EP 224 | Building a Business That Runs Without You: How Steve Lagomarsino Scaled to $25M and Took His Life Back

Welcome back to Building Billions! In today’s episode, I’m sitting down with Steve Lagomarsino—a business owner who went from feeling trapped in his own company to building a powerhouse that thrives without him. Steve started out like so many business owners, owning a job, not a business. When he and I connected in 2019, he was tired of dealing with daily fires and searching for a path that would allow him to scale while regaining his life.

In this episode, we break down exactly what it took to transform his family business from a $5 million to a $25 million operation—without being tied to every decision. Steve shares the mindset shifts, the hard confrontations with his team, and the strategies we applied together to turn his business into a sustainable, scalable machine. You’ll hear how he built a strong leadership team, set the right culture, and created financial freedom through strategic planning and real estate investments.

This conversation will give you a blueprint for building a business that doesn’t rely on you for every single decision. Tune in to learn how Steve redefined success and regained control, and discover how you can do the same with the right focus, discipline, and strategy.

Support the show: http://cardoneventures.com

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's Brandon Dawson. Welcome to Building Billions. I
have a great show today. This is going to be
with a dear friend of mine, Steve Lagomarsino. We're going
to be talking about what it takes as a business owner,
as an entrepreneur, to start, scale and transition through your
business in order to achieve your personal, professional and financial goals.
And different people have different roadmaps that they take. And

(00:23):
what we're going to be doing is talking about how
Steve has actually been able to do that in the
last five years. Steve, welcome to the show. Excited to
be here.

S2 (00:31):
Brandon, how are you doing today?

S1 (00:32):
Good. Tell the audience kind of like where we started
in our relationship.

S2 (00:37):
Well, where we started, uh, I had a successful business,
and I was looking for somebody that was going to
teach me how to build a more scalable business. I
owned a job, I didn't own a business, and I
was looking for what I thought was a unicorn. At
the time, somebody that not only built a massive business

(00:58):
was able to exit their business, but also the very
important part was able to impact so many people's lives
and bring the team along for the ride. So I
found you in in 2019, and we started that journey
in December at a ten x 360. And five years later,
here we are. The rest is history. It's just been
a really incredible ride and an incredible education for me.

S1 (01:20):
Yeah. So what I like to do, because a lot
of people, you know, they think of building a business
and obviously 97% of all businesses fail if they're under
125 million, there's 31 million of those businesses. 98% of
all those businesses stay under 3 million. Stay small. And
so these are all things we talk about. Um, but

(01:42):
when I meet founders or business owners, they don't all
just want to build their business and sell it and
be done. Right. They know there's the life after the deal.
There's something else they want to do or something else
they want to become, or some other thing that they're
inspired by in their life. And for you walk through
kind of what your business looked like when you and
I met and started working together, right.

S2 (02:03):
There is another reason a lot of small business owners
want to exit their business is because it's so painful
for them, because they don't know what they're doing, they
don't have the business acumen. They they do not know
how to build a structure inside that business. That doesn't
make it a problem in their life. So what it
looked like for me when I met you was a

(02:26):
revolving door in my office of people coming in my
office with problems and asking how to get certain things
done in my business.

S1 (02:33):
But how did you start? Talk a little bit about
how you got to where you even had a business
with people revolving through the door?

S2 (02:39):
Uh, great question. So my dad started this business in 1982,
joined the business out of college with him, and started
just putting my, uh, putting my print on the business
by implementing different changes into the business, bringing innovation into
the business. And over time I started actually taking over
the business and I acquired the business from my dad.

(03:01):
It was my dad, and my grandfather owned the business.

S1 (03:03):
So what kind of business was it?

S2 (03:04):
It's an electronic wholesale distribution company. So simply put, we're
selling components to manufacturers in the United States. So it's
a business to business type of transaction, but it's quite
technical sale. So that's where my electrical engineering background was
valuable because we are our personas are electrical engineers at manufacturers.

(03:25):
Got it.

S1 (03:26):
So it was your father's and your grandfather's business? Yep. Uh,
you got your electrical engineering background, and then at some point,
you entirely bottom out.

S2 (03:35):
Yeah. Gave provided them a financial exit. I was their
exit plan. The exit.

S1 (03:40):
And what? And how big was the business when you
took it over?

S2 (03:42):
Uh, when I took the business over, we were maybe
$5 million in annual revenue. Okay.

S1 (03:48):
So now, fast forward. You and I meet 2019. How
big is the business?

S2 (03:52):
We're like 25 million.

S1 (03:54):
So it's a significant you fivex the business. That's right.
Over what period of time?

S2 (03:59):
That was about eight years. Eight years, nine years.

S1 (04:04):
So the first lesson there is your parents. Your dad
and your grandpa had it for how many years?

S2 (04:09):
They 1982.

S1 (04:10):
So they had it for a long time. That's right.
And in eight years you five exed it. That's right.
So first thing is, that should tell to every business
owner that's sitting there that you probably have A5X in
your business. You just don't know how to do it.
That's right. So I come along, you've got a lot
of people coming and going. You're trying to figure out
how to manage this business. That's 25 million. And if
your reference point was your family at 525 probably felt

(04:34):
like a a big feat to try to manage.

S2 (04:37):
Yeah. That's right. It was, uh, it was stressful. And
I knew the opportunities weren't strong for the people in
my organization, and I knew it all depended on me.
If I if I go down, the business is going
down with me. It's not. It's not a good business.
I it got to a point where I said to myself,
if I was an employee and knew what I knew,

(04:58):
I would not want to work here because it's so
dependent on me being there every single day and keeping
it together.

S1 (05:05):
That's an interesting perspective. So you were like looking for
how do I transition from it being that kind of
business to something that runs itself? Yeah, because.

S2 (05:14):
I know there's no value there. And if I were
to financially exit that business at that point, it's they're
buying me really. And I'm going to be stuck in
that for, for quite a long time. And anybody that's
going to have any sense of evaluating a business, they're
going to identify that he's the he's the business right now.
This is not a strong business.

