Episode 22 - Jeff Bush Faith, Determination, And A Bit Of Reverse Engineering Had His Dream Exit

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is Stacy Lauren. You know what's really incredible is when you get to encounter people who are on a similar path as you, who can really be there to support you along the way. Our next guest has been part of the same business mastermind with me for many years. He's been a tremendous part of my ability to weather various storms and also has a unique ability to see business from a sales standpoint. His story demonstrates that you can overcome any obstacle, even a multi million dollar loss, as long as you have enough faith, motivation and determination. Throughout this episode, he outlines a strategy for how to start a business by reverse engineering your goals. He has an uncanny way of seeing the big picture and architecting each step to get there. He recently exited his business, quite successfully, I might add. He shared with me his secrets about how he grew it and why he still has other plans on the horizon. He's also a generous friend, motivating mentor, and an all around nice guy. When I was having a tough time after the exit of my business, I texted him to say I couldn't attend a meeting. Instead of accepting my absence, he called me immediately, talked me through it, and got me to go to the meeting. His words of encouragement were exactly what I needed at that moment. In this episode, we got to talk about what stops some people from going after the things they want to do in life and how to change your mindset. Have faith and surrender yourself to all possibilities. It's my privilege to welcome Jeff Bush to the show. Hey Jeff, how's it going?

I'm doing great. How are you doing, Stacey?

I am doing good. I am so glad you are here.

Thanks for inviting me. Excited?

Yeah. So we've had the good fortune of being in the same mastermind for a long time and so it's been such an amazing chance to just get to know you and all the cool stuff you're working on. I would love you to just share a little bit about your story and Your background for the listeners.

Yeah, so I mean my name's Jeff Bush and you know, background, you know, going back a few years, you know, started in sales and working at companies, selling advertising business to business and I got pretty good in sales and watched the owners of the company make a lot of money and exit and sell the company. And you know, so after doing that for I don't know, five or 10 years, sales and sales management, hiring hundreds of people, growing a company from five people to 200 people, 500,000 in sales to 40 million and watching the owner exit, I kind of started thinking, gosh, I'd like to do that someday. Own a company and sell it and put some money in the bank. That sounded fun rather than just getting a sales commission and an override. So that was kind of in my 20s. And then the owner that I worked for sold the company and I had a non compete, I couldn't leave and start my own direct mail company. So I decided to start a mortgage company. I think I was like 28 years old, it was the year 2000, so I started a mortgage company and I built that up to about 70 employees and we were doing about 1200 loans a year and I was making 2 to 3 million dollars a year in 040506. So it was pretty awesome. I was like 35 years old, multimillionaire, huge income, houses, boats, cars. And then 2007 hit in the mortgage business and literally crushed us. So we went from doing 100 loans a month down to like 10 and ended up filing what I found out was the second largest bankruptcy in Riverside county for the year in 2008. So I almost had the record, but number two, so I filed like a five and a half million dollar bankruptcy in 2008, lost everything, houses, cars, boats, motorhomes. Didn't lose a wife or kids thank God, they stuck around. But that was pretty shattering. And so after that seven year stand in the mortgage business, I went back to start my own direct mail advertising company which was overflow. So kind of founded that around 2010 and I built that company up over the last 10 years and just sold it last year for a pretty good amount of money. So kind of rebuilding a company. And so that, that's a little bit of my story. I mean 20s, 30s, 40s, now I'm 51 and just exited, sold a company and looking at what I'm going to do next, whether that's kind of retirement or semi retired investor, start another business. I'm kind of in between things right now. Which is an interesting place to be.

Yeah, it's such a, it's such an amazing place to be after having seen all the work you've done and being able to actually exit out of that and now reap the rewards and then also kind of figure out the next, the next phase.

I told my wife yesterday, I said, do you remember like 11 years ago when you asked me if you could buy a lawn chair for the pool? So she actually asked me for, to buy two. And I remember saying to her, well, how much are they? And she said, they're like $20 each, so I'm going to go spend $40. And I said, no, don't buy two chairs, buy one. And that was like 12 years ago, right after our bankruptcy. I was that broke. It's frightening. And I told my wife, can you believe, here I am, 51 years old, 11 years later, I'm a multi millionaire and retired. Like, can you even believe that that was possible? Like, if we look back on our life 11, 12 years ago, where we were at, it's just amazing what you can do in this country, you know, with God, with all the things available to us. It's pretty amazing. I just had that conversation yesterday. We were kind of laughing about it, like, who knew? You know, pretty, pretty amazing to go from, you know, bankruptcy to millionaire, semi retired. Pretty cool. You know, and give God the credit to, and stay married through it all, you know, I mean, it's pretty amazing.

Yeah. That's unbelievable to have someone that's seen you at your lowest and then seeing you at your best and being able to be there for the in between too.

Yeah. Most of the mortgage guys that became multi millionaires in 040506, as soon as the Ferraris were repoed and the Newport beach houses were gone, their wives were gone, you know, because they were chasing the money. So it's kind of interesting that, you know, my wife and I were high school sweethearts and we had a baby together my senior year in high school. So she saw me. I mean, we started just, you know, really poor. I mean, I come from a middle class family. My dad owned a body and paint shop fixing cars and I was his painter and you know, her dad was an engineer, you know, but kind of middle, middle income, you know, kind of blue collar, you know, and, and so interesting. That's our background.

