Growing from Massive Setbacks with John St. Pierre

Imagine scaling a company to dizzying heights, only to be shown the door - that's the rollercoaster tale of John St. Pierre, my guest this week, whose story of patient ambition serves as a masterclass in entrepreneurial resilience. We explore the pivotal moments of John's $100 million journey, where his ousting from his own company becomes a launching pad for profound insights on failure and rebirth. John's narrative is a testament to the strength found in life's toughest trials, and it's sure to embolden any listener facing their own crucible.

As I peel back the layers of my own tumultuous exit from a dream job, the conversation shifts to the cathartic power of journaling and self-reflection. We discuss how the act of writing can morph from a chaotic release to a structured daily ritual that offers clarity and grounding. As we share stories of personal transformation, the universality of growth from adversity emerges, bridging the gap between entrepreneurship and the broader human experience.

The episode rounds off with a deep dive into fostering entrepreneurial spirit within teams and the importance of embracing failure as a growth catalyst. We share strategies for injecting entrepreneurship into the business culture, from strategic hiring to nurturing potential equity partners among employees. The discussion culminates in my vision for a maximized life across all facets and a heartfelt acknowledgment of the continuous support from friends like Rich Hoffman. Tune in for an enriching dialogue filled with practical wisdom and heartfelt encouragement.

Connect with John:
http://www.100mjourney.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnstpierre/
http://www.entrepreneursunited.us/

Let Primo know youre listening:
https://depthbuilder.bio.link/

Get on the path to Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What is going on L&M family. I've got an OG baller that's got some real game, mr John St Pierre. I actually got to hang out with him on his podcast, with his co-host, and just some nuggets to kind of get you curious about Mr John. He has co-founded and grown two companies to over 50 million with an M $50 million in revenue, which is a lot of that money. He's also a fellow author. He wrote the $100 million journey which I think Pinky promised that he would at least help us figure out how to make 10 million. I don't know, I'm joking a little bit. And his mission and this is what is really intriguing is his mission is to help entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs achieve their goals and dreams. And of course, I'm going to make you wait just a few more seconds before we get to know Mr John St Pierre a little better to do our shout out. So I got an L&M shout out for Mr Darrell. Shout out for Mr Daryl. Daryl said story number four teared me up because it was all about the conflict between negative self-perspective and embarrassment versus the actual value of being vulnerable and the determination that infused confidence into others. So, daryl, thank you very much for taking the time to read the book first of all, and then to leave a review, because it feels really good to know that somebody read it and it impacted them in some kind of way. And to the rest of the family members you already know, send me a message, leave a comment on the socials, drop a review. I am excited and looking forward to sharing, giving you a shout out on the next interview.

Speaker 1: 1:46

And now for Mr John St Pierre. Mr John, how are you doing today? My friend Doing great, excited to be here. Man, me too. I think we have a little unfair advantage here because we've hung out before, we've had some conversations before, so I want to just dive in with the challenging question. Maybe that'll hopefully reveal a nugget for the L&M family to chew on and also get to know. What should everybody know about you? But the question is this what is one of the life lessons that you share often that seems to help the most people?

Speaker 2: 2:23

I feel, specifically when we're talking to entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, jesse, this concept of patient ambition. I was always very ambitious but I wasn't patient. I thought it had to happen now. We have to grow 100% next year. We got to go, go and then you run yourself off the cliff and you wonder what just happened. And this idea of having ambition, but also combining it with patience, combining it with following a life plan, combine it with having a three to five year strategic business plan that you stay on. You stay on the plan, you don't deviate, you don't chase the shiny objects all over the place. And a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs, don't have that patience. They want instant gratification. It's getting worse and worse. Today's generation want it now, they want it today. But having that patient ambition has been a massive life lesson that I learned through some pretty big failures in my life. And once I figured that trick out, that little concept of patient ambition, everything kind of got a lot clearer and easier and all of a sudden things started happening a lot faster.

Speaker 1: 3:19

My goodness, huge Patient ambition. They kind of conflict. Just the two concepts conflict with each other. Now, you mentioned that it's something you learned through painful lessons in your life. The plan and you click some buttons and it happened. Sure. So, having had the painful experiences that have given you or helped you build the patient ambition, how do you respond to painful experiences as you see them coming now, like in your current mode of operation?

Speaker 2: 3:58

Yeah, wow, oh, jesse, I don't know if I can even answer that question before. I kind of give you a little bit of context, because if I told you how I respond to failure and missteps today, you need to know the context of the past. But I'll give you one of them, just one of those failure examples and it was my biggest. But one of those companies I grew to north of $50 million around $55 million actually in global revenues was a 15-year-old startup that started with nothing, zero dollars. We're going to start this business up, grew it over 15 years with two of my best friends and partners, grew it to north of $55 million and lost it.

Speaker 2: 4:37

I basically got fired in the boardroom of that company 15 years later by the investors and private equity firms that came in and invested in the business and found myself completely broken, lost identity, lost 15 years of building this business and had to pick myself up off the pavement and figure out what is going on and what just happened to me. That was a pretty big failure in my life and from experiences like that you build a little bit of thicker skin, right. You kind of that can happen to me. I can get through anything. Now you walk in and you tell me the house is on fire, I'll start to say, okay, sounds good. What do we need to do Like? I have a little more like reaction time in my mind, because when you face failure multiple times and get yourself back up, you start realizing that nothing's permanent and you can get through everything with the right mindset.