S1 (05:34):
So you and I meet those are the things you
were confronted and concerned with. We meet some things I'm
talking about resonates. Yeah. We start working together. We put
a plan in place. The plan in place was to
move you from being the business to try to minimize
the business being about you so that it had sellable

(05:54):
future value. But in the middle of all that, what
you really wanted to do was create a vehicle, a
program where you could reward your best employees. You could
create incentives for them to win with you and the business,
and you had other things you'd like to do other
than just continue your whole life in that one business.
That's right. So that was the idea when we met.
And the other thing I recall is you wanted to

(06:16):
build up enough income that you can invest in things
that you're not taking care of and you're not running.
So we picked real estate like I did. That was
one of the things I told you is I put
a bunch of money with Grant Cardone, sends me a
check every month, and you're like, I want to do that, too.
So we sat down and devised this strategy in 2019.
Walk through what types of things you had to do

(06:40):
to change you right, in order for the business to change?
And then in addition to that, what's actually happened now
in the last five years, right?

S2 (06:50):
Well, there's a lot. The one thing that I had
that was really important in this whole process is that
I had high level of self-awareness, and I was very coachable.

S1 (07:03):
Yes, I would say that of all the people I've
ever worked with in my career, you've been the most
aware and the most coachable. For certain. That is a
quality you have that I have so much respect for.

S2 (07:16):
And I appreciate that. Um, you know, and so going in,
going through that process into that journey that that ensured
that I was very curious to learn. And this whole
process is a learning process of learning how to build
a business. And even if you are already built a business,
you're going to need to rebuild it. Because if you

(07:37):
if you were never taught how to build a business
and you build a business, you probably built it improperly,
and now you're going to need to be educated and
find all the broken pieces And you're going to need
to go through this process of learning how to to
rebuild the broken pieces within your business. And in order
to do that, you need to be able to be
an incredible leader. And I also was not a very

(07:58):
good leader at that point at that particular time, because
you're in order to implement this, you're going to need
people to do it. And in order and in order
for people to do it, you're going to need number
one to be a very good leader, because you're going
to need to inspire them and align the work that
they're going to need to do with the type of
life that they want. And in order to have in

(08:18):
order to be able to lead people to do it,
you need great people. And the other component of that
was designing a culture within the organization that will attract
amazing people in the organization. All this I didn't have
in place, I saw it right away when we started
working together, I okay, I saw all the pieces missing.
We identified it together and it was going to be
a journey. But along that journey, I was going to

(08:41):
need to be very committed to the process of getting
educated and transferring that knowledge within my team.

S1 (08:48):
I remember when we did your key people assessments, and
one of the things we identified is you had a
bunch of what I call randomizing in the business. Um,
and when you initiated training, the amount of blowback you're
getting from some of your key people to saying, I'm

(09:08):
not going to do that, like, that's not I didn't
sign on for it. I'm not going to do it.
People in your accounting department, people in your technology department,
and all of a sudden you're getting some very specific
key people pushing back on you that like, hey, this
isn't what we signed up for. We've been here a
long time. We're not going to do this. I remember
you calling me going. I have every different way I

(09:29):
could think of. I've tried to inspire these people to
do this, and they refuse to do it. I said, well,
the only thing you need to do now is you
need to eliminate one of them to send the message
that you're serious about it. So talk a little bit
about how hard that first like Big Confront was for you.
But once you did it, what happened after that? That's right.

S2 (09:49):
So number one, that's a symptom of the culture I had.
And I had a culture by default. I hadn't designed
that culture. And now I have a training culture on
the other side of this. So when that incident happened. Yeah,
I'm terrified because all I'm thinking about is I'm going
to lose somebody that's valuable in the company. And if
I make it, if I create new, uh, if I

(10:10):
create a training program that they don't want to be
participating in and they're a top contributor, and when they're
going to just leave here, they're going to take other
people with them. And so I'm, I don't have the
confidence yet as a leader at that point. I don't
have the confidence as a business owner that I'm going
to be able to hire new people fast and bring
great people in the organization. So all these fears are

(10:31):
creeping in. They're really broken beliefs. But once you do
the first one and then you start learning how to
replace that person with somebody that's even a better fit
that was there before. Because you're learning how to find
better people, because you're committed to the process of learning
how to recruit people, then then it becomes empowering and
then you're okay. Now I see it. This is going
to be part of the process. Some parts are going

(10:51):
to be painful when growing is not comfortable. And the
growing we're doing is we're strengthening this organization so that
this organization is going to be able to have be stronger,
have more sustainable growth, not depend on me, and also
be able to grow in the future because we have
a stronger foundation.

S1 (11:08):
So. So what what I'm hearing you say, because you're
speaking in present time, looking backwards. Yes. But at the
point in time, that's what I was telling you. You're
going to need to do if you want this present time, 100%
vision and the courage now, because we're going to go
back to that moment where you're like, hey, this guy,
this person is like so important, right? You had to

(11:29):
confront with them. And they were like pouncing, I'm out
of here. And I remember you were like, oh my God,
I don't know how many of these I can afford.
I don't know how many. But you had the courage
to do it. What happened? As soon as everyone else
in your company who was resistant to doing the things
you needed them to do, saw that you actually had
the courage to take someone they knew was a top performer.
Knew you were worried about losing, saw you let them leave,

(11:54):
and then replaced them and put more intentionality on the
onboarding process and created a better performing employee fast. What
did that do with everyone else on your team?

S2 (12:04):
It realigns people because, look, hey, he's not going to
do anything. We don't have to train. He's looking. He's
not going to do anything. As soon as he does something. Oh, shit.
He's serious. He's really serious about this. It's that important.
He just let that person go. Now all of a sudden,
everybody realigns. It becomes a lot easier. And if they
don't realign. Hey, look, I replaced them. It's not that
big of a deal.

S1 (12:24):
And what happens to your confidence when you realize someone
I was key person, dependent on that was unwilling to
change and follow my leadership principles. And you recognize the
fact that you spoiled them in the first place because
you didn't have that discipline.

S2 (12:37):
I created the circumstance.

