Latest / InvestBetter.™ Podcast / The future of charitable giving as an investment strategy

Transcript

The future of charitable giving as an investment strategy · InvestBetter.™ Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Your fear is not what makes you successful in business.
0:03
SPEAKER_07: My story, it was a single mom, three sisters, and it was very motivating.
0:07
SPEAKER_07: Like I never want to feel this way again.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: But I want to build from joy, not from fear.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Like what I would say to any entrepreneur out there right now, do the self-awareness work that makes you a healed person.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: The limiting belief can't be broken in theory.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: It's broken by showing up and doing the work and then seeing the results.
0:27
SPEAKER_07: You invest heavily in other people.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: So when I think about what makes me have the most joy in life, it is the moments where I get to see somebody come into their own, right?
0:39
SPEAKER_01: When they realize who they really are.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: Just take 10 minutes, get still, and ask yourself the question, where do I feel most alive right now?
0:48
SPEAKER_01: And I I've I've done this before, but uh my cell phone is 615-498.
1:04
SPEAKER_07: Will, thanks for being here, brother.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Hey, great to be here.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me, Sten.
1:08
SPEAKER_07: So you spend your time corner to corner, you founded that.
1:12
SPEAKER_07: You invest heavily in other people.
1:14
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that's kind of my whole thing.
1:16
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, tell me more about it.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll give you a little bit of the background story.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I grew up in the church.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: My dad was a pastor, church planter, very entrepreneurial kind of church world.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and knew I knew all the right answers, right?
1:29
SPEAKER_01: All the good Sunday school answers.
1:31
SPEAKER_04: True.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: But then I went to college at NC State for my undergrad, and I thought I'd go to college, then go to seminary and be like my dad one day.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: But instead I fell in love with being in a rock and roll band.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: Strong.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh grew my hair out this long, none of it was gray, right?
1:45
SPEAKER_01: And I I was touring everywhere from the Apollo in Harlem to the Dallas Hard Rock, bunch of crappy bars in between.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I would say at that point the band was good for my ego, but bad for my soul.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and around that time I connected with this brilliant um leader at the University of North Carolina who's an expert in the AIDS pandemic.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so in 2002, he had a small group at his house where we unpacked a little bit of faith stuff, but also like what do we think about when we think about global poverty?
2:14
SPEAKER_01: What are all the interaction points, the economic landscape, the medical landscape, all of it?
2:19
SPEAKER_01: And then he led us on a trip to Nairobi and we all, you know, kind of split up.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, and we were there to learn from African leaders, um, both from the faith community and the business community about how they were meeting their neighbors in the middle of the AIDS pandemic.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: And I came home from that trip, and you know those moments where you just have an internal dissonance, like, oh, what I'm building my life on is not enough.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: Whoa.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: Right.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'd love to say the earth shattering change everything when you got home, kind of it was earth shattering shattering internally, but the band was so good at stroking my ego.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I I joke, you get these messages, you know, I I would say from God, but you might say the universe, right?
3:00
SPEAKER_01: But you get this moment where you go, oh, I'm meant to be doing something else.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: And I think when we listen to that, beautiful things start to unfold.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: But I did that thing that a teenager does when they hear a thumping in their car, they just turn up the radio and just maybe that makes it go away.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Right.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh so I did, I I tried to numb that out for a couple of years, but but it was very clear that I was meant to go in this direction.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: So uh a little over 20 years ago, my wife and I moved into a low-income neighborhood uh off of Dickerson Road in Nashville, uh, with the goal of how do we get a theology of neighbor?
3:36
SPEAKER_01: Right.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: Like, how do I actually love my neighbor deeply and meet them in their hardest moments?
3:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so that led to the founding of Corner to Corner, but really over time led to this idea that, you know, if we see our neighbors through a lens of pity, then we only build relief solutions.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: And I would say relief is a great place to start and a terrible place to stop.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: We instead want to build a pathway to flourishing.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: And so we focused in on equipping underestimated neighbors with everything they needed to plan and launch and then grow their own small business so they could become their economic engine.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: And so we've graduated close to 2,000 of those neighbors here in the middle Tennessee area.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: We're now expanding nationwide under the banner of a brand called Kingdom Founders that I started last year.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: And we now have seven cities that are running that.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And I hope to get to a thousand.
4:30
SPEAKER_07: Game on, let's go.
4:31
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
4:32
SPEAKER_07: What else are you doing?
4:33
SPEAKER_07: Let's go.
4:34
SPEAKER_07: What came up in me when you said that I'm in the financial advice world.
4:37
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
4:38
SPEAKER_07: Like when I think of investing, I'm just like, how do I save people money in taxes?
