Shawn Allen is the co-founder of M@C Discount. Previously, he was President and GM of Asset Auctions, COO of AssetNation and Senior Product Manager of Giftcards.com which were all successful internet marketplace businesses.
M@C Discount stands for Merchandise at Cost. The company buys truckloads of closeouts merchandise and customer returns from major retailers. They receive "New" and "Used" items that are sold individually at aggressive discounts, in-store and online. What’s great is that all items in their online auctions start at $1 with no reserve price. His background in reverse logistics started by working at another company that was acquired by FedEx. The shipping company lost interest in that portion of the business, which was dealing with the returned items many retail stores accumulate. Shawn used his background in auctioneering and his partner Kellen’s expertise in buying products in designing their current business model. In this episode, Aaron and Shawn talk about the rapid growth of his company, how they have done it profitably, and why auctions are such a great model for selling online. Shawn Allen’s Challenge: When you have the opportunity, give people you’re on the fence with a second chance Connect with Shawn Allen
If you liked this interview, check out our episode about Storing Family Memories Forever & Losing $1 Billion w/ Glen Meakem
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Justin Welsh is a solopreneur that has made more than $3 million running from a collection of digital products. He has leveraged a large boutique advisory firm for entrepreneurs and creates digital products for creators.
He has a decade of experience building two $50M+ ARR businesses, teams of 150+, and helping raise over $300M in capital from VC firms like HLM Ventures, Leerink Transformation Partners, Vivo Capital, Toba Capital, and athenahealth. Over that period, he played the role of Chief Revenue Officer and SVP of Sales at high-growth transactional SaaS companies. His company is an early-stage start-up sales consulting firm that drives revenue growth from an experienced SaaS revenue operator and start-up consultant with proven go-to market strategy and playbooks for scale to $50M+. Justin Welsh’s Challenge: Make one Dollar, then go to https://carrd.co/ Connect with Justin Welsh
If you liked this interview, check out our episode with Marshall Haas: Peel, Shepherd, Need/Want
In 2019, Joe Cardosi founded Free Market Health to tackle the complicated specialty pharmacy marketplace. In less than four years, the firm has raised over $13 million, grown to 50+ team members, and scaled revenue into the millions.
Free Market Health is a healthcare technology platform focused on fixing the company dedicated to improving the specialty pharmacy ecosystem with a care-driven marketplace platform. They support forward-thinking payers and specialty pharmacies of all sizes who need to operate in a complex and opaque market. Previously, Joe worked in specialty pharmacy for 15 years and saw the market opportunity firsthand. In this episode, Aaron and Joe talk about what drives the enormous costs in specialty pharmacies, why Joe was perfectly positioned to found the company, and why patients win when pharmacies compete. Joe Cardosi’s Challenge: If you have an opportunity or a great idea, where you can create a job around it, take a chance, say yes, and just do it. Connect with Joe Cardosi
If you liked this interview, check out our episode on Building a Billion Dollar Company Treating Rare Diseases w/ Dr Gordon Vanscoy
Austin Rief is the CEO and cofounder of the Morning Brew. In 2020, the Morning Brew was majority acquired for a $75 million dollar valuation, just five years after being founded by two University of Michigan students.
Morning Brew is a media company with an email list of over 3 million people. Their content informs, educates and empowers readers on the business world, money and their career. They bring informative and digestible daily news and information about businesses from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. In this episode, Aaron and Austin talk about the metrics that matter to the Brew, what Austin learned about hiring and scaling, and how they implemented the EOS model to get outstanding results. Austin Rief’s Challenge: Harness the power on the internet and learn from it. Leverage technology to make money. Connect with Austin Rief
If you liked this interview, check out our episode on How Sam Parr Builds Businesses.
Dr. Shiv Rao is the CEO and cofounder of Abridge. He was previously a senior executive at UPMC Enterprises and serves as a cardiologist at the Heart and Vascular Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Abridge is an Artificial Intelligence app that listens to the doctor-patient conversations, provides a transcription, and categorizes specific details such as medications, symptoms, diagnoses, procedures, and the care plan. Dr. Rao and his team have cataloged more than five million medical next steps for users. Abridge is focused on the rich data in the conversation beyond the required information and providing it to medical professionals and patients. In this episode, Aaron and Dr Shiv talk about artificial intelligence, how little we remember from our medical visits, and the rise of doctor burnout. Dr. Shiv Rao’s Challenge: Make it a habit of going to sleep grateful. Connect with Dr. Shiv Rao
If you liked this interview, check out our episode with Dr. Timothy Wong where he shared why He Won't Take Health Insurance
Bill Hauser is the CEO of SMB Team, the Fastest Growing law firm growth company in the US. The firm currently has more than $20 million in annual revenue and a team of 60 full-time employees.
SMB team uses digital marketing, staffing, and coaching, to help law firms grow. Their mission is to help 10,000 law firms double their revenue and grow to $256 million in revenue within 10 years. Bill also shares how (and why) he spends over $600,000 annually on personal development. From personal coaches to high-level masterminds, he is committed to becoming the executive capable of leading his company to their lofty goals. In this episode, Aaron and Bill talk about why it is important to have resolve when setting a goal for yourself, his difficult upbringing, and how he overcame his addiction to anxious thinking. Bill Hauser’s Challenge: Take the most direct path to your goal. Keep writing that goal down so you don’t stop believing in yourself until you achieve that goal. Connect with Bill Hauser
If you liked this interview, check out our episode on Pivoting from Bankruptcy to Financial Freedom w/ Jim Shorkey.
Po-Shen Loh is the Founder and CEO of Expii, a free personalized learning website with thousands of math and science lessons.
Po-Shen Loh is a social entrepreneur and inventor, working across the spectrum of mathematics, education, and healthcare, all around the world. He is a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and the national coach of the USA International Mathematical Olympiad team. He has also pioneered a scalable way to learn challenging math live online and a new way to control pandemics by leveraging self-interest. Expii supports crowdsourced lessons to encourage peer to peer learning. It is an online learning platform that lets students choose how to learn high school level math and science by providing multiple learning styles, and encourages students to learn in their own way. In this episode, Aaron and Po-Shen Loh talk about why conventional remote classes fail, how he creates win-win for everyone, and the business model of education. Po-Shen Loh’s Challenge: Take the uncomfortable step of learning a new skill. Connect with Po-Shen Lo
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Andrew Herr is the founder and CEO of Fount, a health and performance advising platform trusted by the world’s top performers. He started Fount to make cutting edge performance insights more widely available and change the quality of health outcomes for all.
Fount is backed by Founders Fund, Elysian Park, and Allen & Co to apply, and scale, their expertise from optimizing the minds and bodies of US Military, professional sports teams, and leading business executives. Andrew is a graduate of Health Physics, Microbiology & Immunology, and Security Studies from Georgetown University. He was honored as a Mad Scientist by the U.S. Army (twice) and as a Fellow by the Synthetic Biology Leadership Excellence Accelerator Program, the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative, and others. In this episode, Aaron and Andrew talk about how he can change human health and performance at scale, how he helped the Department of Defense allocate millions of Dollars towards the optimization of the military, and how structures, data & machine learning make this the perfect time to build a disruptive personalized health company. Andrew Herr’s Challenge: Run experiments on yourself. Pick an experiment for the next two weeks – nutrition like decreasing sugar, cutting down meat, or wearing blue light blocking glasses before bed – and observe if it affects you. Connect with Andrew Herr
If you liked this interview, check out the episode How Sam Parr Builds Businesses and the biggest sales of his career.
Jacob Hanchar is the CEO of Digital Dream Labs. He is a neuroscientist by training who loves entrepreneurship, video games, and learning.
Jacob started out as an angel investor for Digital Dream Labs, an ed-tech company founded in 2012. They are the makers of AI robotic companions such as Cozmo, Vector, Puzzlets, InfiniDrive, and Butter Robot. They lead the field of assistive technology that improves the lives of all ages and backgrounds. In this episode, Aaron and Jacob talk about selling robots as companions, they also break down how he bought IP associated with his robots for pennies on the dollar, and why robots of all shapes and sizes need to be designed to be a little more cute. Jacob Hanchar’s Challenge: Volunteer a couple hours in your local library or museum to get young people more interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Connect with H. Jacob Hanchar, Ph.D.
If you liked this interview, check out the episodes GPT-3 & Robotics w/ Tom Galluzo and Ice Cream Empire Secrets w/ Chad Townsend (Millie’s Ice Cream).
David Brumley is the founder and CEO of ForAllSecure, a startup spun out of Carnegie Mellon University, that has raised over $36 million.
The company provides cutting edge cybersecurity solutions to Fortune 500 companies and government agencies, including the Department of Defense. Straight out of college, David Brumley worked in IT at Stanford University fixing and securing issues with the university’s open network. His challenges motivated him to pursue towards a decade-long research quest to solve the problem of real-time, automated testing and security compliance. This research led to the founding of ForAllSecure and their first product “MAYHEM”, which scans software for bugs, generates exploits, and fixes vulnerabilities. In this episode, Aaron and David talk about selling security to the Department of Defense, how he raised millions of dollars from Tier 1 VCs, and how his startup is the culmination of more than a decade of academic research. David Brumley’s Challenge: Look at what you’re good at and pay it forward. Connect with David Brumley
If you liked this interview, check out the episode Naval Ravikant’s Wisdom w/ Eric Jorgenson where they talked about the power of leverage and how to use more of it.
JT Garwood is the CEO and cofounder of bttn – a healthcare product distribution platform.
Bttn has modernized the healthcare distribution system, to provide doctors easy, reliable access to high-quality, brand-name medical supplies. JT has scaled the company quickly due to their ability to save medical offices lots of money. In this episode, Aaron and JT talk about how bttn raised $20million from Tiger Global, their edge as a distributor, and the benefits of hiring his dad to be his company’s COO. They also talk about the essential role that sales has played in scaling their two-sided marketplace. JT Garwood’s Challenge: Choose positivity today. Connect with JT Garwood
If you liked this interview, check out episode $35 to Visit a Doctor When You Have No Insurance w/ Dr. Timothy Wong (iHealth Clinic)
Wesley Gray is the founder and CEO of Alpha Architect, an investment platform for building custom, low-fee ETFs.
Wes is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Economics at The Wharton School, served as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, has an MBA and PhD in Finance from the University of Chicago. His interest in bridging the research gap between academia and industry led him to found Alpha Architect, an asset management firm dedicated to empowering investors through education. In this episode, Aaron and Wes talk about strategies to “beat the market”, how being a professor is the best gig as an entrepreneur, and his biggest advice to entrepreneurs. Wes’ Challenge: Register at https://alphaarchitect.com/mftf/ to join the March for the Fallen 28-mile ruck march Connect with Wesley Gray (Alpha Architect)
If you liked this interview, check out episode Index Funds, Bitcoins, and Telling the Truth with Mike Green.
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Aaron Watson: So you've got a, a really interesting business that we're gonna break down. Not only how you've built it and everything that's gone into it. But the, the kind of starting question. That I wanted to bring to you was really that of, you know, the folks that aren't professional investors, but need to do some investing, cuz we're all, you know, trying to save for retirement or other goals.
And there's been this, you know, huge narrative wave, I would say that there's, you know, conventionally kind of been two. Pathways by which someone would do their investing. They'd either, you know, go hire someone to be an active manager or to take a really big fee. And like, they're gonna beat the market. They're gonna do special things with that with your money, basically. Yeah. Or there's this, you know BOGO Vanguard school of thinking, which is set it and forget it, throw it in an index fund. Never return in any way, shape or form to, to analyze that. So can you talk to me a little bit just, or, or start things off with folks there's, there's a middle ground there between those two extremes. Can you just take people through how you think about that? X, Y axis. Wesley Gray: Yeah. Sure. So, so to your point, like a good baseline for any investor is just to literally avoid all the BS and focus on the cheapest, most diversified, low cost solution, which to your point is Vanguard. Right that, so that should always be someone's baseline. We have a framework called the facts where always say, Hey, make sure you focus on the facts. And what does that stand for? Well, F stands for fees. Keep them low a stands for access. I E like your liquidity, keep it high. C stands for complexity, keep it low. And then T stands for taxes which Vanguard and a lot of ETF structures will do for you. And then the S stands for search, which is like your due diligence, all your brain damage cost. You obviously wanna keep that low. So as a baseline solution, Vanguard's amazing. And then to your point on the other end is like, well, let's go pay like way over price, active managers that do all kinds of crazy things to try to beat the market. The problem with them. Is, there's not necessarily anything wrong with being an active investor, trying to beat the market and, and trying to earn higher returns than just say a passive index. The issue is if you charge too much for the value that you're potentially creating, it's a net negative. right. And so the, the kind of the happy medium is if, is if you did active investing or try to get the cost out back to investing, right? So maybe you don't wanna just own the SB 500 for the next 50 years, because we know there's all these different techniques where over long time cycles. And to the extent you can deal with the pain in anguish of the strategy, you're gonna try to engage in, it can be at the market. But you have to keep the cost down still. Right? So, so what we call that affordable alpha or affordable, active and we're a believer in that as well, but, but only for a certain segment. So either really cheap, super simple, great. Or you could do, you know, pretty cheap, really affordable and more active, also great doing really expensive, active, not [00:04:00] good. Is basically the answer Aaron Watson: makes sense. And one of the things that, and maybe this is just me. You know, not liking to follow the crowds and be in, maybe I like to believe myself to be a contrarian, but there's always been something that kind of irked me about, like, I'm just literally buying the exact same thing that every single other person is buying. And to some degree, you know, you hear, if you do what everyone else does, you're gonna get the same results as everyone else. And yes, for whatever reason, I'm a, I'm a cat that likes. Try to beat to a different drum beat. So talk a little bit about tangibly putting that into practice, what that looks like and then how that inspired the company that you've Wesley Gray: found it. Yeah. Sure. So, so again, the problem as you approach financial services is you always got to remember that people always trying to sell you something and they're very good at, on your emotions and desires. And, and one, one of the biggest emotions out there is ego. I'm not, not that it's a bad thing, but like, like you may go out there and be like, you know, I just, I can't be like everyone else. And, and that could be attributed to like, Totally fine. Total natural thing that most people do. However, if you talk to the wrong people, they're gonna identify that as a personality trait and they're gonna be like, oh, how can I exploit this? Well, I'm gonna sell them overpriced stuff. That sounds really different is really cool, unique, different, and I'm gonna win because I can charge this individual take advantage of their ego and they're gonna end up losing, but they'll, they'll feel better about it. So obviously we always wanna be really careful about avoid. That because of the, the incentives of the financial service industry. Now that said, there's nothing wrong with trying to be better than average in being different. And in fact, the only way you ever even have a hope or a prayer of beating and winning in the marketplace is obviously you have to be different, right? You can't own everything that everyone else owns and expect to outperform them because that's just silly. So we know you have to be D. To, to do well, but in a financial marketplace, you're also competing with everyone out [00:06:00] there and it's, it's a hypercompetitive game. Right. So usually in order to. Be different and do well. It requires you to do things that are typically uncomfortable. Not fun and painful, right? Because in the end you're gonna have to trade with someone in the marketplace. And so what a lot of the financial research, and again, I, I speak from just what academic research says like data driven, evidence based stuff. I'm not. Not anymore. I'm not a stock picker. I'm just a PhD quant type that just reads academic journals all day. What, what the collective academic research suggests is that if you're willing to be different, do things that are painful, maybe a little bit more risky, you have the horizon. You're not so worried about just being like the other lemmings out there. A few of the different techniques that you can tangibly put into play. Always being cognizant of obviously of cost and taxes, cuz that can ruin any. Any good idea paying too much or, or paying too much in taxes, is it boils down to a few types of strategies. One would be what they call classic value strategies. So that would be strategies that essentially buy cheap stuff. Right. So if, if your audience is not real familiar with stocks, but they know about real estate, well, instead of going by like the brand new house that they're selling out in the development, you go buy the boarded up, you know, row home in, in the middle of the ghetto. That is CEO selling really cheap that that's called value investing and, and, and the equivalent in stocks like buying securities and companies that don't look that good on paper, but they're selling really cheap. If you systematically do strategies that do that over long horizons, they generally tend to beat the market over long horizons. The other kind of class of strategy that you could do to kind of quote, unquote beat the market is what they call momentum strategies. So these are strategies where you just, you systematically buy winners. So when things are doing well, you buy them. But more, most importantly, when things are not doing well. You don't get enamored or you don't believe the story you get rid of them. [00:08:00] So momentum is another strategy that people can use at least systematic over long time horizon to quote unquote, beat the market. But it's, it's a much more trading intensive strategy than value. Like those are probably like the two main ways that are, that are simple to explain. If you have the horizon willingness to be different, keep your costs down that you can usually quote unquote, beat the market in expect. If you have like a 20 year horizon. And so Aaron Watson: basically the founding thesis for alpha architecture company, that that can be operationalized and systematized. So as to not need an active person on the button or the trigger, so to speak, and instead algorithms, computer programs you know, basically writing rules of the road and then letting that just operate on its own is scalable attainable for lots of. Wesley Gray: Yes. So, so what we do is we try to solve two things and I'll walk you through each of them. The first one is, is if you're gonna be an active manager, I, you're not just gonna buy a Vanguard fund. You need to somehow develop a process that, that intuitively and economically can beat the market over, over a long time horizon. Right? So obviously we spent a lot of time doing the research, trying to think about how to achieve this. And there's two methods you can basically. One method is you, you know, beat your head against the wall, read every 10 K report, go talk to the managers, go talk to supply channel, do like epic due diligence on a firm and try to pick the right stocks. The other thing you can do which we're I used to do that by the way. Now, now I'm what they call a systematic investor is you can just use data to identify. The securities or the stocks that on average will produce these favorable results. And it turns out, even though it may not be that intuitive, that when you compare the performance of just doing a system, for example, that buys cheap stocks or quote unquote value, invest. Those systems, which just generically go by, Hey, things that are really cheap on say like a priced earnings ratio. They tend to do just as well as the human beings that maybe spend 20 hours a day reading 10K reports trying to pick value stocks. Right. And so kind of my PhD thesis was essentially proving that to. Where I literally read a bunch of stock picks you know, that individuals were doing and I put them together and I said, well, you can actually just systematically do the same thing, ended up in the same place. So that's step one for us is how do we build algorithms and systems that can general generate a process that will presumably help win over time, but that's not what you have to do to win. Cuz now I need to be able to deliver this cheap and affordably. To the marketplace, right? Cause if I charge a lot for a process, that's good. It's not gonna be a win to the client. So we need to also make it affordable. So, so our business came about where, Hey, we believe we, we have the R and D capability. We have all the PhDs like everyone else, we can come up with the processes that will win over the long haul, but our objectives, how do we do that? Low cost. Well, we're gonna have to get rid of this notion that we're gonna drive Ferrari, go live on park avenue [00:11:00] and like do all this kind of crazy stuff. We we've got to actually live. And, and act like, like we did in the Marines, like in the Marines, they got something called do more with less, right? Like if, if we're gonna be able to deliver this cheaper to the client, you know, we've got to rip the cost out of the ecosystem. So, so we can manage these products, deliver them to the marketplace in an affordable way. And that means we just got to clean out anything that's in the way of, you know, adding costs. But no, Essentially got it. And Aaron Watson: so in terms of scaling something like this, you know, we've had plenty of software entrepreneurs on the show before, and you know, the, a AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google cloud type of solutions are one of the things that enables scaling in a way that previous eras, like they literally had to rack their own servers just to be able to put something. At scale in a, in a relatively expedient amount of time, what is, what is the confluence of technological and other just macro developments that makes, bring something like the, like this to the market possible now, like, cause a question why not 20 years ago? Why not? 10 years ago? Wesley Gray: Great. Great question. And, and I'll tell you that story cuz cuz we kinda got lucky, right? So historically the way asset management work is, well it still works like this to some extent, massive scale business, right? Cuz it's all about distribution and, and being able to pay all the lawyers and everyone to build up the compliance with head. Right? Huge barriers entry. Because how in the heck are you gonna launch a firm? Where you need a hundred sales people out there in the field to get anyone, to buy it, to get you to the scale, to be able to pay all the lawyers, to help you run this stupid thing. Right. And so that has always been a problem, but that said, and this is kind of something that's came about now or last 10, 15 years. And we just happened to start exactly this time is we started immediately with our firm with a. Empower investors for education. And one of our core beliefs is transparency. [00:13:00] So we immediately went digital marketing, right? Inbound content. We wrote content. We did research cuz I'm not, I'm not into like selling and like jamming stuff in front of grandma's face. But I really like research. I love talking about the data. I love talking about the processes. So it was just natural for us to just say, Hey, I'm not gonna do cells. I'm gonna do education. And that happened to be perfectly time when blogs, they weren't cool yet, but they were kind of getting cool. And so I start a blog, like I don't even know, like 12, 50 years ago and started writing about this stuff. And then all of a sudden people realized like, wait, internet connections are getting better. No one believes he sells people anymore. Cuz now you can Google anything. There's a lot more transparency and ability to do your own due diligence. You know, why am I listening to this idiot sales guy when I can actually just go Google and find blogs with people that got PhDs that are gonna explain to me how this works. Right. So I think the technology has, has allowed. A lot of [00:14:00] voices to be out there and in a democratic way, they kind of move to the top, but it's, you know, it's low cost for me to put out a blog and if one person wants to read it or 1 billion people wanna read it, it only costs me the time to put out the blog. And, and I think just the way that the world's moved towards getting the information from Google, from getting information from blogs, internet, and direct to consumer that that's what allowed us to scale our business without having to hire. any sales people like, like we've only starting, even though we've been doing this for 12 years now, we, I think we have like officially we have like two sales people and, and they're kind of recent onboards the last few years. It's always been organic inbound direct marketing and that, you know, that's how we got where we are. What about actually Aaron Watson: gathering the assets though? Like it's not the same as a server, but do like, I'm just so ignorant in this. Like, are there things that break when you actually just get more assets under management and maybe you hear about that with like a hedge funds. It's like, you know, we could make our trades when we had. You know, 50 or a hundred million AUM. Yeah. But when we're a 2 billion AUM firm, like we just can't even make the same trades because it doesn't yeah. You know, the opportunity isn't Wesley Gray: there. Yeah. So, that that's an easy problem to solve. And, and what I always tell people, cuz we, I deal with entrepreneurs all the time, entering our space, AUM. Literally solves all problems. Like those are all problems of too much. An AUM stands for assets to under management. So if you have a problem of having too much asset problems, like what you just talked about, well, that's a great problem to have, cause that means you probably own 10 private islands. And you have millions of dollars and millions of resources and you could solve that, right? Yeah. That's not the issue with being an asset ma manager, like a caveman could figure that out or a cave woman, cave person, I should say. But the hard problem with the asset manager is the barriers to entry to get started in the first place. Right? Cause there's one thing is when you're actually small and you don't have a lot of assets, you actually have a huge advantage in the sense that. You don't have to deal with [00:16:00] any scalability problems you can buy and sell anything without any impact. So you have that advantage. You're super nimble and you can do weird