S1 (12:39):
Yeah. So now you just chose to create a different circumstance.
You're going to find the right people, align them the
right way, and be more intentional about how you onboard them,
and then drive to a result by inspiring them and
working with them and training them like that's that's a decision, right?
That's right. So you made the decision. A bunch of
your people were like, uh oh, we're going to get

(12:59):
in line. We're going to start doing the things you
need to do. And then all of a sudden your
business starts to significantly grow. Talk a little bit about,
because it's not always when you're growing 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, whatever.
It's not always like, oh, it's just so easy. It's
so easy because it's a process. And every time you
do something new, it's a new, new thing you have

(13:20):
to do. And then as you get bigger, the mechanics
of the different things you're making changes in either work
for you or work against you. That's right. Talk a
little bit about that couple of years where you were
having that hyper growth, and you were making all these
changes and focused on developing key leaders in your organization. Yeah.

S2 (13:37):
So when you grow up, you're going to break things
and you're going to be re-optimizing processes that worked when
we were. This level of revenue are no longer appropriate
for where we're at this level in revenue. So we've
got to be able to optimize and change. And during
that process you're developing and you're challenging people, you're testing people,

(13:57):
and you're seeing the people that can handle the pressure.
When with leaders, leaders need to be pressure tested. And
during those experiences, you see who handles the pressure and
rises to the top and becomes part of the solutions,
not part of the problems. And and you and you
learn as a leader to develop other leaders. You develop me.
Developing myself as a leader first during that process allowed

(14:20):
me to nurture and develop other leaders. And now I've
got a core leadership team here in my organization that
I don't need to worry about anything. They've got it
all taken care of. They're there to set everything up.
They report to me and they run the organization for me.
The day to day, I don't run the day. That
was the big difference. The day didn't run without me.

(14:40):
I don't run a day. The day of the organization.
If you are a business owner and you're running the
day of the organization, if it needs you to run
during the day, if something's going to stop in the
day because of you, you don't really have a business.

S1 (14:54):
Yeah, you have a job. You have a.

S2 (14:55):
Job. And that's you can have a job that has
$25 million in revenue. You can have a job that
has $40 million in revenue, $50 million in revenue. There
are plenty of business owners there, but they know it
and they're there. They're stressed about it. They're complaining when
they go home because they know it. And it's just
it's so stressful. I can't wait to get out of

(15:15):
it because this is just so much work for me.

S1 (15:18):
Yeah, you hear it because we have all these. I mean,
since you started, you're one of my first clients. You
fast forward 64 months later. We've had almost $8 billion
of businesses come through this system and you know many
of those people because where you fit within the organization now. So,
so big goals back then. Put enough passive money away

(15:40):
that's working for you that you could replace your income
if you decided to never work again. That was a
big target. That's right. Second target was to grow your
business big enough that it could produce enough income, that
you could share it with all your key people so
that they would have the right incentives in place in
order to exit you from running the day to day operations.
That was target number two, and target number three was
then be able to spend time doing things that you're

(16:03):
passionate about and you love to do without being trapped
in the business every day. That's right. Including in that
was you wanted to move out of state. You wanted
to move from Pennsylvania down to Miami or down to
Florida with your whole family and be able to experience
a different quality of life. Yes. 60 months now, talk
about how much of that you've actually been able to

(16:24):
transition through.

S2 (16:25):
All of it. Um, As a business owner, being able
to create a business where you can generate enough of
cash flow that you can release cash from the business because,
you know, revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. You taught
me that. Um, so being able to run an extremely
profitable business and release cash and put it into passive, producing,

(16:48):
passive income producing assets such as real estate and cardinal Capital,
that it covers all my expenses. Now, I could my
business could disappear and work another day, and I cover
my expenses for the rest of my life. So we've
been able to accomplish that through Cardinal Capital. Some other
real estate investments. I have enough passive income to cover

(17:10):
all my family expenses.

S1 (17:13):
And that feels pretty darn good, right? Because that is
your backstop. Now, you don't need to worry about selling
your business for a backstop because you now have one.

S2 (17:20):
The business I don't depend on the business to survive financially.
And also the beautiful thing about that is I don't run.
You don't? As a business owner, when you get to
that point, you're not running your business scared for your
financial life, because now you're not making decisions out of fear.
You're making sure you have less emotion. You have. So
now you're going to you're going to take more calculated

(17:41):
risks that you need to take. And also, if you
have some challenges in the business, it's good. There's this
level of stress is not going to be the experience
is not going to be the same as if this
was all my income, or if we go for a
month where we something went wrong and we can't get
cash out of the business because someone didn't pay the bills.
I'm in a lot of trouble here. This doesn't exist anymore,

(18:01):
this circumstance. Uh, the second was, uh, well, also moving
to Florida, right? Getting out of a state that was
going to. I lived in the northeast. It was not
not a lot of freedom up in the northeast states.
The weather for a few months of the year is
not that nice. And I wanted to be around more
successful people, more like minded people. And we made a

(18:24):
decision to bring our family down to Florida, where we
were going to have freedom, better taxes, be around more
like minded people, or closer to the Grant Cardone office.
So we get to go to the events and be
with great people that are in this ecosystem. So that
we knocked that off the list a couple years ago.
Business still running, operating smoothly. Didn't miss a beat. Did

(18:47):
that while we were even changing our ERP system and
our business. But I had a leadership team taking care
of that. And what was the other? Yeah.

S1 (18:57):
So so you were able. So when you first set
these targets right. Having enough passive income, uh, being able
to build a leadership team and not have you be
the business driving it every day. Be able to actually
move out of state and move your whole family and
not even be showing up in the office. Those were
if the if if those are lifetime goals for most

(19:19):
business owners. Yeah. And when we were establishing those targets
and those goals and then confirming the business to what
does the business have to do to do that? So
you can do what you want to do, right? There
was a few, you know, kind of gut challenges where
you're like, it almost feels unbelievable that I could actually
do that. Yeah. And yet the idea that you did
it in three years, and now what you've been doing

(19:42):
the last couple of years, in addition to that, which
we'll get into in a minute, when you look back
on it, you realize how fast it actually did happen.
That's right. And then you grew the business much bigger, right?
So so the reason I bring this up is I
think it's really important because a lot of people don't
understand there's no context into what does Cardone Ventures do

(20:04):
to actually help you through that process, besides setting targets
and putting discipline in place? Talk a little bit about
your journey of some of your experiences working with us,
because the reality here is we have so many business
owners come through the system, but a lot of them
are just unwilling to wait the 3 to 5 years.
They want it tomorrow, they want it tomorrow. They want

(20:25):
it now. They're already burned out. They're just like, they'll
give us six months. And and that transactional mindset just
does not allow them enough time to calmly make the
transformation to a target. Because in order for them to
do that, they got to move a lot of other people,
but they don't want to deal with the people, because
if they lose their people, they can't get what they want.
Because then and all this panic and fear settles in.

