On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. You know, in my situation with a sports company, I had a snake in the in the business that wanted to chop my legs off and and they did. It worked. You know, and, and you gotta be careful who you surround yourself with and the culture you create. Way too many entrepreneurs are moving gravel every single week. They're not moving the big rocks. They're moving gravel. Start moving big rocks.
In 2018, 15 years of building this company, the logos tattooed on my forehead. My kids had all the apparel of the business. My best friends were in the business. Sitting in the boardroom getting fired from the company you built to over $50,000,000 of revenues after 15 years and losing everything was the moment I needed to sit back and go, woah. What am I doing? What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe gathering the king's podcast coming back to you here today with another king on the stage.
My man John Saint Pierre. How are we doing? Doing awesome. Chaz, thanks for having me. Good, man. I, appreciate you being here. What kind of business do you have, John? Chaz, I am the CEO and chairperson of a company called Rhumbus Group. We're a private holding company, comprising of 6 businesses, small, medium sized businesses, and then also I just launched my first book, the $100,000,000 journey.
And so, along with that, I do some one on one coaching, some speaking, strategic planning, personal life planning, reaching as well. Yeah. I love it. You've got many things to be able to draw from here. And I'm just excited to be able to get all of that out of your head. Play in this podcast and and out to the listeners. But, tell us just a little bit.
Let's dig in just a little bit because you've got you've got a kind of like a portfolio of companies Tell us what kind of industries that you're in. Maybe if there's any businesses that we'd recognize, give us just a little bit of context here of where you're coming from. Yeah. So we have a variety of companies in that portfolio, not all in the same market, but we have, a facilities maintenance and construction company. So a national commercial business.
We have, digital marketing business called Iowa Ventures. We have, a fractional CFO controller finance firm called Financial Wing. We have a travel business in the sports travel Hospitality Industry called Palusid Travel. We also own a captive insurance company, and we have a a hockey business as well. Wow. Okay. So, I've gotta dive in here because not only are you doing a lot of very different things, but all of them at an extremely high level.
And then, of course, we'll get to your book and stuff here in a second because I got all kinds of questions for you there. But, there's a lot of people that I've heard say that, you know, like, focus on, you know, one thing and one thing only. And you just described lots of different things, all at the same time. How is it different for you, or was there a journey to be able get there that maybe puts that into perspective a little bit differently.
Yeah. Well, there's certainly a journey story behind Chaz, which has no question about it. But, ultimately, don't operate these businesses. These businesses are operated by their own CEOs, in some cases CEOs and presidents. And I, you know, coach and advise and help them grow their businesses from the holding company perspective, but I'm not operational in any of those businesses specifically.
So as a chairman of that business, I can pull myself, you know, above the trees a little bit and strategically with those CEOs and help them grow the business that we aspire to build without actually having to be, you know, operationally and working in the business. Yeah. I love that. Okay. So describe that relationship here because you probably got, you know, CEOs listening here today, maybe even all the way down to one man bands, and they wanna be a CEO one day.
Yeah. Describe that relationship that that, you know, difference between maybe strategic or, like, you're saying high level planning versus being operational. What's the difference It's one of the things I learned, you know, through through my journey is, sometimes it's hard to, you know, grow a business be the CEO of that business and do what everybody tells you you should be doing, which is, you know, John, work on the business, not in the business.
Well, that's a lot easier said than done, Chaz. You know, when you're working 60 to 80 hours a week, you're shoveling the dirt over here. You're solving the problems over here. You got the growth paradox issue. You're trying to hire some people. You're running ragged all over the place. When do you work strategically on your business? Like, how does that happen exactly?
And one of the lessons I've learned is, you know, as an entrepreneur, do you wanna be a business operator, or do you wanna be a business owner? You got you which one do you wanna be? Are you trying to build a business asset that's gonna create tremendous amount of value? Are you looking for a job? Because if you're looking for a job, you know, you're gonna go work for a complete lunatic. Right? It's you. So you gotta really think about which path you wanna wanna take.
And and that was a lesson for me, because I, you know, throughout my most management career, I was the chief cook, bottle wash for CEO. You name it. I was in that business fully in. And when I came to realize that if you move from CEO to chairperson, you can be more strategically involved. You can think a little bit more, and you can help drive the direction of your business.
So today and working with the CEOs Chaz that on our teams, really, it's about the strategic planning process about what that CEO is trying to achieve in their life, connecting it to the business, helping them get to, you know, coach them to where they aspire to build their business and not make some of the mistakes I've made in my history as a CEO as well. And really support them with situational leadership, servant leadership, should really try to help guide them in their teams.
And when there is a problem, I can roll up my sleeves and jump in there with them as well. I have that ability to go do that, but that relationship is really a relationship of coaching and helping them build the business they're aspiring to build. Yeah. Let's we got kinda two layers here that I'm here. I'm seeing form up. And I'm sure there's actually more than that, but just obviously, you know, the the operator to CEO and then CEO to to chairman.
And there's there's you've given some some pieces here of where working more on the business or working more strategically. Give us a couple of things in there that the listener who is still the operator, very much in the business, and you're talking you know, they get hammered, you know, 7 different ways. If you gotta work on the business, you gotta work on the business. Yeah. How can they do that as a CEO before becoming, you know, the the chairman like you are?
Yeah. Which Chaz I think this was, again, another lesson that I had learned is when I was a CEO of one of our businesses, we had grown a sports business to around $10,000,000 of revenue. And it was going really well. And I got invigorated. I was like, okay. Let's go. What what else can we do here? And I looked at the team one day and I looked at at the the partner in the business. I said, look. Next 5 years, I'm taking this business to a 100,000,000. Let's go and went went after it. Right?
