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Behind the Scenes: Building a Business Empire · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Unstoppable Success Podcast, where we spotlight visionary leaders who have mastered the art of growth, purpose, and powerful connections.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Jacqueline Strominger, connector, high performance coach, and creator of the Leap to Your Success Framework in Two Steps to Yes.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Each week we dive into bold insights, real conversations, and powerful strategies to fuel your growth, deepen your relationships, and ignite transformational momentum.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And why?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because you were meant to be unstoppable.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's leap into the podcast.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to the podcast.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I am Jacqueline Strominger.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And today, as you know, on this podcast, we love to hear from amazing leaders and their insights and get really key details as to the way that we can actually change, grow, and become unstoppable in our lives and in our business.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to introduce you today to Vince Cavino.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you a little bit about Vince.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: He has scaled businesses, he has built amazing, actually amazing businesses.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he leads by example where business mastery meets heart-centered transformational leadership.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: He is an as an eight-figure scaling expert and visionary CEO of Warrior Sage, Vin combines the hard-won lessons of entrepreneurial success with deep introspective work and self-mastery.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: His unique approach equips entrepreneurs to scale their companies effectively while connecting authentically with their teams, families, and communities.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, Vince, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And even in your even in your your in your bio about you, we're the the scaling and bringing all of you know bringing company to fruition obviously comes out.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to the show.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Jacqueline.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Vince, you know, uh you've had a great success.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that I think a lot of leaders question is how do we go from at small scale to big scale?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so how did you how have you done that?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so I'll I'll define small scale to big scale.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: There are certain ceilings that a leader hits, and in each case, the growth is self-imposed.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So leaders grow to their own capacity.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: If their own capacity allows them space to be able to manage a team of five, what can that team of five do and how effectively can they do it?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: If someone is incredibly good with AI integration in 2025, then that could potentially be a tremendous scale.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Very often, the next level, let's say the to go from seven figures to eight figures, it requires developing the leaders around you, which means I've got to understand how to attract them.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why would a great leader that's his whole life been making two, 300 grand a year, incentives of 100 to 300 grand a year?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: That level of leader, they're paid that much because that's what the market drives.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: People are paid what they're worth in the market.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you're making 80 grand a year right now, that's what you're worth, according to the economy.
• 3:25
  unknown: Right.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's how the economy works.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so if I want to get someone that is truly capable of adding three, five, seven million dollars in revenue to my company, and let's say that 40% of that follow falls to the bottom line, a really profitable company, then it's going to bring in$2 million in additional EBITDA into my company.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm going to have to pay, if I'm really efficient, three, four hundred grand for that person.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: A leader that is not able to mentor that person and lead that person to a higher level is not going to attract them.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that means he'll never be on your team.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding how to create a compensation package, how to create an environment where they see the vision of the owner.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: They say, Oh, I see.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is my path to seven figures here, or to eight figures if you're, you know, Fortune 5000.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're not going to get a great C-suite person at that level unless unless there's something that makes them believe they're going to be at eight figures.
• 4:28
  unknown: Right.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Exit or otherwise.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a big piece, is that uh the the and and very often it's three, four, five leaders that are just really powerful.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when we went from a million dollars a month in revenue to three million a month, it was in that 18-month period where I received enough growth capital to be able to bring in those$30 million people to two of them and then another three that were in the$150,000 to$200,000 range.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: At that level, you can get the cream of the crop, the one percenters.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: The difference between somebody making$80,000 a year that's doing your marketing and someone that's making$150,000 a year is the difference between, you know, um a 30% growth rate and 80% growth rate.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or the difference of a CFO, which CFOs are so misunderstood and misunderutilized.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I would totally I totally agree with that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: They, yeah, the financial part of it, knowing all those ins and outs and what they can do.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, there's so much that that a great CFO can bring to the table.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But something that you just said, I think is kind of like quintessential.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, listeners, you know, as you're growing your business and even as leadership, there's a couple of things that you have said.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, number one is is being able to develop the leaders around you to grow and attract those right leaders.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really important.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of times I think we bring people in to a company, and Lisa, and this is also what I have seen and what I experienced when I was in corporate.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're bringing people in as leaders, and you think that they don't that leaders don't need to be led.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: But in actuality, there is everybody has some growth in them, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Jacqueline, this such an important observation is that uh the best leaders are also followers.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm attracting people that are great leaders who are also followers.