(20:47):
So I want to talk a little bit about what
you did systematically with us, so that other people that
don't understand the journey right will have context to this. Yeah.
So walk through like you went to the ten x 360.
You you heard enough to realize this could be helpful.
You hired us to engineer your business. Yes. We spent

(21:11):
six months, seven months doing that. Then you hired us
in our strategic business unit consultant to lead to manage
the business. And in the middle of all that, we
partnered a little bit here or there. Right? Yeah. Um,
you finally have just graduated out of our managed services,
our SBU. After how long were you in that program?

S2 (21:29):
So it three years, three years, a little over three,
just slightly over three years.

S1 (21:34):
Talk a little bit about what it was like to
have augmenting your executive team before you developed it with
our basically team. And then what kinds of things would
you do after you had engineered your plan with our
strategic business unit to help you actually format the business,

(21:55):
just so people have context as to what we even
do here? Yeah.

S2 (21:58):
So, um, yeah, it was it's an incredible learning process,
the experience I share with people. There's no college I
could have attended and gotten the same education that I
received over the past three years, but I needed to
receive it. I didn't need to abdicate it to everybody
in my team. I showed up on every one of

(22:19):
those calls, especially in those first couple years where I
was learning information for the first time. So when we're
breaking down the business into different components, whether it's sales
and marketing, finance and people, uh, we're, uh, operations, I'm
on those calls every single week. And, and each of
those calls were being educated. And we're working a plan

(22:41):
on what we need to execute on. But I had
the discipline and the accountability to get it done. And
I and I was curious enough to well, hey, would
I know what results I had doing it the way
I knew how to do it? And I know what
Brandon's results have been doing using his processes and his
methodology and what they're teaching here. So do I want

(23:05):
the same results? What do I have to lose? Well, actually,
I'm going to get the same results and be stuck
with a job again. Or am I going to actually
Follow the advice that they're providing and implement the information
they're giving me. But it's not an event, it's a process,
and everyone has a different learning curve and how long
it's going to take to execute. Everyone has a different

(23:26):
level of courage and how fast they're going to make
tough decisions they may need to make, because some of
us will make a tough decision in 30s, and some
of us will make a tough decision in two years
because they got to debate it and they just can't
make it. And they're making sense of why they shouldn't
make this tough decision to make excuses. So the ability
that that process will vary and how committed you are

(23:50):
to making those tough decisions, doing the work, showing up
every time and actually learning it. Because if I abdicated
to a team who I haven't quite developed in the
beginning yet, well, when they leave, where does the information go?
It goes with them. And now how do I replace it?
How do I how do I am I able to
keep that in my business? So for for me it

(24:11):
was learning all the different business acumen and strategies that
I needed and what I needed to the structure I
needed to put within the departments that were going to
be capable of executing the plan that we created four
years ago. And going through that process, it was and
as we're doing it, everybody's the business is becoming stronger
and stronger. Not only are we executing the plan, but

(24:34):
here we are a few years later. And now I've
got this team inside this organization that is incredible. That's
that is creating the next level of plans.

S1 (24:43):
What would have happen if you would have just said, hey,
my 5 or 6 best people, I want you to
work with them and you listen to them and you
do what they say and you work as a team.
And what's the likelihood of any of that would actually.

S2 (24:56):
Be a disaster? It was destined to fail if I
just abdicated to a team and said, hey, Brandon, your
team that's going to be helping my organization and work
with my team and I'm just going to go do
my thing. That's a recipe for failure.

S1 (25:09):
And the reason for it is, is as you experience
firsthand sitting in those meetings, you actually got to watch
the expression or see the results, because some of those
people got changed out along the way because they were
trying to control what was happening in the business, but
they didn't actually know what they were doing. So at
some point you get to see, wait a minute, I've

(25:29):
put somebody in charge who's acting like they have this.
I call them a camouflage tool. They act like they
got it figured out. They act like they're already doing it.
But now we're in the actual technical business, and you're
sitting there looking at them across the face with our
finance team going over financials, or our operating team going
over operations or our technology team. And you're sitting there
looking at it and going, like, my guy doesn't know

(25:49):
or gal doesn't know what they're doing. That's right.

S2 (25:51):
You can you get a good so you're there and
you're seeing the interaction. Do I do I have the
right person in place or are they are they getting this.
They have the capacity to learn what they any gaps
they have. Are they willing to learn it or are
they going to cover it up? I've got to be
involved in that process to until. Okay, now I they're
the right person and now I understand it. I can

(26:14):
explain it to them as well. Or the next person
that comes in. If that person were to ever exit.
So that's there's a lot of value being involved in
that component of it.

S1 (26:22):
And what would happen what would happen if you're like,
it all has to happen in six months.

S2 (26:27):
Impossible. That would be like an employee coming to a
business owner and telling them, like, hey, you know, I
want to be the VP of the company. And, you know,
I'm a mid-level manager and it has to happen in
six months that any business owner would say, that's ridiculous.
It's not possible. This is a process you got to develop.
So whatever's when you identify the opportunities in your business,

(26:47):
in order for us to, uh, to be able to, uh,
optimize and take advantage of those opportunities, we need to
develop the, the business. And part of developing the business
is also developing the people that are also developing the business.
And that's going to take time. It's a process.

