In this episode of Braving Business, we welcome Dennis Stearns, a financial strategist, futurist, and entrepreneur renowned for his ability to navigate complex challenges and anticipate future trends. As the founder of Stearns Financial Group, Dennis has helped countless business owners think ahead and play smart, creating sustainable success even in uncertain times.
With accolades like "Entrepreneur of the Year" and "Most Admired CEO," Dennis’s career spans decades of advising companies on innovative growth strategies, value acceleration, and creative exit planning. He is also the author of “Ninja Entrepreneurs: How Top Business Owners Achieve Success” and “Fourth Quarter Fumbles: How Successful People Avoid Critical Mistakes in the Last Quarter of Life.”
In this conversation, Dennis shares:
- The critical role of adaptability in building a successful business.
- Lessons from his experience as a chess master and how strategy applies to leadership.
- Memorable stories of helping businesses pivot, innovate, and scale.
- How to prepare for future challenges and stay ahead of the curve.
- Insights on the evolving role of leadership and the power of building resilient teams.
Dennis also highlights his work with Triad Growth Partners, focusing on CleanTech innovations, and his passion for empowering business owners to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Whether you’re scaling a business, navigating a transition, or planning for the future, Dennis’s wisdom will equip you with the tools to think smarter, act decisively, and achieve lasting success.
Key Takeaways:
- Resilience comes from surrounding yourself with the right people and being prepared to pivot when needed.
- Strategy is as much about anticipating future challenges as it is about solving today’s problems.
- Building a great team culture is a cornerstone of long-term business success.
Connect with Dennis Stearns:
- Website: Stearns Financial Group
Contact Us: Visit www.bravingbusiness.com for more information, resources, and episodes.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey there, I'm Tals Lotnitsky from Ignite IT Consulting.
(00:05):
You know me from the Braving Business podcast, but when I'm not behind the mic, I'm helping
tech startups and established companies ignite their full potential.
I also help entrepreneurs and businesses in distress reset for success.
With over three decades of entrepreneurial success, I bring hands-on experience to drive
growth, navigate turnarounds, raise capital, and lead to innovation.
(00:28):
Whether it's executive coaching or strategic transformation, I'm here to turn your business
challenges into success stories.
Visit igniteitconsulting.com and let's spark that change together.
That's igniteitconsulting.com.
Your journey to business brilliance starts now.
And one last quick thing.
(00:49):
If you enjoyed this episode, please stay on after the show to learn more about the Braving
Business podcast and other great episodes for you to discover.
And now, let's get the show started.
(01:13):
Well hello there.
Hey there, buddy.
How are you?
I am well, Mr. Green Jeans.
Look at that resplendent green shirt you have on.
Very nice.
I know.
It's actually Publix.
It's a Publix, you know, Publix is a grocery chain in the southeast.
And I'm in Tampa Bay, Florida, as you know, and it's our grocery chain.
And I got this shirt from Publix many years ago.
(01:35):
I don't wear it often, but it's a nice color.
Wow.
They're just handing out the swag.
You know, you sent me a picture recently that had you with the shirt off.
And I do-
You really are going to go there.
Well, no, no, no.
All I'm going to say, all I'm going to say is if I had your physique, I would never own
a shirt.
So, so I'm happy you're wearing one.
(01:57):
I'm sure Dennis looks better without his shirt on.
Let's just go there.
This, this, this is going downhill in a hurry.
Dennis, I will, I will tell you, I was on vacation in Jamaica and I shared, I shared
a photo with PJ of myself having just entered and I don't know if I'm embarrassed to say
(02:18):
or proud to say, but won a pole dancing competition in my resort.
And I was shirtless.
That is true.
And I don't know why PJ decided to share that with our audience, but he did.
And we'll just have to roll with that.
So, so there's the famous Top Gun movie scene of them playing beach volleyball.
(02:41):
Were you, were you one of those ripped guys that looked like you were oiled up?
He really was.
I will say, you know, he's got, he's got the washboard abs and I, I would like to say that
even though people can clean their clothes on his abs, they can lay them out to dry on
mine.
So it's a, oh goodness.
(03:02):
Listen, let's, let's introduce Dennis before, before I lose our entire audience before everyone
loses their lunch.
All right.
So that's right.
Dennis, thank you for, thank you for being here, sir.
Dennis Stearns is a financial strategist, a futurist and an entrepreneur who has built
a reputation as one of the leading scenario planners in the world.
As the founder of Stearns Financial Group, he has helped clients navigate economic uncertainty
(03:27):
and create innovative strategies for success.
Named entrepreneur of the year and most admired CEO, Dennis has been quoted in major outlets
like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Kiplinger Finance.
He is also an accomplished author with books like Ninja Entrepreneurs, How to Top, How
Top Business Owners Achieve Success, which is his most recent book, and Fourth Quarter
(03:50):
Fumbles, How Successful People Avoid Critical Mistakes in the Last Quarter of Life.
Dennis brings a wealth of knowledge from his work as a clean tech venture partner and his
unique background as a chess master, where he has learned the artist's strategy and adaptability
from losing most of the thousand games he played with his mentor.
His mission to empower business owners to, his mission is to empower business owners
(04:13):
to think ahead, adapt to change and create sustainable success.
Dennis, we are thrilled to have you on the Braving Business Club podcast.
Well, thank you.
Thrilled to be here.
A big fan of your show.
Listen to it all the time.
Oh my gosh.
Well, all right.
It's very kind of you.
You're now my favorite, my favorite person we've had on.
Already?
(04:33):
Jesus, you're so easy to win over.
I am.
Oh my God.
Yes, please.
All day.
Dennis, we're glad to have you on.
You're definitely one of the most accomplished thinkers that I think we've had on the podcast.
I'm really excited to get your feedback on the future because the future is so scary
(04:56):
to a lot of people.
I was having conversations over the weekend with a friend who is just petrified by what
the AI revolution is bringing to the world.
And I'd love to get your perspective on that.
But we're going to start a little bit closer to the point of origin.
You are described as one of the top financial scenario planners in the world.
First, maybe help us understand what that means.
And then tell us what drew you to that?
(05:18):
What made this something that appealed to you as a career choice?
Yeah, well, I was trained early on by some of the best scenario people to think about
how the world could materialize in the future and to try to figure out what the variables
(05:38):
are.
And then watch those variables like a hawk and develop pivot strategies and adaptive
strategies.
And so the concept here is you don't have an official crystal ball, not to mention the
guest that you had.
(05:59):
Yeah, our last guest.
A couple of shows ago.
Dennis was telling us how hard an act to follow a crystal ball is.
Our guest a couple of episodes back.
And I would encourage you, if you've not listened to that episode, do check that episode out.
That was wonderful.
I digress.
Go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so some of my articles have been around.
I don't have a magic crystal ball, but we do think about the future in a more intense
(06:23):
way than most.
And probably more importantly is figuring out how to move a particular direction if
things we see start to happen.
And that happens to be the number one most requested chapter to have me talk on in the
Ninja Entrepreneur book is adapt and pivot.
(06:45):
And it was incredible, the 120 companies that we interviewed, the questions they had, and
many of these are very successful private companies about, okay, when do I disrupt myself?
When do I do a pivot when it's not an emergency situation?
(07:06):
And that's the problem is most pivots in the private sector are done when somebody's in
a crisis or the pandemic hits or something else happens.
And so it's really hard to dig your well before you're thirsty and get ahead of those things
that can happen.
That's a great line.
(07:27):
Dig your well before you're thirsty.
So you've talked in your work as one of the key themes being this preparing for future
challenges.
What are some of the most pressing future threats that you see business owners are dealing
with today or facing today?
And how do you feel that they can prepare?
(07:48):
Well, I think one of the threats that we're doing as part of our some of all fears research
is the potential for supply chain snarls to happen again, like they happened in the pandemic.
And unfortunately, only about a third of all the supply chain snarls that happened in the
(08:13):
pandemic have been permanently fixed.
There's still two thirds out there that people put band-aids on.
And so the question that we're going through with all of our business owner clients right
now is, okay, how's your supply chain?
And is it really as secure as you think it might be?
And if something unthinkable happens, and what I'm about to describe is probably a 50-50
(08:41):
proposition.
So I don't think it's even in the unthinkable category.
If China invades Taiwan, think about the second and third order effects of that happening.
And what will it do to whatever it is you sell, whether it's a product or a service?
And so that's one of the key, you know, dig your well before you're thirsty kind of themes
(09:05):
we're working through with people.
And the other one is think about your customers.
I mean, that was one of the big things that came out of Ninja Entrepreneurs.
It's not exactly a state secret that customers have more power than they've ever had before
in history of mankind.
And they are getting this power through Amazon and a whole bunch of other sources.
(09:31):
And they have the ability to be smarter shoppers.
And so the question is, have we upped our game as business owners to make sure that
we're prepared for smarter shoppers?
I mean, it's sort of business 101, stay close to your customers, right?
But part of our, what we call our super trend research, this collision of these massive
(09:56):
trends is that this is probably going to become a bigger thing as we go.
When you say that customers are more powerful than ever, is it just because they have more
options at their fingertips?
Or can you flesh that a little bit for me?
Yeah, they have more options at their fingertips and they have the ability to shop for alternatives.
(10:22):
And this is a fundamental of economics.
It's the reason why when prices go up in the grocery store, people look for alternatives
in the grocery store.
But the same thing is true whether you're a B2B or B2C type business, is people have
a lot of options and alternatives.
(10:45):
And if you're not exceptional in your category, well, you could be vulnerable in this environment
that we envision in the next five to 10 years.
What's interesting to me, I think, is that the proliferation of generative AI has exponentially
(11:06):
increased the power of consumers because they can so easily search today in ways that are
far more powerful than what we felt was fairly powerful already with Google.
