On today's episode of gathering the Kings, I try to run it by my team. You know, if there's an idea that happens, Fortunately, now we have some statistical data that we can go back and challenge, you know, either through finances, whether you know, what revenues look like. You know, flow flow customers, all that stuff. We go back. We'll look at the data. And then we'll we'll pose the question with each other.
You know, there's usually 4 or 5 of us that are decision makers, and and I lean on everybody for that. There's you know, very few instances are are my decisions from the hip. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe. Featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life. But have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the reel of the reel.
On what it takes to build a successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made success and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today's guest. Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. Hey, everyone. Chaz Wolfe gathered in kings.
We're back today with Dan Nelson on the King stage from construction worker to cannabis king of the Midwest you're gonna get a bunch of just real. Dan does a great job of not fluffing anything in his journey of of, grind. Man, this dude's a grinder, and I can't wait for you to hear it. Alright, guys. Chaz Wolfe. I'm back. Gathering the king's spot We've got Dan Nelson. What's up, dude? Thanks for coming. What's happening?
The the the listeners here didn't get to catch our first couple of minutes. We were off air talking about, Dan's sanctuary he's in right now. You've got kiddos in the house, and I do as well, man. How Chaz that been? I mean, before we get into, like, your business stuff, I just love people dealing with kiddos and stuff. Like, you're obviously in the truck doing the podcast, but, like, how's that been navigating the last couple of years with all this stuff with kids nearby? For you?
It's it's it's not been easy. I'm I'm very fortunate that I've got a very supportive wife and she loves most of what I do, you know, and the time that it takes to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And, but no, yeah, it's It's been a it's been a crazy roller coaster, emotional financially. Yeah. Just just taking taking those risk and dive you know, and then still coming home and seeing the little ones and making it worth every while to wake up and start all over again. Yeah, dude. That's so true.
Okay. So tell everybody what kind of have you're obviously a king in the business. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here, but tell us what industry and what what you're up to. So I'm in 2 industries. So I commercial construction. And then also the big one is, we have 5 retail dispensaries, cannabis, medical cannabis here in Kansas City area. Yeah. Love it. Kansas City. Kansas City, fellow fellow business owner. So it's so funny when we first got connected. Obviously, we didn't know of each other.
And here we are both owning multiple businesses in the same city. It just tells you how big the market is. You know, like, not not Kansas City, but just in general business. Like, you can throw an throw a little drop out there and and nobody even, you know, just a drop in the ocean type of a thing. So you're you're in the cannabis industry, and I know you're doing you're doing commercial construction. We're gonna get into both of those. Tell us tell us at this level.
You kinda you kinda led into it a little bit with the kiddos, but tell us at this level You got multiple businesses. You're doing some big numbers. Why why do you keep pushing even at this level when you've quote, unquote made it? You know, I don't I've never convinced myself that I have made it. And I think that's why I keep pushing myself. You know, there's, I joke with my wife every time we go on vacations. Are you excited? We're getting ready to leave.
And I said, I don't get excited until the plane lands, and I have no control over everything, and we can relax and enjoy the trip. There you go. But, yeah, I I mean, I don't know. I have people that I I've got people that lean on me, friends, family, you know, the people that helped me start these businesses Chaz they still rely on me to to do things at the end of the day. So I wake up and with that anticipation. And, you know, it's not for not letting myself down.
It's letting other people down as well that I'm concerned as So it's not a healthy way to live life sometimes. But it's the way of king. Right? And and so, I've broken down some language, you know, even in my own my own business journey around the kind of warrior to King Transition. And and some of that is like, paying attention to those that are around you and, influencing your community, taking care of your family, obviously.
Do you feel like that has been always something that's motivated you, or has that been something that's grown as you've grown the businesses? It's it's definitely something that's always motivated me, I guess, as, you know, as we as we garner knowledge and, you know, create different avenues for ourselves create opportunities, to help our families in different ways. It's funny. I've got, well, my, like, adopted carpenter dad is showed it. He just showed up in the driveway just to say hi.