S1 (27:04):
And so so is it even reasonable to think, oh,
I could take my business that's struggling now for the
last few years. Or maybe it's growing, but it's still
broken in many areas and just expect that within six
months or a year or two years, it's just going
to give you everything you want out of it. And
because we have a lot of business owners and you
know this, you've seen them, they come in, they get
all ambitious and they're all excited. They get we engineer

(27:27):
their business. They go into our our managed services for
a year and then they're like, I got it all,
I'm done. But they haven't even hit any of the
targets they've established for themselves, but they really have burned
themselves out. Or they're questioning, why am I investing in
the business? And we see what happens. As soon as
they stop doing what they were doing, they go right
back to what they were. Right? And they were the

(27:48):
reason they got excited in the first place. They were frustrated.
So really, what I want you because you've seen some
of the most successful people come through here and you've
seen the ones that have not, have not. And, and,
and then the excuses come out and all these other things.
What would you tell a business owner based on your
personal experience, what they should suspect. What would you tell

(28:11):
a business owner based on your own personal experience? What
they should expect to do in order to make the
transformation they want to have? And what are the indicators
when it's time that they don't need? They've they've developed
their team because for me, you had your targets when
you hit all your targets is when you knew it
was time that you could then go to Florida. Yeah,

(28:33):
but if you hadn't hit your targets yet, does that
mean you should dismiss yourself from the process? Right.

S2 (28:39):
Um, can you repeat the question?

S1 (28:41):
Yeah. So what would you tell a business owner that's like,
they're not doing it for me fast enough?

S2 (28:47):
Well, okay. Well, number one, no one's going to do
it for you. No one's going to do the work
for you as a business owner. You. I knew from
day one I needed to do the work because I
need to learn. I need to execute. I need to
implement that is on me as a business owner. So
if the mindset entering this type of process or it's

(29:09):
your business, you're not going to abdicate somebody else implementing
and executing for your business, they'll buy your business. Okay.
And then they could do that. But when you own
your business, you need as the business owner to be
able to execute and implement. That includes being on the
calls and actually taking the actions needed, applying it so

(29:30):
you can get the results that you're looking for. If
you don't actually take the actions and apply, you're not
going to get results. And if you're waiting for someone
else to do it, it's not going to happen. And
you just have you have an excuse now. Well, someone
else didn't do it for me. I never waited for that.
I didn't wait for someone else to do it. I
didn't have excuses. And if and in a few times
that I did not execute and I failed to implement,

(29:52):
I took responsibility for it. It's on me. I didn't
go blaming somebody else for it because it wasn't going
to help. It was all it was. Was it going
to make me feel better so I could just pass
the buck along. That's not that's not going to. That's
not going to work. That's not what's going to get
my business, uh, stronger. That's not going to increase the
improve the opportunities for the people in my organization. And

(30:13):
if I'm as a business owner, waiting for people to
do it for me, and I'm blaming others when it
doesn't get done, what kind of people? Brandon, do you
think you know I'm going to have working in my business? Yep.
The same kind of people.

S1 (30:24):
Well, and so this is another interesting thing. Um, clearly
when there's people involved. So I have my people on
my side. We're training them, we're hiring them, we're nurturing them.
We're formatting them. You have your people on your side.
You're hiring them. You're training them, you're formatting them. You're
leading them. When my people are letting your people down

(30:45):
and your people are letting you down and themselves down,
and my people are letting me and myself down, you
as a client could easily call me and say, uh,
I don't want to work with you anymore because you
guys aren't helping me out. And I know we had
a couple conversations where you called, this is a thing.
This is I just it's so important that people hear

(31:06):
what I'm going to say right now. It's so important
that you develop the confront the the understanding that when
things are not working, you don't bail, right? You lean in.
And I'll never forget when my team was out of
your with your team and we were dropping the ball

(31:26):
in some areas as I was bringing some people on
and I was trying to acclimate them, and I had
to get rid of some people and bring some new
people on. There were some missed elements of what we
were supposed to be doing. And you called me one
day and you're like, hey, I've got some frustration that's
crept in in the last 90 or 120 days. I
feel like some of your people are not following through.

(31:48):
And I know you run a quality organization and I
know we're missing some things. My team is seeing it.
I'm seeing it. But because I respect you and I
want to be a good partner to you. Just like
you would call me Brandon. If you see things in
my business, you've got some holes in your business. And
I think if I help you fix your holes, you
can help me do things faster. And you and I

(32:09):
came together and said, where are the holes? I made changes, and,
and and we keep doing that. Now contrast that to
someone who calls and complains, oh, you guys are letting
me down. And I don't, because I always tell business owners,
most of you have no idea how to confront your
own internal problems. You just run from them. Why not
practice helping and working with me when we drop the

(32:29):
ball and see how I confront them, so that you
can get a reference point of, oh, this is how
Brandon took care of it. Yeah. And so you and
I did that because you're growing and scaling. I'm growing
and scaling. And what we did is created a cadence
where it's like, what's working? What's not working? What do
we need to fix? How do we need to fix it.
And we kept fighting to win for me and fighting

(32:50):
to win for you together, because we recognize that as
business owners and leaders, we need each other. Yes. How
do you contrast that to the people that you've actually seen?
Some clients come, and then you've sat there with them
and they're like, oh, they dropped some balls. So we're
going to move on. And and then you see what
happens to those businesses, because if they're not willing to
confront me, they're probably not going to confront their own team. Yeah. Right.

(33:12):
And if they're not helping me confront my team, how
am I helping them confront their team? Because they don't
have that. They don't have that relationship. Right. So talk
a little bit about the importance of leaning in, confronting,
having the courage to confront, and then also letting shit
go and working together to solve problems so that everyone

(33:34):
can grow and scale and integrate together as we're trying
to achieve this bigger picture. Yeah.

