September 16, 2024 • 26 mins
Jeff's journey is a compelling one. After a decade in the insurance industry with Century Insurance, he followed his passion by purchasing an independent insurance agency in Littleton, Colorado, creating Security-First Insurance. Jeff’s story is a testament to the highs and lows of entrepreneurship—the thrilling startup phase, the grueling early years, and the eventual realization that ownership wasn't all he had hoped for.
In this episode, Jeff and I delve into the concept of Business Maturity Date (BMD)—a goal for achieving a business that provides both financial rewards and personal freedom. Jeff shares his experience of transitioning from a hands-on operator to a leader who could step back and enjoy life more fully. We discuss the importance of setting a BMD, overcoming self-doubt, and creating a supportive business culture.
Check our special offer for the Making Money is Killing Your Business: https://bit.ly/m/3to5Club
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Today, I'm with Jeff Kramendyke.
He started his career in the insurance industry
with Century Insurance, and after a great 10
-year run with them, he followed his dream
and his passion for insurance and purchased an
(00:45):
independent insurance agency in Littleton, Colorado, and a
security-first insurance agency was born.
Jeff's journey as a business owner is a
great story.
So many of us have experienced it.
It's the thrill of the startup, the long
hours, the tough times, coming to the end
of ourselves, learning how to build a business
that gives us freedom and how he did
(01:07):
that and gave him freedom in his business,
not from it.
For Jeff, faith, family, and friends continue to
be at the top of his priorities, and
he is happily married to Leslie for 28
years, and he's got two amazing boys that
are launching their own careers here in Denver.
Welcome, Jeff.
It's great to have you on the podcast.
Thanks, Jack.
Great to be here.
(01:27):
Appreciate you having me, and it's great to
see you again.
Yeah, you too.
Well, today we're going to talk about business
maturity and specifically what we call the BMD,
the business maturity date, and how getting off
the treadmill is the key to getting that
done, but I want to just start with
kind of a question about the first few
(01:48):
years.
What was it like?
You get your business idea, you get those
hopes, these dreams, and you'd start out, and
for the first couple, three, four years, you
have this thing that you're just moving with.
I just want to get your feeling of
what your experience was when you started out
and how the hopes and dreams became something
(02:09):
that may not have been all you hoped
it would be, but let's start with the
good stuff.
Hopes and dreams.
Yeah, such a great question, and thinking back,
that was almost 20 years ago where I
left corporate America and had this itch that
I just felt needed to be scratched, this
(02:30):
entrepreneurial itch to get into business.
I loved the industry that I was in,
but you know what?
The grass is greener, certainly, on the business
ownership side of the fence, and I decided
to leave everything that was stable and comfortable
and known and went ahead and made the
(02:52):
leap and bought a small insurance agency in
downtown Littleton and really started to realize my
dream.
Let me stop you on that for a
second.
Michael Gerber in his book from 1986 called
The E-Myth, he talks about the entrepreneurial
spasm that we get when we get sick
(03:16):
of doing it for somebody else.
What motivated you to leave the security of
that management position in a corporation to strike
out on your own to start your own
business?
What was motivating that?
Yeah, I think as in all corporate settings,
I think the rhythm, the cycle just begins
(03:39):
to wear on, especially a sales guy like
I was, right?
It's kind of same old thing, what are
you going to do for me today?
It's not.
Yesterday is never enough.
I think being somewhat exhausted by that cycle
and again, having to do the same thing
(04:00):
even better the next year, it was just
becoming a little boring and quite frankly, tiring.
I had always had somewhat of an entrepreneurial
spirit.
I wouldn't call myself a serial entrepreneur by
any means, but really just was intrigued and
(04:21):
maybe it was a spasm per se, but
once I acted on it, it was too
late to go back.
We all have those.
I still have spasms where I go, hey,
I think I'll do this and then you
look back, what in the world caused me
to do that?
That really was a reaction and they're good
reactions.
I appreciate your distinction.
Anytime we need to put a qualifier on
(04:42):
a word, it's probably because the word isn't
exactly precisely what we want.
When you said, I may be an entrepreneur,
I don't know, but I'm not a serial
entrepreneur.
I've done a lot of studies on this
and I think there's a real distinction and
they're both great and they just take different
paths between a business owner and an entrepreneur.
(05:02):
Bill Gates was a business owner, one of
the richest men, if not the richest man
on earth for a while, but he was
a business owner.
Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur.
The difference was Bill Gates had one thing
he learned and he found it, learned it
from somebody else.
He went out on his own and he
just got better and better at that one
thing his whole life.
It was that one thing.
(05:23):
Other people go out and say, okay, where
is there a hole in the economy that
I don't know?
I don't know what I'm doing, but I
see a hole over, I think I'll go
try and fill it.
That's the crazy wild eyed entrepreneur who fails
nine times out of 10, but the 10th
one is an incredible win and all that
stuff.
I just appreciate, I want to make that
distinction for our listeners that there really is
(05:44):
a distinction and they're both great and they're
both two different paths.