Now we see what actual personalized search can look like and it is shifting even more
(11:27):
power, I think, to consumers.
And I'm curious and I asked that or I raised that point early on, you raised supply chain,
which is an absolutely very valid concern and risk that businesses should be thinking
about.
But those businesses are more, I would say, I don't want to use the word traditional,
(11:51):
but those who provide goods.
What about services?
How do you envision, what is the biggest risk that you see to companies and businesses in
the services sector?
Yeah, talent is one of the real key areas that we're working with a lot of businesses
on right now.
And it's no secret that you're only as good as your next employee that you're going to
(12:16):
hire and the ones keeping the ones that you have.
I mean, we have almost a full chapter devoted in Ninja to some creative companies who have
figured out better ways to attract good people and then keep good people.
And this environment we're in, we're still in a reasonably tight labor market.
(12:41):
And we worked with a guy named Chris Zarnak, who is the global head of Vistage, which is
the roundtable groups for entrepreneurs, their talent area.
And Chris likes to tell the story that we're fighting the last war on talent, that most
(13:05):
business owners are still kind of in the mode of, well, people are going to line up because
I've got such a good business or I'm such a good owner, a good CEO, whatever.
And they're going to come to work for us.
And it is an absolute fight out there to get and keep really good talent.
(13:32):
And I do a lot of work also with various universities on teaching young entrepreneurs and growing
entrepreneurs and that second hire, that fifth hire, that 10th hire.
I mean, every one of those is going to take you in a different trajectory on the chess
board.
(13:52):
And most of the time you hire what you can afford.
Well, sometimes those aren't the ones that represent the absolute best for you when in
the game ultimately.
So this whole talent thing has just become crazy.
Yeah, so one of the things that actually you brought it up, you are a chess master.
(14:17):
And so how has your experience as being a chess master influenced your own strategic
thinking, strategic, my gosh, strategic thinking in business and as well as financial planning?
Yeah, good question.
So when I was first starting out in chess, I was an ADHD kid and I was driving my sister
(14:44):
and brother, both older, absolutely crazy.
And so my dad was racking his brain trying to figure out what can I do with this kid?
I mean, if it were today, they'd probably put me on Ritalin or something.
And so he got me into chess and tennis and it was chess that really got me to settle
(15:05):
down focus.
And I had a Cuban chess master as an early mentor.
Now if you can imagine him sitting down with little 10 year old Dennis and he says, we're
going to play a thousand games, you're going to lose every one of them, but you will learn
(15:26):
something from every one and little 10 year old me was like, you know, that doesn't sound
like much fun.
But that wish is not to kill us makes it stronger.
And I mean, he was a tough guy.
And what it taught me was again, you learn from your mistakes, you pivot, you adapt,
(15:51):
you study the masters so that you develop kind of that internal software that we all
have of what would a master do in this situation?
That's why I love shows like yours and the explosion of entrepreneurial podcasts, because
it gives you so many things to kind of lock away into that internal software.
(16:14):
And then you come up against a situation and you have a little better sense of how to make
the right decision on it.
So that's actually a great segue to your new book, which is Ninja Entrepreneurs, how top
business owners achieve success.
And in this book, you talk about the power of adapting and pivoting in the world we're
in.
And we've talked a little bit about some of the pivot points that specific businesses
(16:36):
may face.
But can you share a story from your career, particularly in the early stages, and maybe
leaning into what you learned from the chess master, the Cuban chess master that beat you
a thousand times, which I love.
Is there a story that you can share with us about this principle of adapting and pivoting?
Is there a story you could share about that principle in action?
(16:56):
Yeah, well, one of the things that I learned in chess is if you have an option A and an
option B, never settle for that.
Always look for the third line of play.
And the third line of play is the one that is not immediately obvious.
And so when we have been working with business owners over decades, that's part of the work
(17:25):
that we've done with them is to say, okay, let's look at option A and option B that you're
considering, but let's really think hard.
Maybe it's A or B, but let's really think hard if there's an option C that has a better
risk reward ratio.
And a lot of times that decision-making is influenced by the mentors, the leaders that
(17:51):
people have surrounded themselves with.
And again, I think entrepreneurs in their early stages, it tends to be a little bit
of a lone ranger and you're kind of just making decisions on the fly and you hope they come
out right and you hope that you make more good decisions than not.
I mean, it's like baseball, right?
(18:14):
If you could have a pretty good batting average, but not do everything right, you're probably
going to be pretty successful.
And so our belief is that the environment we're coming into is more treacherous.
It is more uncharted waters out there.
There's opportunities galore, but there's threats galore.
(18:36):
And that means that every business owner just needs to kind of up their game.
Well, I'd love to hear a story of how you actually experienced it on your own terms,
right?
Early on in your career, what's the story that you can think of where you actually lived
this principle yourself?
Yeah.
And that's easy because they look at our firm and they say, oh, you're a multi-billion dollar
(19:00):
firm and you have all this capability within your firm.
Well, that didn't just arrive overnight.
And so in the early stages of building the business, I made some of those same mistakes.
Or maybe I settled for somebody that I could afford as opposed to somebody who would really
(19:24):
take me to the next level.
One of the things that was really helpful to me was when we were about 10% of our current
size, one of our business owner clients sat me down and he said, Dennis, you've got to
(19:45):
invest ahead of the curve and you got to invest in really good people if you're going to grow
and be a great enterprise someday.
He said, do you really want it?
And again, that's been a theme on a few of your shows is, do you really want it?
And so I thought long and hard about what it meant to try to develop a multi-billion
(20:07):
dollar firm.
And I really wanted it.
And so I went out and when I had five candidates for a new job, if one of them was 10% more
expensive but really was a quality add on, I would stretch to make that happen.
Sometimes I went without bonuses myself.
(20:28):
Again, entrepreneurs do that all the time, right?
To be able to build a good team around me.
During 08, 09, 08, 09 was the great recession was one of the most difficult scenario environments
ever because late in 08, you had Congress fiddling while Rome burned.
(20:53):
They really weren't moving quickly to try to solve the issues that were happening.
The whole economy was freezing up and you opened up the newspaper and there were pictures
of 1929.
So the predictions were we're going to a depression worldwide, not a bad recession, but an actual
(21:15):
depression.
So we're making decisions in our firm and we again, we had really good people.
I had hired a decade before who were thoughtful, well-trained.
We dug our well before we're thirsty.
So the cobbler does have shoes here and the cobbler's kids have shoes too.
(21:42):
And so we're trying, but we're still trying to make just really tough decisions.
And so we have an extended network of business owners and clients all over the world.
We just went out to them and said, what do you see going on?
And we weren't just looking for the third line of play.
We were looking for the fourth and fifth line of play and trying to figure out, should we
(22:05):
be moving everybody to cash?
We had already actually moved a lot to cash and more defensive things, but should we get
even more defensive or should we now lean in and be more offensive minded?
One of the toughest decisions in my entire firm, because we were essentially betting
(22:27):
the future of the firm.
Not that we would have gone out of business if we pivoted the wrong way, but we would
not be what we are today.
We were both fortunate, again, we have one of the top plastics entities in the country
and plastics are in everything.
(22:48):
And they said, you know, we're starting to see orders pick up.
So we're not so sure this global depression thing is going to happen.
Well, that was when the stock market was in its second crater in early 2009.
And so on the outside, you said, oh my God, what's going on?
But we said, okay, take a deep breath here and, you know, Navy SEAL, four square breathing
(23:16):
and let's try to figure out what's really going on.
And from there, we just continued to play the offense and take advantage of the opportunities.
You know, that's kind of, you're bringing me back some flashbacks of, Tal, I don't know
what you were doing there that time, but I've been involved in international supply chain
(23:39):
for my entire career.
It's like 34 years now.
And in 2008, 2009, you know, I had been helping companies do all their imports out of China.
And normally, ocean freight is very steady from a cost perspective.
(23:59):
You could, you know, the floor used to be like $1,400 for a 40 foot container that would
move from Pearl River Delta, China to Long Beach.
It's like one of the busiest freight corridors in the world.
And something that people could really rely on as a number.
That number vanished and just started going down and down and down.
(24:21):
And from a freight forwarding standpoint, we didn't understand it.
And we were seeing that the competition for ocean lines in Asia were just basically killing
themselves thinking that they were losing volume to their competitors.
So they kept lowering their rates and it was just this race to the bottom.
And that's when we realized, oh, this is a big deal.
(24:47):
This is a terrifying prospect that's going on.
So I get it.
I think everything that you're saying is, you know, destroying years of therapy that
I've had.
So thanks a lot, Dennis.
Well, sorry for giving you the flashback.
It was a rough time.
So if I could, if I could jump in, PJ, because I think you're raising a couple of interesting
(25:10):
points that I think are worth flushing out a little bit more, which is in moments of
crisis, you tend to assume that the playbook you should be calling plays from is a traditional
playbook.
So there were a bunch of companies there who assumed that what was happening was they were
losing business to competitors as opposed to recognizing, no, something fundamental
(25:32):
has shifted and the old playbook is not going to work.
And I think this really fits in with Dennis's very point around you need to be thinking
not merely in the context of what am I, what threats have I seen, but what are the future
threats that I haven't seen and what might I do?
That's the whole concept I think of dig the well before you're thirsty.
(25:54):
If I'm following the logic there, Dennis, does that resonate for you?
Yeah, you're spot on.
It's a messy world anyway, and sometimes it gets more messy than many of us would like.
Yeah, it was, it was, there was a lot of lessons learned there.
You were probably way ahead of it, but we learned the hard way.
(26:15):
I had just in 2008, 2009, I had just sold my first company and I started another and
had the incredible fortune of speaking on behalf of President Obama to the White House
press on the West lawn of the White House at the age of 33.
