The Top 5 Breakaway Mindsets to 10X Your Financial Freedom in 24 Months | CapabilityAmplifier EP169

The feedback they gave me is that you guys are too much in your business. The business is way too dependent on you, especially you. Aaron is well known in the industry. I took that punch for a day or two, you know, and it hurt and it stung, but it's one of the best things that that happened to me.

Every business is that way. Right. The unfortunate worst expenses are bad hires. And when we spoke with Todd and Eric, they were really talking about how effective you were and the team became at hiring based upon character and values.

As you're growing, you have to constantly be thinking about that. That's again, scaling your business by hiring smarter people than yourself. Turning data into actionable strategies, getting good at reading the data, understanding what should be tracked and what shouldn't. Yep. Tracking that on a weekly basis. Understanding what it's telling you and what actions you need to take from it. Having the right blueprint for growth.

Hey, this is Mike Koenigs and welcome to Capability Amplifier. This is my friend, Aaron Marcum. I'm going to tell you about him right now. He is a member of Strategic Coach. He's a fellow Free Zone member, and he really is a genius and a visionary. He's a true transformer in the home care industry. He's had a significant exit now. He's built several businesses and he's been on the battlefield and he knows how to correct the code on attracting, finding, hiring, retaining teams. That's really one of his biggest areas of genius. Creating value and also creating an exit for himself and others. In fact, yesterday I had the good opportunity to chat with two of his previous business partners who hold him in amazingly high regard. You'll know why in a couple moments. So what he's going to share today are some unique strategies for growing and scaling a business, but more importantly, how to package and position for exit and how to do it in a way that's family and lifestyle compatible. Now you're also going to learn about his new book, Entre Thrive, the entrepreneur's eight laws to reconnect with your calling and create the good life. And his new business strategy, the Breakaway accelerator, that happens in just three days. So, first of all, welcome Aaron. Great to have you here.

Great to be here. Thank you.

I've been looking forward to this. We've been having a bunch of fun, first of all, working together the past three days in beautiful San Diego, California. It's great to have you.

It's been amazing.

Yeah, it really has. And one of the things that I learned about yesterday, I actually didn't really Understand.

Breakaways. But we also talked about drafting and want you to start by sharing your 200 mile bike race journey.

Yes. So Low Du Ja is what it's called. It's Logan to Jackson. So Logan, Utah. Jackson.

Know that. Okay, now I get it. Yeah.

Low Touja. Yeah. So it's a 200 mile bike race. Been around for 30 plus years. My first year was 2016 and we'll talk about that later. My kind of. That was my big year and investing a lot more in my. Myself. But you know, fast forward, I guess the best way to explain drafting and breakaway was in the year 2020. This was my third year of doing the race. And it's. It's over four mountain ranges. It's intense. It's all in one day. It's the longest bike race in the country that's sanctioned as far as a one day bike race. And I was in the last leg. There's five legs, they're all about, you know, 50 or so miles, 30 to 50 miles each. And I was done. I was like, I had no energy left. I had what they call in the biking world, bonked. Oh, yeah. You know, I had miscalculated my fuel a little bit and I needed help. So fortunately my wife had gotten into biking the year before and she's. She's an animal. She's really good at it. And she was on the relay team, so they also do relay. So I was doing the full race by myself. She was on this five woman relay and she had finished and so she jumped in front of me. And the term drafting, very popular biking term that if you get behind someone's tire or wheel and I mean inches from it, you can save just from one person in front of you, sometimes up to a third of your energy. Yeah. And that's exactly what Heather did for me, is she jumped in front of me and for the next for that leg, really helped me save that energy. And not only did I finish, like I wouldn't have finished without that, but only did I finish. I had finished in a better time than the previous two times that I had done the race. And so that, and that caused, you know, in drafting, we also. Drafting is a great way to do what we call breakaways. And the Tour de France is very popular where you break away from the pack. But the best breakaways are with other people. And that's where you leave the pack behind. It's kind of you distance yourself so you can either get the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, in l' Auteja it's finishing the race or getting to the next leg so you can get to the resting station, the feeding station. And so these breakaways are really important in any race, and they're best done with other people. And that's where drafting comes into play as well. So I love the term breakaway. It's really distancing yourself from who you are today, maybe, and, you know, applying this into the real world as an entrepreneur and then separating, you know, from where you were and where you want to go.

Right.

So.

