Latest / Daily Influence / 559. Breaking Ceilings: From Rock Bottom to Responsible Influence with Justin Lund
Transcript
- 0:10[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the daily influence where our mission is to deliver a daily dose of positive influence that can uplift you personally or be shared within your sphere of influence.
- 0:20[SPEAKER_00]: While not every episode may directly apply to your unique circumstances, we strive to provide insights and inspiration relevant to most people's daily, weekly, and monthly lives.
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- 0:40[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, I'm Greg Kleeneau.
- 0:44[SPEAKER_01]: Today, I am joined by a remarkable guest whose story is a powerful blend of success, struggle, and transformation.
- 0:52[SPEAKER_01]: Justin London is a founder of Propel Enterprises, where he helps founders and entrepreneurs break through their capacity ceilings,
- 1:00[SPEAKER_01]: using mindset mastery, systems, and strategic delegation.
- 1:05[SPEAKER_01]: With the background that includes building and exiting multiple businesses and navigating the personal and professional challenges of addiction at a high-stakes legal battle, Justin now dedicates himself to empowering others through authentic leadership and practical tools.
- 1:21[SPEAKER_01]: He's a living example of how resilience and responsible influence can drive meaningful
- 1:30[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, thank you for having me.
- 1:31[SPEAKER_02]: That's very kind introduction.
- 1:32[SPEAKER_01]: Just and can you share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?
- 1:36[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I think I kind of got started in this path when I was a small child.
- 1:42[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe eight years old ish.
- 1:45[SPEAKER_02]: I remember my one of my big brothers, but.
- 1:49[SPEAKER_02]: personal power 20 rounds from infomercial and I think it was $300 and this is the early mid-80s so that's like $12,000 today and he got it in the mail and he's like here you can have that listen to it whenever you want I thought it was really cool that he let me just take this this big box of cassette tapes and I listen to it and I just love that guy
- 2:11[SPEAKER_02]: that the energy him talking about flying into events on his own helicopter, I just thought, wow, that's cool.
- 2:18[SPEAKER_02]: So I loved the way that he got people fired up and he fired me up as a kid.
- 2:23[SPEAKER_02]: And that just kind of lit a bit of a spark inside me that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
- 2:28[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted I didn't want to have a boss or be told when I had to work somewhere and when.
- 2:32[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it just kind of grew from that.
- 2:35[SPEAKER_01]: That's cool.
- 2:37[SPEAKER_01]: That was like he certainly had a positive influence on him.
- 2:41[SPEAKER_01]: You've experienced both immense success and deep challenges.
- 2:44[SPEAKER_01]: How did these experiences reshape how you view influence and leadership?
- 2:49[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a good question.
- 2:53[SPEAKER_02]: through some of the challenges.
- 2:54[SPEAKER_02]: I've gone through a few cycles and major turning points that have had an impact on how I guess the lens that I view a lot of things, the world and all my experiences through.
- 3:05[SPEAKER_02]: One of them was losing my father at a pretty young age, I was 19 years old when he passed away and it was quite sudden.
- 3:12[SPEAKER_02]: He was a little older than most kids' dad's my age, but it's never the
- 3:20[SPEAKER_02]: And then getting into trouble with substance abuse and addiction, that was kind of another major turning point in life, and then going through rebuilding from there and rebuilding something pretty significant financially, and then having that all just taken stripped away and an imbezzledon.
- 3:41[SPEAKER_02]: having to fight through the challenges of that in the legal system, all gave me different sort of, it's hard to see in the moment when you're going through this, it's kind of like the refiner's fire, you know, you don't, you don't like the fire, but when you get on the other side, you look back and say, oh, okay, that taught me things, you know, I mentioned Tony Robbins, like that was, I love the psychology, I loved understanding why,
- 4:05[SPEAKER_02]: things happen the way they happen, why we do things the way we do them.
- 4:09[SPEAKER_02]: And that led me into my went to college and I took psychology classes, which
- 4:15[SPEAKER_02]: We're okay, but I could never really get excited about being like a, like a therapist or all the paths that that led down.
