On today's episode of gathering the Kings. I I definitely go with my gut, and I go with my first gut reaction. Deep down inside, you know, Yeah. You do. You do. And we fight that sometimes. In fact, we fight it often, but do you think that because of your history looking back now that it gives you extra confidence to be able to make that gut decision or for the entrepreneur listening right now who's unable to really discern what is good or what her gut is telling them.
What would you suggest, or what would you say to them? What's up, everybody? Chaz Wolfe. I'm your host, gathering the Kings podcasting. I've got Greg Davis here on the King stage. My brother, Greg, How you doing? Doing great, Chaz. It's great to see you. Congrats on the show. I've had a great time. Listen here the last couple of days Chaz getting dialed in. I'm super glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Well, those are very, very kind words. I'm just glad that I'm here with a good voice.
The last couple days, it's been a little bit of a struggle to to get this sucker to come out, but but here we are. So appreciate you being here and and giving us the time and the value of your experience. I've had a few players in the tech space, but I'm a cited every single time because there's creativity, there's operation, there's so many things going on. And I just wanna get to know your story. So tell us what kind of business that you have, Greg. Yeah. Thank you.
So I've recently taken over day to day operations running a business called Bigleaf Networks, which is based out of Oregon. It's a fun product, and it's a it's a great company. So I'm glad to be part of it. I'm 9 months into day to day operations at this point. We reached a point a year ago where a dolled entrepreneur and the founder of the business felt like it was time to scale and asked me to step in and run day to day operations. We're having a good time.
We're selling to what I referred to as the 2nd largest addressable market that there is, which is We're looking for distributed cloud consumers with relatively low megs of bandwidth. And the consumer, you and I Wolfe represent the largest version of that consume cloud applications on our phones, and there's a lot of us. One step up from that is everything else, and that's the market that we serve. And essentially, that business is designed to make the Internet at work for businesses.
If you think about kind of the distributed enterprise would be the customers that we target. And the distributed area for distribution of veterinary care, the distribution of remote medicine of any way, shape, or form, the delivery of a pizza where you go to the gym, just anything that's a connected endpoint, typical brick and mortar Chaz those businesses have changed dramatically. And I've been part of that change along the path of my career.
Most recently, phone calls are now generally taken in a in a franchise. I think you've been part of a franchise operation. A lot of times that call center's outsource. So what was analog becomes digital. Your engagement with your customers becomes online. You're you're reporting in the way that you track labor and do scheduling. All of that has changed dramatically.
But if you look at the internet connections that are available in trip centers around the world, basically, not much has really changed there. You run your business on the internet. It's dependent on, you know, not just a a utility in the form of the internet, but really a commodity based product that varies from place to place. And so Bigleaf has a is a super cool company, whether it's pizza, whether it's veterinary care, what anything that it is. You're counting on applications.
For your customers. You're counting on applications to run the business. And you can't have a different look and feel at 1100 different endpoints, which is essentially Chaz happens? You're familiar with the way that the internet works. So you sorta hop on with your ISP. You get to the internet and you find the shortest, least expensive path into the applications that you need.
With Big League, We capture that traffic and it hit the r back bone, and we have peering relationships with all the major cloud providers. We also do prioritization. And then last but not least, we provide fail over.
So if I'm looking to open a distribution facility of anything in a remote part of Kansas or in a remote part of Texas, the confidence to be able to do business on the internet and to be able to guarantee that performance and be able to manage it at scale happens through products such as big league. I love it. Well, I can hear. I hope the listener can hear your passion for for the space. And actually, the the cool thing that I heard in in all of that.
First off, I love I love when I get guys that are are applying passionate business to things that a lot of people don't think of. Right? And because we kind of expected at this point, like, I wanna be able to use my phone, like you said, or walk into a business and do business, but I'm not really thinking about the connectivity. And you're right. Inside of my franchises, they've been trying to work through that. Right?
And and as time change Chaz as the pandemic comes and goes and and things change in the environment that way. But what I heard in there was that there's this connectivity or there's this thing between all these industries. That they all use, and and that's actually this really valuable piece. It's also wide open. Like you said, it's the 2nd largest piece there.
So there's a there's some challenge and also some some, like, very, very focused effort in that because it's gonna be really, really valuable. So I just it's like a really big a big dump truck that he just backed up on us. And so I appreciate that. And I'm gonna try to sift through some of this too to help us navigate because you're a smart guy. So Before we get to the story, though, you gotta give us a little bit of how you got involved, and I wanna dig more into that.