You took that one and I personally, being
the entrepreneur type, having built 13 businesses and
10 industries, I wish I was more of
the business owner because the entrepreneur leaves a
lot of damage in their path.
There's a lot of things that your family
(06:04):
has to endure and other people around you
that if you just stuck to one thing.
I really appreciate that and they both really
have the same passion.
We want to improve the world.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I think it is.
It's really good to know who you are
and who you aren't and those around you
to know who you are and who you
aren't so that they can choose to sign
(06:25):
up or not, right?
Exactly.
You had that desire, that dream.
You went out and you bought something and
you showed up the first day or the
first few weeks and I'm guessing it was
exhilarating.
For me, it was.
Yeah.
It's 13 different- Absolutely.
No, it was great.
I mean, I think what I didn't know
was certainly benefiting me at that point.
It was super exciting, felt like the adventure
(06:46):
of a lifetime, had a great time doing
it.
Really didn't raise any capital per se to
kind of get me through year one or
year two, but I had some savings that
really allowed my wife and I to kind
of live on those savings.
So I didn't take a paycheck from the
(07:08):
business.
I think my theory going in to the
first couple of years was, hey, I'm the
last one that gets paid.
I'm the business owner here.
And I was fully prepared on that front.
But yet it was just this exhilarating season
that really propelled me through stage one into
(07:30):
stage two, survival mode, burned a lot of
fuel, getting the rocket off the ground, as
you often say.
And before I knew it, I would say
into year two, going into year three, I'm
like, is this really what this is all
about?
Is this really what the next 20, 30
years is going to consist of?
I mean, this hope of time and money
(07:52):
has certainly not led to significance at this
point in time.
I am like burning the candle at both
ends.
Yeah, we're finally profitable.
We're sustainable.
We've hit a level of subsistence, but man,
this is no way to live.
So you talked about that offline, and I
(08:12):
really appreciate that.
First of all, I appreciate what you said
earlier.
What I didn't know really benefited me.
Ignorance is bliss at times.
It was.
So good.
It can be a really good thing because
it's like raising your kids.
If you got a six-inch binder on
what would happen over the next 18 years
before you had kids, we wouldn't reproduce.
(08:32):
That's right.
Not a bad.
But of course, the joy comes with the
difficulties as well.
So yeah, I really appreciate that.
It's good ignorance.
It should be that way.
You shouldn't know everything, nor should you know
all the joys you would have either.
Then there wouldn't be joy.
But then you started to settle in, and
(08:55):
I think it settled in for you faster
than it does for some people.
I know for me.
You said after a couple or three years,
it was like, I think one of the
things you said out there was that ownership
wasn't all I had hoped for.
Yes.
Give that a little more breath.
Yeah.
I just think I'm not unique in this
(09:18):
realm, but I just felt like, gosh, it'd
be great to own a business.
That way I'd be in charge of my
time, in charge of my money, and everything
would be great.
I think it's just that extremely romanticized picture
that we all have as inspiring entrepreneurs that,
(09:43):
gosh, the life of business ownership is really
where it's at.
I was certainly wooed by that and quickly
realized that that wasn't all the case.
Yeah.
Again, you're right.
We all experience that.
At some point, I've had people who experienced
it not for 20 years.
It finally came to them, this isn't all
(10:05):
it was cracked up to be.
For me, I went through probably three or
four businesses that all lasted three or four
years at a time.
It was a long stretch for me before
I finally said in my fifth or my
sixth business, it was actually my sixth business,
I said, I don't know how I'm going
to do this, but I've got to do
this differently.
I still wanted to be a business owner
because once you taste that, there's a sense
(10:25):
of freedom you were missing in your corporate
job you mentioned, hey, I was tired of
doing the same old thing and having to
report in, and there's a joy in that.
We need a bumper sticker that says, it's
a business owner thing you wouldn't understand.
Once you get that, you realize, yeah, I'm
going to keep this.
I kept doing it, but I was doing
it the same way as I was just
(10:46):
on a treadmill reproducing the same dumb result
every time.
In my sixth business, I just said, I
don't know how I'm going to do this,
but I'm going to do it differently.
You began to figure out that it wasn't
what it was cracked up to be.
What was missing?
What do you think was missing?
Well, looking back, certainly a lot was missing.
(11:08):
I had a job and I wanted to
be a business owner.
I'm talking specifically, when you started to get
to this realization that being a business owner
after two or three years, this wasn't what
it was cracked up to be, what was
missing then?
What did you feel like?
Why isn't this what it was supposed to
(11:28):
be?
Yeah.
Well, I certainly was obviously missing the time
and the money and obviously the significance.
I think at that point in time, Leslie
felt, my wife, that she had potentially been
sold a bill of goods.
I was really getting to a point in
(11:49):
my parenting years, I had two young boys
and really wanted to spend more time with
them.
And yet the business was really kind of
my first priority.
So I think it was really a realignment
of my priorities and what I wanted going
forward.