- 4:22[SPEAKER_02]: I just thought, ah, that's, that doesn't really seem like a good fit for me.
- 4:26[SPEAKER_02]: But I got a job in sales and sales and psychology was a really good blend.
- 4:30[SPEAKER_02]: It was a mix where I could be a little bit more enthusiastic than maybe a therapist often is, but also I could kind of keep working on what makes the brain tick.
- 4:40[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but that sales job is what got me kind of opened the doors to addiction and substance abuse that I found prevalent in the sales environment.
- 4:49[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so that led into the next chapter of rehabilitation through that process, which was like a six week retreat in learning all about my psychology.
- 4:59[SPEAKER_02]: Not just in general, but really like, you know, what's going on with me, and that's where I started to really pick up and
- 5:05[SPEAKER_02]: maybe amalgamize all of these previous experiences that there was a method to the psychology that they taught.
- 5:14[SPEAKER_02]: There's frameworks.
- 5:15[SPEAKER_02]: There were systems.
- 5:16[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, wait a minute.
- 5:18[SPEAKER_02]: So if I get this thought and I disrupt it with this technique and then I replace it with this technique, I produce a different result.
- 5:25[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like,
- 5:27[SPEAKER_02]: I swear Tony Robbins talked about stuff like this.
- 5:29[SPEAKER_02]: And it all started to come together, right?
- 5:32[SPEAKER_02]: So by putting it into my personal, you know, again, it wasn't abstract or vague.
- 5:38[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there are a person doctors talking to me about me and my issues.
- 5:42[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where these frameworks really started to click.
- 5:46[SPEAKER_02]: I get out of rehab and I started kind of putting that to use.
- 5:50[SPEAKER_02]: And I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder to prove to society that I was,
- 5:54[SPEAKER_02]: worth something and not just the bottom of the barrel.
- 5:58[SPEAKER_02]: And so I put everything into a business to prove to myself and to the world if I could really do it.
- 6:04[SPEAKER_02]: And I grew that into a significant operation using those systems and frameworks and techniques.
- 6:12[SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't have it all figured out.
- 6:14[SPEAKER_02]: I was still quite a young man and early mid-20s when I got started with that.
- 6:19[SPEAKER_02]: And it was what I kept blind, what I tried to stay, you know, the things that we don't bring awareness to or typically the things that get us into trouble.
- 6:30[SPEAKER_02]: And mine was, I don't like numbers, I'm not good with the tax side of things.
- 6:34[SPEAKER_02]: And so I just absolutely like delegated and that's not even the right word.
- 6:40[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I didn't even put an eye on the numbers.
- 6:43[SPEAKER_02]: I let somebody else come into
- 6:49[SPEAKER_02]: head in the sand, sort of technique and just took me to the cleaners, you know, all the, I mean, we built a almost nine figure business and had tens of millions in profit and it was gone at the end of five years just completely gone.
- 7:05[SPEAKER_02]: So, so I wasn't downloading lessons and that's where I had to figure out how to shine a light on the things that I may have as a
- 7:16[SPEAKER_01]: such trials and tribulations, and such a roller coaster.
- 7:20[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
- 7:22[SPEAKER_01]: Appropel enterprises, you focus on helping founders overcome their capacity ceilings.
- 7:28[SPEAKER_01]: What mindsets shifts their systems?
- 7:30[SPEAKER_01]: You find most powerful in helping people grow into their fullest potential.
- 7:35[SPEAKER_02]: So again, keeping in mind my experience and sort of that roller coaster that you just described it aptly as I see that a lot with the founders I've gone through it myself a lot and so this you know roller coaster looks like this typically and that's what I appear is that capacity ceiling is what I call it.
- 7:54[SPEAKER_02]: So
- 7:55[SPEAKER_02]: people will come up and off and bump their head on the ceiling and then they turn down.
- 7:59[SPEAKER_02]: And in business that typically looks like revenues and stress reaches certain point, they can't really take it anymore.