Speaker 1: 5:25

Oh my goodness. Okay, you said you combined some words and made a very powerful combination of lost identity in the like when that whole situation happened, which I'm sure probably was not fun at all. But having that building this thing up 15 years, 55 million global revenue, that's not a weekend hobby. That took a lot of your life, sacrifice of multiple things. Then it's you're booted out. And now what did I do wrong? How did I miss this? I'm sure all these questions start coming into your head Big time and you said, okay, let's go do it again. Is that? Am I reading that?

Speaker 2: 6:03

right. Yeah, it wasn't that easy, but you're right. 15 years of blood, sweat, years of tears like just not paying myself over the years, and then finally getting traction and the business is growing. You have hundreds of employees, an amazing culture, amazing people, best friends working in the business. It was in the sports industry, an industry I love so much, I had so much passion for. My kids were youth athletes and they were wearing the logos of the t-shirts and all over.

Speaker 2: 6:28

It was like everything, it was my everything, and to lose that was devastating from a financial perspective. It was devastating from an embarrassment perspective. It was devastating from an identity perspective, because that was my identity. That's who people knew me as was the CEO and co-founder of this business and I had a lot of pride in that business. And when you lose that, it's kind of like that first, like what just happened, kind of moment and there's a okay, now what am I going to do? And you wake up the next morning and you don't have access to your emails anymore. Your calendar's empty. I was in a litigation type of situation with the company based on the severance agreement or anything, so I can't talk to anybody. It's just kind of like this uncomfortable situation you find yourself in, and what I did, jesse, is I basically took some time of self-reflection.

Speaker 1: 7:15

You know what?

Speaker 2: 7:16

I'm not going to jump in anything else. I'm going to go for long walks with the dog, I'm going to think about where I'm at and what I'm doing, and I can share with you what I discovered in that period. But nonetheless, one of the biggest things after that period was really this moment of journaling. I had never journaled before, ever I had never journaled before. I was too busy to journal, I got to get up and go. I don't journal, I don't need to do that. That's for weak people.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Yeah, I don't need to.

Speaker 2: 7:38

I never journaled, I never took some time to figure out what my true life purpose was. My purpose is, I'm going to grow companies and everything's going to fall in place. And then I'm going to make some money and I got a family. Everything's going to be great. Never had a purpose, although mentors had always said John, someday you'll find your purpose, and I'm like what are you talking about? I don't know. Good, I took some time to really develop a 30-year life plan for myself. Where did I want?

Speaker 2: 8:03

to be 30 years from now. Where do I want to be in 10 years? I'll be on track for my 30 years. Where do I want to be in three years? I'll be on track for the three. I really designed a truly comprehensive life plan. I'd never done that before. I had designed company plans, annual plans, three-year plans for my business like clockwork. Let's go for an offsite. We're going to do our strategic business plan. Never did that for myself, never took the time to really build my own plan and align those two, and once I figured that out, it was more of okay. What did I learn? What?

Speaker 2: 8:29

were the introspective learnings of this massive failure, like where did I go wrong? Get away with the do away with the victim mindset. What were my contributions? I was a CEO of that business. I made some critical errors in the foundational elements of setting that business up to put myself in a vulnerable position for that thing to happen to me. What were those? And I crystallized those. I call them the seven principles of entrepreneurial success that I outlined, but then I had to go test them.

Speaker 2: 8:53

So on the other side of this whole story, jesse, is I had an equity investment in a project management contracting business and that business, in around 2016, 17, was on a $5 million business and I took those principles with my partner there and said, well, let's apply these principles over here, because I'm not done growing companies. I love growing businesses. Let's go, let's take this thing to a hundred million and we literally put together a three to five year business plan with that at the center, but applying the principles of success, not doing what I'd done there. Let's try this a new way. And in 2022, we successfully grew that company to north of $100 million. The right way.

Speaker 1: 9:32

I hear the right way. I hear you say growing it the right way. The way that translates in my head is in a sustainable way. We're not running people ragged, we're not cutting throats. You got to be prepared to go there, but that's not the best way to do it. I mean, please let me be clear, I've never built a million dollar business, much less a 50 or a hundred million dollar business, but I've. A powerful thing is when people build systems, processes, thinking, mental models that are sustainable for the business the $100 Million Journey, the Seven Principles.

Speaker 1: 10:27

You went in this period of reflection, picked up journaling. It was a dark time, and so I'd like it if you could shine a little bit some light on the dark times, because it's my assessment that, at least in Jesse land, the darkest times is where I've had the biggest lessons, and I know that there's L and M family members out there that are in dark times, that have been in dark times and maybe stuck there or there's dark times ahead, and so what I'd like is to maybe steal some of your wisdom to help them through that. Yeah, because I don't think you're. I think it's a human experience, more than it is an entrepreneur, of building multimillion dollar business experience. Am I wrong?

Speaker 2: 11:13

No, you're not wrong at all. No, you're a hundred percent right. So, yeah, to share a little bit on that. In that moment I'm in the boardroom, I'm getting fired, getting in my car. It getting in my car, it was about two hours away, two and a half hours away from my house, and obviously the first call I make is to my wife hey, I'm not sure what just happened, but I just got fired Driving home.

Speaker 2: 11:34

And this is a wife that I don't know how other spouses are that are listening to this, but my wife's always right, literally always right, and she had warned me John, you're going too fast. John, are you sure you want to bring on some additional capital? Are you sure you want to bring on some additional capital? Are you sure you want to do this Like that kind of oh no, I got this, I got this. They would never get rid of me. You know, this is so the arrogance and just kind of that. No, I'm invincible. I got this Right To come back home and I could tell that she had just informed my 10 and 12 year old what had just happened and I had to give her a big hug and said honey, I effed up and that was my sign to her that you know you were right.