things and no one looks at you. Oddly, the problem is you have massive fixed cost and you need to get like at an, in the case of an ETF, you need to have $50 million day one, or you're lighting money on the fire. You, you know, or lighting money on fire. So how the heck do you get to 50 mil? If you're starting from zero. So you have all this ni nimble capability, but because of the huge fixed cost, you need a half 50 mil to make it profitable and stay alive by how you're gonna get 50 mil. If you don't have any money to pay for sales people to get it rolling. So, so asset manager business is just incredibly challenging because of this chicken or the egg issue. And it's the same problem with like, SASCO, Newser like if I'm gonna start like a ne a new Facebook, or if I don't like Twitter, I'm like, well, I'm just gonna go start a new. Well, the problem is they got network effects. They already got the scale. They're already there. They already paid to fix costs. No [00:17:00] problem. So even if you invent something that's better, more cheaper, more nimble, the problem is you've got to survive to get to scale, to make it profitable and worth your time. And, and that's like any good business that that's a good business. It's gonna take you a decade. Realistically to build it. And, and that's why it, I'm sure you've heard this saying, but in our business, particularly like in asset management, financial services, it's, you know, overnight success takes 10 years a and that's actually pretty good number. Like, like that's why I moved to Puerto Rico a few years ago. Because it took me 10 years to finally get to this point where I was like, I actually need to worry about taxes cuz I'm actually making money as opposed to being broke off my ass for the past decade. So it's just the nature of our, our business is challenging. Aaron Watson: So man, there's so many different directions I could go there. I'm trying to pick the, the route that makes the most sense for everyone. So the, the years of struggling the years of, you know, not needing to worry about tax optimization, cuz you're worried about growing the revenue and just getting the business to a sustainable place. Yes. Was it, was it bootstrap, like how did you [00:18:00] actually think about growing this thing? Outside of writing blogs and doing this content marketing, like what was, what was the strategy. Wesley Gray: Yep. So, so we were a hundred percent bootstrap. We've always been basically bootstrapped there there's one wrinkle on that. I'll walk you through. But essentially this is just something I always wanted to do right in the first place. Like I just, even as a little kid you know, I grew up on this on a ranch and everything. I, and I, I learned to hate manual labor at a young age and, and a long story short, I learned like, wait a second. There's this thing called investing where you just take money and you make more money. That's a lot better than like digging ditches out in the field. Right. So for whatever reason, I was like, that's what I want to do. That makes a lot more sense than like breaking my back all day long. So I, I just, I was like, you know what? I got to get into this business. Long term, it's what I wanna do. And then what my particular case is kind of cheating, right? Because what I did is I became a professor and I don't know if your audience knows about like being a tenure track professor, especially at a business school in finance, but it [00:19:00] it's a, it's what I would call a cheese ball gig. Right. You're making like a big salary. And I had a special deal where I only had to teach three classes a year. Right. So, and it was a quarter system. So there's 52 weeks in a year. A quarter's 10 weeks. So I literally worked where I had to like focus on like actually doing something for 10 weeks a year, but I had 42 weeks a year to do quote unquote research. Right. And I'm getting a huge salary. So, so in my case, it was pretty easy to be an entrepreneur because what was I doing during the 42 weeks a year? I'm thinking about investment strategies and things that I want to do. And like, cuz it'll be useful for academic research, but Hey, I might actually make some money and turn this into an investment product someday. So I had this like very lucky situation of, of not having like burn to midnight oil in one job and do the other one. So it Aaron Watson: sounds, so it sounds. So it sounds like another arbitrage. I know we're gonna talk about Puerto Rico later, but another arbitrage for anyone looking to break into investing is to just get a PhD and become a professor. Wesley Gray: yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's not easy, but, but if you, I always tell people the best gig ever to be an entrepreneur. Is to somehow become a professor be because it's not a real job. And I feel bad for, for what I call real entrepreneurs where, you know, you're literally like working your ass off 88, 9 hours a week at your day job. And then somehow you've got to figure out how to do. You're entrepreneur endeavors after that, and you got a wife and you got kids like, to me, that seems crazy. And you're just setting yourself up for failure. So you, you really need to get a situation like that, where you have something floating you, but you also have your time and or what you're doing, kind of matches what you wanna do as an entrepreneur. Anyway, cuz that's the only realistic way you're gonna be able to, to make it happen. And then the other. That I always tell people is so one, if you can become a professor, get your PhD you know, that's not, not easy, but you know, if you can do that, it is a great way to set yourself up to be an entrepreneur. The second thing is just put [00:21:00] out really great ideas and great content. And, and, and put yourself out there. And so that's what we did. And, and one way we got set up in business and, and I don't know if you ever heard this story, it's kind of crazy, but I literally had a billionaire cold call me cuz he ran my blog and he ran my dissertation as well. But like this was way back when we started our business. Right. When I was becoming a professor, I got a cold call from a billionaire. This guy named Eddie stern, who runs like the stern fan office. And he is like, Hey, you know, I got like three to $4 billion. This was around 2010 and he said, I want to get rid of all these hedge fund managers. You know, we just got smoked out in 2008. I'm tired of all this crap. We're gonna take over our money. We're gonna keep our costs down. Controller taxes. I haven't reading your blog. I like you. I trust you. Can we talk. And I was like, well, like I just VE first verified. I Googled like, is this a scam? I, I feel like I'm about to get scammed here. And I Googled and I'm like, oh crap, this is actually like a billionaires calling me. So anything, one, one thing led to another and then they basically kind of put us in business. Initially, cuz they, we got like essentially a 50 million seed into our, into our anchor strategy. . And so that was kind of about us Aaron Watson: going, just to clarify though. So, so people were stick with us. This is invested capital. So that AUM idea, not like equity that they took in the business, sometimes not equity sometimes. You know, your starting investor may take also some of the shares associated with being like, like actually the, the. The business equity itself, but this is invested capital that you can start to take your, you know, relatively small fee on and then go to the next potential investor and say, Hey, look, we already have 50 million and this reputable investor. So Hey, you should probably consider Wesley Gray: joining us as well. Yeah. Yeah. So I should clarify. It's not operating capital. It is investment capital, which is obviously way different because you know, if you have 50 million and you charge, let's say half of a percent, you know, that, that means you're getting 250 K revenue. It would be really nice if someone just put 50 [00:23:00] million in my bank account, and then I could go spin that on like operating. But, but this is really, it sounds like a lot of money, but to your point, that's the assets, but you need that because even, even if you get paid zero on. It, you know, an asset, management's something where, when you talk to people, they're like, well, how much assets do you have under management? And if you tell them that you have, well, I have a hundred thousand dollars from my mom. They're gonna be like, okay, maybe I'll give you $5,000. Right. Cause they don't wanna be like a big part of your business. But if you say, oh, I got 50 million in my business, in my assets, then they'll say, oh, I'll give you five. Right. So scale begets scale. It's like a lot of these things, you, you need scale to get the scale and it's no different in asset management, but, but the, the main point to, to go back to your original question is one, get a gig that facilitates a lot of time on your hands, and then two put yourself out there as authentically and loudly as you possibly can. And if you're saying something different unique, I truly do believe in this day and age, you know, you'll, you'll have people that reach out to you. To, to inquire about, you know, what you're doing, what's your value add and all that good Aaron Watson: stuff. And so, yeah, that's a perfect thing to build off of, which is people are gonna have these different takes and you, you reference momentum. That's also called trend following sometimes. And Value investing. Like there's still different takes within that, you know, very large universe of investing frameworks. And so if I have a particular type of momentum investing or any type of investing that I wanna do, what your platform actually allows folks to do is make their own. Custom ETF and be that the rules or the, the, the industry or the segment that you wanna focus on, you basically provide the underlying infrastructure for them to kind of express that investment thesis and, and bring it to the market in not the high fee active management way, but in a lower fee way. Do you wanna expand on Wesley Gray: that a little bit? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, and, and I'll explain it. So, so we, we. Two kind of core businesses, right? And this goes back to the whole mantra of low cost and just running things lean. Cuz [00:25:00] we effectively had like an AWS situation, which I'll explain. So we have our asset management business, which is our branded products. So where we do the research, it's our particular ideas. That we run, we put it out to the market. I personally invest in them, et cetera, but over time, because we had to survive in this crazy, you know, huge barrier to entry entry business called asset management. We ended up building the ecosystem to support an asset manager institution on the cheap. Right. And every single point, along the way, we are not Goldman Sachs, where are some people in a garage trying to save money. And it turns out that, you know, we run our own assets, but that capability to be able to bring other people to market. Cheaply affordably and efficiently is, is, is what we call ETF architect. And that's what, we're where we do at your talk about where, where let's say you're an entrepreneur and you want to bring your idea to the marketplace, but you don't [00:26:00] wanna light millions of dollars on fire to try to figure out how to do that. Our platform it's kind like equivalent tech. It's like AWS, right? Like. Do you really wanna run your own server racks and do all this stuff? Probably not. It's a lot easier to just go hire Jeff Bezos in Amazon, cuz they already did it for their own business. Right. We kind of did the same thing. We, we, we didn't even know it. Because we weren't thinking about being in that business, but we essentially created like AWS for ETFs. Where, where if you don't wanna deal with all the back office, minutia and things that most people don't wanna waste time on, you know, we have a business where, where we do all the infrastructure behind the scenes to allow, you know, basic people to be. Sorry, like go be out rich and famous and sell their idea to the public, essentially. Yeah. Aaron Watson: And you're meanwhile, you're doing the shovels and pickaxes behind the gold rush. Wesley Gray: Yes. Yeah, exactly. That, that's why I tell people I'll sell a great shovel. That's low cost and high quality to anybody who, who wants to enter our business. Cuz the objective on, on that business particular is I want to make it easier for other entrepreneurs cuz I had to do it the hard. And then we kind of figured out how to do it, but I don't wanna, I don't wish that upon my worst enemy. So how do we lower the barrier to entry where other entrepreneurs can enter our business and make it more competitive? That that's what the objective of that platform is. Aaron Watson: Got it. So this has been fantastic west any I, I wanna. Discuss the ETF market and stuff a little bit more, but you are calling in first guess we've ever had from Puerto Rico. And in, in our, our note before actually doing the interview, you said it's the biggest arbitrage I know of on planet earth. So I don't know. Yes. I don't know. That's about as, as good a hook as I can put into any kind of premise set. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wesley Gray: take it away from there. sure. So so like going back to fees, right? Like, like you always wanna get as much as you possibly can and pay as little, as much as possible for it. Right. And so in our investment business, people are gonna haggle well, you're charging me 1%. This person's charging me like. One 10th of a percent or whatever it is. Right. But people always forget that the biggest cost on your human capital or your actual capital is not the fees. It's the taxes. Right? Cause like, think about your own human capital. If you're, if you're making a lot of money, your marginal cost to the government is in many cases gonna be half of. Goes to uncle Sam. So why are we arguing about like 10 basis points or 1% we're talking about 50 percentage points every year goes to this, this thing called the us government. Right. And in SIM similar, like on your capital, like in the form of capital gains and what have you, maybe it's not 50. But it's, you know, a good 25, 30%. And so the Puerto Rico situation, and this is something I started thinking about pretty hard, cuz you know, like I mentioned, like I, I was the 10, 10 year overnight success where, where I'm basically eating ramen noodles and like taking massive, huge risk with my life. Like pissed it off my [00:29:00] wife and family and everything. And then we finally make it where I'm like, holy cow. Like, this is actually what these entrepreneurs, you get, you get rich, we'll call it like, but wait a second. Now I got to give half of this back to the government. Like I finally made it. If that's the deal, that's a bad deal. I got to solve for this. Right. And so Puerto Rico has this thing called act 60. We're we're essentially the, the country we'll call it even though it's not a country, it's party, United States, it's a colony, but you can just treat it like a country cuz they get to kind of run their own rules. They basically have a situation where, where a lot of people have been leaving the island for a long time cuz like hurricanes and some other stuff. And so they're trying to incentivize people. To bring their human capital and bringing their talents down here and to make a long story short, it's called act 60 used to be called act 2022, but effectively. And it's more complicated than this, but you pay 0% on your capital gains and you basically pay 4%. Income tax, right? There are, there are frictional costs. It's not that simple, but, but at a high level, it's [00:30:00] pretty close to that, right? So the reason I call it, the biggest arbitrage in the world is you might move from a, a marginal 50% tax income tax rate down to four. Which is, you know, life changing difference. If you compound that over time, it it's, you know, it, it, I value my time. And so if you have some set like financial goal, you know, by ripping that much out, you're gonna cut your time needed to work by like a third. Or like more like 70%, sorry. Because you're just gonna get wealthier much quicker if you should have, and Aaron Watson: it compounds, right? Like that's investing 1 0 1. Yes. It's not just 50% one. And you get Wesley Gray: a compound compounding effect. Yeah. So, so you save it and then you compound it at zero. So, so you're, if you just do any sort of spreadsheet modeling, let's say you have objective to hit X million in, in 20 years. We'll plug in the taxes. It'll take you 20 years. Come down to Puerto Rico. It might take you five. Right? And so, and if you don't want to be a work and stiff your whole. And you could hit a certain financial objective, you know, in five years versus 20, I just literally bought 15 years of my life where I could do whatever the hell I want to me. That's hugely valuable. Cause I value my time. Cause it's the only scarce resource that we all have. But of course then you got to ask. Okay, well, well that sounds amazing. And that would be an arbitrage if there's no cost, but you know, do I got to go live in Afghanistan or something or go, go live in Iraq, which I've actually been there. You know, that sucks. And a lot of people think like, oh, well I got to go to Puerto Rico. Like, like aren't I gonna get like mugged and murdered every day and it must be terrible. And, and honestly, I think it's amazing. Like I have a place called PMA Delmar, like it's tropical weather. So it's like perfect weather every day. Do we have hurricanes? Of course. Is it, is it, you know, issues? Of course, there's a huge community down here where I live in particular where it's everyone down here is like an entrepreneur. They got wife, kids. There's a. Sorry, community like security wise. I don't even worry about it. Like it's like anywhere, like, well, yeah, if you go out to the [00:32:00] city at two o'clock in your rolls Royce and you're throwing a hundred dollars bills around in the wrong neighborhood, you might get bugged, but that's not unique to Puerto Rico. That's just. The world, like that's common sense, but I actually find like Puerto Ricans to be incredibly considerate friendly and open, especially if you're willing to like put in time, like learn some Spanish, learn the culture. So I just see it as almost like, like there's not any cost, like you're gonna pay basically us. Government's gonna pay me to go live in a tropical island, hang out with really cool people every day. Like it, that's why I say it's the biggest arbitrage of all. Because you get all these benefits. And at least from my perspective, there's very little cost. If anything, it's negative cost. So I like it. Aaron Watson: So, and, and one of the other benefits is that it's also like east coast time zone, like you and I are literally like, we've setting this up, we're on the exact same time zone. It's not as if I'm going to the other side of the globe and like asleep when other people are awake and trying to coordinate that or stay up all night. Yeah, but I wanna just, I wanna ask about the costs just, just to [00:33:00] make sure. That, like you said, like, and I'm not accusing you of doing this, but like the financial advisor would be like, it's, there's no cost. There's no downside whatsoever. That's always like the alarm flag going off, so, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. There, there is some infrastructure stuff and there is some hurricane stuff. Is that the, would that, would you call that like the two big costs associated with it? I would say. Wesley Gray: Yeah. So, so there's upfront frictional costs to set it up, right? Cause you got to hire some lawyers, accountants, and that can range the pen complexity situation from like 10 grand to a hundred grand or more But, but that's not really, if you're bringing any sort of scale down here where like, obviously you're, you're at a marginal rate of 50, this is Trump change, right? That the real cost honestly is the, is the emotional and like family cost and like the frictional cost of you've literally got to have no kidding live down here and be a bonafide resident. So, and that's costing a sense from an emotional standpoint. I, if you're in a place, you have a lot of anchors. You have a lot of roots. You, you literally, you literally, you cannot really not live in Puerto Rico and just hang [00:34:00] out down here. Like you got to literally live here. So I would say that's frankly, the biggest cost, the real cost that people got to think about. And Aaron Watson: is that like one of those things where it's like 180 days out of the year, something like that, they're like, Wesley Gray: you're verifying that. So, so what it is is, is. My strong recommendation. So on the capital gains, it depends on sourcing, right? So capital gains are sourced where you reside. So wherever your bonafide residence is, that's where all your capital gains get attributed. So that requirement means you need to be a bonafide resident and put a hundred a three days. In Puerto Rico. This is also the same role that applies to like a Florida, a California, Texas. What have you, same deal for capital gains in order to get the capital gains sourced to like a certain state, you have to put in the time income is sourced where you do the work. So for example, let's just say, you're like, oh, I'm gonna be smart. I'm gonna move from California to Florida, but I'm, I'm, I'm gonna go live in Florida for six months, a year in a day and not in California. But I do live in California. I do work from California. So capital gains are good. A hundred percent of your capital gains is gonna be subject to Florida, state taxes, none to California. However, your income, the 183 days that you're standing in Florida is gonna be subject to the zero state tax. But the other days that you're sitting in California doing work, those are gonna be subject to California, state tax, still same kind of concept in Puerto Rico. Right? If you do six months down here, You will get the 4% tax rate on your income. If it, if it runs through like a, like a company and it's structure correctly, however, for the other days that you're in the states, like if you go live in New York and you work the other six months up there, those six months, you're just subject to good old fashioned. taxes you were paying beforehand. Be, be again, because the sourcing on different types of income are different just based on the tax rules. So I always tell people, if you want to get the real deal, you really need to be down here like 80, [00:36:00] 90% of your days. And, and just live here as like a full-time resident. Got it. That's what I Aaron Watson: do. Got it. Well, this has been incredibly educational west before we aim towards wrapping up and last asking our standard last questions. Was there anything else you were hoping to share today that I didn't give you a chance to? Wesley Gray: No. I, I would say I, if we're talking entrepreneurs out there, my, my biggest advice on that, cuz cuz a lot of people ask. Is is you just got to keep your internal operating costs down and you just gotta be willing to grind realistically for like five to 10 years on nothing. And, and if you don't have that capability, it's why would you do it? Like, what's the point, it's just, it's too risky and too crazy. So any entrepreneur out there who, who wants to do this? It it's like anything in life. It's not a free lunch. And that includes being entrepreneur and it's not for every. Aaron Watson: Totally. And, and I've talked with so many different entrepreneurs about this, and it sounds like you're kind of over that threshold where things are starting to really compound an exciting way because you're past the 10 years. Yeah. [00:37:00] But it, it's not just that, you know, the revenue of the business compounds or that the number of clients compounds it's that your skill and your capabilities. As an entrepreneur compound as well. And I'm, you know, my business is approaching five years, so I'm halfway to that overnight success story, but I'm like realizing things now that it's, it's painful. I'm like, man, if I could have just figured this out, like two years ago, holy hell, there'd be a completely different place. And I know that there's 18 more of those waiting for me here over the next couple years that I just have to try to accelerate my, my rate to getting to. But that's, that is exactly, you know, what I've experienced and is affirming to hear from you is that, that compounding isn't just for investors, it's for entrepreneurs Wesley Gray: as well. Yes. And, and the 90% stat or whatever it is about like 90% of businesses fail it, it's kind of like a PhD, right? They always say like, if you get a PhD, it it's 1% brains, 99% perspiration. And, and it's very easy to identify. Who's gonna finish PhD. Not based [00:38:00] on their IQ, but just their ability to grind and same thing with entrepreneurship. Like, I don't need to know your brains. I don't need to know anything if I have a sense for like your, your culture of discipline and ability to grind. I, you know, it's not the 90% odds that you're gonna have. You're probably odds are probably more like inverse. There's probably 90% chance you will. If, if you could do it. So I'd say if you're someone who's got that discipline, you've got that passion, and this is something you want to do. You know, even though we're talking about how hard it is, I wouldn't dissuade you cuz I think your probability of success is actually more like 90%. You're gonna win. It's the 90% stat is, is the, is the, you know, the, the, the total population of everyone who tries. And as you know, just based on how many fat people there are in America, like it's really easy to lose weight and get skinny, like eat less or work out more. But the problem is how many people can actually do that. Right? So if they entrepreneur it's really easy, like we just said, you got to be willing to work for 10 years and hate, you know, work really hard and not.[00:39:00] Get a lot of benefits and that's just a hard thing to do so that that's where those stats come from. But you should stick with it if you, if you really think you got the discipline. Yeah. And I Aaron Watson: just love the way that, you know, you approach thinking about investing and how you, you are evidence based, but you're also, you know, part of that from a statistical perspective is what are the base rates? And so I saw the same statistics when I got started and my whole thing was okay. If 90% of people fail, what percent fail. Don't work just 40 hours that work 50, 60, 70 hours. And then what percent fail if they read more than 10 books a year and what percent fail if they, you know, commit to a content publishing schedule and never break it, like, and then you start to shift the base rates in your favor, if you can play those different games, but inspiring stuff happy for you and all the success and compounding that you've already experienced. And the fact that you're getting 15 years back is certainly something that plenty of people are gonna be jealous of. If they wanna learn more about you. About alpha architect, where in the digital world, can we point people Wesley Gray: that wanna learn more best place is Twitter at alpha architect and then on LinkedIn, I'm pretty active as well. Also like slash alpha architect. So, but Twitter's the main place where, where I reside. Aaron Watson: Perfect. We're gonna link that and all the other relevant links in the show notes to this episode. So you can connect with Wes going deep there.com/podcast is the place for every episode of the show to find that, or in the app, we're probably listening to this right now, but Wes, before we let you go, I would like to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience. Wesley Gray: All right. So I run this event called March for the fallen. We're eight years running now, and it is a 28 mile R March, but I always tell people, Hey, everyone's got a personal summit where it's not a charity, cuz the charity is actually showing up. To this event and conducting the event in remembrance of people that obviously fell in the service, cuz there's a lot of what they call gold star families out there. And so in order to do this, it's very easy. Go to a architect.com/mf TF and sign up [00:41:00] register. We actually cover logistics and chow. You just got to pay the 40 bucks to the base. It's out in the middle of Pennsylvania, bunch of finance geeks out there that I bring lot of movers and shakers in our business. And that's something you could literally do right now. Sign up and in two months, I'll see you in the flesh should be Aaron Watson: fun. Awesome. Where is that in Pennsylvania? Cuz that's not, not too far from me. Wesley Gray: Yeah. Yeah. It's in for Indian town gap, just, just near Harrisburg. It's around like 40 minutes. It's at the national guard training. Awesome. Aaron Watson: Well, we are going to share that link, encourage people to do it. We've got Pittsburgh listeners, so hopefully, maybe we can get a, a caravan of folks coming out your way there for that. Wesley Gray: That'd be awesome. Yeah, that'd be awesome. We'd appreciate it. And so, so obviously with gold star families, beautiful, good Aaron Watson: stuff. Well, west, this has been fantastic. I've learned a lot. I'm feeling inspired. I'm gonna go, I don't know, maybe, maybe not March that many miles, but I'm gonna go go for a walk or a run or something after this. Cause I'm fired up. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the. Wesley Gray: Yeah, appreciate you having Aaron Watson: it's been an honor.
Ali Moiz previously founded and sold Streamlabs and Peanut Labs, for a combined enterprise value over $180 million.
