Run Your Business Like an Investor to Operate Better | Tyrus Shivers x Startup Science

Well, Tyrus, I appreciate your time today. Thanks so much for talking with me.

Thanks, Jonathan. Glad to be here.

Yeah. So for those just tuning in, talk me through, you know, what's your background? What's your story? I think everyone in the startup ecosystem has a bit of either they're a bit crazy or a bit passionate to be in this space. You know, it's not every day is totally peaceful. So Tell me about yourself.

Yeah, I'm gonna give you the Campbell Soup version because I could spend an hour laying out everything that I've done. So I'll start with losing my scholarship in 2006. I was on a full ride to Tuskegee University. I lost it pledging. And I did the thing that I said I would never do as a young child, I always watched my family work hard, 12-hour, 15-hour days in the factories. I'm from South Alabama, so there was not a whole lot of opportunity. And I told my mom I would never work like that. And I've been in entrepreneurship since I was 8, but I ended up going to college, going that same pathway everybody goes, lost my scholarship, and then I got 2 jobs, movie gallery and UPS. So I'm working 12-hour days and doing what I never said I would. And I was like, okay, I can't keep doing this. What am I going to do? And as I searched, I ended up going to the Air Force after having a lot of conversations. So it, I didn't go to entrepreneurship. I went into the military and I was going to become an officer, do 20 years, retire, and keep going in life. But then I was medically retired. At, um, 2 years and 6 months in. So for the audience listening, you gotta be able to pivot and know when to pivot and how to pivot, 'cause life plans don't always go through. And from there, I went through and into GovCon work. So system integration engineering, system administration work, cybersecurity, and I still have a footprint there, but I learned that that wouldn't get me to Wealth, generational wealth. So what did I do? I started a property management company. This was around 2014 when the market had rebounded from 2008. Everybody was getting into wholesaling, flipping, just the real estate was booming at that point. But I wanted to do something that didn't require a lot of income upfront, which was property management. In 18 months, I went from 0 to about 250 units, about $1.2 million in revenue. So I hit 7 figures in 18 months. From there, people wanted to know, how did you grow it so fast? And I kept growing fast. And another lesson is if you grow too fast, you can implode, which I did. 2019, I shut that business down. Didn't sell it because I didn't know. I didn't have the network. I didn't have the people in my ear saying to sell it, just stressed out. But I went into coaching and consulting, fractional integrator work, helping other businesses build. Which leads me to today, skipping a lot of pieces, but now I focus mostly on helping startups, founders, businesses that are sub-$10 million in revenue access capital through raising capital from investors and then using that capital to actually grow and scale their business.

Man, I relate to a lot of your story. I, I'm in the Army National Guard right now. I saw you were in signals intelligence. So were you like, were you a linguist as well, or did you—

No, I did signals intelligence, which was basically the demodulation of your radio waves and signals. And then I did Morse code. And so I like to tell people I copied the fastest Morse code on the planet and I was great at it.

Oh, that's incredible. It really takes a brain, uh, the right kind of brain for that. That's awesome. Yeah. And I also might get medically retired soon, so.

We got a similar story.

Yeah. Geez. And I did real estate before that and you were smarter at it. I went the expensive, painful way and you did it. I think property management is the best way to get into it. So good for you, man. You saved yourself a lot of debt that I found. Well, that's incredible. So tell, like, kind of tell me in more detail, what are you doing now? Like what organization are you affiliated with? What do you do and why should people care?

Yep. So Legacy Wealth Capital Group is the organization that I spend the most time in. Now I'm a partner in 5 other entities that I have ownership, and in most of those entities I sit in the operation seat. So I sit in my gift and my superpower. But with Legacy Wealth, what we focus on is that my partners, they took a company public 20 years ago. They were one of the only minority-owned publicly traded utility companies in the country. And so they speak the language of going public. That's their focus. They want to take 10,000 businesses public. I sit in the language of let's scale these businesses and get them to a position to where they can go public or they can acquire. So what we spend most of our time doing is just getting businesses investable and fundable. Systems, operations, marketing, hiring, like all of those components that a business needs. Because at the end of the day, business is very simple. You have a product or a service, you market it, you close or you sell it, and then you deliver. That's it. It's not rocket science. We overcomplicate business way too much. But that's what we focus on. We created the Legacy Business Operating System, which is our own unique system and methodology of taking businesses through a process to where they can raise capital, buy other businesses, or they can go public. And that's our goal. Now, I spend time in the other businesses. My wife and I own a translation company where we do English to Spanish, and I think like 30 other languages. She heads that up. I own a GovCon business where we still do that system engineering administration work. I'm developing a software, fund management software in another business right now. Um, I got some LOIs out on some other things. So when you asked me before the— before we start recording, do I have downtime? No, I got a lot going on.