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as a as a CEO, I looked at my mentors.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: One was our um chairman of our board, which by the way, a board of directors helped me tremendously.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was part of my growing from from uh low eight figures to well, growing from 10 million a year to 35 million a year.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: I had two or three other mentors that I believe were leaders in my life that I said I admire the way they lead, the way they love, the way that they're able to seamlessly give up control.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was something that I really held on to.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was a micromanager.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and you gotta have a good observation for yourself to realize that, right?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then that was part of my mentorship is being led by someone that could teach me.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then my willingness to lead others.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you this in 2016, when I first brought on my two uh C-suite executives, you know, a quarter million a year apiece with and with incentives as well.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: I went through maybe three executives over the course of three years, which is way too high.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized, okay, I can I can attract them here, I can dangle a carrot, I can show them, hey, look, this here's our path.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: This this company's gonna be worth$400 million, and here's your slice of it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't at that stage retain them, didn't have the capacity.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another part of the formula.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's one thing to bring them on, it's one thing to sell them on the vision, which I was really pretty good at.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: But um, six months in or eight months in, I remember a COO who I couldn't believe I'd got someone at this level.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, wow, this is this is just incredible.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: But he truly saw what was possible.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And because he was such a professional ninja with humans, he said, Vince, you're you're hard to work for, I want to tell you.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it was my first time I ever, you know, I heard a thousand people tell me that before, but I had never let it land in the level of trust that I had in this person, the respect that I had for his integrity.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, he's probably telling the truth.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then I started to realize how to retain and why it was hard and why I needed to be a little bit, you know, Steve Jobs went through that uh process as well and had that shift.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And very often it comes with with some of the gray hairs, but it you know a few extra wrinkles in the comes with a little of that.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the those are big pieces of it.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, getting alignment of those key, depending on the company, the dynamics, those key three, four, five people, those key alliances in the company internally, and then obviously the you know, the key partnerships externally and developing those, which is similar principles, attracting those, developing those, retaining those relationships.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really it.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: You really don't need too many.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I found that in my financial planning business.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: I had two people that were paid six figures, uh, and then another dozen that were paid, you know, 60 to 90.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh with with clients, with with building that business out, a couple of CPAs, a couple of attorneys that were just great referral centers, great partners with with other business owners.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then then I found the same principle to be true in in my other uh two businesses that uh that were really successful.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that was that that was a big key, really.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's a team approach.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what you just said, team approach.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: But you also said something that I that I think that again, I I really want listeners to to really hone in on this, which is you are also open and willing to learn and and make a shift because you saw that there was an issue, like you saw that you could bring people in and you're like, oh, I you know, if I keep doing the same thing, that's obviously we and and I'm not getting the same results.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have to do something different.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's interesting.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: We started tracking retention, and I and I was shocked because we, you know, we had uh about 550 people employees when COVID hit.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: When COVID hit, we you know, the everything changed for us because we had uh we had to uh close everything, we had to go from 150 grand a day in revenue to zero.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that changed everything.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: But but before that, and of course, after that, as we went back up again, I was listening to a podcast and I and I realized how valuable retention of employees was.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked and I thought, oh my goodness, here's our retention rate.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds horrible.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I went and did had our HR director who was amazing.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: She was with about eight, nine years.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: She um started out as a reptile uh husbandry expert at one of the locations and just uh moved into HR.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Just in case fascinating experience, if we had time to get into that, but um had her run the report per department.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I found out our husbandry department had sky-high turnover, and that allowed me to say, what is it about our husbandry department that's causing such high turnover?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, in many cases, they don't like the uh practices, our husbandry practices, our enrichment.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started to do exit interviews of people who would put in their two weeks' notice or leave, and we'd learned so much about um about how we run our company from our employees.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And before that time, it was really look, this is erring, but I'll say what it what was silently going through my head.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the smartest guy in this room.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'll set the policy, I'll set how this goes, I'll set the checklists.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody would say, Well, if we did this or we did this, I'd say, okay, yeah.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you for that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Here's this, here's your checklist.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And as I as I began to listen and study, I would learn why this department or that location had high turnover, higher than the industry average.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, how can I be worse than the industry average and possibly be competitive?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that allowed me to see how to shift cultural changes.