And ultimately, I think in the conversation we had yesterday, it was with your past business partner, Eric. He was talking about this, and we realized, while it's a fantastic metaphor from a business perspective, so why don't you just talk a little bit about how you think about drafting and breakaways from a team perspective? Because it really was the conversations we had.

Both of Todd and Eric, about their experience with you as a business leader, and.

Yeah.

Why these were such important metaphors. So dive into that a little.

Yeah, And I appreciated that. I mean, I was. Have been a mentor to them, and they've been a mentor to me. I mean, the best breakaways is when you're sharing that drafting. Like in the example with my wife, she really led for quite a while. Right. I was. I was toast. And sometimes that happens as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, as you need that. But often the best ones are when you're sharing that and you're kind of one's leading for a while, and then sometimes that leader needs some help, and so they let someone else get in front of you, and it's this team effort. And with both Eric and Todd, that's how we work together. It wasn't always me leading, but I always knew that, okay, I needed them to jump in front sometimes. And that's the team that's the best breakaways, the ones that, like, if we try to do that ourselves, we often fall back in the pack. In fact, if we use that much energy to break away and we're not getting that help with that drafting, just think about in business, often we can fall behind the competition. Often we can fall behind others, and we lose energy in the long run. And so doing it as a team, as a team effort with the right people are the best breakaways in business.

Yeah. And I know, you know, experienced business owners will be like, okay, I get it. You know, good teams, of course.

Yeah.

But when we were chatting with your. With your team yesterday, I had a couple big distinctions. In fact, last night, I was talking to Vivian, my wife and.

I was talking about the philosophies that they shared with us when they talked really about what their experience with you was. And I really want to get into some of those nitty gritty distinctions because I think the psychology of this and it all came down to, you know, finding and retaining high quality talent, getting customers to pay more, increase your revenue scaling without losing your people or your cash or breaking your people and your cash and then building systems. And you're a big eos advocate.

Yeah.

And then also thinking in terms of the exit all the time, you really have that exit mindset. And you've had so, you know, a couple exits, substantial ones. But more importantly, you left behind a business that didn't break when you were gone. These guys are still there. You still have, you know, some ownership, but they've had in some ways. You had mentioned a couple of people you've been with have actually exceeded what you took away. And to have the courage to leave something at the right time to take care of you, first of all, takes a lot of courage and for them to like you still. Because getting bought is hard and very rarely does it work out for the buyer or the people are left behind. And very often if you don't get all your money up front as an owner, it's, you know, you get one check and that's it.

Yeah, yeah.

So through my lens, you've won on a whole bunch of levels, which to me is rare because I talk to a lot of founders who've had exits. And so I think there's some real gold inside this conversation. So with that.

Why don't you talk a little bit about the two conversations we had? Because I think that's where some of the real juice in the meat.

Yeah. And how they, you know, the foundation really, I mean, we had to go into it when, you know, in 2015, obviously we, you know, at that point we, we didn't have it figured out. Like, we didn't understand how to scale and how to grow this business. And so we learned early on in 2016 that we had to build a business whether we wanted to exit it or not. We wanted to build a business that we could exit or that was, was, was had the, the right, the right framework and everything else that we could make that choice when that, that count time came. And every buyer wants a company where the founder isn't in the business. Like, that's a huge benefit. And so my mindset had to change. And that's one of the big things that I'VE really gotten into in the last few years through positive psychology is that it really does start with your mindset. It really does start with getting. You know, we talk about the thinking part of our accelerator program that we're building out. It starts there as we've got to help people or we're going to try to help home care providers, specifically in thinking bigger, thinking about their mindset, thinking about what their business needs to look like, regardless of whether they're going to exit or not.

Right.

So that they can live the freedoms that they've always wanted to live, get back to that original dream or that original calling that they. They had. Hence the subtitle of the book, you know.

Well, I think. Yeah. When you. I didn't realize it was Aristotle who said the Good Life. Now I've heard that forever. It's a old copywriting gem. But there was also, when we were talking to Eric, he said that he remembers the moment when you walked in looking like you had just gotten punched to the stomach because you had just taken a little bit humble pie from a potential buyer.

What.

What was it that they said to you that really.

Yeah.

You know, made you realize that you had some learning to do?