Speaker 2: 12:12

I went way too far over the skis and put myself in this position, and so that was tough. That was really really tough, but the one piece that really kept me in the moment, jesse, was. Here's a 10 and 12 year old right that no daddy had a bad day at work. Here's a wife who loved me. Although she told me she had told me and warned me, she's there with me, I have my health, I was healthy. So nice family, healthy. Perspective starts coming in Perspective, and it was like that helped me a lot, which is there's so many things going on in this world that people are in much worse situations than this currency. Although it's devastating, put it in perspective of everything, and I think sometimes people lose that element of perspective where their problem seems bigger than any other problem that's out there, and in this particular situation it hurt a whole bunch of different areas, but I wanted to be strong for them.

Speaker 2: 13:02

I needed to be strong for myself and look at, okay, what are all the positive things, what am I grateful for, what are all these things that I have? And so I think, being grateful for what I had, having perspective of my current situation, and I think the big thing that you hear it's cliche is that every dark room has a light switch. It's easier said than done because when you're in that dark room you can't find it. You're looking, but every dark room really does, and there's always a light there somewhere. You just got to find it. And that's kind of the perspective I had in those moments.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Oh man, okay, so let's. I want to hear a little bit about journaling, because I'm a huge advocate for journaling. It's not so much the physical act of writing. I like you was like journaling, like who's got time to do that garbage? Now I've got an hour blocked out every day. On my calendar it says thinking time. Yeah, but it's me sitting down with my journal. I've got a fancy, super expensive Etch-A-Sketch. You remember the Etch-A-Sketch? Oh yeah, so I got a Remarkable which is a it look like this Exactly, so I got a remarkable, which is exactly like that.

Speaker 1: 14:55

So I got one of those and there's some days I'll sit and, man, I'm writing, I'm burning it up. Other days I might write a few lines, but I'm thinking right. I'm clarifying my thinking looking at what I experienced yesterday, or dead end, blah, blah, blah. I didn't start journaling an hour a day. I started. My therapist challenged me to find five minutes in the next month to sit down and think and I'm like who I you create, like, all right, I'll do my best. That's where I began. Now I have this habit where it's a daily thing, and so what was that progression like for you in terms of picking up the habit of journaling and doing that introspection?

Speaker 2: 15:35

Yeah, I think initially, jesse, it was me trying to think through all the things that just happened. It was just a brain dump, no strategic. Anytime I'd want, I'd take a piece of paper out, I'd just start writing Like really not strategic, not really organized. And the magic of doing these conversations right. Rich Hoffman, my co-host for the Entrepreneurs United podcast, and I started. We're in our fifth season now, so we started doing this. Pretty shortly. After this situation's going on, I'm saying, hey, let's do this podcast again. I want to sharpen my saw and work with entrepreneurs and we're doing these conversations, and one of our guests, dr Julie Bell, was her name. She said everybody should start every day for 20 minutes with a blank sheet of paper. Just every day, for 20 minutes with a blank sheet of paper just a blank sheet of paper just blank and just whatever comes, just let it come and I

Speaker 2: 16:20

committed in that session. To Rich, who you've met, I said, rich, I'm going to try that. I'm just going to try. I'm going to get a notepad and I'm going to start with a blank sheet of paper. I'm going to start. And out of that, jesse, came this book.

Speaker 2: 16:31

Out of that came a process. I identified for myself that every morning through talking through other guests and saying we should start off every morning with what you were grateful for yesterday, what you're grateful for today. So then I started every day. I then changed my sheet of paper to start Okay, what am I grateful for yesterday, what am I grateful for today?

Speaker 2: 16:45

And then my brain dump and as I kept having more and more conversations, I started seeing more and more of a trend that some of the most successful people in the world journal every single day or night one of the two about what it just took in place, what they captured, what they put together, and I started finding it magical. I was like, oh, this is really cool, and the amount of ideas that I came up with just a blank sheet of paper where I just let my mind go wherever it was going to go really sparked my creativity, really helped with my memory because I had stuff written down. I can go back. It's all here, I know where to find it, as, with you, I got this remarkable pad, so the last few years are right here. I can go find anything. I can go find our podcast from a month ago that you had with me within seconds and say, oh yeah, jesse, we talked about this, this, this.

Speaker 2: 17:28

For me, it just kind of brought everything together. I'll give you just one last piece. Somebody at one point this is a book that I had read in the past and they talked about what's Facebook's business model. And Facebook's business model is the elegant organization of information Okay Is what they called it and in our minds we have all these input, millions of inputs. They're just kind of coming in and out every single day in our reticular activating system and that filter only takes in a certain amount of information. We can't take it all in.

Speaker 2: 17:54

But there's millions of inputs that are just coming in to us or trying to hit us every single day. The ability to elegantly organize some of that that is skating around in our minds on a piece of paper every day just creates magic for me now.

Speaker 1: 18:08

So two questions, or maybe observation and question. So one observation. It's funny like getting prepped for our conversation today. I'm like, oh man, I got a block out time I got to dig like in my head and then I sit down and outline. I'm like, oh, it wasn't as big when I actually sit down and do the thing because I like I got my dry erase pad here and when I have that stuff going on, once I put pen to paper or whatever pad, stylus to pad, whatever the damn thing is. Now it seems to settle all the static and all the stuff that it's not as big as I thought it was. When I sit down, get it out of my head and look at it, it's like, oh, that's the elegant organization.

Speaker 2: 18:52

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 18:53

Now, as you were journaling and I'm sure I mean you're an entrepreneur, you've built many businesses, you've got I'm sure your network is probably ultra power that network In terms of going from journaling to writing a book was it like, okay, I'm going to write a book, let me journal about it. What was that trajectory of getting fired, doing some soul searching, building a habit of journaling, writing a book Was it just that easy?