4:40
SPEAKER_07: Like, how do we grow your business?
4:42
SPEAKER_07: And I and I vividly remember this was probably five years ago, a good friend of mine that runs a nonprofit.
4:49
SPEAKER_07: I'd gotten to a point where it's like, I'm successful, I have extra.
4:52
SPEAKER_07: So the instinct is like, how do I give to organizations?
4:55
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
4:56
SPEAKER_07: And he told me once, he's like, send that.
4:58
SPEAKER_07: I think that's awesome.
4:58
SPEAKER_07: Like you're really generous with that.
5:00
SPEAKER_07: But he's like, I don't see you being generous with your time.
5:03
SPEAKER_07: And I was like, oh dang, like like money is is easy.
5:06
SPEAKER_07: Uh I think we should all do that.
5:07
SPEAKER_07: It's important.
5:08
SPEAKER_07: I think me starting trying to compete with corner to corner tomorrow on the mission wouldn't make sense.
5:12
SPEAKER_07: It's like just give Will money.
5:13
SPEAKER_07: He's gonna go put it to work.
5:14
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
5:15
SPEAKER_07: But like you're you you decided at some point, like your greatest asset, your time, yeah, you're investing in others so that they can go do something else.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
5:25
SPEAKER_07: Let's unpack that.
5:26
SPEAKER_07: Yeah because I think there is something about like the the deep purpose of that versus like the surface level financial investing, getting return, having a comfortable life.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:35
SPEAKER_07: You said I'm gonna invest differently.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: I so when I think about what makes me have the most joy in life, it is the moments where I get to see somebody come into their own, right?
5:48
SPEAKER_01: When they realize who they really are, right?
5:51
SPEAKER_01: Their own skills, their own passions, their own drive.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like watching somebody come online.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: True, right?
5:58
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, oh man, how do I get close to that?
6:01
SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, money is a component, but it's a tool, not the tool, right?
6:07
SPEAKER_01: And so time ends up being a critical component of that, kind of any way you slice it.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and I'll give you an example.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: We had um a graduate of ours, uh, her name is Kayla, and she came to us with a$30 Walmart juicer, right, that you or I could buy for our kitchen and an idea that she thinks she could create an organic juicing business.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: Because she saw those little, you know, small juices for like 12 bucks, and she's like, I think the lemon and ginger is probably marked up.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: I could do that, right?
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, we'll fast forward, she comes to our program, she learns all about, you know, who's your target customer, what problem are you solving, what's your distribution plan, right?
6:46
SPEAKER_01: All that the kind of nuts and bolts.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: And so she got a farmer's market booth, right?
6:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh here in Nashville, so she could get access to customers.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: A month into that, she goes, Oh my gosh, uh, I'm I'm gonna burn a hole through the table.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: This thing was not meant to do this level of juicing.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: It's starting to smoke.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: Can you guys invest in me?
7:09
SPEAKER_01: Right.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: And so we'd already done the time investment.
7:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: 10 weeks in the classroom.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: Now was this small infusion of capital, a thousand dollars to upgrade her equipment.
7:19
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: We gave her 12 months to pay us back.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: She paid us back in six weeks.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: My favorite part of this is we were so blown away by her.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: We connected her to our friends at Goldman Sachs.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: We supply a ton of people to their small business training in Manhattan.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: Um is that an in-person?
7:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's an in-person for several days.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you got to qualify.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: We actually feed more people into that program than anybody else in the nation outside of the city of Atlanta.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: Like collectively.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh, so she goes up there, day two of her training.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: I get this text, says, got 'em.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: And you know how sometimes a photo is delayed on a text message.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: Right.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: I was like, what are you?
7:55
SPEAKER_01: Then boom, it pops up.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: And it's an image of her signed contract with Goldman Sachs for 200 units of her juice.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: Because in the hallway, she heard some people talking about an event they were doing next week, and she sold them on her juice.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: They were so blown away by her, they invited her to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange so she could see a grander horizon, right?
8:21
SPEAKER_01: And so to me, it's a combo of money and time, but also believing that every human you see is a lottery ticket of potential.
9:33
SPEAKER_07: I'm thinking through like the responsibility around like how do you do that well?
9:39
SPEAKER_07: I think a lot most of you listening probably right now felt something like I was when you were telling that story.
9:43
SPEAKER_07: And it's like, man, I'd love to get behind that.
9:46
SPEAKER_07: But again, if you would have just probably given her money and said, hey, go get them, that that doesn't help.
9:51
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
9:51
SPEAKER_07: Uh there's a lot of places to get information.
9:54
SPEAKER_07: I'm sure she could have Googled some stuff and learned some things.
9:57
SPEAKER_07: Like, what's the system you've built and what things have you figured out?