And it meant that I needed to make
a change.
(12:11):
Yeah, that's really well said.
It took me again, I'm a slow learner,
it took me probably a year to figure
this out.
The time was the real issue.
My business at that time, my third or
fourth business there, it was actually giving me
money.
But I still felt like this wasn't what
was cracked up to me because I felt
like a hostage to this business.
I bought myself, I used the word job,
(12:32):
I built myself a job.
And that job had probably more tyranny involved
and more claim on my life than when
I worked if you worked in corporate, because
then you go home on Friday and come
back and leave it behind.
That's right.
Yeah, you weren't leaving it behind.
So you came to the end of yourself
on that stuff.
(12:54):
I think you mentioned that you found my
book or found us or whatever.
This isn't a commercial for us.
We have nothing new under the sun, we
haven't invented anything.
But this happened to be your path.
So you found something that kind of gave
you a big aha.
What was it?
Yeah.
So I think I was, yeah, I was
(13:14):
introduced to three to five club, the book
in particular, invited to visit a group by
John Hokama, actually, good friend of mine, and
John was in the process of building a
group, a three to five group.
And so I visited and read the book,
(13:34):
and really started to see clearly where I
was and where I wanted to go.
I think I was in a real season
of disorientation, feeling like I, you know, again,
had jumped into something that I thought would
be different than what it actually was.
And it was really, you know, the book,
(13:55):
Making Money is Killing My Business, just really
rang true.
And I began to become reoriented to realize
that, wait a minute, this wasn't, you know,
just, you know, this wasn't such a, what
I thought was a good idea.
I mean, it was actually a bad idea.
(14:17):
And it was being carried out violently, as
you have said.
But there is structure, there was a way
to potentially, you know, bring this into order.
And that's when I was introduced to the
different stages of business, it was pretty clear
that I could see I was, you know,
probably in a stage two or three business
at the time, and then really begin to
(14:38):
see through the introduction of the book, and
also joining a three to five club that,
you know, I needed to get to stage
four, and eventually stage five as soon as
I could, by achieving my business maturity date.
So three to five club for our listeners
is a business mastermind for business owners, specifically,
it's not a networking group has nothing to
(15:00):
do with that.
It's at a much different level.
And it's a place where we all figure
out together, we use this phrase, it's a
place to go to say three magic words.
I don't know.
Where do you go to say I don't
know?
Yeah, we don't have that opportunity.
That's right.
We don't, not only in business, but in
life.
And so, yeah, Syllabus, you know, syllabus to
(15:22):
help us figure out how to get through
that.
So you've talked before offline about being off
the treadmill or being on the treadmill.
And what are some things that you feel
like you learned in your journey that were
beginning to get you hope that you could
get off this hostage treadmill you were on?
Yeah, yeah, I think there were some, you
(15:43):
know, key concepts.
Obviously, I needed to realize that I no
longer wanted to be or could be the
craftsman, right?
I couldn't be the one in the business,
making the chairs any longer.
I needed to begin to really create an
organization, create a business, put other very capable
(16:05):
or even more capable people around me in
the different areas of the business so that
I could begin to really oftentimes I use
the word picture of a steamship, right?
Like get out of the engine room, get
up on the deck so I can at
(16:25):
least start breathing air and certainly kind of
take some soundings, but eventually I wanted to
get up to the crow's nest so I
could see where this business was going to
go eventually and avoid the pitfalls and so
on and so forth.
So really moving into, you know, more of
a leadership, executive leadership role as opposed to
(16:48):
an operator.
So one of the things we talked about
and you read in the book is this
idea of a business maturity date, a BMD,
and how did that fall into or how
did that work its way into, how did
that help you get hope?
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, like any great goal such as a
(17:10):
business maturity date, which, you know, Chuck, we
can certainly define here in several different ways,
but nonetheless, it needed to be time stamped,
right?
And that's what I loved about, you know,
the three to five club.
It put outside eyes on my business and
on me and brought accountability that I'd never
really had as a business owner.
(17:32):
And so the idea, which I think actually
can be done quicker than three to five
years, was to get my business to a
point of maturity in three years.
And for me, that was going to be
June 29, 2011.
June 29 is my wedding anniversary.
(17:55):
And 2011 seemed like a reasonable amount of
time, which was about two years to actually
get the business to a point where I
could actually take time away from it and
it would continue to make money.
So that's part of the definition of a
business maturity date.
You mentioned that it has to be time
stamped, that any business can get to the
(18:18):
place where it gives us money.
It's when our business gets to the place
where it's giving us back regularly, consistently both
time and money that I can be gone
on Thursdays or I can be gone on
Fridays.
And the business makes money when I'm not
there.
It doesn't stop when I stop.
A business maturity date means it gives me
both time and money, whatever I want, whether
(18:39):
it's one day a week or three days
a week.
So I think that's important that people understand
that.
And you're right.