Speaker 2: 19:20

No, I mean, I think part of the journaling process for me was trying to crystallize what did I do, where did I mess up, and what do I want in my life, and what's my purpose and what's my passion and what do I want to do next, and all these different thoughts, but an introspective part of what did I learn as an entrepreneur in this experience? I started crystallizing. You know what it's? These five things? No, it's not these five things. I got two more. There it is. Oh, I got 10 now and these two are the same.

Speaker 2: 19:45

So I started like just trying to bring it together, partly because, jesse, that was going to be a lesson. Make it a lesson that I could really benefit from. I really didn't want to lose anything. The idea of writing a book the book would have been half-baked, the book would have been here's what happened to me and here's what I learned. But there's no proof of concept. That really wasn't quite there.

Speaker 2: 20:09

But when I talked to my business partner about taking this other business and say, hey, let's really grow this thing, let's go, but I'm only going to do it if we don't violate these learnings that I have right, let's go, apply them. And as I started to see the company grow and I started seeing we're going to do it. We're going to bring this company from 5 million to 100 million, applying these principles and full control of our business and doing it the right way. In my mind, I got to tell the story. I got to go help entrepreneurs. I got to tell the story of the whole process, which in the book I talk a lot about the story. So it's a third about a story, a third about the learnings and a third really the case study that goes along with it.

Speaker 1: 20:45

Nice, nice, okay, so you had an idea. Let me practice these things, these truths that you discover through a painful experience. Now let me go test them and then capture that story. So I know that's ultra, ultra basic, simplified, but I really want to pull it out that way because we can all do that. It doesn't have to be a billion dollar business plan. It's the lessons.

Speaker 1: 21:14

I really honestly I don't know how to tease it out but I get to coach and interact with a bunch of folks that want to do something different. Right, they're in that transition phase of life, introspective, I really I got a great job, I like it, my situation's good, but there's something missing and I feel like, because I did this, there were a ton of really valuable lessons and transferable skills that I built as a result of doing life, but I didn't understand how universally applicable they were to different venues, different situations, and so that's why I'm trying to be ultra basic. But where are you on that thought, in that the lessons that we learn are universal and maybe not don't have to be the $1 million journey they'd be like that's not exciting enough $10 million journey.

Speaker 2: 22:06

That's not exciting. $100 million, yeah, that sounds good. That's going to sell, right? So the principles in this book apply to growing a half a million dollar company to a $500 million company. They don't really change, right? So that's very important.

Speaker 2: 22:29

But I want to address the point you talked about in terms of the transition, right? So put things in this perspective. When I got fired from that company, jesse, that was my dream company, that was my dream role. If you asked me today, I could be the CEO of any company in the world. What company would you want to be the CEO? I'd be like that company I lost. That would be my answer. Right? So it was everything for me. So then you can't do that anymore. You got these non-competes, you got these different whatever. So, okay, now what am I going to do? Do I go on LinkedIn and look for another job? And what industry? What do I want to do? Like, you started going through all these different thoughts. You're in this transitionary phase. The one thing hopefully your listeners could take from this that I executed upon and it worked wonders for me is in Jim Collins' book Good to Great. He talks about the hedgehog concept. Are you familiar?

Speaker 1: 23:15

with that concept.

Speaker 2: 23:16

Oh yeah, it's these three circles right, the Venn diagram, where these three circles intersect, and I had once heard that's where success lives. If you can find the sweet spot in that Venn diagram, in the middle of those three circles, that's success for you, and I've since been using that same Venn diagram with all the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs that I coach, which is what are you most passionate about? Let's do a brainstorm. What are all the things you're most passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at? Let's brainstorm that. Maybe you're not the best in the world at it today, but you have enough passion in it and you're pretty good at it that you could be the best in the world at it. Let's brainstorm those things.

Speaker 2: 23:49

And what can drive your economic engine? What can really make the finances work for you that you have? What you're looking to get in your life? Right, and let's brainstorm those ideas. And where those all come to the center is what you should be doing. That's where success lives, and I think way too many people live in one or two of those circles and haven't found a way to live in all three. And once you live in all three, you're basically retired because you're doing life the way you want to do life and you waking up every morning excited, energized. You have the passion, you know you can be the best at it. You make it work for you economically. That is how you transition to something new is really find that sweet spot.

Speaker 1: 24:24

Yeah, thank you for saying that so clearly. So dumb question Sitting down and getting that list and find that sweet spot. Should somebody carve out like 15 to 30 minutes to make that happen, or should they be ready for a little, to invest a little more time?

Speaker 2: 24:40

Yeah, I think it's more time. I mean, let's go back to journaling, right? You could spend. You could spend an hour right now, if you're listening to this. Get a blank sheet of paper and fill that paper with the things you're the most passionate about. It doesn't matter, you write for your family. If it's this, if it's basketball, if it's carpentry, if it's ballet, it doesn't matter. Right? Write all the things you're most passionate about today, Tomorrow. Grab your paper and go what can I be the best at, Right? And write all those things down. And then what? What can I make money doing? Write all those things down and then combine that list.

Speaker 2: 25:11

I think it's a little bit more of a soul searching piece, right? Because sometimes it's also good to do it with somebody, like a coach, who could brainstorm with you. Wait a minute, Jesse, I thought you were good at the guitar, Like why isn't that? Or do you like the guitar? Oh, yeah, I'm passionate, but I can't make money doing it. It doesn't matter, we're still writing it down Like the brainstorm these ideas out of your mind. But yeah, it takes a little bit longer than 20, 30 minutes, but it also is not that complex of a thing to do and everybody can do it.