I wanna hear more about the business as well. I wanna know the burning desire for Greg. Call it the y. Call it the deafness of purpose. What beats on the inside of that chest every single day that gets you up? Yeah. So that's an interesting question. Think fundamentally at its core, it's the development of people and the people around. I mean, so I didn't have what I would consider to be just a lot of skills, if you will. I didn't think I was exceptionally smart.
I didn't think I was a a super creative, but I was a hard worker. And so and then I had a tremendous amount of help. And I still receiving help along my journey. And for lots of different reasons, I think people lend a hand when they they see people bust in their ass. People into Anne when they know that they need it and and that kind of thing. And so, you know, over the course of my career and I've lived by this. Over the course of my career, I am I've tried to help folks along the way.
Help help people. They're in the same situation as me, achieve what what it is that they want out of life, and think about think about what is where am I trying to go and how can I help them get there? And there's no better baited field than the world of private equity investments between 10 and a $100,000,000. There's Lots of folks that get drawn into Chaz, and they're all generally speaking, that's a merit based environment where people are really looking to hot wire their careers.
And I was able to do that, and I wanna extend that same courtesy to to to folks that that where I can't help. I'm still in it for the money, Chaz, and I feel like there's a lot more opportunity for me to make more money, if you Wolfe, but that's that's stopped driving me a long time ago. I'm at least a point where I can sort of pick the projects that I focus on. Right. And the one I'm focused on right now may not fit everybody's criteria, but it fit mine. It's an awesome business.
It's got great people in it. And so that's what I wanna do here. I wanna derisk any risk associated with the business. And I wanna develop I wanna develop leaders. The other thing that drives me, and this sounds heavy, and I guess to some degree, it probably is, but I tried to store the business when I was younger. I got in my first deal out of high school, and it was a family deal in Europe. And then I did another one. I got in another one.
And the second business I started I'm really screwed up big on Chaz, if you will. And it's still around today, and it's healthy. It's called Drake's catering. They do the Skybox catering for LSU sports in Louisiana. My brother my brother runs the business. It's a big operation, but I realized after the second time that I was not, start your business kind of person. I'm not an entrepreneur.
I don't think that way I'm just not good at Chaz, but I am a good operator, and and and I'm a good builder, and I'm a good scaler. And so what I'm last going to over the course of my career, what I figured out fast, My father was an entrepreneur. What I figured out is that I could help the American entrepreneur, if you will, but at which has been an amazing amazing story. And I still think Chaz great ideas are out there. They need people to operationalize those ideas.
Get them to market and get them to scale. And so When I talk about developing people, it's not just developing employees and getting people in a management positions, but it's about helping entrepreneurs take advantage of what they built. And a lot of times, they go to private equity markets looking for for for money, and then they get it. And when they get there, it's not what they thought it would be. They're certainly not not and charge.
And so if the the fracture can exist between the finance folks and the entrepreneur, and that's where I step in. And I love doing. That's what I'm doing now. It's what I've done for the last, but 23 years. As a matter of fact, most of them are very close friends of mine to this day. And and and I enjoy that aspect. I enjoy that aspect, and I've had a good run. I've had a lot of a lot of folks that work for me have gone on into into the bigger bigger jobs. They're running sales organizations.
They're running businesses. And a lot of the entrepreneurs that that have hired me to come in have made a lot of me. And that's sort of how you keep scoring. I feel good about that. Win win win. But more importantly than yeah. Exactly. So the entrepreneur who's listening, because I we we interview mostly entrepreneur. We've had some operations guys, some integrator types, which I just I just totally appreciate that perspective.
With with my history and also then skill sets and my personality, I I fit both. And so it's interesting for me, but I hear someone like you finding value in those skill sets. And it's not that you're wanting to be the entrepreneur. It's like, or I wanna be the idea guy or the visionary or the the guy that start things, you just settled down with, you know, like, here's my skill set, and then here's who I add value to.
And I'm sure all those entrepreneurs are still your friend because you probably changed their life. Because those guys are great idea guys. They're great. Get it off the floor, but it's never gonna be anything big unless we bring in guys like you or or like mindedness where, you know, systems people in scale can come. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Totally. And those people have changed my life as well. So it's a it's very much a two way street.