10:01
SPEAKER_07: That like, no, everybody needs this process.
10:03
SPEAKER_07: You have to start here, you don't get to skip a level.
10:05
SPEAKER_07: Like, yeah, absolutely.
10:05
SPEAKER_07: I almost understand that.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'll start.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: It's real simple, right?
10:09
SPEAKER_01: Three ingredients if you want to make entrepreneurs, it's education, it's mentorship, and capital.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: Those are the three pieces.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, but when we start thinking philosophically about education and business education, I would say most of what we've seen in America has been shaped recently by Silicon Valley and like high growth obsession.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, even though it's, you know, 50% of our GDP is small business, right?
10:31
SPEAKER_01: You are way more likely listening to this, working at a small business statistically, right?
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so we wanted to invert that.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: And by that I mean we're not looking for the next Uber, we're looking for our next door neighbor.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: And so from that standpoint, one, we want to welcome whoever wants to come in the door.
10:49
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: So we are, we're not saying, hey, we've got 10 seats for this intense incubator.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: We're saying, no, no, we've got hundreds of seats all over Middle Tennessee, where if you've got the idea, you're willing to put skin in the game and pay for the class and dedicate the 10 weeks of time, then we will walk with you.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: And from there, the framework is pretty basic.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: We use the lean canvas model, very popular, where you're almost looking at like a monopoly board, right?
11:15
SPEAKER_01: To instead of like a pro forma or something that's gonna, you know, make your eyes, you know, roll in the back of your head, like we're we're tangibly doing the work.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then we spend time double clicking into some of the things that are more challenging.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: For example, what's your break-even point?
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we sometimes have businesses come in and they've been going for three or four years.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: Say, like a lawn care business.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: He's like, I'm cutting yards every week.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: And at the where's the money at the end of the month?
11:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm back to zero.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: And we go, okay, well, let's understand your pricing.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you've got to cut 32 yards just to break even.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: So you need to change your prices and sell more in order to actually have money.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: And so it's those kind of things we go, we go deep in.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's 10 weeks.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: The curriculum's written at a fifth grade reading level.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: That's an in-person experience, which again, I think, is gonna be a big differentiator in the day of AI, right?
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Where you could get uh the right question answered if you know the right question.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's good.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: Right.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you don't have a person sitting across from you going, Hey, I know it's tough for you to believe in this dream right now, but I'm gonna hold a little belief with you as we go.
12:25
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
12:27
SPEAKER_07: It feels like there's a limit to that.
12:29
SPEAKER_07: Like, how far can that scale?
12:31
SPEAKER_07: Who who do you have to find that is capable?
12:34
SPEAKER_07: You know, there's only so many wills or so much will to go around.
12:39
SPEAKER_07: What's the plan?
12:39
SPEAKER_07: Like, is you is it you need a will in every state?
12:42
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
12:43
SPEAKER_07: How do how do you scale?
12:43
SPEAKER_07: Because the motivation, I think, the belief, like that is a skill.
12:46
SPEAKER_07: I don't know if people need to live life and start and fail in some businesses where they can sit across from someone and be like, hey, I gotcha.
12:53
SPEAKER_07: And this is gonna be hard, but it's gonna be great.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I so you know, when when I launched Kingdom Founders, the new national kind of version of this, that is specifically aimed at faith communities, right?
13:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, and the reason being because this work is inherently messier and slower at this side of the business sector, right?
13:13
SPEAKER_01: You have to be motivated, I think, by something bigger than a chamber of commerce stat.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's how we're expanding.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: So one, we're aiming at people who have the heart level call to do that work.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, the second thing I would say is we have uh a turnkey solution that you can run that has no need for like some kind of charismatic leader.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: Got it.
13:37
SPEAKER_01: You can just run the playbook.
13:38
SPEAKER_07: You just have to find a passionate person willing to facilitate.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: The champion who raises their hand and goes, I want to bring this to my community.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: So, like I'll give you an example, Charlottesville.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: There's a church there called the Point VA.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, they said, We want this because we we have this pop pathways out of poverty thing, but we can't just do relief.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: We have to do economic development.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: We got them going.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: They've already graduated 59 entrepreneurs.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And I've not been in a single one of their classrooms.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: Goodness.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: Right.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh down in Dallas, Texas, Watermark Church, big church down there.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: We helped get them going in 2023.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: They're on their eighth or ninth cohort now.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: So uh this thing can run.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: Because the we shouldn't be surprised that when you have creative and hopeful people, yeah, if you give them a curriculum and a pathway, yeah, you would expect them to build stuff.
14:27
SPEAKER_04: True.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think it's only more like postmodern industrialization and everything else that the path became just get a job and work for somebody else's dream.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: I think back in the day, uh entrepreneurship was was more common.