Well, and that's why I say anyone working in startups is, there's some compulsion behind it, right? Like it's, it just kind of bubbles out of you. And that's why I almost stumbled over how to ask you, what do you do? Because there's never a simple answer. Obviously, there's usually like a main thing and then there's like a whole sphere around that. So I love that. So talk me through that because I think a lot of people might not be able to relate, or maybe they're actually in the same shoes and they just don't have any friends like you. So like, what is your mindset as you take on projects or pursue things and how do you, um, structure your workload?

100%. So all people, businesses, every, everybody, we're gonna go back to the basics and you really need to understand your vision. I know you've heard it before, but it's so key. Bob Proctor used to say that he could make decisions in 30 to 45 seconds. And I used to wonder why, like, how is that possible? And then of course he talked about Napoleon Hill, who made a really quick decision to give up everything, listen to Andrew Carnegie, and kind of go through and interview all these top people. But at the end of the day, Bob Proctor was like, if you're so clear on your vision, it is easy to make decisions. So for me, I filter everything through my life What are the ultimate goals that I want for my life? It's generational wealth, safety, and security for my family. It is to be able to do the things that I love and not do the things that I don't want to do. It's anything that's moving me in the direction of getting to Arizona and enjoying hot weather. So when I think about opportunities that come up, I filter it through that lens of, does it meet my life goals? Does it meet my family goals that we've set up together? And if it does, it's something that I move on quickly. And for startups, for entrepreneurs, it is okay to move fast. It's speed. It's opportunity doesn't wait. When I was working with Dr. Eric Thomas, a motivational speaker, he always used to say, you have to take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime in the lifetime of the opportunity. It might not hang around for you. And so when you're seeing all of these things, when you think an abundance mindset, and then when you go from a Tony Robbins perspective of taking massive action, opportunity just shows up everywhere. And you have to figure out, okay, which one moves the needle towards my goals? And that's how I make decisions. And then I balance my time by being very structured. Very regimented. I schedule everything. I don't do the popups. My phone stay on silent. I don't do the popup phone call. You text me and say, hey, you got a minute? For what? You gotta explain it. So my time is allocated, broken all the way down, scheduled, put on a Google Cal— Google Calendar. And that's how I move day to day. And I tackle the most or the toughest task first. And then I do all the small things that still are required to do by me because we have to delegate. We have to move into a position of not doing all the tasks. Uh, Michael Michalowicz wrote a book called Clockwork, and they talk about the 4 Ds. That's doing, deciding, delegating, and designing. Most startups sit in the doing phase. They're doing all day long, and you gotta get outta that. And as you grow your business, as you scale, and as you move up, You can begin to then spend your time on $100 tasks versus a dollar task.

And it's, it seems like one of the hardest lessons to teach people that have this compulsion to startups because there's a strong action disposition, but it's really hard to step back. So how do you, I know you work with a lot of founders directly. How do you help people to take that step back and work in the other Ds besides just doing?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I challenge them. The challenge is take off the operator hat. I wanna make it very clear that most business owners, especially small, they're accidental business owners, just like accidental landlords. Oh, I do great at this. I don't need my company. I'll just start a business. Or I need an extra $50,000 a year. I'll start a side hustle. With that mentality, you're an operator and you're going to move into that and do the doing, just do the work. I challenge them from the beginning to take off the operator hat and put on the investor hat. I skipped the owner hat, if you notice, because most people tell you, you gotta stop being an owner or operator and go to the owner. If you read Michael Gerber's book, The E-Myth Revisited, that's what it talks about. From operator to owner. However, if you think like an investor, what does an investor think about? They think about assets.

Mm-hmm.

They think about return on investment. So to me, business is not my baby. I don't love my businesses. Like, I'm not in love with them. I look at them as tools, as an asset. So I challenge all owners to look at your business as an asset. in a portfolio, then they can actually start getting out of the weeds and sitting at a 30,000-foot level and say, you know what, I need the right people, I need the right systems, I need the right processes, and I need to design the future of this business so it can bring a return versus me being in the weeds, not able to move forward.

It's such a good point because One of my favorite questions to ask a founder is, would you invest in your own company? Like if you were an investor and you had to put your money to work, would you put it in your company? And if not, then identify why and bridge that gap and you'll probably be a better operator because of that.

100%.

Especially bootstrap founders. I don't know if you see a pattern across different types of founders and the exit that they're building towards, but bootstrappers, are really good at pouring a ton of resources into something and they just kind of skip the investor mindset. But really it's, they're investing their time, they're probably not paying themselves enough. And like there's this long window where they're just not focused on the right things because you think you can just play the game forever. And it can be a trap. And it sounds like you see that.