Yeah. Absolutely. I love I love the humble, the the humility there, the humbleness there. Because it is bulk. You're right. And so we hear a lot of the, especially as entrepreneurs if you're listening right now, and it's like, oh, man. Like, there's, I mean, who would wanna do this? Because because you particularly don't have the skill set for the the team building, the operations, the scaling portion of it. But there are people.
Greg exists and others like him Chaz he's training or whatever, but He really does make a great team when you have those 2 those things come together. And then on top of that, then adding value to each other, which it sounds like you've done actually several times now, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's not easy, but it's this is my career has been very, very cool. I've met a lot of people, and I've done a lot of different things. So Yeah. Awesome.
Okay. Let's get into the nitty gritty here since you say you're an operations guy. Was it gonna be good? Cause I wanna know of a good decision that you made inside of the operation. Something that worked and that you do it again, and maybe you have done it. The same thing again in another organization. Yeah. So that that's interesting. So I think let me kind of back up with just on the concept of decisions in general.
So so when we think about, I believe, Chaz the best management teams and the most successful folks spend their time making the best decisions. And so the more time that I can spend making making decisions for the neuros and and spending time over high quality decisions. I think the better off the business is it's gonna it's going to run. Of those decisions will be good. Some will be bad, but that's where management really, really, really needs to be spending their time.
In order to get in that situation, you really need an environment that generates good question. And so I tried to create that situation where, you know, 80, 90% of what happens in the business Chaz far as decision making processes can get handled by people in a room that I'm not in, and I'm looking for that type of consistency across, and that takes a lot of work. The the the skill that gets developed in a lot of cases gets developed through making bad decisions. You make a bad decision.
If you've got the environment, that can appreciate that, then you could pick that up and and learn from it and live in my life that way in my professional life. So I end up in a lot of decisions. And and so it's hard to see or hard to point to one and say, hey. That was a that was a pivotal moment where where everything changed. But there have been a couple of big moments where and I think back on 1, I think that the one of the career move Fran, I'll never forget the moment.
I was with Gray Hall. He was a CEO. You and I worked together with Dave Colesante who just joined my board. We we worked together for 15 years or 2 businesses and 3 deals together. There was a point in time where I was we were running a hosting business called Vericenter. And we were scaling that business up. We had just acquired a small division of Sprint, their e commerce division, which is there in Lee's Summit. We were young, and we really didn't know.
Oh, maybe we felt people we knew what we were doing, but we didn't necessarily know how to run an operations because the one we had just acquired And so we overnight went from 30 employees to a 100 and something. And and and I I was looking at the operation, and it looked a lot like a kitchen. It looed a lot like what I had come out of and and and the way that information flowed back and forth.
And so I started thinking about the relationship between how how servers are serviced by administrators, how tickets get open, and go into the queue how those tickets get worked and how work gets extinguished and customers get happy. That whole cycle looks a lot like the way that a restaurant operates.
And so In 2003, we began to build a contact center in Atlanta, Georgia under the under the sky, Marty Mcguffin, And the design process for that really looked a lot like the the the flows in and out and the way that we communicated mirrored what happens in in relatively casual restaurants every single day. And you think about things like there's no ice in the ice bin, and someone says, hey. We need ice across twenty people and someone says, I got it. That's a big deal.
That's a big communication thing, and people in technology didn't do that. And so I think the direct answer to your question is the best decisions that I've ever made is reflecting back on specific experience and then being bold enough to say, this simple basic thing over here might apply to this really complicated thing over there. And that Chaz is the kind of when I talk about empowering people and helping people, given, you know, a restaurant broil cook, the confidence to say, hey.
My system might work as well for delivering Oracle applications online as trying to get a Patty Melt patty melt out of the kitchen or something from the sea floor to the refinery. And so, again, I think the I think the good decisions are based on being open and allowing those good decisions the oxygen to be able to take place. Yeah. I I love everything about what you just said. I think the the the you have a skill set of taking the complex and making it simple.
And even inside of that skill set, you've just been able to use your own advice in previous experience by saying, well, what if I take this and move it over here? What it made me think of actually is the movie founder with Ray Crock and and with the McDonald's. And there's that section in the movie where the McDonald's brothers are are game planning, how this machine is gonna work, and they didn't really know even what it was gonna be.
I mean, they knew it was gonna be, but before they built it, before they started serving anything, They were out there marking out on the chalkboard or out on the out on the chalk floor. You know, how's it gonna move here and who's gonna flow here and how's how are we gonna get and how are we gonna move together? And it was like a big old orchestra And, everything that you just said was like, wow, that orchestra is happening inside of each business.