And we ultimately ended up growing that business to north of $50,000,000 of revenues. And, then I got fired. And I was like, wait wait wait a minute. We just grew this company for 15 I was the CEO and cofounder of that business. It was my vision what we were trying to build, and I found myself on the pavement. Like, what just happened? Well, the reality is I was growing a business for the sake of growing it. I didn't it didn't really connect with my my personal life plan. I was just going.
And so I didn't really have you know, for me, growing to a $100,000,000 meant success and meant fulfillment. Look, oh, look at me. We got this big business. But along the way of growing to a 100,000,000, we're bringing on investors capital. My my equity gets diluted, diluted, diluted, diluted. I lost complete control of the business, and I got put back on my butt. Right? And so what was I trying to do?
So to answer your question, if I'm talking to this person who's trying to build their business, the first question is what are you trying to achieve? Not in the business. Are you trying to achieve in your life? What is your life plan? Like, what do you want in your life in the next 30 years? Because maybe what you're building doesn't align. And I and I'm finding way too many entrepreneurs don't have a life plan. They have a business plan.
So, you know, one of the things I've done, you know, from that failure was, okay. I'm gonna align my life plan with what I wanna build as a business and have true connectivity between those two now I can go build the business of my dreams. And so I tell that CEO or that entrepreneur, do you have a life plan? Because most entrepreneurs I ask don't. Let's start there. Let's create a life plan.
And now let's connect your business plan to that because unless you, again, unless you desire to go work 80 hours a week, be fully stressed out spend enough time with your family, you know, eat unhealthy because you're traveling all over the if that's your goal, then fine. But if your goal is to create wealth and freedom through this business asset, maybe there's no way of doing Yeah. You've you've set us up here for some for some great questions here.
So tell us, first off, what what is intake what goes into a life plan, And then maybe what would be for some first steps that you would suggest them taking to maybe identify what that would look like for them personally? Yeah. I love that. I mean, again, it took me having a massive failure to realize that I didn't have one myself. So I get it if if you don't have one. Right? I was just going a long thing. Oh, things were working. I got a great family, great wife.
Business is good, but I didn't really have something I was shooting for. What was passion. What was my mission? What am I trying to do beyond myself? And, like, what was my purpose? And so, you know, tools like Simon Scenic start with y. Gary Keller is the one thing. You know, there's a lot of tools out there. Jim Collins, the hedgehog concept. You know, what are you most passionate about? What can be the best in the world at? What drives your economic engine?
I took all of those things together, and said, okay. I gotta figure out what my why is, what what my purpose is, I used to always Chaz, meet with my company, and meet with our executive team, q 4 of her year ago. Okay. What's our why? I'd play Simon Sinks video. We, you know, what's our why for our business? Our strategic business plan. I never did it for myself. I never sat down with myself and said, what am I trying to achieve.
So ultimately, the format I came up with, and I do talk about it in in the $100,000,000 journey book is I came up with a true North Life Plan format, which is what am I trying to achieve in the next 30 years? Think far out. 30 years in life. Not in business. In life, what am I trying to achieve? And then break it down into a few segments that are important to you.
So my segments were financial, health, relationships, family, spirituality, you know, those you break up into your categories are important to you and lay out a 30 year plan. And then break it down, go, well, in 10 years, where do I need to be in these segments to be on track for my 30 year plan? And you can see where I'm going here. Where do I need to be in 3 years to be on track to my 10 year plan? Where do I need to be in a year? It's gonna track my 3 year plan.
We're going to be this quarter, this month, this week, this day, this hour I'm doing right now, Chaz, what I should be doing towards my 30 year plan. And that's how you alignment. The reverse engineer, you know, that you just gave to us, comes maybe a little bit more naturally for, you know, some wired in a certain way to be able to think that way. For those that it's a little harder to kinda go, like, I can see the vision.
And most entrepreneurs do have some sort of a vision, maybe not 30 years out, but they've got something that they can hold on to. Practically, how can they start walking that back? Because timelines get a little hairy sometimes. You know, is this even possible? Like, what am am I thinking that this is true? Like, what are my what are my beliefs in this? Like, all of those things get really, really muddy as you're starting to back it up to figure out what you do today. Give us some insight there.
Yeah. I think it was Bill Gates that said people always underestimate what they can do in 10 years. They overestimate what they can do this year. But they underestimate what they can do in 10 years. So what I truly believe is if you are setting a year plan for yourself. But you don't ultimately know what you want in 10 years? How do you know what you're doing this year is the right path? Right. Maybe undershooting what you should be doing this year for that matter.
So I truly believe in long term thinking, and I was talking to somebody recently that, was a little bit older than myself. And I said, you need a 30 year I'm like, well, I'm not gonna be alive in 30 years. I go, oh, hold on a second. I think people are gonna be alive a lot longer than you think with what's going on right now. So you need to really think further out in your life because ends up happening is we do things on a weekly basis that may be good for this week.
Yeah. And you make it the instant gratification of this week. But what do you want long term? And so the same thing you go back to that CEO that's running their small business. Right? You may be doing the things today that's gonna help you this week. But is it the things you should be doing today? Gonna help you 10 years from now? And if not, maybe you should be rethinking it. Maybe you shouldn't be doing that. Maybe you should be hiring somebody to do Chaz.
So you can focus on building what you ultimately want. So I really think having that long term vision is important, but then to get into a bunch of time management things. Right? I have a daily visualization. Chaz ties to ultimately what I want in life that I read for 12 minutes every single day to train my unconscious, you know, subconscious mind. Right? I have a weekly planner that outlines exactly what I gotta do.