Nice.
(26:35):
And that, that is what I recall from that timeframe.
I know a lot of people have a horrible, nightmarish memories.
That is what I recall from that time in my life.
Maybe the, not maybe, the highlight of my life.
I mean, now followed closely by winning the pole dancing competition in Jamaica, of course.
(26:56):
Well, one day I hope to have the same amount of accolades as you do tell.
So Dennis, you have surrounded years, or you've said that surrounding yourself with the right
people has been a key to overcoming adversity.
And absolutely, I don't think there's a person in the world who would argue against that.
It's an obvious and true statement.
(27:17):
The big struggle is how do I identify those people when perhaps you don't have a lot of
experience building or assembling a team.
So what advice would you have for those burgeoning entrepreneurs trying to build a resilient
team on what the key qualities are to look for and the shiny object qualities to look
past?
(27:38):
Really good question.
And, you know, the traditional advice is to hire slow and fire fast.
Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs, because they have an immediate need to fill, they
actually reverse that.
Guilty as charged.
Yeah.
(28:00):
And so one of the things that any small growing business, like we have a small growing business
that we're mentoring in Raleigh and they have tremendous growth potential in the future
and they're up against some big competitors and they're hiring ahead of the curve, trying
to grow their business fast is let's have a team that will assess and evaluate these
(28:28):
potential team members.
And it's a bit of an unconventional team.
You know, some of them are the folks from the firm themselves who meet with the individual.
Some of them are outside mentors, which can include me, who will come at it from a completely
different way of vetting somebody.
(28:50):
Sometimes it's just doing what you actually need to do, which is really get down in the
weeds with somebody and try to ask them a whole lot of questions about how they would
deal with this situation or that situation.
You know, a lot of people are very good interviewers.
That's the problem.
(29:12):
And they will pull the wool over your eyes.
And I've had a number of those myself that I thought, oh, this is just the right person.
But I contained my enthusiasm and I stuck with my discipline of having others kind of
take a look at somebody.
And I avoided some massive hiring mistakes by doing that.
(29:34):
So they don't have to be Harvard MBA or whatever.
Just people you know who have good common sense who can spot a BSer is helpful.
So how do you spot a BSer?
I mean, I don't disagree with you.
I think the question PJ asked is the right question.
(29:55):
It's not a matter of is there any doubt at all that the caliber of people you surround
yourself with is going to impact your level of success?
None whatsoever.
I don't think there's anybody that's listened to this podcast who's an entrepreneur or frankly
alive who would not acknowledge that the quality of the people around you have, if not the
most dominant, a very, very substantial impact on how successful you are.
(30:17):
Quality of product matters, pricing, et cetera, et cetera.
People matter most.
The biggest challenge is spotting the BSer.
That's the biggest challenge.
I've struggled with that my entire career.
I'm a person who tends to assume the best.
What's one thing or two things that comes to mind?
(30:39):
I'd love that if you had an opportunity to point to one thing that you've learned in
years and years of doing this that is a red flag for a likely BSer.
I have one I want to share, but I want to hear your answer first.
Yeah.
Well, one of my favorites is to ask a prospective employee, what's the biggest mistake you've
(31:03):
made in your working life and what did you learn from it and how did you fix it?
Obviously, people have multiple answers to that question.
The person who says, oh, well, one time I forgot to put something down on my timesheet
(31:24):
is probably lying to you.
One of the things also that I have found is that sometimes opposite sex can detect things.
If I'm interviewing a man, I want one of the people on my team or my extended team outside
(31:48):
my company, I want a woman to be able to ask some of the questions because they may get
entirely different answers.
They'll go down different bunny paths and they will eventually find out that something's
not quite right.
Now, the other piece that we have found extremely valuable, calling references, always a challenge
(32:14):
because no reference, first of all, if they're going to give you a reference, it's probably
somebody good.
Then is the reference going to actually say anything bad?
We have been surprised when we ask those same questions.
What's the most awkward situation, John, that you found that Bob was in with you, personal
(32:37):
or in a business setting?
Just ask those open-ended type of questions and get them talking.
Eventually, if there's some kind of smoke or fire there, you're probably going to get
a sense of it.
We do all the traditional assessments and run them through the gallery of assessments.
(33:02):
Some of those assessments have a pretty reasonable BS meter associated with them.
But my goodness, I have run into some people who can fool an assessment.
Anyway.
Let me ask you a couple of very specific things that I've been doing.
Non-scientific.
(33:23):
I've not read them, it's just something that has occurred to me over the years that I've
started to do.
I'd love your reaction to them.
The first thing I do is I say something that I know to be false and I try to assess how
that person deals with it.
It's something that they should know based on what they're being interviewed for.
I'll say something that's false and I'll evaluate, are they capable of, without offending, pointing
(33:49):
it out?
Or are they just because I'm the interviewer?
If I say something false, are they just going to let it go?
Because as I bring people into senior positions in particular, I want them to be able to feel
comfortable enough speaking the truth.
And if getting the job is more important than being in an environment where speaking the
truth is what the person is seeking, I'm not sure I want them on my team.
(34:11):
Can you react to that?
I have one more.
Oh, brilliant.
So, can you give us an example?
I mean, I can give you dozens.
It really depends on the job, right?
So, if I'm interviewing an engineer, I might misstate something about a process that they
should know about.
And I'll say, well, my experience is that that is how you do it.
(34:34):
What's yours, right?
So, I'm giving them a chance.
It's not a matter of they'll need to say to me, no, no, no, you're wrong.
To chance them to say, well, that hasn't been my experience.
When I've done it, it's been this way, right?
So, I invite them to engage with me on a statement or fact that I'm making.
So, that's one thing.
Oh, I like it.
The other, yeah, well, great.
Add it to your repertoire.
(34:55):
Maybe it'll be in your next book.
Then the other.
Yeah, there you go.
And this is in Ninja Entrepreneurs, one of the most challenging people to hire for are
salespeople because they have naturally learned how to BS and pull one over on you.
(35:16):
That's exactly right.
So, that goes to my second consistent approach, which is I ask questions to which the proper
answer is I don't know.
And I will hire someone that says I don't know 10 times out of 10 ahead of someone that
has an answer to every single question.
(35:38):
Because in my experience, that is an indication of a bullshit artist.
What's your perspective on that?
Yeah.
And again, that just gets right back to being able to have a good conversation with somebody
where you're maybe throwing in some zingers, but maybe they don't know they're zingers
(36:00):
and just seeing how they react to them.
I love it because the old thing, the old traditional thing was you take somebody to dinner and
you see if they let down their guard after a couple glasses of wine or something else.
By the way, that still works pretty well.
(36:21):
But I think, again, you just got to be, as you were just talking about, you got to be
more creative.
No, that's all great.
And to validate, Dennis, what you said about salespeople being bullshit artists, we are.
So thank you very much.
That's how we survive.
(36:42):
Although I'll tell you what, you know, what's interesting, PJ, is that the older I get,
the more I realize that I am a more successful salesperson when I'm vulnerable.
And I admit I don't know.
And it took me years and years and years to realize that because when I was younger, for
two reasons.
One is that the imposter syndrome rages when you're young.
(37:02):
It never goes away completely, but it rages when you're young.
Right?
And so you're really, really struggling to show any kind of vulnerability.
And secondarily, it feels like, you know, you may never have another chance.
You're always when you're younger, you're always at this place where you're like, well,
this better be, you know, I better get this one because then and I've learned that that's
(37:23):
never the case.
There's always another another apple, take a bite in and no one situation warrants you
compromising your values and your integrity.
Again, learn from years of trial and error and choosing plenty paths in my earlier years
where I didn't view it that way.
(37:43):
Well, you know, and it occurs to me, you guys have talked in a lot of your previous podcasts
about emotional intelligence, EQ.
And we absolutely agree with you that we believe EQ trumps IQ every day of the week.
You know, there's some jobs you have to have a minimum IQ just to do the job.
(38:06):
But EQ is such a higher predictor of people rising to success as an entrepreneur.
I mean, it's to the point where we are now in several universities, including classes
on EQ, because I think it's that critical a skill set.
(38:27):
In one of my first books, CEO Road Rules, my co author, she was an expert on teaching
EQ.
EQ can be learned, which is a fabulous thing because I mean, in our firm, we actually have
training programs around EQ, how to sharpen that axe.
(38:47):
Well, the sharper the axe you have an EQ, the better chance you can detect somebody
who's not authentic.
I could totally see that.
Actually we were just talking about EQ with our last guest, Markel.
Mr. Russell, Markel Russell, he was off the charts for just from us meeting with him and
(39:10):
talking with him and seeing how he interacts with people and how he looks at things.
His EQ was phenomenal, right?
Like, really?
I would agree.
And this is a guy who dropped, Marquel dropped out of high school after ninth grade.
And his EQ was like something I'd never seen.
I mean, it was stratospheric.
Yeah.
It's an episode I'd encourage anyone in the audience who's interested in the concept of
(39:34):
EQ to really listen.
He shared a lot of pearls of wisdom about his process, which I think would be very valuable
to listeners.
Yeah, no, fascinating guy, fascinating.
So Dennis, you wrote a book previously called The Fourth Quarter Fumbles about mistakes
where people make late in their careers.
(39:55):
So what are some of the most common mistakes you see business owners making when they're
planning for the fourth quarter?
And what can we, I'm in that, what can we do to avoid them?
Yeah, well, the aging of America and the world, you know, more and more people are going to
(40:16):
live longer, although we all know examples of people who die too young, but the general
trend is going to be live longer.
And so in that, there are three segments that we identified back when we were doing that
research and we live this every day because of a lot of the clients that we're dealing
with.