When I named three to five club, three
to five club, I named it figuring that
from the beginning, from the printing of a
business card to being able to get consistently
some time, even if it's a half a
day from your business, it shouldn't take us
(19:01):
more than three to five years in any
industry.
And you're right.
We could have named it one to three
club because most people that we connect with
aren't starting their businesses.
They've got two, three, four, five, 10 years
behind them.
They've laid a bunch of groundwork and it
is really just a one or two year
shift to get to where, okay, I'm no
longer a hostage to my business.
(19:21):
What are some, so that was a, did
you, was there any time at point or
point in time where you felt like, oh,
I've set this date that's, you know, a
year out or whatever.
And I don't know, I'm not sure I'm
going to be able to make it.
Was there any doubts?
Oh yeah, definitely.
I think for small businesses, you know, mine
(19:43):
in particular, as we started to hire, you
know, staff and begin to put these key
positions in place for a small business, it
meant that that business maturity date was hanging
kind of, you know, in the, you know,
kind of, yeah, just hanging out there kind
of at risk at all times, just by
(20:05):
maybe losing an employee, you know, if it
was my assistant or if it was a
producer, if it was maybe our front desk
person or a key customer service person, just
losing that one person would set me back.
That's like one, two steps for one step
forward, two steps back kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
And there were a lot of those moments
for sure.
(20:25):
No doubt about it.
But again, really stuck to it.
And my team members helped me stay committed
to that and helped me accountable to get.
So let's explore that for a second.
So you have this business maturity date where
you have in your mind that on your
business maturity date, you're going to walk out
the door that day and going forward, you're
(20:47):
going to take fill in the blank.
You know, you're going to have every Friday
off or every Monday off or every Wednesday
morning off.
And then you're going to build on that.
And it just sounds like this self-centered
sort of thing that everybody else should be
talked about.
They're just like, what is Jeff doing?
How dare he?
Did you experience that from other people or
(21:07):
did you experience something different?
Or maybe mix?
Yeah, no, I think I didn't necessarily have
any experiences.
I think, however, I felt that way about
myself.
So that was the only person I experienced
that from was me.
Exactly.
Like just had a work ethic that I
(21:29):
grew up with, my parents instilled in me.
And this idea of not working as hard
as I had been really didn't, it felt
really uncomfortable for myself.
I had to get used to it.
I hear that all the time.
You know, yeah, nobody else seemed to have
a problem with it.
I was the one.
I'm thinking of this guy in Chicago who
(21:51):
was working five, six days a week, making
a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.
Now he works one day a week and
makes 500,000 a year.
And he had the hardest time with this.
He felt so bad.
His entire team was constantly trying to push
him out the door to get him to
his freedom.
They were more than happy to do that
because that means they had more agency.
They had it showed that he demonstrated confidence
(22:13):
in them.
So how did you how did you communicate
this with your team in a way that
they obviously didn't push back on it?
What benefit do you feel like they got
out of you pursuing a business maturity date?
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot.
I think it really started with our culture,
which I'm sure we'll get into here, maybe
in another another podcast of some sort in
(22:35):
the future.
But, you know, really one of the things
that three to five club in the book
in particular really stressed was, you know, just
the importance of a two page strategic plan
and really the importance of making that first
page, you know, kind of your roadmap, really,
you know, the Bible of your business, you
(22:57):
know, coming up with, you know, getting vision,
mission, core values, just this this whole idea
of what this business was about and that
it was here to provide an ideal lifestyle,
not just for me, but for all of
our people, all of our stakeholders.
And so I think I think that was
one of the key things that really aligned
(23:18):
with what we were trying to create from
a culture perspective.
If anyone was hired into the organization and
had, you know, took exception to, you know,
someone exercising an ideal lifestyle, that was it
was not something that stuck along, stuck around
real long.
Yeah.
And so I definitely want to have you
back to talk about how you built that
(23:39):
culture of inclusion and freedom for everybody, because
I think it's important.
But I think it's just it's important from
my perspective that we understand that a business
maturity date is not self-centered.
Actually, every experience I've ever had is that
somebody else benefited as well.
Everybody else in the business benefited.
Well, we we've just scratched the surface and
(24:01):
we're out of time, which it's hard to
move on.
But how can people get a hold of
you to learn more about your experience and
for insurance?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, just kind of a quick conclusion to
what's been a great journey and really a
plan followed that Chuck's laid out in a
(24:23):
couple of his books.
But we were able to sell our business
successfully here in March of 2022.
We are just finishing up a three year
earn out and we were purchased by a
private equity company that is branded by the
name of One Digital Insurance.
We're a national insurance brokerage.
(24:45):
And yeah, I can be found at JeffKromendyke
at gmail.com would probably be the best
place to reach me without getting, you know,
intermixing business and this idea.
And you can always look me up with
(25:07):
One Digital as well.
And we can also put people in touch
so they can get a hold of us
and say, hey, I want to hear more
about how Kromendyke pulled this off and how
he got to the point where he was
a hostage and now he's got this freedom
and now he's sold the business.
How did he do all that?