And if I look at that weekly planner and there's stuff on there that doesn't align to my 30 year plan some way, shape, or form, it shouldn't be on there. And that's how you ultimately become, you know, really super efficient in what you're trying to accomplish. Yeah. That's interesting. You've brought up several things here that I'm super curious about Chaz well as implement myself. But just real quick here on the timeline for that guy who was like, okay.
I'm not even gonna be around in 30 years. I I personally am working on right now a 100 year family plan. Love it. And maybe I'm of liven. I mean, that would put me at a 136 that there's There's a possibility to that maybe. I don't know. There is. But but the reality of it is is that in my mind, I'm I'm planning for 3 generations. And and so I don't know if that 100 years includes me or not, but it will include the things that I'm deciding to do today. To your point. Right?
And so I I think Chaz, that 30 year or or out further, whatever that looks like for for you is super important. I'm a big hunter. So I'm Archer guy. A lot of times, you start get you get stuck at the 30, forty, fifty yard, you know, and I just can't hit them target. Step back to, like, 75. Step back to a 100. And you're like, wait. What? If I can't hit it, How am I supposed to hit it at a 100? It it's just the way that it works. You step back a little bit. You can just see it a little clearly.
A little clearer. Okay. So you've talked you've you mentioned several things in here, the the the 30 year life vision, broken it down. Okay. And then you quickly heard a, like, all the way down to a daily visualizations, like, big gap on this side over here, 30 years out, all the way down to something I'm reading 12 minutes a day. Talk about, How do I get from here to here? You don't have to give me every step, but then I wanna ask you about that visualization.
Yeah. But now I'm thinking the re I'm rethinking the 30 year now. You got a 100 year. I think I gotta step my game up here a little bit. Jeez. But you, you know, a 100 just a quick point on on lifespan. I mean, advances that are going on in technology and artificial intelligence and gene therapy, I have no doubt that you have a chance to live to a 136 years. I mean, there's just no doubt. And now, will you weren't sure? I don't know, but there's a chance for sure.
Sure. And, that that's really interesting to me. Look, when I create my 30 year life plan, I work it all the way down to my year plan, ultimately. I look at Chaz. Occasionally, this is the time of year around, you know, the beginning of the year where I actually relook at it again and go, am I in track for what I'm doing? Then when I have my life plan, I kinda put that aside. Now I'm working on, you know, 90 day increments.
Okay. What do I need to do every quarter this year to achieve this annual plan. And then I back a track to it as well. Like, I have a weekly plan every week. Oh, here were my top 3 priorities. Here's what I got in all these different segments, right, and it would either be my this business or that business or my book or whatever it may be. And I break it all the way down, but, really, it's how do you become super efficient with how you're spending your time? Towards your goals. Right?
So, you know, yes, I do work it all the way back down to a daily visualization, which basically articulates who I ultimately wanna be in life, what I Wolfe ultimately wanna accomplish just so I can Always be reminded. Right? And I think Chaz the the the biggest thing on that is the reticular activating system that is in your mind. The the mind is so powerful. And I heard, I think it was Susan Slie who had mentioned this, but she she was talking about the red car concept.
You ever heard of the red car concept. Right? I've I've heard it. Yes. Go ahead. I I I think I know Charmo, but I've heard it phrase just slightly different. Yeah. It was kinda like, you know, if you were driving around this weekend, how many red cars did you see? Think after that, I don't know. I am sure I saw some, but I wasn't counting them. But if I said, look, I'll give you a hundred bucks.
If you count how many red cars you see next time, you'd count right, because your your reticular activating system, the filter of your mind is opening up to the things you should be seeing at any given time. So as an entrepreneur, If you're not training your mind to see opportunities and see what you're ultimately trying to create in your life, they're just gonna you're gonna miss them.
You're just gonna completely miss them so that daily visualization helps me see the types of things I need to be able to see by opening my mind to be aware to ultimately what I wanna accomplish. So I guess to make a long story short, how would I start? Create a life plan for yourself, you know, know ultimately what you wanna achieve, and then break it down is simply if you know what you wanna achieve in life, just break it down to this week if you need to. Do I need to accomplish this week?
What are some of the big rocks I need to accomplish this week to be moving in the right direction and focus on those rocks? That's the Stephen Covey, 7 habits of highly effective people, right, with the big rocks and small rocks. Way too many entrepreneurs are moving gravel every single week. Not moving the big rocks. They're moving gravel. Start moving big rocks. Yeah. That's a one liner for sure. I'd drop the mic after that and just call the updating of the show.
To kinda summarize here, we've we we can figure out, maybe what the red car is, that 30 year plan out. And then I'm bringing it all the way down into a highly descriptive form that I'm reading to myself every single day so that way I can pay attention when the red car should be coming up. Yes. But I can do this in all areas. I mean, I think that, you know, I call it, you know, a couple different, you know, dimensions of kingship, but you're saying in all areas of life.
It's like, okay, there's all these different pieces of life. So talk to us about that because there's a lot of entrepreneurs that believe I can go after hard after a business, and I gotta be all in and obsessed, but that that Chaz then limits me to have than a great relationship or, you know, a great to be a great dad or to not be able to have a fitness or all of the other things that you've mentioned. So what do those things look like, or how do I go about all of them at the same time?
Yeah. I mean, this concept of work, life balance is a bunch of crap. Right? Doesn't exist. It's work life abundance, you know, prior to this show that your daughter walked in. Right? Yeah. And it's just so it's such a cute moment. It's a real moment. It's it this is work life abundance. It's life abundance. Ultimately, people think they have to give. If I'm working sorry in my business, I can't have a good relationship where I can't be healthy.
Or I can't be, you know, there's there's a give and take. It's it's phony. And in my daily visualization Chaz example, it's not about my business. Yes. There's a component with my but it's also about me. It's about my health and my eating habits and my workout habits and what time I'm getting up every day. It's about my relationship with my wife and my relationship with my kids. It's the full picture of who you are.