14:41
SPEAKER_07: I think back to some times I was in a room and I love business.
14:44
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
14:44
SPEAKER_07: And I've started stuff and it's worked and it hasn't.
14:47
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: Same.
14:48
SPEAKER_07: That if you get me, if somebody shares an idea with me, I can get in the mode of like, I want to convince them to pursue the dream.
14:54
SPEAKER_07: But I've realized there's times where the peop that those people probably shouldn't.
14:57
SPEAKER_07: Like they're not equipped for it.
14:58
SPEAKER_07: It's not what they're called to do.
15:00
SPEAKER_07: Because I think at the surface, everyone wants to make your own schedule, have an impact on the world, make as much no upside, you know, like the job, you know, it isn't appealing to most people, but some people should not try to start a business on their own.
15:15
SPEAKER_07: How do you, because people I'm sure come to you, is there a point in it where you would almost talk them out of it?
15:20
SPEAKER_01: No, we let you know, it's a great question.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: One, just statistically speaking, a lot of the studies show that about 13% of a population should be entrepreneurs.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: So you got a hundred people, 13 are going to sell to the other 87.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Got it.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: Gut level, that feels about right.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, so one, we're not saying this is for everybody.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: No.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh two, though, I would say um we filter one by you have to be willing to dedicate the time to 10 weeks, you know, uh, three hours a week in the classroom plus the field work.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: You have to be willing to put up the money.
15:53
SPEAKER_07: Are these at night because people are working day jobs?
15:56
SPEAKER_01: We'll do night and day classes depending on yeah, where we're offering them.
16:00
SPEAKER_07: Um, people are they like, I have a job, but I have a side hustle and I want the side hustle to be the main thing.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I can get into the nerdy stats because we we're partnered with uh we've got research partners at Vanderbilt, Belmont, Notre Dame's doing a three-year randomized control trial with us, and most recently MIT partnered with us.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Um so we've got great data on this.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: But the other thing that filters people is we uh we don't ever tell them if their idea is good or not because you know, my mom taught me not to get in cars with strangers, and that was Uber, right?
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Like uh, so who am I to judge?
17:06
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: And so what we say is starting week one, go out and talk to the market and get their feedback.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: Would they buy this flavor, this size, this color?
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so an example of that, we had a young woman came to class night one, and she was so pumped she was gonna do vegan ice cream, and her first flavor was avocado.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, go try to sell that to your neighbors.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: By week three, she came in and she goes, Nobody wants guacamole in an ice cream cone.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: She's like, It sounds terrible.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna pivot and I'm gonna do dairy-based vanilla.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: We're like, I think people buy that.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Like, give that a try.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Right now, some people have a dream of an idea, and as soon as they meet friction, they let it go.
17:53
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so if you can't learn to pivot on your idea, yeah, this probably isn't for you.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so but the market, we we try really hard to let the market shape that, not us.
18:05
SPEAKER_07: I found a lot of great business owners, it's uh like strong beliefs loosely held.
18:09
SPEAKER_07: Like because a lot of entrepreneurs I meet, like they can be very convincing, you know, very distortion, distortion field.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:16
SPEAKER_07: And yeah, I'll I'll die for this idea and I'm not gonna listen in the marketplace.
18:21
SPEAKER_07: So as you were talking, there's some things coming up in me with clients that I I know you help people start these businesses, but I'm thinking of even established business owners.
18:28
SPEAKER_07: There's like this lack of awareness of the financials.
18:31
SPEAKER_07: It's like I have a dream and I'm gonna brute force this thing to be.
18:34
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
18:34
SPEAKER_07: Uh-huh.
18:34
SPEAKER_07: And a lot of times what that ends up in is you just create a really hard job for yourself.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: Or a prison for yourself.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:40
SPEAKER_07: And you're just like, is that good for your family?
18:41
SPEAKER_07: Is that good?
18:42
SPEAKER_07: And so when I meet business owners, a lot of times when we put them through our process, they're like, oh, it didn't have to be that hard.
18:47
SPEAKER_07: Oh, I was overpaying on taxes.
18:49
SPEAKER_07: Or like, there's just all these other levers to pull.
18:51
SPEAKER_07: But it's like the if the survival instinct is what drives you, which is somewhat necessary.
18:56
SPEAKER_07: Um, some of the greatest business stories we've all heard are like I was in my garage and I was down to my last dollar and a check came in, and here we are, we're worth a billion dollars.
19:04
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
19:05
SPEAKER_07: But like the the for the business owners now that are out there that are beyond the startup phase, what have you learned in this level of the planning and getting people launched that like is true really of all business owners?