I actually, it's funny, I didn't, we've known each other for a long time and I didn't actually, I knew that we both ran our businesses off of the sales mindset. But I didn't realize that you started in sales too and that you got to kind of, that was your kind of starting point was being able to see this happening around you and that's what gave you the motivation to do it yourself.

Yeah, I mean, I had a son my senior year in high school and I moved from Canyon Lake, California to Newport beach and I was going to junior college at Orange Coast Junior college and doing night school and working during the day. And, you know, I decided I didn't like college. And so when I quit college, I'm like, what am I going to do to make money? I know you can make money in sales. So that's kind of what got me my first sales job at 20 years old. And it was basically like outbound telemarketing, car dealers selling, you know, junk mail, direct mail to car dealers. And that's what introduced me to sales and advertising and B2B and you know, print and creative and data and kind of introduced me to it. So when I was 20, you know, 30, 31 years ago.

Yeah. And so the other thing too that I think is interesting is from the time that you had the mortgage company and then you had the bankruptcy and then you decided to then go again and open up another business, what was that like for you? Like, how come you weren't like, oh, you know, let me just get a job now, like, how did you actually get yourself to do that?

That's a great question. So when we filed the bankruptcy in like 08, right after the mortgage crash, and our mortgage company just couldn't sustain a 90% drop in revenue, we went from doing 100 loans a month to like 10. It was crazy. IndyMac, Countrywide, all the big banks were going out of business and you know, they wouldn't buy the loans that I funded. So it was kind of a really, really tough time. And I actually did go to work for some people that I had hired and trained into the business 10 years earlier. You know that saying, like, Jeff, be careful. You're going to see the same people on your way down as you see on your way up. So you better be good to people like you might be working for your employees one day. And I remember hearing that and thinking, oh, that'll never happen. And it happened to me. I went to work for someone who paid me, you know, 100 grand a year to be their marketing manager, sales manager. So in between the bankruptcy and starting my new company, there was about a two year period where I, I worked for a couple different people. And, you know, they promised me partnerships and ownerships in the business. And then after I worked there a year, they changed their mind. And I, you know, kind of got, kind of got screwed on that deal. So after getting screwed around by a couple people promising ownership that just didn't want to come through, I decided I, I really need 100% of my own business. I don't want partners and I don't want to. I'm not going to work for someone else. Even though I had the, the big failure at the mortgage company, I knew I could build another business. So I started overflowing, like 2010 and started rebuilding. And, you know, I remember there was days I was sitting at home just, I mean, couldn't get out of bed, so depressed. And I remember calling a friend of mine one time and he said, jeff, if you're walking through hell, just don't stop. You know, if you stop, you're going to burn up. And I just kept thinking, wow, I got to get up out of bed and start walking forward and go to my, you know, dreams and goals. And so when I started Overflow, my direct mail advertising company in 2010, I basically said, I'm going to build this company to make $2 million in profits and I'm going to sell it for a five times multiple. So as soon as I can sell this thing for $10 million, I'm out. And I thought I could do it in five years from 2010 to 2015. That was my goal, five year plan. Build a company that would do, you know, 10 million in revenue, earn $2 million in profits, and sell it for 10 million five times multiple on EBITDA. And.

It took me 10 years, but I sold it for a lot more money. We drove it up to about a $40 million company with $4 million in EBITDA. So it ended up being a good deal and it took about 10 years.

Yeah, there's so much in that too. It's funny when you could sum it up and it's like, oh my gosh, all that work. All that work. So.

How did you get the courage after going through the bankruptcy to start that company? Where did that courage come from? Is that the walking through hell part?

I mean, just, yeah, you're going through hell. Just keep walking. I mean, I had luckily a lot of good business people, friends, coaches around me that kind of helped guide me through all the craziness that was going on in my mind. Like, hey, you're a failure. You know, I remember thinking, dude, I'm never Going to make money again. Like this mortgage company that I made $3 million at in 2006 is like my only success. I don't, you know, I had made like $300,000 a year in sales and sales management. So I made above average income. But when I got to making 3 million a year, I just thought maybe I got lucky. I mean, the mortgage business was booming in 040506. There was a lot of people making a lot of money. So I started doubting myself, like, you're really not that good. You got lucky. And just having some friends that kind of talked me out of that stinking thinking, bad thinking. And I don't know, it's like, I remember a friend told me one time this was important. He was doing collections for Citibank on credit cards. So let's say you had a $10,000 credit card with Citibank and it charged off because you couldn't pay the minimum payment. And he told me, jeff, we never call the people right after the charge off because we know they're broke. But these people with big credit card limits, what we found is 18 months later, these people are making money again. And that's when we call to try to collect our balance. So he goes, even though you're bankrupt today and you have no money, you watch, like 18 months from now, you're going to be making money again. That's how long it takes. And that's how Citibank, you know, organized their collections department to try to get money out of credit card charge offs and start calling 18 months later. And for some reason that, like, resonated with me, like stupid little things like that just kind of started to make sense. And I think it built my confidence up to where I felt like I could do this again. And I had no money. I mean, when I started my, my business, I mean, I had no money. Like, maybe I had five grand in the bank from my last paycheck. And I quit my job, started this business. I was sitting in my wife's horse barn up in Murrieta, La Crusta, California, with a concrete floor, no air conditioner, no heater, a horse right next to me. So I had a cell phone and a laptop and I just started dialing the phone and selling advertising. And that first year I started my business, I brought in a million dollars in revenue and I made 150 grand net profit. I had no employees, just me for the first year. And it was amazing. Like, I created a pretty good income just dialing the phone out of my Barn with no money to start the business. So that first year was kind of tough, being freezing cold winters in this little barn, concrete floor. It was horrible. But, you know, I did it. And I think at the end of the first year is when I got an office and hired my sister in law as my assistant. And the second year, I think we did $2 million with two or three employees. And then it took off to where, you know, at the end I had about 70 employees, $40 million in sales, making 4 million bucks a year. It was pretty awesome. Wow.