As well. Oh, every day. Uh, that's why there's a low percentage of businesses that ever hit a million in revenue and an even lower percentage of businesses that hit $10 million in revenue. So the backbone, the 33 million-ish businesses in the United States are small and they don't reach a million or $10 million in revenue. And I like to ask owners, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing it for? Because if you just wanna make $200,000 or $300,000, get better skills and go get a better job, and you don't have to worry about any of the other stuff.

A lot less stress.

A lot less stress. And I think sometimes, Jonathan, it becomes a gut punch, 'cause I am very direct with it. And it's a gut punch when they come into my ecosystem of how we coach. And consulting mentors is not handholding. It's like, what are you doing? If you're not looking to build a $10, $20, $50, $75 million business, we're not the right fit. I will give you the diagnostic, tell you all the issues, but if you don't have the mindset of growth and scale, we're just not the right fit because I'm not interested in a lifestyle business. I can just go work and do IT work. All my days and make $400,000. If if you want to be a great AI strategist, Meta's paying half a million dollars for that. You don't need a business. So it's really about the mindset of that owner to think: What am I doing and why am I doing it? If it's just lifestyle, great. There are mentors for that. But if you want to grow a scale. That's what we focus on.

Man, I could go for a couple hours with you just on this because I can tell how much you've read and invested in yourself. And I can think of a lot of books that you've read and the people you're quoting and that you're built on the backs of many giants who've shared a lot of wisdom. So I do want to ask you, what trends are you seeing in the startup ecosystem? We're in a time of radical change with, know, AI and, and, you know, just the whole world's pretty wild in the new cycle. Yeah. It can keep you busy. So I just wanna know what, what trends are you seeing?

I'm seeing the definite trend of ETA, entrepreneurship through acquisition, and searchers. They're coming back. And also what I'm seeing is, of course, most business owners don't have that terminology knowledge, so they just wanna buy a business and they They listen to your Cody Sanchez's or your Roland Frazier's or your others that are preaching the buy a business instead of start one from scratch, which I agree with. When you look at an Amazon or Facebook or any of these billion-dollar businesses, they didn't become billion-dollar businesses just through selling a product or a service. They acquired and they got bigger. And that's the only way to unicorn status and beyond is to acquire, build an ecosystem. I mean, look at Amazon. You'd never think they would be in the movie studio space from where they started. They didn't turn a profit until they released AWS. So it takes that to get to where you want to go. So that's one of the trends that I'm seeing mostly. I'm seeing more people talk about the SBA 7 loan so you can go and buy a business. With as little as 10% down. I'm seeing people talk about entrepreneurship. So maybe I don't want to be a business owner, maybe I don't want to start a business, but maybe I can go run a business and get some equity in it. I'm seeing more ESOP programs being talked about. We're thinking about the silver tsunami and all of the wealth is going to be transferring from the baby boomers over the next 10 years or so, 15 years. Who's taking those businesses? We know that their kids aren't taking them. So instead of them shutting down, who's gonna take over them? So there's a large trend of how do I buy a business? How do I support a business versus how do I start one today?

And what are the best ways that someone can position themselves with these trends that you're seeing? And to me, there's a maturation going on because you have a lot of businesses that will be for sale just because of that silver tsunami. But you do have to kind of level up your chops to jump into something that's already operating where you can fumble around early on and maybe the mistakes don't cost as much besides time, but at least you're getting your lessons in, you're learning, and then you kind of grow with it. But if you don't grow with it, you can jump in and make more expensive mistakes faster, it seems.

Yeah, 100%. And definitely you can. Number one, get your personal finances together. I don't care what people say. Yes, you can do some deals. It is never no money down. What it is is creative financing, and you have to be a very good negotiator to do creative financing where you don't put anything out of your pocket.

Yeah. Very rare.

I, the real estate world was full of that. Everybody trying to do no money down deals rarely worked. Get your personal finances together, get your credit score right, because if you're leveraging any kind of bank loan, uh, SBA-backed loan, CFDI, they all gonna look at your credit. They're not gonna look at the business revenue and you're, you're personally guaranteeing this stuff. So that's number one. Number 2, to your point, invest in education where you can. I'm not saying you gotta go be a part of somebody's mastermind, but at least start researching and learning the information of acquisitions. If you've never owned a business before, look at business basics and business fundamentals. You can go to the SBA or SBDC, SBDCs, and they have free consulting. Go to them, get the basic business chops, because to your point, when you jump into this acquisition and this business is running, you better hope that you retained the people that were key to running that business. Because if it was founder-led, hard, hard, hard to take over and keep it going. You wanna make sure there are employees there. I'm a fan of buying a business and installing the CEO. So you need to make sure those numbers work. And make sure that that individual knows how to run a business. That way you're not in it. So you're, you're a true investor. It's just like if you put your money into a VC firm or a PE firm or in a fund and they're buying things, you're not managing the day-to-day. Your money's in it. You wanna think of business acquisition to that same, that same point. How do I put some money into this business, bring it on, and make sure I have the right people in place? That way you can spend time studying, learning, and adding more information, designing your future, and just growing from there.