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, staying curious and staying connected to your customers.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're not obsessed about your customer experience and their satisfaction, and you're not you have to ask.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: You have to ask, you have to be in front of.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, I I mean, there's a million examples of businesses that just completely missed it, you know.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, from the turn of the century where it was like the biggest manufacturer of horse saddles, you know, had a chance to do the leather work for Ford and said no because they didn't think cars were gonna be a thing.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: Wow, you know, they're gone.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or I even think about how, you know, Amazon Web Services, right?
19:57
SPEAKER_01: AWS, uh, they weren't in cloud infrastructure.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: That was Oracle, that was Microsoft, but they saw this niche way to get into that marketplace, and now they've got like 36% of the market.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: That's why.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I, you know, what I would say to any business owner, if you're not tied into your customer and staying really curious and really knowledgeable about what they want to buy, and then how you can be additional value add.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: If that's not your obsession, then you're probably getting a little sleepy.
20:29
SPEAKER_07: Got it.
20:30
SPEAKER_07: Does that look like uh assessments?
20:32
SPEAKER_07: Does that look like feedback survey?
20:33
SPEAKER_07: Like what's the best way, or is it like I'm gonna go just ask somebody in person?
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, some of it is straight up and down customer interviews at every every stage of the journey, right?
20:43
SPEAKER_01: Another is like if you want to do broad swath, it's like net promoter scores.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: Got okay.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: Get some net promoter scores out.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Like how likely are they to recommend your product or service?
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah.
20:52
SPEAKER_07: What I've run into recently is that uh client retention is not always the best measure because there's a chance you're keeping clients because they see it as too painful to leave, but they won't recommend you.
21:02
SPEAKER_07: And so in the financial advisor space, like I'll get pushback when I'm talking about like are you exceeding someone's expectations?
21:07
SPEAKER_07: Like there's what they expect of you.
21:09
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, totally.
21:10
SPEAKER_07: And in our business, it's like they're probably gonna try to sell me something, they'll give me a decent idea, but like understand their expectations so you can exceed it.
21:17
SPEAKER_07: But then how what is the best measure?
21:21
SPEAKER_07: And for us, we think is is that person willing to refer somebody to you?
21:23
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, totally.
21:24
SPEAKER_07: Because I've on board with some other businesses recently, and I'm like, man, that was so hard that like I'm here now and I've gotten through it.
21:29
SPEAKER_07: Switching cost is painful, yes, but I don't know if I'm willing to ask anybody else to go through the experience I just went through.
21:34
SPEAKER_07: And so I won't leave.
21:36
SPEAKER_07: So if the metric they're looking at is like, oh, Sten didn't leave, it's like, yeah, but Sten's also not super happy because he's not gonna actually invite somebody else to come through it.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: Retention is very different than willing to give a referral.
21:47
SPEAKER_07: Got it, yeah.
21:48
SPEAKER_07: What are some of the stories of some of the people you're helping?
21:51
SPEAKER_07: That juice one was wild.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, super fun.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, and if you want to check her out, uh the city juicery is is where she now Goldman Sachs orders over 3,000 units of juice per quarter.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: So she and she's cleared, uh not cleared, but rather she's crossed the million in revenue mark from a$30.
22:09
SPEAKER_07: Is it still kind of farmers market vibe, or is it now like mass production?
22:13
SPEAKER_07: I mean, like shipping.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: Her her bottling looks like anything you'd expect to see at like a high-end place.
22:19
SPEAKER_07: Um, but she like put that uh old juicer in a box and I I wish she would mail it to me.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to put a plaque on it and keep it.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, I you know, one of our our early stories that I I just love was, you know, we had a gentleman walk into class, um, his name was Marcus, and uh and I said, Man, what's your what's your business idea?
22:40
SPEAKER_01: This is 2016.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: He's like, I'm gonna launch a restaurant, da-da-da, and he's telling me all about it.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Amazing.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: Do you have half a million of upfront capital to get that going?
22:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, No.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Well, neither do I, right?
22:55
SPEAKER_01: And and one of our driving ideas is start small, start now.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: Got it.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, what's the shortest path to revenue?
23:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's good.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, because we don't have, you know, again, Silicon Valley base.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna in 10 years, we'll be profitable.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like we're we need this to go now.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so he started catering um and started learning the best recipes, what people responded to, what they didn't, learning his operations, right?
23:19
SPEAKER_01: Fast forward three years later, fall of 2019, he opens his first brick and mortar.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: We were so pumped.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: I was like doing half of my lunches there, right?