S2 (33:39):
It's it's almost like I when I think about the
that contrast because it's, it's so foreign to what I
would do. And uh, because I know how I understand
Stan how damaging that would be if that's how you're
going to move through business. And I almost call bullshit
on it because I feel like it's just a way

(34:00):
to bail. It's it's like it's chickening out. That really
is what it comes down to because my approach is, well,
number one, I'm aware of the fact that I'm growing
and scaling my business and you're growing and scaling at
hyper growth here in your business. And of course, there's
going to be some challenges and aware of that. There's
no way that it's going to be all like perfect

(34:21):
all the time. That is impossible. I'm never going to
find anybody to be of any service whatsoever that's going
to be able to help me and be perfect all
the time, especially some organization as successful as yours that's
experiencing a growth. There's reasons why you're successful. And, you know,
I learned a long time ago never to be part
of the problem, always be part of the solution. So

(34:43):
when you find a problem, this is something my dad
taught me at a very young age. And my grandfather
bring solutions. So if I see a problem or a
challenge or situation and I have a tremendous amount of
respect and we're working together as organizations, we have mutual
interests to succeed. It is in everyone's benefit to come

(35:03):
to you and say, hey, you know what? We attempted
to work it out, but I think it's at the
point where I need to elevate it to you, Brandon.
And here's the situation. And I think there's I have
a possible couple of solutions. I'd like to share them
with you, but I'd like to hear what your thoughts are.
And then boom, we figure it out. And that's how
you earn respect and you earn relationships and business. But
if every time something goes wrong in business, you just bail.

(35:25):
You're never going to have a network of business relationships.

S1 (35:28):
And to and you're never going to learn how to
actually work through something, because you're going to revert back
to the same people that didn't know how to do
it the first time. That's right. Which is yourself. That's right.
And you go back to the same behavior, which is
blaming everybody else for why you can't succeed. Yeah.

S2 (35:42):
And those those people are probably not setting their employees
up for success. And when they don't do a good
enough job because they didn't set him up for success.
They're firing him and it really the fault is the
business owner. They're probably experiencing a lot of problems like
that in their business, because it's just going to be
a vicious cycle for them. They're going to be stuck. And,
you know, even if they're getting some growth and they

(36:02):
think they know, oh, you know what? I got growth.
But can they sustain it because what are they going
to where are they going to revert to. Did they
really learn what they need to learn. They, they have they, they,
they hit a level. But did they are they getting
to levels where they've got what they need inside their organization.

S1 (36:16):
So now all of a sudden, because you have the
tenacity to work things out, you start bringing your team along.
When they come to you and they say, we have problems.
You're like, yeah, let me show you how we resolve problems.
Let's get Brandon's team. Let's get my team. Let's better
connect the dots. Let's make sure the two business owners
are aligned, and let's make sure that our equal teams

(36:36):
are aligned and they work together over the course of
trial and error and practicing and executing. Now we fast forward.
It's only been 60 months. I mean, it's not like
this has been ten years. No. and in 60 months
my business was a startup. 60 months ago, I was
a pure startup. It was my wife and I with
a couple other people. Today we have 370 employees doing

(36:57):
almost a quarter of $1 billion. Your business was entirely
dependent on you being in the office every single day,
doing 23 million or 24 million bucks. Now, you have
been able to move two years ago. So three months
into three years into that cycle, you're able to make
your move to Florida. Yeah. You're able to put enough
money in cartoon capital. Millions and millions of dollars, because

(37:19):
you're much more profitable, and you're able to share the
value and the upside of your company to your team,
which is running the day to day operations. And what,
a year ago, I think it was. Yes. You and
I sat down and I said, you've done such a remarkable,
remarkable job, and you've hit your targets and you do
everything you say you're going to do, and you have
so much credibility. And you had mastered my 15 month

(37:40):
leadership program like every module would. Discipline participated on every
one of the events, and all of a sudden you're like,
I think I could add some additional value from the
entrepreneurial perspective that's in your program. I'm like, yeah, I mean,
bring it on. Like, you have enough credibility with me.
Bring anything you want. And you came and spent some
time with me to figure out how to build even

(38:01):
better continuity. And your whole team was on the program, too,
going through this. So you had what it looked like
for the team to come into the program, too. And
I was like, man, this is amazing. This is such
a good perspective. Why don't you run it? Yeah. And
you're like, oh, dream job come true. Now you get
to sit with me and John Maxwell and my mentors.

(38:22):
You get to work on programs. We go to private
dinners with the people that have changed my life for
30 years. You get to the inner circle of that,
and now you're part of the inner circle, right? Talk
a little bit about the transformation for you, just being
able to elevate yourself into something that you're so passionate about.
You're highly successful. We just had Hundred and 60 business

(38:44):
owners here say this is one of the best events
they ever went to. We're launching a program for employees
to model and mimic what you've been able to do
and what I've been able to do, and you lead
that program. Talk a little bit about that. How in
60 months you've entirely transformed yourself and put you in
a different circle of people that you were reading their

(39:04):
books about five years ago, and now you're in the
room privately with them developing things?

S2 (39:09):
Yeah. You know, you mentioned it's crazy to think about that,
to think about five before. Just before I met you,
I didn't even think a guy like you exists. And
I'm a struggling leader, but wanted so much more for
other people. And I'm reading all these books. John Maxwell,
you know, all your mentors and then here I am.

(39:33):
You transformed me and my entire life and the amount
of impact I'm making on other people. And then Yeah.
It's like what you draw into your life is incredible.
You're sitting here all of a sudden you're eating dinner
with John Maxwell, with just a few people, having a
casual conversation and hearing about all the impactful work he's doing.
It's anything's possible. The the difference is, is I just

(39:56):
was committed. I knew what I, I had a vision,
I knew where I wanted to go, I knew what
I wanted to accomplish, and I and I was very
committed to it. And I was willing to put in
the work. And also at times it took aggressive patience
at times. Mhm.

S1 (40:12):
Oh, say that again.

S2 (40:13):
Yeah. At times it takes aggressive patience. Like I'm we're
not we're never entitled to anything every single day. And
we're tested as part of winning is, is sometimes waiting
another day or another day and the waiting and when
I'm waiting I'm not. It's you're not not doing anything.
You just continue doing the work because you didn't earn

(40:36):
it yet. You got everything is earned in life And
if you're not working to earn it and making the
sacrifices and following a plan, it's not going to happen.
And being committed. And that takes a lot of patience
over time. And in leadership with people, it's the same thing.
You're developing people. Everyone has a different learning curve and

(40:58):
it's going to take it's just it's just these little granular,
incremental improvements or steps every single day over time. And
all of a sudden they add up. And then here
we are. How many did I take in five years
and five years? Here we are. It's like a.

