From Financial Advisor to Deca-Millionaire Mentor: How Justin Goodbread Helps Entrepreneurs Build Exit-Ready Businesses

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
Here's a picture illustration of how why most
business owners don't do this.
So I was about 16 years of age.
My dad was, he had me workingwith him and he gave me a big
heavy sledgehammer.
Now, at the 16 years of age, Iweighed 110 pounds.
I was like soaking wet, little,little, little kid.
And he said, Hey son, I want youto beat this wall down.
I want you to knock this walldown.
So, like most business owners, Igrabbed the sledgehammer and I
swung it with everything I hadand hit the wall all over the

(00:23):
place for about a minute and ahalf and it didn't fall.
And he came over and he said,You tired yet?
I said, Yes, sir.
I'm pretty tired.
He goes, Can't quit till thewall's down.
Yes, sir.
He said, He goes, I'm gonna showyou something principle of life.
This is where so many businessowners miss the mark.
Again, if you want to become aDECA millionaire and break away
and be in the top 1%, if youwant to get to that level, this
is a principle that works everysingle time.

(00:44):
Take it to the bank.
Friends, this is it.
What he do is he grabbed a canof black spray paint.
And Chris, he reached down andhe painted a little dot in the
bottom right hand side of thatcorner and he said, hit that dot
over and over and over.
Okay, guess what?
That wall fell down in aboutfive minutes.
That's right.
Because as long as I kepthitting on that one dot over and

(01:06):
over, the wall cracked.
But we as business owners, wewant to take our service or our
product or our offer and try toget it to anybody and everybody.
And so we just bounced againstthat wall like that, like I was
doing when it tried to hit thatwall all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 (01:17):
Welcome to the Small Business Safari, where I help
guide you to avoid those traps,pitfalls, and dangers that lurk
when navigating the wild worldof small business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggets ofinformation and invite guests to
help accelerate your ascent tothat mountaintop of success.
It's a jungle out there, and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal

(01:38):
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari to get you to themountaintop.
No, he doesn't say it, but I do.
Let's get ready to rock androll.
Let's get ready to learnsomething today, everybody.

(01:59):
You're driving around your car,and if you're here in Atlanta,
uh school is back in session, sothat means you're perking and
not driving.
Uh, and you're stopping and notdriving, and you're behind I
love school buses.
I love kids.

SPEAKER_01 (02:11):
I just do you like cars that have the student
driver stickers all over them?

SPEAKER_00 (02:15):
Still my favorite.
One of them pulled out in frontof me again today, and I went by
him.
He was like a 45-year-old Indianguy.
I'm like, you're not a studentdriver, bro.
You're just not.
And do you think that makes medrive any better?
I mean, that's the question.

SPEAKER_01 (02:26):
Well, so I stuck one on your car.

SPEAKER_00 (02:28):
I know you did.
And people weren't very nice toyou.
They were not nice to you.
I was getting cut off leftaround.
I'm like, what the hell's goingon?
And I went, Oh, Alan.
Justin, if you see somebody witha student driver bumper sticker,
which I think is a pandemic hereright now in Atlanta.
It's John's Creek.
Oh my god, they're the worst.
Yeah, they're the worst.
If you see one, do you drivebetter, worse, or try to cut

(02:49):
them off and get away from asfast as possible?

SPEAKER_02 (02:50):
I avoid them.
I go the opposite direction.
Right.
How do I get away?

SPEAKER_00 (02:55):
I don't know what they're thinking with this, but
it's not helpful.
That's like baby on board.
You know what?
I'm just gonna hit you a littleharder.
That's all.
I think I have car seats,they're fine.
You can't say that.

SPEAKER_01 (03:04):
You can't say that.
You shouldn't have said it, butyou did.
I did.
Oh, that wasn't it.
You know, your on-airpersonality is so much nicer and
kinder than off-air, because youflipped me off twice before we
hit the start button.
But now you're talking aboutlaunching babies through
windshields.