So if you can't bring yourself to be your full self to your business, Then people see through that as well. So how can you accomplish this this area of abundance where you're high powered in all areas? You wanna have the best relationship, the best health, the help your kids grow and develop. You wanna have the best organization. You wanna help develop the best leaders you can in your business. That's infectious.
Yeah. How do you how do you look back at your story and go, this was the moment that I started to do the things that you're talking about, the 30 year reverse engineering, using a daily visualization because I'm gonna guess very similar to me that you kinda just took off running. You probably had a good amount of success. And then you got smacked in the face and you were presented with a different way of doing things. Talk us to us about that.
Yeah. I mean, Chaz, to your point, I was a young on Furniture. I was a college pro painting franchisee, became a college pro general manager for a couple years, made a lot of money in college running a painting business. I thought thing that is called business was super easy. I I had this all figured out. Right? Then in the late nineties, we start an internet company that you would be connected to in some way, shape, or form, but it was handymanonline.com. That's right.
And we were VC funded, and we're growing like gangbusters. As the vice president of sales, twenty four years old traveling across the country opening up offices. This thing called business is super easy. This is fun. And I'm I'm having a ball. And the crash happens, bang.com crash. And, we ultimately end up selling all of our assets to service magic. Who became homeadvisor.com, who then merged with Angie and is now called Angie. That was our business.
And I can remember driving back in my Jeep Cherokee from Beaverton, Oregon back to Chicago, listening to Anthony Robbins personal power tapes, trying to figure out what is going on. Right? I thought I had this thing all figured out stock options, everything else figured out, and yet here I was on my butt going okay. Now what? And I was like, you know what? I'm I'm gonna pick myself back up. You don't entrepreneur again.
Let's go. And I and I got myself back up and start building again, building a new, and built the sports company I was mentioning earlier. And I just had this vision. Let's grow. I wanna build something big, and let's go. Let's go. And, in 2018, 15 years of building this company, the logos to it on my forehead. My kids had all the apparel of the business. My best friends were in the business.
Yeah. Sitting in the boardroom, getting fired from the company you built over $50,000,000 of revenues after 15 years and losing everything Yeah. Was the moment I needed to sit back and go, woah. What am I doing? Yeah. This is a second failure, you know, the one was crash or just, you know, what I thought was gonna happen didn't happen. And then here's another one, Wolfe doubt, a reflection. And that turned real quickly into perspective.
Introspection, learning, you know, what have what what are my contributions to the situation and how am I gonna make sure this never happens again to me? Or for that matter, any other entrepreneur I work with. Hey, Kings and Queens. Jazz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day.
And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast, mediums of Apple and Spotify. We would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible.
Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's have each other grow. Yeah. What were the components, you know, the the kind of the framework that you've given here?
Again, like you said, explain it, I'm sure, in-depth in your book, but the framework of the 30 year plan and backtracking and using the daily visualization, what part of that didn't you have before, or maybe it was the whole thing. But then but why were you yeah. I would say even inside of those failures, you were still successful to a degree. Right? Like, you were still operating on certain principles, maybe whether you realize it or not.
And so, like, what it didn't you have before that you got in that enlightenment at through that second crash, but you obviously had some things because you you know, successful even though they bombed, you know, you you get what I'm saying. Like, give us a little bit more there. Yeah. I had none of it. I I I never had a life plan. I was always very goal oriented. So if I set my mind to something, I would go for it.
And I and I could, you know, had a lot of successes, you know, set target, hit target kind of, you know, mode. So I was really good at that, but I didn't really have a life plan. You know, I I there's segments of it. Right? Like, I I you know, after listening Chaz Anthony Robbins, private personal power tapes as an example, I wrote down on my little daily planner at the time, like, all the things I was looking for in a significant other. Right, 34 things.
Ultimately, married Amy. She had 33 other 34 things on the list. Subconsciously, so it's very goal oriented. But I didn't really have the full picture. I didn't really know what my purpose was in life. I didn't really know, you know, really what I was trying to accomplish until this massive failure in 2018 where I really had to sit back and go, what's my purpose? You know? And I had Chaz older mentors of mine ask me.
Well, I was, you know, young gun, you know, young guns spinning vinegar everywhere. Right? They're like, well, China, someday you're gonna figure out there's a deeper purpose than just growing something. Right. And I was like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. I'm just gonna go build this thing. And that really those conversations came back to remind me in this moment of failure, man, they're they're probably right. Because I was growing something for the sake of growing it.
I just thought there was power and glamorization and growing something big. Right. When you grow something big that you no longer control our own Right. What's the point of that? And so, yeah, I had I had none of it. What's the nuance now? It's growing something big with what? Like, what what's the what's the difference now? Cause, obviously, you're still growing. You're still growing actually multiple companies. Yeah. What's the what how what's the perspective change?
To me, it's the connection again between your life plan and your business Yeah. So now I'm not growing something for the sake of growing it. Now I have a life plan. I know exactly what I want in my dream life. I know exactly what I need to be doing, you know, know, I know exactly what I wanna accomplish, excuse me, in my dream life. So if if I wanna accomplish this, well, then here's how I'm gonna align my strategic business plan to Right?
Yeah. If if my life plan said, I wanna go work 80 hours in the company and be fully stressed out unhealthy and, you know, I well, then it started to structure a business to go do that. That's not what I want. I ultimately wanna be able to impact entrepreneurs, make a difference, and help them grow the business of their dreams. Well, I can't do that if I'm going to operate a business. So you have to align the 2 together.