I just agree on all fronts. And, um, I know we're close to time. Uh, could we take 5 more minutes and do a few rapid-fire questions?

Yeah, 100%.

Awesome. So I wanna follow up on what you just said. How can a, um, someone's in entrepreneurship or they want to get into it, how can they attract working with a mentor like yourself?

Showing that you actually do the work. So I attracted my first mentor by going, I'll give you 2 examples. I know these rapid fire were 2 quick answers. I attracted my first mentor by walking up to him and asking him targeted questions where he would know I had did some level of research.

Huh.

I attracted my first investor, $100,000 check. He gave it to me on the spot. Because I would talk about flipping a house all the time. He asked me, why aren't you doing it? I said, I don't have the money. And he said, what would you do if you had the money? And I was ready. You gotta be ready. You have to be knowledgeable to a point. You don't have to know everything, but nobody wants to mentor a person that they feel like they have to drag and handhold. So to attract a great mentor, You have to be ready to add value and to show up with some level of knowledge that shows that you're worthy, for lack of better words, of being mentored.

Yeah, it's easier to support someone that's in motion. They're taking action and you're just pointing it in the right direction, making it more efficient. I totally agree with you. And so you recently got started with Startup Science. Tell me, what is Startup Science going to help you to accomplish? Why choose— why did you choose to work with Yeah.

Startup Science uses a word that I like to use, ecosystem. I believe that the incubator accelerator space is fragmented. You got thousands of them. I mean, every time I look on LinkedIn, there's another one starting. And I sit on a lot of panels, I judge a lot of pitches, I support a lot of states, I support a lot of economic development centers, and they all have this gap. And this gap is software. It's a platform. It is a place to where all of a startup's information, their TAM, their SOM, their cap table, being able to attract investors, talk to mentors, none of that is in one place. There are makeshift tools out there that they try to use, and the common thing is Startup owners feel overwhelmed. Founders are overwhelmed. They just have a bunch of notes on paper. What Startup Science is doing is taking all of that information and putting it into one place to where you can truly build an ecosystem where the coach or consultant, the incubator cohort, the mentor, the investors, all of your data can live in one place. So for me, It's a no-brainer to work with a system that supports individuals like myself, but also helps us deliver ultimate value to the founder because the founder now can build out their business profile in one location and we can bring everybody else to them. So I just think it makes so much sense when I saw it and I was like, I wanna be a part of it.

And I did not pay you to say that. And what I love about your answer is that everyone, everyone that we work with has a similar belief system. And that belief that you just described comes from the maturity of the life experience that you've already lived. So I, I, I love the work that you're doing. How can people— who should connect with you and how can they connect with you?

So who Is the startup founder, business owner, entrepreneur. I don't care what words you use for yourself with the big idea, the dream, and the want to be a $10, $20, $50, $100 million public company. You wanna acquire business, you wanna grow. I was listening to Myron Golden and he said one time that if you ask a person how Healthy do you want your children to be? As healthy as they can be. How smart? As smart as you can be. With money is the only thing that we say we just need enough. I want to be as wealthy as I can be. The people who want to be as wealthy as you want to be, not that money is everything, but just don't put a limit on it. Those are the people who I want to connect with. Those are the people who should want to connect with me because we have a similar mindset and they can find us at legacywealthcapitalgroup.com or @legacywealthcapitalgroup on any social media.

That's awesome. You've truly invested in the belief system, your internal heart, not hardware, software. And it's just a pleasure to chat with you. We'll definitely, I want to do a deeper dive on a lot of these topics later, so I'll I'll, uh, try to squeeze into your, your calendar again in the future. But, uh, any final words? If you, you know, maybe if you had to put something on a billboard for other founders out there, what would you, you know, what would you, what would you say?

2 things. Number one, clarify your vision. I talk to a lot of founders, they don't really know what they want to do. Clarify your vision because nothing else matters without a very clear picture of where you're going. Number 2, borrowing from Tony Robbins again, once you clarify that vision, take massive action. Doesn't have to be the right thing all the time. You want to fail fast. You want to get bumped and bruised and scraped. You want to learn by going through, but you got to take massive action. I know so many people with so much potential that just won't move. You can't—

Yeah.

You can have a Bentley, If it doesn't move, it's not doing you any good.

It's so true. Once you're moving, hey, just go that way instead of this way. Easy.

Absolutely.

Oh, thank you for your time, Tyrus. I'll make sure that people can connect with you. We'll link to your socials and anything else you want to put out there. And you have a great rest of your day, man. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. You too. Thank you for having me.