Speaker 1: 25:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good, and I'm glad you said that, because I back to patient ambition. Right, if I'm patient with this process, I'm going to list 10 things. Okay, there's the answer. Let me go do that and then spend a whole bunch of energy and maybe I didn't. I didn't invest the appropriate amount of time to get ultra, ultra clear on what that sweet spot is, and I love your recommendation to do it with a coach or somebody you trust so that they can challenge you and call you on it and really, really dig in deep on the thing.

Speaker 1: 26:11

I was having a conversation with a really good friend of mine, colleague in the industry, and we were having this conversation about goals and I have an issue, so maybe you could straighten my brain out a little bit. The way I view life or manage my ambition is I have a direction right. I am on a path to share my gifts and talents to introduce people to the promise they are intended to be, and, provided that I am sharing my gifts and talents in service to others, I'm winning. I'm on the path right, like that's. That's my method of thinking through selection, saying yes, saying no, all of that.

Speaker 1: 26:52

And my friend was like yeah, but what's your goal? And I'm like I think I just said it. So we got a little deeper into it and then it became like, yeah, but how do you measure that? And so I was like, oh, okay, in my head, measurement is not as important as the direction and the path. But I think for a lot of, I think, maybe, conventional thinking and where I'm struggling to understand, is no, no, no, no. You got to have these hard measurable goals before you start moving, which, again, I'm like no, I just need to make the next rightest decision and get moving. Well, what are your thoughts on all of that gibberish I just spouted?

Speaker 2: 27:28

Yeah, you're talking to a numbers person and I do have a core philosophy that you can't manage what you don't measure. So if you don't measure something, you don't know how well you're doing. That being said, that's more of my core philosophy. When you start talking about KPIs of a business and what the gross margin is and different things like that, in the grand scheme of everything right, one of the things I mentioned earlier is I have a 30-year life plan. I'd never had a 30-year, I'd a one year life plan, let alone a 30 year. I have a 30 year life plan and that whole idea.

Speaker 2: 28:00

One of the other contributing elements to that was the book by Gary Keller, the One Thing, and the concept there is what is the one thing you're trying to achieve in life Not in business, in life Like, what are you trying to achieve? What is that? So a lot of my self-reflection period that we talked about in that year I took some tons of time was what is that one thing? Then, once you have that one thing, 30 years from now, what does that look like? If you're achieving your one thing in 30 years, where are you from a health perspective, a financial perspective, a relationship perspective, a spirituality perspective. I don't know all the other perspectives you'd like to put in. Where do you want to be in all these areas 30 years from now? And then, okay, now you have your 30 years. Where do you want to be in 10 years? That, if you hit this level in 10 years, you'll be on track to your 30-year plan? Okay, got that.

Speaker 2: 28:48

Okay now, where do you need to be in three years to be on track for your 10-year, to be on track for your 30? Okay, got that. We need to be in the next year to be on track for your three year, for your 10 year theory? Okay, got that. We need to be each quarter. So now I have a quarterly plan? Okay, got that. Where do I got to be each month? Okay, got that. Where do you be each week? Okay, got that. Today, this hour, right now, you and I are doing exactly what we should be doing, that step we should be taking towards our 30 year life plan. I don't know how to measure it exactly either. All I know is, after this I'm doing another thing that plays into my 30-year life plan, and that's how my days are constructed is you've got to build those blocking elements to keep marching towards your total life plan in general, and as long as you keep taking those steps, have patient ambition, you start making those steps, they'll all accumulate. I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1: 29:33

So I'm not totally crazy. Steps they'll all accumulate. I love it. I love it. So I'm not totally crazy. And, truth be told, I do have some very hard, some very specific, clear things that I'm measuring daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. Those don't feel like those in my head. They're done. I just need to do the right things, learn the right lessons and keep doing them and they're going to be accomplished Like it's not hard.

Speaker 1: 29:57

Other thing the introducing people to the promise they're intended to be. That's a little harder and keeps me on a better path, not just for me but for people. I'm sorry I should say that the other way, because some people I had one person asked me. She was like Jess, you know, you're just so giving, you're so available. And I'm like, yeah, it's like, how, like, why do you do that? And I'm like it's not because I'm this super sweet guy, like for real, but because it keeps me sober, it keeps me healthy to serve others. So it's not like I'm serving just for the plain sake of serving. It's because it's the only way I know how to get fulfillment and stay sober. So there's some selfish stuff going on there, twisted stuff. I love it, but it's necessary to keep me going Now.

Speaker 1: 30:44

You've mentioned two words and I threw them out at the beginning intrapreneur and entrepreneur and at first I thought it was like a misspelling typo. I'm like no, I think there's something there, so what's the rule? I mean, I thought it was like a misspelling typo. I'm like no, I think there's something there, so what's the rule? I mean, I think people generally understand entrepreneur, what that means.

Speaker 2: 31:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:02

Especially now with all the damn content on social medias about entrepreneurship. But what's the relationship between entrepreneur and your book and entrepreneur and entrepreneur? Can you like clarify that?

Speaker 2: 31:17

Sure. So let me start with the second part. What's the difference between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur? There's a lot of individuals with entrepreneurial spirit that work within companies that aren't necessarily the owner of the company. They may, they may be a small equity owner, but they may not be. They may be, I mean, there are CEOs of companies that don't own the company, are paid very well to run the company, but they're an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2: 31:41

So I look at the entrepreneur as high risk, high reward. Right, you're putting all your capital at play, you're maybe getting you know, working for years without getting paid, and maybe someday you're going to create something great. Then you look at the employee who's exchanging time for money or results for money. Right on the employee side, yes, well, right in that middle is an entrepreneur. And an entrepreneur, if done right, is not only exchanging their time for money or results for money, but they also act like owners of the business. They're treated like owners of the business and I call them intrapreneurs. And in the seven principles, jesse principle four of the book. I'll give you principle four and I'll give you principle seven.