SPEAKER_00 (03:18):
No, not.
I mean, because if they got thecar seats, they're safer.
I mean, maybe I should put thosestudent drivers in car seats.

SPEAKER_01 (03:23):
They'll tumble down the highway.

unknown (03:25):
Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (03:27):
Oh boy, yeah.
And that's why we're explicit,Alan.
Great.
All right.
So that's what true crimes nowthat puts us in the true crimes
um podcast genre.
We have.
All right, man.
We got to get rid of the rockand roll, everybody.
Uh we got Justin Goodread ontoday, and Justin has started,
sold, started, sold so manycompanies we couldn't even keep

(03:48):
it all straight before we gotstarted going on this thing.
But he also is out there sharingsharing his knowledge, and he's
been gracious enough to come onthis podcast.

SPEAKER_01 (03:56):
He seems like he's way better at it than we are.
He is.
He is badass.
Yeah.
He's got big muscles, too.

SPEAKER_00 (04:01):
And he is, yeah.
And you know what?
We're kissing his ass becausewe're afraid that he'll drive
from Knoxville, get to Atlanta.
Well, then he won't.
Then he'll turn right around andgo, Oh my god, I just went 200
miles in two hours, and I can'tgo five miles in two hours.

SPEAKER_01 (04:13):
You're saying the Atlanta traffic may have saved
us from ass beating.

SPEAKER_00 (04:16):
That's right.
If we say the wrong thing.
Especially because he's like, hewas laughing because he's like,
hey, wait a minute, that's notfunny.
I have a kid in a car seat.

SPEAKER_02 (04:24):
I know my kids are way past car seat age.
I've got them in college now.
It's like, come on now.
I I'm ready for kids in carseats.
So grandbaby's coming aboutanother 10 years, but not right
now.

SPEAKER_00 (04:33):
That's right.
Yeah, don't don't don't be in ahurry for that one.
I know Alan, Alan, Alan wants agrandbaby.
I know that.

SPEAKER_01 (04:41):
I mean, like, we're on we're on grandbaby watch and
we're excited.
I know.
I've heard.
So we're all excited.
All right.
We're hinting a little too much,though.
I've been talking about it.
I bet we are.
That's a shocker.

SPEAKER_00 (04:53):
Justin, give us a little quick background on
yourself, and then we're gonnadive into some of these
businesses and uh how youstarted and what you did with
them.

SPEAKER_02 (05:00):
Absolutely.
So I'm born and raised in SouthGeorgia, guys, down uh on the
coast, Bronsway St.
Simon's Island is where my I'mthe only good bred, not in Glen
County, Georgia.
Everybody else is still Georgia,George, Georgia natives, and I
still cheer for my GeorgiaBulldogs.
I gotta cheer for my dogs.
But yeah, I mean, you gotta havethe Bulldogs there, especially
up here in Rocky Top area wherethey love the stupid song, you

(05:22):
know, Rocky Top.
It's worse when you live here.
You gotta put gas in your car,it's literally paying at playing
at you at the car pump.
You know, it's like I've hadenough of this.

SPEAKER_00 (05:33):
And that orange, I mean, tell me you wear that
orange anywhere other than afootball game or a volunteer
game.
Never.

SPEAKER_02 (05:38):
Well, no, no, you can wear the orange if you're
from Tennessee.
You can wear it to the footballstadium on Saturday.
On Sunday morning, you can pickup trash on the side of the
road, and on Monday you can godeer hunting, all with the same
color orange.
It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 (05:49):
It is versatile.
So St.
Simon's, we gotta do this.

SPEAKER_01 (05:54):
No, I got it.
One more Rocket Top thing.
The only way that my sons and Ican deal with it when we watch
Georgia, Tennessee is we have abet on over-under on how many
times they play it.
And so suddenly you got a littleskin in the game, then you can
deal with it.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (06:06):
Boy, I bet you it's gotta start, it's gotta start in
the 70s.