So, okay, so you're in, you're in the barn, it's cold, you've got your cell phone, your laptop.

And you're making calls. How did you, how did you stay motivated?

I mean, I had four children. I think they were all, you know, anywhere from like 10 to 22 years old at the time, but they're all living at home. So I never needed motivation. Those kids like to eat and unfortunately they like to eat like every day. And you know, my wife didn't work, she was still home taking care of kids. And you know, I had $3,000 a month of rent. I mean, it blows my mind that people need to find motivation. I mean, if you've got a wife and kids and they like to eat an electric bill. And I remember, you know, being a little behind on that $3,000 a month rent for that house. And I mean, I had plenty of motivation where I just wanted to get away from living week to week. And you know, I bounced a check to Costco for groceries. And back then you could put a hundred dollar gas card at Costco on your bill. So what I would do is I'd like write a check for groceries for $1,000 and I'd buy $100 gas card to get gas in the car. And then the check would bounce and I had two weeks to try to make it up. It was a terrible time. But that, you know, Costco helped finance my business, I guess.

Yeah. So thank you.

Costco.

Yes.

So yeah. That's amazing. Oh wait, do you remember how many people that you had to call to like get, to get, to get your ads? To get the advertising? Like so when you were making those calls, do you have any of those stats? I'm just wondering.

No. I hired hundreds of salespeople to do over the phone business to business advertising sales. And I knew the number was make 100 phone calls, talk to 20 people and get two people interested every day. So I guarantee you for that first year I was making a Hundred outbound phone calls a day to talk to 20 people to find two that were interested. And then at the end of the month, I had, you know, 44 people interested. And I would close like four deals. And the way my business worked is if my product worked well, they would reorder. 90% of our business was reordered. But it's really hard to get your first 50 clients. Like that took me a year, four new clients a month for 12 months. At the end of the year, I had 48 clients and they were reordering. So that's how I went from a million dollars in sales the first year. All new business, working very hard, cold calling and email marketing. I did a lot of that to doing 2 million, doubling my business the second year because of the reorders and continuing to sell new business. But that's just how my business worked. But it seems like a lot of businesses work that way, right? Yeah.

And I would love to kind of dive into that a little bit more because I think, you know this book, so it's do the Thing is the book that I'm writing. And then I decided to do the podcast actually to help me write the book, because I needed to pull more information out and hear more people's stories about how they do the thing so I could uncover a formula. But originally it was going to be just a sales book because that's my real love is sales. And I know we've talked about this before, and I thought we could kind of talk about it here too, because there's so many people that won't take the step to do a sales job because of whatever it is, fear or something's holding them back. And I know you've seen that too. And I just, I thought we could take a few minutes to kind of talk about that because, I mean, it's all numbers, right? At least you and I know that, you know, 100, like, since you know your numbers, so, so strong. It's like, we know if you talk to 100 people, you're going to get two people interested. It's just a matter of consistency and attitude and all that type of stuff. But when you try to explain that to someone else who decides to take a $15 an hour job versus a job that they could make 200,000 a year. And it's funny, I did 15 dol an hour and 200,000 a year, but you know what I mean? But it's hard for them to understand. And then they're frustrated, you know, as to why they're not making that level of money. And anyway, I thought we could just kind of, I could get your, your thoughts on that as well and what you think the difference is between those two people.

