On today's episode of Gathering McKens. Nobody posts typically their bad day on Facebook. In in podcasts like this or just in in looking at somebody's journey from the out side and you see them being successful, it's like the old adage of the iceberg, right, where you just see the tip of the iceberg. You don't see all the work that happens underneath all the preparation, all of the stuff that goes into what makes a successful entrepreneur that's under the water, under the surface.
The biggest advice that I can give other entrepreneurs are trying to build is just don't make the big mistake. It's okay to make mistakes, but you wanna be calculated you always do want to make sure that you balance yourself with what is the worst case scenario. You are listening to gathering the King with Chaz Wolfe featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be.
We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today's guest.
Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. Alright. Chaz Wolfe and Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you are prepared for an amazing story. We've got an entrepreneur who literally went from lemonade stand to selling millions of wrist bands to restaurants galore to a food service company with 500 employees and and a real estate guru to to to boot. I have an unbelievable story with Adam. We just got off the pod, and it was incredible to hear all your story.
Was it as good for you as it was for us? Hey. It was awesome. I always love love telling the story and and love encouraging other entrepreneurs. So thanks for having me. That's exactly what you're gonna get here. So strap in, get your, notebook and pin ready because that's exactly what Adam does. He breaks down so many different things that are gonna encourage you in your entrepreneurial journey. Get ready. Here we go. Adam, guy. Welcome to the stage. My brother. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.
Hey. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Thanks, man. It's so funny. Our relationship started so many years ago. And I remember this is for the audience because this is a perspective that you probably didn't even know, but Adam Guy was, like, the guy in high school. Okay? He was the guy, a couple years older than me, the star, the basketball team, everybody, really looked up to Adam guy. Not only just was he the guy, but he was a really good guy.
We're just a good dude, took care of people around him. I remember being a sophomore in the basketball team. And, just being a part of your leadership at that point. And so after all these years later, it feels like a decades later, we've come to the same king's table here today to extract your story, things that you've been successful with. You've been uber successful in many areas. I'm totally jacked to to get your story here today. So thank you again for for sharing with us today.
Yeah. I'm excited about it. And I I look back fondly on those Rockbridge high school, the Rockbridge high school days, and and certainly glad that's your perception of me from time, but, yeah, that was certainly a lot of fun and built a great foundation for what we do today. Absolutely. So tell us what you do today. What's your business? Give us a little highlight of of what you're into right now. Sure. So I am the, president and CEO of upper crust food service.
And long story short, we are a contract food service management company. And that is a long way to say that we do not serve meals to the public, but rather we serve meals in contracted situations. Our number one kind of priority market is fraternity and sorority. And so that is our our niche, if you will. Yeah. That we serve food in. That's fantastic.
And so you take in a long history of food because that we'll get into your your food pedigree, if you will, here shortly, but taking a long history in many hours and you found a niche that, has just incredibly blown up for you. And so we'll get into some of that. But tell us at this level where you've you're at the you're at the mark everyone's attaining to be. You're doing enough revenue to where you're not the guy cooking any longer.
And so the listener today is building a They're most likely a six figure business, and they're in the grind. But when they get to your place, you're still driven. You're still growing the business. Tell us what drives you now. Well, I think it's just it it it evolves over time. And I think that's the thing Chaz an entrepreneur. It's a journey. And I think that you really have to look at it as a really long journey. And, honestly, it's a roller coaster ride.
I think that especially early on in your journey, you're gonna have days where you wake up and you sign a big deal, and you feel like you're gonna be a millionaire tomorrow. And then you're gonna find out that that deal wasn't quite what you thought that deal was. And next thing, your biggest customer isn't working out, and you think you're gonna be bankrupt in a week.
Chaz that journey, I think the biggest thing for me being an entrepreneur is, like, you have to keep that even keel and you really have to look at it over the long run. And that means there's gonna be a lot of sacrifices, especially early on. In order to make it where you wanna be. So for me, it's just a change in mindset as you grow your business to the point. Everybody has to start by working in their business. Right? Right. You have to work in your business to understand your business.