That was the biggest a moment for me because I never ever ever had my true north life plan aligned to my strategic business plan. Always had a strategic business plan, but I didn't have this side. And now I aligned the both of them so I can always look at, am I creating a business that I want for my life? I'm just creating a business to glamorize, look how big I built something, or look how much capital I like, you know, business owners talk about this all the time. Oh, I have this size company.
I just $20,000,000 of capital. They they glamorize those things, but, ultimately, it's tied to what they want in life. Yeah. Yeah. They're I mean, this is a big well. I wanna go back to the moment though. You're in the boardroom and you're fired from the company that you've just built to 50,000,000 plus over the last 15 years in I love that picture of your kids wearing the garb and, you know, the logo tattooed on your forehead. You were all in is what I'm hearing. Yep. So what went wrong?
What can you share with the listener that you have perspective on now that you couldn't see in that moment? Yeah. Wolfe, I'd say those in in in the book, a $100,000,000 journey, I talked about the 7 principles of entrepreneurial success. And the reality is in this particular situation, I violated all of the principles. Okay. And upon learning the principles and applying those principles to my other business, I successfully grew that to a $100,000,000 the right way applying all of the principles.
But I'll run through the principles Chaz and you dive in wherever you want. Right? But principle 1 is protect and grow your equity. It's the most important thing you have in your business to create wealth and freedom. 2, build your own capital. Because if you don't build your own capital, you don't build your the net operating cash flow you need to self finance your own growth. Gonna be going to banks and investors to go find the capital, which is gonna violate principal 1.
Principal 3, re invest smartly. In the sports business, I was reinvesting carelessly. We were making money over here. And Chaz in reinvesting as fast as I can and over here, but the whereas in reinvesting, it was actually generating less net operating cash flow, which was hurting our ability to self finance our growth, which is making us go get investors in bank debt, which violated principal 1. Principal 4, build a culture of entrepreneurship.
If you ultimately wanna have a business asset someday, you gotta build people within the organization that can think like an entrepreneur, run the business like they were it was theirs. So you gotta create that culture of entrepreneurship. Principal 5 is protect the house. There's a lot of situations, entrepreneurs. You know, you you have a hundred holes in your boat. You plug 99 of them. Guess where the water's coming through. Right through that other hole. Right?
So you how do you protect your business properly? Principal 6, you would appreciate this space when you're talking about your 100 life 100 year life plan. How do you access the owner's liquidity in your business? You got this business balance sheet and you got your personal life balance sheet. How do you have liquidity from your business's balance sheet?
To your personal balance sheet and tax efficient manners that can really help you and future generations of your family benefit from this business asset that you've created. And principle 7, how do you move from CEO to chairperson? Cause you may not be the best person to run your business, but if you can move to the chairperson level, you Chaz be more strategic oversee the growth of the business and create something of huge value.
Wolfe, I I'm in alignment with all 7 of those, and I'm gonna pick 5 and 6 to dive into here. So I wanna talk about protecting the house because, you're right. You know, and I almost I see it as a boat like you said, like, we're, you know, kind of building the ship at sea as an entrepreneur, and and it's constant, you know, trying to plug the boat. And and eventually, we have this dream of it being this huge cruise line and no ever, you know, issues.
How in the moment the listeners right now, they're going, okay. So maybe I'm I'm just starting my company. I'm only doing, you know, a couple 100,000, or maybe I'm listening, and I'm doing a couple 100,000,000. But I get these Springs coming up in the house, how do I protect? What was some of the principles that you're sharing in that chapter? Yeah. Absolutely. It's a game of whack a mole. Right? You you hit 2, 3, 4 down, 5, 6, 7 pop up. It's just like a continuous game. Right?
Yep. You know, I think the first one is who do you surround yourself with? What's your team of protectors? And, you know, I I Rich Hoffman is the co host, our podcast, the entrepreneur's United podcast. At one point, when I was gung ho and running on my business, he's like, Who's coaching you today, John? And I'm like, coach, I don't need a coach. I'm good. Like, I I got this thing. Like, I don't need anybody to coach me. Right? And he reminded me of that after the failure, by the way.
He's like, what if coach have helped you? And I'm like, oh, dang. You had to ask me that question. Who who's coaching you? Do you have a professional small, medium sized business CPA or are you using the mom, pop tax, you know, accountant down the street? Do you have professional advisors, attorneys, commercial insurance agents, captive insurance agents, trust attorneys? Do you do you have a team where you look around the room you're like, man, we got a team.
Right now in our business channels, I have, you know, 6 advisors on our team. They're all world class. We do not sneeze. Unless all 6 are unanimously on board with the decision. We just if it's a big decision, if it's a one door decision, like, this is an irreversible one door decision. We need all of our professional advisors to sign off on it. And when they don't, we pause. Okay. There's something something's off here. Let's let's caucus. Let's get this thing together.
2, vulnerability assessments. When do when does an entrepreneur sit down and perform a full vulnerability assessment on all the holes that potentially exist on the boat? We're so busy running. When does that happen? It never happens. We just keep running. So, you know, when do you pause on an annual basis and do a vulnerability assessment? Maybe you need a little risk committee, a focus group amongst your team that does that. I'm not sure. There's a lot of ways to to go about that.
Do you have the proper insurance coverage? Are you be carefully, you know, are you careful of who you hire into your business? You know, there's a a book called snakes and suits. You know, in my situation with a sports company, I had a snake in the in the business that wanted to chop my legs off and and they did. It it worked. You know, and and you gotta be careful who you surround yourself with and the culture you create. So we go through all those different.