S1 (41:13):
Leap. And now your team who is replaced you in
your company day to day. Now they're on this journey
because they're almost like clients of you running this leadership
program with me. So they get to watch you emerge
as like a I mean, I've had thousands of business

(41:34):
owners come to this leadership program over the last 12 years,
so they get to see you. You're actually in the
inner circle. You're doing the private dinners. You're you're you're
on the strategy side of the equation. You're spending time
with me and Grant and John Maxwell and other mentors
that I have in the private room, talking about where
we're going and what we want to affect in these
changes and how we're going to deploy it and how

(41:55):
we're going to implement things. And you've moved yourself to
that point, which I'm sure for your team has has
to feel a huge sense of pride.

S2 (42:04):
Oh yeah, they're they're so proud and they're so inspired.
And we you and I know what it does to
their belief of what's possible. Yeah. Because they've seen the
they've seen the journey because because those a lot of
those team members have been with me during that journey. The,
the ones that are in the program. So they've seen
the transformation so they know what's possible.

S1 (42:25):
You know, I've started a scale that I've been tracking
now for the last, probably about the last eight years.
And the midpoint is neutral, right? It's just a it's
just a straight line, right? The midpoint is neutral. The
farthest left side is in IOP. The farthest right side
is Pioppi. So for a listener you're like, what's an IOP?

(42:45):
IOP and IOP is negative influence of other people. And
there's a ten point scale. And on from neutral to Pioppi,
there's a ten point scale to the most positive. And
when I when I sit and I take a little
pen out when I'm sitting across from somebody, any business owner, right.
And because neutral really is an IOP because if you're

(43:08):
not doing anything, you're negative. Yeah. I mean, it's it's
no impact, there's no charge, there's no nothing and nothing's happening.
So when I'm sitting there, I've gotten to a place
now that when I listen to the business owner communicate,
I can put little dots on if it's Pioppi or
an IOP. Right. And I think it's really interesting. This

(43:29):
is a very simple exercise that any person can go through.
And I think it would be helpful because I've been
doing it with the entrepreneurs, tracking the thousands of people
that come through here, and it's based on the language
they use and the behaviors they exhibit. So I have
a language category. I have a behavior category, I have
a results category, I've got an influence category. And I've

(43:51):
just been putting a little initials down that has a
little key card. And I've been tracking this. Right. Yeah.
And what's really super interesting is here's some things that
I find that very quickly go to the Naiop because
the last thing I track is character, right. Because it's
the total sum of all those other categories. Right. And

(44:14):
then there's a little score. And that score is what
I call the influence score. It's either negative influence or
it's positive influence. Words like it's their fault. Phrases like
We're going to quit, uh, people who text others and

(44:37):
say we should get out of this and go do
something else, and I'm not getting what I want, so
I'm going to take my little ball and go home.
That mentality, those kind of calm lines, those kind of
communication cycles like, you know what? I'm not getting what
I want, so we should all leave. They try to
influence others. So there's a magnitude of if they're not
getting what they want, are they quietly saying, okay, I'm

(44:58):
either going to figure out how to improve, work with
who I trust or I'm going to quietly go away.
That's that's like a person who quietly goes away, okay?
That's a person who isn't trying to be disruptive. They're
just not getting what they want. Yeah, but what about
the person that tries to go away and take a
bunch of people with them? That's a destructive personality, right?

(45:21):
Because they are trying to make a point that they
have the influence or they.

S2 (45:27):
Want to validate their decision or.

S1 (45:29):
They have to validate their decision because they're so insecure
as a human that the only way they can validate
is to get everyone else to agree with them right now.
On the other side of the spectrum, you have the
people who quietly want to hit their targets, create their teams.

(45:49):
They're still a little introverted, but you start seeing the success.
They're still quiet, but they're doing the things they need
to do every day. And then you have those people
that are screaming from the top of the mountain, my
life has changed. Look how crazy this is. Come with
us dragging people along because things are so impactful. So

(46:13):
you have this spectrum between the people that score the
most in the naiop and the people that score the
most in the pioppi. Right. You've got hundreds of points
between them, those categories. But it's by no surprise that
the upper 30% of the most successful business owners we
work with are the people that are exemplifying those scores,

(46:38):
and the highest level of the pipes, and the people
who leave and go away and continue to do what
they were doing before I ever met them, are scoring
at the low end, and then there is collateral damage
sometimes in the middle of that, because you do accidentally,
inadvertently in all businesses, we have that client or that
person we love. We love working with them, but you
just screw up enough that they're like, look, I can't

(46:59):
do this anymore, right? And so you have that category
of people and no one wants to lose those people, right?
But those people go away. Here's what I've charted. Those
people go away quietly. The ones that are the big
nips try to go away loudly, right, and drag as
many people with them as possible.

S2 (47:18):
Can I tell you what I do with them? Yes.
I mute them from my life every single possible way.
Anytime somebody is going to be a bitching and moaning,
draining person, if you didn't like what you found, just
move on in life. But if you gotta like bitch
and moan about it and put a bunch of negativity
out there, you're going to attract that into your life.
And what do you think they're going to have in

(47:39):
their business? You can have employees that do the same
thing to them.

S1 (47:42):
So you and I both know, and John Maxwell actually
has a law, law of mirror. When you look into
your business or you look into your life, anything that
is a reflection of what you do and what you
think and how you look that comes back is your reflection.

S2 (47:59):
Yes. If I put complaints out on social media, for instance,
and I bitch and moan, I know I'm going to
bring that back to me in my life. There's there's
no doubt. And so if I have a bitching, if
I'm a little bitch for a moment, I got to
get over it. But I am not going to project
that into the world, because I know it's going to
come back to me if I do, and I know
it's got to stop at the thought, and I've got
to give it a competing thought immediately.

S1 (48:21):
And that is something that giving it a competing thought
is something you have worked on in this program to
drown out that self-limiting, that self-belief, that piece of critical
thing that you know is going to pull you off target.
That's right. And so when people ask me what is
the ultimate difference between those that succeed, from those that

(48:42):
fail in life, in business, at targets, everything. And if
you listen to the best athletes in the world, the
thing that they were able to do is learn to
control how they think and then what they do, right?
And they did that by keeping anything that didn't contribute
to the movement towards the target completely out of their mind. Yes.