And you have to work in your business to be able to look at any of your employees and say, I know how to do your job if I have to. Right? And then once you've figured out how to work in it, that next transition is transitioning to working on it.
And I think that's the hardest transition that, entrepreneur's face because it often comes with a lot of anxiety, right, giving giving up a piece of your little kingdom that you've built, a trusting other people with something that that in your mind, you might be able to do better, quicker. Chaz time that you spend making that transition k. Will pay major dividends. So that has really, especially in the last 5 to 7 years of my journey.
It's really been about letting go, honestly, and hiring the right people and trusting them and trusting, but then verifying what I want done is is getting is being done. Yeah. So for the listener today, you've already just you've you just you've taken us to the deep end already. It's fantastic. If you're taking notes, you need to first write down what he talked about is that it's the long game. Right? So if you're trying to get rich today. Good for you.
But if you're playing the long game, at the end of the day, if you find yourself, you're still pressing in and you haven't quite hit there yet, it's okay. Time's on your side. You wanna be urgent today, but you wanna understand that this is a long game. So thank you for that perspective, Adam. And and so you're a little bit of time in and you're looking back a decade or probably even a couple of decades at this point, getting close to looking in your business journey going, wow.
There were times where I was in the daily. There were times where I was growing a team, times where I was a little nervous about giving things away. And you can give us that perspective that you just did. So that's so great. So let's go back to some of those days where you were maybe more in the grind. Sure. Tell us about where entrepreneurship started for you. Obviously, I knew you before you were a business owner, and but you were a leader on the basketball team.
So did leadership lead you to that? Did you already leadership innate inside of you? Did you learn something after school? Like, where did it start? Well, I think for me, it really started with having a really supportive family I think that's something that I try to hold on to with my 3 kids today as I'm raising them is my parents always encouraged me when I had an idea to try it. Right? And just say, hey. You know what? Go do it.
I mean, it it for me, it started with a a lemonade stand on the corner of a prominent intersection before a cop before college football games. Are you saying location, location, location, Adam? Yeah. It was a great location. Honestly, like, I I was learning that at five years old. Like, hey, I picked this location where thousands of fans were gonna be walking past me, and and this is I mean, going back to entrepreneurship 1 on 1, the lemonade stand.
I would make a for a five year old, we'd make a hundred bucks doing a lemonade stand on a game weekend, and I was rich. But for me, just seeing that happen and then tweaking that. I remember moving my stand to where I I saw there was gonna be more people and making sure that I had enough product because the 1st week, I I sold all my lemonade, and it was gone. And so next week, I had to make sure I had more for the next game.
And I I just remember that excitement of leaving the game early because I needed to get to my stand to set things up so I didn't miss customers as they left the game. And so that was really where I think I sort of just got the bug. Right? This is fun. This is cool, and this is something I can figure out. And even at age 5, something that I'm somewhat competent at or I kinda just innately have inability to understand.
And then I moved into actually, this is a a fun fact about me that not many people know, but I I moved into, I was an a magician and an illusionist. That's right. And so at age seven, I did my first Magic show. I grabbed my sister who was 6 at the time. And I said, hey. You're my assistant. Come over to the retirement home with me, and we're gonna do a we're gonna do a magic show. And I think just my parents, like, I think about so many parents that when their kids says, hey.
I wanna go do a magic show. Can you help me figure out where to do this? And my parents connected me with this retirement home to go do a magic showing. I feel like there's so many of us as parents that would say, you know what? I'm busy with work. I'm busy with my life. I'm busy with my stuff. I don't have time to set my seven year old kid up to go embarrass himself in front of a bunch of old people. But what happened was that audience was incredible because I got done.