You know, I remember one of my mentors in the 80s when I was a teenager was Zig Ziglar. I started listening to sales and motivation to keep me motivated to make sales calls when I got my first sales job. And Jim Rohn and I think it was Zig Ziglar who said they did a study of like a hundred successful CEOs or business owners, people that own multimillion dollar businesses and 50% of the CEOs came out of the sales arena. So I thought, wow, if half the CEO business owners in America all started in sales, it's a great place to start if you can learn how to sell. That's the most important part of any business is revenue. And sales is what brings in revenue. So I remember just thinking, I don't really want to be a salesman. Right? I mean, you think about like car salesmen and salespeople have kind of a bad rap. Like everybody thinks that they're liars or manipulators. And if you don't know the truth, you believe that maybe sales is not a great career. But when you know the truth, that there's good products out there, you don't have to lie and be a snake oil sleazy salesperson to make money in sales. You're really helping people. It's almost more. It's the biggest customer service job there is, is helping a customer get what they want, you know, through your products and services. So as long as you're honest and moral, you can make a great career out of sales. I mean, I, I went from making 30,000 a year to $300,000 a year in sales. But I learned more importantly how to deal with people and how a business worked. Sitting sideline and, you know, learning about finance and accounting and HR and legal. That's all freaking easy. You know, if you can figure out the sales side of it, bring in revenue, you can hire everybody. You need to do the boring parts of business to me, which are attorneys and accountants and HR. So I don't know. 50% of CEOs business owners started in sales. So why not, you know, start in sales if that's your only angle? I mean, my parents didn't send me to Harvard or Harvard Business School where I could just assume a $500,000 a year job as the CEO of a big company. So I didn't have that on my resume. I got one year of junior college. So sales is just a place where, you know, you eat what you kill you, you make whatever you want to make, you know, and. And so I, I got excited about sales and built a career out of it. But, you know, I was only in sales for maybe five years. I moved to sales management most of my life and then business owner. I got to move to business owner when I was, I don't know, 29 years old from my sales career. So if you want to be a business owner and get rich and have control of time and money, I love the thought you can start in sales. But I think most people just have a bad preconceived notion about what a salesperson is. And that's what they use as an excuse not to get into sales. What they really don't have is they don't have faith in themselves. They don't have the work ethic to go through, and they don't. They can't handle the rejection. Right. Because sales does have rejection. And you got to have a big self image and keep yourself motivated to make it in sales. And that's the hardest part. I think that's why people quit. They can't handle rejection. They don't have enough confidence in themselves. They don't have the motivation to keep going and persevere because sales is about perseverance and consistency and persistency. So I don't know, maybe I spoke too long on that, but that, that part's pretty close to my heart. After, you know, building a career in sales into business ownership, into selling a business, now being an investor and coaching up a lot of salespeople on how to go from making $50,000 a year in sales to 500,000. My top salesperson last year made over $3 million at my company, which I was really excited to see somebody make $3 million W2 as a sales rep. It was crazy.

Yeah. It's so rewarding when you can. When you can give someone the vehicle to be able to have that level of success. Right. And know that it was because of your influence and because of the opportunity you provided them, that that's there for them.

It was funny, I'll tell you. I don't know if I can veer off for a second, if you don't mind.

Like seven years ago, me and my wife went to this comedy club and there was a comedian on stage and my wife was kind of laughing and the comedian thought she was heckling it. So the comedian kind of got mad and Started ranking on my wife and I wanted to hide under the table. It was so embarrassing. But after the show was over, we walked outside and I was getting into my pool. Brand new Jaguar XJL supercharged. Just a badass black Jaguar that I own. Beautiful car. And he saw it. The comedian walked outside and saw it and goes, hey, what do you do for a living? I do comedy on the side, but I'm a sales rep and I'm looking for an opportunity where I can make a six figure income. Like I'm only making 60 grand a year, you know, at my sales job. And I'm one of the top 10 salespeople out of a hundred. So I really want to get into a sales job where I can make more money. So I hired that guy, and seven years later, that's the guy who made $3 million last year. Oh my gosh, isn't that crazy? And so there's a lot of satisfaction as a sales manager. I love to take people that were making 50 grand a year and show them how to make 100, 200, 500. And I've done that probably, I don't know, 20 or 30 sales reps. And it's funny, Stacy, because I sold my business and I have no business to hire a salesperson anymore. I was driving my Rolls Royce Ghost the other day and I went into the tire shop and the manager of the tire shop came out and saw my car. He's like, oh my God, that's a beautiful car. I always wanted a Rolls Royce Ghost. And it was funny. It was almost the same thing that happened to me seven years ago. And I sat there thinking to myself, oh my gosh, I have no place to bring this guy and coach him on how to go from making 70 grand managing a tire shop to making 700,000 in sales because I don't own a company anymore. And I drove away from that meeting going, God, I think I'm going to have to have a company to show people, you know, how to bring them up. Because that's probably the most enjoyable part of my life as a sales manager was bringing people in and watching them grow and make money and, you know, buy houses and cars and get married. It was such so rewarding to me, more probably. And it's just funny that that, that just hit me really hard. That just happened a few months ago.

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I had that happen the other day. I was at a restaurant and the server was like, amazing. And I'm like, oh my God, you're Like the perfect person to work, you know, to work. And I had.

You have no place to put them right if you don't own a business, you know? I know. It's so sad, you know? I know.

Oh, my gosh, Jeff, this is great. Because you verbalize something that I haven't been able to put a finger on. I kept thinking that a lot of people won't move into sales because they're scared of failing or scared of whatever. But you, you said it really well with that pre. Confidence. Preconceived notion of what sales. In sales. Sorry, the preconceived notion of what sales is. And I love how you worded it with it being the biggest customer service job in the world, because I saw it that way too. And I do. I think it's the perception of what sales is. You know, I'm sure there's definitely people that are scared of it, but I do also think it's the inter. The way people are interpreting it. That's cool. I actually. I hadn't looked at it in that way before, and it reminds me of my top salesperson at my business. When she first started, it wasn't like she didn't think it was going to be a first sales job, you know, she thought it was. What does she think she was like a consultant or something? And. And it's all about that. That. That thought process of what someone perceives it as. So anyway, that's. That's really interesting. I just had a big. A big epiphany on that. That is really cool. So you've had people that worked for you and that wouldn't take the sales job and they took that hourly position. Do you know what the difference is with them? Was that what the difference is, was the preconceived notion or was.