23:30
SPEAKER_01: It's uh cone head.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: Chicken and waffles in a waffle cone.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: Oh, nice.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, amazing.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and it was, you know, fall of 2019, which, you know, to for your for your listeners, if you remember what happened right after that, COVID.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and COVID shut down the restaurant industry almost harder than anything else.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: And I got a call from Marcus that spring.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you get that phone call that you're like, oh man, I was kind of dreading this one.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: And I feel it in my stomach.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, hey man, what's going on?
24:00
SPEAKER_01: And I thought he was about to tell me, look, we planned for a lot.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: We didn't plan for a global pandemic.
24:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have to wrap this up.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: And instead he said, Hey, what I learned in the class about iterating and pivoting, plus all the work we did with catering has meant that we are awesome at takeout and we are killing it on all that like Uber Eats and everything else.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to call because I know you guys are doing online Zoom-based classes right now because of COVID.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: Can I sponsor a bunch of people to go through?
24:34
SPEAKER_01: And he by the end of the year, he had paid for 10 other entrepreneurs to come through the program.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Fast forward, now he has two brick and mortars in a food truck.
24:42
SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: Right?
24:43
SPEAKER_01: Still going, didn't just survive COVID, but thrived COVID.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so yeah, the the the entrepreneurs, the businesses that are coming out, um, they're you know, they're as different as the people.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but the again, the great part about this, a lot of nonprofit, you're saying, hey, let me do good to you, poor person.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: And and it's you're you're we're gonna try for mere stability.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is I've never met somebody who wants to get up for stability for the next 50 years of their life.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: Right?
25:14
SPEAKER_01: They want to pursue their hopes, their dreams, their vision for their kids, just like you and me.
25:18
SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: It's why you your people want to leave a legacy, right?
25:22
SPEAKER_01: And so uh I what I love about this is we're saying, what is that seed of a dream?
25:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then how do we put the infrastructure and the support behind it to turn it into a money-making reality?
25:35
SPEAKER_01: And so it's not us getting, you know, trying to sell them on a crappy job, right?
25:41
SPEAKER_01: It's us getting behind their dream and they then push it.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: They're the momentum.
25:46
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
25:46
SPEAKER_07: I look back at my entrepreneurial journey and I wish I would have had some things normalized beforehand so I didn't feel like I was doing something wrong when certain things happened.
25:56
SPEAKER_07: I'm sure people get an idea and they get excited.
25:58
SPEAKER_07: They come to the class and maybe their confidence grows.
26:02
SPEAKER_07: Are they pretty quickly met with like reality when they launch?
26:05
SPEAKER_07: And you almost like, hey guys, just so you know, when you go out, there's gonna be some days where you're like, I shouldn't do this, I wasn't built to do this.
26:11
SPEAKER_07: Like, how do you coach the entrepreneurs up on like this is what it means to business?
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, part of that is, and I had somebody ask me this question one time.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: He said, Hey, Will, how do you teach your people resiliency?
26:22
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: And the reality is if you're in a multi-generational low-income neighborhood or family, you know resiliency way better than I do.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: You're getting up and fighting every day for every step.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: And so we don't have to teach them resiliency, we just teach them how to aim it into this framework.
26:40
SPEAKER_07: That's good.
26:41
SPEAKER_07: But there's also maybe some limiting beliefs that we all inherit.
26:45
SPEAKER_07: I know for me, it was like nobody in my lineage owned companies, and you know, we only made this much money, and therefore we just we work hard.
26:51
SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
26:52
SPEAKER_07: And that's just the way it's it is.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'll give you an example of that.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: One of our graduates, Adrian Bowling, uh, she before she met us, uh, single mom, two kids, um, doing her best.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh, she came up with this idea.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: She needed a low overhead business, right?
27:08
SPEAKER_01: That she could also pick her kids up, you know, and get them to school and stuff, right?
27:12
SPEAKER_01: And so she's like, Well, I've got this used car.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna start uh a mobile notary business because you can never find a notary when you need one.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: That's true, yeah.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: They work every third Tuesday for like nine minutes, right?
27:23
SPEAKER_01: So she's like, I will show up where you need me.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: That was her business model.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: She got to 35,000 without any kind of training or plan.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Her growth stalled out.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: A friend was like, You gotta check this training program out.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh, she came to us within 12 months.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: She had done over 85,000.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: She came back, all of our classes are co-led by graduates.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: She's now led four different times.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: Now I talked to her recently, she is doing around 200,000 in revenue.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: And I services.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: And I said, What what does this meant for you?
27:58
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Will, I just got my son his passport for a school trip to Spain.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: She said, poverty told me my life had to be small.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: And now I've got my son in this different school, and he is seeing the world.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: And his vision for the future is so much bigger than I ever thought possible for myself.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: And so that's the kind of, you know, the limiting belief can't be broken in theory.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: It's broken by showing up and doing the work and then seeing the results.
28:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:30
SPEAKER_07: My sister and brother-in-law and all their kids uh ran a group in Honduras where they would take women and teach them to be entrepreneurs.
28:38
SPEAKER_07: And what was wild is they realized like sending them home, the the environment was not pro-women in business.
28:44
SPEAKER_07: Oh, yeah.
28:45
SPEAKER_07: And so all of a sudden it's like everything's great, it's working well.
28:47
SPEAKER_07: And so it's like the the factors, what do you see most entrepreneurs run into?
28:52
SPEAKER_07: And what's the biggest?
28:53
SPEAKER_07: Is it like the the people they're around are not encouraging?
28:56
SPEAKER_07: Do they just is it you know, yeah.
28:58
SPEAKER_07: I mean, there's so many into.
28:59
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, because again, a lot of entrepreneurs listening now, and it's like we can all relate to this.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: I and I think some of this is true no matter what your your economic background is, right?
29:08
SPEAKER_01: Where if the pathway is your parents have always said you're gonna be a doctor or a lawyer, and suddenly you're like, I've got this crazy idea, right?
29:16
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get a lot of kind of uh lack of support or straight up attack at home.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: And so often that's the case where our the people we're working with, they have some sort of stable job, but it's a job that has a ceiling and they're stuck.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: And so now to rock the boat potentially, yeah.
29:36
SPEAKER_07: Which usually involves a spouse, maybe some kids like spouse, kids, a parent, right?
29:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, and then I'd also say as our folks um get more successful, and I know this is a common theme with entrepreneurs, and I'm sure you see it with the people you advise, uh you become seen as the successful one.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: And then everyone starts hitting you up.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have good, healthy boundaries and a sense of self, suddenly you start being the person who's always giving out the money or loaning the money, or in some cases I've seen like drawing down on the business.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's like, oh no, no, no, that's gonna tank this.
30:13
SPEAKER_07: Is it is it feel like a pay it forward?
30:15
SPEAKER_07: Now it's time for me to take care of everybody.
30:17
SPEAKER_07: Like, what is that, or is it like I just I have a hard time saying no?
30:20
SPEAKER_07: I dealt with the same thing with my family when it's like I I can't take a nice trip if they have it.
30:25
SPEAKER_07: And like that was just a weird thing I could have anticipated.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I mean it's all of that and more, right?
30:30
SPEAKER_01: And I and I also think most of us grow up in situations where most of the relationships we see are by definition codependent.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm only good if you're good.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: That's good, yeah.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: And so uh when you start seeing, oh, I'm good now, but my mom's not good, um, even if it means that you're gonna jeopardize the thing that's led to this growth.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: Wow, I think sometimes being able to own that well, yeah.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, that's a that is a like what I would say to any entrepreneur out there right now is do the self-awareness work that makes you a healed person.
31:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh and and I say this specifically to entrepreneurs all the time.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: Your fear is not what makes you successful in business.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: And so many think it is.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: It actually can be pretty motivating.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: It's no, it's super motivating, but it at the end of the day, it's toxic and it hollows them out versus uh your best self is hopeful and creative and generative.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's just a different energy to create from.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: And so learning how to recognize um which state you're in and which state you're building from, I think is super important.
31:36
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
31:36
SPEAKER_07: I know for my my story, it was a single mom, three sisters, and it was very motivating.
31:41
SPEAKER_07: Like I never want to feel this way again.
31:43
SPEAKER_07: Totally.
31:43
SPEAKER_07: I want to go to the grocery store and not be like a sad experience.
31:46
SPEAKER_07: You know, like a full gas tank feels great, you know, like those things.
31:50
SPEAKER_07: And and that was pretty motivating.
31:53
SPEAKER_07: I mean, through college, you know, I have I'm on a mission to take care of the people I care about, like finding my first job, like but the tough thing is like that it was only sustainable for so long.
32:03
SPEAKER_05: Yep.
32:04
SPEAKER_07: And then I had to get to a point where I was like, wait, why am I attracting people that want to be taken care of?
32:09
SPEAKER_07: Whether it's employees, but I mean, as a financial advisor, if you overserve people, like codependent advisors are great.
32:15
SPEAKER_07: You have to solve people's problems all the time, you get positive feedback all the time from doing it.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, please rescue me.
32:20
SPEAKER_07: Oh, yeah.
32:21
SPEAKER_07: And it's like, great.
32:21
SPEAKER_07: The good news is I'm paid to rescue people and get great feedback on how good I am at it.
32:27
SPEAKER_07: But then I'd get to a point where I was like, wow, if I stop doing it to that degree, which is like proactively trying to find problems to solve without people even asking, am I gonna lose that edge?