I tell this all the time. We had some music that played in our magic show. And so we got done with the magic show, and this little old lady came up to me, and she grabbed my hands. And she said, son, Chaz was the best music I have ever heard in my life, and she thought we were singing, and we were musicians, not Right. So this this retirement home audience was the perfect audience from 100%. So we took that business, and I just kinda got the bug.
And and for me, what's fun too is when I was performing, I could become a version of myself that I had invented. I could go up and and I wasn't maybe the most outgoing guy to just go up and and start a conversation with someone I didn't know. But if I was on a stage in front of a thousand people doing something that I was competent in, something I knew I was good at, something that I had prepared and practiced and planned for a good result.
I had this confidence, right, for an eight, nine, ten year old kid doing a show for thousand people in a theater. Chaz that was something that really built my confidence as an entrepreneur because I wasn't making a fortune. But people were paying me, right, to come and do something that I really enjoy. So that was where I think it started for me. Yeah. So we did those shows all the way until I was in college and had a great little business doing, not a legitimate business per se.
There's a lot of stuff that I was just, you know, I was just running. I we had shows. I couldn't drive my car yet. My parents were driving me and dropping me off, but then I got started. Once I got into college, I started my first legitimate business which was an online. We sold a silicone wristbands back in the Lance Armstrong Recray. That's right. Yep. I remember. And I think that's a great example of just taking an So I saw these wristbands.
You couldn't even there was like a underground market for charity wristbands. So I was driving in the car, and I told my dad, I said, I'm gonna make some of risk bands for our local college. And I'm going to make them black and gold. I'm gonna write go tigers on them, and I'm gonna sell these things. And so he, of course, was supportive of the idea, but I was using my money that that I had made through my magic shows.
And the good entrepreneurs are always willing to push the envelope just a little So I ordered 10,000 of these wristbands. Wow. So how old are you here? Okay. I am a soft, sophomore in college. Okay. Alright. So 20. I'm Tia. Twenty years old. So sophomore in college, I ordered 10,000 these wristbands. Everybody in my family says, hey. This is a great idea, Adam, but don't you think you should start off 500 wristbands. Right? I do think you should see if this works.
Well, I already understood that the price of buying 500 versus the price of buying 10,000 was dramatically if I was gonna make any money on this, I needed to go for the 10,000 where I could make a bunch of money. I ordered these. They came in from this manufacturer in China. It was actually he was in California promotional products company. The product came from China. I get the product and I go and I I I solicited all of my fraternity brothers. So this was my first sales team.
So I went and I said, hey, guys. I got a great opportunity for you. So we went out in 5 degree weather. And we plastered every single car with a flyer with a PayPal website back in the day. Alright? And, so we plastered probably 6 or 7000 cars during a basketball game at the university. I went out with my buddies. Went out to have fun that night. It was like a Thursday night. We went downtown. We had some fun. We came back. This PayPal account was connected to my student email.
So when I got back when I woke up in the morning, the next morning, I opened up my student email to do some homework, and I had 6000 new emails. Okay. In my inbox. And every single email was a confirmation of an order from PayPal. Wow. So we we sold all 10,000 wristbands overnight. Wow. So now I've got this really big problem because I didn't think about the fact that each one of these people were buying, like, 1 or 2 or 3 wristbands. Now I gotta ship these out to all these people.
Right. Now I go so now I go back to my fraternity brothers and I'm due. I have a job for you guys. Instead of study hall, Yep. I will pay you and help me stuff envelopes. Yep. And it gives me an appreciation when you're waiting on product that hasn't arrived Oh, yeah. From a startup company because we literally were the cafeteria of our fraternity house, stuffing envelopes with wrist bands, and I think it took us like a month to actually package and ship out all 10,000 of these wrist bands Wow.
But that's really what got me started. And I ended up selling that business, and so that was the first transaction I ever had was another person that was in the promotional products world. Sure. We we ended up selling tens of 1,000,000 of wristbands. It's incredible all over the country. And so we had a legitimate little business, and so he bought that from me.