Currently, Ali is the founder, CEO, and meme Dealer at Stonks, which aims to help founders save time in fundraising so they can focus on the business. Stonks is a platform for virtual Startup Demo Days. It has quickly become popular in helping startups find their angel investors with the help of event organizer. Join Aaron and Ali on this episode as they discuss how he got it up and running so quickly with over $15 million monthly investments, while avoiding lessons from past startups, and what he is doing with the wealth he had acquired from his past companies. Ali Moiz’s Challenge; Clean up your calendar, remove things that don’t need to be there and use that time for personal development. Connect with Ali Moiz
If you liked this interview, check out Naval Ravikant’s Wisdom w/ Eric Jorgenson and Billionaire Henry Schuck just IPO’d ZoomInfo during a Pandemic.
Jim Shorkey built his family’s auto business into more than 9 dealerships, over 800 employees and 15,000 new & used car sales per year. This podcast explores how he did it.
In 1996 Jim Shorkey Jr.’s father died and left him the Jim Shorkey Auto dealership. With his experience as a sales manager, Jim Shorkey was arrogantly sure he was going to be successful growing this business. Instead, he brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. Jim had to grow his skillset and discipline quickly to save the family business. He credits mentors and the book Think And Grow Rich for how he was able to turn things around. Join Aaron in this episode as he finds out how having a mentor and reading a book multiple times helped to pivot Jim’s perspective and why he plans to live to 122 years old. Jim Shorkey’s Challenge; Buy Think And Grow Rich, read it at least three times, and disagree with him. Connect with Jim Shorkey
If you liked this interview, you’re gonna love our episode Don’t Marry Your Business, Commit to Your People w/ Jason Wolfe.
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Shorkey: That's the interesting thing about goals, but you can go beyond the goal and you will, if you're running this thing the right way, you'll go beyond the goals. It's not the goal. The goal isn't the key, the key is what you become in pursuit of the goal. And oftentimes when you're doing things the right way, you actually will get to a point where it's time to get the goal. And it's like, I don't even want that goal anymore. I want this, but you have the financial wherewithal to do it.
Watson: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to going deep with Aaron Watson today's episode with Jim Shorkey is a tour divorce. We get into how he transformed his family business from one dealership to many selling hundreds, to selling thousands of cars per year, and also how he went from the company being on the imminent verge of bankruptcy to having more economic and financial success than 99% of dealerships out there. I am confident that you will be blown away by Jim's energy, the clarity of his vision, and a whole lot more. So let's get into it. Here is Jim Shorkey. You're listening to going deep with Aaron Watson. Jim, I'm super appreciative that you're making the time to be on the show. I'm really excited. Shorkey: I'm super glad you're making the time to have me on the show. I love it, I love it. I'm glad to be here. So I wanna paint a picture and I was reading your book and I saw these kinds of two stats that really, to me, summarize one of the many transformations that you've experienced over the course of your life. Watson: And that is 1998 and the year 2019 in 1998, your family car dealership was one dealership. Yes. With 40 employees and was selling. 800 new and used cars per year. Correct. And by 2019 you had built that into nine dealerships, over 800 employees and more than 15,000 new and used cars sold per year. Shorkey: Correct. There's a lot of principles that made that possible. It's not, we can just, you know, give them one prescription and let 'em run there, but to kind of start things off. Can you take us back to those early days of running the family business, where your mindset was and what needed amending? Okay, so, my father is the founder of the company, so I'm second generation. So the company was founded in 1974. And at that time it was called Courtesy Oldsmobile Jeep. So it really is a 50 year old company that said I, I always worked in the car business. I worked part-time jobs in high school and college. And, you know, I always wanted to be in the car business. I always wanted to sell cars from a young age. And that was obviously a great deal because my dad, you know, worshiped the ground he walked on. I wanted to be like dad, that kind of thing. But I always wanted to be a car salesman. So, you know, fast forward to 1979, I graduated from college. I have a degree in economics and math and I, you know, people thought, what are you gonna do now? I'm gonna go sell cars. Like what? You're gonna go sell cars. Yeah. I saw what I wanna do. So I, 1979, I'm selling cars. And then I did very well selling cars. And so I got moved up into the business and, and so proceeded to run my career and it was mainly a run selling. So I was a salesman and I directed sales and I was at the end of the, at the end of, of that, that part of it. I was the general sales manager. My father was the founder and the owner and the operator, and he ran everything except for the cells and even oversaw the sales as well. So my father died very suddenly March 24th, 1996. And he literally dropped dead. He was only 63 years old. Watson: And how old were you at the time? Shorkey: I would've been 19 1996. I was 30,39, right? Yeah. 39, 39 years old. Yeah. And so I still miss my dad. I mean, I met with my dad every single day. My whole career in the car business, except for, at the beginning, I met with him every day. We would get together at 8:30 in the morning and talk about the car business and, and, and, you know, oftentimes it was about life, you know? And so my dad died. At that time, my wife and I owned 24% of the stock of the corporation. So we were owners and I was the air parent. It was all set up, all legalized that I would be the, the, the, the guy that would run it. So my dad died. And I often say, Aaron, if I knew half as much as I thought I knew when my dad died, I would've been pretty darn smart. The fact is I really didn't know what I was doing, but I was arrogant. And so it's one thing to not know. That's one thing, that's, that's a bad idea. It's another thing to not know, but think, you know, that's called arrogance, right? Mm-hmm . And so I didn't want any help. I didn't want any advice. I didn't want any, any assistance. All kinds of people reached out to me cuz my dad was a well thought of man in the automobile business. And I just didn't want any of that. I just, I got this, I got this, I got this. So two years later I ended up in bankruptcy. I got a phone call from my sister on a Sunday evening that tomorrow morning when we open up the dealership, the bank account's gonna be a negative $55,000 checks are gonna bounce, bounce. Excuse me. And you know, so it was a devastating thing. Very devastating, very depressing, very sad. I mean, this is my dad's business. He has run it for 22 years. I've been running for two years. We're in big trouble. So needless to say I didn't sleep that night. I got up the next morning. First thing, I headed for the bank. I believe you needed to confront your problems, head on headed for the bank and I told Lazar was my my connection. He met me at the steps. They weren't even open yet. I was there before they opened much the same as you and I just talked about. And so I'm there early and this is a big deal. Big problem. I'm sad. I'm depressed. I shouldn't say I'm depressed. That's a clinical thing, but I was very sad, very upset. Cuz probably anxious. There's probably an anxious, anxious. Yeah, anxiety. I really felt in my mind, at least in, I felt that these were my dad's checks and like how could I do this? How could I let my dad down like this? Like I felt that they were his checks and his name was on the check cuz it was Jim Shorkey. I'm Jim Shorkey. Jr. So it was always Jim Shorkey. Jim Shorkey Jr. My son's Jim Shorkey III. So, so anyways, so, so Lazar assured me that these checks would not bounce, which was like, oh thank you so much. I borrowed a hundred thousand dollars. To get the business floating again. And I had to get to work. And so now it was time to get to work. And I realized just how stupid I had been. I mean, really stupid. I'm not afraid to say that's not self-deprecating. It's a fact. I was just dumb. And so at the time I was reading this, this book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill written in 1937 to the height of the great depression. And it was a book about how to get rich, because if you're, if you think about it, the great depression, people didn't have money. And so he wrote this book, Napoleon Hill did for, to, to give people the opportunity or the guidance they should say to make money. Right. So, I have his book, I'm reading it, but I'm not really executing. And I think a lot of us do that. Like, we'll get a vocal reader, be like, okay, let's go read another book. Wait, wait, let's do the first one first. Right. So I wasn't executing it. So I executed it. So I decided at that time I had a, a Napoleon was long dead, but I had a conversation with Napoleon Hill on a spiritual basis. And I said to Napoleon Hill, if you get me outta this mess, and it was a big mess, I will do exactly what you tell me to do. I will dot the I's cross t's I will do exactly what you tell me to do. And number one, number two, I will never be arrogant again ever, ever, ever, ever. And so that became my credle that became my call to arms call to action. So I got, I, I got the book, I, I got a pen, I got a highlighter. I started dotting the I's and crossed the t's. And one of the things that comes, if, if you've read the book, one of the things that comes out very, very paramount in the book is seek expert counsel, find somebody who's smarter than you and have a conversation. Find somebody who's done what you want to do and, and, and have a conversation they've done successfully. You say, find somebody who has done it successfully and then have a conversation. And so, and, and along those lines, if you're the smartest guy in the room, you're in the wrong room, you need to get out of that room. You need to get in the room, the best room for you to be in is the room where you're the dumbest guy in the room, the dumbest girl in the room. Right. So that would, that was the advice I took from that was the credo. Right. Watson: And that's kind of a paradox where I think it's, I don't know if it's Yogi Berra or someone has the lines. Like, I don't wanna be a part of any club that would let me in, which is the sub. The subtext of that is I'm trying to reach those most exclusive rooms. Not because it's a prestige thing that that's, the error is like thinking it's an ego prestige, look at how cool I am for being here. It's because the folks that really kind of cloister together that have these secrets, it's not necessarily that they want the secrets, but they can be, you know, completely torn apart if they were just to fully themselves open to the public. Yeah. And if you can find your way into those spaces, you're going to get access to wisdom. That's hard earned. Shorkey: It's unbelievable. Yeah. And, and so it's, that's an interesting thought in and of itself is that the people that are in those rooms, they're so gracious and they're so willing to help, you know, they want to help, they want to pass this information on, they want this to be their legacy as well. Just like I do. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing now. And so but anyways, it was to seek expert counsel. Right. So that was the message. And so I, I, I went and did that. I went to Mr. Hamilton, who was my dad's former partner. And I went in now and now think about it. Two years ago. I'm Mr. Arrogant. Now it's like, man, I got I'm I'm I'm embarrassed. I got my tail between my legs. I got my hat in my hand. Right. And I went to Mr. Hamilton. I said, Hey, Mr. Hamilton I, I, I don't know what I'm doing. I need help. I would like to get a list from you. Top 10 things I should be doing to be a successful automobile dealer. And he called me James. Everybody called me, James, the seniors call me James. The younger people call me, call me Jimmy, my friends, I should say, call me Jimmy. But I was James to him. He said, James, let me think about that. Come back tomorrow morning. I'll have a list for you. So I go back the next morning and he has this really cool typed up list. I wish I could show it to you. Yeah, I, I, whatever I did with it, but usually I keep stuff like that. But anyways, I can't, I came back this morning, he hands me the list and I started to do this list. Right. But he was also in the car dealership business. Oh yeah. Mr. Hamilton was very, I'm sorry. Yeah. I, I assume people know that Mr. Hamilton was a very successful automobile dealer brought my dad into the car business was my dad's partner at one time. And he, he, he had the boats, he had the cars, he had the, he had the houses, everything I wanted, I wanted to be was, was him in terms of the, the, the financial aspect of things and the material aspect of things he just did. And so, so I go to him and so next, I, I get the list. He gives me a list and I, and I start to execute the list. That's all I did. I said, here's this list, these 10 things. And so if you can understand this analogy or this figurally speaking, so here, this is me, this is my, this is my needle. And it's flat, man. There's a bar. There's not a pulse, right? So I start doing a list and I can see this thing start to bump, man. I could see it. Like I start doing a list and I'm doing it, doing, doing the needles, moving I'm, I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not a train coming the other way. And it's like, this is, this is cool. So I go back for more ideas, Mr. Hamilton, again, very great. This was all free, by the way, very gracious gave me more ideas. Then I reached out to Chrysler financial, who was the financial arm of Jeep at the time Jimmy Lawn. And they come in and, and they just, they, they were so gracious and so nice. And they, they gave me a, another great idea, which I, we don't have time to get into, but it was a really, really great approach to this thing. Right. And then I reached out to GMC Jim Kacharski also. These were, by the way, we're very good friends with my fathers and I think that's part of it. Right, right. And so I go to Jim Kacharsky and he sends me this. And you wouldn't even notice cuz you're too young, but they were VHS tapes. Okay. These things were about this big. Right. And you put 'em in and it was, it was a videotape, right. It was how to be a, how to run a car dealership. And there were four modules and workbooks. And so I got those things and I wore them out. I just kept watching and watching, watching 'em and I joined think tanks, the smartest guy in the room. Wrong room. So I went to these think tanks where these people were very successful and, and I got involved and I went to a training program. So I'm talking to a CPA and in this training program I joined different think tanks. And I reached out to Allar my, my banker, Hey, what, what should I be doing? Allen just kept doing that. Right? And so over time, I developed this, this list and this list and this list, and it got bigger and bigger and bigger, and it kept executing lists. That's all I did was execute this list. And and so it went from bankruptcy, imminent, you know, like you said, 800. Cars per year, and it might have been a thousand. It was in that range, right. 800 a thousand. And, it was in fact 40 employees and it was one dealership. It was courtesy Oldsmobile Jeep. Well, from there, let's forget about 2019 because I left in 2016. But today, following these same principles, which my children do. So my wife and I turned the business over to the children back in 19, I'm sorry, 2016. It was a part of our estate plan. So we're out, we are not owners. We, we do have nothing with respect to the car dealerships either than real estate. Okay. So we're out, my children, four children, Katie Jim III, Russell, James, and Daniel James. They own the dealership 100% free of charge and clear of us. So we make no decisions. We're not involved every once in a while. They ask our advice and, and very quickly ignore it, you know, my kids do. But anyways, so, so today. That dealership group is 17 dealerships. They have a group in Georgia. They have a dealer group of five dealerships in Georgia. They have a dealership in a pretty sizable dealership in Boardman, Ohio, and then they just bought a Toyota dealership in the North Hills. So they have a Toyota North Hills Mitsubishi, Kia and Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep,. You reap Jeep rent trucks and north Hills two Chevrolet dealerships. And so it's like 17, 16, 17 dealerships, depending on how they do the math. It has north of 1100 employees and it sells 25,000 cars per year, north of that. And so that's the power of what we're talking about today. Watson: Were there going back to the, the kind of two year stretch where the business that your dad had built your first two years holding the rains before you had the mentors, as you were heading towards bankruptcy a minute, are, are there just simple unforced errors that were so clear in hindsight, but that you were making, whether it was, you know, really overspending in a certain area or, or focusing on the wrong thing? Shorkey: Can you just articulate maybe like some of those things that needed to be clarified? So remember my dad died. Okay. And it was my father who worshiped the ground. He walked on, but at the same time, I'm Jim Shorkey Jr. I'm gonna make this bigger than it had ever been before. Right?. So I wanted to make it bigger. Right? Sell more cars, make more money, everything big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big. And so that's the mistake. Okay. So, when you're running a business, the most important thing that we have to pay attention to as business owners is our cash position. Right? And so when you make this business bigger, it takes more cash to run it. Anytime, unbeknownst to me, cuz I didn't understand it. We're bleeding. Cash. Right. And so as I got into it, as I got into the accounting of it, and when I realized that bankruptcy was imminent, I'm talking to a CPA. And I said, I showed him my numbers. I was in a training seminar actually. And I sh and I, I, I, I, I, I well, this, this is a long answer. Shorkey: A short question. No. So, I did it, they had us do it in this training seminar. It was a CPA driven thing and had us do what is called a Z factor. And a Z factor is seven different ratios on your financial statement. Your, so your financial statement consists of your balance sheet and your income statement, right? So you take these two statements and you put these ratios together and there's seven of 'em and it comes, it, it, it comes into what is called a Z factor. And I don't remember what the ratios are. It was like debt income, and, you know, your, your, your assets and just different stuff like this. There's some of 'em. So they said, okay, we want you to do your Z factor. And the Z factor is a measurement of your, of your, the strength of your business. Right? So I go through the calculation and it turns out this is where I got this idea about bankruptcy. And it turns out, it says bankruptcy is imminent. I'm like what the crap, I must've done something wrong. I'm a math guy, right? Yeah. Go through and pay attention. He raised everything. Bankruptcy, imminent. I'm like, what the heck is this? So I'm really upset. I'm sad. I'm disappointed with all that. I go to, I wait till everyone else leaves the room, cuz this is embarrassing, right? Yeah. Your hand. Yeah. By the way, I'll better zoom over here. Like no. So I wait until the end. I went up, I got tears in my eyes. I said, Hey, this is my number. Yeah. And he said I said, this isn't gonna happen. This isn't happening. This, this is not gonna happen. I guarantee this isn't gonna happen. What should I do? He said, you gotta get small. And there's your answer. Yeah. If you gotta get small. I'm like, what are you talking about? You gotta cut everything. If you gotta cut the paper clips. If you have an employee that is not necessary, you gotta move them out. You gotta cut everything. You can advertise, whatever it is, you gotta get yourself so small that your breakeven point, which is an important number, is low enough that you can now sell a reasonable number, number of cars and make money and start building your cash position. Great position back up. Plus if you're liquidating assets that you don't necessarily need, you're also putting cash in a bank. So that's what I did, what all kind of happened at the same time, like the bankruptcy imminent and the negative 55,000 in the bank. This all came to a head at the same time and so but, but, but that would be your, the answer to your question would be, what did I do? Arrogant know it all, let's make this big, what did I find out after getting my butt kicked rurally, lose the arrogance and get small and get into expense management and cash management and all these different things that I just wasn't doing at all. Watson: And what's so interesting. We've, we've been on a, a role here on recent interviews of different businesses that, you know, through 2020, which was hard on so many businesses, unless you're like zoom or, you know, pelotons a couple there, which so hard on so many is the ones that had been in some way shape or form kicked in the teeth before. Shorkey: Yeah. Actually we were able to negotiate like, you know, JD Ewing or Aline, or some of these companies would say, like, we didn't lay off a single person. Yeah. Because we had had. At some point came Jesus' moment and said, man, we really need to have a, a tight handle on our bounce sheet and a conservative, you know, thing of the back with our company. We talk about our first year, nowhere not quite the same, but we had $27,000 worth of invoices past due from our existing clients. Yeah not good and not enough money for payroll. . I, I can remember a similar sentiment of staring at those numbers and being like, man, I don't, I don't really know what we're gonna do here. And you know, then I was talking to people. It's like, here's how you actually write your sales agreement terms. Here's how you send your invoices. Here's how you get the capital in place. And once again, it's like, you know, you can't, you can't persist through an experience like that with the fully inflated ego in check, unless you're maybe a sociopath. I don't know. That would be really the only way to, to navigate it. My favorite war in that regard is pivot P I V O T. And so I'm not, I don't, I don't care what the external circumstances are. I don't, I don't care. COVID 19 was all, it was, a call to action, a call to arms. If I had to pivot, I had to execute a pivot. I executed my pivot as a personal pivot in terms of, okay. I looked at it and I thought, okay, this, this is here. This is common. This is getting worse. And started analyzing, I thought, okay, well, my pivot was, what can I do to improve my, specifically concentrating on immunity. And I figure, okay, if I can get my immune system to be really, really strong, then I'm gonna get COVID and it's gonna be no big deal. Right. Well, as it turns out, I was right, right. So it turns out COVID 19 really is no big deal for the vast mature majority of the pop population. And in, in, in other words, like, well, over 90% of the people got COVID, they were sick, they recovered and, and they moved on me personally. I did get COVID. And it was like no big deal. And I'm not speaking with medical advice here. Okay. I'm speaking anecdotally, but for me it was no big deal. Now, what was I doing before that? I was doing intermittent fasting. I was drinking oolong tea. I was doing the physical movement I was doing. I was working all my sleep very aggressively and I was working on stress reduction and meditating and, you know, different things like infrared sauna and cold plunging and floating and all these different things that I just got these ideas. And I kept working on ideas, seeking expert counsel, right. Ideas, ideas, ideas, list, list, list, list. And so I went to work on that. And, but, but in the meantime with that pivot, I'm getting healthier regardless of COVID 19. So if I was in business with COVID 19, I would've executed a pivot. Okay. COVID nineteen's here. It's reality for us to say it's not that's craziness, but at the same time, what can we do? To take advantage of this situation in terms of running our business in a more efficient manner. So that's what my children did. And they actually developed a very, very serious, comprehensive, online approach to selling cars. They weren't even able to open, and then they were, and they, but they had this online. So they were working the deals online, everything, online pictures and discussions. People would come in cars, out, front, cleaned up, ready to go, basically have an agreement and they just have to drive the car. So they come in, drive the car and the paper work's all done. And, it actually ended up being a very efficient method for selling cars. So they're doing that. And they're selling cars like really, really well, because they were prepared in the meantime, the old method of kicking tires and driving cars and going into the showroom that came back. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: That came back. So now they have two approaches to the business. So because of COVID and to say, I don't believe me. I don't. Make fun of COVID. I'm not here. I know people died and people got very sick and people are still very sick. So I'm not making fun of that and I'm not making light of it, but it was out of my control. Watson: Right. Shorkey: As a business owner, it's out of my control and it serves no purpose for me to get all caught up in all the politics and the dogma, all that about how to deal with COVID. I can only deal with it on a personal and a corporate basis with our little company, which in Italy is a big company. But in the realm of the big world, it's a very small company, you know, 1100 employees is no big deal. It's probably at best a mid-size company relative to the world anyways. So we get to control how we handle the situation and that is our choice and that's what they did. And that's what I did. And, you know, that's what we did during the Great Recession when president Obama was in office and we executed a pivot and it was like, holy cow, we did better during the Great, this is what we learned is by the way, you're talking about adversity. Yeah. So the Great Recession, it was the worst depression, let's call it since the Great Depression. So it was really bad. There were 16 million new cars sold before the Great Recession. The year 2008 was 10 million. So 6 million people went away. Wow. And I said to my people, I said, listen guys, and girls, they said I'm not gonna talk about the 6 million. Oh one away. I'm gonna talk about the 10 million that one will buy cars this year and we're gonna go get 'em. Yeah. And we're gonna, we're gonna get, we're gonna get our fair share plus. So we're gonna take some of yours and we're gonna take some Hannahs and we're gonna take, we're gonna take the market. And so we came up with that idea and while everybody else was cutting, cutting, cutting, we were spending, spending, spending, and I, I felt that if I could go through the Great Recession and lose money, as long as it was, I had enough money that I could lose, I would be okay. Prefer not to prefer to break- even prefer to make a few bucks. But I came up with this idea. The pivot to listen to this was called the prosperity plan. And it initially was the depression plan, the recession plan. And I changed it. I, the prosperity plan, let's prosper during this time. So we upped our training. We upped our advertising, we upped our customer service, we, everything we opt up, up, up. And we ended up making more money in 2008 than ever in the history of the Jim Shorkey family auto group. Wow. And we actually repeated that in 2009. It was unbelievable because what happens if you, if you understand the competitive field, so if you have a, if you have a hun, if you have a hundred people that you're competing with, just to pick a number and this obstacle COVID 19 great recession, whatever it is that comes up, it's an external situation comes up 95% of the people just give up . And they go home. That's exactly what happened during COVID. Watson: Yep. Shorkey: Just a lot of, a lot of giving up. Watson: Right. Shorkey: Whereas we didn't give up. And so when you don't give up, if 95% give up, guess what your competitive fuel is now down to five people where it was 100, 5 people people. And so you can make a very, very successful business during a very, very tumultuous, external environment. And that's what happened to the people that really did the pivots, the restaurants, and the diff different businesses. They kicked butt. Watson: And, and that's, you know, throughout economic history, the Great Depression and other instances it's common to refer to the downturns or the collapses or the, the financial crises as when fortunes are made. Shorkey: Yes. Watson: Because if you're prepared, like you couldn't have spent and been comfortable with loss, if you hadn't been shoring up the balance sheet. Shorkey: No, no. Watson: And running a tight ownership in the years ahead. So you have a clear handle. It's like, you're not just jumping into the void, you're going in with a specific plan and awareness of what is able to be deployed in a responsible way to this growth opportunity and, you know, seizing that opportunity when everyone else has been, you know, kicked in the gut or knocked out or knocked outta the field is, is where, you know, really special growth occurs. Shorkey: Yeah. The people that, that really the business people that suffered during the Great or during the COVID excuse me, or, or the Great Recession, we can pick each, which, wherever one, you want the, where they made a mistake. So a fundamental rule of accounting is that you should have a minimum. Minimum of six months working capital yep. Supply minimum preferably a year. And so, so when I had, when I, when I was bankrupt, guess what? My day's supply of working capital was zero, was negative, right? It was zero. And so, so what happened was because I now understood that I learned, you know, what you don't know will hurt you by the way, whoever gave that, what you don't know won't hurt you is old crap advice. Don't pay attention to that. What you don't know will hurt you. And so what I learned from bankruptcy a minute and been moving forward with Mr. Hamilton, cash is king, cash is king, cash is king, and you have to have this supply, this supply of working capital. And so six months will be bare minimum. And what does that mean? So if you're spending just to pick a number a hundred grand a month on your expenses, on your, on your op on your operating report, a hundred thousand dollars a month means you need, you need to have $500,000 of unencumbered cash in the bank minimum so that if your business goes south, you have the money to sustain. So you didn't have the money, that's it? Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: You have you and what you need to do prudent financial wise, go grab those people by the throat and get your darn money, right? Exactly. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Cause that's gotta go to paying your people. Watson: Yep. Shorkey: So anyways, you didn't have the money to pay your people. Very very, and I was the same I'm with you, same place. So, but the prudent would be 12 months. Right. And so, so I don't wanna sound braggadocious and I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but I was prepared at the onset of the Great Recession in, as this is 2008 to lose a million bucks. I was prepared for that. And I told my people that, and I said, I'd rather lose 500,000. And I told 'em that. And I said, but preferably, and I actually have it written in the document, the research that I, but I'd really like to lose a hundred grand, like that would be great. Right?. This is my thinking. Right? It sounds kind of weird right? I'm gonna lose a hundred grand like, well, what, yeah, but we went on because we had the right idea in mind. It was a 24 point plan, much like the list that you and I already had talked about earlier, it was a list of, this is what we're gonna do. And you know, for example, customer service, we're gonna be customer service champs. If you don't like that, you need to go. You're not gonna be part of this. Right? So we're gonna take care of our customers. We're going, we're gonna, we're gonna make it a great environment for them, it won't be a depressing recession environment. So we had, we made chocolate chip cookies and we made popcorn and we put balloons in the sherm every day. And we had popup music in a sherm. So when people came in, they would see this, this, this, this environment that was like really, really positive. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: On our people. We had pump up meetings every day and got them pumped up right? And then we had training, we upped our training. So we are okay. If we're not gonna have any customers, let's just train like heck. And my vision was when we come out of this thing, I wanna be way better than I was going in. So it was my vision. So training and I felt if I kept my advertising going and even opt it, that I would be such a present in the market that when the thing did shift, that I would be in a position to take advantage of it. I opt for my inventory levels right? Everything was aggressive. And so it turns out that I was right. Okay. Turns out that I was right. And so, so we're doing all this stuff and we're making and, and, and what happened with this great recession was the advertising, because everybody bailed, most people bailed. I could get advertising for a dollar. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: I'm getting it for 50 cents. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: So the bang for my buck was double. We had the factory, they couldn't, they couldn't move cars right? Cuz nobody was cuz million people are I'm sorry, 6 million people in the way. So there were deals on cars. So I got these deals on cars. Like, Hey guys, I got these deals, come see us. So I'm up in the advertising. I got the deals. I got the people trained. I got the environment when they came in. And so long story short, we're running our business. We couldn't get all the people. We couldn't answer the phone fast enough. I remember one time I was sitting in the sales meeting and they said, and we would pay sales calls. So we're in a sales meeting. If there was a sales call, the salesman left the meeting. Right. And I, we had this thing going on a, on a, on a, on a car and it, and it And the message or the, the, the, the receptionist system said sales call lines one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine. I'm like, what heck couldn't get to the calls, quoting, get to all the customers. We actually brought my wife in and my sister in, to talk to customers. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Get this. This is the Great Recession. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: And we had a couple people that were washing cars. We brought them up just to talk to customers. One of 'em Dan Garber, still working at the dealership, selling cars. That's a mini pivot, right? Watson: Yeah. He has the opportunity too. Shorkey: He's washing cars. He came in and now he's selling cars and he's got a nice career all because of the Great Recession. Do you see where I'm going with this? Watson: Absolutely. Shorkey: So the Great Recession was an opportunity. It was an opportunity cuz everybody else. Does that make sense? Watson: Absolutely. And, and the thing that is apparent from the first time I spoke with you to the entirety of this conversation is having the right you wanna call it frame of mind, mental model collection of, of, you know, practical you know, strategies for dealing with any problem that you may face, be it, your health, be it, your business, be it, your personal life is like this through line that you are hyper committed to. So I wanna kind of fast forward, back up to when as part of you and your wife's estate planning, you passed the business off to your children. Take me into a little bit of the thought process there, and then we can transition into rethink you and what you're doing now. So I had this vision again, it's all about the vision goals, right? Shorkey: Had his vision. I knew that it was me. Right? And it was, I mean, I'm running the deal. I'm the guy, but my children I. I told my children very clearly that I said, guys, don't talk to me about, don't talk to me about the car business, cuz I love the car business. I'm gonna talk you into us. So if you don't wanna talk about it, let's not talk about it. I said, but if you're gonna get involved in the car business, I don't wanna be your second choice. I won't permit that. I'm not gonna be your second choice. I wanna be your first choice. And if you don't like it, then you'd go do something else. And they knew that they very clearly understood that. That was just my I'm. I'm the, I'm the guy, I'm the, I'm the dictator. I'm not gonna have, I, I don't want you to go out someplace else and fail, and then say, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go hang out with dad. No, that's not a formula for success. So if you're gonna be in this business, I wanna be your first shot. And so they, they all did that. They all did that and they got involved and they loved it. Cuz we were running this great organization. So Katie got involved and Jimmy got involved and Russell, my son got involved and my son Daniel got involved. He's the youngest of them. And so they're all involved and they're, they love it. I check with him consistently, even now. How do you, how do you like what you're doing, man? Oh God, I love it. I just love it. My son Russell, he's the math guy. He's the CPA guy, which. You know, remember what I said about the number, all man, the most important position in the, in the place Jim, my, my son, Jimmy, he's the salesman, you know, he saw you you'll be sitting right now and he's, like, I just bought five cars what happened? You know, he's like, he's the salesman. And then Katie and actually Katie's husband, Matt. Who's like a son to me. He's the guy Katie's involved with. Katie's a full-time mom. She is involved, but not to the degree that she was at one time, but they're just very passionate about the business. Daniel was a general sales manager at the key dealership in Wexford. Does a great job. Everything I hear about him is he works harder than anybody else in the organization. And I love that. I mean, he's a hard working guy. So, anyway, I had his vision that I've got these four children involved in the business. Daniel was very young at the time. So I said, I said, guys, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get three dealerships, right? That was my goal. Think about goals, right? Three dealerships, cuz I wanted to have one for Katie. One for uh, uh, Jim the third and one for Russell. And I said, now you guys are gonna get the dealership for, for Daniel. I'm not gonna do that. Right? So, and I, what my vision was that there would be four dealerships. Katie would own one 51% cuz one of the things accounting prudent, prudent, prudent accounting is you have to own the company. If you're involved in a partnership, 50, 50 bad ideas in general, just a bad idea. You want to control the company. So it's gotta be 51,49. That was what I was taught. That's how. I trained 51,49. So my vision was Katie 51, Jimmy 51 Russell and Daniel. They will all have this dealership and they would own 51. And the other three children would own the 49% split three ways. So they would own 16 and whatever I come 16 and a third I believe is so they would, they would own that. And so now it's coming to we're, we're doing this thing and I'm, I'm working on my estate plan, Amy and I are, I should say. And so I'm with my, and we have the whole family in the room, which those of you who are working on estate planning, it's, it's important to have everybody in the room, right? So I got 'em all in the room. And my, my, my, my attorney we're talking about what we wanna do. And I'm, I'm telling this is my vision. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: And the kids said we don't wanna do that. We don't wanna split it up like that. I'm like, well, what do you guys wanna do about this? We want, we want it to be, you know, everybody. Owns a share of the total thing nobody's in control. We'll work that out as a family. And one of my creators by the way, was that we gotta be able to do Thanksgiving dinner. If we can't do Thanksgiving dinner, I'm out, we're, we're, we're selling this thing. I'm not gonna do that. If we, if we break up the family, this isn't, this isn't not gonna happen in my view. It would kill me. Yeah. It would kill my wife, which would kill me. So the family has to stay together. So that was the basic crew of the thing. But anyways, they said, well, we don't wanna do that. I'm like, well, what do you wanna do? And they wanted to just have this big master company and split it up 25, 25, 25, 25, which I was not in agreement with. I said, hey guys, listen, this is your deal. And so we're literally having this conversation like we're right now. And I said, well, let's make a decision, right? It's right in thinking, right? Okay let's do it. So the meantime, Steve Seal who is my attorney comes up to me and says, well, there's this deal right now that's that's left. This is 2000, probably 15 left over from the, oh no, I'm sorry it was 2013 when it's I think, but this is left over from the Bush administration and, and it expires at the end of this year. I think it was 13, but don't hold me to that. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Doesn't matter. So, they said, well, he said, well, you can give your entire estate away up to this amount, which was a pretty big number. Watson: Yeah Shorkey: Estate tax free. I'd like tell me more and it goes on into perpetuity. So what I gave to the children, what my Amy and I gave the children, excuse me, was there would be no estate tax and the estate tax is brutal. It's basically, once you get beyond a certain number it's 50% like holy cow, it's like, it's rough, put you outta business. And, but onto perpetuity means that they can also pass it on to the next generation. Watson: Oh wow. Shorkey: State tax free. So I left this part out, but, remember I said three, three dealerships, right? Well, at that time I had six so that's the interesting thing about goals. People think, well, the goal is that you can go beyond the goal. And you will, if you're running this thing the right way, you'll go beyond the goal. It's not, it's like the goal, the goal is just to the goal is just like that board there. Right? So that's the goal. And, and, and Jim Roone said, it's not, it's not the goal. The goal isn't the key, the key is what you become in pursuit of the goal. And oftentimes when you're doing things the right way, like the signs of getting rich, you actually will get to a point where it's time to get the goal and it's like I don't even want that goal anymore. Yeah. I want this, but you have the financial wherewithal to do it. Does that make sense? Watson: Our mutual friend, Sarah Macon. Shorkey: Oh yeah. Yeah. Watson: Talks about there is no limit, so you can set the goal, but you're almost like putting a limit if the goal is just here Shorkey: mm-hmm. Watson: and there's extra space above that. Shorkey: Yeah. Don't forget that. And that's why I'm not a big believer in setting big goals. I'm not, and that's gonna count sound very foreign to a lot of people, but Watson: yeah. Shorkey: big goals are, are daunting. Like, like you wanna, Watson: It could be deflating if they see Shorkey: deflating yeah. You wanna run a marathon, right. So, and you look like a runner, so let's say you wanna run a marathon. I say, well, tell me more. You say, well, I've never run before I said, well, forget about a marathon. Let's start running, Watson: Go run a 5k. Shorkey: I run a 5k. Yeah. And run the 5k. Yeah. Or, or, or, or, or walk the 5k. You've never run. Maybe you can't run. Maybe it's just like, not gonna work, but let's start with walking the 5k. And at that, even at that, like, let's start with walking. How far are you walking now? I don't walk at all. Well, let's start with walking a half a mile then. And, and let's do the 5k and then we'll go to another goal, and then we'll go to another one and use the same formula. We'll get to the marathon if we want. But by the time we get to the half marathon, we may say, you know what, I'm good. I like my half marathon, but I can take this knowledge now that I learned about how to get to the 5k, the 10 K that half marathon, and I can apply it to my love. It's the same formula. The formula never changes. It's the same formula. Start with a reasonable goal, right? You have to have a reason why that makes you cry. Okay. And then seek expert counsel to figure out what the steps are to get to the goal and then start to execute those steps. And as Jim Roone said, it's not the goal. It's what you become along the way. So because you achieve the goal of the 10k, right? You got that done. Well, now you're a goal achieving pro. And so you can take that same knowledge and apply it to something else. And that's what I did. That's the essence of what it did. So back to the thing. So, so it was, it was six dealerships at the time we did it. We did the deal. It's done, we're out. And then the children, I mean, I'm out at six, right? Yeah. And like I said, now you heard the number 17. It's not just 17. They've expanded into other businesses. They've actually, since I left, because of those principles in that book right there, it's 10 X. What it was when I left 10 X. Watson: Wow. Shorkey: 10 X. Watson: You gotta be so proud. Shorkey: I am so proud. I have no, I have. I'm telling you, I don't even have like people say to me. Well, do you ever wanna go back? No, I don't. I'm good. I'm 65. I worked my butt off. I'm good. I don't want to go back. Am I envious? Am I jealous? Not even a shred. It's a hundred percent let's go get him kids. I'm so proud. He makes me cry. Yeah. Nah, the biggest legacy I can leave is that this business, my vision is that the business is there for the great grandchildren. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: And I'm here as well. So, yeah, we'll talk about that. That's a, now I have a, a bodacious goal with respect to aging, which you probably know, cuz you've read my stuff. Watson: So let's, let's double click though on the why that makes you cry cause you, you drop that in there, but that's, that's a pretty powerful concept. Very powerful. Most people aren't necessarily tapping into, well, there's two why’s. There's the why and the why not. Right. So I always want to analyze things from the perspective of what do I want, what do I not want as an example in business? Shorkey: Like bankruptcy imminent. Like I don't want that. So I don't run from that. I wanna keep that right in front of me, bankruptcy, imminent tears, sadness. Like I don't want to ever forget that, cuz that is very motivational for me. I think that in my world, I think that what I don't want is more motivating than what I do want, but it doesn't really matter because it's all subjective. But the fact is that I don't want to. I'm gonna run away. And I have very strong things in my body called fight or flight, which, which I can engage and to get away from that right? And what I do want is also very clear and I'm gonna run towards that. So I'm gonna run away from what I don't want to run towards what I do want. And if I do both, I'm gonna get there twice as fast cuz I got this thing over here, which is a lion and I got this thing over here, which is my wife. And I wanna run towards her and get away from this lion, which is gonna eat me. And then there's no more wife. Right? And so I wanna run from the lion, run towards my wife, or I wanna run from the bank minute, run towards success. I wanna run from illness. I have an illness right towards health. Right? So run from illness runs towards, towards health. I do both. So, what I do when I, when I'm setting my goals up, my reason why has to make me cry. And I mean, it's sincere. So I ask myself seven times at least. Why, why, why, why does that matter? Why is that important? Why do I care about that? Why is that a big deal? But I also asked why not like so, so my, my long term goal, 1 22 healthy happy, terrific, relaxing years. When I am 80 years old in the United States of America, you realize that there's a 50% chance that Jim Shorkey will have Alzheimer's disease. It's not Jim Shorkey. It's not genetic. It's not the family. That's just the number. It's what it is. Okay. Look it up. Watson: Wow. Shorkey: 50%. So I studied Alzheimer's. What can I do to prevent delay? So if I can prevent it, that means I don't get it at all. If I can delay it, I'd rather get it at 90 to 80. And if I can mitigate it, that means I'm not gonna have it as bad as maybe somebody else would have it. So prevent delays. And so it turns out there's certain things that I need to do to not get Alzheimer's. So just think about that. There's things I need to do to not get Alzheimer's, but there's also things I need to stop doing. Okay. And this is really essential. So what's on my stop list? What's on my go list. Same with the business I needed to stop being arrogant. I needed to stop. Wasting money. I needed to stop a lot of stuff and I needed to get that list from Mr. Hamilton, which was my goal list. Right. So I did both. So it's a stop list. It's a goal list. And so but, but, but back to the goal, if, if I don't have reasons why that make me cry for the goal and reasons, why not that make me cry, then things are gonna show up. They're gonna derail me. And if my reasons aren't strong enough, I get derailed. So, so COVID 19 comes to mind again. So I had these reasons why I want to be healthy. And so one of my visions is that at that time I was 64. And I, I, I thought about this, we call this at rethink you 2.0, we call this thinking it through the whole way through, I'm a thinker, I'm a critical thinker and so I have this vision of I'm 64 I'm 94 years old, a very clear crystal vision. And so that's 30 years from now. So you and I are gonna be sitting on the front porch of my house. Right. And it's a beautiful view. We're gonna be sitting here. We're gonna be talking about this stuff. 30 years from now. You gonna be here about it, what you gotta take care of your Watson: That's my game plan. Who long tea, you know what I mean? Yeah. Shorkey: And, and you gotta think about this, right? I mean, are you gonna be there when your great grandchild is married? You gonna be here?. Something to think about right? That's cause you keep doing the stupid crap. You're not gonna be here. Yeah, you'll be dead at 63. Didn't didn't see one of his, his great-grandchildren not one and missed several of the grandchildren. You know what I mean? He died at 63. So 94 front porch, you and I are talking about Katie, my daughter. Who's not gonna be 70 hard to believe. She'll be sitting there with us along with my granddaughter, Lila. And this is just not that Lila is I have nine grandchildren, but Lila's sitting there and so Lila is gonna be 41. And, and I think about probability, you will be a probability kind of guy. Watson: Yeah. Base rates, all that stuff. Shorkey: Yeah. Think about probability, mathematics, all that I think. Okay. Probability states that she will most likely have a child. Probability states that. And if not her I've got nine grandchildren. So I will probably have a great grandchild. Okay. Am I getting you to cry yet? Watson: I'm. I'm feeling something. I'm not a huge crier, but I'm feeling something. Shorkey: Yeah. Like, yeah. So, now I'm 94. I'm not on the front porch. You and I are sitting. We're good friends. We're sitting talking Katie's there. She's joining the conversation. Lila's with us. She's 41 and there's this baby. Who's 3, 4, 5 years old, whatever, six months old. But I get to experience that. Why? Because I drank oolong tea. Why? Because my reason why at 94 makes me freaking cry. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Cause I wanna be here and it's not, it's not a, it's not probability states, no probability. Right? Probability probability states said at 94, I won't be here. That's what probability states. So you and I, we gotta beat probability, right? How do we do that? The to-do list, the, to not do list Watson: And, and you gotta do things that other people don't right? So in every single case of the story, so far to live to 95, you are an outlier to build a business of the scale that you've built. You are an outlier, correct. And you attribute books like the Science of Getting Rich and Think, and Grow Rich in some of these other books as being highly influential, to being able to get those outlier types of results. I guess my question is, so I've always been someone who I think a weak part of my game was the vision. I could come up with, like the vision for what our company Piper was gonna be and it's kind of the most nascent stages. And it was somewhat opaque. It was certainly not the way that Sarah says, you know, we are gonna transform millions of people's mental health, make their lives better, make them happier. It's so simple and clear what that's gonna be. You're painting a picture. Maybe there was some complexity and texture to it, but you could actually really distill it down into this very simple idea. My gap has always been, I feel like I can usually get the actions day to day. I, I can get the tactical, like here's how we tweak this little metric. This is how we, you know, optimize a little bit here and the gap sometimes between, hey, the vision is up here and I feel like I have a lot of the, the forward action, but I'm sure if the vision was more clear up here, up in the clouds, then down on the dirt, it would reveal 20% of the problem to me. Shorkey: Yes. Watson: So can you talk about that a little bit more? Shorkey: Well, so in the book Thinking We're Rich written in 1930, It's incredible. The book. It really is. And as I study other books today, still to this day, I read, I read probably on the average four to five books a month. And I read them, I mean, I'm on a, I'm not listening, I'm reading. And if I had that book right there I would be, it would be underlined and highlighted in the star, like, wow, look at this. This is great. I'm reading a book called the Molecule of Emotion. And I just finished reading a book called the Biology of Belief. And so that Biology of Belief, he said, Hey, you gotta get this book like, oh crap. I need another book. Like I need him to look at this book. I got all these books. I gotta stack this big. Yeah. The next book I'm gonna read is about quantum physics. Now imagine a car salesman, reading a book about quantum physics. This is kind of goofy. Watson: You have a math degree. Give yourself a little credit. Shorkey: Physics is like way, way, way beyond math I mean, it's like, wow, but I'm gonna read it, right? Watson: Yeah. And so, and, and that's, by the way, gonna tax my brain, which is very good for my brain as I age towards 94 outside and on the front porch. But anyways, so in the book thing, grower rich I'm gonna tell you a couple things about that in the chapter on desire there's six steps. And these six steps are the essence of the book and that in reality, and the first step is you gotta have a clear, concise idea of what you want clear and concise. He makes that very, very, very, very crystal clear. You gotta have that. If you don't have that, then you gotta get it. Like you gotta stop and you gotta get that. So it's in the book and it's interesting. Napoleon Hill tells you in the book, he says, no, here's an instruction. Okay. That I guarantee you missed. And therefore, you're not a practitioner of the art of thinking we're rich. And so I don't mean to point fingers or be judgemental, No, I'm, I'm self aware and I'm, I'm not the executor. And I, nobody does this virtually. Nobody does this. He tells you in the book, in the chapter and imagination, he says now, and he says, read the book, cover to cover before you put it down. Meaning just before you read another book. So you're not gonna read him one day, but read the book cover to cover before you put it down three times. Three times before you do anything else, as far as starting reading three times, because then you're not gonna stop. Okay. And so I'm reading the book. And I'm not doing what the guy tells me to do. And then I start doing what the guy tells me to do. And that was one of the things he told me to do. So I'm like, I'm gonna do that. Right. And there's other things he there's, it's so involved. And I'm doing all these things, I'm dotting the i's, crossing the t's, everything that Napoleon Hill told me to do I did. And along with the Mr. Hamilton wanna, and that needle's moving and moving, moving and moving. And so I'm going from bankruptcy to, at least now I got some some breathing room. And, and I'm still not out of the woods yet, but I'm still, but I'm working at it. And so in that chapter, on, on a imagination, he tells you to read it three times, because then you're not gonna wanna stop. And I'm thinking, holy crap, I don't want to be the first guy that stops. Like, I don't wanna, like, if I stop, maybe this whole thing comes crashing down. And so it's almost like a superstition, like, you know, like, like, like, you know you know, don't step on a crack, you're breaking, mother's that kind of a thing it's like, so he says this he's helped made the needles move and it's like, I'm not gonna stop. Did I tell you what time I read that book? I saw in, in the book that it was like 113, but you're now up to a hundred Shorkey: 145 Watson: 40 something. Shorkey: And it's like, and, and, and, and, and it's interesting. See, see the hand that picks up this book, this book right here, the science of getting rich. It's like, I look at it, I think, wow. I, I didn't know. Getting rich was a science, it turns out. And, and, and I didn't know, getting healthy was a science. It is. I didn't know that getting unhealthy was a science, it turns out it is, but it was a science that getting rich it's, it's the, the secret. I always had this curiosity for the secret, the proven mental program and to a life of wealth, Wallace D. Wattles. Shorkey: And so some people are turned off at his title, just like thinking rich, because they think of rich in terms of, of money and it is, it is money, but it also could be health. It also could be love whatever you want it to be. But anyways this book is very intriguing to me. And so I read the book and, and where was I going with it? I had a thought I lost my train of thought. Watson: I think you were talking about the number of times that you've read it. The reinforcement of getting to a vision. Shorkey: Yeah. Watson: Something's reinforced in terms of getting to a video. Shorkey: Oh, I'm sorry. No, the, the hand it picks up this book Watson: Yep. Shorkey: and reads it and does what the book tells you to do is not the same hand that puts it down. Biologically speaking. It's not the same hand. Chemically speaking. It's not the same hand. Epigenetically speaking. It's not the same hand. So it's, it's a different hand you change. So then you read it again and guess what you'll be reading this book you say, I never read that before. What's he saying here? I didn't, I didn't read that. Holy crap let me underline that. And then the hand that picks up the book's not the same hand it's done. So on the 145th reading, I changed. And so think about it, the guy that read that book on the one 145th time versus the first time it's not the same guy. I mean, and for obvious reason, I'm 65 versus however, however, what it was back then, but nevertheless, even in a day in a month, the hand changes, it actually changes. It's a fact. And so, but, but even beyond the science of it Is the idea that even mentally you change, so your mental perspective is, is different, but it's turning out that it's much deeper than that. So that's why I kept reading it and I'm not reading it right now. I actually started to read it one forty six, a hundred forty six times and I was on another project and this, this biology of belief and quantum physics and stuff, it really got me intrigued. And so I'm actually really digging into that stuff right now. Shorkey: And I'm reading it believe it or not I read that I just, I didn't finish it because I got into this biology of belief, but I reading the, the diary of Anne Frank and he said, well, and that's not a motivational book why the heck would read a book like that? Well, you know what? That was a nasty freaking thing. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: And I think we need, need to, need to tune into nastiness to say, okay, don't want that, don't want that to ever happen again. That was awful. Awful, awful, awful. And the girl was brilliant 13 years old or 14 and her writing ability, incredible, brilliant, brilliant young lady. And so I found that to be very intriguing, to say the least, but you know, it, it, it teaches me an idea of what I don't want is really what I'm saying. And I think there is like this idea, like in a self-development field that we're in there is no line. There is no line. There is no line to cover up your eyes, cover up your ears. Well, yeah, there is a line and he's out there and you better deal with him cuz he's gonna eat ya. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: And so I'm not a big believer in this. I really think a positive mental attitude is a really important idea, but let's not be delusional. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: There are problems. Watson: Amen to that. So when I have at times reflected on, on some of my goals over a longer period of time, one of my goals is associated with being able to maintain a high degree of energy late into life. Cuz you see certain characters who, as they get into their later years, they just slow down to a really significant degree. And I'm not, I'm not one to just deny the realities of biology, deny the realities of, of the, you know, the passage of time and how life is gonna go but for the time that I got, I wanna maintain a very high degree of energy throughout what I do. And the two things that I've basically come to as, as being drivers of that are number one, really trying to be cognizant of my health. I also intermittently fast. And, and have, you know, some of the principles there, I'm sure you could teach me thousands of things in that realm. And then also trying to orient yourself around work that is meaningful because if you just say at 63, 64, 65, all right. Fishing and drinking by the beach for me, for the next couple decades, not me. To me, that's deflating for other people that might get them jazzed up. But for me, that just, that's not a particularly enticing kind of chapter or outcome to potentially start. And so what's interesting to me is you've talked a little bit about the health side, but it also is interesting to me that, and I, I use this, this term in our, our kind of pre-interview of someone who is post economic. You, you no longer have this, you know, kind of specific need for a financial outcome, the house, the boat, the whatever, those types of things are not the question anymore. No, the fact that you would start a new project, I read as partially being a means to give back, but also partially to kind of maintain your own creative energy and vigor. So can you talk a little bit about this chapter that you've started with rethink and what the goal is and what you're aiming for? Shorkey: Well, let's be clear here, so, you know, I mean, it's really, my, my vision is not about me. It can't be about me. It can't be about me. And I'll circle back on that, but it can't be about me. Watson: That can't be the vision. It can't be the mission. So what happened to me was Mr. Hamilton. And he welcomed me with open arms and made me cry. And it was, it was free, right? And so he said, yeah, here's the list. Right? And then Jimmy Long came in and they had a full blow. They, I actually audited my books. It was a 30 some thousand dollars audit for free and they did it twice. So we're gonna do it today. We'll come back in a year. They gave me my list and they're, you're gonna come back a year from now. We're gonna come back a year from now. We're gonna do it again. And we'll see how, what kind of progress you made. I guarantee you, they thought there's no freaking way. This guy's gonna make it. It was like, I'll show you. So, but anyway, so Jimmy Lawn and Jim Kacharski and, and I forgot about my good friend who actually passed my accountant Tom Hugin and an interesting story. I'll digress for a second. So I'm sitting in my house with Chuck Belina, who is a big part of rethinking you. He died of colon cancer at 51 within the past couple years, Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving in the year 2000. And he was just a really, really inspirational guy to me and really helpful in, in developing the genesis of this whole idea. And I actually coached him and that's how we ended up hooking up long story short, I'm sitting in my dining room, just like we are right now. And I'm, we're talking about bankruptcy and everything like that. And he said, Chuck, you don't believe me. Do you just like it, you probably don't believe me. He, I don't Tim, you know, it's kind of hard to believe. Really. I look at you right now. Look at the house. Nah, you know, I, okay. So I called Tom Hugin. and I said, and Tom was very irreverent. He'd drop F bombs. Like, like nobody's no more. Yeah. So I called Tom Yugen. I said, Tom , you're on speaker phone. So clean up the language and I said let me ask you a question, Tom, when you and I joined me at that time, I had to actually dismiss my, my dad's accountant, my father's accountant, because he wasn't reporting properly to me about what was going on with the books. And so I had to do, make that decision by bringing in Tom Yugen on recommendation of a very good friend of my father's. And so he comes in and so we're doing our thing. So here we are, Chuck, this was, Chuck was still living at the time. So this is probably three years ago, let's say, and he's on at the dining room table. And I said, Chuck, I said, Tom, I said back when you came into the dealership, I said was bankruptcy imminent? And he started laughing. I'm like, what are you laughing for, man. He says you were way beyond bankruptcy. And he says you were ready to fall off a cliff as exact words. He said. And I said okay Tom. I said, so let me ask you a question, Tom, did you think I was gonna make it? And he said, there is no way. We didn't clean it up. Totally. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Cause there's no effin and way you weren't getting out of that. I said, looks like we did. Huh, Tom. He said, you sure did. And of course I was out of the business by that time. Watson: But anyway, so, Tom Hugin and Jim Kacharsky and Jimmy Lawn and Mr. Hamilton and Lazar and on and on, on. And so I was so successful and I'm getting these trophies and these awards and these hugs and these pats on the back and Jim, you, people, I'm a guru and all these things, I'm a car business king, and I'm the best dealer in America and all this, all this, these plots. Shorkey: But I knew in my heart of hearts that I couldn't take the credit. It wasn't me. It was the mentors. And so back on that day, I have it in my journal. I don't know the exact day, but I wrote in my journal, I said, someday, I'm gonna start this company. And the idea behind the company is gonna be, you know, give a woman a fish and she eats for one day, but if I teach her how to fish, she's gonna eat for a lifetime, give a man a fish eats for a day, teach him how to fish and eat for a lifetime. That was the basic theme. And I felt a very strong reason why makes me cry. I felt that if I took this information to the gray with me, that I would be very, very selfish. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: I'd be amongst the most selfish people on the planet. And I didn't want that to be my legacy. And so I had this idea you know, just like on the front porch with you and Katie and at 94, well, I had this idea back and I think it was like 2000, I'll say four or five. I'd have to look it's in my journal. And it doesn't matter, but I had this vision back then that someday I would start this company. So now I'm outta the business and it's like, It's go time. It's time to go. I gotta start sharing this information. And so that's what started this whole thing. And I have so many things in my head that I want to say that you know, we need to do 10 more of these, right? There's so many things I wanna say that need to be said. Watson: I have to imagine. So the other two things as an external, you know, we just met, I don't know you that well, but, but absorbing your story and absorbing a lot of stories like these, there's two things that really jump out to me is with the surprise or kind of sudden passing of your father, you were also maybe not as fully equipped as he would've wanted, cuz he wanted to still have you under his wing for longer and be able to provide the wisdom and guidance. I just called my dad yesterday for guidance on a thing. And so I also interpret both your willingness to do the estate planning and pass it off to them. Absolutely. And still be there and the production of this course, not that it's just for your kids, but I'm sure you've heard of Randy Pausch the Last Lecture. Shorkey: Oh, my goodness yeah yeah. Watson: So in that same way, like Shorkey: Talk about making me cry. Yeah. Read, the book multiple times and watched the uh, Watson: Amazing Shorkey: And watched the uh, Watson: You think the lectures are for you and then at the end he's like head fake this is for my kids. Shorkey: Yeah. Watson: Because this is, this is what I'm gonna have to pass on to that. Shorkey: Yeah. Lovely. Watson: And so in a similar sense, Shorkey: Carnegie Mellon Watson: Amen. You have that, that broader perspective of trying to help as many people as you can with the knowledge, but also, you know, for your kids, as they take the Shorkey Automotive and your grandkids and, and eventually great grandchildren onto this family business, should they choose, they're going to have every resource that you could possibly provide them, Shorkey: Correct. Watson: To avoid the same mistakes. Correct. And be able to reach even greater heights. Shorkey: Yeah. There's no question. And so there's a couple things to that. Okay? There's more to it than even that. So number one, my dad died in the saddle. And, by the way, so did Mr. Ham, he lived to be 89, but he's, he's 89. I can remember going to visit him. And I visit him often. He's in his office signing checks. And I'm like, my thought was you're 89 years old. He's on oxygen and he's signing checks. And I'm like, why are you? And I didn't say this, cuz he was my mentor. I'm not gonna be disrespectful. But like I thought, I don't want that. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: I don't want that. And so my dad died in the saddle at 63. He literally dropped dead. He's the guy he's gone to. Mr. Hamilton died at 89, his work was very successful. Like, man, it maybe, maybe you're right we need to have a purpose. But maybe at 82, it's like, okay, I'm gonna go sit on the beach and drink and have a few drinks or whatever the case may be. It's like, I've earned that, right? Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: But he didn't do that. He's signing checks. And I thought, well, I'm not gonna do that to my kids. And that was part of the impetus was learning from the negative negativity of dying in a saddle. That was one thing I very clearly didn't want to do. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Secondly was the lack of education spot on. I wanted to give them the platform that they could, number one, learn what to do, but also learn what not to do and then they could pass it on to their organization. So they've 10 Xed the company with those principles. And then of course, yeah, the, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren and now that's a legacy. Watson: Yeah, Shorkey: That's the legacy, but it's, at the same time, I wanna be very clear about this cuz you know, I'm, I'm a big thinker and I think in terms of million, right. Million million, a hundred thousand 50 million. And so with this thing that I'm doing called results from thinking 2.0 and, and, or I'm sorry, rethink 2.0 and results from thinking, I know that it's going to be very big I already know that because the message is so powerful that you're not gonna be able to stop it. Watson: Right. Shorkey: I'm not gonna be able to stop it, but I wanna be clear here that that's not my vision and I can, you have to be very careful that because I'm a big thinker and a million and tell 10 million, a hundred million in stages selling on stadiums, all stuff. That's not what this is all about. This is all about one very important person that I can touch. And that's it. And so that one very important person, all I ask for is the stories. I just want your story. Right? And so if that one becomes 10, well, 10 X, I get the joy from the stories, right? There's not a money making scheme for me. It's the stories., right? So if that one becomes 10 or becomes a hundred Watson: Yep. Shorkey: Or becomes a million,okay. I really want to be very, very careful that I don't lose sight of the fact of this one. Very important person at a time, cuz this is a real live human being across the table for me and, and boy, you know, if I could somehow cause a life change in direction for that person, that's the joy, right? To be, to be, you know, I call it my funeral test, right? So my funeral test is, you know, I've hit my goal 122, healthy, happy, terrific relaxing years. I am 122, you know, and I drop dead at 122. I just freaking fall over and drop dead. What a great way to go, right? So now I'm in the hole,122, and this person walks up to my whole and is looking at me and he's got his wife, or she's got her husband, or they've got their significant others, whatever the case may be. They've got a group, right? A group there. And as you see that guy there, that guy in that holder, that guy changed my life and everything we have today, the car, the boat, the vacation place, the going on trips, the mission we've established it. Well, everything we have is because of that guy right there. Well, see, that's the life well lived for that one person. And the more people that show up and say that, that the, the bed of the life had been lived. So how so, who shows up and how long's the line? The second question about the funeral is when somebody shows up and says, listen, yeah, I'm just here to make sure this guy's dead because he was a total a-hole and I hated him. I want nothing to do with him. And I just wanna make sure he is, is he really dead? Yeah. Okay. I'm outta here. And the more people say that that's my legacy. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: That's a bad legacy, right? Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: He was a jerk. He was greedy. He was this, he was that he was a moron. He was rude. You know, you wanna judge people, people's character, watch how they treat the waiters and the waitresses watch that. You'll say, Hmm. I want no part of that. I want no part of that. I love waiters. I love waitresses. I don't want to be Jim Shorkey. Mr. Big Shot. You know, I'm there too. To have my meal and to be very kind and very gracious. And and, and I compliment people, man, you're doing a great job. Like I got, I was Johnny GUI. I got some kombucha, right? You remember the kombucha? Watson: Oh yeah, yeah. Shorkey: I got some kombucha and I'm checking out and a young man, when I said, man, you did a great job. Good, good, good work, man. You know, and I do that every time. Not because it's any self-serving thing, it's just because I think people need to be recognized. Right? Watson: Yeah. And so, and it's rare. It's so much rarer than people realize . Shorkey: Like we're checking out and the thing and we're on our phone, like, oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's like, what the heck, put the phone, like you saw what I did when I said, I said my phone's off. I don't, I don't want that thing. I respect you. When I picked this phone up, I rushed to wash a Ted Talk about this and I held on a second, Aaron. I'm saying you're not important. Yeah. This is more important than you. And that's what the guy, that's what it was. It was actually Simon. Simon. Sinick you, you heard him I'm yeah. He says, when you walk in the room with this in your hand, you're saying nobody else in the role matters except for you. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: And I, I thought about that. I thought, okay, when I'm with my grandchildren, phone's in the car. I leave my phone at home now. It's like, okay, missed your call Aaron, sorry, man. Yeah. You'll know. Sometimes I delay getting back to you, probably playing Scrabble with Amy. You know, it's important if I'm on, if I'm playing Scrabble and I'm on my phone, it's like, she's not important. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: That's what I'm saying, unfortunately. And so I'm checking out and I'm on my phone. It's like, oh, I'm so important. I'm so important. I gotta, oh geez. Oh, somebody liked me on Facebook. I gotta get on it right away. Oh boy. I'm a big shot. Nah, phone is not, not even on me. It's in my car and I'm this young man who is very kind, very nice. Does a great job. Hey, you did a great job, man. It's all it takes. Just, you know, so I want that to be my legacy. Watson: Amen. Well, that is the perfect, the perfect note for us to, to wrap up on, I am certain that we will be doing this again at some point in the gym cuz there's, there are many more minds for us to, to go exploring together. So for folks that wanna learn more about you, this project rethink you, these, these things that you, you have that you're up to what digital coordinates can we provide folks to check out? Shorkey: Well, we have one that's very easy. It's called. We have a community called the Goal Achiever Community. There's 1400 people in that community right now. And you just go on Facebook and look for groups and see the goal achiever community it's private. So we have to allow you to get in, but you just make a request and we let everybody in. And when somebody shows a picture of pornography, whatever, we kick him out, you know how that goes. Watson: But it's a good bar. Shorkey: Exactly. Yeah, we don't, we don't want the bull crap, but like somebody posted yesterday in our group about she was advertising that they have jobs. It was a young lady. She works for, they have these jobs available. I'm like I don't text devices. That's a great message, thank you. Because the people in our community made it. Maybe somebody's looking for a job. Right. It's that kinda stuff I like, you know, or whatever. So, we want people to come into the group and if they post total bull crap, they're gonna get kicked out. But if they're selling something that, that we, that we kind of agree with and like, then yeah, we're gonna let 'em do that, right? But anyway, there's 1400 people in our goal, achiever community. Our site is Results from Thinking, okay? And by the way, thanks for the glitch Derek fixed it, I guess. Watson: Yep. Shorkey: So, but that's, we don't know these things, right? Cuz I'm not downloading the book. I've read it right anyways. So but results from thinking all one word and then our, our self development program is called Rethink You 2.0. And it's really wonderful. Actually, Sara Makin is, is part of that. And cuz she's a, a lady that did what I told her to do and has had incredible success as a result of my advice with, along with many, many, many, many other people's advice. So I'm not the only one, but she's in there and she actually is speaking. So, so what it is, I'm sorry, it's it's a video course along with a workbook and it's myself and Derek Kelly and then a lot of our students and I'm gonna say probably six if I was guessing students that some of them actually teach in the, in the thing and then just commenting on what happened right. With, as a result of this stuff. So it's called Rethink You 2.0 and it's $397. And You know, the question I would ask people is cuz sometimes people really focus on the 397. I say, you know, let's not focus on what it costs you to do. It. Let's focus on what it costs you to not do it. And if I'm right, this thing might be worth 3.97 million. Right? What if it was? Well, it cost you well over 3 million or maybe it's worth How much did the first copy of Thinking Go Rich cost you? 15 bucks. I was guessing 15 bucks. What was that worth? Yeah. What did this cost you Watson: 12? I don't even know. Shorkey: Yeah, so it's not the, it cost you 12, but if you don't read it, it cost you a million. Yep. And it, maybe it's not a million cuz we're talking big numbers here, but maybe it cost you a hundred bucks, right? Watson: Yep. Shorkey: $12 investment, pretty good return, but that book's worth a million, it's worth a hundred thousand a year. It's worth whatever, because if you do what the man tells you to do, you're gonna, you're gonna get rich in some way. And remember, you know, you may not wanna get rich with money. I did. I'll be Frank with you. I did. I don't have any qualms about saying it. I think money is important. I wanted to have enough money to do the things that I wanted to do when I wanted to do them with no worries. And so that's it. And so I'm not afraid to say, and I actually had to change my thinking about that. And I, so I have an affirmation, which you probably don't want me to share, but it was about Watson: No bring it. Shorkey: Okay. So the affirmation was, I grew up with the idea that money is the root of all evil, which is not even a true quote. It's a, it's, that's, that's been misinterpreted for centuries, but we'll leave that all off the table. Money is not the root of all evil, that's just not true. Or the level of money. Excuse me. That's also not true if you read it and really digest, dissect, and you'll find the case. So anyways, money is a, if you don't love money. You don't do how you gonna get something if you don't love it, right? So, so I developed this affirmation on my own from these guys and, and the affirmation is this, right? I love money. I love making money. I am a money making machine. I am a money magnet. I am attracting money to me. Yes, I am. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the money. And I said that a million times and I changed my thinking around money because money is important. And so if I'm gonna have this cause here this, cause right now I'm not making money on this. I'm spending money on this. I pay money every year, a monthly, excuse me, to get this rethinking youth thing going, mm-hmm, costs me a lot of money and I'm not gonna get into those details, but you know, so, so money is important. And for those of us in the audience, I think it's not, you're making a categorical mistake, cuz it is important. And just like I can, I mean, I think if you said, if, if I said to you right now, how do you like your house? I love my house. Well, isn't that the same thing? You know? How do you like your car? Oh, I love my car. Oh man. What car do you have? I got a Honda CRV. Yeah. I love my car, right? Do you like it? Watson: Does the job. Shorkey: Do you love it? Watson: I like it. Shorkey: What's to love. Watson: I see this. Shorkey: It's okay. Watson: I'm going to be sacrilegious, I'm not a huge car guy. Shorkey: That's okay. What do you love? Watson: I love my family. I love my friend's lake house. I have a, a friend with a Shorkey: Illegal, Watson: It's just the perfect lake house. Shorkey: Illegal. Watson: Illegal. Shorkey: You can't love that. You can't love, can't love material things, it's against the rules. Why? Who made those rules? You know? That's what I'm saying. Like, I love that. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Where's the Lakehouse at? Watson: It's in Atlanta. Shorkey: Oh, wow. Where are you? Watson: I'm gonna blank. Shorkey: We have dealerships in Gainesville. Watson: I'm gonna blank the name. I'll look it up. Shorkey: Is it Lanier? Watson: It's the other one. Lanier's the big one. Yeah. They're at like the second biggest one. Shorkey: They're in Gainesville where Lake Lanier is basically. Which is right. I guess that's where Lake Lanier is basically. Watson: Right. Shorkey: Well, cool. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: What's wrong with that? Watson: Nothing, yeah, Shorkey: But the neat thing about it is it's free, right? It's free mm-hmm. Costs no money to get there. Costs no money to get home and you, and you don't have to eat while you're there. You don't go out to any restaurants. So it's free, right? No, it's not. No. Maybe the house is free. Yeah. It's your friend, whatever. But no, it's not free. I mean that, that's the name. I, I want my, their ability to host like that and they host this friend and that friend and this family member. That's lovely. Watson: That's the goal. So that's one of my visions. Shorkey: That's a money goal? Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Somebody money, somebody to give you this lake house. Watson: No, it's gonna take money. Shorkey: Is somebody gonna give it to you? Watson: No. Shorkey: Are you gonna walk down the street? And you're just wide the street. Got a nice shirt on nice pants. Somebody goes, Hey, come here, Aaron. I got a house I want to give you. You really think that's gonna happen? Probably not. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Mark Cuban's probably not gonna, not gonna call you today and say, hey, Aaron, I listen to your podcast. I got a lake Lakehouse in Gainesville, Florida. That I'm gonna give you, cuz I think you're doing great work. Probably not gonna happen if it does. That'd be great. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Probably not. But loving that. Why is that such a bad thing? Who's selling us on these ideas? Like I love money. I really do. I learned from Jim Rome I think it was Jim Rone. I love Jim Rone by the way. And so when I, when I, and I can prove it to you. So when I take my wallet out, I have money in my wallet and I think it was Jim Rome who taught me. I said, it might have been Zig Zigler. Somebody did, but when you arrange your money, you arrange it. I can't make this stuff up respectfully. So we respect money, right? Look what I do. 1 10, 20, 20, 20. Look how they're all in order, right? Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: And so rather than be crumpled up and like, look, and that was a little thing that I learned. It's like, and I started doing it. It wasn't that this is like, oh, you did that. Therefore you're gonna be rich. But it was like, it made me think. about respecting money, about respecting the cash flow, about respecting the accounting. So this is a little mean thing that happens every day, cuz you're getting older every day. Like if you go to the gas station yeah. You take your money out, you pay for things and then you gotta rearrange it again, respectfully, respectfully. Watson: So there's an interesting one. You know, the way it's been framed. If you're trying to build a business, it's not one switch that was flipped. It's not one change. Shorkey: Oh god no. Watson: It's thousands of micro adjustments. And when someone sees, you know, the point A and the point B that were achieved in your case, someone may just see bankruptcy imminent. Shorkey: Oh, yeah you're right. Watson: But the reality is how many dealerships you're right. But reality, are there a thousand different adjustments? And what I'm also hearing is your framework for a relationship to money relationship to wealth and, and, and these types of ideas is one of the little adjustments is how you arrange your cash in your wallet. Shorkey: Yeah. Watson: One of the adjustments is going from not having an affirmation to having an affirmation. Yes. One of those other adjustments we can go on and on down the line. Shorkey: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Keep track. Like it's like, well, if you want to take care of your health, one really good, simple thing you could do is weigh yourself every day. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: That, that would be, that would be one thing. And then at the same time, stand naked in front of a mirror. So have a look like, how do I look, well I don't look so good. Well, what are you gonna do about it? Watson: Yeah. At home, not at the mall. Shorkey: Oh, you can do it at the mall. If there's any law against that you'd probably be in trouble. Maybe, maybe, probably I joke. But not yet at home. Yeah. But stand naked in front of the mirror, you know, should we do that? I think so. I think if, I think if the broad, if the broad population of America stood naked in front of the mirror, I mean, not everybody's gonna, some people are delusional, but some people are gonna say, wow, what in the heck happened to me? You know what I told you about this right? Donuts aren't a healthy food. Pizza is not a healthy food. Fritos are not a healthy food. So I gotta stop doing that. I gotta start doing the broccoli. I went to the store yesterday and bought some kombucha. I didn't buy Coca-Cola. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: Kombucha is a pro body drink. It's very good for Jim Shorkey. 122 healthy, happy, terrific relaxing years on the front porch with you at 94 talking to you and my daughter, Katie and Lila. And, and my great grandchild. I don't wanna miss that. Right. And so do you think I've thought it through the whole way? And do you think I'll continue to do that? Watson: Yep. Shorkey: Yes, absolutely. Watson: So we end every single one of these interviews, Jim, with a challenge for the audience. Yeah. It's something they can go implement the next day, week, month. You've given us a bunch already over the course of this, the interview. But knowing that this is the last chance on the mic to speak to them, what would you want to do? What is the actionable personal challenge that you'd like to issue to the audience? Shorkey: Okay. How much do you pay for this book? I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it was 12 bucks, maybe 15 bucks just to be conservative. Okay. So what I want the audience to do is I want you to go buy this book for 15 bucks and it's actually two books. So there's a book in the back here, which is really actually even better. It's how to get what you want. Well, how, how intriguing is that? How to get what you want? Well, I wanna know that, how do I get what I want? 122 healthy, happy, terrific years. How do I do that, right? So my challenge is to get this book, number one, actually I have three challenges. Watson: Okay. Bring it. So it's 10 bucks actually. Shorkey: 10 bucks. I'll take two. So, number one, I want you to buy a book for 10 bucks. Number two, I want you to read it three times, three times. I want you to get a pen and a pencil highlighter. I want you to really, really dissect this book. And then I'm gonna give you my email address, which is Jim Shorkey, 1957@gmail.com. You have it Aaron. So you can put it in the show notes. Great idea. And I want you to email me with whatever questions or disagreements, whatever problems you have with a book and then I will do a live Facebook video based on those emails that I get with the challenge. Okay, cool. And say, yeah, here's what Aaron said about this. And here's how I dissect that. And here's what, here's what Hannah said about this and here's what I think about that. And no, Hannah you got, you got that wrong. You just, you didn't get this, you misinterpreted this, right? Cause I notice this book really, really well. And so that's my challenge. Get the book, read it three times and then email me and tell me I'm full of crap. Watson: Okay. Shorkey: And I can take it. I'm course I got like a thick skin brother. The Watson: third step might be the difficult one, but Shorkey: No, no. Hey, I would, I love that. Tell me I'm full of crap. Disagree with me. I, by the way, you, as, as, as I expected, you had absolutely zero chance. Zero chance of accepting my challenge. What was my challenge? Stop me. Watson: Yeah. Shorkey: You didn't. I knew you wouldn't. Watson: Maybe on the next one. Shorkey: I doubt it. I doubt it. I'm a Caral and I move fast, man. Woo I'm in I'm in and out, man. Yeah, no, you won't get me. Well, I'm gonna take that challenge at some point down the line. You won't. And we'll do this again. But I appreciate you taking the time. Oh man. I love you guys. It's great. It's fantastic to be here. Watson: We just went deep with Jim Shorkey, hope everyone out there has a fantastic day. Hey everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the end of my interview with Jim. If you found it valuable, I am confident you would also enjoy our past interview with Jason Wolf, who went from living in his car to selling one of his companies for $120 million. He gets into all of it, including how he's built his team. So go check that out and hit subscribe because we've got some fantastic interviews coming real soon. Thanks for listening. Connect with Aaron on Twitter and Instagram at Aaron Watson 59. 