Yeah. This was a valuation firm, actually, that we had gone and we got it. We're really curious, what is the business worth? And I had, I think, like many entrepreneurs, much bigger pie than I had already.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, we're. We're all filled with hubris when we're in our 20s and 30s. Right before the big kick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so they came back and they told us anywhere between 800,000 and a million dollars. And they said the reason why. And they could tell I was completely shocked. This is before I even brought Eric in on the conversation. I had this conversation with the valuation firm, and he came in, thought I got punched in the gut. He could tell it was not good news. And so, because I felt well into the millions, like, I expected a totally different answer. But the feedback they gave me is that you guys are too much in your business. The business is way too dependent on you, especially you, Aaron, as well known in the industry. And it was just too much dependent on me. And I took that punch for a day or two, you know, and it hurt and it stung, but it's one of the best things that happened to me. Eric mentioned yesterday I completely changed. I did kind of a 180 in the way I looked at things in my business. I started actually listening to my coach, Dan Sullivan, and what he been teaching Because I was still a part of Strategic Coach early on, but you know, maybe a couple years before that, but I was finally getting it. Like I was understanding what he was trying to say is the who, not how concept. And, and so I started leaning into all of that. And that was in my mindset and how I looked at my business and said, I have got to build a business that does. That's no longer about me and my ego. I had to build it so it was scalable. So.

So how about before we go into some of the how to's you had had your previous exit with Arbor Senior Care. And.

I'm curious what like that was to a publicly traded company.

Yeah.

So here you had an exit that was a seven year company. That's interesting. That's kind of like the magic number. It's usually 7 to 10 years for. Until you learn more. And then, you know, maybe it shortens, but because I, I had the same thing. You know, my first is about seven closer. Yeah. The next one was closer to 10. But what, what changed between those two? And what do you think you either got lucky at or you learned or you didn't learn the next time around? Like what was the psychology there?

Yeah. You know, unfortunately in the second go around I had. So halfway through that journey with Arbor Senior Care, I had the idea for my next business. But I grew that successfully. I exited that in 2009, but I had started that other business about a year before. There's about a year old crossover. Crossover. And the idea was a company who measured data satisfaction for the home care space. Burning in my brain, training. No one was doing it. And so I put everything. I call it obsessive passion. It's a psychology term where I became so obsessive with the success of this new business over the next few years that I sacrificed my own well being. I sacrificed my health. We have this picture that you saw of me in 2015.

The man with hips.

Yeah, the man with hips. And I just wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't delegating. I had control issues. I had like Eric had been working with me since 2012 and I was not leveraging his skill set. Amazingly talented individuals you saw yesterday.

Yeah, yeah.

And he was not being maximized. I was not letting go of the things I needed to let go of. And so I did not learn what I should have learned. Because when I exited Arbor Senior Care, I had a right hand person who had taken over the business. I had moved three hours away from my business for two years. Before I sold that business.

Wow.

And was not really in the day to day there. And then I put myself back in the day to day for several years because I had this obsession, you know, obsessively passionate about this, not harmoniously passionate about it. Like I did not have that kind of yin and yang attitude that I needed the right people. And then I started listening to smarter people, mentors, EOs 2016, we implemented EOs. And I started investing a lot more into my own passions, like cycling. I got it April 2016. Ordered my bike. Same day I signed up for that 200 mile bike race five months later. People thought I was crazy. Talk about acceleration and changing myself so quickly. But I did and it was incredible.

You know, so what I'm hearing right now that I hadn't really heard before, your life is sort of like a series of interesting metaphors. So it's like the breakaway, the drafting, and then using that, like really getting used to. So, like what happened in your outside life started happening in your inside life. And then your businesses benefited from that.

Yeah.

But it started with something else. And I'm going to jump around a little bit because after you sold your last business, you wound up going back to school UPenn studying positive psychology.

Yeah.

So how does that fit into the big picture? And if we were gonna. I. I have a add on question. I'm gonna just set that one up first. So what about that and why?

Yeah, you know, in 2017, as I was going through this journey, you know, it didn't all happen in 2016. I was. It was a progression, of course, and I kept continuing to try to improve myself. I came across the book the Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, first Introduction to Positive Psychology. And I just fell in love with the field and the concept. And at the time I was CEO of my company.

And what's positive psychology?

Positive psychology, a lot of people say, is that how to be happier? And I guess there's some elements to that, but it's really the science of well being. And why do. Why do some people thrive and why do some people don't thrive? You know, in psychology, especially behavioral psychology.

It'S traditionally a reactive field. Right. Is that they're reacting to people's behaviors as they get down in addictions or whatever that might be. Positive psychology is a proactive psychology. The father of psychology, Martin Seligman, who is my professor and still my men, one of my great mentors.

Seriously awesome. Yeah, that is seriously awesome.