(40:37):
It's the go-go, slow-go and no-go stage.
And so what's happened in the last couple of decades is the go-go has extended considerably.
In the good old days, you got to age 65 and they gave you a gold watch or if you were
(40:57):
an entrepreneur, you know, maybe you had a party or something.
And you basically within seven years of retiring, either you or your spouse got sick and if
usually it was the guy who got sick and then the wife became the caregiver or the partner
(41:19):
became the caregiver.
And so usually one person was dead within a decade of retirement.
Well, not that that doesn't happen today, but in a lot of cases, people are now, I mean,
we have clients in their 80s who are bicycling across Croatia with their grandchildren and
(41:40):
all kinds of other crazy stuff that never used to happen in the past.
And so as opposed to kind of the slow gradual decline and to being decrepit, you now have
an opportunity, not a God-given right, but you have an opportunity if you take care of
(42:02):
yourself to be able to go deep into the fourth quarter and then drop off a cliff, which is
kind of what we all would like to do, right?
You know, die in our sleep, but hopefully after we just had something really fun going.
And so the, I think PJ just got that.
(42:23):
So I got it too.
Listen to the crystal ball episode where I asked her how she decompresses.
And that would be, that would be the feeder to that one.
Go on.
I thought that was hilarious.
And great answer.
I never gotten that one before.
Yeah, good job on that one, by the way.
So the, you know, the basis of the fourth quarter stuff is that if you're a business
(42:49):
owner, we also did a workbook called fourth quarter fumbles for business and fourth quarter
champions for business.
And the issue is that entrepreneurs love what they're doing.
I love what I'm doing.
And you tend to go deeper into the fourth quarter in a work vein.
(43:11):
And a lot of times the reason is not the right reason.
The reason is that you can't imagine yourself doing anything else.
And you view yourself as being miserable or possibly dying early if you retire.
And so what tends to happen is business owners stay longer than all their leadership team
(43:37):
would prefer they stay.
And what happens then?
Well, in this environment, I go out and poach those people.
So we have companies that I'm also partner in a number of different companies.
And if we see a leadership team and we meet one of them and oh yeah, the owner was supposed
to retire five years ago, but he's still in there and I'm not sure what I'm going to do
(44:02):
because I was supposed to move up.
Well, that person is probably poachable.
And so there's a whole bunch of business fumbles that can come with kind of overstaying the
welcome.
And one of the key things we believe in is, you know, let's try to figure out what the
next chapter can look like.
(44:24):
You know, maybe it's not exactly the last chapter, but there's a lot of things you can
do out there that'll, you know, make you jump out of bed in the morning.
You know, I think it's so interesting that you're bringing this up.
I quite literally this weekend, I had a conversation with a friend who has, who works for a firm.
(44:45):
I won't state the industry where one of the founders is just hanging on and has long lost
his edge is now disruptive to the point where if he's in a meeting, there is an expectation
that 20 to 30% of the time will be wasted chasing rabbits or going down rabbit holes.
(45:08):
And she expressed the extent to which that was frustrating, not just to her and the team,
but also the clients, which sometimes are privy to that.
The challenge, of course, is, you know, at some point, that person was probably exceptionally
competent and capable.
And it's really hard to recognize that you've lost your edge.
(45:33):
And if you're in an environment where sharing that truth is going to cost someone their
jobs, then you're likely not going to get the input that you need as an entrepreneur,
that maybe it's time for you to shift or pivot even within your company to some other role.
I've seen entrepreneurs do this exceptionally well.
(45:56):
I've seen entrepreneurs ruin their companies by not doing it well.
And what I'm hearing you say is that, you know, that fourth quarter, if you're just
going to be one of those guys and we've seen them, you know, I don't know if you're a football
fan, but we saw Aaron Rodgers yesterday throw touchdown 501.
Okay.
But boy have his last couple of seasons tarnished an otherwise stellar career.
(46:22):
People stay on too long.
This we've seen it in sports and we recognize it more easily in sports because you can more
readily because it's a statistical game.
You can see their degradation and quality much more readily than you would in a boardroom.
But what would you recommend if you're working for someone who's lost, you know, some of
(46:43):
their game?
Oh, what, what would you recommend to that person other than leaving?
Maybe that's the only option, but is there anything besides that, that you could share?
Yeah, we have that situation happening right now.
And the number two person, you know, his first inclination was, okay, maybe this isn't going
(47:09):
to work out even though I'm very loyal.
I have invested a lot of my time and a lot of my effort in making this company better,
but it's clear that I'm not going to get my shot.
And I said, okay, let's think about a third line of play here.
(47:31):
Let's think about another way to approach this.
And so we ended up having a conversation.
He hired a group to come in and do interviews with all the leadership team.
And it was ostensibly to be able to make the leadership team work better together in the
(47:54):
future.
They're under a system called entrepreneurial operating system EOS.
And so they had had some issues with the visionary integrator, which has happened a lot by the
way, where those two are too far apart from each other.
And so there was some good reasons why they needed to do this evaluation.
(48:17):
Well, we encouraged them to include external sources, including family members outside
of the company and the spouse in particular of the owner to be able to get a true 360
degree view.
And so I think that is moving things because now the business owner is beginning to realize
(48:43):
that, hey, maybe I am creating a miserable situation for a lot of people around me.
But if you're already on the warning track to any kind of early dementia, the eight warning
symbols, if you have two or three of those eight, you're in a path to a really difficult
(49:04):
situation because that individual won't usually recognize it.
And it'll be some kind of forced situation that usually turns into legal battles and
a war.
Again we try to, our battle cry is plan ahead, play smart.
(49:27):
And so, which I guess is another offshoot of dig your well before you're thirsty.
And so a lot of times we suggest that if you get off the track of whatever has been promised
to you, if you're a number two person or number three person in a firm, if you get off that
track, don't wait even six months to bring it to people's attention, bring the situation
(49:52):
up, see if there's a way that it can be resolved.
Wow.
All right.
I never thought we were going to be talking about this today, but thank you for that.
That's very insightful and terrifying.
I'm going to need to look up what those eight signs are.
Are you worried about your own decline?
(50:12):
Is that what you're saying?
That's what I was thinking about.
I was like, man, I was going to make the joke that I wanted to work with Dennis because
all I ever wanted to do was ride my Harley straight into my grave penniless and a little
drunk.
But now he's got me thinking about other stuff.
There was a great book written on that, by the way, called Die Broke, where you're checked
(50:35):
to the funeral director balances.
I'm sure the funeral director industry would not appreciate that.
Yeah, really.
Oh, that's amazing.
All right.
So last question, Dennis, you've been, first of all, you've just been a stellar guest and
just a trove of information.
So thank you for sharing your time with us.
One of the things that you also do is you're a partner in Triad Growth Partners, which
(50:59):
is focused on clean tech and water remediation technologies, but also dealing with PAFS,
which is a tooth crunching acronym for the often toxic manmade chemicals that is widely
used in packaging, cookware, fabrics, cosmetics, electronics, medical devices, and more.
(51:21):
Why have you chosen to focus your time and attention there?
And what do you believe is possible to achieve there in the next five to 10 years?
Oh, great question.
Well, so that came out of a economic development program out of our nanotechnology center,
(51:41):
which at the time I was serving on the board and secretary treasurer of and head of strategic
planning.
And by the way, nanotech is coming.
It's going to be here.
And so we developed a venture entity.
Our first customer was NASA, of all people.
(52:03):
And then this gets back to that issue of you hire smart people and they will take you in
good and unexpected directions at times.
So our chief scientist, she actually got her chops at Carolina and Duke in environmental
remediation.
(52:24):
And so as we were working on all kinds of contracts to develop research around different
things for the future, she kept coming back to this PFAS issue as being the billion and
maybe even trillion dollar problem of our time, all little crap that's in water that
(52:47):
we don't even know about.
I mean, I actually know more about water problems than I want to know at this stage.
And so we ended up getting contracts from Army Corps of Engineers and Air Force and
a whole variety of entities to work on researching this stuff.
(53:07):
And we're just in the process of launching a major division to actually get out and solve
the problem.
And it's a cool thing to solve a problem.
But I can tell you, this was a long game.
I mean, this was not Bobby Fischer chess where it was bing bang boom checkmate.
(53:30):
This was the long game, the patient game.
But that's how I got involved with that whole area.
And I do a lot with venture capital.
We're partners with a venture firm in LA and Singapore in healthcare.
And that's another area I'm very passionate about because I think the innovation in healthcare,
(53:52):
it's going to be huge because the healthcare system has got major problems.
So our guest today was Dennis Stearns or is Dennis Stearns.
He's one of the world's most well known and most respected financial strategists and futurists.
He has built an incredible company, Stearns Financial Group.
(54:14):
And he shared a lot of wisdom with us today.
I'd like to thank you for first of all, for being a listener.
Really appreciate that.
I'm extremely humbled.
And I appreciate you taking time to talk to us today.
In general, I think that the most useful thing for entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs
to do is to absorb as much information as possible and then use that information through
(54:41):
the prism of their own experiences and their own perspective.
So I think one of the interesting things about you as a guest is that there was a lot of
talk about the benefits of planning and thinking ahead.
And while everyone recognizes that on some level, right, we all know that if we plan
(55:05):
ahead, we're going to do better.
It's amazing how many people just don't do that.
And entrepreneurs maybe are worse than many for some reason in flying by the seat of their
pants.
And I'll tell you what, you're going to fly yourself.
You're more likely to fly yourself into a wall than you are to fly yourself to the clear,
blue sky.
And if there's anything that you heard today that resonates, it's this brilliant concept
(55:33):
of dig your well before you're thirsty.
What a brilliant and simple analogy to think about because it makes so much sense.
So Dennis, it's been a privilege.