He saw me sitting out the truck. So, so, yeah, I was a u but I was a union carpenter. And that that guy actually just retired. I call him my carpenter dad, because, you know, he took one for me and he he took me under his wing and, you know, and and it's I've got good kids that work for me and both businesses that, you know, I wanna be able to replicate and do the same. Yeah. It's been great. The the giveback there really is more than just you.
And and it's so interesting too that it it's stemmed from someone giving to you. I think that that probably is relatable to, you know, anybody in the audience who who feels the same way of wanting to give back. Usually, it's because they were once given something. You know? So, I mean, even even from, like, my perspective, like, you know, I grew up single mom family, but, yeah, we didn't have a whole lot financially, but, man, while she was there, You know, like, she was there.
Every basketball game, every everything. And so, like, I wanna do that same thing for my kids. And, obviously, even for my employees, like, you're talking about, just having people that you can pay it forward. So I will, I definitely know that tune all too well, you know, but I grew up. My brother and I, a single mom, She worked 7 days a week.
She was, an office clerk at a at a at a company, and then she worked, Denny's 3 days a week as a waitress, you know, and then, yeah, we we didn't have much, but, you know, it's they got, and that's part of it. Yeah. And then my mom, you know, at the games, at football games, I could hear that one scream. And I was like, oh, man, that's my mom. Get up and then yep. Yeah. But but tell me if you related to this. It there was that that slightly embarrassed moment.
I remember those too because my mom was always the the loud one too. But I'll tell you what. I wanted to perform too. You know, knowing what all that she had done the last 7 days or last 7 years for that matter or whatever the time frame was that we were thinking about. When I heard that voice, it was like, an extra boost of energy. You know what I mean? Mhmm. Do you do you do you get that in business too? Like, is that is that wife now? Is Chaz kids now?
Like, what's the what's the what's the voice that you hear where you're like, okay. Head down. Here we go. Actually, right now, as of lately, it's been my teammates, you know, and I don't when we wanna put the team together for the cannabis company, I I try to reiterate to everybody. There's no hierarchy once in our corporate side. We'll call it the corporate side. I and I I don't care to call it that because, you know, we're really just a team that helps the other.
We're we're the ancillary part of the company that helps run the business. But we all bounce each other's ideas off of everybody. And then we, but when it comes to, you know, they ask me, damn, we need you to go and and and actually do this for us as a company decision. And so that's where, you know, I got people that say, I'm only here because of you. I only I'm only here because I trust you.
Yeah. And so to hear that and that resonates, it's like, You know, even when the kids are sick and the wife's sick, you know, sometimes I get sacrificed. I said, I'm sorry, but I have to be at work today. There's you know, there's unfortunate circumstances and those sacrifices. It's not it doesn't have to be fiscal, you know, just that time with the kids being sick, they want me home, and sometimes it doesn't happen. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Good, man.
Okay. So I I I think we've got a good a good perception of of who you are and and and what you're up to. Let's let's go back into history a little bit. And tell us how how business started for you. Was it was it cannabis that first got you in business? Where did were you? Did you have the entrepreneurial bug before that? Where did it start for? Yeah. So, yeah, I was a union carpenter and then, I had an opportunity to go out and build and do some remodeling.
So I started out in residential remodeling. Left the company I'd worked for for, 12 years. And then and I've always done stuff in the wintertime. Chaz a concrete worker. He always picked up side work. So then, yeah, I took the jump, took the dive, and started to teach him. I didn't know a lick about business.
Didn't know a single thing about it other than I knew I knew what things cost, but once you get into taxes and then then the overhead, you know, what what does it physically take on a granular level to to run a business? And that's where I started to learn on the construction side.
And then I built a name for myself there, And then, a group of friends came to me with a cannabis opportunity, and they said, well, Dan, those industrial and commercial build out we're gonna need some of those when we build these stores, then then I had operational sense already built in from my previous experiences and then that I just started to fit the mold better. And then as we grew the company, I, you know, I moved into CEO, after 3 years of being with the business. That's awesome.