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I had always read Peter Drucker's, I love it, uh, you know, strategy eats or culture eats strategy for breakfast.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I really didn't understand what it meant and why it why it was true until I began to listen.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And when I listened to your point, became open and receptive to what others were saying.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's when we moved from well below industry average to way above, not way above, but it a decent 50-60% better than our industry average.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, wow, better retention, lower, lower cost of hiring, less you know, fewer mistakes, safer, all just so many advantages.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a big big shift, big improvement.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's huge.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I absolutely love that.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so basically, not to put words in your mouth, but basically you went from thinking that you were the smartest person in the room to realizing you're not the smartest person in the room, and there's somebody else in this room that's smarter than me.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or that we're all collectively, collectively, right?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Collective collectively, there is that brilliance, right?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And to use that brilliance.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the key thing.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like as a leader, you have to understand to use the brilliance of your team, like get their get their take in on what's happening, because you know, from the person who's quote unquote the lowest position all the way up.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that lowest position is but might have more of an insight into what people are seeing because they might see the customer in a different way than you do.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely true.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, how'd I been able to like like if current 50-year-old Vince uh could go back and go into the mind of 35-year-old Vince, uh, oh my goodness, what a difference.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right, but that's why it's so great because you get to share this wisdom with us now.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so hopefully there is a 35-year-old Vince listening, and they're gonna collect that wisdom, which is so important.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, something that you also said that I think is also really important to I want to talk about is that you you shared in order for you to scale, I mean, you had to obviously go out and get you weren't bootstrapping this off of your credit cards or a loan from the bank.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: You actually, you know, to bring in those key C-suite people that you know, leaders that were going to help you, you know, to pay somebody three, four, whatever uh uh hundred thousand dollars a year plus bonuses, that takes capital.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, unless you obviously had it saved in the bank.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just takes capital.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh an investment in yourself is generally the best move you can make.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: An investment in your leadership, your development, both inner and outer mastery.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: I believe if you have one or the other, you're gonna fail.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, you could have great business mastery, which I believe that I had, and I believe that I failed in so many levels because I truly didn't have that inner mastery.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I understand that really clearly now.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of mentorship and a lot of work on that.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in terms of growth capital, most businesses are on a, they don't know it, but they're on a 10 or 20 or 30 year timeline.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And they're not even thinking that far advanced because they're thinking about next month or maybe next year.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is most businesses that are successful take decades.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's start with 95% of businesses don't make it 10 years.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: The ones that do make it 10 years, they're in it for 20, 30 years.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how do I shorten that 20 or 30 years so that I'm not saving and slaving for 20 years and turn that into a five or a seven-year timeline?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's when uh it dawned on me.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I want to build 20 locations.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's gonna take all other five to 10 million dollars a piece.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna take me 30 years if I wait till I get my revenue ramped up.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I'm laughing because it's so true, but because it's you know, you know, we don't we don't see, and I and I want to say this, you know, so many times in business that we don't see the beginning, right?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see, you know, people you know, think about Amazon, for example, right?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody saw the beginning of him working on that, right?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And there's that 10 years that it took to get to here, and you know, but then there was capital.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so keep keep going.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Capital, his parents, uh, a couple of his friends, and and you know, they've obviously done really well.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it without those very fundraises, it's very probable, and I haven't dissected his well enough, but um, there are plenty of deals out there, plenty of big public companies out there with that without the growth capital, they would not exist.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: These people wouldn't be billionaires, they wouldn't employ 10,000 people and serve 10 million customers.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Sequest, my company, um and other companies that I had were not brand sequest branded.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: They served 20 million guests that came to my locations.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: We estimate that when someone comes, they smile 80 to 150 times.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, I created two billion smiles.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Two billion, right?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Of these right here.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: That would not have happened if I didn't know how to go out and attract capital.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, let's just say same principle, reach retain the capital because I can tell you that my early investors that on day one put in a million here and two million there, later, years later, put in three million here or eight million there.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so you know, we raised a lot a lot of eight eight figures of dollars from real estate partners, from investors, uh, in comp saying a couple of cases from friends.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I would have would have never been able, you know, in my peak growth year of 2019.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, when COVID hit, everything changed.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: We, you know, we shut everything up.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: But the year before before COVID hit, I built five locations.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: I opened five in the the year.