Scott Heeter is the CEO of Heeter, a third-generation commercial print firm that has been running for 75 years.
Heeter is one of the largest commercial marketing firms in the country, with over 140 full-time employees in Pittsburgh and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Duke Print and Graphics, in Cleveland. Heeter has evolved from the commercial print company that it was to a more customized provider that include mailing fulfillment, digital marketing and other innovative services. In this episode, Aaron and Scott discuss the challenges that Heeter overcome to attain regional dominance in the printing industry, how he has built their corporate culture, and how they’ve retained valuable employees for the long term. Scott Heeter’s Challenge; Don’t rush through difficult decisions. Connect with Scott Heeter
If you liked this interview, check out the episode Blow Up Your Business Plan w/ JD Ewing
Sara Makin has built Makin Wellness into one of Pennsylvania's top online therapy platforms in just five years. She started Makin Wellness in 2017 on a mission to help millions of people heal and become happy again by providing excellent mental health care.
Today, Makin Wellness has over 50 employees and a goal of becoming a national provider of a results-based, individualized approach to online mental health care. Sara entered Psychology Grad School with a clear vision of having a multi-state Mental Health Company. In this episode, Aaron and Sara discuss how to scale a remote mental health startup, managing millions of dollars in medical billing, and articulating a clear vision for your company. Sara Makin’s Challenge; Take ten minutes in the morning to do something nice for yourself. Connect with Sara Makin (Makin Wellness)
If you liked this interview, check out the episode Ketamine for Mental Health w/ Mindbloom founder Dylan Beynon.
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Makin: So the number one priority was getting the number of clients up. And then once the volume starts to increase, then the priority is ensuring that the operations are able to run smoothly. And once that was in place, it was really brought on more. talent and more providers and making sure that the right people and with the right training and with the right intentions.
Watson: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to going deep with Aaron Watson. My guest today, Sara Makin is the CEO and founder of Makin wellness. Makin Wellness is a mental health and wellness startup that delivers all of its care via remote consultations with their providers. She has been at it for just five years, but has already scaled to a team of over 50 people. And in this interview, we talk about how she has optimized her medical billing systems, the clarity of vision that she has had for years preceding the founding of the company and how she has thought about growing the platform. I took a ton away from this. I was really impressed with how quickly her business has grown. And I think you're gonna take a lot away from it as well. Here is my interview with Sara Makin. You're listening to Going Deep with Aaron Watson. Sara, welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to be talking with you. Makin: Thanks so much for having me on. I'm so excited to be here with you. So I wanna start off because I've been aware of making wellness for a couple years. We'd known each other for a little while when you came to the, I think it was the original going deep summit years ago. And I, I had not appreciated the scale of the enterprise that you've been building here over the last couple years. So can you just give us a starting point and then current day where Makin Wellness stands and what they're doing? Makin: Yeah, absolutely. So I founded make and wellness in 2017 with the intention of helping millions of people to heal and become happy again, through excellent therapy. And when I started, it was just me, no angel investors, no venture capital, nothing. It was just myself and my $4,000 that I had. And we've essentially grown between 100% and 247% year over year, ever since then. And we now have about 50 team members. We're licensed in Pennsylvania and we are growing exponentially, which has been really exciting. Watson: And is all of the therapy that is delivered to patients, customers. I'd be interested in what your parlance is within the organization. Is it all delivered virtually? Makin: Yes. Yes. So our model at Makin Wellness is all remote care so our providers are trained and how to provide evidence based online therapy so that our clients can experience reduction of symptoms and start to live the lives that they really want to live. Watson: And you said right here at the beginning that you started with this vision to deliver better care to millions of people Makin: Mm-hmm. Watson: Did you have that vision that clearly articulated right at the jump, because I've, I've experienced a couple things. There's companies where they have the vision from the jump and it's like, literally I can see 10 steps down the board and I just kinda need to figure out the intervening eight ,there's those that they kind of start with the kernel of an idea. But once they start to pick up momentum, like, okay, I need a focusing vision, and then there's companies that I don't say they have no vision, but it's kind of constrained the whole time and they just continue to, you know, scoop ice cream or whatever the entity is maybe responsible. Makin: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really great question, Aaron. So my vision really started years prior to me starting the business. Watson: Wow. Makin: I actually went to school for psychology and counseling because it was always my dream since I was about 12 or 13 to have a huge mental health company. Watson: Wow. Makin: So it was always my intention and I actually remember in grad school, there's a class. I forget exactly which course it was, but we were going around sharing what we were going to do with our degrees and everyone said sort of normal answers of like, I want to work in a school, I want to work at a clinic and there's me like, I'm going to have a company where we're licensed in every state and we have at least a hundred locations and we're providing therapy. And I remember certain classmates just looking at me. What, who answers like that? And I thought, why would you not want to have an organization like that? And so I didn't realize how weird it was to think in that way or to have visions like that. But it's, I've always, I've always sort of been like that. Watson: And so did you pick that up from a role model or mentor that had their own big business, maybe in a different industry? Makin: That's a great question. So I really feel like it's in my bloodline because my grandfather was an entrepreneur. Watson: Okay. Makin: And that's on my dad's side, on my mom's side and on my dad's side, a lot of people were in healthcare, so I've grown up very accustomed to the healthcare system. And I've just always been very entrepreneurial. I mean, Ever since I was a kid, I remember my first venture was lemonade delivery because lemonade stands were just not innovative. Watson: That's awesome. Makin: So I've just always, always been like that, I guess. Watson: Very cool. So one of the things I, one of the biases that I bring to this conversation, and then I brought to the first time a mutual friend of ours had suggested this as being interviewed is some skepticism around therapy generally. Makin: Yeah. Watson: It's not saying that there, I know that there are mental health problems, that there are people that struggle with them. I know that unequivocally there are people that report substantial benefits. Having some form of therapy. I guess maybe we don't necessarily do this and unpack my bias here. This is an interview going in one direction, but my, my kind of question for you is you cited evidence based models for care. Makin: Mm-hmm Can you just talk a little bit to folks that may carry a similar skepticism to me about how you think about what type of care to provide that is evidence-based invalid and how as an individual, we can go through the world trying to make those kind of judgment calls for ourselves. Makin: Oh, absolutely. It's important to have the right information so when someone is going out to get a therapist that they're improving the likelihood of success. And so one of the most important things for outcomes is actually ensuring that you are seeing a therapist that you actually feel comfortable with, because if you don't feel comfortable, whenever you're talking with them, if you don't feel like there's a connection, then what that means is that the therapeutic alliance really isn't there, and it doesn't matter what they say or do. If you don't feel comfortable, you're not really gonna share what's happening. So this is the first thing is whenever you are connecting with a therapist, if you don't feel comfortable, if they're, if you feel like you're being judged, if they are not being compassionate, then that is one major sign that that's not a good fit. Another major thing to look out for is this person listing that they're specialized in like 500 different things, because in reality, you can truly only be specialized in maybe two max, three things. So whenever you are looking for a therapist, make sure that they actually are specialized and they don't just have every type of treatment as a specialty. And the final thing is really how they are trained. And so if they're saying that. I'm specialized in, trained in how to do 20 different types of treatments. That is also a big warning sign. Watson: Yeah. Because to get specialized and even one, it really takes years. And so what you would look for is that they are trained in either C, B T EMDR, MI, or D B T. Those are typically the. Common and effective evidence based practices. So when you're looking for a therapist that has an evidence based modality that they're using, they're listing one, two, or maybe three primary areas of treatment. And once you actually meet with them, you feel comfortable and you have a good connection with them. And all those things can help to increase the likelihood of success. Watson: And in terms of buckets or analogies or metaphors that I can use to understand it, we've moved into this space of better understanding mental health as part of your overall health and, you know, you could see your nutritionist for dietary issues. You could see a trainer or a physical therapist for some kind of more physical orthopedic issue. But the physical trainer ortho, physical trainer, physical therapist is kind of an interesting example where I get a 6, 8, 10 week script to see the physical therapist. And once my ankle, my ankle's working again after the really bad sprain, he sends me on my way with some exercises to do. But I could see my personal trainer and she could work me out two days a week for the rest of my life to maintain a base level fitness. So are there similar protocols and models for mental health that you guys are executing, where maybe someone needs a, a recovery, a change, a trajectory alteration, versus those that are doing something more like basic maintenance? Makin: Absolutely. That's a really great question, Aaron and so it all depends on what the patient is experiencing. There are times when we'll see a client once a week for two months, and their anxiety has reduced so much, they have the tools and the skills, and they're implementing them on their own volition. And so they don't need to be seen more than once a month or once every four or five months afterwards. Then there are of course cases where it's more, more cases where you need to be seen like once a week or twice a week for a year or so, or three, or even more than that. And there's some clients that are seen once a week for the rest of their lives. Watson: And it all really depends on what the diagnosis or the condition is and how big of an issue it is in their lives. So it really all depends. We've had some clients where we've seen them for like even a month and a half and they're like, wow, I didn't know. I can do X, Y, and Z as a coping skill and then you feel better and it's not necessary anymore. Makin: So once clients start to feel better and the results are there, AK results, meaning reduction in symptoms, then we reduce the treatment.... Watson: makes sense. Makin: .....frequency. Yeah. So coming back to this business that you've scaled to over 50 people and starting with just one person getting there in five years is a really impressive rate of growth. Watson: I wanna ask about the sequence of roles that you delegated away. So if it's just you at the start and you have the degree in psychology, we can safely assume that at the very beginning you were one of, or you were the person delivering care, and then you had this whole apparatus of admin sales and other things kind of that took up the rest, the remainder of whatever time you had. And eventually you've, you've parceled those off. So how have you thought about that sequentially? Makin: Yeah. So really the number one priority in the beginning is just increasing the number of patients and increasing the revenue and adjusting the company in a way where it was as profitable as possible. So I could reinvest the profits back into growing the organization. So the number one priority was getting the number of clients up, and then once the volume started to increase, then the priority is ensuring that the operations are able to run smoothly, that clients have a good experience of getting scheduled in online, scheduling is set up, automated appointment reminders are established and that we had a medical billing and credentialing team in place to be able to handle the follow up with collections, collecting bills and helping to estimate how much a patient was to pay per visit, and once that was in place it was really bringing on more. Talent and more providers and making sure that the right people and with the right training and with the right intentions, because for myself and for Makin Wellness, our mission is to help people to heal and become happy again, and so I really wanted to have very talented providers that were on board with that. And so we started to partner with different universities like CMU and University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University to have internship programs and so that was the next step. And so it just kept growing and evolving and my role went from being a solopreneur to like being like a ringleader of all this chaos happening and doing my best to get everything situated and systematized and organized, and then bringing in the right people and delegating roles and responsibilities and empowering them to take ownership of various divisions or various parts of the company and helping them to do so. Watson: So with you being licensed in Pennsylvania, does that constrain the potential patient pool to those that are residents of Pennsylvania? Is that how that works? So maybe so far. Makin: Yeah. That's a great question. So we're actually working on that now we have a provider actually depending on when this airs starting very soon if she hasn't started already in New York. So we're working on developing our presence in New York and we have another provider, Julie licensed in Delaware too. So Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania at this point in time and that is one of our initiatives for the next several years is to ensure that we are able to practice in additional remote areas too. Medical licensing laws are very interesting....... Watson: Yeah. Makin: ......to say the least. Watson: You can, you can take us down the rabbit hole, but from the standpoint of, if you're building the platform to enable this care to be delivered digitally and you know, there isn't, you're not investing in a storefront where, you know, you're hanging hours of therapy, time on a shelf somewhere. Makin: Yeah. Watson: Then it kind of lends itself to that scaling across borders in a non geographic type of framework. But you are still, it sounds like constrained by the regulatory apparatus for this specific type of care. Makin: Absolutely. Yeah. Anything medical service related is very much so, and so this step is making sure you have awesome attorneys to help out to make sure that as you grow that you're doing so in a way where you're not accidentally violating any laws or policies or anything like that, so, Watson: Right. Makin: Yeah. Watson: Take me through the thought process then of when, you know, it's that time to expand because like, I have to imagine, you probably serve a ton of people in Pennsylvania, but you haven't completely tapped out the market or dominated all the..... Makin: Oh yeah.... Watson: ...... in that sense. Makin: ....not yet. Watson: What is the kind of balancing act there of doubling down on a region versus this starts like the initial stages of tapping more geographies? Makin: Yeah. We started to look at it whenever we started to have to turn clients away because they weren't a Pennsylvania resident. And even last week, I think it was about 50 patients that we had to turn away because they found us typically organically through Google, so that is when we really started to look at prioritizing, like, what states do we need to get into? How fast can we make this happen? What all needs to be in place? And so when the demand started. increasing for those services, then we really started to look at getting that established. Watson: And that also tells you where to focus, because if everyone's coming from Tennessee looking for you, that's like, okay, let's prioritize Tennessee, but if no one's coming from Utah, I'm making up random states here... Makin: yeah. Watson: ....like then it's okay. We can table that until sometime later down the line. Makin: Exactly. Watson: Got it. So you talked about the kind of specific regulatory challenges associated with any company in the medical sector. The other thing that's interesting is the way cash flows through a business, right? Makin: Yes. Watson: So in certain instances you'll have businesses where they have to go make this upfront investment for a product run. And, you know, if you've read Shoe Dog with Phil Knight, that's the, the quintessential example where you're trying to put as much capital as possible into the latest run of sneakers so that their margins can improve when they sell this set, but then they have to go hustle out and sell them to like almost play catch ubup...... Makin: yeah. Watson: .......to the capital being deployed. And then you have other instances where, you know, we just interviewed Josh Caputo who talked about his first customer paid in full before the first, you know, prototype had been launched, and so he now has a runway to go like, actually, you know, figure out how to fulfill it. It sounds like there's a little bit of, you know, specificity here where someone will come in, they will want care, and then you have this billing and collections department that's responsible for following the correct trail down to actually getting the transaction to be completed for your firm. So can you talk a little bit more just about how that works? Makin: Oh yeah, absolutely. So we partner with insurance companies. We have partnerships with all the major commercial plans in Pennsylvania at this time. So the way medical billing works is if they have a copay or a deductible, you collect that fee at the time of the visit, and what happens then is you code a bill in a certain way that indicates what service was rendered, who the provider was, how much was collected, what's the location, and then you send it to a medical billing team to review that this, that this is accurate. Watson: The medical billing team is on your part of Makin or they're a third party? Makin: They're outsourced. Watson: Got it. Makin: They're outsourced and we work extremely, we work very, very, very closely together. Watson: Yeah. Makin: Medical Billing Solutions. They're amazing. Yeah. Anyone is.... Watson: They like having you as a client, it sounds like. Makin: Yeah. They're amazing. So then the medical billing team reviews the claim to make sure it is accurate because every insurance company requires billing to be coded in a certain way. If even one number is off, they will deny the claim, which then turns into a longer collection process. Watson: I would be so bad at that job. Just Makin: Same, same terrible. It is like I remember starting out, they, they, the one lady would send me emails all the time like I am so sorry, like details are not my thing, but I will work on it, you know? Watson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makin: So then they clear it and then they send it to the insurance company. With our process, it is electronic. So all this is done through an electronic medical record system that we have, and typically within 45 days, which is actually very fast in the medical world, we get paid by the insurance companies. I know a lot of people don't like working with insurance companies, I personally have loved it, I've really enjoyed the experience of it and I think a lot of it is just making sure that your systems are tight in that, there's a emphasis on timeliness because the longer it takes to release the claim, the longer it takes to get paid. So. Watson: And, basically making that more efficient is gonna have all sorts of downstream, positive ramifications for your business, where, you know, another thing is like demand planning. So if we're expecting more patients to come on and we have this coming demand, but we don't yet have the right kind of capital in place to go higher, the next 5, 10, 15 providers that we need, we're gonna be constrained from actually taking on the, and actually growing our business. So the ability to turn that over and actually get the deal closed is a really important part of the process. Makin: It is, medical billing is so, so important. Watson: And so is the relationship with those insurance providers, and this may be basic stuff, is that really just contingent upon you, you and your organization having the right licensure or is there another degree to which is like relationship building or something like that? Cause I have to imagine the insurance company's like happy to find people pay for policies, less happy to go be paying the people, making claims. Not that they don't want to, but just, Makin: Oh yeah. Watson: it's a, it's a more convoluted process. Makin: Oh, absolutely. And they're really concerned about making sure that their patients are getting effective care. Something that we've been seeing and hearing more talks of is value based care, and what that means is there is proof and evidence that the care that the physician or the provider's providing is actually helping, and so that's a new model that is that I hear a lot of insurance companies are working to get set up and certain plans have done it already and have that in place like now, so part of it is relationship based, but even more so is the way that you handle your medical billing actually, because the way that you do something is the way that you do everything. Watson: Right. And so if your claims and your medical billing is sloppy, many times the clinical operations of a company are also going to be sloppy and disorganized. Makin: So they use that as a way to measure where your company's at. and also they have all this data on like your company and what, what you're doing, and they put a lot of emphasis into doing their due diligence before you can even get a contract, like for us with UPMC Aaron it took us three years to get a contract with UPMC. Three years of consistent follow up. And of course you don't give up, you stay persistent, but it takes a lot of time to get these agreements in place, and so once they are in place it's important to make sure you're doing what you need to be doing, so you're not causing any issues so you can keep them. Watson: And so anytime anyone's pursued something for three years and it finally comes to fruition, there's gonna be some, some sort of celebration for that. But to just make that super tangible, to make sure I'm understanding.... Makin: Mm-hmm. Watson: ....the UPMC insurance apparatus had this three year run up and after which patients with UPMC insurance were now covered to use Makin Wellness as a mental health service provider. Am I explaining that correctly? Makin: Yes. Watson: Got it. So on the flip side, another part of the medical experience, particularly in America, Is the referral out to specialists. So you see a general practitioner, you see some, a generalist, and then they kind of shoot you in, in a certain direction to make sure that you're getting the highest level of care and orthopedics or whatever the thing may be. How has Makin built a funnel for inbound referrals from other providers, or has that not been as important as perhaps digital marketing or the presence on certain websites? Or like what, what has kind of driven that growth? Yeah, that's a really great question that we partner with certain companies like Quartet receive those referrals. Makin: So Quartet, if anyone's not familiar, it's a platform where primary care providers can refer out to mental health or addiction specialists. And so that has been the main funnel for being able to coordinate care with primary care providers. The main way that people have found us has been through word of mouth. Insurance companies were listed on all of them as well and online advertising and search engine optimization and. Watson: Got it. Makin: Yeah. Watson: Is there one that's like a standout or is it kind of an even distribution between those different entities? Makin: I would say just like thinking through. Watson: Yeah, yeah. Makin: Google and search engine search has been a game changer for us, for sure. Watson: Yeah. Makin: Yeah. Watson: It seems like. So from, from, there's a couple things that you've said here, I didn't wanna make it about Piper too much but it ends up, but...... Go for it. ........you know, bleeding into every conversation, right? So you talked about it. Finding therapists that are, are specialists in a specific domain. And we see that in marketing agencies, cuz if any agency isn't really at scale, but they say they do it all, they're either contracting everything out or they're kind of not really experts in these things...... Makin: yeah. They're generalists. Watson: ....doing, doing a mediocre job at it. But the other piece is, you know, we get these different inbound leads from all sorts of different entities and sometimes you're working with like the head of marketing as a certain entity and they kind of, they, they get it, they know what they're looking for and they just need the function. They can really clearly articulate what they're looking for. And then very, it's not a frequently that comes in for us, but there is a relatively consistent experience of when interfacing with folks who are in medicine in some way, shape or form the entire, you know, realm of marketing, really being opaque to them, like not even knowing the basic parlance, the basic kind of contours of what to look for, what to ask about how it works the same way I would be. I would be beyond equally useless in a medical environment. But it's just interesting that that's part of your edge, where many of the other firms that it's just not a kind of skill set, that's gonna be baked into their DNA from the jump. Makin: Yeah, absolutely. And if you think about it, if you've been trained for years and years at a time of how to do something in a certain way and what's important and what's not like in a provider's mind, all they think about is like, I just need to do a great job with providing excellent client care, which is extremely important, and effective marketing and branding and positioning and ensuring you're communicating what's happening and getting the public to get more and more familiar with your company is extremely important because that's going to be your one to many, Watson: Right. So it, what it sounds like then is that a good performance marketer has a pretty solid base from which to work on in a business like yours, because if there is a basic understanding of what the cost, I'm sorry, what the revenue per visit is of that patient coming in and the kind of standard quantity of visits that they will do, you can back into the average value of what that entities worth when they come in the door, and so there, you know, more or less off the bat, what the max budget is for your kind of digital ad spend. And now really in terms of a constraint of growth, if you have the capital, because your billing's tight and you have the clarity on what to,what you're willing to pay for one of these entities, then it's like, let's run an experiment anywhere. Makin: Yeah. Watson: To see if that translates into more people coming in the door for us. Makin: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's a numbers, numbers game for sure, and measuring your conversions and even earlier before you and I met today, I had a meeting with my team about conversions