Well, you know, the most recent one I can think of. I had a sales rep who said, I'm really thinking about going into sales, but I'm scared of. You know, she's on like a $50,000 a year salary, and the base salary for our sales reps was like 30 grand plus commission. So she was going to lose $20,000 a year and she was getting ready to have another baby. And for her, it just maybe wasn't the right time to take a risk. Like she wanted that. That comfortable. I mean, $50,000 a year, you know, that doesn't pay my electric bill at my house, so it's not real comfortable. But for her, that $50,000 was like a big deal. So to go back to $30,000 salary and then be earning your income on commissions. But it's funny, there's another lady who started around that same time in sales who made $100,000 like her first year. So I'm thinking you could have doubled your income. Like, why are you scared of more of your salary based on what you sell? You know, they just don't have the confidence, what if I can't sell? What if I can't handle rejection? What if I can't force myself to make those phone calls? So, you know, for this particular lady, bowing out of a sales position cost her 50 grand a year, you know, and the sales rep making 100 grand is working way less hard as she is. As a admin, you know, we call them account coordinators. So I just think it's funny how people will kind of sell themselves short just out of. I think it's just fear, you know, the fear of the unknown. I want the cushy salary, and I think that's why people stay working for corporate America for 20 years instead of starting their own businesses. It's the same thing. For a business owner to give up this $80,000 a year job for a business where I could make nothing my first year is so scary. You got to have a lot of faith to step out there. I don't think people. I think people have a challenge with what their faith in themselves or, you know, to be able to do that. So.

Yeah, and I mean, it's also like trusting the numbers, right? Like when you said 100 phone calls a day. And that's kind of my mindset too. With any kind of sales job or any business. It's just once I understand the numbers of how many people I need to contact, you know, in order to get the numbers that I need to get what I want, you know, then, I mean. But I think if people don't have that understanding, it's hard. It's hard for them to conceptualize it.

Yeah. What's funny for me, making 100 phone calls a day, I mean, when you're new to sales and you're not that good at it and you don't know the product that well, you have to just make up for in labor and effort what you don't know and talent and ability. So it's like that first year I made 100 phone calls a day and built a business, a million dollar business. But, you know, the second year I probably backed it down to making 50 calls a day. And by the third year, I was probably making 20 calls a day. Because I had my business built. So in sales, you don't really have to do it forever. If you take care of customers and you're selling a product where there's repeat business, you know, you don't really have to do it for that long. So it's. It's like you could do anything for a year, right? Could you take rejection and make a hundred calls a day for the first year and just no matter what, you're going to do it because you, you kind of build your own business as a sales rep. It's as close to, to owning your own business as you can get. Right.

So anyways, okay, so as we're talking, I'm uncovering your formula for doing the thing. So I hope it's okay. I'm gonna. I'm gonna read off where I think you're at and then we can figure out if there's anything I'm missing. Because there's something else you've done that I wanted to, to talk about too, because. And then we could see if I missed anything through the new thing because you, you also opened a wedding venue like the last few years, which was new to you, and that's doing the thing. So anyway, let's kind of let me go through it as we're. What you've done in the past. And then as we talk about the wedding venue, we'll see if I missed anything else. So formula number one piece is basically, it looks like you talked about coaches and people around you that were helping you. And I know you mentioned Sig Ziglar. It's funny, I followed him. Also, I remember driving door to door and listening to him on my tapes.

That's funny. He was a door to door Tupperware salesman, right?

I mean, yeah. Oh yeah, he's awesome. But yeah. So coaches. So that was one of the things you mentioned is having coaches around you. And then number two, you did mention the mental and the not that good. And then you had friends surrounding you that would encourage you. And with that piece, I was wondering, is there anything you had to do for yourself or was it mostly the people around you that were able to lift you up out of it?

For me, my dad made $50,000 a year, which was pretty good money in the 80s or 70s. And we had lived in above aver, you know, lifestyle, middle, you know, upper middle class, I guess you'd call it. But I never knew anybody who was a millionaire and nobody. What I found is as I tried to get around millionaires and learn how they did it. And what they did, they weren't real receptive. They didn't help me at all. I really tried. I'd go to events and rooms and walk up to people, hey, teach me what you know. And you know, they just weren't really that helpful. They were freaking busy. And who's this punk kid? And so what I found for me that worked is I just found all these motivational speakers that had interviewed people, new people, and just started engulfing all that. I mean, from Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar. I mean, I'm gonna learn something from these guys that were all millionaires, but they knew a lot of millionaires. So I guess I had to kind of go through the back door to learn, you know, how do people make money? Like how do you start a business, how do you do sales and marketing? So, you know, it was like an internal corporate request to go get the information because nobody was willing to share it with me. You know, I didn't have anybody that was wealthy that was coaching me. So yeah, I guess just if you want it bad enough, right, you go find a way to learn it. And people weren't real helpful.

Yeah, I think that's great because it's not about money you had or anything. You're just accessing information that everyone has access to. Yeah. So that was then how you helped your mental was by just engulfing in the information and consuming it, Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely. Just self training, you know, reading a lot, a lot of audio, right?

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so so far for your pieces of the formula then I would say that educating yourself, surrounding yourself with mentors, whether they be real mentors that you know in real life, or the information that we all have access to, which then helped you through your mental, mental baggage. And then you mentioned the preconceived notion of something like when we were talking about sales. So I'm thinking that idea that you just keep a really open mind when you're getting into something new.