There's obviously people working or, like, the people communication piece. There's the tech that's supporting it. There's the client. There's the ownership. There's the management. There's the, like, this whole conglomerate. And I just thought you just made a a really bit a beautiful picture there. I'm curious. Yeah. Go ahead. I was gonna say it's it's they're all very similar.
Even within tech the technology space, the workings of a business and operations of a business from the tire shop to the most sophisticated really just aren't that different.
Yeah. That that right there is the nudge that a gathering of kings gives, not only through the podcast, but even in our mastermind group, the the peer to peer for 7 to 9 figures, it's like you you don't know that this tech guy or this real estate guy or this utility construction guy or, like, all of these guys come together, and it's, like, totally different industries. And you start actually putting the things out on the table, and it's the same orchestra to your point.
And and so then the value that gets passed across the table in that environment or even in this environment, when the 2 parties recognize that, it's like, oh, okay. We're not talking X's and O's here. We're talking principles. We're talking like, high level. This is how an orchestra has done, and I can apply this to any project that I'm working on or any team that I'm or any family that I'm trying to strengthen. Like, we can apply it anywhere. Right? Correct.
And and that's the and I'd literally referred to it as An orchestra and the conductor of the symphony. And the conductor of the symphony might change from topic to doc to from topic to topic but that analogy holds true. And when we need strings, we need strings. And when we need base, we need base. But more importantly, is we need the orchestra to trust itself. And so that means the conductor really needs to make sure that we that that we're we've we've gotta be organized.
Yeah. Yeah. And good decision making and building an environment that facilitates that, I think, is is core. Trust, trust in one another and then a good decision making facility. And and there's really you can do anything with any business. Yeah. I love that. Hey, Chaz Wolfe here.
As many of you know, I have been on absolute mission to help entrepreneurs from all across the country in many different industries, level up their game and grow their business, and intentionally connect with other entrepreneurs. We do Chaz, obviously, through the podcast, but we also have a peer to peer mastermind group specifically for 7 to 9 figure business owners.
We are bringing some of the best and most successful entrepreneurs and minds together in a regular and a super intentional way to not only grow our network but to be able to leverage.
And at a certain point in business, success becomes about leverage, leveraging time, leveraging resources, leveraging key relationships, This is exactly what we're doing inside of the peer to peer mastermind group called Gathering the Kings, specifically for 7 to 9 figure business owners, So if that's you, if you're ready to level up your 7 to 9 figure business, even to the next level and get around other big hitters just like you, I want you to
go to gathering the king's dot com, fill out a short application, and, it'll come to an application, call with me I wanna chat with you and see if it might be a good fit. Talk soon. Okay. Well, let's flip the coin. Let's talk about bad decisions either that you've made or that you've seen made in in these organizations. Something that maybe we can learn from and don't have to go through. Yeah. Yeah. So greed is compelling, and it's available all of the time.
And I think if you look back on do people make professional mistakes? Fundamentally, there's some element of of greed that's involved with that. And I've been guilty of that At least once, and certainly more than that. And that's been at the heart of every bad decision that I made. And there's one And it generally happens when you start to move your own goalposts. So I I was really lucky that I got connected with some exceptional people at a perfect time in my life.
I got I met a guy named Gray Hall and Dave Colsanti. Dave Colsanti was a founder And I got I got connected with those guys, and they sort of taught me everything I needed to know about business and access to capital and how to scale And we built a business. My brother was involved with it as well. We sold it to SunGuard. We couldn't work together for a couple of years, and Gray and I We were we we exercised together.
We were pretty good friends, and we decided that we were gonna go do another deal together. And we did. We updated partners out of out of Virginia. Had an asset in Houston called Alert Logic. It was a small business. They were in they were in security. They were doing IDS, actually. And Gray and I looked at the business, and we saw a cloud product, and we saw the ability to deploy in AWS. And we saw the first mover status as did the entrepreneur.
We went in and took over that business and reeled off 27 quarters of 40 40% growth. It was it was off the charts. And we and we scaled. We made great decisions. We scaled it, and we rolled it up and sold it for about $350,000,000 in 2012. And I was done.
I I in in terms of alert logic, I had done what I set out to do with that business, and we made the decision on exactly what we were gonna do with that company sitting in the place in the office, and I'm sitting in right now about 10 feet from here. Me, gray, Marty, and my brother. And me and Gray, Marty, we're gonna go do the alert logical. 2012, we and we're gonna this is we referred to it as a double in terms of our expectations. That's what we thought, and we were gonna hit it.