There's more, but, you know, how do you protect the business from every single angle we go through a lot of those angles. Because as an entrepreneur, whether it be customer credit risk, customer going bankrupt on us for a quarter $1,000,000, we got we had a wire fraud situation where we wired a quarter $1,000,000 over to Asia by accident, never got it back. I mean, there's a, you know, what are your financial controls?
So there's a whole bunch of different areas you need to protect your business because one mistake, one lawsuit, one situation can really go back and violate principal 43, 21. Done. I'm assuming just because in in my daily visualization, it positive, you know, positive energy. I'm focused on vibration, and and I'm all in. Right? I'm only assuming that you're that way.
And so how can you plan for all these things that you just said and and putting a team together around the table of trust attorneys and think about how my my wealth is gonna perpetuate and and other professionals that you just described, protecting the house, which is inevitably thinking something bad is gonna happen. How do I teeter between planning properly and not being negative is really what I'm asking. Yeah. You'll love this term. It'll connect with you immediately.
It's do you have a healthy dose of productive paranoia? If you are not in this state of productive paranoia, you're blind because crap happens. Like, literally, stuff will happen when you least expect it And if you're not protecting your family's estate, as an example, in your 100 year plan, you never know what can happen. Right? So how are you protecting it a long way? Not because You anticipate something's gonna happen, but you're prepared in case something does.
So how do you have that productive state of paranoia? I'm I'm a trust first person. Like, I love to build things. They're very positive, optimistic. So I I I think the world's a perfect place, and no one's ever gonna wanna be litigious with our business as an example. But all it takes is one situation where, you know, an employee gets terminated. Next thing you know, you're facing a lawsuit because you didn't properly have your HR processes in place.
It just takes those one situations, and that distracts you from your strategic business plan. It just distracts you from the why of your business, what you're trying to do. It distracts you from your true North Life Plan. Is stressful. It's draining. It's no fun. So if you can, you know, if you think about a highway with all these different exits and imagine the exits are all vulnerabilities, just close the exits.
Just, you know, you don't want anybody going off those exits and creating a vulnerability, you know, aspect for your business. So that's that's the way I view it. Yeah. I I'm in alignment with that. As I'm thinking about my 100 year plan, I know that stats tell me that in the 3rd generation of wealth, if I'm 1st generation, it's my grandkids that are gonna lose it all. Mhmm. It's like, okay. Well, I don't I don't have any grandkids yet.
Yep. And so I can't I can't, like, emotionally go, well, John is a terrible grandson and, you know, Susie is, you know, a Wolfe at heart and gonna, you know, spend all my money. I have no idea. They're right. They don't even exist yet, but I can take statistics to your point. I Chaz think down the road and I can go, okay. Let me just Let me create some frameworks here to where they can't even mess it up. Exactly. 100%.
We're trying to we're trying to have, we're trying to have Rockefeller perpetuation here, you know. Exactly. You gotta let it keep going through. Yeah. Okay. Number 6, I don't remember exactly what you called it, but you basically it was the protection and then the perpetuation. So remind me number 6 again. Access owner's liquidity, moving it from the balance sheet to your personal balance sheet.
Yeah. I think this is important because at some point, the listener may not be there yet, but maybe they are where they've had success and they start to have some money. And there's some either equity and or actual kickoff of cash. And they're like, let me go buy this not very smart thing. Or how do I how do I strategically plan just to move equity on a balance sheet? Like, that maybe this is number magic. I don't know. What what are you what are you Yeah.
There's a there's a lot of, financial instruments that we talk about in the book. And and, ultimately, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you're building a lifestyle business where you wanna max optimize your income this year so you can go buy the material goods or whatever you want. This principle may not work for you. This book may not work for you, actually.
This book is really meant for an entrepreneur who's building a business and wants to go from a lifestyle size business to a high performance, high value net worth business. Right? So the one way to do that it goes back to principle too. You gotta build your own capital and have enough net operating cash flow to self finance your own growth so you retain your equity.
Well, the one way to do that is to you're very, very smart about how you access owner's liquidity because you still wanna pay yourself. You still wanna create wealth for yourself along the journey. You don't wanna wait till some day you might get a pot of gold at the end. How do you how do you do that? But if a business today tries to meet a $1,000,000 of net income and you just distributed that to the partners Chaz an example, right, 40 to 50% of that's going to taxes.
Not a very smart way to do thing, but there are instruments that are out there, captive insurance programs that further protect your business with extraordinary coverages, Chaz also reduce your taxable income and you create another business asset for yourself and your business. That's taxed at lower capital gains as opposed to ordinary income. So we're getting some financial instruments here.
There's what we do in our business 401 k, cash balance profit sharing programs where all of our employees participate in our that that program where they automatically get 3%, whether they'd whether they participate or not. They all get 3% of their salaries in their in their retirement programs. There's a vesting period and such. And we do profit sharing for them on an annual basis.
But by doing that, it allows the owners of the business to put 10 times the maximum IRS allow the limit into our own 401 case. Which reduces our taxable income and creates wealth for our family. So there's a bunch of guess what? I knew none of these. I you you don't actually end up learning about some of these until you surround yourself with the right amount of protectors around the business that can help share that with you.
And what we now do with some of that business, that's why we have multiple entities is we also reinvest into other entities. Because by reinvesting our capital into other entities, sometimes you get accelerated depreciation and other tax benefits that reduces your taxable income. So we're able to hire more people. That's what the government wants you to do. They want you to build more business, build more commerce, hire more people, So by doing that, our taxable income comes down.
So instead of the money going to the government, we have the money building our business assets and building our wealth. Along the way. And that's that's ultimately, I think a lot of people think in order to access someone's liquidity, I gotta sell my company. I gotta bring on a minority investor. I gotta bring on maybe a majority investor. And I'm a big proponent of, no. No. Build your business asset. If you wanna get out of your business, sell, sell a 100% and get out. That's fine.