Yeah, I mean open mindedness to be able to be. Well, one of the most important things is to be teachable and not think that you know everything. So I think open mindedness to me is like kind of like humility, you know, like, like you can't really go into things with your big ego thinking you know everything. You're not going to learn anything. You got to kind of suppress that ego, get humble, become teachable. To get to that word. You said to be open minded. I have to be humble. Because if I think I Know everything. And I'm always protecting my ego. What the hell am I going to learn? Right? Like, open minded is, I think so tied to humility and you know, I mean, how do you get humble? I mean, sometimes I got humiliated like a bankruptcy and bouncing checks to Costco and you know, going to check writing school. I mean, it's, it was bad, right. So. But I learned it the hard way, but it made me teachable and open minded. You know, knowing that shit, I. What do I know? I don't know a whole lot.

Definitely.

I still try to be that way, but you know.

Yeah. And I want to look. Okay, let's skip to that because I think that's important. So when you just, can you give people a background about what you did with the wedding venue and how that started. Just a quick little kind of summation. Just because we can dive into a little more. Because you got into a whole new industry that you've never been in before and is successful. And so I think that's since it's fresher, it might be, we might be able to uncover a couple more things for the formula.

Yeah. So the basic idea is my wife is Italian. We've been married 29 years. I have four adult children. They're 33, 26, 24 and 21. And my wife's of this old school Italian thing that she wants all the kids to stay close to home. And you know, wouldn't it be cool if we had a property where, you know, our kids could live on the property and maybe get married and have kids and like stay around? Like she doesn't want any of them to leave. Some people want their kids to gone. My wife does not want them to leave. And my kids, you know, we're all pretty tight. They don't really have a desire to move out of state or, or you know, get away from family. I mean, we're just a pretty tight family. So what happened is two years ago this property went for sale. It was 40 acres with four houses on the property. The main house where I live is freaking 8,000 square feet. It's a beautiful home. And then it has three other houses on the property. But I found out that it had a license to do weddings. And the lady was doing about 20 weddings a year at the property. So she's bringing in, you know, 20 grand per wedding times 20 weddings. She's bringing in 400,000 a year and it's helping to pay for the house. So I basically came and looked at this house for sale two years ago and Go. Oh my God. This is, this is it. This is 40 acres, four houses, you know, and the wedding venue, I mean, she was doing 20 weddings a year. And I'm thinking I could get this place up to doing 50 weddings a year. And 50 times 20 is a million dollars in revenue. We'll make a couple hundred thousand dollars. So the wedding venue will pay for the house, which is extremely expensive, maintaining 40 acres and you know, $5,000 electric bill, $5,000 a month property tax bill. It was kind of scary to come by this place, but. And I bought it right in the middle of COVID when everybody was shutting down for weddings, which was really made it even more interesting. So I bought this house. You know, it's coming up, I think July 5, we moved in here so two years ago. And we've got 79 weddings on the books for the next 18 months. So 1.6 million in revenue. We're making good. So anyways, I bought this wedding venue. I'd never been in the wedding business, but I understand sales. I understand how to get a lead in the door, how to call it and get them in here for a tour and then sell the wedding. And it's not that hard. So I've had to learn about catering and bartending and liquor license and food handling licenses. So there was a lot to learn in the wedding business. But it's still just sales. It's leads and marketing and sales and revenue and people just like any other business. So we've got a staff of five full time people here now and, and we're rocking. And I just talked to my manager, I go, hey, we're going to do a million dollars this year. I want to do 2 million next year. So we're making plans to try to grow this business. So anyways, that's a little bit about, you know, Hawke Ranch, our wedding venue slash residence, where my wife and my four adult children all live and five golf carts driving around 40 acres. It's kind of insanity. There's a lot going on here at all times. But it's fun, it's exciting. We're liking it.

Yeah. And it's so gorgeous. Anytime I know I've come up there for various meetings that you've had and it's just, it's like you go into a whole nother escape all time and space is gone. And it's like you're in this whole other world. How did you even make that? And I understand like where it came from, like with the kids and then, you know, seeing the business Opportunity, but like that kind of like huge decision like that. Was it just you, like by you being able to do the thing and purchase that and then get it going, Was it just you, your kind of intellectual brain going, okay, I already know this formula. I know how to succeed in this business. I can do it. Or was there something else that got you to, to make that decision?

No, I didn't make the decision because I really wanted to be in the wedding business. I made the decision because I had like a $2 million house and I was gonna. I figured, okay, I'll sell that one and I'll buy this one for just over 4 million. But this house is gonna cost me less because I have income. So it's like your house is producing income. And that just made sense to me. Like, I'll figure out the business part of it and doing weddings and catering, it's not that big of a deal, you know. So I think it was really more of a business decision. But the fact that this property had four houses on it, it was like my wife's dream to have the kids home. And it's funny, that dream is starting to come into fruition. My son just got engaged and they're having a baby. And we're, you know, so we're going to have a baby born here at Pac Ranch in October. And so it's all kind of coming together like we had planned. So it's kind of like a family dream thing. Slash, hey, the business helps pay for it. I don't know if that makes sense, but to me it was kind of like a no brainer. Like, I knew as soon as I toured this property that this was, this was for us, you know, I just kind of knew.

Yeah, it seems like jumping in could be another piece of your formula.