How lucky are you? Yeah, it's been amazing to kind of learn from him. But he, he started this movement 25, 30 years ago and he is very well known psychologist even up to that point. He's the one who learned helplessness, all the research behind that in the 60s. And so he, he was tired of that reactive stance as a psychologist. And that's when he started. We've got to get on. We've got to help anyone understand how to thrive regardless of whether or not, whether they're dealing with behavioral issues or not. We've got to understand that science. And so that's positive psychology. And for my purposes why I got into positive psychology, I was laser focused on the entrepreneur, the home care entrepreneur, of course my background but the entrepreneur in general, hence the book is for a wider audience but very specific also to, to that niche of home care entrepreneurs. But it's, it just, I just was, I wanted to know rather than.

Talk about it or have some anecdotal type answers, I wanted to know the science and I was just fascinated with it. And so in 2021 it was a good time to just go into the program. I applied very difficult program to get into.

Yep.

And I didn't expect, I guess that I would but I did and there's 38 of us in the program and it was amazing journey transformational for me. Another because I'd already was on my journey of change and improving myself. This was just an added layer and now I felt like I can really go out and help and guide others. After having 20 plus years of being a successful entrepreneur, EOS strategic coach and now positive psychology. It's, it's a great time for me.

Yeah, I, I like that. Now that brings us to the book Entre Thrive Subtitles the Entrepreneur's eight Laws to reconnect with your calling and create the good life.

And that's as of the time this is out being released@breakawayaccelerator.com um, so you did decide to broaden and make a broader based book. So once you talk a little bit about the eight laws and why you know some of the core findings and I'm curious again. So you had your, your exits, you had going back to school, you had.

This burn inside you and there's a lot psychologically going on at the same time. And then you know, ultimately that leads us to your latest reinvention as well which is just rethinking your life and your business. So kind of work, work your way through the book and what was the big draw there? Because, because again I see it now. I see how the combination of all these things makes sense to me as an outsider looking in, getting to know you and getting to know your life and your background. But let's talk about that, the why behind it.

Yeah, yeah. Of course when you write a book it kind of there's an evolution and the really the launching pad for the book was in the program. You do a capstone, a thesis and mine was on how to help, you know, what are the science backed reasons for thriving among entrepreneurs. You know. And I had to do a lot of research. It was 60 plus pages of research and to put together and that was kind of the foundation at the time. I really hadn't planned on writing the book or writing a book based on that. It was after I had left the program and decided this has to get out there, I started putting the laws together based upon the research and those eight laws. You know, it starts with the first law for especially for entrepreneurs is clarity Entre. Clarity is what we call it for the entrepreneur but that's getting really clear on what we call the guiding truths. Years ago.

I created that. I was part of the E myth revisited. I did a mastery program with Michael Gerber and he called it the primary aim. I kind of evolved it because I felt like there are more questions to get to that. And so I added some more questions to it. But I've had my guiding truths for years. My mind is at peace, my life is filled with abundance. My family receives of my time. And so I have these guiding truths. And I feel like before you even kind of get to your core values in a company for your company, you personally as an entrepreneur have to know what's truly what you want to be true about yourself. And that's that, that's kind of the beginning stages of the or that law, the entra clarity law which then goes in. In that, in that lie. Talk about the breakaway in that law is that, is that once you have those guiding truths, get clear on what the breakaways you want in your life personally and professionally.

That's interesting. So because when I was thinking about breakaways again metaphorically, I was thinking about a race when look you're drafting. It's not like you plan a draft or you plan a breakaway. That's what a race is. There's a whole bunch of random things coming together there and, and this is the first time I've heard you talk about a breakaway being a planned.

Yeah.

Thing. So like what were your breakaway planned moments versus the ones that you had no clue because. Because you know, and again Looking at getting to talk to your partners and yeah, listening to you, getting to know you.

Exits, you can kind of plan them, but you, you got to depend on a lot of relationships, a lot of connections.

Lucky circumstances that you influence but don't control.

Yeah, yeah.

So talk about the random versus the not random breakaways.

So breakaways, they're not even like, they're like mini goals almost to a bigger, bigger goal that you might plan. For example, the big goal would be the exit. The breakaway would be, you know, getting, getting systems in place, you know, for your business, getting your proven process in place, you know, EOS term, getting those things aligned so that you can eventually reach that. And some of those like, I mean, taking the cycling analogy, if I'm in the Tour de France, almost every breakaway they do is planned. Is they've got to think, they've got to know at what corner is the best corner. They even look at the headwinds. They do make some plans. But some of my best breakaways have not been planned either, you know, is that. But I was ready for them. And that's. I think the key is that when I exited my second company, my first company, I prepared for that. I approached brokers. I was like, I'm ready to exit the second one. What happened within a few months? Because it was kind of this mute, you know, I got approached and my business was at a point where I had already stepped down as CEO. I had prepared everybody. I had done my seven week sabbatical, which I know we're going to talk about here, and I had proved the concept and that I could be away from my business and it would. Not only would it survive, it would thrive.