- 8:06[SPEAKER_02]: They don't really know what to do next.
- 8:08[SPEAKER_02]: And then they start to self-sabotage, turn things away just a little bit, put their head in the sand a little bit, and they start heading back towards that floor.
- 8:16[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like a thermostat.
- 8:17[SPEAKER_02]: I've heard people talk about like a thermostat.
- 8:19[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when you're you reach this comfort,
- 8:23[SPEAKER_02]: When it's here, you turn it down, when it's here, you turn it up, and what I try to do with people is help them understand, you know, take a page out of my book, you know, I turned a blind eye to anything that had to do with the numbers and finances and taxes, and it cost me everything.
- 8:40[SPEAKER_02]: And not only did it cost me the profits of the business,
- 8:44[SPEAKER_02]: It also allowed somebody else to file tax returns with forged signatures on them, to where there was at one point in the middle of this four and a half year litigation that I went through.
- 8:56[SPEAKER_02]: It's all I did for four and a half years, eight hours a day.
- 9:00[SPEAKER_02]: there was IRS debts that were north of five million dollars, and climbing within interest and penalties.
- 9:08[SPEAKER_02]: So don't do that would be my my council and it would be to just do something.
- 9:15[SPEAKER_02]: As entrepreneurs, we often try to make the best.
- 9:17[SPEAKER_02]: We sell problems, right?
- 9:18[SPEAKER_02]: We look at things.
- 9:19[SPEAKER_02]: So when we look at something like numbers or taxes or these areas, most visionary builders don't build because they really get a tax strategy or, you know, spreadsheet, so anything like that.
- 9:33[SPEAKER_02]: So that's intense to kind of get pushed in the periphery.
- 9:35[SPEAKER_02]: Like out of the spotlight.
- 9:38[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I, here's a simple quick one, like schedule a meeting with your CPA once a quarter this year.
- 9:45[SPEAKER_02]: Do it today.
- 9:46[SPEAKER_02]: If you just get that on the books, I don't do it for March or April.
- 9:49[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
- 9:49[SPEAKER_02]: Do it for May.
- 9:51[SPEAKER_02]: Don't do it on their B most busy.
- 9:53[SPEAKER_02]: Do it during their downtime.
- 9:55[SPEAKER_02]: And that's one of the things that I coach people to do.
- 9:58[SPEAKER_02]: And they, they often say,
- 10:00[SPEAKER_02]: What do I, I don't even know what to say?
- 10:01[SPEAKER_02]: What do I, what do I do?
- 10:03[SPEAKER_02]: And there's just, you don't have to get a master's degree in accounting to start looking at your numbers.
- 10:10[SPEAKER_02]: And so by meeting with the CPA and just adding context, the CPA can get context to your life, your business, your challenges.
- 10:20[SPEAKER_02]: And I tell a story at one time my wife,
- 10:24[SPEAKER_02]: There was just a couple of weeks before we turned in a lease, and we had a lease vehicle in the business.
- 10:29[SPEAKER_02]: He was driving the vehicle.
- 10:31[SPEAKER_02]: It was the first snow of the season in New England.
- 10:33[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like this much.
- 10:34[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was nothing.
- 10:36[SPEAKER_02]: We hadn't put on winter tires.
- 10:37[SPEAKER_02]: We weren't going to because we're turning this vehicle in.
- 10:39[SPEAKER_02]: It's an expedition.
- 10:41[SPEAKER_02]: It was a 24-month lease.
- 10:43[SPEAKER_02]: She slides a little bit out of control and hits the front, the side, the side, the back, like into a little mailbox and does like $18,000 a damage.
- 10:51[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, are you kidding me?
- 10:53[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
- 10:54[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we're turning this in in a few days.
- 10:57[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I have a meeting quarterly with my CPA.
- 11:00[SPEAKER_02]: So I talked to him a week later and I was like, Paul, you're not, yeah, let me tell you this.
- 11:08[SPEAKER_02]: Well, he doesn't really care about the story.