Yeah. And, like, any good person that's, twenty one years old and just sold their first business think I got dropped on my head at some point when I was a kid and I said, right, the restaurant business looks really fun. Let me get into that. Oh, that's a transition that got me into the restaurant business. Case. Yep. And transition then into food service. Alright. Well, so let's dissect this a little bit because, you've given us such a wild ride already. So thankful for this story.
So What I want the reader or the listener to understand here is that not only did you try multiple things, but you hit on multiple things. And which is incredible, and that's not not necessarily the story for everybody, but but your story behind that is you took the Chaz, whether it was at 5 and eliminated and moving it more supply or whether it was later taking a chance on on the 10,000 first order, when everybody else around you was saying, don't do it. And guess what?
I believe that if you had not sold one of those wristbands, you would have given them away. I'm sure. And then you probably would have went and done another business. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I I think when it comes to failure, obviously, it's like the Facebook of our lives. Right? Like, nobody posts typically their bad day on Facebook. And and podcasts like this are just in in looking at somebody's journey from the outside and you see them being successful.
It's like the old adage of the iceberg, right, where you just see the tip of the iceberg. You don't see all the work that happens underneath all the preparation, all of the stuff that goes into what makes a successful, entrepreneur that's under the water, under the surface. And so for me, the biggest advice that I can give to other entrepreneurs they're trying to build is just don't make the big mistake.
It's okay to make stakes, but you wanna be calculated, right, and you want to know you always do want to make sure that you balance yourself with what is the worst case scenario Okay. Yep. I knew when I bought those 10,000 wristbands, if I sold 0, I wasn't taking out credit to buy those. I I had that money. And so it wasn't gonna put me in a situation where I was going to have to file for banker if I didn't sell this.
So I think it's, along the way, it's okay to take risks, and you have to take risks. It's no different than playing blackjack. If you don't double down every time you have an 11, guess what? You're not leaving with any money. Right? That's the only way you're gonna leave with any money. I think the same thing is true in business. You have to take risks, but they have to be calculated. And as long as you don't make the big mistake, then it's okay.
And you're gonna make a ton of little mistakes along the way, and we don't have enough time. You'd have to have me on for 17 sessions in a row for me to tell you all the mistakes that I've made in my, you know, 15 year journey. Yeah. So on that note, I'm glad you went there because, obviously, if if the listener here, if this is not their first show listening, they know that I like to go through good decision, bad decision.
And so you've given us some really good decisions of risk taking, following a market, getting in on something when maybe it was early. I'm sure there are some really good decisions that you've made that in some of your bigger businesses, but what about the bad decision? What did you make that that didn't work? Sure. So, on the the silicone wristband business, I came up with an idea.
I had about 3 or 4 national competitors that I was competing with at the time, and it just so happened that a competitor and I came up with the same idea at the same time for a new product. And this was back when the iPads were real big. K. Yeah. And if you remember, IPods Chaz the little click wheel on them. So what we came up with was we used the same silicone that we used to make our wristbands, and we made covers for iPads and then we could you could put different colors of the silicone.
So my idea was I was gonna collegently license the So I made some really cool ones. If your mascot was the tiger, I made them black and gold and white, and they were swirled and looked like tiger stripes, and then I would put your logo on the click wheel. If you were the Nebraska cornhuskers, we could make a bright red one with the huster on the click wheel. And so my idea was people are gonna wanna buy these.
They're gonna wanna cover up their iPads ipods and and have their logo on the click wheel and do all this. So we spent a decent amount of money developing this product, and then we went out to start collegently licensing this and getting this out into the marketplaces on campuses. My competitor came up with the exact same product at the exact same time. Okay? And this gives you an example of 2 products identical, but marketed differently. Okay. So I go to the collegiate licensing route.