Yeah, I mean, I go, I go, I think it through. I mean, I'm not like totally irrational, but. But I have a lot of faith and think it comes from, you know, comes from God and from a strong marriage where I just have a lot of faith that I can jump into something really scary. And I know that we can make it happen, all of us together, you know, So I guess maybe that's where my faith comes from. I mean, you know, I was making $300,000 a year when I was like, think, let's say I was like 28 years old. I had 40 salespeople, four managers. I loved my job, I love the company, I loved the people there. And I walked in and quit that job, $300,000 a year, married With, I think I had probably. No, I had three kids at the time. The fourth one wasn't born yet, but, like, to walk in and quit a $300,000 a year job when you have a $3,000 mortgage and three kids. And my partner agreed to pay me $12,000 a month, 144,000 a year. So I cut my pay in half. I mean, I had some income. It wasn't like I was going for nothing, but, like, who freaking does that? Like, I sat down with the pastor of my church and goes, dude, I'm thinking about quitting my job. He's like, jeff, you make a lot of money. Like, are you crazy? Don't quit a $300,000 a year job. And I'm like, yeah, I think I'm going to do it. He's, oh, well, you know, just be. Be careful. And so my pastor advised me not to do it, and I quit that $300,000 year job, made 150,000 for a couple years, and then I made 1 million, 2 million, 3 million. I mean, like, like, whose advice are you going to take? Like, so having the faith to go do it, to jump off the cliff, I mean. But, you know, I went through a bankruptcy, too. I took some risks that not everybody. You know, it's not fun telling your wife and kids, hey, pack up your shit. They're foreclosing on the house. We got to get out of here and go rent a little track house. And, you know, so we've been through all of it. Like, you know, the ups and downs of entrepreneurship and taking risks and having faith. It didn't always work out right, but in the end, it's life that I can be pretty happy with. Like, I was swinging, you know, I wasn't sitting on the bench, you know, So I don't know if that makes sense or resonates with anyone, but it's. It's. It's scary. You know, you have to. Faith is a pretty big part of it that everything's going to be okay. We're going to make it work, you know?

Yeah. And actually, it's interesting. This concept of surrender keeps coming up. And I think, actually Jill in our Mastermind had mentioned it too. Just being able to just follow that. How do you. How do you think. Would you. Would you say that's the right term that I just used? Or.

I don't know if it's surrender or let go and let God or where that comes from, that understanding you're really not in charge, you know, like, you think you Are, but you're really not. Like I wasn't in charge of making $3 million in 06. I wasn't in charge of the five and a half million dollar bankruptcy in 08. So what do I really have to do with it? I'm just doing the legwork, you know, I'm working hard and I'm trusting. So. Yeah, I don't know if that's where that comes from.

Yeah. So what do you, what do you think's been the hardest thing for you just throughout everything you've done with doing the thing?

Well, in the hardest thing.

Was probably when I had my mortgage company and I had 70 employees and I was so stressed out over all my loan officers. Some of them were just borderline criminals, like they were. I found them doing fraud and I'd be firing loan officers that I would catch doing fraud or lying to people and trying to run that business. I was on the hook for everything, everything my employees were doing. And you're dealing with people's houses and their mortgages and it was really scary. And you know, I got to the point where I would go home and, and drink every night. And so I was, you know, 33, 34 years old, multimillionaire. But the stress of running that business was causing me to, to drink every night, to try to like release all my burdens and just check out. I just couldn't handle it, you know, because I was trying to do it too much on my own and not turning it over and not surrendering it, thinking it was all up to me. So I almost drank myself to death at like 35 years old. So I had to, you know, find a little program and kind of an anonymous thing and, you know, a 12 step thing and, and get over my drinking problems. So that was 16 years ago. So I haven't drank in 16 years. That was probably one of the hardest things in my life is learning how to live through all this scary stuff. Fear, anger, you know, sober, you know, so I'd say that would probably be like a big turning point. When I was a multimillionaire and I was drunk, so it's cool to go bankrupt and not have to check out with drugs and alcohol and now become a multimillionaire, sober and with a better mind and a lot better health, you know, so that's kind of part of my story too.

Yeah. And isn't it amazing, that moment and you having that experience now, the thing that's probably helping you live at the level that you're living at because you Went through that?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm 51, I'm probably in the best shape of my life, health wise. You know, I'm, I'm in shape. I'm, you know, I'm not overweight. I mean, you know, I was 30 pounds overweight when I was 29 years old. I mean, I had married with four kids by the time I was 29. So, you know, I'm fat, I'm out of shape, I'm drinking every night, you know. So yeah, it's kind of cool to, to go through all that stuff and, and know that you can make it through all that stuff without, you know, whatever Drugs, alcohol, gambling, all the different things that people are addicted to. Food, right? I mean, smoking weed, I mean, all that stuff is such a big issue, I think in, in our country of the world today. So it's cool to be able to go through it and you know, sober minded.

I'd love to ask you because even like doing that program is doing the thing, right, it's making that decision. What do you, what do you think got you to even do that?