That's awesome. Yeah. A long long history there of, of the journey and and and even the 2 different industries, how they how they've come together, but are so vastly different. I love how just for half a second before we move on to some of the decisions you made and stuff. You know, grown up single mom family, how do you think that that's affected you either number one getting into business or how you make decisions in business? Like, how do you think those two things come together for you?
Ex especially with the staff and the other people Chaz, you know, a lot of companies, I think, fail at they look at everybody as a number instead of as a person. Sure. Yeah. So so when I look at hiring people and I look at what we're doing for work today or, you know, if if I know guys gotta put food on the table, you know, that's my responsibility that I took, and I gave them the opportunity to have a job.
And if there's if there's no work, I I gave everybody an opportunity to come out and mow do, I mean, do do anything that at least for a few hours, and I'll pay them just so I know that, you know, So growing up with that, you know, have a single mom and budget being tight, but also too, I I go out of my way to try to teach people how to financially help take care of themselves or what they can what they can do to self perform, you know, on a budget, you
know, and and where you can make mistakes and waste time and money where you should have spent it. So and I know we're gonna get into a little bit of that here. Yeah. Yeah. I I think it's so good, though, you know, because not everybody obviously grows up. In the scenario that you owe and I Chaz well since it seems like we're the same, but we all have those kinda like determining factors. And for you, it was, but we didn't have a whole bunch. I saw my mom get really creative.
And so that stemmed out some sort of like a like little bit of a regimen in you. It sounds like you're pretty it sounds like you're pretty regimented with at least finance because you're teaching other people how to do it. Do you think that that stemmed from just Chaz, or was that from football, or is that a combination of the both, or is that just what you've, you know, just naturally what you're good at? How does that how does that apply?
No. I mean, I've worked towards it through a lot of different things. Yeah. I was an eagle scout through high school. Yeah. And and and like you said, I've I've been fortunate to be a growing up around a bunch of intelligent people. And so the best way that I can compliment them is show show people and show them that I've reciprocated what they gave me. Yeah. And so as I learn from other people, I I think giving back is that education and knowledge. Totally. Yep. I'm with you.
Good. Okay. So, let's get into some decisions. Along the way, obviously, you've built a couple different companies, but, I wanna hear a good decision that you've made knowing that, you know, most likely the listener here today is 6 figures. And they're trying to get to that elusive 7 figure mark. What what what is the decision that you made that they need to know about? They can also try to replicate. Don't wait. I, you know, I made it you know, people can sit there and hoe, over the best time.
When the jump in, you Chaz forecast a bestest you can. Sure. But one one of the best decisions I ever made was Go. Just do it. Just just take that jump, take that dive. I mean, if if you're looking for a an overall encompassing picture, yeah, just get out there and do it. I love it, man. In that moment, when you made the jump, to your point, was it like stemmed from I I don't wanna do the job anymore.
I wanna do my own thing, or was it that you had enough of your own thing happening on the side where you just said, okay. Fine. Like, this is overtaking. Like, What was that transition, like for you? It was hard, actually. It, and it was and it's both of those parts, you know, in the you know, in the heavy labor construction union park, you know, I was making great money as a general foreman. I I generally had you know, 12 to 30 guys underneath my belt.
And they, I but as I as I work day in, day out with these guys, in the trenches. Yeah. It was, yeah, it beat up my body and it's like, do I wanna continue another 15, 20 years of this? And then what's left of me when I retired? Right. The other part of me is is, hey. You do have enough comment, you know, a common business sense. Why don't you just go out and do this?
So, you know, it's making sure I had enough nest egg saved to even go out and buy our first, you know, our first little truck that my brother and I bought together was a $6000 diesel work truck. And we worked out of that for 6, 8 months until We had put a new motor in it. And then Sure. We've so but, yeah, it it was it's a little bit of those. You know, I wanted to change my career for my better health being physically, mentally, which isn't true.