And by 2012, we had a triple, and we hit the triple. I changed my calculus, and I spent 4 years of my life trying to get back to where I was at that moment in the same deal versus wishing everyone well and stepping off and moving on to the next deal. And and the reason I did that was because I was trying to make exponentially more money than I ever set out to. And that's just the wrong reason to move forward on anything. And so that cost me it cost me down and distance.
And it also probably cost the business a little bit to the business could have recovered faster. Had I left as soon as we exited, but I stuck around. I stuck around for 3 more years. I I should not have done that for alert logic. I shouldn't have done it for myself, and I shouldn't have done it for for gray and the guys. Now Over the course of that, I hired a bunch of people. I made some great friends.
We built a European operation scaled the business from 50 to a $130,000,000 and really set myself up for her career, but I would have done that wherever I was. Alright. And so my lesson to everyone else is when the boat leaves the dock, You wanna be on the dock waving to second tours just generally aren't a good idea unless there's a reason why. The deal that I'm in now I'm the CEO. If I was if this business treated, then chances are that continuity would be important going forward.
That's not a decision. So but but as far as decisions go, my decision to stay on alert logic for another tour was that was just not smart. Yeah. Yeah. I I I love how you broke that down, though, because staying isn't necessarily the issue. Although you're you're saying most of the time staying isn't necessarily the best idea, but I loved how you broke it down for you, staying was only about the money, and that's just not just don't don't do that. What was your quote you said at the beginning?
I'm sure my production guy a team is gonna grab it, but it was greed is what? What was what did you say a few minutes ago? I I said, generally, at the heart of every bad decision is is an attempt at being greedy or some form of greedy. It's the desire to get something that I hadn't set out to get this. Yeah. There's a probably a fine line between being opportunistic. Sure. And and look, I do this.
I I do a lot of work with people that are in transition because I've I go through them about every 4 years, and people tend to wig out. They're they're nervous. They don't know what they're gonna do. So they're going to replace what they have. Like, immediately, I wanna replace what I have. I wanna find. I lost this job. I need to replace her. This didn't work out. I need to replace it. So what I try to do is keep settle down and say, what exactly are you looking for?
Because if you don't know what you're looking for, the chance that you're gonna find it is 0, and that's the same for a business or anything else. And so we wanna avoid bright shiny objects because you could burn a lot of calories chasing things that don't necessarily make sense. So set your goals and understand and know what you're looking for. Then don't be greedy if a $300,000 a year job down the street from your house is what you're looking for, and one comes your way. Take it.
And don't go looking for one that's 3 20 or a 100 or whatever the number is. I'm just throwing stuff around, but you you get the picture. Yeah. Exactly. What you've given us a little bit of this construct that I'm gonna ask for, but what's what's your decision making matrix look like today? For exiting or for just day to day operations? So a couple. So for strategic, pretty straightforward, again, a lot of the is pretty straightforward in terms of the way that I make those decisions.
Number 1, is it a strategic consideration? And I gotta be better off if I do this or if I don't do this or bad things potentially gonna happen to the business. And that's sort of foundation number 1. The second thing, and I think people fail at this is in particular in these types of businesses, venture private equity backed in that chasing $100,000,000 range, which is what's the organization no readiness of what we're trying to do.
Do we have the systems, the procedural discipline, and the and the people in order to be able to execute this? I could take my my marketing stack at alert logic, and I could have handed that to the hunger rush crew at the time that I joined it. They wouldn't know what to do with it. And the same thing holds true for sales operations and the environment that I'm in right now.
If I took my sales operations function that I had at one business and applied it here, it folks would be law And so this concept of understanding what the business can metabolize is important, and you need to already type with your organization. I think through that stuff, all of the time. Great ideas that you can't execute are a waste of time.
And then last but not least, I live in a world of value creation and every, you know, every calorie that I burn is designed for me to deliver value back to the common shareholders, in this case, Bigleaf and before that hunger rescue, before that alert logic and then Vericenter and then global data systems. And that So I think about value creation every minute of every day. I sometimes wish I didn't. So things either do or don't add value. So if I can lay that out, and I understand, hey.
This is something that we really need to go do. And we're organizationally ready for the most part, but we lack these skills and we think that this is gonna generate an a a good return relative to the investment thesis, off to the races. Yeah. Love it. And then my personal life more so in the way that I think about not necessarily how I'm making business decisions, I tend to go with my gut, and there's a concept called thinslicing.