32:37
SPEAKER_07: And life eventually just kind of forced me into doing it.
32:40
SPEAKER_07: But there was a big part of me that's like, no, that's the fire.
32:42
SPEAKER_07: Like that's like the athlete that has a little bit of anger and being like, I can't be a nice person.
32:46
SPEAKER_07: Yep, I gotta go out there and just compete.
32:48
SPEAKER_07: Yep.
32:49
SPEAKER_07: What comes up in you when I say that?
32:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's probably the common uninvestigated story for most of us on some level.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't ever want to feel like that again.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'm down this path.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think if we're lucky enough to have a moment of real self-awareness, we connect with wait a minute, what if I build from something that's healthier?
33:13
SPEAKER_01: Because I I remember reading this one story about a very successful entrepreneur.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, it was a Michael Lewis book where he said that for this guy, it was always 3 a.m.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: in his heart and he was up with that anxiety, no matter how much money he had in the bank.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: And at this point it was billions.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: And I think most of us who build something, because we know the whole landscape of what we built, we also know all the things that could go wrong.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: And so we're constantly we can ruminate on that, right?
33:43
SPEAKER_01: But it hurts us, it hurts our physical health, our mental health, hurts our families.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: And so I think if you're lucky enough to get that moment of self-awareness and then go, man, I actually want to build and still be ambitious, but I want to build from joy, not from fear.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: That's good.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's great places like OnSite here in Tennessee, is an amazing program that can help you do that.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's expensive, but that's definitely an investment.
34:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, but I man, as someone who has personally benefited from their work, couldn't couldn't recommend it enough.
34:17
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I would say in my experience, and it does take a commitment, it it's sometimes it's easier to stay on like the track of grind, make money, go on the, you know, go to Florida twice a year with the family and be present by Wednesday and then be anxious again by Friday morning.
34:31
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and I think the tough thing is like it something will happen.
34:33
SPEAKER_07: Like it will come to a head.
34:34
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I think the entrepreneurs can be great compartmentalizers.
34:37
SPEAKER_07: And um, but as we as we wrap up, uh from an entrepreneur standpoint, for those listening, I think it's probably fair to say every entrepreneur has been successful.
34:46
SPEAKER_07: At some point, somebody spoke into them, invested in them.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, poured into them.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:50
SPEAKER_07: I think it's great to get to a place to where you're like, well, I'm not scared every day.
34:54
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I do have a successful business.
34:56
SPEAKER_07: I I might now have employees.
34:57
SPEAKER_07: I can maybe, you know, I can invest in corner to corner and like pass it forward.
35:01
SPEAKER_07: How would you coach the successful entrepreneur that has maybe reached a place of comfort and consistency?
35:08
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
35:09
SPEAKER_07: How do we help them stay aware of like not falling into like just a life of comfort and simplicity that's self-focused?
35:15
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
35:15
SPEAKER_07: Which maybe our culture kind of encourages versus I want to create, I want to keep doing my thing, I want safety and comfort for my family, but like there's probably other ways to invest that are less traditional, yeah, like in other people.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would maybe just take 10 minutes, get still, and ask yourself the question, where do I feel most alive right now?
35:38
SPEAKER_01: And I have found usually if your whole life is around your own comfort, you've kind of slipped into apathy.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: There's very few places you really feel alive.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so from that, I would say if that's you right now and you're like, oh, you know what, actually, I do need a little bit more.
35:56
SPEAKER_07: You shocked the system a little bit.
35:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, then then I would say find out what's going on in your community where your skills and your talents could be put to use in a dynamic way.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, and pay attention to your heart.
36:08
SPEAKER_01: Like if you hear about an opportunity and your heart beats faster, it's probably an indication that there's a little bit of life there for you.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh and I'd also say, uh, if you're like, hey, I love what I'm hearing about starting up small businesses and helping low-income people launch out of poverty.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, I I I would love to talk to you.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: Um and I I've I've done this before, but uh my cell phone is 615-498-4987.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: That is not a Google Voice number.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: That is straight up.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to bring something like this to your community, I would say call me and I'll help you get launched and you'd be in for the ride of your life.
36:50
SPEAKER_07: Man, thanks for the work you're doing.
36:52
SPEAKER_07: And I know and I love the stories you've shared, but I've seen it firsthand in other places where it's like an entrepreneur gets unleashed, builds a business, affects their the generations that they get to see.
37:01
SPEAKER_07: Like it is starting a healthy business in a community.
37:04
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it is game changer.
37:06
SPEAKER_07: Hard to explain.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, entrepreneurship is the cheat code for capitalism.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: It's crazy to me that we don't teach this like we teach basic reading and math.