(49:04):
Which means it's out of their mouth, because what you
think is what you say, what you say is what
you do, and what you do is what you're known for.
So from your perspective as an entrepreneur who's hit every
single target, you've literally graduated through our strategic business unit
because you've developed those competencies inside your business. Right. And

(49:25):
now you have that team there. You don't need to
outsource it because you have it and you are the
outsource leader. Now, you don't need me and my team
because you are that person now. Yeah. You've been able
to move out of the state. You've been able to
hit your financial targets. You have a business that has
a team of people that are taking care of it
every day. You're now running the leadership program, and you
and I are looking at other business ventures together and

(49:45):
doing other things as a word of encouragement. Summarize from
your perspective someone who's done the whole cycle from because
because you hear me say a thousand times over, building
a business is starting, building, optimizing which scaling and then

(50:06):
scaling which is growing. So, so starting, building, optimize, growing, transforming,
putting your people and your systems and your technologies and
your processes and then Uh, exiting. Ultimately, exiting doesn't mean
you sell it. Exiting means you move to the next

(50:26):
thing you want to do, whatever that is, right? But
if you don't know what that is, you can't do it.

S2 (50:31):
Yeah. And if you've got a great business and you can,
you don't have to financially exit a business, because what?
What if it's so good? Why would I sell it?
It's too good to sell. Right. But summarize that person. Yeah.

S1 (50:45):
Summarize in your mind. Yeah. Because you've completed that whole
cycle in less than six.

S2 (50:50):
So when I think about the I would summarize it
with some attributes. Number one is, you know, high character right. Resilience.
In order to have aggressive patience, in order to be
able to work through the obstacles, the obstacles are going
to happen. Setbacks are going to happen. And it's not
it's impossible without it. But you need to be extremely
resilient and develop that resilience. You need to be intellectually

(51:15):
aware and intellectually curious, because if you're if you're going
to be ignorant and not curious about learning what you don't,
you don't know what you don't know. You're going to
be a know it all. You're never going to succeed
in this journey. You need to have true high, very
high level of belief because a lot of people, they

(51:37):
want to bail out because they don't believe they can
keep doing it. They want to bail because they don't
think they can get to to the end of the
road or whatever that, uh, whatever that vision is, they
don't think they could survive. And so they just want
to bail or they won't do the work because they
don't believe they can really accomplish it. So they're going
to find a reason to excuse to to bail out.
And you need to have a vision of where you

(51:59):
want to go and what type of impact. Because if
it's just about money and money alone, it isn't going
to be enough. Like, why do you why are you
doing what you're doing? How is that going to impact
people or whatever it is that you really care about?
And there's so much purpose behind it because I don't
need to do what? I don't need to like what
I'm doing. But I say I need to love why

(52:20):
I'm doing it. Because there are times we're going to
need to do things that we don't love to do.
But you can earn the time just like you have,
and I have begun to earn, to be able to
do the things you love to do because you've earned it.
You've gone through that journey. You're a great example of that.
I'm working through that right now, and now I get
to come into my passions leadership. If I could just

(52:43):
sit there and help other leaders. We had over 160
business owners in there. I think we had we calculated
6000 people were going to be directly impacted from that
particular event. That's purpose. That's why I enjoy doing that.
That's my passion. I can help leaders help other people.
I can I can amplify impact if you don't, if

(53:05):
you have that set of attributes as the basic, yeah,
you can do it, you can do it.

S1 (53:11):
But if you're self-focused, You have low awareness, you have impatience.
You defer, deflect and blame everybody for why you can't
do what you want. You're always looking for an excuse out.
You have little spurts of energy and then you default
back to the things you have different, actually different conflicting
ideas about what you really want versus what you what

(53:34):
you really want versus what you're saying. So that because
ultimately who you really are inside will come out under pressure.
That's why John says when you squeeze the tomato, you
get tomato juice. You don't get orange juice. That's right.
So whatever really is happening inside under pressure is going
to come out and it's going to reverberate, especially if
you're hiding who you really are. It's going to reverberate
because now you have the insecurity that people are starting

(53:55):
to figure you out. Right. So here it is in
a nutshell. And IOPs ultimately that have low character are
going to struggle, fail and blame everybody else.

S2 (54:07):
In every aspect of their life.

S1 (54:09):
In every aspect. P IOPs positive influence of other people.
They have high character are people who follow through, who
stay consistent, who stay on target, who get results, and
who treat others with the same respect that they want
to be treated. And you are a high. You're in
that top quadrant of the pioppi, which now the question

(54:33):
is going to be, what podcast are we going to
shoot in 60 months? So it'll be a ten year
window between you and I. And what are we talking
about in 60 months that we did? Because the thing
I recognized you and I have not done yet is redefined.
You've accomplished everything we defined 60 months ago, but it
got this weekend. I realized what we haven't done is

(54:55):
we haven't redefined what we're going to do in the
next 60 months. So we don't need to solve it here.
But I do think we need to put our attention
on it, because that will be how we do it.
And I know what components will be there, because I
know the quality of person you are and what your
true desire and impact is, but we will share it
in a follow up podcast. Um, and, and I just

(55:16):
want to say how much it's been a pleasure for you. Uh,
for me to get to, I just want to say
how much it has.

S2 (55:21):
Been a pleasure for.

S3 (55:22):
You. I know.

S1 (55:23):
I just want to say, first of all, you become
one of my best friends. Secondly, I have so much
respect for you and your family. And thirdly, you have
made what I do a pleasure because I get to
spend time with people I love, right? I respect and
I admire equally. And the things we're going to do
together are going to be really super exciting. And I
think business owners listening to this should model, mimic and

(55:47):
master what's already proven to work.

S2 (55:50):
I love it man, I agree, and what you've done
for me and my family is incredible. And what we're
going to do for thousands of other people, millions of
other people around the world is going to be incredible
over the next five years.

S1 (56:02):
Well, thank you for being an example and for helping
me on that mission.

S2 (56:05):
I appreciate it, brother.

S3 (56:06):
Yeah, brother. All right.