And that's the key, is those are the best breakaways. Right. When they're not planned like that and they come out of left field, they're really good things. And you're ready because you planned all those other mini breakaways along the way.

Okay. So it's, it's really like applied wisdom.

Yeah.

And this is a good place for me to go in and I will just dramatically seed. Grab the book to go through.

Yeah.

The eight steps. Because I really want to talk about the big five here. Because if I were again using this framework in the structure of.

You know, what led you to. If you had five big breakaways to plan and what they are setting yourself up for success and if you were to.

Redo.

Knowing what you know now, going back to the punch in the gut moment and thinking about how could you have reached your exit or if you're going to reach your next exit a lot faster, a lot more effectively. What are they? What would you do? So this is your chance to basically have. And just for the record, I know you're, you're pretty open about this. You walked away with enough from your last exit where technically you don't have to work again. You get this is a. An act of. Want to, not have to.

Yeah. Right. I'm young.

Yeah.

At least I consider myself.

Yeah. Agree.

I agree.

Well, I'm older than you and I consider myself reasonably young. You know, it depends. That's right. I'm like, man, feeling it. I'm feeling it. But yeah. Let's plan your next exit and let's just pretend that breakaway accelerator is your next big exit. And this day, today, we're going to plan your breakaways and what you're going to do. And this is what you're teaching in the system, but it's also what you're going to do for you because you're creating an exitable company, but it's exitable in multiple levels. That's what's exciting about it.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, let's go down that path. Hey, action taker Mike Koenig's here and I just wanted to interrupt for a second and let you know that if you're ready to reinvent yourself and your business, go to connecttomike.com to learn more and book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode.

All right. Yeah. So breakaway, the breakaway accelerator, and what I'm building out and if I were to do this all again and what I want to help others do better in their own exits and creating the freedoms that they want is really first and foremost to get on their thinking Right. And to change their mindsets. You know, in the, in home care space, many are in their business day in, day out, evenings, weekends, even when they're not working, they're thinking about it. I certainly relate with that. That was me in 2015, is that I could not even be home when I was home.

Right.

I wasn't present. And so helping these entrepreneurs, these in home care entrepreneurs especially, to get to understand the right mindsets, how to change the way they frame their past so they can create a better and brighter future. And using, of course, the science of positive psychology to do so, and all the research I've done, I've done a lot of the work for these entrepreneurs so that they can learn from that and hopefully be their guide through that and help them get the right mindset. So that's the first step, the first kind of rung to that. Once we can get around that, we really have to look at the talent. We have to look at. We call it keep. You know, how do you keep the best people and retain them and create those positive culture. We call it the culture of retention.

And really building out a business, a home care business in this example, that can eventually be run without them with the right people. And so again, going back again, that's like kind of a positive psychology approach to keeping their people and making sure that they're creating this culture of retention.

Okay. And one thing that we did a little research. In the home care business, the average Turnover rate is 65%, 37% leave within 90 days. Turnover cost is $2,600 per home care worker, and the average turnover over cost for an agency is over $170,000. And I would say every business is that way. Right. The unfortunate worst expenses are bad hires. And when we spoke with Todd and Eric, they were really talking about how effective you were. And the team became at hiring based upon character and values. And if I remember correctly, either none or only a couple of the people on your winning team came from the industry.

None of them did.

Okay, that's. That's really interesting.

Yeah. I was the only one on the leadership team that actually had specific industry experience. We were more concerned about their character and if they were a good core value fit, and that made all, all the difference. We knew they could figure it out. Our first really big investment was in Todd, who you met yesterday at Todd we had. Before that, we had had people in that sales and marketing seat who were managers, but not leaders. And Eric and I knew more about sales and marketing or finance, sometimes more than many of those team members. And so we had to change our mindset about that. We had to realize that we need to hire, find people who are smarter than us. So Todd, much smarter than both of us in sales and marketing, but also more money or more of a bigger investment than we'd ever been willing up until that point to do. So we had to change that. And that was one of the, if not the best hiring decision we ever made, especially for that business, is he was phenomenal. And we had so much trust in a short period of time where we just would tell Todd, this is how we want it to look at the end. Just go and figure out how to do it. And he did. And he learned the industry extremely fast and has become. Now he's still there and is one of the Foremost experts in the industry. So.