Yeah. He goes complete custom customization route. So think Nike ID when you used to be able to make your sneakers however you want. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Pick your shoelaces, pick the colors, pick all of those different things. Yeah. So he allowed customers to buy one at a time off his website they could pick what color they wanted, they could customize them. Yeah. His product, which is exactly the same as he ended up selling so many of these.
He re he branded himself, and he ended up selling that business for over $40,000,000. Wow. And his product ended up in all the AT and T retailers all over the country. It became like iPhone cases, all this kind of stuff. It's still a product today that you can go by at at your AT and T store. Wow. Mine, I couldn't sell enough. We couldn't get into the stores. With the exact same product, we had trouble getting the licensing. We had trouble getting into the stores.
We had trouble getting traction. So it ended up being a product that we ended up saying, hey. We're spending too much on this. We're gonna have to pitch this and and move on. It ended up being one of those things that you just let go die in the entrepreneurial graveyard. Okay. Yep. And, so that's a great example. So we that's the we literally had the same product. He made $40,000,000 I lost about $30,000. Okay? So It's a $40,000,000 swing, my friend.
Yeah. It goes to show you, though, that that was a great lesson for and in my journey and and granted that didn't kill me. Like I said, once again, don't make the mistakes that kill you. That didn't kill me, but it certainly was an opportunity cost that that I lost by attacking that opportunity in the wrong way. Yeah. And I think probably so if you're taking notes here, what I'm hearing Adam say is not only just don't take the risk that kills you. Right?
Because some risks you have to take, and some of them come close to killing you. I think every entrepreneur has been close to dying. But here's the reality is that there's a formula to thinking worst case scenario, best case scenario that I'm hearing him talk about. And they've even in the midst of that, there's competition. There's other things in the market. There's supply chain issues right now. There's COVID stuff. There's this, that, and the other.
There's labor shortages going that that you have nothing to do with, quote, unquote, as an entrepreneur in today's world. And so from a bad decision perspective, what he's saying really is try your darndest to make the good decisions when you Chaz. So that way, the external factors, like this case right here, he just picked the wrong thing, not knowingly necessarily, but it didn't kill him. It didn't have to kill him because he had made a lot of other really good choices. Right.
He built himself a buffer inside of his business because it wasn't just risk risk risk risk risk risk. It was let me make good choice repeatedly over and over. So that way when I do make the risky choice and it goes wrong, it doesn't kill me. That's how you survive entrepreneurship. You don't actually die. Exactly. Okay. So you've given us so much, dude.
I wanna transition here a little bit to to the speed round because I know we're gonna these are supposed to be one word answers, but I know we're gonna get into this a little bit in your business. So I know there's a couple businesses right now, and you haven't even talked about, really, your 2 main businesses. Your 2 main businesses being food service to the fraternities, like you mentioned, you've got 500 plus employees. Like, this is a crushing business right now.
In addition to that, you and I've had some awesome talks about short term rental stuff and and just real estate and and you have a huge long term legacy play when it comes to real estate, and I just we are so like minded in that way. When it comes to those businesses, If you could track one metric forever and ever, you can only pick 1. What do you pick? For me, balance I think that I can't be writing my business if I don't have the right balance in my life.
And so I'm constantly looking at that as the barometer because in all honesty, like, my businesses are super important to me Chaz it's I have a work family just like I have a family at home. Nothing nothing that I do in business or everything I do in business, rather, pales in comparison to my job as a husband and a father, and and and what I do with my family. And so I think that just always having that balance and making sure that my priorities are right.
Honestly, that's the metric that I use most of my life. And I believe that if you have that, it just clears your head for all of the other decisions that you need to make, in your business because you're growing it for the right reason. And you're you're investing in it for the right reasons. And so that for me is really the staple. And then once it gets into the actual business, if you wanna transition into there, I think finding what in my business we call it our prime costs. Okay?
And so, every business has a different prime cost. For my food service business Chaz prime the prime costs are food and labor. Those are my big expense lines. And so I'm always tracking on a daily basis, where are we at on our prime cost? Because for me, if our prime costs are in line, then we're gonna be profit. Everything else is gonna shake out. And so I think with the real estate business, it's the same way when you go into an opportunity.