- 11:10[SPEAKER_02]: He's a little dry like a lot of accountants are, right?
- 11:13[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, wait a minute.
- 11:14[SPEAKER_02]: Was that the least vehicle that you're leasing under the such and such company?
- 11:17[SPEAKER_02]: I said, yeah, it was.
- 11:20[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm telling more of the story and I'm like, can you believe it?
- 11:23[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, wait a minute.
- 11:24[SPEAKER_02]: What are you going to replace it?
- 11:25[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, of course, at some point, but it's like, if you don't put it into the year on this was November, I'm like, well,
- 11:32[SPEAKER_02]: I guess I wasn't going to, but I mean, he's like, there's a single accelerated depreciation.
- 11:37[SPEAKER_02]: If you do that, and his accounting brain kicked in, so me just signed a story, I ended up buying a one, an F-150 truck that we accelerated all of the depreciation that year.
- 11:47[SPEAKER_02]: Not only did I write up the full ticket price of like $57,000 with all the depreciation, but it dropped my tax bracket because
- 11:56[SPEAKER_02]: It took me from this level of tax, to this level of tax.
- 12:00[SPEAKER_02]: So all my other income was taxed to the lower, I mean, it was just like, from telling a story.
- 12:05[SPEAKER_02]: And so when people say, I don't really know what to do to think about my numbers, set up a call with your CPA, four times a year.
- 12:12[SPEAKER_02]: Tell them what's, spend the 250 bucks an hour, whatever it is, because I say pins of thousands on that one call.
- 12:18[SPEAKER_02]: Just telling a story about how I was dumb and didn't change the snow tires, because I was trying to save a buck or two.
- 12:26[SPEAKER_01]: That is really a good advice.
- 12:27[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for sharing that.
- 12:29[SPEAKER_01]: If the IN team, we talk a lot about self-awareness, personal responsibility, and alignment with values.
- 12:36[SPEAKER_01]: How do you personally stay a line as a leader when navigating big decisions or setbacks?
- 12:43[SPEAKER_02]: I love that topic.
- 12:44[SPEAKER_02]: I love alignment.
- 12:46[SPEAKER_02]: I often tell people that, you know, when you're you're hitting the ceiling and you're going up and down on that roller coaster, if you stop and analyze where your time goes, what you'll find is that you're totally out of alignment in a most every case that you feel that stuck feeling.
- 13:02[SPEAKER_02]: So you spend an hour going this way, and then another hour you're going this way, and then the other hour you're going this way,
- 13:10[SPEAKER_02]: then you get to the end of the day and you you're puzzled on why you're in the same place you started but you're exhausted.
- 13:15[SPEAKER_02]: Well you're crazy, you know you're just going around like that's part of the deal.
- 13:20[SPEAKER_02]: And so part of what I love to do with people is get that alignment.
- 13:25[SPEAKER_02]: And that's by taking a future vision like some idea that you want to pull into
- 13:31[SPEAKER_02]: and getting clear on that so that your date to date decisions are in alignment with that because one hour this way stacked behind one hour that's this way.
- 13:41[SPEAKER_02]: Now four hours get you quite a bit of momentum quite a bit of forward movement whereas four hours this way this way this way this way just creates chaos and tumult so in my life I try to do the same thing so how do I
- 13:56[SPEAKER_02]: I have a vision of what I want to be in 20 years.
- 13:58[SPEAKER_02]: I review that vision quarterly.
- 14:01[SPEAKER_02]: My wife and I go away for a few days and I hope to get away from all the noise and we look at our vision and we compare like, is everything still relevant?
- 14:08[SPEAKER_02]: Is it still, is it still what's important to us?
- 14:11[SPEAKER_02]: And then sometimes you say, yeah, that was a little agrover ambitious.
- 14:14[SPEAKER_02]: Let's take that off the radar for now.
- 14:16[SPEAKER_02]: Let's push that into next year or something.