Speaker 2: 32:19

Big guess what all the other ones are based on that. Principle four is you need to build a culture of entrepreneurship in your company. I see on the dry race board behind you. Others listening who are not watching will not see it. It says invest in who you got. Are you investing in your team and helping them become more entrepreneurial within your company so they start treating your company like it's their own on every single element of it?

Speaker 2: 32:44

And principle seven, if I fast forward, principle seven is how do you move from CEO to chairperson of your business? Because you may not be the best person to run your business. You need to elevate yourself from being the operator to being the owner and being more strategic. Right, the only way to do that is by doing principle four building a culture of entrepreneurship where people can run your business. That $100 million company that I'm telling you about, that we grew in the contracting space, is run today. The CEO of that business was somebody I hired years ago as a sales rep who now is the CEO of that business. He's now an equity partner as well. So he's not just an entrepreneur, he's now an entrepreneur as well and my partner in that business. But he didn't start off that way. He started off as an employee, who became an entrepreneur, who became an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 33:30

Oh man, yeah, so I'm assuming you've read Dream Maker. I have not. I might be seeing the title of the book wrong because I'm not good with that. Anyways, when you talked about developing entrepreneurship within your organization because that's going to you didn't say these words, but in my head is what I heard right Develop the capabilities within your people so that they operate as entrepreneurs, because that's going to enable scaling of the business. And that book I think it's called Dream Maker very similar the super summation of that book this family, husband and wife had a business I think it was like a cleaning business and they were struggling with retention and you know all the things.

Speaker 1: 34:13

They started getting business and they couldn't get the people to do it and it was very transient. People would leave for a dollar more and what they started doing was really getting connected with their staff, like their cleaning crews, to understand what they wanted to learn and what they like, what their greater ambitions were outside of the job, and then they contributed to that, whatever that was learn another language, learn about business, learn about finance or leaders. They started making deposits towards the dreams of their people and guess what happened? They got tons of people that they had their head, hands and heart access to that and that business exploded. And then some of those their staff started their own little businesses and left. But when they left they said, hold on, we got. We know some people go work for these people. Yes, you're going to be cleaning commercial space, but they will make the dreams come true. Does that sound wacky? I mean, it doesn't sound wacky at all.

Speaker 2: 35:14

I think we have a massive problem in small business across America where the most common thing you hear from an entrepreneur is oh, I can't find good people, I just can't find. I can't keep good people, I can't find good people. There's an economic problem here. I can't find any good people. Hold on a second right. Let's take that mirror up and ask these questions. Right? Is the entrepreneur really a leader that people want to work for? Do they display those leadership traits and skills that inspire people that want to go work for a cleaning company? Right? Do they have those skills? Number two do they create the right environment for entrepreneurs to grow within? Because a lot of environments aren't built for proper entrepreneurship development. Let's call it right. People are stuck in a desk over there and they clock in and clock out. They're micromanaged. It's not set up for the right environment, right? Do they have the right situational leadership ability to train their team, depending on where they are, and keep developing them along the pathway? That's important. Can they identify the right talent?

Speaker 2: 36:16

Being an entrepreneur right now is like being a pro scout. You got to be walking around going. You know I'm looking for talent. Like, where's the talent? You got to be able to identify in your business the people that can do more and need to be elevated and given the opportunities to prove themselves. And you need to be able to identify talent in prospecting and interviewing. You need to be able to identify talent when you're at the restaurant and you see somebody doing something special. That's the type of person I want working in my business. Right, you got to be able to identify talent. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs are so busy running their businesses. They're in the trenches, they're shoveling the dirt, they're doing everything, they're rolling up their sleeves, and then the idea is well, I can't find good people, I can't keep good people, but they're not really developing that skillset within their organization.

Speaker 1: 36:54

Yeah. So you just mentioned a whole list of really powerful skills. I'm just going to be a thick headed goofball and say, well, yeah, but there's just not that many people with those skills. Like, where do I go to find them?

Speaker 2: 37:07

What skills though?

Speaker 1: 37:09

What skills are you talking about? That's okay. I don't. The people that I keep getting are people that don't take ownership for anything.

Speaker 2: 37:17

The people you keep getting or the people you keep hiring? Yes, the people I keep hiring, okay, and part of the question. Obviously this is very industry specific, right, but how are you prospecting? Going back to this path of least resistance I put an ad in the newspaper and these people showed up and I hired the best person of them, but they're not willing to take ownership is a lot different than are you prospecting people?

Speaker 2: 37:40

Do you have the right interviewing process? Are you running a caliper style, like predictive index tests on people as they're coming through, to see what their attributes are before going through the interview process? Right, like, how are you training them when they first come on and how do you motivate them and how are you paying them? Are you motivated, like? There's so many different elements of it, but the netting result ultimately and this is why I agree with you I hear it over and over again is why I just can't. They are all the good people, they just don't come work here, they work over there. You know there's a lot of symptoms as to why that may be happening.

Speaker 1: 38:13

Yeah, that's a very polite way to say that there's a lot of symptoms. I would say this is a you thing Instead of saying there's a lot of symptoms.