Well, what got me to change my mind? I mean, if you know anything about like alcoholism or, you know, drug addiction or gambling addictions, I mean, there's so many overeating addictions. There's so many addictions out there. What, what the reason I had to make a change is I was just waking up every morning feeling horrible, like hungover and feeling like I was gonna die. So it's kind of like at that time I felt like my life depended on it, like I gotta stop this way that I'm living and find a new way to live, you know, so for me it was just giving up and surrendering that, oh my God, I got a problem and I gotta go get some help. And so thank God there was help out there. And you know, a lot of those people are still my friends today. And you know, stuff comes up in life, right? Relationship stuff, money stuff, scary stuff. And you know, how to get through it without numbing out or checking out. I know people that check out in the movie theater and go watch five movies a week just to get away from their brain and their life.

And you know, so what do you think if you could give people one piece of advice on doing the thing, what would it be?

Oh.

Writing it down, like what your real dream is and what your real goal is and then drawing up the plan on how you're going to get there and then executing the plan through daily, consistent, persistent activity. I mean that was something I learned. I was in, I was in Amway, the multi level. My dad got all excited about Amway and I was like 18 years old and he got me, you know, signed up in Amway and we're out there selling soap and we never really did anything with it, but it was funny. The principles of what I learned in multi level, there is a place where you had millionaires who were willing to help you because they were making money when you made money. So reading all those books and getting the coaching, it was like, you know, have it. What's your dream? What's your goal? And then drawing up a plan to get there and then work the freaking plan, right? What are you doing every day to move towards your goals? I mean, I had a, I had a business card in my wallet that said sell for 10 million. That was sitting in my wallet for 10 years. And how do I sell for 10 million? Well, I built a company with 10 million in revenue and 2 million in profits. How do I get 10 million in revenue? Well, the average salesperson does a million dollars. So I need 10 salespeople. So let's go hire some salespeople, let's go hire some admin. Let's invest in some equipment. So it's like having a goal and a dream and then having a plan to get there and then actually executing on the plan. What are you doing every day to move towards your goal? So I don't know, that's kind of a long answer question. But I think, you know, dream a plan and executing the plan. Those three are vitally important. I know a lot of people with dreams and then they have no plan. And I know some people with dreams and a plan and they're out, you know, screwing around all day, not working, not working hard to execute the plan. I think it's like threefold. You got to do all three, right, or you're going to miss the boat.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting because I actually, my first draft of the book I had reverse engineering your dream, you know, like through daily actions on there. And I feel like you really summed it up really well in this section. This the cause I think that's so true. It's like once you have this big dream and then you could break down the pieces, it, it just changes everything.

You know, I've been thinking about what I'm going to do next, right? And it's like, okay, you know, I just had a nice exit. I could live pretty comfortably semi retired off the income that I have. Just kind of coming in. But I'm like, but I really want an airplane. Like, I couldn't find a flight to my house in Montana on Sunday. I was so mad. There's no direct flights right now. So I called my friend who's a pilot, and he goes, I'll fly you up on Sunday in the Citation jet. But it's $18,000 one way for two passengers. I'm like, oh, God, I really can't afford. And I'm pretty wealthy, but to spend $18,000 to fly one way to Montana is just too much money for me to spend, to be honest. I'm not that wealthy. So I'm like, I really want to own my own plane. So maybe I'll start another company and try to sell it in five years for $100 million. A bigger exit. So I've been thinking about, okay, how do I get to a hundred million, you know, in sales where I could sell the company for? And I'm kind of reverse engineering. How many customers do I need? What do they got to pay per month? How many employees would that be? So I am kind of in the middle of now. I don't know if I'm going to do it or not. I haven't decided if I'm going to go again or just take some time off. I don't know. We'll see. Check back with me in a year.

Yeah, it's exciting. All the possibilities. So where can people find out about you?

My email address is now jeffawkranch.net so j e f fawk like the bird h a w k and then ranch r a n c h.net people could email me if they wanted to chat or just run something by me, you know, hawkranch.net is our website of our wedding venue. And that's where I live. It's in Murrieta, California. So, I mean, I'd be open to probably getting. I do most of my conversation through email. I'm not big on social media and I don't usually hand out my cell phone number because I'm getting 20 or 30 text messages and calls a day. So I don't really want to increase that. Email is probably the best way of communication to me. And then, you know, call somebody back, email them back, whatever, set up meeting, zoom. I got a lot of time on my end, so I got more time than I have in the last 10 years.

Isn't that amazing?

It is. It's pretty cool. It's, it's. It's something I have to get used to I was so busy and all of a sudden not having a whole lot to do sometimes it's kind of, kind of boring, you know, But I'm trying to get used to that and just be okay with that as I go through this time and figure out what I'm going to do next, you know?

Yeah. So you're working on pausing from doing the thing?

Yeah, yeah, I've been doing the thing for 10 years. Well, not 10 years, 30 years. Right. Non stop. I mean, I just took a 17 day vacation with my wife. We went on an 11 day cruise, five days in Miami, two days in Tampa. And it was like, oh my God, I've never spent 17 days in a row with my wife. This was fun and we had a good time and, and so just trying some new things. It's nice to be able to do that for all the hard work, you know. So I'm trying to take all that and enjoy it before I run off and say, oh, go do something else to get real busy again, you know?

Yeah, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time. I'm sure that everyone listening got so much value from this and yeah, I am just really, really happy that you were able to take the time to, to talk to me.

Cool. Yeah, this was fun. Thanks for, thanks for talking and having me on your show and I'm excited for, for where it's gonna, where it's gonna go for you and for all the listeners, you know.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave a us a voice message at do the Thing callcast co or email us@helloothethingpodcast.com.