I don't know if this is the right thing to do or not, but I'm sitting here talking to you, and I'm I'll be transparently honest. Yeah. I I I have I I know a person that I had I met in 2003 that I didn't think much of. And then I spent, but we I hired him anyway. And then I spent Almost 15 to 17 years, and I love this person. It's still to this day, but I spent about 15, 17 years getting back to my first impression, that I had that this probably wasn't gonna work.
And we moved around and we had some good times and we had some, but at the end of the day, had I gone with my first impression, I would have saved myself a lot of time. And I think that holds true in a lot of If we just go with our if we go with our gut, we're gonna be wrong. Some small percentage of the time, and so I try to do that. I if I I socialize a lot, but I I definitely go with my gut. And I go with my first gut reaction. Deep down inside. Yeah. You do. You do.
And we fight that sometimes. In fact, a lot of times, we fight it often, but do you think that because of your history looking back now that it gives you extra confidence to be able to make that decision? Or for the entrepreneur listening right now who's unable to really discern what is good or what her gut is telling them, what would you suggest, or what would you say to them? Yeah. I so I I kinda joking, but I do assume that there's no confidence.
Like, I there's never a point in time where stamp. And I'm saying, I'm totally confident. I'm trying to dot the lowercase j's and cover the corners on everything. And I think about it maybe because it's a almost a lack of confidence or a desire to have as many data points Chaz it as I can. Yeah. So I socialize a lot and then and then I land and go. And so I think they need to figure out when to socialize and when to go with their gut, but There's no recipe for Chaz, but I want big decisions.
I generally I tell people there's no original content here. I'm not doing anything. I'm taking what other people are doing, putting it together, curating it, and serving it back to you. And a little that's not entirely true, but for the most part, if if it's a big decision, I'm I'm getting I'm forcing the debate. I'm making sure that people a lot smarter than me are in the room getting putting laying the tracks on their opinion. And then fort and force some good decisions to be made.
Did that answer your question? It does. It does. I think that that it was a it was a very eloquent answer, but the facilitation of information and of people and skill sets, I think, is what you're saying. And you bring all these things together, and that's the magic, really, that maybe you have. I could say the same thing about the show. I could say, look, I've interviewed a few $1,000,000,000.
And but but, really, it's like, Wolfe, but but we did the work of putting those really cool people together in a room and I'm a great question to ask her or whatever. So I hear what you're saying that it's not original content, but the original piece that you get to put on it is your facilitation or just your version of your gut just telling you, okay. These these pieces go together. These don't. We all kinda have to figure that out for ourselves. No. That that's exactly right.
But the concept of the no re little content, the truth of the matter is back since the concept of developing people Generally speaking, the the CEO's making decisions, it it is other people's decisions, and they should have the confidence to to put it out there and CEOs and leaders of businesses needing to create that that form for that to happen. Most of the big heavy decision, I worked with a guy named Fritz Maxwell for years years. He he's a awesome guy.
He's still a friend of mine to this day. A lot he was involved in every big decision that I ever made, and he got he's a super smart guy. He's a deep thinker, and I still talk to him this day. I rely on people around me to make make big decisions, again, all the time. Yeah. Love that. Okay. In the speed round here, I'm gonna ask you about KPIs. This is gonna be a fun one because you're an operator and you've done this in different businesses, but you only get to pick 1, Greg.
What's the most important? What's the most important? If I only had 1, I would look at that operating income. Yeah. That sounds kinda terrible, but that that tell tell us why, but what's your thought process? What's the what's what's tinkering back there on that? Well, so the normally, LTV to CAC is is, I think, a very good metric to look out on the business. However, it's stand alone. There's danger in there.
And so when I think about if I had one shot and one thing to look at and assuming proper discipline around the way that the that the ledger is set up, operating income from operations, how effectively the business flows, EBITDA, as as people refer to Chaz. I think that's the classic metric for the health of the business, and I think it's more something everyone understands. So I look at a lot of things as it relates to to metrics, and that's certainly one of them.
Yeah. Absolutely. I I I love the succinctness of your answers. You're just very confident. You can tell you've done this plenty of times before, and I hope that that courage is being transferred through the microphone. If for the listener, right, I could see some some folks like popping like me, like, yep. Yep. That's right. I can hear that. And then I see others in my mind listening to you going, EBITDA, LTV to CAC. What is he talking about? So take a take a couple minutes, look this stuff up.