Love for people to connect with you on
that so you can mentor them in that
situation as well.
(25:28):
Jeff, this has been a pleasure.
We're going to have you back.
That was too short, but it was sweet.
Appreciate you and appreciate your journey.
Great.
Thank you, Chuck.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off The Treadmill podcast.
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
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(25:48):
grow your business and to get off the
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workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
G-R-O-W at cranksetgroup.com.
Until next time, have a great week.
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Today, I'm with Jeff Kramendyke.
He started his career in the insurance industry
with Century Insurance, and after a great 10
-year run with them, he followed his dream
and his passion for insurance and purchased an
(00:45):
independent insurance agency in Littleton, Colorado, and a
security-first insurance agency was born.
Jeff's journey as a business owner is a
great story.
So many of us have experienced it.
It's the thrill of the startup, the long
hours, the tough times, coming to the end
of ourselves, learning how to build a business
that gives us freedom and how he did
(01:07):
that and gave him freedom in his business,
not from it.
For Jeff, faith, family, and friends continue to
be at the top of his priorities, and
he is happily married to Leslie for 28
years, and he's got two amazing boys that
are launching their own careers here in Denver.
Welcome, Jeff.
It's great to have you on the podcast.
Thanks, Jack.
Great to be here.
(01:27):
Appreciate you having me, and it's great to
see you again.
Yeah, you too.
Well, today we're going to talk about business
maturity and specifically what we call the BMD,
the business maturity date, and how getting off
the treadmill is the key to getting that
done, but I want to just start with
kind of a question about the first few
(01:48):
years.
What was it like?
You get your business idea, you get those
hopes, these dreams, and you'd start out, and
for the first couple, three, four years, you
have this thing that you're just moving with.
I just want to get your feeling of
what your experience was when you started out
and how the hopes and dreams became something
(02:09):
that may not have been all you hoped
it would be, but let's start with the
good stuff.
Hopes and dreams.
Yeah, such a great question, and thinking back,
that was almost 20 years ago where I
left corporate America and had this itch that
I just felt needed to be scratched, this
(02:30):
entrepreneurial itch to get into business.
I loved the industry that I was in,
but you know what?
The grass is greener, certainly, on the business
ownership side of the fence, and I decided
to leave everything that was stable and comfortable
and known and went ahead and made the
(02:52):
leap and bought a small insurance agency in
downtown Littleton and really started to realize my
dream.
Let me stop you on that for a
second.
Michael Gerber in his book from 1986 called
The E-Myth, he talks about the entrepreneurial
spasm that we get when we get sick
(03:16):
of doing it for somebody else.
What motivated you to leave the security of
that management position in a corporation to strike
out on your own to start your own
business?
What was motivating that?
Yeah, I think as in all corporate settings,
I think the rhythm, the cycle just begins
(03:39):
to wear on, especially a sales guy like
I was, right?
It's kind of same old thing, what are
you going to do for me today?
It's not.
Yesterday is never enough.
I think being somewhat exhausted by that cycle
and again, having to do the same thing
(04:00):
even better the next year, it was just
becoming a little boring and quite frankly, tiring.
I had always had somewhat of an entrepreneurial
spirit.
I wouldn't call myself a serial entrepreneur by
any means, but really just was intrigued and
(04:21):
maybe it was a spasm per se, but
once I acted on it, it was too
late to go back.
We all have those.
I still have spasms where I go, hey,
I think I'll do this and then you
look back, what in the world caused me
to do that?
That really was a reaction and they're good
reactions.
I appreciate your distinction.
Anytime we need to put a qualifier on
(04:42):
a word, it's probably because the word isn't
exactly precisely what we want.
When you said, I may be an entrepreneur,
I don't know, but I'm not a serial
entrepreneur.
I've done a lot of studies on this
and I think there's a real distinction and
they're both great and they just take different
paths between a business owner and an entrepreneur.
(05:02):
Bill Gates was a business owner, one of
the richest men, if not the richest man
on earth for a while, but he was
a business owner.
Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur.
The difference was Bill Gates had one thing
he learned and he found it, learned it
from somebody else.
He went out on his own and he
just got better and better at that one
thing his whole life.
It was that one thing.
(05:23):
Other people go out and say, okay, where
is there a hole in the economy that
I don't know?
I don't know what I'm doing, but I
see a hole over, I think I'll go
try and fill it.
That's the crazy wild eyed entrepreneur who fails
nine times out of 10, but the 10th
one is an incredible win and all that
stuff.
I just appreciate, I want to make that
distinction for our listeners that there really is
(05:44):
a distinction and they're both great and they're
both two different paths.
You took that one and I personally, being
the entrepreneur type, having built 13 businesses and
10 industries, I wish I was more of
the business owner because the entrepreneur leaves a
lot of damage in their path.
There's a lot of things that your family
(06:04):
has to endure and other people around you
that if you just stuck to one thing.
I really appreciate that and they both really
have the same passion.
We want to improve the world.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
No, I think it is.