specifically, and one change that our team made increased our conversions 7% within a timeframe of one month. And so tracking all of these analytics is incredibly important for sure. Watson: Right. So in terms of incentives, right? The most obvious way you incentivize is a salesperson with a commission, but that's not necessarily ideal in something like healthcare. So how do you think about incentives for the prov, these, these care providers and then the rest of the members of your team to kind of keep everyone aligned and continue that skyrocket that growth? Makin: Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, one of our company values is collaboration and I'm very adamant about making sure that we're all working together in a harmonious way, and as we grow, there are lots of opportunities that we provide to our team members and we have different things, like we have different referral bonuses, or if you refer a provider to work here, And they're an outstanding fit, that's another bonus opportunity. And we also have a profit share at the end of the year, contingent upon how profitable we are, how much we've grown and what their contribution to that is. And it also looks at their adherence to our values because we are in a value, different driven company. All of those things go into helping of course, like give back to our team as well. And they're all very, they appreciate all of those things. And it's also helpful for us too, because you know, the more quality providers we get, the more partnerships that we can get established with other places, and the more we can have our team really taking ownership of, you know, this is our team, this is our company, and having that mentality really helps with the growth for sure. Because everyone is very invested. Watson: Yeah. Makin: Yeah. Watson: When did you implement profit sharing? Was that from the jump or was that like when did you make that decision from a policy standpoint? Makin: Yeah, so I was doing it informally and I was not realizing that's what it was called until later on and so I've I'd say I've always done it, but it wasn't a formal process until about two years ago. Watson: Got it. Interesting. Makin: Yeah. Watson: Well, I am I. I'm really impressed by the growth that you've experienced and it, clearly that the vision part is, is really Impressive to me, cuz I think that's probably an area of my game that I could tighten up a little bit. So... Makin: yeah. Watson: ......I'm gonna have to maybe debrief after here with uh, with some ways that you've cultivated that, but I want to aim towards wrapping up before we ask our standard last questions, is there anything else you were hoping to share today that I just didn't give you a chance to? Makin: We went over everything. Watson: Yeah. Makin: Yeah. Watson: What are some of, what are some of the specialties? So you talked about the therapist talking about having 20 specialties, that's not valid. Like what are some of the most common ones or what maybe, maybe some that you wouldn't necessarily expect if you weren't in this space. Makin: Yeah. So the most common specialties and the challenges that come here to make and wellness are depression, anxiety, and PTSD by far. Watson: Okay. And are there any kind of new, or like nascent niches that people have really kind of focused on that are a specific realm of care? Makin: For treatment? Watson: Yeah. Makin: Could you reword that please? My bad. Watson: So, you know, depression, anxiety are kind of these broad specialties that someone could apply themselves to, but is there anyone that's like, this would be over the top? Makin: Yeah. Watson: But like specifically folks that have been in a skiing accident and like, that's, that's like, it's, it's way more niched down, but it's, you know, there there's clearly a need there that it's, it's being addressed and having that hyper specialty really differentiate differentiates you and your capability to provide that care. Makin: Oh, okay. I really appreciate you clarifying that. Watson: Yeah. Yeah. Makin: So something that we've so far regarding specialty care, we support a lot of very busy professionals and executives. Watson: And so helping them to just manage the kind of complexity of their lives and the lack of time and the kind of stress associated with that. Makin: Yeah. Typically it's some type of stress that they need support with. And sometimes it's cases where they legally are not able to talk about certain things that cause them a lot of stress. So they're able to talk to the counselor about it because through HIPAA, we're not able to self we're not able to disclose a lot of things. So we support a ton of attorneys, actually like a ton. Watson: Interesting. Makin: Yeah. Watson: Well, that's very fascinating. If folks want to learn more about Makin Wellness, what digital coordinates can we provide to learn more? Makin: Yeah, absolutely. You could go to Makin wellness.com and you can check us out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest at Makin Wellness. Watson: Awesome. And you've got the tag, the handle for all of them. Makin: Exactly. Yes. Watson: That's huge. That's huge as well. We're gonna link all that in the show notes. You can find it as you can with every episode@goingdeepthere.com slash podcast or in the app. We are probably listening to this right now. But Sara, before I let you go, I'd like to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience. Makin: I would love to do this first off Aaron, a challenge that I would love for you to do is to take 10 minutes in the morning to yourself to do something nice for yourself before you start your day. And it can be anything that makes you feel good. That is healthy for you. So nothing self-destructive Watson: That's a good caveat. Set your day off on an odd course there, if that's not part of it. Makin: Yeah, exactly. Watson: Yeah. Makin: Maybe put the alcohol down. Watson: Yeah. I love that. And I, I wanna shout something else out here before the recording turns off, you have a very interesting habit that, that wasn't I was gonna see if it was the challenge before I, I shouted out cause I didn't wanna step on your challenge there. Yeah. But you always end your emails or any message that I've sent with you, or even a call telling the other person to have a lovely day, or I'm sure you're doing it intentionally. How do you make sure to do that with every single message? Cause I've definitely noticed it in our communications. Makin: Oh my goodness. Well, I'm really happy. You did notice that. So typically I'll say have a lovely day or have a successful day and I'm saying that to the person so they keep that in mind for themselves, like what can I do to have a great day? What can I do to have a successful day? And then I also tell it for myself too. So it's a gift, but it's also a little bit selfish. Watson: Yeah. Makin: Because then I'm thinking, okay, like what else do I need to do to have a successful day? Watson: Yeah, I think I noticed it in a message. And then we were on a call and you, and you kind of signed off with that, and that was enough for me. Like she was definitely intentional about doing that. And then I was reflecting on, I mean, that felt, feels great to hear because you're not hearing that from every person that you, that you interact with on a day to day basis. Yeah. But it also feels fantastic to, you know, pass that on to someone else. So I'm gonna add that in. I think that spending 10 minutes at the beginning of your day is a fantastic challenge for folks, but I'm just gonna add on, because it's also something that I've noticed you do is to just dial up your sign offs 10% and it doesn't have to be steal exactly what Sara's saying, but tie up your sign off a little bit because I noticed it, I appreciated it and I think that it'll have a, a net positive impact for a lot of people. Makin: Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Watson: This has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Makin: Oh my gosh. Yes. Thanks for having me. This has been awesome. We just went deep with Sara Makin. Hope everyone out there has a fantastic day. Hey, thank you so much for listening to the end of my interview with Sara. If you found this valuable, I think you'd also enjoy our past interview with Dylan Banon the founder of Mind Bloom. He is also building a remote- only mental health startup focused on administering ketamine to folks that need it for mental health conditions. I also learned a ton from this conversation because this is a field that is completely foreign to me. I think you'll take a lot away from it as well, including Dylan's own story of working on his personal psychology and a whole lot more. Check it out.Thanks for listening. Connect with Aaron on Twitter and Instagram at Aaron Watson 59.
Justin Moore is a Sponsorship Coach & Founder of CreatorWizard, a training program that teaches creators how to find & negotiate brand deals. With his wife April, Justin has been a full-time creator for nearly a decade and has been running an influencer marketing agency for over 5 years.
Justin and April started creating content back in the days before brands reached out to collaborate with influencers. They started with a cooking channel and a family vlog channel and did daily videos for several years, eventually growing their total following to over 1,500,000. With more than a decade of experience in content creation, it is easy to see why Justin Moore is able to help creators find & negotiate their dream brand sponsorships. In this episode, dive deep with Aaron as he and Justin discuss how a side hustle led to quitting his 9 to 5 job, managing his influencer marketing agency, and the opportunity on Amazon Live. Justin Moore’s Challenge; Reach out to that person. Reach out to that potential partner. Connect with Justin Moore
If you liked this interview, check out our episode Men’s Fashion Reviews, YouTube, and Building a Brand w/ Jon Shanahan.
Josh Caputo founded HumoTech in 2015 as a spin-off from his CMU research robotics department. His passion is focused on developing and commercializing cutting-edge robotics technology that addresses current societal needs like prostheses and exoskeletons.
Josh and his team have built a platform to enable the world’s top researchers to more rapidly iterate on their products and designs. This will eventually allow robotics to assist people in achieving higher levels of mobility and a greater quality of life across medicine, engineering, and business. In this episode, Aaron and Josh discuss Humotech’s goals, how they’ve bootstrapped a hardware company, and why exoskeletons will change the way we live. Josh Caputo’s Challenge; Go on a hike, turn off the cellphone and ask yourself what you are doing with your life. Connect with Josh Caputo
If you liked this interview, check out our episode The Construction Robot Revolution with Jeremy Searock where we discuss how Advanced Construction Robotics applies robotics technology in the rebar industry.
After years as a chef in the fast-paced world of fine dining, Chad Townsend decided it was time for a change.
He purchased an expensive Swiss-made food processor that would finely puree frozen foods such as ice cream or sorbet. His wife, Lauren, allowed him to make this purchase under one condition: he had to have it paid off by the end of the summer. What started as a fun summer hustle turned into a 10,000 sq. ft. Ice Cream Manufacturing and Franchising business. Growing his homemade Ice cream Business, he had to put processes in place and hire people he can trust. In this episode, Chad and Aaron discuss what it takes to scale-up food manufacturing, how to find good franchise partners, and their strategy for coming up with new flavors. Chad Townsend’s Challenge; Spend some dollars (buying products) from somebody who lives within 50 miles of your house. Connect with Chad Townsend
If you liked this interview, check out our episode with Bill Sarris where we discuss how he turned his family business into a Candy Powerhouse.
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Townsend: We had to learn everything and anything involved with dairy processing. We learned process engineering on the fly. We've learned so many different things, not the least of which being what it's like to scale up a product that is not a widget.
Watson: Hey, you're gonna love this interview with Chad Townsend, the founder of Millie's Ice Cream. We talk about his humble origins, making ice cream out of his kitchen. We talk about how the firm experiments with all sorts of different wacky flavors, how they figure out when one works. And he goes into detail about how he's built a 10,000 square foot manufacturing facility to ship ice cream around the region. Enjoy Chad. Welcome to go deep, man. I'm excited to be talking with you. Townsend: I am very excited to be here. It's been a while coming, but glad we could get it scheduled. Watson: It was about time. So I wanna go back in time to the start of Millies and what I've come to learn is that more often than not, when someone decides to just create a new company outta nothing there, the entrepreneur will have this feeling of something is missing. They it's like they can see a puzzle and there's just this clearly missing piece. Townsend: Yep. Watson: And you know, there were other ice cream shops, there were other, you know, places to go get a dessert after a meal, and yet you felt compelled to start your own ice cream shop. So through that lens, can you talk about what you saw that was missing that drove you so hard to create your own ice cream shopping company. Townsend: Yeah. So you know, I, I was a chef in a past life and had left the place I was at because I felt that it wasn't fair to those people as I was kind looking to do my own thing, and wasn't fair to my search to be committing time to work. And it wasn't fair to work, to be committing time to my search. Fortunately, my wife, you know, did well enough at the time that she said, why don't you just leave and we can start the search. And one of the days we were in the process of the search we went and had some ice cream at a place. So certainly won't gonna men won't mention the name, cuz we're not gonna throw anybody under the bus, but, and it was like, it was really lousy and it said homemade on the, on the sign and I'm like, like, I feel like I could do better than this. I trained with a couple pastry chefs. I'd worked with some really talented chefs and had the general idea of making ice cream. So we got this idea that I was gonna buy an ice cream machine to make at my house. And it was under this weird guys, that I wanted this ice cream machine. I wanted to play around with it. I knew I would use it in my eventual restaurant, but I, you know, the problem was I didn't have any money. I certainly had a, not a great credit score. So I said to my wife, why don't you buy this thing? She said, fine, good deal. I'll buy it. You have to pay it off by the end of the summer. So we started doing that and it was just a fun project to keep us busy, to do whatever through the summer. And then people started coming to the place I was selling it. So we were just making it at home. People started coming in, standing in line on Friday nights to have this ice cream grocery store start reaching out. And what we found was that there wasn't a super premium local option. And so that was kind of the, the light bulb that went off, if you will, for us is, why don't we do this we might have something here. So we built a really small legal dairy plant, because again, we were doing this whole thing. We were doing a CSA, which was really weird. We thought it was gonna be this great thing. This was pre-kids. We were gonna be driving around on Saturdays. We were gonna be listening to tunes, dropping off a pin of ice cream at people's houses, 10, 15, 20 houses. Then it was gonna be great. Well, like 80 people signed. We had to divide our roots. Lauren was working a job. She is formerly in private equity. She was working in a job and then Friday night she would develop this route in, in a spreadsheet and it turned out to not be a super fun thing. So we decided let's let's ground this. We built a small dairy plant. Got legal, started selling into grocery stores. Started opening our ice cream shop in Shadyside. And that was the other kind of piece of the, you know, the, the missing puzzle, if you will, was that there wasn't an ice cream shop that was fun, serving a super premium product that we felt in town. It was, you know, places that you had gone to, you stood out and did in a parking lot. You, people had been going there for 50 or 60 years having soft serve, whatever it may be, but there wasn't a place that was like fun playing good music, felt great, felt comfortable, had a good vibe and was also serving great ice cream, and so we saw that kind of, you know, gap and decided to build Shadyside and it's been rolling ever since. Watson: And so coming to today, can you just give a little bit of context on where the business stands now from that original, you know..... Townsend: yeah. Watson: .....dairy production facility that was put together and your first shop. Townsend: Yeah. So 2014 is when the business was founded, right? Incorporated, if you will. 2015 is when we got our dairy plant built out. So it was 900 square feet and Homewood Point Breeze. Today 2022, we have 11 locations potentially five more queued up for next year on a 10,000 square foot dairy plant among e-comm shipping to 48 states distribution through a large food service distributor and all of the kind of states that abut Pennsylvania and we're in 50 or 60 grocery stores growing. Watson: And so one way to think about a kitchen, I mean, even, even for a kitchen in your home, is that it really is a manufacturing facility.... Townsend: sure. Watson: .....at, at a micro scale of the dinner or the lunch. Your family's gonna be consuming. And that scales up into the commercial kitchen that sits within a restaurant. But what we have here, 10,000 square feet, we just walked through. It is a completely different can of worms than a commercial kitchen serving a single restaurant. Townsend: Yep. Watson: So can you talk about what you had to learn in order to make that scale up possible and, you know, maintain the quality of your product and do all the things that come along with scaling the company. Townsend: Yeah. We had to learn everything and anything involved with dairy processing. We had to learn that all of the regulatory standards were heavily regulated. We have inspectors in, in the plant every two to three months at the very least not to mention third party audits and all of those things. So we learned all of that. We learned process engineering on the fly. We've certainly, you know, we didn't just do it all ourselves, but we've, we've been able to make some great relationships and great friends with people who have given us free advice, cheap advice, very expensive advice and everything in between. But we've learned that it turns out that if you are making two gallons of ice cream, you don't just multiply all the bill of materials times a hundred to make 200 gallons. Right? There's a lot that goes into it, from heating, there's you know, there's a lot of different flows through pumps and without just getting into like the absolute weeds of all of the day to day minutiae of, of problems we've, we've learned. So many different things, not the least of which being what it's like to scale up a product that is not a widget because if you're making a piston, right, you just buy enough metal to make a hundred pistons, okay? Now it's a thousand. One of the things that's really, you know, kind of interesting that we've had to learn is that we have a lot of overhead piping, right? Stainless steel piping. You may or may not have seen it as you go through the plant, you know, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of feet. And you can't like, just take that down and clean it. Where, if you're in a restaurant, right, you're cutting fish on a cutting board, you clean the cutting board in the sink, you put it in the dishwasher and you go, we can't do that because we have sticks of pipe that are 60 feet long. And so we have to, you know, run a cleaning cycle and there's a, there's a, a tried and true process for doing that. But one of the interesting things is that my cleaning process takes the same amount of time if I produce one gallon or I produce a hundred thousand gallons. And so one of the things we've had to learn is scheduling and planning our day from an efficiency standpoint, that we are not wasting a large portion of it cleaning. You know, cuz we still have to clean every day at the end of the day. I mean it's, if, if we produce one thing, we still have to clean. If we produce 10 things, the cleaning process is no different. And so that's been a really, really steep learning curve for us, I would say the steepest just because we make a mistake and maybe we get very low yield. Okay. Now everybody stops for three hours and we clean. And so that I would say that has been the biggest piece of, of what we do is learning that how to schedule the day, how to schedule shifts, how to balance and stagger people in people out so that we're still within the constraints of a, of a food safe program, but, but maximizing our output. Watson: Yeah. It's always so fascinating to me, how folks will get into a business for a kind of core reason, which in your case was the flavor of the ice cream. Townsend: Yeah. Watson: And how quickly, if you're successful, it literally turns into a completely different job. You're talking about optimizing cleaning schedules in a manufacturing facility. Townsend: Yeah. Watson: Not creating custom ice cream flavors. Townsend: Yeah. I mean, you know, we have binders upon binders of records and document keeping and I'm just not, I'm not naturally a document guy. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: Like I've always been kind of a shoot from the hip fly by the seat of my pants guy and like that doesn't work, you know, and, and to, to, to, when I was listening to the one podcast this morning, it was really great because we're developing these SOPs and it's like, it takes a lot of time, right? We have to write them. And it's one thing to like, to, to write that SOP but then to like, Implementation is the hardest part. That's 90% of the job. And if you miss a step and you have somebody who, if you just write the SOP and you miss a step and you hand it to someone and you just expect them to then recreate it, they will. But somebody who knows the process pre SOP will say, oh, well, you didn't say this in here. And so we're constantly tweaking those, working those, you know, we, we just went through an audit and the guy asked for a document to document how we destroy our documents. And I'm like, listen, like I don't really, we're not super proprietary. Like we, that's. The thing about what we do is it's just milk cream, sugar, eggs, salt. Like we have, we certainly have recipes, but like, I'll share those recipes with whoever, because it's not, it's not just about that recipe, it's all the things around it. Staffing..... Watson: Execution. Townsend: ...it's all of that. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: And so I'm like, we just throw the documents away. He's like, well, then you have to document that you just threw the documents away, I'm like, this is crazy, so that's been another very big challenge for us. Watson: Yeah, it sounds like it is. I wanna get more into the business model, but before we do that, just to, just to drive home for folks, the nature of your skews and the, we talked about customized cream here. There's a famous, you know, Malcolm Gladwell anecdote about pasta sauce and how there was originally, you know, chunky and regular pasta sauce and then there's this, you know, meeting about how do we make more money? How do we sell more pasta sauce? And it was about customizing to the person that wanted, you know, more garlic that wanted less garlic that wanted, you know, spicy, less spicy, all these different things. And that's how you now walk through the grocery store and you see an entire aisle of different pasta sauces that one could self-select for. So in that same spirit, like I can remember, and we're, we're not shouting at any other ice cream shops by name here, but I can remember where like you know, it there's, there's chocolate, there's vanilla there's twist and then maybe there's, you know, the one you know, milkshake or you know, cookies and cream flavor. Yeah. And that was like the universe..... Townsend: Yeah Watson: .....of ice creams. And I was just in your shop the other day and my wife orders, a lavender based ice cream , which is a pretty significant departure from that past. So talk a little bit about the flavor profiles. Townsend: Yeah. So you know, being that I was a chef and we have a bunch of people here who are very creative culinary minds, or able to kind of go a little bit outside of people's, you know, standard. We certainly have the standards, right. We have vanilla, we have chocolate, we have coffee, we have cookie dough, cookies and cream. But part of our mission is to continually rotate some portion of those SKUs. Even if it's just in the shop, we've, we've transitioned that into grocery store because we've found that that does really well having some level of rotation in the, in the pints, in the grocery store. But yeah, we, we, the lavender is a funny example because it's one that it's fine. I like it. It's fine. But we get a ton of requests for it. As soon as people have kind of associated it with spring and Millies and so on, as soon as it starts to warm up, you're gonna do lavender again. When's lavender? How about lavender? And so we've, you know, just been continually bringing lavender around the spring and now it carries on a little further because people are still buying it at. It's such a volume that we keep it going. And so those things we pull back from other years, but we're also trying to like to throw new things in there. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: Every year, every. Watson: Talk to me about how that works, cuz everyone can kind of picture, you know, those big kind of glass open freezers that you can look in and decide what you want and get a taste and then even once you kind of know what you want, ask for one more taste just to get it. Townsend: Absolutely. We encourage tasting too. Watson: But, you know, you have your, your standards, like you said, your chocolate, your vanilla, the, the tried and true, they're always gonna be a consistent demand for like how many slots does the average Millies shop have for those tubs of ice cream in there, and then how many of those are kind of turning over with regularity, either seasonally or from an experimentation standpoint? Townsend: Yep. Watson: And then what are, you know, your, how many are your kind of old trustworthies. Townsend: You know, 14 to 16 on average slots, if you will, flavors at, at any given moment we try to keep six, 8,10 of 'em that are always the same, because one of the things that we found is we were able to build trust with people, having some kind of more outside the box flavors if they're trying some of the, the, you know, more standard flavors. So we always want to keep that because we also will see that we'll have, you know, a, a husband and wife, a boyfriend, girlfriend, you know, two people that are coming in, friends that want to, one wants to just have vanilla, one wants to go a little outside of the box and if we don't have a, a good split of that offering, then we, then we lose one person or, you know, we don't get either of them. So we wanna have, we wanna be kind of approachable, accessible for everyone. Watson: And from an experimentation standpoint, how often, you know, so I have a good friend, a very successful entrepreneur who, you know, who'll be quick to tell you, I get a hundred different ideas and 99 of 'em are terrible. Townsend: Yeah. Watson: And like, like I need to, for my business, need to focus..... Townsend: yeah. Watson: .....on like doubling down on the things that matter specifically just in the spectrum of flavors, not all the other, you know, potential business model, creativity, ideas, which could also exist. But how often are you, like, like I'm guessing these, like, let's just try to make this ice cream. Let's try to experiment with it and iterate, iterate, iterate until it's either something worthy of cutting out to the public or just mixing. Townsend: Yep. Watson: And then on the second level, okay. We brought this out to the public and it either is, or is not landing. Those seem like the two kinds of you know, what's the, the trolley problem where they're like switching the, you know, the pathway back and forth. Townsend: Yeah. Yeah. So, we certainly kind of have those, those two sections where we, where we decide, you know, where if we want to go forth with it, you know, internally, and then how it's received from a shop level. We're fortunate at this point that with the volume of the shops, we can have a single run of a flavor and it will go pretty quick, regardless of its popularity, right? It's maybe not gonna go as quick as some super popular ones, but we, there's not a lot left out to die anymore. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: It wasn't the case so much in the first one or two shops. But you know, for example, we had a goat cheese flavor. There was goat cheese, ice cream. Rachel, our production manager, made it, she did a strawberry or a raspberry rhubarb jam for it. And I said, go ahead, make it, nobody's gonna buy this. Yeah. And it was one of our most popular flavors. And so it's just really hard to, to tell. And I've at this point I've, unless it's something that's so funky or so whack, you know, I say all right, let's, you know, let's figure it out. Let's R and D it, and let's get it to a point where at least somebody here who likes this flavor profile is pleased with it and then we'll release it. And it turns out a lot of times I'm proven wrong. Watson: Well, I mean, that's just a really compelling thing for a business to kind of have embedded into its culture and into the actual business model is like you have these 14 to 16 slots per store with foot consistent traffic. So you can actually, you know, it's a website that does, or doesn't get traffic to it. One of them can run a lot of experiments, the other one can't even if they have the desire to, and that's, I, I just think that's a very kind of compelling part of the business. Townsend: Yeah. You know, and, and it's it. In a, kind of a weird microcosm, right? This it's, it's just an ice cream shop. We're just making ice cream, but we are able to identify now as we're kind of further along in the business, these kinds of human behaviors and things just from surveys around flavors. And we, you know, we have some really great people on our team that are thinking about things a little bit differently. And I think, you know, to go back to the go cheese flavor, one, it's one of the stronger lessons for me as, as the person running the business is that I have to ultimately trust these people who, who I've hired, and if I'm, if I'm hiring them and not trusting them and I'm just kind of like, you know, overbearing on their decision making, then, then I'm either not training them right or I'm hiring the wrong people. And it turns out I'm often wrong. These people are all very intelligent, hardworking, driven people. And so I've gotta continue to give them more rope and you know, at the end of the day, if they fail, I, I say to them often, like we're not operating on baby's brains here. We want to be safe. We don't wanna make people sick obviously. But if a flavor sucks and we don't sell a lot of it, like it is what it is, I mean, nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna die. And so, like, we have to, you know, I have to continue to give. All of the people that work here, the, the, the room to grow and, and be better. And they're, they've thrilled me so far with how excited and engaged they are. Watson: Absolutely. And another thing that thrills a team of staff is a genuine growth story. If, if the entire lake is just completely placid with no sort of rapids of any way, shape or form, not only does that, not, you know, challenge anyone, but it's also like, okay, well, where are we gonna go? Like what, what is there even to do? And you guys are scaling, you said 11 to potentially 15 or 16 locations. E-com in 48 states that you're serving. Can you just talk a little bit about the different pillars of the business? Cuz we interviewed Bill Sarris, another kind of local candy person here in the greater Pittsburgh region, and he talked, I was kind of surprised by this. He talked about them having five layers to the business there, online sales, their sales within the store, the school fundraisers and on and on down the line. Talk a little bit about how that looks from Millie's standpoint. Townsend: Yeah. So we're, I mean, we're probably three or four, depending on how you categorize them. So there are certainly, you know, grocery pints, right? That's very simple. That's clean cut. We deliver those, we service 'em we distribute 'em we make them there's obviously the ice cream shops. That's the bulk of our business. That is 80% of what we do is, is those shops. And that's what we want to focus on. You know, it's, it's kind of that like old cliche is like, I wanted to do everything and I never wanted to say no to anybody and I, and the idea from the beginning was like, okay, if we just keep bringing in continually growing revenue, like we'll do fine. That's like, that's, I thought that was the secret to like building a great business, but it turns out it's it maybe isn't always like that. It's not just accept as many dollars in the door as possible because it puts weird stresses on the team, it puts weird stresses on the equipment, the space, all kinds of things. So we're continually like looking at it once upon a time we had a growth strategy Shady Side was gonna be an ice cream shop and we were gonna distribute wholesale ice cream to restaurants, grocery stores. And then we found it's really hard to compete in grocery with a Unilever, right? I mean, billions and billions of dollars in ad revenue that they'll spend to, to keep them in a, in a prominent facing on the shelf. And we can't have that personal touch at the grocery store. We're a more expensive item. So 7 99 compared to a 5 99 for something else. And if you don't know us, what, what, like, why are you gonna try us? Maybe we got great looking packaging. Maybe it's an intriguing flavor, but we can't explain our kind of origin story or what we are to to the guests or to the customer, whereas in the shops, we can come in, taste it. Oh, lavender, that sounds weird to you have a taste. We encourage tasting. If you don't like it, throw the spoon away. It's not gonna gross you out, you might, you know, just say, hey, that's not for me, but we've had a lot of people that have tasted it and said, great. And we can have fun music and we can have the great staff that we have because they are, they're the key to the whole thing in the shops. And then, we have that huge kind of piece of it. We do have a small wholesale distributor, as I said, through a large food service distributor. And then we have, you know, other ancillary things, right, school fundraisers, those things, not to the degree that that Sarris would, but we roll those into the shops as kind of a community outreach community building angle. Watson: Got it. And then the other kind of piece of terminology, you particularly, if you're saying you're shipping, you, you have your distributor that can help with wholesale, you have the ability to sell online to these 48 like continental United States. Yeah. And another terminology that I only learned here in the last two years is the cold chain storage. Townsend: Yeah. Watson: Or, or the cold chain for a supply chain being, you know, different than the conventional supply chains that we're accustomed to. And that was, you know, originally under the conversation of shipping vaccines that needed to be temperature controlled to different locations. But in food service, particularly for someone like ice cream... Townsend: sure. Watson: .....that is an important part of the equation as well. So what can you tell us in terms of learning that part of the equation? Cuz I am, I've basically just walked right up to the line of my knowledge and I have nothing more. Townsend: Sure. Yeah. I mean, what I can tell you is that it's it's difficult from a sourcing that, that transit or that freight perspective. So it's difficult to find those people, not everybody does frozen or refrigerated logistics. It's expensive, as you can imagine, because you know, when you're talking about FTL or LTL, LTL is certainly more expensive than FTL in a standard freight shipping model, because there's no guarantee that they're gonna fill that truck. They often do almost always if they have good logistics planners, but you pay that kind of convenience fee to not ship the whole thing. But it's easy if you are. LTL provider, you go, you pick up three pallets from soandso. You go pick up two from soandso, next thing you know, you have 26 pallets, pretty easy to find, but you may not have people who are looking to ship pallets of, of frozen or refrigerated, you know, with the same kind of level of, of regularity that you do on standard shipping. So that's been one of the things that we have really had to think about as we're continuing this growth from a franchising perspective is okay. We know we can support the store, we know what the footprint of the store looks like, we can design, we can give you a pretty tight budget. We've done it many times now we know that, but the big question is, okay, you come to me and say, I want to open a Millies in Orlando. Okay, how do I get the ice cream to Orlando? Because right now, some combination of local distributors, warehousers and us warehousing and distributing our own product that's easy. The furthest, you know, footprint is, is Shitakwa, New York down to like Wheeling West Virginia, which you certainly don't want to do in a day, but you can, if you have to. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: But I can't just send a delivery driver to Orlando, right, for twice a week? So where do we store, you know, on the way to Orlando, where do we store it when it's down there, so we can have some economies of scale if we're gonna ship a lot of product, how reputable is the carrier that they're going to ensure that this cold chain has been maintained? You know, with something like, if you're shipping refrigerated, french fries, Right? They certainly have to be refrigerated, but if those french fries go above 41 degrees for an hour, it's okay. You know, they're not gonna get ruined they're refrigerated, French fries or whatever, you know, refrigerated produce. With ice cream, I mean, it melts, right? Like it melts and then it refreezes, and there's no way to know until you.... Watson: yeah. Townsend: ...... right? And maybe something that is lettuce, right, you could see it, it's wilted, it's no good, but in a pint, in a bucket you don't know. And I can't then open up all those buckets and taste them. And so it's, it's a challenge. That's certainly one of the most challenging pieces, especially with the climate of how things are right now for us. Watson: So talk just a little bit about the addition of these locations and how you're thinking about it then from like a geographic footprint. Townsend: Yeah. So we're kind of thinking in concentric circles, one from a, from a dis distribution standpoint, two from a support standpoint I think one of the things that is our kind of value add in this franchising industry that we've identified as something that is a non-negotiable for us, is that the franchisee will receive great support because we want them to be very successful. There are franchises out there that you can go find that the director of development will say, Hey, this is for you know, a husband to run whose wife is very wealthy and they don't need to make money they just need to stay busy or, you know, some partners in some format, they just want to get, you know, stay busy. We want people to be very successful at these. You know, at these ventures themselves. And so what comes along with that is great support from us. We want to be able to, we wanna be either at your door within 24 hours or on the phone in a couple hours with you, to help you walk through the troubles that you have. And so as we think about growth from a concentric circle standpoint, that's the way that we can do it without, you know, absorbing so much overhead to, you know, be sending people to Colorado and Texas and California. So as we kind of grow, right, it's, it's now regionally or tristate, if you will, and then the next kind of concentric circle will be down into the Carolina's, right? And then adding people to the team that can help to support as we grow those. Watson: And franchising businesses, when they are at the upper, I mean, you could say this about most businesses, but franchising businesses really are when scaled, when, when actually super successful some of the best businesses on the planet McDonald's included, but we could go on and on and on down the list...... Townsend: Yep. Watson: .....outside the realm of food, but just sticking there for a sec, what are, what are you, what have you had to learn in that realm in terms of. Operating it profitably. It seems self-evident that, you know, the more profitable, the better the experience is for my franchisee. Townsend: Yep. Watson: There's gonna be all sorts of down, you know, positive, downstream ramifications. They're gonna wanna open another location and, and, you know, do more financing. But what else, just in terms of practical execution, you know, subtle tweaks to the business model, that weren't necessarily a consideration when it was all Millie's owned and operated. Townsend: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, and that's exactly it, right, is that there, there is, you know, we, we learned opening one ice cream shop was difficult, right, as it is opening, any type of business opening two was, many times more difficult, that was the most difficult location to get open because you're spread thin on resources, you really don't have enough income to bring on people, to help doing this, to help do this, you don't have the systems in place, right? Because why do you need a system if I'm the guy who's making it, I'm the guy who's delivering, and somebody else is running it, right? It's just a one on one, hey, I need this, hey. But then like, okay, what days do we do deliveries? Do we do deliveries every other day and rotate them? So there's a lot of lessons learned in that. And we're still certainly learning those le I mean, we, we only have three franchises, so we're still certainly learning those lessons. And I think our idea with the beginning franchises was to get people who you know, are, are quote unquote, true believers, right? People that believe in what we do that want to be a part of it. It's not just a guy who's looking for an investment property or a woman who's looking for some way to diversify her portfolio. It's somebody who either wants to work in this shop or be a strong, you know, overarching managerial presence. And so, we are very upfront with them and saying, hey, you know, we're kind of new to this. And we are going to go above and beyond to provide the service, but we need the feedback loop from you to tell us what you're missing, what training do you wish that you got? And so we're constantly, you know, to go back to the SOPs, trying to develop those, trying to create all of those systems, to get everybody to feel like they're supported. Watson: And so what you just said reminded me of the past interview that we did with Raji Sankar of Choolaah, where she was talking about.... ....yeah, she was one of the..... Townsend: Oh, oh yeah so what's her what's Raji and, Randhir yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Raji's fantastic. Watson: ........so they were one of the very first franchise, franchisees of Five Guys, and then translated what they witnessed in terms of that scaling into how they're thinking about building Choolaah. Townsend: Yeah. Watson: And it's just self-evident that they've made, not only have they made their mistakes in the, the Five Guys as, as franchisee, but they've almost witnessed secondhand the mistakes of that scaling franchiser..... Townsend: Yep. Watson: .....so that they, you know, can already kind of start on second base. Not that it's easy by stretching the imagination, but in order to get where they want to go. What, what I'm hearing, if they're thinking about it, like as part of their portfolio, whatever, and they're looking for maybe like super passivity, that's not a great match for you, but I have to imagine on the flip side, getting the partner who maybe I'm just making things up already has, you know, a Taco Bell, a a McDonald's and a KFC..... Townsend: yeah. Watson: ....and understands what that infrastructure can be, can kind of be this translator to you or look, I get that. You're new. I'm not trying to be a jerk..... Townsend: Yep. Watson: ....but like they have this in place, you guys should consider it. Townsend: Yeah. Watson: I love this, you should consider it. I hate this, try to avoid that. Townsend: Yeah, no, that that's absolutely, that's absolutely it. And we've been able to, to pull from both of them from, from I met Raji a while ago through a mutual friend a, a little bit before they had Choolaah, but when Choolah was in the incubation stage in their mind. And then Randhir has been a little bit more of a tactical help to us, and, you know, they're both fans of ours, we've done some, some partnerships with them. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's that feedback loop is, is the most important piece, right? And so like bringing, bringing in knowledge from the outside is certainly important. And so we are trying to walk that delicate line, right? With, with having someone that is sophisticated enough, that they don't necessarily need to have that external systems knowledge, but maybe sophisticated enough to know what their own expectations are without just kind of like throwing themselves at the mercy of, of what we're giving to be able to say hey, I would really like this. Hey, I would really like that. So we want a franchisee that is sophisticated enough to, to, to communicate that to us. But then also one who doesn't expect that we're fully polished...... Watson: Yeah. Townsend: .....and ready to turn out a hundred locations a year. So that's, you know, finding those people and that's really important, right? We spend a lot of time with, with the potential future franchisees to understand like, how do we like you? Do you like what we do? Because there's a, there's a huge social component to Millies too. It's a really important to us that it, that all of those things are wrapped up in what we do and, and so if people aren't necessarily buying into what some of our kind of belief systems are, you know, it doesn't make them better or worse or whatever than us, but, but that's part of what we do. That's part of our presence. And so they have to be willing to buy into that too. Watson: Makes sense. All right, couple fun questions I'll say and then we'll, we'll aim towards wrapping up here. So you're in business with your wife? Townsend: Yes. Watson: What have you learned about navigating that kind of double layer complexity of being business partners and life partners? Townsend: Yeah. You know, I've, I've we've both answered this question a lot. She, she started, you know, she kind of helped bankroll the whole operation in the beginning when I couldn't really take a salary cuz we weren't really making any money. So she was able to. Watson: How long was that if you don't mind me asking? Townsend: How long was she? Watson: Were you not taking a salary outta the business? Townsend: Oh, it was probably two to three years. Watson: Okay. Townsend: And then, you know, there was a portion through COVID..... Watson: yeah. Townsend: ....right where we, it was important to us to keep our employees employed and, you know, we could figure it out. She did some consulting on the side and so she's, you know, she's an absolute rockstar but you know, it's really weird. We don't have, like, some people say that the key to be working with each other is like, they go home and they don't talk about work and they come to work and they don't talk about home. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: But like, it's so intertwined for us and we love it so much that like, sometimes we have to say, all right, let's just, can we just stop fucking talking about Millies? Watson: Yeah. Townsend: But most often, like we're at home, our kids take up a ton of our attention, then the kids go to bed and we're sitting there, she's on her computer I'm on my computer or we're just talking about something. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: We're having a drink, just talking about Millies, what we want it to be, because there's a lot of like, fun and exciting parts to that too. And often it can get boring, right, when you're talking about the nuts and the bolts, like, okay, what are we gonna do you know, for this board meeting, what are we, what's the, you know, this PowerPoint gonna look like, but more often than not, we're talking about like, okay, what, you know, what does five years look like? What does 10 years look like for us? What, you know? Watson: Yeah. Townsend: What, like, what are we gonna build this thing to. So I, that's just a lot of fun for us and we just love being a part of it. Watson: And I mean, I think one of the challenges with relationships is, you know, either the, the receding or the lack of a shared interest, and yes, it's good to also hike or do whatever other stuff, rock, climb, whatever it is that you do with your time, but the ability to kind of have this common shared interest where it's not just, you know, the clock and clock out type of experience, but something you guys are, you know, all in on and get to share that together to me, it having not done it sounds like the kind of idealized version of what it can be, which is like, hey, we can always, you know, you're gonna talk about your kids a lot. Townsend: Yep. Watson: You're gonna talk about your business a lot. Townsend: Yep. Watson: That's most of the hours of the day, you can find something else to lay on top, but those are kind of two things that you get to have in common. Townsend: Yeah. And yeah, one of the things that we're talking a lot right now is that we are, we're trying to figure out right, cuz like everybody else, we have a mission statement. You know, I could show you the mission statement, all the it's in the handbook, it's kinda okay, it's a mission statement. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: But we wanna distill something down into this kind of one sentence that we can tell everybody who works for us and that's, that's hard. And so tomorrow we're gonna be in the car for eight hours driving and, and this morning she's like, oh, you know, we can just kind of brainstorm this whole thing out. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: And so, you know, we'll listen to some music, we'll listen to podcasts, we'll just kind of shoot the breeze and, and just keep driving. So it's, you know, those are a lot of those are enjoyable moments. Watson: Right on, get this camera ready, just to have your hand on the lens. So tell me about the tattoos. Townsend: Yeah. so I got these tattoos the day before the shady side shop opened up. Watson: So you had skin in the game from the jump? Townsend: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And people are like, oh, is it have to do with locations, like, no, I just, there was a great a guy I knew and he sent a text around to a couple friends and we were having some beers and he said, I'm usually booked up for months and months and months but I had something open up on Thursday and they said, oh, you know, maybe I should get a tattoo. I said, maybe I should get an ice cream tattoo. And they're like, yeah, go do it. And so I went and did it and that's great, but I want to add some to it... Watson: Yeah. Townsend: ....but it's been, it's been hard to build. Watson: So do you recommend that for folks starting a business to get a tattoo, get they're selling before they actually launch? Townsend: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent and then, you know, people ask me all the time, like what if Millies goes outta business, which is an awful thing to ask somebody, but you know, you'd be surprised how much you get and I, you know, I don't really have a good answer for that, so I'm like caught off guard. I don't know what I'll do, I guess I'll just tell people I like ice cream. Watson: Yeah. Well, if you, if there wasn't enough reason to kind of continue working hard at everything..... Townsend: Yeah. Watson: Having to deal with... Townsend: So I don't look like a fool. Watson: Yeah. That's really the main reason. Forget the, you know, the family business, part of it. Awesome. Chad, this has been fantastic. I really enjoyed talking about this with you and thank you for the tour. Yeah. Of the facility earlier, before we ask our standard last two questions. Townsend: Yeah. Watson: Was there anything else you were hoping to share today that I just didn't give you a chance to? Townsend: No, I, I I thought this was a great conversation, had a lot of fun, just, talking about Millies, talking about, you know, being in business, doing fun stuff. Watson: Right on. Well, if you haven't tried yet, I recommend it. Obviously I had a perfect excuse to take my wife, yeah. To do a little research before the absolutely. But it's absolutely delicious for folks that wanna learn more. Maybe you can't necessarily make it out to a physical location, what digital coordinates can we provide people that wanna learn more? Townsend: Yeah. So we've got a large Instagram presence. So, it's just at Millie's is our Instagram presence.Our website Millie's homemade.com. We are on, we are trying to build more presence on other platforms. It becomes difficult without a dedicated person to build that content for you, but that's what people are looking for these days and it's really a great resource. So we're trying to build all those. Watson: Awesome. We're gonna link all that in the show notes at going beha.com/podcast, where you can find for every episode of the show or in the app. We're probably listening to this right now, but before we let you go, Chad I'd like to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge to the audience. Townsend: The actionable personable personal challenge is very simple. It is to go spend some of your dollars regardless of what you're currently spending with somebody who lives within 50 miles of your house, it doesn't have to be food, it doesn't have to be clothes, you know, it's a, it's a really weird time we're in and it, there are a lot of online presents that you can certainly buy and I have a tough, you know, sometimes things are tough and I certainly buy things online, but we try to challenge ourselves to go put some money into somebody's pocket that, whether they're making food, whether they're making honey, whether they're making clothes or shoes or arts or crafts or whatever, and it doesn't have to be thousands of dollars. Watson: Yeah. Townsend: Go spend five more dollars this week with someone and buy a half gallon of local milk.... Watson: Yeah Townsend: ....but just do that. Watson: I love it. I also just inspired, obviously you make food. By, you know, there's all this conscientiousness about sustainability, but also like where is locally raised, locally grown, locally made whatever. And the correlation there between the intimacy of the product where, you know, I'm sure that my TV at home was assembled literally on the other side of the planet. Townsend: Yeah. Watson: Before it, you know, was floated across the ocean and hung on, hung on the wall there. But the things you're putting in your body are particularly, and the things you're putting on your body, like you said, clothing.... Townsend: Yep. Watson: ....are particularly salient that you, you know, that's made the right way, made in a kind of a way that's not only good for the overall environment, but good for you..... Townsend: Yep. Watson: ....from an actual input standpoint, so that's something that I've, you know, I talk about the other challenges I've been doing, that's definitely been one that's on my list. Townsend: Yeah. And we've, you know, who wants to live in a world where you reduce your face to face contact with another human, I mean, that's what we are made to do right, we're made to interact, and again, like, I know it's easy I, I I've done it, I do it, I just go online and, and buy something and it's sent to my house within 24 hours. But, you know, go talk to a dairy farmer, go, you know, It, it will help everything in the world, it will help you understand what people are going through, it will help you understand what your dollars are going to if just like, okay, we just get up and something arrives at our door and who wants to live in that robotic environment. And I'm not holier than thou. I, like I said, I certainly do all those things, but just go buy a half gallon of milk, go buy a pine of vanilla's ice cream. Watson: Little bit better every day. Chad, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks. Thanks for having me. This is fun. We just went deep with Chad Townsend, who there has a fantastic day. Hey, thank you for listening to the end of my conversation with Chad. If you enjoyed it, I guarantee you will also enjoy our past conversation with Bill Sarris of Sarris candies. He talks about turning around a family business and the different engines of his candy empire. Check it out. 
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