But, ultimately, you can build this business assets that create tremendous amount of value for you and your family for the next 100 years by deploying some of these principles correctly. I love it. What would you say that the average entrepreneur outside of the fact that they don't have a life plan, because all the things that we're talking about are connected to that. That's clear.
But once we get past that, You know, these 7 principles that you kinda discussed here, we just discussed 56, but what's the hardest one for entrepreneurs to kinda wrap their minds around in your experience? Principle 2. K. Build your own capital. Yeah. They they I mean, it does it feel slower to them, or what's the what's the response?
If if there's a 100 entrepreneurs listening to this, and I said, raise your hand if on a monthly, you know, basis, you measure the performance of your business based on the profit and loss statement. All the hands would go up. Sure. And Alan Milt, who, runs a company called Cash Flow Story. He was the co author of the Chaz, Cash, in Vernon Harnes' book called scaling up.
Okay. Yeah. He says if you measure your business based on your profit and loss statement, you're basically reading a murderous mystery novel and only reading the first chapter and thinking you know how the story's gonna end. K. You know, there there's other instruments. And and the one instrument that most entrepreneurs don't know how to calculate is their net rating cash flow. And based on how much cash flow you generate, you can calculate literally calculate your self financeable growth rate.
So there's a Harvard business review, and the article was called how fast can your company afford to grow? And the reality is every entrepreneur listening to this has no clue. Because I didn't, and no no no entrepreneur talk to knows exactly what percentage you can afford to grow. So, Chaz, if you if your company can afford to grow 5% a year based on the cash flow you're generating, but you are motivated entrepreneur. You wanna grow 20% a year. Where's the other 15% come from?
Yeah. We're we're not gonna just get lucky and can grow. What are you talking about? You're you're it's gonna come from investors. It's gonna come from debt. Right, which then puts pressure on principle 1, protect and grow your equity. So you you you wanna own a business where you own a 100% of it or a majority of it, but over time, you you're growing above your skis, and you grow yourself poor. I mean, the one thing that the entrepreneurs don't understand, you can grow yourself out of business.
You can be a victim of your own success because you don't know how to calculate your self financeable growth rate, your net operating cash flow, and the financial instrument of your business is broken. You're growing for gross sake, and that's what happened to me. I was growing so fast. We were successful because our revenues are going like that. I was like, this works. Some of the profit and loss statement, oh, this is working. We're in good shape, but we had no cash.
So I had to go back to the bank. Oh, bank, we need more debt. We need more debt. Well, then at some point, I have to deliver the balance sheet. I had to go get investors come on in, and then I'd brag, oh, we just raised $20,000,000. Look at this. Next thing you know, I get fired. Right? So build your own capital is the hardest one. I provide some workbooks and tools on how to exactly calculate those, numbers for you and your business, but, yeah, it's it's a tough one.
I mean, you really gotta If you can, if you can master building your own capital, now you're in business. What kind of timeline, I mean, you're talking about a $100,000,000 business that you grew after a $50,000,000 business. You know, I know that less than 9% of all businesses do, even a 1,000,000 in revenue. Let alone a 1,000,000 in net. The personal listening right now is, like, these are really big numbers. I don't you know, you're talking about fund my own growth.
You're talking about, like, a much slower process, probably. Maybe, maybe not, but wrap their mind around how can I even get to what you're talking about at at a $100,000,000 level? Yeah. Well, ultimately, I'll I'll I'll say this right right away. Wolfe you rather own 10 percent of a $100,000,000 business or a 100 percent of a $10,000,000 business? And the reality is I felt if I own 10 percent of a $100,000,000 business, that'd be fantastic. But guess what?
It's fifty times harder to build a $100,000,000 business than it is a 10,000,000 business. It's not linear. Right? And so these principles are not for somebody who wants to build a $100,000,000 business. The $100,000,000 journey was my journey. It may not be your journey. What is your true North Life Plan? What are you trying to accomplish in your life? What do you want in your daily life? Now let's build a business that can accomplish that. Build the business of your dreams.
Your dreams may be to have a $2,000,000 business, $3,000,000 business that you own a 100% of that has great margins that creates wealth for you and your family. You never imagined. So it really depends on what you wanna choose, but way too many times entrepreneurs glamorize building a 100, 200, 300,000,000 dollar company. They own 5% of or 2% of or 1% of or own none of it, ultimately.
So it's a very risky, dangerous road, but if you aspire to grow a business of high value, There's a lot of pitfalls. There's a lot of cliffs. You gotta be careful. And this book was specifically written for those who wanna build a business of high value. To be dangerous for all of those clicks, but it also applies to small entrepreneurs trying to build the business of their dreams. Yeah. I think that you the way that you're defining high value, you did a great job there.
If if I wanna 100% of a $10,000,000 business. In essence, it's effectively the same from a net perspective as the 10% of a $100,000,000 business. There's just a whole lot less things that have to happen for me to actually be able to achieve it.
Now there are some things in here around, you know, principle 1, making sure that you have people around you at the bigger company, probably have an advisory board, stuff like that, where if you're smaller, then maybe you have to, you know, join groups, gather in the Kings or programs or other things to be able to get a hold of those that same principle, but, in essence, it's effectively the same. I wanna I wanna change gears here on you because I got some questions.
You mentioned earlier you know, even before some of the failures that you still had a great family and great kids and great wife and especially now with the daily visualization and you, like, really focused on those things, How can the how can the power of you and your marriage? That's truly the core, but then, of course, after that is then you and your children.