It's really good to know who you are
and who you aren't and those around you
to know who you are and who you
aren't so that they can choose to sign
(06:25):
up or not, right?
Exactly.
You had that desire, that dream.
You went out and you bought something and
you showed up the first day or the
first few weeks and I'm guessing it was
exhilarating.
For me, it was.
Yeah.
It's 13 different- Absolutely.
No, it was great.
I mean, I think what I didn't know
was certainly benefiting me at that point.
It was super exciting, felt like the adventure
(06:46):
of a lifetime, had a great time doing
it.
Really didn't raise any capital per se to
kind of get me through year one or
year two, but I had some savings that
really allowed my wife and I to kind
of live on those savings.
So I didn't take a paycheck from the
(07:08):
business.
I think my theory going in to the
first couple of years was, hey, I'm the
last one that gets paid.
I'm the business owner here.
And I was fully prepared on that front.
But yet it was just this exhilarating season
that really propelled me through stage one into
(07:30):
stage two, survival mode, burned a lot of
fuel, getting the rocket off the ground, as
you often say.
And before I knew it, I would say
into year two, going into year three, I'm
like, is this really what this is all
about?
Is this really what the next 20, 30
years is going to consist of?
I mean, this hope of time and money
(07:52):
has certainly not led to significance at this
point in time.
I am like burning the candle at both
ends.
Yeah, we're finally profitable.
We're sustainable.
We've hit a level of subsistence, but man,
this is no way to live.
So you talked about that offline, and I
(08:12):
really appreciate that.
First of all, I appreciate what you said
earlier.
What I didn't know really benefited me.
Ignorance is bliss at times.
It was.
So good.
It can be a really good thing because
it's like raising your kids.
If you got a six-inch binder on
what would happen over the next 18 years
before you had kids, we wouldn't reproduce.
(08:32):
That's right.
Not a bad.
But of course, the joy comes with the
difficulties as well.
So yeah, I really appreciate that.
It's good ignorance.
It should be that way.
You shouldn't know everything, nor should you know
all the joys you would have either.
Then there wouldn't be joy.
But then you started to settle in, and
(08:55):
I think it settled in for you faster
than it does for some people.
I know for me.
You said after a couple or three years,
it was like, I think one of the
things you said out there was that ownership
wasn't all I had hoped for.
Yes.
Give that a little more breath.
Yeah.
I just think I'm not unique in this
(09:18):
realm, but I just felt like, gosh, it'd
be great to own a business.
That way I'd be in charge of my
time, in charge of my money, and everything
would be great.
I think it's just that extremely romanticized picture
that we all have as inspiring entrepreneurs that,
(09:43):
gosh, the life of business ownership is really
where it's at.
I was certainly wooed by that and quickly
realized that that wasn't all the case.
Yeah.
Again, you're right.
We all experience that.
At some point, I've had people who experienced
it not for 20 years.
It finally came to them, this isn't all
(10:05):
it was cracked up to be.
For me, I went through probably three or
four businesses that all lasted three or four
years at a time.
It was a long stretch for me before
I finally said in my fifth or my
sixth business, it was actually my sixth business,
I said, I don't know how I'm going
to do this, but I've got to do
this differently.
I still wanted to be a business owner
because once you taste that, there's a sense
(10:25):
of freedom you were missing in your corporate
job you mentioned, hey, I was tired of
doing the same old thing and having to
report in, and there's a joy in that.
We need a bumper sticker that says, it's
a business owner thing you wouldn't understand.
Once you get that, you realize, yeah, I'm
going to keep this.
I kept doing it, but I was doing
it the same way as I was just
(10:46):
on a treadmill reproducing the same dumb result
every time.
In my sixth business, I just said, I
don't know how I'm going to do this,
but I'm going to do it differently.
You began to figure out that it wasn't
what it was cracked up to be.
What was missing?
What do you think was missing?
Well, looking back, certainly a lot was missing.
(11:08):
I had a job and I wanted to
be a business owner.
I'm talking specifically, when you started to get
to this realization that being a business owner
after two or three years, this wasn't what
it was cracked up to be, what was
missing then?
What did you feel like?
Why isn't this what it was supposed to
(11:28):
be?
Yeah.
Well, I certainly was obviously missing the time
and the money and obviously the significance.
I think at that point in time, Leslie
felt, my wife, that she had potentially been
sold a bill of goods.
I was really getting to a point in
(11:49):
my parenting years, I had two young boys
and really wanted to spend more time with
them.
And yet the business was really kind of
my first priority.
So I think it was really a realignment
of my priorities and what I wanted going
forward.
And it meant that I needed to make
a change.
(12:11):
Yeah, that's really well said.
It took me again, I'm a slow learner,
it took me probably a year to figure
this out.
The time was the real issue.
My business at that time, my third or
fourth business there, it was actually giving me
money.
But I still felt like this wasn't what
was cracked up to me because I felt
like a hostage to this business.
I bought myself, I used the word job,
(12:32):
I built myself a job.