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in fact, when COVID hit, I was literally a month and a half away from opening Fort Lauderdale.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: A month and a half.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had water in my exhibits, I had sharks ready to go.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I we were so close.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was crazy.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then there was a big lawsuit between the city of the KEDA sued the city of Fort Lauderdale for letting me come to Fort Lauderdale and then COVID hit at the same time.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was just it was just nuts.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Able to build five locations and employ 300 people at those locations that welcome three, four, five hundred thousand guests per year without, in that case, about twenty-eight million dollars.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't have done it.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it's it's necessary.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I suppose I could have done one every two years and and made this a 20-year endeavor, but I don't have the patience for that.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to make a big impact, right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: In this case, it was 2 billion smiles, and frankly, 400 million dollars for me.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my motives have shifted, but that was the ideas is still impact at some level.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, yeah, growth capital is something that uh in my early career as an with an investment firm, that's where I started.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I built a firm called Legacy Wealth up to about nine figures, and then I sold that.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: That now is approaching a billion dollars in in assets under management, managed by uh probably 60 or 70 advisors now.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they they've really taken it into a the three businesses that I've had really successful exits with, they've taken them to astonishing levels, and it's very gratifying to look around and say, wow, that look look at all the good that this company is doing.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and I birthed it.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I brought it in through its you know, toddler years and juvenile years, and they've taken it and they've done things that um frankly I wouldn't have done.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and I say that in positive ways.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean they've gotten more sophisticated, more calculated.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the level of planning that they do now, I was just on the phone with them yesterday, uh, helping some, you know, a guy worth 130 million dollars.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's beautiful to see that and be a part of that.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think that's actually a really interesting thing to be also to be able to be to be able to understand yourself as to almost like knowing, you know what, I've gone here with this, I know that if it's gonna go here, I might need to step out, sell it, whatever, so that I can have somebody else bubble it up even further.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so in that sense, like if somebody has that company or is in that position, what was the time what was the sign for you that was like this is the right time for me to this is such an interesting question.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if anyone's ever asked me this, but I have quite an experience around this.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have always thought to myself, even after dilution, my wife and I owned 70% of Sequest.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we we always said that that whoever is the most qualified, or the shareholders, myself and five other people who have invested a lot of money.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Whoever's most qualified to be CEO should lead this company.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And when that day comes, that it's not Vince Cavino, let Vince Cavino get out of the way.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's hundreds and hundreds of employees, there's people that depend of all the companies.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Out there, they've chosen, they've said this is the company that I'm gonna trust to feed my family.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is the company that allows me to sing my music and do something where I feel I'm making a contribution and I'm being recognized for the impact that I'm making right here.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And when somebody can do that better than Vince Cavino, his obligation is to get out of the way.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Two and a half years ago, that happened.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Our CFO, I realized six or 12 months in, I realized this is an executive at a level that I've um I've not gotten to yet.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to the board and I told them precisely that.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I think he's better.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I also think one of the private equity companies that backed out in the last hour, 2017, we had a$40 million offer for private equity deal.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: It fell apart four days before closing.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because he called and said, Look, Vince, one of our multi-billion dollar investors just called, looked at the deal before we fund it, and said and said, His name is Brand.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Look, we are not going to own C World, C Life, CQS, C Nothing, get out of that business, run.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a dead end.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: The moods are shifting, the worlds are shifting, and and these guys are very hands-on as well with animals.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's not gonna go.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he told me, he said, uh, Vince, here are the things you need to do to get to the next level in your business.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I followed those.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: One of those was how I had set up my board and even myself as a CEO.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I took a vote, the the board took a vote after I told them that.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they came back.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and I and I again, my suggestion was I think Aaron will be a better CEO than me.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they came back and and they said, made the made the vote.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Vince is still the CEO.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh, I was very gratified at this level because I thought they believe in me.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Here I am in the midst of COVID.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's the it's a shit show.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's for us to try to feed 50,000 animals, you know, with with no revenue coming in, and and and it would plenty of challenges.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, I thought, I'm not sure I want to be doing this anymore.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Every day was a fight.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like Chief Joseph, I will fight no more forever.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: So another four months went by, and I went back to the board and I said, Um, first of all, I still think that our CFO is a better CEO than me.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Second of all, um, my passion for this is dwindling.