I really appreciate you taking time to be with us today.
Continued success to you.
We'd love to maybe give away a couple of copies of Ninja Entrepreneurs.
If that's something you'd be open to doing, we can ask our listeners to just write in
(55:58):
and tell us why they should win the book.
It can be funny.
It can be creative.
If that works for you, Dennis, maybe we can give away a couple of signed copies.
How does that sound?
Oh, that'd be great.
And again, guys, I view you as being a cornerstone of why entrepreneurism will flourish going
(56:21):
forward.
So keep up the good work.
Oh, go on, Dennis.
I mean, like seriously, go on.
Keep going.
And that's a wrap, folks.
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(56:41):
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Thanks for being a part of our production and we'll see you next time on the Braving
Business Podcast.
Hey there, I'm Tals Lotnitsky from Ignite IT Consulting.
(00:05):
You know me from the Braving Business podcast, but when I'm not behind the mic, I'm helping
tech startups and established companies ignite their full potential.
I also help entrepreneurs and businesses in distress reset for success.
With over three decades of entrepreneurial success, I bring hands-on experience to drive
growth, navigate turnarounds, raise capital, and lead to innovation.
(00:28):
Whether it's executive coaching or strategic transformation, I'm here to turn your business
challenges into success stories.
Visit igniteitconsulting.com and let's spark that change together.
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Your journey to business brilliance starts now.
And one last quick thing.
(00:49):
If you enjoyed this episode, please stay on after the show to learn more about the Braving
Business podcast and other great episodes for you to discover.
And now, let's get the show started.
(01:13):
Well hello there.
Hey there, buddy.
How are you?
I am well, Mr. Green Jeans.
Look at that resplendent green shirt you have on.
Very nice.
I know.
It's actually Publix.
It's a Publix, you know, Publix is a grocery chain in the southeast.
And I'm in Tampa Bay, Florida, as you know, and it's our grocery chain.
And I got this shirt from Publix many years ago.
(01:35):
I don't wear it often, but it's a nice color.
Wow.
They're just handing out the swag.
You know, you sent me a picture recently that had you with the shirt off.
And I do-
You really are going to go there.
Well, no, no, no.
All I'm going to say, all I'm going to say is if I had your physique, I would never own
a shirt.
So, so I'm happy you're wearing one.
(01:57):
I'm sure Dennis looks better without his shirt on.
Let's just go there.
This, this, this is going downhill in a hurry.
Dennis, I will, I will tell you, I was on vacation in Jamaica and I shared, I shared
a photo with PJ of myself having just entered and I don't know if I'm embarrassed to say
(02:18):
or proud to say, but won a pole dancing competition in my resort.
And I was shirtless.
That is true.
And I don't know why PJ decided to share that with our audience, but he did.
And we'll just have to roll with that.
So, so there's the famous Top Gun movie scene of them playing beach volleyball.
(02:41):
Were you, were you one of those ripped guys that looked like you were oiled up?
He really was.
I will say, you know, he's got, he's got the washboard abs and I, I would like to say that
even though people can clean their clothes on his abs, they can lay them out to dry on
mine.
So it's a, oh goodness.
(03:02):
Listen, let's, let's introduce Dennis before, before I lose our entire audience before everyone
loses their lunch.
All right.
So that's right.
Dennis, thank you for, thank you for being here, sir.
Dennis Stearns is a financial strategist, a futurist and an entrepreneur who has built
a reputation as one of the leading scenario planners in the world.
As the founder of Stearns Financial Group, he has helped clients navigate economic uncertainty
(03:27):
and create innovative strategies for success.
Named entrepreneur of the year and most admired CEO, Dennis has been quoted in major outlets
like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Kiplinger Finance.
He is also an accomplished author with books like Ninja Entrepreneurs, How to Top, How
Top Business Owners Achieve Success, which is his most recent book, and Fourth Quarter
(03:50):
Fumbles, How Successful People Avoid Critical Mistakes in the Last Quarter of Life.
Dennis brings a wealth of knowledge from his work as a clean tech venture partner and his
unique background as a chess master, where he has learned the artist's strategy and adaptability
from losing most of the thousand games he played with his mentor.
His mission to empower business owners to, his mission is to empower business owners
(04:13):
to think ahead, adapt to change and create sustainable success.
Dennis, we are thrilled to have you on the Braving Business Club podcast.
Well, thank you.
Thrilled to be here.
A big fan of your show.
Listen to it all the time.
Oh my gosh.
Well, all right.
It's very kind of you.
You're now my favorite, my favorite person we've had on.
Already?
(04:33):
Jesus, you're so easy to win over.
I am.
Oh my God.
Yes, please.
All day.
Dennis, we're glad to have you on.
You're definitely one of the most accomplished thinkers that I think we've had on the podcast.
I'm really excited to get your feedback on the future because the future is so scary
(04:56):
to a lot of people.
I was having conversations over the weekend with a friend who is just petrified by what
the AI revolution is bringing to the world.
And I'd love to get your perspective on that.
But we're going to start a little bit closer to the point of origin.
You are described as one of the top financial scenario planners in the world.
First, maybe help us understand what that means.
And then tell us what drew you to that?
(05:18):
What made this something that appealed to you as a career choice?
Yeah, well, I was trained early on by some of the best scenario people to think about
how the world could materialize in the future and to try to figure out what the variables
(05:38):
are.
And then watch those variables like a hawk and develop pivot strategies and adaptive
strategies.
And so the concept here is you don't have an official crystal ball, not to mention the
guest that you had.
(05:59):
Yeah, our last guest.
A couple of shows ago.
Dennis was telling us how hard an act to follow a crystal ball is.
Our guest a couple of episodes back.
And I would encourage you, if you've not listened to that episode, do check that episode out.
That was wonderful.
I digress.
Go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so some of my articles have been around.
I don't have a magic crystal ball, but we do think about the future in a more intense
(06:23):
way than most.
And probably more importantly is figuring out how to move a particular direction if
things we see start to happen.
And that happens to be the number one most requested chapter to have me talk on in the
Ninja Entrepreneur book is adapt and pivot.
(06:45):
And it was incredible, the 120 companies that we interviewed, the questions they had, and
many of these are very successful private companies about, okay, when do I disrupt myself?
When do I do a pivot when it's not an emergency situation?
(07:06):
And that's the problem is most pivots in the private sector are done when somebody's in
a crisis or the pandemic hits or something else happens.
And so it's really hard to dig your well before you're thirsty and get ahead of those things
that can happen.
That's a great line.
(07:27):
Dig your well before you're thirsty.
So you've talked in your work as one of the key themes being this preparing for future
challenges.
What are some of the most pressing future threats that you see business owners are dealing
with today or facing today?
And how do you feel that they can prepare?
(07:48):
Well, I think one of the threats that we're doing as part of our some of all fears research
is the potential for supply chain snarls to happen again, like they happened in the pandemic.
And unfortunately, only about a third of all the supply chain snarls that happened in the
(08:13):
pandemic have been permanently fixed.
There's still two thirds out there that people put band-aids on.
And so the question that we're going through with all of our business owner clients right
now is, okay, how's your supply chain?
And is it really as secure as you think it might be?
And if something unthinkable happens, and what I'm about to describe is probably a 50-50
(08:41):
proposition.
So I don't think it's even in the unthinkable category.
If China invades Taiwan, think about the second and third order effects of that happening.
And what will it do to whatever it is you sell, whether it's a product or a service?
And so that's one of the key, you know, dig your well before you're thirsty kind of themes
(09:05):
we're working through with people.
And the other one is think about your customers.
I mean, that was one of the big things that came out of Ninja Entrepreneurs.
It's not exactly a state secret that customers have more power than they've ever had before
in history of mankind.
And they are getting this power through Amazon and a whole bunch of other sources.
(09:31):
And they have the ability to be smarter shoppers.
And so the question is, have we upped our game as business owners to make sure that
we're prepared for smarter shoppers?
I mean, it's sort of business 101, stay close to your customers, right?
But part of our, what we call our super trend research, this collision of these massive
(09:56):
trends is that this is probably going to become a bigger thing as we go.
When you say that customers are more powerful than ever, is it just because they have more
options at their fingertips?
Or can you flesh that a little bit for me?
Yeah, they have more options at their fingertips and they have the ability to shop for alternatives.
(10:22):
And this is a fundamental of economics.
It's the reason why when prices go up in the grocery store, people look for alternatives
in the grocery store.
But the same thing is true whether you're a B2B or B2C type business, is people have
a lot of options and alternatives.
(10:45):
And if you're not exceptional in your category, well, you could be vulnerable in this environment
that we envision in the next five to 10 years.
What's interesting to me, I think, is that the proliferation of generative AI has exponentially
(11:06):
increased the power of consumers because they can so easily search today in ways that are
far more powerful than what we felt was fairly powerful already with Google.
Now we see what actual personalized search can look like and it is shifting even more
(11:27):
power, I think, to consumers.
And I'm curious and I asked that or I raised that point early on, you raised supply chain,
which is an absolutely very valid concern and risk that businesses should be thinking
about.
But those businesses are more, I would say, I don't want to use the word traditional,
(11:51):
but those who provide goods.
What about services?
How do you envision, what is the biggest risk that you see to companies and businesses in
the services sector?
Yeah, talent is one of the real key areas that we're working with a lot of businesses
on right now.
And it's no secret that you're only as good as your next employee that you're going to
(12:16):
hire and the ones keeping the ones that you have.
I mean, we have almost a full chapter devoted in Ninja to some creative companies who have
figured out better ways to attract good people and then keep good people.
And this environment we're in, we're still in a reasonably tight labor market.
(12:41):
And we worked with a guy named Chris Zarnak, who is the global head of Vistage, which is
the roundtable groups for entrepreneurs, their talent area.