And that job had probably more tyranny involved
and more claim on my life than when
I worked if you worked in corporate, because
then you go home on Friday and come
back and leave it behind.
That's right.
Yeah, you weren't leaving it behind.
So you came to the end of yourself
on that stuff.
(12:54):
I think you mentioned that you found my
book or found us or whatever.
This isn't a commercial for us.
We have nothing new under the sun, we
haven't invented anything.
But this happened to be your path.
So you found something that kind of gave
you a big aha.
What was it?
Yeah.
So I think I was, yeah, I was
(13:14):
introduced to three to five club, the book
in particular, invited to visit a group by
John Hokama, actually, good friend of mine, and
John was in the process of building a
group, a three to five group.
And so I visited and read the book,
(13:34):
and really started to see clearly where I
was and where I wanted to go.
I think I was in a real season
of disorientation, feeling like I, you know, again,
had jumped into something that I thought would
be different than what it actually was.
And it was really, you know, the book,
(13:55):
Making Money is Killing My Business, just really
rang true.
And I began to become reoriented to realize
that, wait a minute, this wasn't, you know,
just, you know, this wasn't such a, what
I thought was a good idea.
I mean, it was actually a bad idea.
(14:17):
And it was being carried out violently, as
you have said.
But there is structure, there was a way
to potentially, you know, bring this into order.
And that's when I was introduced to the
different stages of business, it was pretty clear
that I could see I was, you know,
probably in a stage two or three business
at the time, and then really begin to
(14:38):
see through the introduction of the book, and
also joining a three to five club that,
you know, I needed to get to stage
four, and eventually stage five as soon as
I could, by achieving my business maturity date.
So three to five club for our listeners
is a business mastermind for business owners, specifically,
it's not a networking group has nothing to
(15:00):
do with that.
It's at a much different level.
And it's a place where we all figure
out together, we use this phrase, it's a
place to go to say three magic words.
I don't know.
Where do you go to say I don't
know?
Yeah, we don't have that opportunity.
That's right.
We don't, not only in business, but in
life.
And so, yeah, Syllabus, you know, syllabus to
(15:22):
help us figure out how to get through
that.
So you've talked before offline about being off
the treadmill or being on the treadmill.
And what are some things that you feel
like you learned in your journey that were
beginning to get you hope that you could
get off this hostage treadmill you were on?
Yeah, yeah, I think there were some, you
(15:43):
know, key concepts.
Obviously, I needed to realize that I no
longer wanted to be or could be the
craftsman, right?
I couldn't be the one in the business,
making the chairs any longer.
I needed to begin to really create an
organization, create a business, put other very capable
(16:05):
or even more capable people around me in
the different areas of the business so that
I could begin to really oftentimes I use
the word picture of a steamship, right?
Like get out of the engine room, get
up on the deck so I can at
(16:25):
least start breathing air and certainly kind of
take some soundings, but eventually I wanted to
get up to the crow's nest so I
could see where this business was going to
go eventually and avoid the pitfalls and so
on and so forth.
So really moving into, you know, more of
a leadership, executive leadership role as opposed to
(16:48):
an operator.
So one of the things we talked about
and you read in the book is this
idea of a business maturity date, a BMD,
and how did that fall into or how
did that work its way into, how did
that help you get hope?
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, like any great goal such as a
(17:10):
business maturity date, which, you know, Chuck, we
can certainly define here in several different ways,
but nonetheless, it needed to be time stamped,
right?
And that's what I loved about, you know,
the three to five club.
It put outside eyes on my business and
on me and brought accountability that I'd never
really had as a business owner.
(17:32):
And so the idea, which I think actually
can be done quicker than three to five
years, was to get my business to a
point of maturity in three years.
And for me, that was going to be
June 29, 2011.
June 29 is my wedding anniversary.
(17:55):
And 2011 seemed like a reasonable amount of
time, which was about two years to actually
get the business to a point where I
could actually take time away from it and
it would continue to make money.
So that's part of the definition of a
business maturity date.
You mentioned that it has to be time
stamped, that any business can get to the
(18:18):
place where it gives us money.
It's when our business gets to the place
where it's giving us back regularly, consistently both
time and money that I can be gone
on Thursdays or I can be gone on
Fridays.
And the business makes money when I'm not
there.
It doesn't stop when I stop.
A business maturity date means it gives me
both time and money, whatever I want, whether
(18:39):
it's one day a week or three days
a week.
So I think that's important that people understand
that.
And you're right.
When I named three to five club, three
to five club, I named it figuring that
from the beginning, from the printing of a
business card to being able to get consistently
some time, even if it's a half a
day from your business, it shouldn't take us
(19:01):
more than three to five years in any
industry.
And you're right.
We could have named it one to three
club because most people that we connect with
aren't starting their businesses.
They've got two, three, four, five, 10 years
behind them.
They've laid a bunch of groundwork and it
is really just a one or two year
shift to get to where, okay, I'm no
longer a hostage to my business.