Yep. You're evaluating what is my position going to be in this property? Is is this going to be a successful venture? And you're always looking at those prime areas or those 2 or 3 main points that that are the part of your. I've seen entrepreneurs. They get caught up in the minutiae. Yep. Okay. And they lose sight of the fact, if you're chasing down and I'm not saying that the cost, let's just take, like, insurance, for instance.
If you take 6 weeks trying to negotiate with an insurance carrier about your insurance costs, but you take your eye off of how much you're spending on labor and food and all this kind of stuff. You've completely lost focus of what's gonna make your business profitable. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to get the best price on your insurance. You should.
But I think it's all about prioritizing and figuring in your business, what are the 2 or 3 key metrics that are gonna make you profitable and track them all the time? Weekly at minimum, but daily if you can. That's huge. Okay. So you've said several things here. I'm gonna come back to your original metric because wow. Oh, we're gonna come back to that. We have to.
They're they're the the the gathering of the Kings podcast is exactly what you've just said, which is we have to be able to boil it all down to the entire kingdom, which isn't just the business. Business, family, all the other things that were made for. So all of it to say, let's go back to your metrics here because this is exactly how I've done my my franchise business. And then then now getting into real estate as Wolfe. You pick your 2 or 3 main, what he called, prime costs.
And these are the things that you hone in on everything else, you still wanna pay attention to and shake down, but it has to be able to be broken down into 2 or 3 main things that you're really tracking. This is exactly what I've done as well. I would even give you an an example here. This past week, I met a a real estate investor, and he's he's flipping. And he told me that he has he's on week 3, trying to find a stove for this unit.
And I'm thinking in my brain, like, a stove, 3, 4, 5, 6, a thousand bucks. I can't imagine that this stove is really you can't find one, what's the issue? And he's like, oh, I can't find one that fits my $300 budget. I can find one right now, and it's for 600 bucks. And I literally across the table said, buy the $600 stove and move on because the time that you have spent trying to save $300 you could have done another deal, or you could have been thinking it at a bigger play, really.
He was just so stuck in the minutiae, like you were saying, I gotta find the deal. I gotta find the deal. I gotta find the deal. As opposed to valuing his time, really. So all of the value of the time circles way back, Adam, to what you're talking about with your family. So let's crack that just for half a second here. Why has for you for so long? Your family, being a husband, being a dad, been as important? Because we all say that it is. We want it to.
But for you, it sounds like it has been, and you've prioritized it. So for the guy that's listening or the lady who believes the same thing that you say, but they're having troubles getting there. How do they prioritize it? How have you prioritize it so that you can actually be balanced? I think that as we talk about the kingdom, and we talk about being a king and all these things. I think it's a great analogy. I think you're doing great things with this.
But for me, it starts with with saying to myself, okay. I'm gonna follow, in my life, this is my philosophy. I'm not actually going to be the king. I'm gonna follow the king of kings. You know what I mean?
I'm gonna live my life in a way that it is gonna represent my faith And so I think that when you start there and you truly do live that I'm 3rd attitude of god first, other 2nd, I'm 3rd, and and and in others Chaz includes your family, and that includes your friends, and that includes your business partners and all of the same people in your life and really putting yourself there. That puts you in a position of leadership that is just so much different.
And I think it allows people to look at you and say, hey. There's something different about that guy. What is different? And then when you're blessed to have success, then it puts you on this stage where people are with you even necessarily wanting it, they're looking at you. And they're saying, I'm gonna watch that guy. What what's he doing? How is he being successful?
And so I think that's one of my main goals in is just to make sure that when people are looking at me, when I don't even know they are, what are they seeing? What do they see? Do they see a guy that is just so driven in business. That's all he cares about, and and he's willing to do things unethically to get it done, or do they see a guy who truly has a great balance in his and it's a great example for what we should all strive to be. And let me tell you something.
