you links to him. So one of them is, you'll absolutely love this, by the way. He's the founder of Wealth Dynamics, and I think it's like wealthdynamics.com and, you know, there's a lot of personality tests out there. But one of the cool parts about this is you take the test and it doesn't just. It doesn't Say, Dale, you're a quick start. It doesn't tell you all of your.

Qualities.

It lumps you in of one of eight different entrepreneurial wealth creation profiles. It says, okay, you're either a star, you're a creator, you're a deal maker, you're a supporter, you're a mechanic, you're a trader, you're a lord, you're an accumulator. And this is based upon your area of genius. So for instance, like the mechanic, he's like, mechanics are the ones who create duplicatable systems. They're the Ray Krocs of the world. He didn't invent McDonald's. It wasn't his big vision. He just understood how to make it a system. There's like the Richard Branson's of the world and the Steve Jobs. They have the big visions, they're the creator, they don't do all the other stuff. I'm kind of like going through these real quickly. Obviously the star makes sense. It's Oprah Winfrey. You make the money off yourself.

I've always fallen into the supporter and dealmaker role. And one of the reasons is because those are two areas where. Where my area of genius really is.

For lack of a better word, a people person. But he says people will either solve by their nature a problem by asking who, what, how, or when. I always ask, who, who can help me? Who's got this? Who has what I need? Who needs what I have? Other people. Like when he says, if you want to know when, these are great traders, they make great real estate flippers, stock traders, buying it low and selling high on ebay, things like that. Then there's the accumulators and the lords and the people who buy cash flow assets. And I have a feeling you're kind of more of a between a deal maker and I guess a lord.

I'll send you some links to this. You'd find it super duper interesting. But it also talks about how.

If you're a deal maker and you're trying to be a mechanic, you're trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Like, the deal maker needs the mechanic to create these systems, to generate deal flow, to get them in. So it talks about how to partner up with the right people and how to plug those holes in your organization. And that's the first part. But the second part, that was wealth dynamics in his other book, Millionaire Master Plan, which, by the way, I hate the title of the book because it sounds kind of generically cheesy. Cheesy Right. But it's one of the most brilliant books I've read because it takes two prongs. It says, first of all, no what your area of genius is. Are you a who, what, how or when person? And then he says, know what level you're at? Are you a worker? Kind of like cash flow quadrant, right? Are you a worker? Are you self employed? Are you a business owner? Are you an investor? But there's like nine levels. And he explains how if you're at this level, these are the skill sets that you need to develop to get to the next level, because all the skill sets that got you to where you're at will keep you from moving up. And he explains which skills, like exactly how to do that based upon your area of genius. It's kind of deep, but it was so impactful for me when I was reading it going, oh, okay, this is how you uplevel. These are the mindset changes you need to make. And one of those, we talked about this. Which was when you go transition from being the business owner, the CEO to the investor, kind of like yourself, you're not looking at the same metrics. You're not looking at conversion rate optimization, you're not looking at, hey, how many leads are we getting now you're looking at the P and L, the balance sheet, these things, and it totally changes because you have to step away, release these things, bring somebody else in, and just focus on the big numbers instead of micromanaging it anyway. I think you'd find it fascinating. I highly recommend.

Well, damn it, Brad, you've added to my book list.

It's a long list, but all right, I'll put it right on there.

But I actually mind map the book. I'll send you my mind map. I think you'll like it.

Oh, I love those.

I mind map the crap out of everything. It's the way that I absorb.

Which software do you use for that, by the way?

I use two. So I use xmind.net which is free, but it's not online. It's a program you download. What I like about it is you don't need Internet connection. And it's blazingly fast. And then I use Mindmeister.

Oh, I love Mindmeister. I have an account too. I pay for that just because my teams, I go, guys, we're going to map this out. And then I give it to my team and then I'm out of there. You know, it's awesome. And then I can watch really organic stuff grow there.

Yeah, I live by mind maps. I actually went through years ago, I started going through some of my favorite marketing courses that I bought in business courses. And, and like if I bought something as I went through it, I would just start mind mapping it and I was looking for all the big actionable points, the things I wanted to remember. So I'm not just sitting there going through video after video. I'm like, alright, I'm going to break down the structure. And now I have a visual structure of the entire course that I can go back to. And it's at quick reference. I can just jump around. I'll send you one of them.

I would love that.

It's like now become my training stuff. It's like, oh wait, I don't want to go back and log into this course and try to find it. Like, no, I've mind mapped it and now I've integrated it in my brain and now I can remember it.

I tell you what, that whole thing is a podcast unto itself. I mean, I used to put together Mastermind groups and use Mindmeister and Skype and we'd all be on there, we'd all be talking and as we'd be talking, we'd all be adding into the mastermind. It was brilliant stuff that at the end of each Mastermind meeting we would have actionable points for each person and accountability and everything else. It was brilliant.