It's really, really important. Greg's giving you some really, really, really valuable stuff here. And I want you to not just let the stuff gloss over because Greg's been super successful in multiple projects with this type of information. So I'm I'm provoking him to give it to you so that you'll go learn it. So if you don't know what these things are, go figure it out. Yeah. So So, Chast, I think that's a good point if I if you don't mind.
So I think one of the things Chaz I try not to do is throw around these financial wonky financial metrics that throw people off. The lifetime value of a customer, like, how long customers stick around, and how many calories do you need to burn in order to get them to start with you or to get them to join you in the first place. That's a good metric. You know, operating income, EBITDA, earnings before interest, and taxes and amortization and all that. That is I start off with this.
I do these things and I end up with that. And what is that? You know, how many cookies in the cookie do And it's all very simple. And I think and if people should understand what they are, they would they probably would be more effective in changing them, which is what I try and drive inside of the belief in other businesses. No. Such a great answer. Thank you. What book, business resource, podcast, events? Like, what what have you been a part of informationally?
That you could share with us that we can go digest. Yeah. So I'm not a I'm not a very good reader, which will come as a no surprise to to to people that know me. Yeah. I try. But there's a couple of books. There's a couple of books that I have that I I there's always one in the works, if you Wolfe, and there's a couple that I'll carry around.
So from a business perspective, my favorite business book is a book written by a guy named Buzz Bissinger, I believe, is his name, and it's called 3 nights in August. And it's about a series between the Cubs and the Saint Louis Cardinals And it's the amount of preparation and thoughtfulness that goes into a middle of the week series in a in the in August. And it's amazing.
And when you start to think about when I when I think about people that are exceptional, duck guides, people fishing guides, people that deal cards, people that work at a Wolfe. I mean, people that are exceptional at their trade, no matter what it is, the love watching that. I I just I just think that's just a cool thing to witness. Yeah. I I love that. Can't wait to to experience that peace because you're right.
It's really, I guess, it's more about intentionality and then intentionality connected to excellence because in the middle of August, when it's hot and we're playing tons of games and does this series really matter is what creeps in even to our businesses, but it does is what you're saying. It does matter. It's attached to excellence. It's attached to the winning record or not.
Yeah. If you wanna if you wanna win, you need to give the game the competitive intensity that it deserves, and that means detail. And so I think if you look at at how, you know, what a baseball manager does, what Tony does through the course of of the series, then you Chaz get a feeling for what it really means to be committed to, again, whatever it is that your task. Another thing I always enter with the 5 Dysfunctions. So it's the first book I lay down.
I did it here, and it's why we talked about trust a little earlier in the podcast. That's foundational level. And so I I'm I'm big on that. And then currently, because of where I am in the process with Bigleaf, you know, I'm pushing the hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz, and that that's, you know, I was going through my first deal when ops were sold back, and that was, like, a almost a $2,000,000,000 deal no one had ever heard of us at this time.
And we were super excited about that as we were trying to market our business. And so I was always attached to the opsware transaction And I think it that's a great book.
And especially for for people that are in my situation when the trade offs are, I'm trying to in my situation in that where you're trying to work on scaling businesses and you're trying to get businesses off the ground a lot of times, that your decisions are what's the least bad option of these things and understanding how to how to process those things, is is is healthy. Yeah. Yeah. I'd I'm just, like, tracking right along with you, man. I just think these answers are great.
I hope the listeners paying close attention. I've got a question for you about family. I didn't prep you for this, and so I apologize. Sorry. Not sorry. I'm a big fan of of what whoever is involved in the family. For me, it's my wife and my kids, but being as obsessed with those things in my personal life, as I am in my businesses because obsession or passion, the why and helping people in my business is the exact same thing that makes my, in my case, family successful.
So for you, those other things outside of the business, how do you how do you stay obsessed with them as much as you do now with the project that you're on? Yes. So I think I'd probably never, in the last 15 years, say, I I never have unobsessed, if you will. So I my business has been It's certainly now we're working out of our houses in some cases, but my business has been part of me and but it's never been number 1 on the list.
And so The first thing that I take care of is myself, and I stay healthy, and I do the things that I need to do to make sure that that I'm on my feet. And the second thing is that for me, is my wife and 2 daughters and my extended family really on both sides. And the girls, generally speaking, I'm a lot more laid back featured than I was 5 years ago. And a lot of that has been my girls are older.