And Chris likes to tell the story that we're fighting the last war on talent, that most
(13:05):
business owners are still kind of in the mode of, well, people are going to line up because
I've got such a good business or I'm such a good owner, a good CEO, whatever.
And they're going to come to work for us.
And it is an absolute fight out there to get and keep really good talent.
(13:32):
And I do a lot of work also with various universities on teaching young entrepreneurs and growing
entrepreneurs and that second hire, that fifth hire, that 10th hire.
I mean, every one of those is going to take you in a different trajectory on the chess
board.
(13:52):
And most of the time you hire what you can afford.
Well, sometimes those aren't the ones that represent the absolute best for you when in
the game ultimately.
So this whole talent thing has just become crazy.
Yeah, so one of the things that actually you brought it up, you are a chess master.
(14:17):
And so how has your experience as being a chess master influenced your own strategic
thinking, strategic, my gosh, strategic thinking in business and as well as financial planning?
Yeah, good question.
So when I was first starting out in chess, I was an ADHD kid and I was driving my sister
(14:44):
and brother, both older, absolutely crazy.
And so my dad was racking his brain trying to figure out what can I do with this kid?
I mean, if it were today, they'd probably put me on Ritalin or something.
And so he got me into chess and tennis and it was chess that really got me to settle
(15:05):
down focus.
And I had a Cuban chess master as an early mentor.
Now if you can imagine him sitting down with little 10 year old Dennis and he says, we're
going to play a thousand games, you're going to lose every one of them, but you will learn
(15:26):
something from every one and little 10 year old me was like, you know, that doesn't sound
like much fun.
But that wish is not to kill us makes it stronger.
And I mean, he was a tough guy.
And what it taught me was again, you learn from your mistakes, you pivot, you adapt,
(15:51):
you study the masters so that you develop kind of that internal software that we all
have of what would a master do in this situation?
That's why I love shows like yours and the explosion of entrepreneurial podcasts, because
it gives you so many things to kind of lock away into that internal software.
(16:14):
And then you come up against a situation and you have a little better sense of how to make
the right decision on it.
So that's actually a great segue to your new book, which is Ninja Entrepreneurs, how top
business owners achieve success.
And in this book, you talk about the power of adapting and pivoting in the world we're
in.
And we've talked a little bit about some of the pivot points that specific businesses
(16:36):
may face.
But can you share a story from your career, particularly in the early stages, and maybe
leaning into what you learned from the chess master, the Cuban chess master that beat you
a thousand times, which I love.
Is there a story that you can share with us about this principle of adapting and pivoting?
Is there a story you could share about that principle in action?
(16:56):
Yeah, well, one of the things that I learned in chess is if you have an option A and an
option B, never settle for that.
Always look for the third line of play.
And the third line of play is the one that is not immediately obvious.
And so when we have been working with business owners over decades, that's part of the work
(17:25):
that we've done with them is to say, okay, let's look at option A and option B that you're
considering, but let's really think hard.
Maybe it's A or B, but let's really think hard if there's an option C that has a better
risk reward ratio.
And a lot of times that decision-making is influenced by the mentors, the leaders that
(17:51):
people have surrounded themselves with.
And again, I think entrepreneurs in their early stages, it tends to be a little bit
of a lone ranger and you're kind of just making decisions on the fly and you hope they come
out right and you hope that you make more good decisions than not.
I mean, it's like baseball, right?
(18:14):
If you could have a pretty good batting average, but not do everything right, you're probably
going to be pretty successful.
And so our belief is that the environment we're coming into is more treacherous.
It is more uncharted waters out there.
There's opportunities galore, but there's threats galore.
(18:36):
And that means that every business owner just needs to kind of up their game.
Well, I'd love to hear a story of how you actually experienced it on your own terms,
right?
Early on in your career, what's the story that you can think of where you actually lived
this principle yourself?
Yeah.
And that's easy because they look at our firm and they say, oh, you're a multi-billion dollar
(19:00):
firm and you have all this capability within your firm.
Well, that didn't just arrive overnight.
And so in the early stages of building the business, I made some of those same mistakes.
Or maybe I settled for somebody that I could afford as opposed to somebody who would really
(19:24):
take me to the next level.
One of the things that was really helpful to me was when we were about 10% of our current
size, one of our business owner clients sat me down and he said, Dennis, you've got to
(19:45):
invest ahead of the curve and you got to invest in really good people if you're going to grow
and be a great enterprise someday.
He said, do you really want it?
And again, that's been a theme on a few of your shows is, do you really want it?
And so I thought long and hard about what it meant to try to develop a multi-billion
(20:07):
dollar firm.
And I really wanted it.
And so I went out and when I had five candidates for a new job, if one of them was 10% more
expensive but really was a quality add on, I would stretch to make that happen.
Sometimes I went without bonuses myself.
(20:28):
Again, entrepreneurs do that all the time, right?
To be able to build a good team around me.
During 08, 09, 08, 09 was the great recession was one of the most difficult scenario environments
ever because late in 08, you had Congress fiddling while Rome burned.
(20:53):
They really weren't moving quickly to try to solve the issues that were happening.
The whole economy was freezing up and you opened up the newspaper and there were pictures
of 1929.
So the predictions were we're going to a depression worldwide, not a bad recession, but an actual
(21:15):
depression.
So we're making decisions in our firm and we again, we had really good people.
I had hired a decade before who were thoughtful, well-trained.
We dug our well before we're thirsty.
So the cobbler does have shoes here and the cobbler's kids have shoes too.
(21:42):
And so we're trying, but we're still trying to make just really tough decisions.
And so we have an extended network of business owners and clients all over the world.
We just went out to them and said, what do you see going on?
And we weren't just looking for the third line of play.
We were looking for the fourth and fifth line of play and trying to figure out, should we
(22:05):
be moving everybody to cash?
We had already actually moved a lot to cash and more defensive things, but should we get
even more defensive or should we now lean in and be more offensive minded?
One of the toughest decisions in my entire firm, because we were essentially betting
(22:27):
the future of the firm.
Not that we would have gone out of business if we pivoted the wrong way, but we would
not be what we are today.
We were both fortunate, again, we have one of the top plastics entities in the country
and plastics are in everything.
(22:48):
And they said, you know, we're starting to see orders pick up.
So we're not so sure this global depression thing is going to happen.
Well, that was when the stock market was in its second crater in early 2009.
And so on the outside, you said, oh my God, what's going on?
But we said, okay, take a deep breath here and, you know, Navy SEAL, four square breathing
(23:16):
and let's try to figure out what's really going on.
And from there, we just continued to play the offense and take advantage of the opportunities.
You know, that's kind of, you're bringing me back some flashbacks of, Tal, I don't know
what you were doing there that time, but I've been involved in international supply chain
(23:39):
for my entire career.
It's like 34 years now.
And in 2008, 2009, you know, I had been helping companies do all their imports out of China.
And normally, ocean freight is very steady from a cost perspective.
(23:59):
You could, you know, the floor used to be like $1,400 for a 40 foot container that would
move from Pearl River Delta, China to Long Beach.
It's like one of the busiest freight corridors in the world.
And something that people could really rely on as a number.
That number vanished and just started going down and down and down.
(24:21):
And from a freight forwarding standpoint, we didn't understand it.
And we were seeing that the competition for ocean lines in Asia were just basically killing
themselves thinking that they were losing volume to their competitors.
So they kept lowering their rates and it was just this race to the bottom.
And that's when we realized, oh, this is a big deal.
(24:47):
This is a terrifying prospect that's going on.
So I get it.
I think everything that you're saying is, you know, destroying years of therapy that
I've had.
So thanks a lot, Dennis.
Well, sorry for giving you the flashback.
It was a rough time.
So if I could, if I could jump in, PJ, because I think you're raising a couple of interesting
(25:10):
points that I think are worth flushing out a little bit more, which is in moments of
crisis, you tend to assume that the playbook you should be calling plays from is a traditional
playbook.
So there were a bunch of companies there who assumed that what was happening was they were
losing business to competitors as opposed to recognizing, no, something fundamental
(25:32):
has shifted and the old playbook is not going to work.
And I think this really fits in with Dennis's very point around you need to be thinking
not merely in the context of what am I, what threats have I seen, but what are the future
threats that I haven't seen and what might I do?
That's the whole concept I think of dig the well before you're thirsty.
(25:54):
If I'm following the logic there, Dennis, does that resonate for you?
Yeah, you're spot on.
It's a messy world anyway, and sometimes it gets more messy than many of us would like.
Yeah, it was, it was, there was a lot of lessons learned there.
You were probably way ahead of it, but we learned the hard way.
(26:15):
I had just in 2008, 2009, I had just sold my first company and I started another and
had the incredible fortune of speaking on behalf of President Obama to the White House
press on the West lawn of the White House at the age of 33.
Nice.
(26:35):
And that, that is what I recall from that timeframe.
I know a lot of people have a horrible, nightmarish memories.
That is what I recall from that time in my life.
Maybe the, not maybe, the highlight of my life.
I mean, now followed closely by winning the pole dancing competition in Jamaica, of course.
(26:56):
Well, one day I hope to have the same amount of accolades as you do tell.
So Dennis, you have surrounded years, or you've said that surrounding yourself with the right
people has been a key to overcoming adversity.
And absolutely, I don't think there's a person in the world who would argue against that.
It's an obvious and true statement.
(27:17):
The big struggle is how do I identify those people when perhaps you don't have a lot of
experience building or assembling a team.
So what advice would you have for those burgeoning entrepreneurs trying to build a resilient
team on what the key qualities are to look for and the shiny object qualities to look
past?
(27:38):
Really good question.
And, you know, the traditional advice is to hire slow and fire fast.
Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs, because they have an immediate need to fill, they
actually reverse that.
Guilty as charged.
Yeah.
(28:00):
And so one of the things that any small growing business, like we have a small growing business
that we're mentoring in Raleigh and they have tremendous growth potential in the future
and they're up against some big competitors and they're hiring ahead of the curve, trying
to grow their business fast is let's have a team that will assess and evaluate these
(28:28):
potential team members.
And it's a bit of an unconventional team.
You know, some of them are the folks from the firm themselves who meet with the individual.
Some of them are outside mentors, which can include me, who will come at it from a completely
different way of vetting somebody.
(28:50):
Sometimes it's just doing what you actually need to do, which is really get down in the
weeds with somebody and try to ask them a whole lot of questions about how they would
deal with this situation or that situation.
You know, a lot of people are very good interviewers.
That's the problem.
(29:12):
And they will pull the wool over your eyes.
And I've had a number of those myself that I thought, oh, this is just the right person.
But I contained my enthusiasm and I stuck with my discipline of having others kind of
take a look at somebody.
And I avoided some massive hiring mistakes by doing that.
(29:34):
So they don't have to be Harvard MBA or whatever.
Just people you know who have good common sense who can spot a BSer is helpful.
So how do you spot a BSer?
I mean, I don't disagree with you.
I think the question PJ asked is the right question.
(29:55):
It's not a matter of is there any doubt at all that the caliber of people you surround
yourself with is going to impact your level of success?
None whatsoever.
I don't think there's anybody that's listened to this podcast who's an entrepreneur or frankly
alive who would not acknowledge that the quality of the people around you have, if not the
most dominant, a very, very substantial impact on how successful you are.
(30:17):
Quality of product matters, pricing, et cetera, et cetera.
People matter most.
The biggest challenge is spotting the BSer.
That's the biggest challenge.
I've struggled with that my entire career.
I'm a person who tends to assume the best.
What's one thing or two things that comes to mind?
(30:39):
I'd love that if you had an opportunity to point to one thing that you've learned in
years and years of doing this that is a red flag for a likely BSer.
I have one I want to share, but I want to hear your answer first.
Yeah.
Well, one of my favorites is to ask a prospective employee, what's the biggest mistake you've
(31:03):
made in your working life and what did you learn from it and how did you fix it?
Obviously, people have multiple answers to that question.
The person who says, oh, well, one time I forgot to put something down on my timesheet
(31:24):
is probably lying to you.
One of the things also that I have found is that sometimes opposite sex can detect things.
If I'm interviewing a man, I want one of the people on my team or my extended team outside
(31:48):
my company, I want a woman to be able to ask some of the questions because they may get
entirely different answers.
They'll go down different bunny paths and they will eventually find out that something's
not quite right.
Now, the other piece that we have found extremely valuable, calling references, always a challenge
(32:14):
because no reference, first of all, if they're going to give you a reference, it's probably
somebody good.
Then is the reference going to actually say anything bad?
We have been surprised when we ask those same questions.
What's the most awkward situation, John, that you found that Bob was in with you, personal
(32:37):
or in a business setting?
Just ask those open-ended type of questions and get them talking.
Eventually, if there's some kind of smoke or fire there, you're probably going to get
a sense of it.
We do all the traditional assessments and run them through the gallery of assessments.
(33:02):
Some of those assessments have a pretty reasonable BS meter associated with them.
But my goodness, I have run into some people who can fool an assessment.
Anyway.
Let me ask you a couple of very specific things that I've been doing.
Non-scientific.
(33:23):
I've not read them, it's just something that has occurred to me over the years that I've
started to do.
I'd love your reaction to them.
The first thing I do is I say something that I know to be false and I try to assess how
that person deals with it.
It's something that they should know based on what they're being interviewed for.
I'll say something that's false and I'll evaluate, are they capable of, without offending, pointing
(33:49):
it out?
Or are they just because I'm the interviewer?
If I say something false, are they just going to let it go?
Because as I bring people into senior positions in particular, I want them to be able to feel
comfortable enough speaking the truth.
And if getting the job is more important than being in an environment where speaking the
truth is what the person is seeking, I'm not sure I want them on my team.
(34:11):
Can you react to that?
I have one more.
Oh, brilliant.
So, can you give us an example?
I mean, I can give you dozens.
It really depends on the job, right?
So, if I'm interviewing an engineer, I might misstate something about a process that they
should know about.
And I'll say, well, my experience is that that is how you do it.
(34:34):
What's yours, right?
So, I'm giving them a chance.
It's not a matter of they'll need to say to me, no, no, no, you're wrong.
To chance them to say, well, that hasn't been my experience.
When I've done it, it's been this way, right?
So, I invite them to engage with me on a statement or fact that I'm making.
So, that's one thing.
Oh, I like it.
The other, yeah, well, great.
Add it to your repertoire.
(34:55):
Maybe it'll be in your next book.
Then the other.
Yeah, there you go.
And this is in Ninja Entrepreneurs, one of the most challenging people to hire for are
salespeople because they have naturally learned how to BS and pull one over on you.
(35:16):
That's exactly right.
So, that goes to my second consistent approach, which is I ask questions to which the proper
answer is I don't know.
And I will hire someone that says I don't know 10 times out of 10 ahead of someone that
has an answer to every single question.
(35:38):
Because in my experience, that is an indication of a bullshit artist.
What's your perspective on that?
Yeah.
And again, that just gets right back to being able to have a good conversation with somebody
where you're maybe throwing in some zingers, but maybe they don't know they're zingers
(36:00):
and just seeing how they react to them.
I love it because the old thing, the old traditional thing was you take somebody to dinner and
you see if they let down their guard after a couple glasses of wine or something else.
By the way, that still works pretty well.
(36:21):
But I think, again, you just got to be, as you were just talking about, you got to be
more creative.
No, that's all great.
And to validate, Dennis, what you said about salespeople being bullshit artists, we are.
So thank you very much.
That's how we survive.
(36:42):
Although I'll tell you what, you know, what's interesting, PJ, is that the older I get,
the more I realize that I am a more successful salesperson when I'm vulnerable.
And I admit I don't know.
And it took me years and years and years to realize that because when I was younger, for
two reasons.
One is that the imposter syndrome rages when you're young.
(37:02):
It never goes away completely, but it rages when you're young.
Right?
And so you're really, really struggling to show any kind of vulnerability.
And secondarily, it feels like, you know, you may never have another chance.
You're always when you're younger, you're always at this place where you're like, well,
this better be, you know, I better get this one because then and I've learned that that's
(37:23):
never the case.
There's always another another apple, take a bite in and no one situation warrants you
compromising your values and your integrity.
Again, learn from years of trial and error and choosing plenty paths in my earlier years
where I didn't view it that way.
(37:43):
Well, you know, and it occurs to me, you guys have talked in a lot of your previous podcasts
about emotional intelligence, EQ.
And we absolutely agree with you that we believe EQ trumps IQ every day of the week.
You know, there's some jobs you have to have a minimum IQ just to do the job.
(38:06):
But EQ is such a higher predictor of people rising to success as an entrepreneur.
I mean, it's to the point where we are now in several universities, including classes
on EQ, because I think it's that critical a skill set.
(38:27):
In one of my first books, CEO Road Rules, my co author, she was an expert on teaching
EQ.
EQ can be learned, which is a fabulous thing because I mean, in our firm, we actually have
training programs around EQ, how to sharpen that axe.
(38:47):
Well, the sharper the axe you have an EQ, the better chance you can detect somebody
who's not authentic.
I could totally see that.
Actually we were just talking about EQ with our last guest, Markel.
Mr. Russell, Markel Russell, he was off the charts for just from us meeting with him and
(39:10):
talking with him and seeing how he interacts with people and how he looks at things.
His EQ was phenomenal, right?
Like, really?
I would agree.
And this is a guy who dropped, Marquel dropped out of high school after ninth grade.
And his EQ was like something I'd never seen.
I mean, it was stratospheric.
Yeah.
It's an episode I'd encourage anyone in the audience who's interested in the concept of
(39:34):
EQ to really listen.
He shared a lot of pearls of wisdom about his process, which I think would be very valuable
to listeners.
Yeah, no, fascinating guy, fascinating.
So Dennis, you wrote a book previously called The Fourth Quarter Fumbles about mistakes
where people make late in their careers.
(39:55):
So what are some of the most common mistakes you see business owners making when they're
planning for the fourth quarter?
And what can we, I'm in that, what can we do to avoid them?
Yeah, well, the aging of America and the world, you know, more and more people are going to
(40:16):
live longer, although we all know examples of people who die too young, but the general
trend is going to be live longer.
And so in that, there are three segments that we identified back when we were doing that
research and we live this every day because of a lot of the clients that we're dealing
with.
(40:37):
It's the go-go, slow-go and no-go stage.
And so what's happened in the last couple of decades is the go-go has extended considerably.
In the good old days, you got to age 65 and they gave you a gold watch or if you were
(40:57):
an entrepreneur, you know, maybe you had a party or something.
And you basically within seven years of retiring, either you or your spouse got sick and if
usually it was the guy who got sick and then the wife became the caregiver or the partner
(41:19):
became the caregiver.
And so usually one person was dead within a decade of retirement.
Well, not that that doesn't happen today, but in a lot of cases, people are now, I mean,
we have clients in their 80s who are bicycling across Croatia with their grandchildren and
(41:40):
all kinds of other crazy stuff that never used to happen in the past.
And so as opposed to kind of the slow gradual decline and to being decrepit, you now have
an opportunity, not a God-given right, but you have an opportunity if you take care of
(42:02):
yourself to be able to go deep into the fourth quarter and then drop off a cliff, which is
kind of what we all would like to do, right?