It'S that mindset. He also had to figure things out. We call it in positive psychology, self efficacy. He just believed that he could do it.

That's awesome. And I know I had a note here to say it's back to the who, not how. Thank you, Dan Sullivan. But also this book that I've been giving to everyone I know lately, which is Rick's, Rick Rubin's the Creative Act. That's a way. Yeah, it's been a. I can't recommend that book highly enough. It's amazing. So breakaway secret number three.

Number three is accelerate like we, we often like. Yeah, go slow to go fast. I realize that's a popular term and that's the, that's the mindset and the keep. Right part of that is. That's the slow part is we gotta make sure those are right before we can really accelerate. Because if you accelerate too fast, what happens? Things fall apart. You know, you don't have the right tires or at the right level and things just fall apart. And so this acceleration means that we've, you know, we can now get our strategies in place. The right strategies, marketing, sales, pricing. Our contracts, you know, we went from. Once we had more of the right people, we were able to take our contract from a month to month contract to an average of 27 month contract within a fairly short period of time. That's acceleration. Our value because of those contracts went up exponentially. But we really couldn't have gotten there without those first two steps. So acceleration, understanding the.

You know, what needs to be accelerated, where you need, where those gaps are. Of course. You know, I have a great story. I invested in 1-20-21 or 2022 actually. I partnered with Jen Stangle out of Raleigh, North Carolina, Golden Harmony, Great Home Care Agency. I became a 40% investor and in within 24 months we had four times their revenue. And that's just a revenue. It's not their actual enterprise value is even more than that because of the growth and the trajectory that we're taking them on. And that's so much as far as just accelerating their growth. Once we had the right people, she didn't have in the EOS world call them an integrator, but a right hand that she was the visionary and she was flying down kind of being in that integrator seat. And she was, you know, a visionary trapped in an integrator seat per se. And so that, that was causing chaos in the business. Always, always right. And so once you get that right, you can now accelerate and get all those other things in place. So that's great. Yeah.

Okay. So that's accelerates number three, number four.

Number four is scale. You know, get that acceleration going and then now you can scale you learn how to, you know, Dan Sullivan calls it a self managing company. Right. Where, where now again you have the right people and they're you know that think keep is for the first and accelerate the first three areas of that and then hire smarter people than yourself. Keeping that sustainable. Like that's like a constant. Like as you're growing you have to constantly be thinking about that. That's again scaling your business by hiring smarter people than yourself. Turning data into actionable strategies like getting good at reading the data, understanding what should be tracked and what shouldn't, you know, and tracking that on a weekly basis, understanding what it's telling you and what actions you need to take from having the right blueprint for growth.

Yep.

Very important for scaling and then creating a culture of accountability. You know, that's lot that's missing in organizations which is kind of the top dysfunction of the five dysfunctions that Patrick Lencioni touches on is the absence of that right of accountability.

Yep. And accountability doesn't have to be a bad thing. I mean people ultimately want containers and frameworks that they can operate within. And, and.

I know most of us founders hate it or we think we hate it, but we're. Because we're driven just by different things. But we're weird that way.

And you know, with Home Care Pulse there's something that you had done that no one had done before. And what was that Home Care Pulse.

I had integrated with There's a lot of things we were pioneers in so many ways with that company and really thinking outside the box, the fact that only wanted to do satisfaction surveys and so forth. And so we had these satisfaction surveys and when we first started to get that data to call clients and their employees to see how satisfied they were services and with employment every month our customers were downloading that data from an Excel spreadsheet. Very cumbersome, not scalable. And in that industry there are what we call scheduling software providers really the brains of these home care companies to help make sure the caregiver gets there out on time scheduling them, it's. That's the key to their, their success has everything about the client, everything about that care professional. And so we took, we got in line with all these software companies who are fierce competitors frankly and got them to work together and integrate directly with us and trust us with that data that, that took two to three years, but to get about 10 integrated, that's a fairly short period of time to get that many intern integrations working together. And we had all the data now. It was the first, no one had ever done that in the industry. And it really set us apart. And obviously our customers loved us because they no longer had to do that. And we had better data and it was scalable now we had, we could grow exponentially. We also had great relationships with these software providers for additional. We had the same target market.

Yeah. So that's great.

Yeah, that's great.