- 14:18[SPEAKER_02]: We get clear on that and then we start looking at planning so we know where the next last how do we do last quarter what do we want to change for the upcoming quarter and that's what I do and I review that three to five times every day I have a list of 10 12 things for this year the changes quarterly based on some of the tweaks we make but that's how I stay in alignment by I mean I've got a shortcut right here on my phone.
- 14:42[SPEAKER_02]: So that I have on the bottom, I just hit that button and up pops my goals and calling.
- 14:49[SPEAKER_02]: And then I have my list that I review and I tie that to other behaviors to things that I do.
- 14:54[SPEAKER_02]: So when I get up in the morning and I brush my teeth and I put on my workout clothes and then I go upstairs to the treadmill before I get on the bike or the treadmill, I sit down and I look at those goals first.
- 15:04[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the first review that I do.
- 15:06[SPEAKER_02]: And then as I'm reading,
- 15:16[SPEAKER_02]: So as a challenge comes up, back to your question is it as whether it's a challenge or a setback or a fork in the road or something that vision is never really that far out of sight and out of mind.
- 15:30[SPEAKER_02]: So it becomes very clear when it's like, well, here's this fork in the road.
- 15:34[SPEAKER_02]: One of them is definitely going to line up with that vision and the other one is less likely to.
- 15:41[SPEAKER_01]: it's great advice, Justin.
- 15:42[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sharing that.
- 15:43[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us about a moment or experience where you felt you made a positive impact on someone's life and what it taught you about your own influence?
- 15:53[SPEAKER_02]: Well, recently I've been working a lot with my older kids and teenage kids and helping them with their goals with similar practices.
- 16:00[SPEAKER_02]: But I think in the world of
- 16:04[SPEAKER_02]: business.
- 16:04[SPEAKER_02]: I moved to Hawaii after all the litigation ended and I was just ready for a little bit of a reprieve from all that.
- 16:12[SPEAKER_02]: And there was a couple of young men that I met in the condo complex that we lived right in the beach.
- 16:18[SPEAKER_02]: And they were talking about buying a company.
- 16:21[SPEAKER_02]: They were going to put together all this money and borrow a bunch of money and they were going to buy a tourboat company.
- 16:27[SPEAKER_02]: And they had a lot of angst and a lot of concern about the whole process.
- 16:32[SPEAKER_02]: For similar reasons, like they weren't really good with the numbers, they weren't really sure how to evaluate the financials that the previous owner who was potentially looking to sell, and they didn't really know how to make sense of that.
- 16:45[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that stands out as one of those moments where I'm just sitting in the hot tub with a Maxwell and just chatting with him and became really good friends with both of them.
- 16:53[SPEAKER_02]: They are now actually clients of ours and have been for seven years, but that was a moment where just helping them to take a deep breath and to realize that you don't, like I said before, you don't need to be a CPA, you don't need to have a master's degree in accounting.
- 17:08[SPEAKER_02]: He used to figure out how to do a little bit better with numbers, and then next quarter, maybe you do a little bit more, and then the next, you know, it's a process and they were able to kind of get
- 17:19[SPEAKER_02]: that's a result of that.
- 17:19[SPEAKER_02]: They took a deep breath.
- 17:20[SPEAKER_02]: They kind of got the angst of the whole consideration kind of moved out.
- 17:24[SPEAKER_02]: I knew we were able to move forward and they've been running this business ever since seven years ago.
- 17:28[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a great business.
- 17:30[SPEAKER_02]: They do very well and they've expanded and grown and have gone from just this one to adding some real estate holdings and different things.
- 17:36[SPEAKER_02]: And so I've kind of watched that ring side and just thought,
- 17:40[SPEAKER_02]: They were at a fork where they were about to turn away because it seemed pretty daunting and scary, and by just kind of normalizing it and helping them point to a few of the right people that could help interpret some of the numbers and help strengthen some of their weaknesses now.
- 17:57[SPEAKER_02]: They're bringing in great seven figure incomes.
- 18:00[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're the financially they're set.