Yeah, that's cool. And I remember just doing that, just going through something else and doing that. It just solidified. I know in my brain. It goes back to when I was in high school and I would cheat my butt off in high school to a point. I was like a halfway cheater because I would wait till the last minute, then I'd get nervous and I think, okay, I'm going to create a cheat sheet. And I'd spend all night instead of studying, just writing all this stuff down, like really small. Creating a cheat sheet. I'd taken it into the class and by the time I got to the class I didn't need the cheat sheet because just doing that integrated it in my brain.

Too bad you had to write it so small. I mean, you could have just written irregular, right?

I know, right? And it's so funny. I never put those two together until it took me forever. I was like, oh, wait a minute. That's actually how I learned.

No kidding.

All at once. Brain dump and get it out. So what are some nuts you're trying to crack right now?

Well, so I'm in the assisted living facility business. We're buying up assisted living facilities we have a goal to buy about 3,000 beds over the next four years and then have a big exit.

What I do is I do things that the CEO may or may not have experience in, which is raising money from investors and kind of laying out the big plan.

So the big nut that I'm trying to crack is really, I really want to figure out how and what to do with our online marketing, because we do online stuff that would effectively help me crowdfund real estate deals at an amazingly fast pace. Right? Yeah.

And that's why we were talking the other day, because crowdfunding funding episodes that I did.

Yeah, those are brilliant. And so what I'm looking at is going, all right, well, there's a bunch of platforms, or I could build a platform. I don't really want to get into building a platform. I just want to figure out how to do, how to effectively utilize what's already existing. Right. I don't have to build a Facebook or a social network to get a hold of a bunch of people. I just have to use Facebook.

So I'm really thinking through that process right now. And that's kind of. And I've also got of a couple, couple opportunities that I've been approached by and I'm looking at them. But for the most part, I am mentoring about five people through various stages of CEO ness. A couple of them are early stage. So I tell them, you're on the CEO fast track. I want you to work for me for X number of years. I want you to learn all these things, but you're right now just a worker. And when I have a business that needs somebody like you, I will call you first.

I'm grooming people in my working group, my employees.

So I've got somebody at the very beginning who's very young, 22, and I'm grooming that person for a fast track to ceohood. But I told this person it's going to be about five years. Then I've got people in, they'll be.

27 before they're a CEO.

I know, right? But that's okay because they're realizing that at 22, they're not really ready because I say, come here. Look at all the responsibility you would have if somebody, if this really bad thing happened and they're like, yeah, I don't want it yet, but I want to learn how to do it. So I'm grooming them there by giving them a behind the scenes look at the stresses and the opportunities, as well as some of the successes of some of the other CEOs that I'm grooming, then I've got a couple CEOs that I'm grooming through various businesses. So I've got a couple up and coming in the pipeline, and I'm always looking for more.

And I've got some people who are coming up through management. What I'm doing is I'm really, really, really focused this next 10 years and developing talent to the point where instead of having multiple assets, I want multiple companies run by CEOs that I've personally groomed and know their behavior traits and how they deal with stress and how they deal with difficulty and how they deal with profitability as well. I want those people personally groom so that I can have a bunch of companies. So that's what I'm working on in the next 10 years is CEO grooming. I'm not building companies anymore. I'm building CEOs who will build the companies.

I love that.

That's my whole focus.

I love it. I'm definitely going to make an introduction to Mark Winters, the author of Rocket Fuel. I think you guys need to chat about this because that is his. He calls them the integrators. Right. As opposed to just the CEO. But I may have mentioned it to you. One of his big.

Sometimes a CEO needs an integrator. So sometimes they are one. Yeah, sometimes they are one. Sometimes they can be part visionary and I can be part visionary. My goal is not to be the visionary everywhere, every time, for everything. My goal is to put CEOs who can put a good team together well.

And sometimes you don't need as much vision. I mean, a lot of times the visionary ness is just needed to get the ball rolling. And then if it's a relatively simple business model, you just need somebody to go in there and execute on a static vision. That doesn't always have to change.

Yeah. I mean, to be perfectly frank, assisted living is not new.

Getting old will never go out of style. It's like a really stupid, boring, but extremely profitable business. So I don't need somebody to be a crazy visionary of. I want to change the world. I go, I want you to be able to fill 3,000 and manage 3,000 beds.

That doesn't require a lot of vision.

Exactly.

That requires a lot of execution.

Exactly. Exactly. Are you also looking for potential people who are. If this has kind of struck a chord with them, if they want to contact you about potentially investing and stuff.