And ultimately that just led to again going back to what.

You know, besides just learning how to hire better when it came to the acceleration. And this is something that a lot of founders don't give themselves permission to do because they don't know how to receive. And they also don't understand their true value. But it's being willing to be a premium brand, being willing to ask for more and receive more. And in a business like yours where there is so much resistance thinking that, you know, no one will pay more for home care.

Yeah.

And, and you also have exceptionally low paid people. You know, it's like the nursing professions, the teaching professions, home care professions. It's ridiculously low.

And that explains the turnover, right?

Yeah.

But by increasing the prices, you can pay more, you can become.

That's a huge differentiator. And then extending your contracts, which I think are a non obvious as well.

Yeah.

Right. So, and then from there, like I said, in your case, the scaling, but also thinking about the software and that's really where your mindset is now. There's huge opportunities where you can come up with new ways to automate and combine all these things. I think that's going to be your, your next breakaway. We both agree on it.

Yeah.

So let's get to number five, Breakaway secret number five.

Breakaway secret number five is freedom. You know, gaining flexibility, control and the financial freedom obviously when, when any entrepreneur. And again, all these principles we talk about home care there, it's, it's agnostic. Right. It really does apply to most any business, is that we start our businesses with this whole idea of financial freedom and living the good life, as Aristotle would put it, the complete life. And then we get into our businesses and it's harder than we thought. The uncertainties.

Keep compounding and growing inside our companies and that freedom gets lost. And a lot of my book is about that, helping them find that. But that freedom is imperative. And so the reason, you know, that's at the end there is that to get that freedom, we have to kind of go through the process.

And to build a company. And again, building a company that is sellable, even if you're never going to sell it, is really important because then you're building a life for yourself.

And.

I hit that point in 2018. We had gone through the scaling process. So we went from 2015 to not having like anything that was scale, that was the $800,000 valuation.

Basically a low paying job that you worked at six days a week.

Right, right. And then you fast forward it just three years later. We had a scalable business accelerated to that, that level of growth that I could actually step down as CEO. But I hadn't stepped down yet. I had confidence in my people. I knew I had the right people. Todd, Eric, amazing. Those were my kind of my two lieutenants in that sense. And Eric was even more than that. He was my integrator and partner, business partner. Partner. But I had so much confidence in. But we hadn't test the competence. Like what would happen if I stepped away? And I think this is a great question for all entrepreneurs. What would happen to your business if you left for even a month?

What would happen when you came back? What would you find?

Well, I asked the same question.

Yeah. And here was the framing. What would you do if you left for one month or in your case, seven weeks.

Yeah.

And what would happen to your business? Could you do it? And that's no meetings, no phone calls. And the answer is it thrived.

It was amazing. And we're talking. I left my laptop in my office. I didn't have any access, didn't talk to a single person in the business during that seven weeks. And I came back. You know, there's always that like what, you know, in the back of my. We'd done all the work, of course I was like, oh, this is going to be interesting. And they had secured some opportunities that I didn't even know we were working on before I left. And they had done some things. I was just so proud of them. And I was able to go, wow, this does work. And it gave me so much confidence. And it's the confidence and competence. And I love that Eric talked about this yesterday, that I had the confidence in him, but we hadn't tested the competence yet. And that was amazing and gave me so like the freedom that I had always desired. I just left for seven weeks and then after that I would leave for weeks at a time, you know, without any concern about what was happening back in the business and even started investing and going into other. Other. Other opportunities. And so it's. That freedom component is pretty key, and there's. There's certainly steps within that step to get there.

That. That, I think is, to me, that is the breakaway leap is.

Being able to lean into what if that were possible for me.

Yeah.

And, you know, Todd said the ship was still sailing. We hit a few icebergs, and then there was some dirty laundry in the hampers. That was pretty funny. And. And Eric said he didn't say he hated you for a little while, but he said he was really mad.

Yeah.

You know, he was very angry, and he was emotional when he told this story.

But in the end, everyone was so grateful that that happened. And I see that as being a huge pivot point. So that brings us to.

You know, when we summarize the five secrets, and I know you'll talk a little bit about community in a moment, but the seed I want to plant in your head to maybe cycle on and end with is.

Most founders never experience that freedom.

Yeah.

To walk away and can't imagine they imagine that happening for them. And part of that's having the applied wisdom, the guide, the coach, the tools and the resources to get through the five steps in the first place to achieve that.

Yeah.