You know, I think there's, you know, there's ignorance and bliss, you know, when I was out running the field, it was almost a switch. I could come home, turn it right off, you know, and not until I jumped in the work truck. Did that switch have to come back on? Right. Business owner's side. That's a 20 fourseven. I think that's something everybody struggles with, and we have we all have our own personal switches.
Okay. Yep. Yeah. There's a lot of that that comes up in conversations, with with me and other owners of that switch or or or other language that I've used is the you know, working on versus working in, the business. And I think that there's always that caveat of, like, man, I I'm better at it or I'm in my own way or all those things that you're mentioning. So I think is, totally applicable, especially for this this conversation and and listener. So let's hop over to the bad decision.
What what you what what you do along the way? That was just a goof of a decision that, you can share with us that we can learn from. Don't think you can do everything. Yeah. I see. So, yeah, you know, one of one of my bad, you know, the bad decision making skills is I think we can do it all. When when reality is is, so, you know, I didn't do enough research, you know, to make it more cost effective for myself. It ends up costing me more money in the long run.
Sure. Killing my time, killing efficiencies, and so forth. So, yeah, I think bad decision. Yeah. So for you, was it was it in the construction deal where you're trying to do, you know, everything for everyone or or give us Give us what that looked like for you on that. Oh, well, so, like, on the cannabis side, let's, you know, we thought that we could do everything tech side on our own, and there's so much software out there.
You know, and there's lots of new guys popping up, you know, looking for angel funding, building their own programs to manage inventory menus, POS systems. You know, so we we thought we would do our own menu. So it's gotta be easy. Just, you know, cut and paste some graphics, throw some numbers up there. What we found out later was you know, our menu system didn't correlate with our inventory. And it ended up costing us a lot more money and time.
It costing us a full time person just to manage a menu when we could have had a had a A vendor. A software with an API key that integrated with our POS and that could track inventory and populate menus and so forth. But there's Right. But things changing daily in our industry of what product are available or what strains of flour that are available. And then, there's so much more stuff granular beyond that testing results, ingredients, and so forth that can be available as well.
Right. And that Chaz you weren't even aware of because Yeah. You you weren't able to get beyond yourself. Yeah. Well, we thought we were saving ourselves a dime. And, basically, we're costing ourselves a dollar. Yeah. How how often do you think that that really happens for people? Like, you know, the guy listening right now, like, is that really happening in his business? It could be.
If you're bootstrapping it, you know, if you're coming off, you know, if you're on the you feel like if you're on the bottom of the totem pole and you think you can save yourself money, for instance, you know, working on your own trucks, if in the construction side, you know, well, now you've basically just wasted more time trying fix your own things when you could have taken it to a mechanic while you were doing a job that you have better margins on instead of
taking your time where there are no margins in your time. Right. And so I think a lot of people at the bottom starting up. Yeah. It depends. You know, they got a business degree. I don't. I school of hard knocks right here. And and I've and then, and I beat myself pretty good in that school. Got the, got the got the, validatorian on that one. Yeah. At least Damon for it. There you go. Yeah, you know, I think that I think that you're right. You know, we can we can try to save.
And and I think that there are there are times where we have to. Right? We have to be resourceful and, and you can't do the deal, but I even learned a long time ago when I was just a sales guy that if if I could make x on a sale and paying a plumber to come over and fix my my my issue was gonna cost me y and y was less than x. I needed to be at the office making phone calls, not trying to figure out how to fix the plumbing issue. And and that's just a simple math equation.
And so to your point, most business owners just don't do the math. They just figure, well, I'm gonna just do it myself. But they're really costing themselves in the long term. Yeah. Well, I mean, just our instance in the menu thing, I mean, Chaz in our 1st year, we figured we lost 20 or $30,000. Yeah. Yeah. And that would have continued if you didn't stop it. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're yeah. Start look. You get the boat floating and then you start looking for holes.