I I fail every single day, every week, every month because I think that pursuit of what I'm pursuing, perfection Yeah. It it's impossible. And and and that's the reason why faith is so cool for me because we don't have to be perfect. That that's what's amazing. So I think that that to me is the foundation that that's built that, but it doesn't mean that that you can't be a really success entrepreneur in it. Doesn't mean that you can't go get them.
It doesn't mean you can't have this, like, this hunger to to be successful and to do the best you can to just have to be doing it for the right reasons, and it can't be all about building your own kingdom. You gotta make sure that as you grow, how can you impact other people around you, whether it's the 500 employees that I have influence over every day? Like, how can I positively impact their lives beyond just them cashing their page What can I do in my community now? Right?
Now that we found success, are are there areas in the community that that I can help with for for people who aren't as fortunate? So I think that that is really, a cool change in my life in the last few years that's happened. It's just the ability to be able to look at Chaz. And I think it's okay if that's a goal that you have because as you're building, you may not be in a position to be able to do that yet, and that's okay.
But I think as long as you're building for the right reasons and you know that when you make it, to that place. That's gonna be something you're gonna wanna do. I think that's a really cool, really cool way to do it because you can there's so many ways you can do stuff without money. You can give back without So 100%. I think that the finances and all that is awesome, but there's a lot of ways that you can give back without having it be purely financial A 100%. Yeah. It's a spirit, really.
It's a it's an attitude of servitude and being a servant as a leader. Obviously, that there's a great book, servant leadership that that kind of breaks us down a little bit as well. But, yeah, to your point, the picture of the kingdom doesn't just have the business. It has the family. It has the whole entire thing.
But even bigger than that, which you gave, which I love, and I totally agree with, is the idea really is is that all the kings eventually take off their crowns, right, unto the king of kings, as you mentioned. And so I love that perspective We share a lot of commonality there. So if you're listening right now, the uniqueness of the story that he's building is because of his design, his purpose. Who he is as a son, who is as a king, son meaning, uh-uh, son of the king.
And that perspective of sonship leads you to great gratitude and thankfulness and being able to then go out beyond what it is that we think we need for ourselves, there's nothing wrong with that to get yours, but to have the influence and the community, the team, the family, all of that is is really a a larger part of what we're designed for. So thank you for sharing that with us. And two last questions.
If you could recommend a book right now to a six figure owner, practically one that you just got so much value from, what would it be? Man, that is a great question because I'm gonna be perfectly honest with you. When I was in college, I had to use cliff notes every single time. So I'm gonna be one of these weird entrepreneurs that I do a ton of reading.
I I don't do a a ton of reading books, which I know is gonna be surprising people because I think that most successful entrepreneurs do read books, and I would encourage people too. What anytime I do get a chance to read a book, it's a positive thing for me. I'm always learning. For me, most of my learning has been honestly grabbing on to other people that have had and instead of necessarily reading their book, it's like trying to get a hold of them and say, hey. Can I have coffee with you?
Can I have lunch with you? I wanna learn. I I wanna learn what you've done and what's been successful. I liken it to driving, you know, if you're driving down the road with a blind fold on and you have somebody in the passenger seat with you Chaz telling you when to turn and and and how to miss these potholes and and entrepreneurship, sometimes it is. We literally, in a new business, put on a blindfold, and we just go and we start driving down the road.
And so if you can figure out a way to not be doing that alone all the time and do that with mentors and peers and things like you're doing here at Chaz, the the to to be able to listen to podcast and hear from other people that have had success. And Chaz to me, at this stage in my life Chaz replaced the book. It might have something to do with 3 kids, 96 too.