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you're when you're paying attorneys 800 bucks an hour to fight animal rights activists and just constant, you know, good morning, America, all just news articles.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you read the new news articles, you're like, okay, look, there's like four percent truth to that, you know what I mean?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so out of and you just every day, there's literally three, four, five articles every single day.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I I step down, but but there's a there's a great study out of Harvard, that the founders' dilemma, where the very skills that that birthed the company into existence took it to the level that it hit where it hits a barrier, are uh are not the skills uh that are needed to take it to the next level.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so very often it behooves, and I've seen brilliant people do this where they've hired a CEO.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember 2005, 2006, one of my friends did that for his company, very successful company, and I was I was closely affiliated with him.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I had a great valuable lesson there that he brought in a CEO that was better than him at it for this big company, and it was a good move.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And hindsight is like I say, wow, wow, you know, he just had a quarter of a billion dollar exit.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why he put in the right leadership.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I could talk to you for hours about this because I think it's I think it's it's it's I think it's so true that again, like there's a season like when you and even the you know, as when you found something and you get it going at some point, it is actually better to take that step back and have somebody else come in not because you don't believe in it anymore, but as you shared, like the passion for it changes.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: You want to see it go and keep growing, but your day-to-day passion changes.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: And exactly, it could be it could be passion, but it also could be skill set.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah, skill set right, yes.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, and bringing somebody else in and being able to acknowledge that and recognize that, like, kudos to you for like seeing that.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that's sometimes that's a lot harder to see and admit.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't have the skill set to do that and to admit that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because so many of us don't want to, like, so many people don't want to, right?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll give you a quick hack, Jacqueline.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: You'll like this.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you who if you spend a lot of time on AI, AI knows you, and it will tell you what your blind spots are if you ask it and say, be brutally honest with me with all these prompts, everything you know about me.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Give me 20 questions that explore my leadership capabilities.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Where am I strong?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Where am I weak?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Give me the questions, then go in and answer those 20, 30 questions, and then say, Now, my AI's name is Valen.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me everything, tell me what I don't see, and don't sugarcoat anything.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: I want the fucking truth.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it laid it out, and it was so spot on.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I can't believe it gave me chills, and I thought, oh my gosh, that's why my mentor told me I'm a four out of ten with leading the feminine.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: I see it, I connect the dots.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Here's why in 2013, this female employee told one of my uh advice, one of my board of advisors, Vince doesn't know his head from his ass.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, I know why she said that, because I don't.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: I get it right.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, when you're willing to receive the truth, I call it the lotus sword, the penetrating truth, recognizing what's but people in your life that can do that with love in depth, like the COO did for me at one point or another employee.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: So many times I've had not so many times, but five or six people in my life, which is a lot, who can speak truth to me when I have a blind spot.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've got them.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've got five or six of them in my life, and they will drop truth bombs right on there.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's every time we go to a different level in our relationship.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to ask, I'm gonna have to ask my favorite uh AI that knows me the best.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because you know you there is one that you always do your whatever.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have to ask in my blind spots.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um anyway, so Vince, um how can people get connected with you and learn more about all the things that you're doing?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I know pre-show you share that you've got this little retreat happening place.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how can people best connect with you, get more of your wisdom?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh warriorsage.com.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on TikTok as well, and uh Orvin Scavino.com.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is it one is there one place that you hang out more?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um if someone's looking for growth capital, warriorsage.com, uh someone's looking for um just a bit more about just the the content of my experience in my life, probably TikTok.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, listeners, first and foremost, I'm sure you gotten some great nuggets out of this episode.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I have, and Vince is such a wealth of knowledge and a great expert on growing and scaling a business.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: So connect with him.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Go to Warrior Sage, check him out on TikTok, connect with him on all the socials, and please do me the favor of sharing this episode with your friends and colleagues because I think it is vastly important information to uh to be shared.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And also make sure you hit subscribe.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jacqueline Strominger, your host, and thank you for listening.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you, Vince, for being an amazing guest.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me on the Unstoppable Success Podcast, where we don't just talk about growth, we leap toward it.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: If something today lit a fire within you, sparked a new idea, or gave you the extra push forward, please don't keep it to yourself.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Share this episode and podcast with a friend, colleague, or fellow high achiever.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to subscribe, rate and review, and most importantly, connect with me, Jacqueline Schumppinger, at leaptoyoursuccess.com.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: For coaching, community, and your next bold move.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Keep leading with intention, keep building your network with purpose, and most of all, keep leaping because you are meant to be unstoppable.