Like that, Is there a pathway, investors. They can reach out to me and talk. If it's a fit. We can discuss it. If it's not. I'm not a fit for everybody, which is fine. I'm doing some really cool, fun, exciting stuff. But if they want to talk to me or ask me additional questions, they're more than happy to reach out to me, I think. How do you typically do it?

I gave my email in a podcast once and I got like a thousand emails in a day and I was like, holy shit.

If you have a general website where they can kind of go fill out a form or something and that makes it easier, okay, I'll give you a call. Or they can just contact me and say, hey, Brad, hook me up with Dale.

Oh yeah, I'll give you a link that you can do that in the show notes. But one of them is whoisandolphin. I have a Facebook page. There's. I don't really post that much there, but it's a place to reach me. I also have theassistedlivinginvestor.com that's a website we just started, so it hasn't been finished out yet. But it's where I'm going to be dumping a lot of thoughts and experiences there. I'll give you a personal link that will lead to an email that they can reach out to me if they want to.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Awesome. Got any other big plans coming up? Any big travel plan? Kansas.

New York, Vegas, a couple other places.

When are you going to Vegas?

The 30th. The end of this month.

Okay. I think I'll be there on the 23rd, 4th. There's an event that my friend and former guest Keith Yackey is putting on.

Oh, nice.

What's the. Are you going out there for events?

No, I was actually going out there for a couple of larger. We're looking at a 12 million dollar deal and I need to sit down with a couple guys over dinner and say, how are we going to execute this? And that's about it.

Like assisted living.

Yep.

Cool.

Yep, yep. And New York also, I think will be the 30th of this month as well. That's going to be affiliate summit, so I'll be out there.

Oh yeah, that is affiliate summit. I was thinking about going to New York like right after. Like I might be there right before that, but I don't know. We'll kind of see. I've got to be back to pick up Kenya from Brazil on like August 3rd or 4th, but.

Yeah, exactly. I should. That's what Uber's for, dear.

Uber. Uber.

Cool. And I know I'M doing some extra research. I got some feelers out for you regarding some of the possibilities on Title 3 Equity Crowdfunding. Love to know more for this because the big question. I know with that it's relatively inexpensive to get going. I think it's like $10,000 in general filing fees, etc.

The only thing that isn't quite pinned down yet is exactly what's possible on marketing those deals. I've heard they're a little bit more strict than the Title four ones and that I was hearing that, oh, you can only put out a tombstone. That doesn't really sell the sizzle. And another person was saying you can. So kind of want to figure out what's possible there because there could definitely be some opportunity.

Well, there's new rules. With new rules come somebody getting slapped, and when somebody gets slapped, everybody.

And that's the problem is nobody's gotten made an example of yet, so there is no precedence.

Right.

So you never want to be.

You only know when you screwed up after the fact. And it's kind of, you know, that's the sec. Yeah, yeah. Do what you want and then we'll tell you. You when you screwed up. I've never appreciated that, but. Oh, whatever.

Exactly.

I mean, I ran a publicly traded company. I know what you can and can't say to investors on the investment side, typically. So, you know, it's probably going to be similar to that, really. I mean, you just can't say that water will cure your cancer.

Well, it's not even so much that. It's. Because now, I mean, you can advertise on Facebook, you can do all this other stuff, and then you can build these stories around it. And I think they're trying to be careful so that it's not so many marketers just coming in and hyping it up. Yeah. But I don't know.

It'll happen anyway. Oh, yeah, it's. That's. That's.

We only have a few good years of this. We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see.

Somebody will screw it up.

Some affiliate will come in and, you know, say this one weird trick. Well.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And then we're done.

Well, Dale, this has been fun, man. It's always good to catch up with you. Hopefully we can absolutely meet each other up in person. And I'll.

I'll let you know when this go live. I'm going to make a handful of introductions, so we'll be talking here in the next, I'm sure, several weeks as it is on outside stuff for all my listeners. Hope you've enjoyed this. I've really enjoyed it. This has been a really fun one. It's cool to zoom out on some of the business strategies and the mindsets that it takes to really get to the next level, which is what a lot of people want to do, as opposed to just the micro tactics, which I also love. And that's kind of like the sizzling stuff. That's the candy that keeps us all involved. But this is the kind of topics that will help you grow as a business owner. I know it'll help me as well. If the show notes, we'll have links to what Dale was talking about. You can always get in touch with him or come through me. You can email me@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com if you're interested in being groomed by Dale or potentially working with me on some of my ideas, feel free to reach out to me. I know that I am looking for my integrators. I'm looking to create CEOs for myself as well because I am at that stage and love it when my listeners reach out and let me know what they can do to help me. Because I'm here to help you as well.

Share this episode on social media Tell your friends about it. Subscribe to the newsletter@baconritebusiness.com and do not hesitate to subscribe to the show so you don't miss a single episode. Dale, thanks again brother. Appreciate you bud. We will talk soon.