Speaker 2: 38:28

It definitely is them as the owner of the business. They got to set up the right environment. They got to set up, but I guess I bring back the problem in their defense. Cash is tight. I got to make sure our production's on schedule. I got to do this. I got to do that. Now we got a problem over here. Now this like the entrepreneurs run themselves crazy. Right, they're working 80 hours a week, fully stressed out, trying to figure out how to do this whole thing and you're telling them you got to hire better people. Yeah, easier said than done, jesse. What am I supposed to do now? Like? What am I supposed to do now? Like? It's not easy? It absolutely is not easy. But until you figure it out, until you create that culture of entrepreneurship in your business, you're never going to be able to grow the business of your dreams. You're going to be stuck in your business. You'll never get to principle five, six and seven in the book. You're going to stop at principle four.

Speaker 1: 39:05

As a matter of fact, it may go backwards the other way and you end up really in the depths of the messy middle trying to grow your business, where it's two steps forward, three steps back, one step forward, two steps back, and you can't ever get through. So a couple of things I'm hearing is one you got to kind of be prepared not kind of. You got to be prepared to develop the appropriate skills for entrepreneurship within your organization and there's value in understanding how to scout, recruit and hire folks with that skillset, or at least some indicators or attributes that can be built upon once they walk through the door. How'd I do on that?

Speaker 2: 39:44

Yeah, pretty good. I mean, I hosted a session this week with one of the largest franchising companies in the US and we had their franchising. We're talking about how do you create an environment that fosters this, because that cleaning company example you gave me they fostered this culture of entrepreneurship that once you foster it and the snowball just keeps going and going. That sports company I mentioned to you before that we lost, right, we had never run an ad to hire somebody ever. We were getting people coming to want to work for our business because of the word of mouth of people already in the business going this is the best company ever we got to work here, right. And once you get that, it starts going and starts rolling. And it takes hard work to do that.

Speaker 2: 40:26

But think about the whole environment, how your incentive programs are built, how you're patting people on the back and thanking them for what you do. Do you have a company picnic? Just think about the whole environment where people want to be. But then are you providing proper rewards? Are you giving people an opportunity to run a P&L of your divisions? Hey, I trust you Go see how you do it. Are you training them on the financials of the business and showing them hey, transparency, here's how we make our gross margin, here's how this works. Now go take this job and show me what you can do. Are you allowing people to fail and say that's okay, no problem that you learn, okay, let's take the next one. Are you getting, are you creating that environment where you're training entrepreneurs within your business, or are you trying to train your employees to generate more for you? It's an environment question.

Speaker 1: 41:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a. It can be the system. It's a system that can be designed right. My I kind of default to the thinking of whatever I'm experiencing right now and then, especially when I don't like the results or the outcomes that I'm experiencing, I need to evaluate my system, because I can tweak the system much faster, or rather in a more sustainable way. Then I can go and change the world and make everybody a better employee.

Speaker 1: 41:46

I couldn't agree with you more on that. Now. You said something that I 100% agree with. I have a way of going about it, but I'd like to get some insight on your thoughts, because you're coaching people. You've been in helping companies entrepreneurs grow their businesses in terms of celebrating problems and making it okay to experiment and I'm using experiment instead of fail, because that's how it works in my brain. What do you suggest, people, or what are some of the most common roadblocks that you see that are easy if people just shifted their thinking a little bit.

Speaker 2: 42:24

I love the word fail now and I wish I could give her appropriate credit. But we had a guest on our podcast. Her name was Erin. I'm trying to remember the last name now, but I'll have to look it up and get it to you. She has a company called Fail. Yeah, Fail.

Speaker 1: 42:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:40

And here's the problem we have, and she articulated this to me I'm like, oh my gosh, you're so right, you're so right. What happens is when somebody fails within the business, something doesn't go right, they take it and they try and shove it under the rug because they don't want to be exposed, they don't want anybody to find out. They're embarrassed, they don't want to get fired, whatever the situation may be. We live in that culture. Think about a CEO reporting their finances, even a public company. When they report their finances, they're not like yeah, here's where we really screwed up this month. They're actually shoving that under the rug and they're showing you all the beautiful graphs that actually go the right direction. They don't go with the ones that don't, and so we have this culture in small business, where it's not okay to fail, and the businesses that create a culture and what she was talking about in this fail. Yeah, culture, she goes into companies and every month you got to bring in a storyboard of something you failed at.

Speaker 1: 43:34

Ooh like that's a requirement, it's a requirement.

Speaker 2: 43:38

And the largest failures get the most rewarded from the perspective of we tried to do this, and massively. And they make fun of each other or themselves. I should say we did this. And look, oh my gosh, like here's what happened. It didn't work. And they actually recognize within the organization the vulnerability and the power of being open and transparent, because they can articulate how this didn't work. Somebody else learns from it. They make sure they don't repeat it.

Speaker 2: 44:01

All these other things start happening and there's less of a culture of hiding things. It's more of a culture of transparency and being okay and accepting the fact that no one's perfect and no one's ever going to do it all the time, and recognizing that. So I think it's a big thing in small business is to allow people to fail and, especially if you're trying to build a culture of entrepreneurship, give someone a responsibility to go, do something and let them know hey, I want you to succeed doing this, but this is a learning opportunity for you. And when they come back, yeah, it didn't really work and we lost a little bit of money on this job or whatever happened, go through it with them, train them, teach them, pat them on the back. So, okay, you ready to take one again? Let's go. You could do it this time and walk them through it again. A hundred percent.