I have a twenty five, a twenty one year old, and Holly and I've been married for almost 30 years now. I showed up with face paint on every day to the office, and I kinda had the warrior mentality. And the girls have really chilled me out. My my daughters have taught me how to communicate with the modern workforce. And I still have a lot more work to do, but they're very much they're very much into it into it with me. This is kind of a cool side story.
There's a hot business called High Radius here in Houston, and a guy that I worked with in the past Chaz alert logic is their COO and My daughter happens to work there, and she's doing a tour in Cracock, Poland right now, working for our radius. And so my daughter's in a private equity bag deal, Hiroland Unicorn often polling doing her thing, and there's a lot of pride that goes with that. My youngest just finished her MBA. So These girls are amazing.
I think in general Chaz the galvin the workplace seem to be rocking right now, man. I have a staff, a team of 20 something girls that are just killing it at Bigleaf. It's awesome. Yeah. No. I think you're a 100% right. I grew up single mom family. My sister sister, my grandmother, my aunt, her three girls, all of our cats and dogs were female.
I was literally the only one, and then and then I my first business was edible arranged and I had 7 of those at one point, 65 ish employees, and I bet you 62 were females. Yeah. And so I I not only agree with you, but I also I'm I'm pretty darn proud of that as Wolfe. Just, again, coming from a single mom family going, like, there's just as much power traditionally or un like, I'm down for whatever, but I think that that there's there's an equal part.
Actually, there's a there's not an equal part. There there is a there's a whole skill set that that a that a woman has, especially in the way that she thinks that that I don't. And that's the part that I'm, like, trying to always pick from my mom, from my wife, from my daughters, even though that they're little, I'm just like, you guys have something that I don't, and I need a little access to it. Yeah. No. No. No. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. They and they do.
And it's different perspective. So I've had a lot of fun with it. I I grew up. It was all boys in my world forever. So it's it's it's fun. I think there's a lot of cool stuff happening in the world right now. We don't hear much about it, but I think the women in the workforce is one of them. Yeah. It's cool. Greg, I have one last question here for you. I wanna know if you had the opportunity to whisper in the younger Greg's ear, What would you say? Be bold.
Yeah. I waited way too long to start making big board decisions in my life way too long, and that's when I go back to training people. That's what I'm trying to catch myself at working on a flat grill in the back of a kitchen in 1987 and tapped me on the shoulders and say, hey, man. There's pay attention to what's going on around here and be really bold in the decisions that you make. The world is condition to convince people that they don't belong at the table and that they don't belong here.
And so and then the the scoring methodology is it reinforces that. And so there's a lot more horsepower around us than we give credit for. I was part of that horsepower for years. And so tapping into that and releasing it, I think, is something that I wake up every day trying to do both for myself and people around me. And so if I could go back, that's what I would say. Yeah, an untapped potential or a reach into it maybe sooner.
I loved actually in your example there of tapping you on the shoulder in in the back of the kitchen, you didn't just say you're made for more get out of here. You said, pay attention, learn, take advantage of the opportunity, see what's happening and who's happening around you, build relationship, and understand flow, and then go be all that you're meant to be. Go make bold decisions. You know what I mean? You you get a chance. You you're exactly correct. Thanks. Of course. I do. I love it.
Greg, you've been incredible here on on today's episode, but I want to give you an to tell us how we can find you. So how can we find the business and the project that you're working on right now? Who would maybe need to find that? Then how can we find you as an entrepreneur to get to know you better? Yeah. So what I'm used to to find out on LinkedIn. My email address is gdavisat bigleaf.net, and I do my best to stay on top of my email.
I love hearing from folks Chaz people, I think, you know, that should take interest in this. And if you're a franchise owner, if you're looking to expand, you're looking to scale, and you're looking for a better relationship with your franchisees, then you should definitely take a look at what we're doing. And I think those folks those folks are coming to us, but those are the folks that should reach out to us.
We can be found at bigleaf.net and, yeah, come on over and there's easy to get in touch with us from the website. But, again, you can reach me via email or find me on LinkedIn. Yeah. Thanks so much. Yeah. It Chaz been. You're you're super smart, and I hope that the listener paid attention, but we wish nothing but blessing on that family that you just got done talking about your daughters and over your Wolfe.
And then, of course, your current project and any other future projects that you put your hand to. Thank you for being here, Greg. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own. Carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries and now interviewing literally over 2 or 300. Other very successful 789 figure business owners is Chaz It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings literally exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com.
I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.