It's not the best way to build a boat. Yeah. You know, and actually to tag on to that, what I've found too, and maybe you can tell me if you if if you've seen this in other areas of your billing business, but Once you build the boat to your to your point of what you just said, you you you've you've created a process where you're in it and you're stuck. You created your own menus.
If you don't ever do the math or even if you do the math later on and you realize you're losing, but then it's still hard to pull the trigger sometimes because you're you have what what are some costs. Right? Like, you you you're there. You've spent the time. You're like, oh, we'll figure it out. We'll get better. You know? Like, it it so the so the madness continues. Yep. Right? Yeah. When you pull the rug out from under it because, yeah, you gotta you have to.
There's Yeah. And then then, yeah, as we've gotten better at forecasting what our costs are and what, you know, what budget has really here in cannabis, Missouri's new to it. So we all we all came out. Every company came out trying to throw things at the wall and see what but stuck, you know, business wise, marketing wise. You know, there's some some case scenarios where there's been some multistate operators that have come in with big dollars.
And, you know, they start throwing elbows, and they've got proven processes from different states. You know, my friends and I, We're from Missouri. We don't we don't have really any experience out in another state that is legal. So we've hired consultants. We tried to take advice. We tried to do this and this. But it again, you know, just, like, for being the show, wake up and keep going. Yeah. That's right. Do you have any sort of process as you make decisions?
As you're making decisions literally every day, do you take yourself through any sort of a discipline? Nothing formal. I, I try to run it by my team. You know, if there's an idea that happens, fortunately now we have some statistical data that we can go back and challenge, you know, either through finances, whether, you know, what revenues looked like, flow flow customers, all that stuff. We go back. We'll look at the data, and then we'll we'll pose the question with each other.
You know, there's usually 4 or 5 of us that are decision makers, and I lean on everybody for that. There's, you know, very few instances are are my decisions from the hip. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think as the team grows, that more of the voice from those team members is is important to be weighed in on.
Obviously, I think for the guys that are listening right now, there's probably just them and a couple of guys, whether it be construction guys or their agency owners or they're just an individual franchise location owner or retail. You know, it's just them and a couple of workers. And so, to your point is that at some time and the journey, those decisions get made by maybe multiple people. Yep. That's awesome. Okay. So here we go. Speedround.
Dan, you're ready for us in some hard hitting punchy questions. Bring him. Bring him. Let's go. Okay. So first question is this. If you could only pick 1 metric, in all of your businesses. And you even have different industries, so I'm I'm gonna love this answer. What metric would it be? It's the only one that you can track. What would it be? Volume of accepted people. And and to this is, to this is cannabis is still new for everybody.
And so, you know, the metric that I would look at is who's informed and who's not informed. And, yeah, it Chaz helps the business grow, but also too, you know, there's a an underlying thing outside of just a monetary deal. You know, it's there's true medicine out there. So Sure. You know, cannabis is, you know, eliminating so much, you know, pills. They're helping anxiety, sleep, deprivation, you know, helping cancer patients.
So even people that are in hospice, you know, it's improving their quality of life at the end of their day. And, So, you know, if I was gonna look at a metric, just yeah. I've how many people have been informed? You know, how many people wanna be informed? Just as as that it it's a it's a cascading situation in our in our industry. It gets pretty complex.
Yeah. And I love how you said that, you know, basically without without getting into the nitty gritty, if more people are informed, usually what that means to your point and they realize the benefits or then the people that it's helping. And then sales go up, because naturally it's a it's a it's a corresponding Yep. Connection.
Yep. Do you find the same in construction, or is it, obviously, informed as maybe not the right word, but do you find that, you know, the the more folks, like, if you're tracking, are informed of, you know, the new the newest granite counter. I mean, I don't know, like, how that applies, but is it the same general thought, or is it different?