Yeah. Yeah. Then by the time I get them to bed every night, it's man, I just it's time for me to go to sleep or go do a few more emails before I hit the sack. That's right. That's right. No. I agree with that. Alright. So last thing for today, Adam, you've given us so much value. If you lost it all, I mean, you have if we're talking about kingdoms, you your kingdom is pretty big. If it all fell apart today and you had literally nothing tomorrow, what do you do?
Well, I think that ultimately is what drives most entrepreneurs. Yeah. And I think if we're honest with ourselves, the idea that we could lose it all at any moment is oftentimes what keeps us from ever losing it all. Right. I think that if you don't have a little bit of that in your every day that you could potentially lose it all.
You're probably not pushing the envelope part enough, and you're probably not working quite hard enough in in that journey and you found yourself in a really comfortable position. And maybe later on in your life, when all of your investments are passive, maybe that's the place you wanna when you're sipping a margarita on the beach and and this whole journey is behind you and you're just reaping the rewards of it, great.
But I think if you're not worried about losing at all, I think that's a place that you should be as an entrepreneur. And, of course, I'm not encouraging you to lose it at all. But if it had go back to what I said before, it would be disappointing. You would but at the end of the day, it it's like getting knocked out in the ring.
You're gonna you're gonna pick yourself back up and you're gonna go back out there and try to find that next idea Chaz to take care of your family, and it sure helps when your identity isn't tied up in that. And I had a great lesson in that not too long ago. I sold my last restaurant that I had to be able to do the food service company full time and really focus my efforts there.
And I was really worried, like, I think a lot of good entrepreneurs, we struggle with humility and and ego, and I was just worried about what's the community's perception of me, basic closing or selling this. And what I found out afterwards was nobody cared. These things are so much more important to us than they are to anybody in And so I think that if you do lose it all, like, I just don't think that anyone should be that worried about what the perception is of Chaz.
I have a business partner right now in one of my businesses that that came in, as a partner of ours, and he's a billionaire. And guess what? He went bankrupt already once, and and he's a billionaire again, for the second time. And so stories like that, you just have to pick yourself back up and make adjustments the time. And I I think that's what I would do. And and if your focus is in the right place and your identity is not tied up a 100% in your business, then guess what?
You're gonna you're gonna have a life to go home to even if you lose your business and and you're gonna have a support system to be able to help get you back on your feet. I love it. Love it. Okay, Adam. Thank you so much. For someone who's listening today that has just resonated with you and they wanna connect with you. And, maybe they wanna maybe they wanna connect with you in business somehow or become one of those one of those partners. How do they connect with you?
Sure. Our business our primary business is called upper crust food service, and so that's how people could find us online. And then my email is, probably the best way to get a hold of me. Super easy. It's just my name, Adam, at uppercrustfoodservice.com. Easy enough. Okay. Guys, if you're listening, guys, and gals, if you're listening today, you may wanna go back a couple of times. You could probably listen to this episode another 6 or 7 times and not get everything Adam said.
And so he really dropped some wisdom on us today. And so thank you. So much for coming and doing that and taking the time out of your precious day, for doing that for everybody. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. Sure. It's been great. Congratulations on all of your success with the podcast and everything else you're doing. I think it's great to to encourage other entrepreneurs. And that's the last thing I'll say before I go is this is not a competition when it comes to entrepreneurship.
But support each other because everybody's at a different place in their journey. And I I love rooting on other people that are that are in their journey. And and so I think there's enough business out there for everybody, and we can all have that mindset. 100%. That's abundant speaking from the core. I love it. Thank you so much, Adam. We appreciate it. Thanks for listening to Gathering the Kings.
We hope you got a ton of value today and learned a thing or 2 about taking your business to 7 figures and beyond. If you desire more and want a community around you to help you get there, I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com. That's gathering the king's dot com and I want you to apply for our next becoming a king 90 day intensive. We are extremely exclusive by nature as a group.
That means that we're really wanting only the entrepreneurs who take their business and targets super serious to apply. So if that's you, you think you got what it takes, to level up your business, I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com and apply. And we will see you on the other side.