(19:21):
What are some, so that was a, did
you, was there any time at point or
point in time where you felt like, oh,
I've set this date that's, you know, a
year out or whatever.
And I don't know, I'm not sure I'm
going to be able to make it.
Was there any doubts?
Oh yeah, definitely.
I think for small businesses, you know, mine
(19:43):
in particular, as we started to hire, you
know, staff and begin to put these key
positions in place for a small business, it
meant that that business maturity date was hanging
kind of, you know, in the, you know,
kind of, yeah, just hanging out there kind
of at risk at all times, just by
(20:05):
maybe losing an employee, you know, if it
was my assistant or if it was a
producer, if it was maybe our front desk
person or a key customer service person, just
losing that one person would set me back.
That's like one, two steps for one step
forward, two steps back kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
And there were a lot of those moments
for sure.
(20:25):
No doubt about it.
But again, really stuck to it.
And my team members helped me stay committed
to that and helped me accountable to get.
So let's explore that for a second.
So you have this business maturity date where
you have in your mind that on your
business maturity date, you're going to walk out
the door that day and going forward, you're
(20:47):
going to take fill in the blank.
You know, you're going to have every Friday
off or every Monday off or every Wednesday
morning off.
And then you're going to build on that.
And it just sounds like this self-centered
sort of thing that everybody else should be
talked about.
They're just like, what is Jeff doing?
How dare he?
Did you experience that from other people or
(21:07):
did you experience something different?
Or maybe mix?
Yeah, no, I think I didn't necessarily have
any experiences.
I think, however, I felt that way about
myself.
So that was the only person I experienced
that from was me.
Exactly.
Like just had a work ethic that I
(21:29):
grew up with, my parents instilled in me.
And this idea of not working as hard
as I had been really didn't, it felt
really uncomfortable for myself.
I had to get used to it.
I hear that all the time.
You know, yeah, nobody else seemed to have
a problem with it.
I was the one.
I'm thinking of this guy in Chicago who
(21:51):
was working five, six days a week, making
a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.
Now he works one day a week and
makes 500,000 a year.
And he had the hardest time with this.
He felt so bad.
His entire team was constantly trying to push
him out the door to get him to
his freedom.
They were more than happy to do that
because that means they had more agency.
They had it showed that he demonstrated confidence
(22:13):
in them.
So how did you how did you communicate
this with your team in a way that
they obviously didn't push back on it?
What benefit do you feel like they got
out of you pursuing a business maturity date?
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot.
I think it really started with our culture,
which I'm sure we'll get into here, maybe
in another another podcast of some sort in
(22:35):
the future.
But, you know, really one of the things
that three to five club in the book
in particular really stressed was, you know, just
the importance of a two page strategic plan
and really the importance of making that first
page, you know, kind of your roadmap, really,
you know, the Bible of your business, you
(22:57):
know, coming up with, you know, getting vision,
mission, core values, just this this whole idea
of what this business was about and that
it was here to provide an ideal lifestyle,
not just for me, but for all of
our people, all of our stakeholders.
And so I think I think that was
one of the key things that really aligned
(23:18):
with what we were trying to create from
a culture perspective.
If anyone was hired into the organization and
had, you know, took exception to, you know,
someone exercising an ideal lifestyle, that was it
was not something that stuck along, stuck around
real long.
Yeah.
And so I definitely want to have you
back to talk about how you built that
(23:39):
culture of inclusion and freedom for everybody, because
I think it's important.
But I think it's just it's important from
my perspective that we understand that a business
maturity date is not self-centered.
Actually, every experience I've ever had is that
somebody else benefited as well.
Everybody else in the business benefited.
Well, we we've just scratched the surface and
(24:01):
we're out of time, which it's hard to
move on.
But how can people get a hold of
you to learn more about your experience and
for insurance?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, just kind of a quick conclusion to
what's been a great journey and really a
plan followed that Chuck's laid out in a
(24:23):
couple of his books.
But we were able to sell our business
successfully here in March of 2022.
We are just finishing up a three year
earn out and we were purchased by a
private equity company that is branded by the
name of One Digital Insurance.
We're a national insurance brokerage.
(24:45):
And yeah, I can be found at JeffKromendyke
at gmail.com would probably be the best
place to reach me without getting, you know,
intermixing business and this idea.
And you can always look me up with
(25:07):
One Digital as well.
And we can also put people in touch
so they can get a hold of us
and say, hey, I want to hear more
about how Kromendyke pulled this off and how
he got to the point where he was
a hostage and now he's got this freedom
and now he's sold the business.
How did he do all that?
Love for people to connect with you on
that so you can mentor them in that
situation as well.
(25:28):
Jeff, this has been a pleasure.
We're going to have you back.
That was too short, but it was sweet.
Appreciate you and appreciate your journey.
Great.
Thank you, Chuck.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off The Treadmill podcast.
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
(25:48):
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker, or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
G-R-O-W at cranksetgroup.com.
Until next time, have a great week.
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