No. I think, I think if if customer service is more on the construction side, I think, you know, there's, you know, timeline awareness and, you know, that that serviceability that a lot of people lean on in the construction side of the industry. You know, I think there's enough information out there on the internet that we don't have on the extraction side, guys. We don't most of us don't have to go out there and pedal the next best thing. Most people already know what they want.
And if not, you know, we kinda lean towards designers and architects to help influence some of those decisions. But I think for Chaz a construction owner, you know, serviceability, you know, that that customer trust, that level of trust that customer knows that you're gonna get the job done. So Yeah. 100%. Alright. Next next, speed round question. And what book would you recommend for a 6 figure owner who's wanting to get to 7? It's more of a I don't know if it's a good financial book or not.
It's more of a a people book, but, you know, it's really popular. It's even a kid's book. A little prince. K. Tell us about why that's your recommendation. It shows, you know, I I think it it tears, you know, people down to a level where it shows, you know, the different types of people we run into life and imagination and, you know, not forget that there's still a child in us and that, you know, that still influences how we make decisions some days.
And and some days, you know, days are gonna be hard. And they're and, you know, they're gonna be horrible tough decisions that you gotta make. At the end of the day, it's, you know, you got you gotta be light on yourself as well. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. I understand that. Okay. Do you intentionally network, and or mastermind with other entrepreneurs, Kansas City, or nationwide?
Yes. So we network through a, we got there's a a trade organization that we we meet with quarterly here in the state of Missouri for It's called Milcan Trade, and there are other like minded business owners. There's cultivation owners, manufacturing owners, dispensary owners. Every every, you know, every facet that touches cannabis here.
And then I and then I network through LinkedIn, And then still, like, I've had one of our security companies come to us and ask us, you know, some advice on how to build their business some more. And I was like, nothing still beats, a solid handshake get getting out there and and and making yourself present in front of people. That's right. Yeah. Just meeting meeting new people. They can open up doors all over the place. That's for sure. Last question.
And, this one, this one, obviously, you got you got multiple irons. And so We're gonna take them both away. We're gonna say all businesses is done. You know, your construction business is gone. Cannabis is no more. What what do you do? What do you do? Hobby farm. Farm? Yep. Be on a farm. Okay. We've got I want, oh, just a little hobby farm. I want, you know, I want that retired horse, that retired cow to be buddies. Chickens, you know, the, you know, something Wolfe sustainable. You know?
Yeah. And then and then a little fish and trip thrown in in here and there. There you go. He said, hey. If the business is no more, let it be done. I'm I'm going fishing. Yep. I love it, man. I think I think some, some other owners out there would be with you on that fishing trip. If their business, closed up as well. So anyway, well, dude, this has been incredible. Obviously, as a as a fellow Kansas City, and thanks for your time.
And I just think that you know, being in different industries, you bring a perspective. And and I know that the the listeners today have gotten just a just some real value listening to your very authentic answers. So I just really appreciate your time. If someone wanted to connect with you, Dan, how how do they do that? Where did they find you? You said LinkedIn, maybe, or or how else would they find Yeah. So, yeah, Dan, Dan Nelson on LinkedIn, or you can, hit us up on our Facebook.
You know, can't say cannabis. We've got locations in bush Springs, Kearney, Excelsior, and Lake Tadalana. And so, yeah, there's there's ways to find me. Just search for me. There you go. Love it, man. Well, we really appreciate you, just taking a minute of your time, even even in the car away from the kiddos and, and downloading your your mindset to us thank you again for your time and best of luck with all the projects that you have working on, right now. Alright. Thanks, Jess. Appreciate it.
Yeah. Thanks for listening to Gathering the Kings. We hope you got a ton value today and learn a thing or 2 about taking your business to 7 figures and beyond. If you desire more and want a community around you to help you get there, I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com. That's gathering the king's dot com, and I want you to apply for our next becoming a king 90 day intensive. We are extremely exclusive by nature as a group.
What that means that we're really wanting only the entrepreneurs who take their business and targets super serious to apply. So if that's you, you think you got what it takes to level up your business. I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com and apply. And we will see you