But talk about you and your wife for a second and how that's played into some of the early success and or even now the success that you're enjoying today. What what how are those 2 things linked? Yeah. Wow. After the dot com failure, after the handyman online and in in that is when I met my wife. And I was in no position to be an entrepreneur at that particular moment. You know, I was I I didn't have the the cash, the capital to be able to go start something significant.
But she had a stable career, chemical engineer, a very smart woman, and she provided me the ability to go, pursue my dreams of being an entrepreneur. So right from the go. Right? Like, it's like, okay. Right. That's where that is. Yeah. And as I was growing these businesses, she saw how goal oriented I was and how big I wanted to build these businesses, but I guess what, Chaz?
You know, when I would talk to her about bringing on capital and, again, bringing on investors and we're going to a 100,000,000, her comments were, you know, are you sure that's what you should be doing? Like, should be careful. Like, you know, you sure this is smart? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. This is good. Right?
So imagine that night coming back from the board meeting and her getting up from the couch and and giving me a hug and how hard that was to be like, you know, honey, I I I effed up. You're right. Right? And the support I got to keep going. And the time I needed to reflect and get these learnings. And so the learnings became a little bit more than just me.
I I I had to take these learnings for my Wolfe, for my kids, for my family so they could see me, you know, my kids now were 10 to 12 at the time. We're now 15, 16. They've seen me go through this journey of failure to rebuilding to perseverance, and I'm sure it's gonna have a massive effect on them. So just all of that space to be able to go learn, reflect and the support, it it's it's unbelievable.
And whether it be your spouse or whether it be your friends or your mentors, your coach, whoever you have around you, Chaz surrounding is so important. And how you feel about your surrounding will play into the energy you bring into your business every day. Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, you're saying your wife's an engineer. Obviously, she's super smart and and thinks about things in process.
And probably at least all the engineers that I know, they know how to do it, and they they don't have a problem telling you.
And so I can only imagine some of the conversations that that you guys had around, her opinion on the order that things should be done in and and how clearly maybe sometimes you listen, sometimes you you didn't, but, after all that, regardless, the moment that you just described is where the power is is because you inevitably felt like no matter what happens, I it doesn't give you permission to be frivolous, but it gave you permission to be free.
And even to make bad decisions and fail, which is, like, really kind of tough, I think, for some spouses where it's like, well, I don't want you to fail, so I'm going to try to control situations. And so there's this balance here, and and I don't know if it balances the right word because we don't believe in that, but there's this maybe there's this relationship of support yet guidance yet, like, mastermind. I mean, Napoleon Hill talks about this.
Like, this is the, oh, it's the ultimate mastermind in the marriage. Where something can be born from these two minds, and it sounds like you guys couldn't be more opposite also. So it's pretty pretty perfect. Yeah. No. 100 100%. And, you know, it's funny because a lot of people talk about their spouse is always being right, but, unfortunately, in my case, she always is.
So I have to, you know, learn from that, but I I think at the end of the day, it's when you feel empowered, with your health, when you feel empowered with your relationships, when you feel empowered across the board, you can then be empowered in your business. And you can have a free mind to be strategic and free and grow and build the right way. And so that's why this life plan continues.
I just keep coming back to that as one of my biggest learnings you have to make sure you're aligned in all these different areas, or you can't bring your full cell. That's right. That's right. Alright. I got one last question here for you, John. I want you to roll back the clock. I'm gonna let you because you got a couple moments here. Maybe it's even younger. I want you to talk to the younger John. You pick the age. You tap him on the shoulder and you whisper in his ear. What do you tell him?
Well, if you open the $100,000,000 journey, I'd love your question. The first thing you'll see in the book is something I call dear entrepreneur. And assigned your future self. Yeah. So in the absence of reading that, the overall emotion of that letter to the entrepreneur is, you know, you think you know it all when things are going well, but you may not. And you need to have patient ambition, not just ambition. Yeah. Not careless ambition. Not ambition in Nora. Look at me. I can go do this.
You have patient calculated ambition to build the business of your dreams the right way. Otherwise, you risk making some fatal mistakes along the way. And so how do you surround yourself with the right people? How do you take time to make 2 door decisions instead of one door decisions? How do you put yourself in in a position where you can actually thrive and not be just driving carelessly around in circles? Because if you don't know where you're going any will do Chaz saying.
I don't know who said it, but they go, you don't know where you're going. Any path will do, but, you know, unfortunately, in my situation, I was driving the car around I was going really, really fast. It was really, really exciting, but then it's like, right off the cliff.
And, you know, don't let that happen to you as ultimately message and you can move you can prevent it by just having that patient ambition, I mean, a little more calculated study, you know, bring people around you, get coaches, join mastermind groups like you talked about. All those things are so critical to surrounding yourself and building something the right way, but have patience. Have patience. If you could build the business of your dreams, it doesn't have to happen next year.
Or in 2 years. You got me in 10 years, and you'd be extremely fulfilled. So have patient ambition. I love it. That's a great way to end. What a but a pure message. Truly. We get we get ahead of ourselves and our urgency problems or our ego or comparison game. I mean, you name it. We can go down the list. John, how can number 1, where can we find the book?
Oh, or if I'm an entrepreneur that wants to dig past the book, I wanna maybe even hire you as a coach or, network with you somehow, how can I find Yeah? So the book is on Amazon, the $100,000,000 journey. Our website is 100mjourney.com. So 100masinmaryjourney dotcom. And on social, you can find me at at John Saint Pierre 100. I love it. Okay. Well, you've been incredible. Your journey is vulnerable.
And, we appreciate you sharing those moments and, seeing how those failures have raised you to where you are and sharing that all that all that juice. So appreciate being here. Blessings to you and your family and all the businesses that you're impacting. Thank you for so much. Thanks, Jess. 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 in multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings 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 gatheringthekings.com. You 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.