You know, die in our sleep, but hopefully after we just had something really fun going.
And so the, I think PJ just got that.
(42:23):
So I got it too.
Listen to the crystal ball episode where I asked her how she decompresses.
And that would be, that would be the feeder to that one.
Go on.
I thought that was hilarious.
And great answer.
I never gotten that one before.
Yeah, good job on that one, by the way.
So the, you know, the basis of the fourth quarter stuff is that if you're a business
(42:49):
owner, we also did a workbook called fourth quarter fumbles for business and fourth quarter
champions for business.
And the issue is that entrepreneurs love what they're doing.
I love what I'm doing.
And you tend to go deeper into the fourth quarter in a work vein.
(43:11):
And a lot of times the reason is not the right reason.
The reason is that you can't imagine yourself doing anything else.
And you view yourself as being miserable or possibly dying early if you retire.
And so what tends to happen is business owners stay longer than all their leadership team
(43:37):
would prefer they stay.
And what happens then?
Well, in this environment, I go out and poach those people.
So we have companies that I'm also partner in a number of different companies.
And if we see a leadership team and we meet one of them and oh yeah, the owner was supposed
to retire five years ago, but he's still in there and I'm not sure what I'm going to do
(44:02):
because I was supposed to move up.
Well, that person is probably poachable.
And so there's a whole bunch of business fumbles that can come with kind of overstaying the
welcome.
And one of the key things we believe in is, you know, let's try to figure out what the
next chapter can look like.
(44:24):
You know, maybe it's not exactly the last chapter, but there's a lot of things you can
do out there that'll, you know, make you jump out of bed in the morning.
You know, I think it's so interesting that you're bringing this up.
I quite literally this weekend, I had a conversation with a friend who has, who works for a firm.
(44:45):
I won't state the industry where one of the founders is just hanging on and has long lost
his edge is now disruptive to the point where if he's in a meeting, there is an expectation
that 20 to 30% of the time will be wasted chasing rabbits or going down rabbit holes.
(45:08):
And she expressed the extent to which that was frustrating, not just to her and the team,
but also the clients, which sometimes are privy to that.
The challenge, of course, is, you know, at some point, that person was probably exceptionally
competent and capable.
And it's really hard to recognize that you've lost your edge.
(45:33):
And if you're in an environment where sharing that truth is going to cost someone their
jobs, then you're likely not going to get the input that you need as an entrepreneur,
that maybe it's time for you to shift or pivot even within your company to some other role.
I've seen entrepreneurs do this exceptionally well.
(45:56):
I've seen entrepreneurs ruin their companies by not doing it well.
And what I'm hearing you say is that, you know, that fourth quarter, if you're just
going to be one of those guys and we've seen them, you know, I don't know if you're a football
fan, but we saw Aaron Rodgers yesterday throw touchdown 501.
Okay.
But boy have his last couple of seasons tarnished an otherwise stellar career.
(46:22):
People stay on too long.
This we've seen it in sports and we recognize it more easily in sports because you can more
readily because it's a statistical game.
You can see their degradation and quality much more readily than you would in a boardroom.
But what would you recommend if you're working for someone who's lost, you know, some of
(46:43):
their game?
Oh, what, what would you recommend to that person other than leaving?
Maybe that's the only option, but is there anything besides that, that you could share?
Yeah, we have that situation happening right now.
And the number two person, you know, his first inclination was, okay, maybe this isn't going
(47:09):
to work out even though I'm very loyal.
I have invested a lot of my time and a lot of my effort in making this company better,
but it's clear that I'm not going to get my shot.
And I said, okay, let's think about a third line of play here.
(47:31):
Let's think about another way to approach this.
And so we ended up having a conversation.
He hired a group to come in and do interviews with all the leadership team.
And it was ostensibly to be able to make the leadership team work better together in the
(47:54):
future.
They're under a system called entrepreneurial operating system EOS.
And so they had had some issues with the visionary integrator, which has happened a lot by the
way, where those two are too far apart from each other.
And so there was some good reasons why they needed to do this evaluation.
(48:17):
Well, we encouraged them to include external sources, including family members outside
of the company and the spouse in particular of the owner to be able to get a true 360
degree view.
And so I think that is moving things because now the business owner is beginning to realize
(48:43):
that, hey, maybe I am creating a miserable situation for a lot of people around me.
But if you're already on the warning track to any kind of early dementia, the eight warning
symbols, if you have two or three of those eight, you're in a path to a really difficult
(49:04):
situation because that individual won't usually recognize it.
And it'll be some kind of forced situation that usually turns into legal battles and
a war.
Again we try to, our battle cry is plan ahead, play smart.
(49:27):
And so, which I guess is another offshoot of dig your well before you're thirsty.
And so a lot of times we suggest that if you get off the track of whatever has been promised
to you, if you're a number two person or number three person in a firm, if you get off that
track, don't wait even six months to bring it to people's attention, bring the situation
(49:52):
up, see if there's a way that it can be resolved.
Wow.
All right.
I never thought we were going to be talking about this today, but thank you for that.
That's very insightful and terrifying.
I'm going to need to look up what those eight signs are.
Are you worried about your own decline?
(50:12):
Is that what you're saying?
That's what I was thinking about.
I was like, man, I was going to make the joke that I wanted to work with Dennis because
all I ever wanted to do was ride my Harley straight into my grave penniless and a little
drunk.
But now he's got me thinking about other stuff.
There was a great book written on that, by the way, called Die Broke, where you're checked
(50:35):
to the funeral director balances.
I'm sure the funeral director industry would not appreciate that.
Yeah, really.
Oh, that's amazing.
All right.
So last question, Dennis, you've been, first of all, you've just been a stellar guest and
just a trove of information.
So thank you for sharing your time with us.
One of the things that you also do is you're a partner in Triad Growth Partners, which
(50:59):
is focused on clean tech and water remediation technologies, but also dealing with PAFS,
which is a tooth crunching acronym for the often toxic manmade chemicals that is widely
used in packaging, cookware, fabrics, cosmetics, electronics, medical devices, and more.
(51:21):
Why have you chosen to focus your time and attention there?
And what do you believe is possible to achieve there in the next five to 10 years?
Oh, great question.
Well, so that came out of a economic development program out of our nanotechnology center,
(51:41):
which at the time I was serving on the board and secretary treasurer of and head of strategic
planning.
And by the way, nanotech is coming.
It's going to be here.
And so we developed a venture entity.
Our first customer was NASA, of all people.
(52:03):
And then this gets back to that issue of you hire smart people and they will take you in
good and unexpected directions at times.
So our chief scientist, she actually got her chops at Carolina and Duke in environmental
remediation.
(52:24):
And so as we were working on all kinds of contracts to develop research around different
things for the future, she kept coming back to this PFAS issue as being the billion and
maybe even trillion dollar problem of our time, all little crap that's in water that
(52:47):
we don't even know about.
I mean, I actually know more about water problems than I want to know at this stage.
And so we ended up getting contracts from Army Corps of Engineers and Air Force and
a whole variety of entities to work on researching this stuff.
(53:07):
And we're just in the process of launching a major division to actually get out and solve
the problem.
And it's a cool thing to solve a problem.
But I can tell you, this was a long game.
I mean, this was not Bobby Fischer chess where it was bing bang boom checkmate.
(53:30):
This was the long game, the patient game.
But that's how I got involved with that whole area.
And I do a lot with venture capital.
We're partners with a venture firm in LA and Singapore in healthcare.
And that's another area I'm very passionate about because I think the innovation in healthcare,
(53:52):
it's going to be huge because the healthcare system has got major problems.
So our guest today was Dennis Stearns or is Dennis Stearns.
He's one of the world's most well known and most respected financial strategists and futurists.
He has built an incredible company, Stearns Financial Group.
(54:14):
And he shared a lot of wisdom with us today.
I'd like to thank you for first of all, for being a listener.
Really appreciate that.
I'm extremely humbled.
And I appreciate you taking time to talk to us today.
In general, I think that the most useful thing for entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs
to do is to absorb as much information as possible and then use that information through
(54:41):
the prism of their own experiences and their own perspective.
So I think one of the interesting things about you as a guest is that there was a lot of
talk about the benefits of planning and thinking ahead.
And while everyone recognizes that on some level, right, we all know that if we plan
(55:05):
ahead, we're going to do better.
It's amazing how many people just don't do that.
And entrepreneurs maybe are worse than many for some reason in flying by the seat of their
pants.
And I'll tell you what, you're going to fly yourself.
You're more likely to fly yourself into a wall than you are to fly yourself to the clear,
blue sky.
And if there's anything that you heard today that resonates, it's this brilliant concept
(55:33):
of dig your well before you're thirsty.
What a brilliant and simple analogy to think about because it makes so much sense.
So Dennis, it's been a privilege.
I really appreciate you taking time to be with us today.
Continued success to you.
We'd love to maybe give away a couple of copies of Ninja Entrepreneurs.
If that's something you'd be open to doing, we can ask our listeners to just write in
(55:58):
and tell us why they should win the book.
It can be funny.
It can be creative.
If that works for you, Dennis, maybe we can give away a couple of signed copies.
How does that sound?
Oh, that'd be great.
And again, guys, I view you as being a cornerstone of why entrepreneurism will flourish going
(56:21):
forward.
So keep up the good work.
Oh, go on, Dennis.
I mean, like seriously, go on.
Keep going.
And that's a wrap, folks.
Like what you heard?
Want to support the show?
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Visit us on YouTube and please like and rate us on all of your favorite podcast streaming
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(56:41):
You can also see exclusive content, subscribe for free to our weekly blog, support our sponsors,
and soon buy our merchandise at www.bravingbusiness.com.
Thanks for being a part of our production and we'll see you next time on the Braving
Business Podcast.
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