- 18:02[SPEAKER_02]: They're doing well, and it was just that subtle change.
- 18:07[SPEAKER_02]: So that's something that I'm proud of and happy for them about.
- 18:10[SPEAKER_01]: That's wonderful.
- 18:11[SPEAKER_01]: Sounds like they had a positive influence on you, too.
- 18:14[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for sure.
- 18:15[SPEAKER_02]: And I get to go on the boat every time I'm in Hawaii, so that's good, too.
- 18:18[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, nice.
- 18:20[SPEAKER_01]: What message are words of encouragement?
- 18:22[SPEAKER_01]: Would you like to share with our listeners who aspire to make a positive difference in the world, especially those that may be facing personal or professional challenges?
- 18:31[SPEAKER_02]: I would say always share, like your journey,
- 18:36[SPEAKER_02]: is there for a reason and, you know, whether it's a sitting in the hot tub, with a couple of strangers at first, like be willing to open and share your experiences.
- 18:45[SPEAKER_02]: You've had those experiences for a reason, and there are somebody else, if not.
- 18:52[SPEAKER_02]: doesn't 100 or 1000 other people out there that could benefit from that experience.
- 18:58[SPEAKER_02]: So you never know what kind of effect you're going to have.
- 19:01[SPEAKER_02]: I had no idea sitting in a hot tub, what kind of effect I was going to have and where that trajectory would go, but by simply being willing and able to share a little bit of my story and how I had just gone through some of these experiences.
- 19:15[SPEAKER_02]: was transformative for them and you know I've heard other people say similar messages where just one post on social media kind of changed somebody's idea of something or one comment or one quote or one encouraging word sometimes it's just a smile or a good job keep up the good work
- 19:35[SPEAKER_02]: can really have an impact and you never know what that impact is.
- 19:38[SPEAKER_02]: So don't be so selfish as to keep it inside.
- 19:42[SPEAKER_02]: Get out of your own way.
- 19:43[SPEAKER_02]: Overcoming your own fears to just share what's in your heart and help somebody else.
- 19:49[SPEAKER_01]: That's great advice Justin.
- 19:50[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for joining us today and daily influence.
- 19:53[SPEAKER_01]: Your journey is such a powerful
- 19:56[SPEAKER_01]: that influence isn't about perfection.
- 19:58[SPEAKER_01]: It's about showing up a purpose, leading with resilience, and turning lessons into service for others.
- 20:06[SPEAKER_01]: If our listeners want to get touched with you, what's the best way to do so?
- 20:09[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, probably Instagram or any of the other social platforms were on pretty much all of them.
- 20:14[SPEAKER_02]: And it's at its Justin Lund.
- 20:16[SPEAKER_02]: We put out content regularly, and if there's anything that you're dealing with in business or startup that is kind of challenging,
- 20:26[SPEAKER_02]: probably a thousand different playbooks that we've created from our own internal companies as well as the companies that we coach and advise and anything that we have if we have a playbook on the subject will give it to you for free like you don't need to give us a blood sample or email address or anything just we ask for a follow you know coming coming hang out with us in our community and anything we have is available to anybody who's listening that might be beneficial.
- 20:51[SPEAKER_01]: Wonderful, Justin.
- 20:52[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
- 20:52[SPEAKER_01]: We'll put that information in the show notes.
- 20:54[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for joining us today.
- 20:56[SPEAKER_01]: That's great for you.
- 20:57[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thank you.
- 20:58[SPEAKER_02]: Appreciate it.
- 21:00[SPEAKER_01]: For our listeners, remember, even when you're facing your greatest challenges, you still have the power to influence your world in a positive responseable way, every step forward matters.
- 21:12[SPEAKER_01]: If today's episode resonated with you, please share it with your family, friends, and co-workers and consider adding daily influence to your daily routine, whether it's during your commute, a walk or a quiet moment, it's your daily dose of positivity.
- 21:27[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, keep having a positive responsible influence one small action at a time.
- 21:32[SPEAKER_01]: Bye-bye.