Speaker 1: 44:39

I think the way I look at those failure points like my own personal failures I'm having fun and I can learn, and I got a great network of my advisory council. They really helped me polish up and tune up on the regular and, like when I'm supporting teams and helping people, the way I look at failure is the failure point is the venue for growth and coaching, and so hiding it or polishing that turd and sprinkling glitter on it doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help you because I think things are fine. It doesn't help me because I'm going to go tell my boss and I'm going to do my polishing right. Things are fine and by the time you can't hide it, when we run out of runway to polish and glitter up turds, it's too late to do anything about it. And so surfacing problems early is a good thing because, one, we can accelerate the learning, we can close that feedback loop. Two, you signal and get the resources you need to be successful so that it doesn't have a dramatic impact on the business and the health and wellness of the individual.

Speaker 1: 45:50

Because I know every time I polished something up I was not feeling good about it, but I didn't want to get yelled at. I didn't want to have that negative consequence, if you will. And so I've heard two sayings that I repeat often around this failure idea and it's bad news. Early is good news, and the other one I heard is bad news does not get better with eight. True that. And the other one I heard is bad news does not get better with eight. True that. And so if we, as leaders building a business or help raising kids, the way we respond and react to bad news is going to condition people to behave in an entrepreneurial way or not. What do you think about that?

Speaker 2: 46:31

No, I talk about kids, or even your team. Right, your team does something wrong or it doesn't work, or we lose a client and the entrepreneur comes storming out of their office and berates the person in front of everybody else. What kind of culture are you creating, right, with your kids? That was a perfect example. I love the way you bring that to kids. Your kid gets in an accident with your car or does something and they bring it to you. They come to you. Hey, they're probably crying. The last thing you should be doing is beating them up over it. They came to you, they had the courage to bring.

Speaker 2: 47:00

Now, certainly you're going to be upset. There's going to be different things, but how you react to things that go on in your business or in your life is 50% of the battle in my mind. Right, and it's all mindset regulation, it's all like mindset's a big thing. It's a big thing in athletes, it's a big thing in entrepreneurs, it's a big thing in business leaders and in parents, like the ability to regulate your mood and understand when and how. Having that emotional intelligence to know when and how to best use your emotions and your energy to develop future long-term benefit, not just the instant situation is a very hard skill to attain.

Speaker 1: 47:41

Oh, I know I've ordered it on Amazon and it seems to be on back order. It hasn't arrived yet. I'm still waiting for it. So who's I? You know I have a bad habit of being ultra selfish with awesome people's time, so I'm trying to be more responsible. But who is the ideal candidate to read the $100 Million Journey?

Speaker 2: 48:14

in the book that, specifically, if you're north of $5 million in revenues, have been in business more than 10 years and you're on this entrepreneurial journey, trying to grow your business to the next level, you must read the book. If you're an entrepreneur in business, you should read the book.

Speaker 2: 48:23

If you're an entrepreneur who's saying I want to start a business someday, the roadmap is here, right, you may not connect with everything right off the bat because there's some sophisticated financial elements to the book and as you're growing your company that are important to understand and master. But the book, I'd say, is for all entrepreneurs. But it depends as you grow and have been an entrepreneur longer, you start resonating with more of the core concepts.

Speaker 1: 48:46

Okay. So here's what I heard. I need the damn book. Right now I'm nowhere near a million, but it's going to help me and when I get there cause I'm going to get there to the what, all that other stuff because it provides me the resources and venues to serve more people. So that's the whole point. So I need the book and if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, get the book. I'm assuming it's on Amazon and you got a website for people to find it at.

Speaker 2: 49:13

Yeah, exactly, you can find it on Amazon. It's also at 100mjourneycom, so 100m as in millionjourneycom. All the information's on there as well, as well as a free workbook that people can go download. It kind of has a questionnaire in there and some financial instruments to help you with your business Beautiful beautiful, all right.

Speaker 1: 49:29

So get the book, guys, because I'm going to get it. I should have gotten it before we had this call, but I'm a slacker. So here's the fun question, and I'm excited because you mentioned you have a 30 year plan and it's probably extended. Since then, you've accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience, not just in business, but in life as a human being, and so what is the promise you are intended to be?

Speaker 2: 49:52

The promise that I'm intended to be to others or to me. Let's start with others. Okay, so not dissimilar to yours, but very closely. I want to be the guide to help people achieve their dreams without falling off the cliff like I did, and it's more geared towards entrepreneurs in that vein, but I do a lot of work with athletes, do a lot of work with parents and other areas that aren't entrepreneurs. But, yeah, helping people achieve their dreams the right way, with patient ambition, is really my life's purpose.

Speaker 1: 50:21

Nice, I love it. And how about? To you?

Speaker 2: 50:24

Yeah, my life plan is to maximize all of life's offerings. And then in all these different categories, right, how am I going to do that? Whether it be in my career, as I just mentioned that's kind of one big thing for me with my health, with my wealth, with my relationships, my spirituality, with my family and all these different areas, how am I going to maximize life's offerings? Because we're here for a short time, although it's being elongated a little bit. Right, there's going to be some, maybe some additional life and health span with all these technologies coming out, but we got to maximize it. We got to maximize every day, every week, every month and get the most of this thing called life. Oh man.

Speaker 1: 50:57

Amazing. I knew it was going to be deep, so I appreciate you for that.

Speaker 2: 51:00

Anybody- want to shout out. If I have to shout anybody out, jesse, I'm going to shout out Rich Hoffman right, my co-host with Entrepreneurs United Podcast, because you had a chance to meet with him and he's just been a 25 year long business relationship friendship. That's been there along my entire journey and I'm so grateful to host the Entrepreneurs United podcast with him every single week. I'd encourage people to check that out as well for entrepreneurs. They want to take a look at that. Definitely give him a shout out.