And how do you make that leap to say, maybe it's possible for me, actually imagining yourself not wishing into taking a month off or seven weeks or longer off, but being able to make that leap and say it's possible and make that investment in themselves and.

Just.

Try it on as possible.

Yeah.

Where would you get that from? What do you say to someone who's sitting in that? I want it, but I don't believe it. I don't trust it could happen for me.

Yeah. And it goes back to that first step, is that we can't swallow it all at once. And sometimes as entrepreneurs, we're often in the Colby in strategic coach. We talk about the Colby quite a bit. The Colby assessment. Those quick starts as we want it all now, we want to be able to have that freedom, and that's just not. We can't have it tomorrow, typically. And so we have to believe that it's possible. And that, again, goes back to working on reframing how you look at even your past, where you're at today and where you really want to be. And then, you know, there is a. You can do those plan breakaways. And again, the mini breakaways are those breakaways that you do plan so you can have the bigger breakaway later on. Right. And so starting off again in those steps, getting your mindset right first and believing that you deserve this. You know, Dan Sullivan talks about want being okay and not apologizing for wanting what you want. And I think as entrepreneurs, especially in the service industries where you're serving others, and that's certainly the case in home care, is that we give so much of ourselves and we lose ourselves in the service of others.

That we feel guilty for wanting what we want too often. And what I'm trying to help these entrepreneurs understand is that let that go. Like, let's lean into what you want and have that as like your big like in the cycling world and Tour de France. That's the yellow jersey. Right. The freedom is the yellow jersey, the four week sabbaticals, the yellow jersey, the big breakaway, and then work backwards and say, okay, I've got to start, I got to believe that, that I can, that I'm worthy of that, that I can achieve that and then start the process of who, what people do I need to have in my business to help support that dream and that calling of mine. Right.

You know, and the reality is you don't have to do all the work when you get a, a good coach to get there with you. I mean, that, that I think is you don't have to go it alone. And that is the big surrounding component that you've put together is the community.

Yeah.

That goes along with that. So maybe that's the, the draft. The last one.

Yeah, yeah, they can draft. I am, I am kind of set myself up to kind of draft for as long as you need me to kind of guide and direct now, not doing the work. I mean, that's the thing, thing, all the work is that there's, there's some work obviously, but with a guide and someone you can kind of save energy behind, makes it easier for sure. Yeah.

So we've got some great goodies@breakaway accelerator.com. so we've got the master class, the Breakaway Accelerator Systems Principles and Mindsets workbook. It's also where you can get the.

On Thrive book.

Entre Thrive Entre Thrive book. It's such a tongue twister for me and also for people who are in the home care business. A discovery call with someone on your team or you to learn more about working together. So is there anything else that you want to add before we wrap up the. The experience and how you work with them?

Yeah, you know, this has been fun. I appreciate the opportunity to sit down and talk more about this and. And, you know, obviously, the book is really more about the first part, right. The mindset and creating a positive culture and then allowing, you know, but we lean into more of that. We go deeper, obviously, through the Breakaway Accelerator and how to elevate through all of those five steps in a much deeper, meaningful, like a journey that's going to change you as an individual. And that's what I'm here for. And I'm excited about that kind of impact that we can make.

Yeah, no, it's what I. I know. I've seen the evidence, done the research, talked to your folks, got to know you, is.

You know, you live this. You're an amazing family man. Been married 27 years. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Incredible.

Heather's amazing.

You got a lot of kids. They're still like their daddy. And, I mean, you really won. I mean, being able to achieve what you've achieved at your age is incredible. And the fact that you've got the fire in your belly to do it again and make it happen, and you got people who really love and trust you and want to do it again with you also is. Is a real testament. So what I can say to you watching Listening, is if you ever get a chance to work with Aaron Markham, do it. He focuses on this particular industry, but at a minimum, go over to Breakaway Accelerator, grab his book, learn a little bit more about him, and dive into some of the additional content, too. You're going to get some big nuggets out of there. So, any last words before we wrap up?

No. I appreciate it. This is. This is. I'm excited to work with entrepreneurs in Home Entrepreneurs, but, yeah, the book is for every entrepreneur that's looking for their breakup. Yep.

It's fantastic. So with that, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. This is Capability Amplifier. On behalf of myself, Dan Sullivan, I want to thank you so much. Make sure that you share this with someone who can benefit from some of the wisdom in it and as well, always leave a comment. Give this thing 5 stars on iTunes or YouTube or wherever you listen to or watch. And let's say goodbye to everyone, shall we? Thanks for watching.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening. See you in the next episode. Bye.

Bye.