SPEAKER_01 (06:11):
No, it's normally like 15.
Something like that's like thewhole thing.
Yeah, the whole game.

SPEAKER_00 (06:16):
Oh my god, it feels like it's it's abusive.
I went I went to the Georgia,Tennessee game down here, and um
my friend invited two volunteerfans, and uh boy, it was fun.
Uh because they thought for surethis was the year they were
gonna smoke Georgia.
And uh man, that's all youheard.
And like after the firstquarter, you're like, I can't
hear you anymore.

(06:36):
Wait, where are you?
You still here?
You still at the game?
And he goes, Yeah, I'm nothaving fun anymore.
So, all right, St.
Simon's Island.
I learned a little somethingabout that because in South
Georgia they have a little bitdifferent dialect than we do up
here in Atlanta.
And what is the main road thattakes you onto St.
Simon's?
Uh St.
Simon's Island Causeway?

(06:56):
Yes, the Causeway, but it wasnamed after a guy, and it was
D-E-M-E-R-E.

SPEAKER_02 (07:04):
Oh, um Demry Road.

SPEAKER_00 (07:09):
Demory.
Demory Road.
I I I seriously, I've been inAtlanta uh since 2001, 24 years.

SPEAKER_01 (07:15):
Are we trying to be French with it?

SPEAKER_00 (07:17):
I know I was like Demir.
Demery?
No, they're like, nah, it'sDemory.
I'm like, Demory.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (07:24):
As soon as you pass the sailboats come on to the
island to Causeway, you it turnsyou onto either Sea Island
Causeway or Demory Road, whichtakes you around to the uh to
the um the fishing pier.
So yeah, born and raised downthere, man.
Uh all right.
So how'd you get out?
Well, yeah, I started my firstbusiness when I was 15, scaled
it rapidly.
By the time we were 17, mybrother and I are making more
money to each than my mom anddad combined, and a little

(07:45):
landscape company had a blast.
Then my wife is from Knoxville,go figure.
So we got married in the early20s, sold the business down in
South Georgia, moved to EastTennessee, and then um since
then started and sold fiveadditional businesses, became a
share a major shareholder inanother, took that one from
mid-eight figures to anine-figure exit a couple of

(08:06):
years back, and now just havingfun teaching uh business owners
how to do the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 (08:10):
Hang on, Ellen's trying to we he ran out of
fingers.
Nine figures.
I mean, that's that's a lot.
That's a lot.
That is a lot.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
So uh obviously that theentrepreneurial spirit was in
you.
Was were your parentsentrepreneurs?
Where'd you get that buck?

SPEAKER_02 (08:25):
Yeah, neither one of them were entrepreneurs, they
came from what they calleddysfunctional families.
I would call it catastrophe.
They anything that could happento kids happened to my mom and
dad.
And they met each other at theyoung age of 15 and 16, fell in
love with each other and said,Hey, we're gonna do something
different.
We're gonna raise our kidsdifferent than the uh
dysfunction they went through.
So they were working folk.
Mom worked at the hospital, dadworked at the Georgia port down

(08:47):
there loading boats so that weget all around the world.
At the age of 15 or so, we hadbeen homeschooled for a couple
of years.
We came back whenever I washomeschooled.
This is decades ago.
I mean, yeah, years of yearsago, there were only 15,000
homeschoolers in the UnitedStates whenever I was
homeschooled.
Now there are, I mean, in KnoxCounty, Tennessee, where our
office is, there's 53,000 schoolage students just in Knox

(09:08):
County.
So back when I was a kid, wewere doing homeschooling, and
they said, Hey, we're gonna putyour education around business.
And so I literally had businesspeople teaching me, teaching me
business.
I had doctors teaching usscience, I had English
professors at college teachingus how to write.
And whenever all this educationwas happening before 15, Chris,
what my dad told me one day, hesaid, Hey son, you're gonna be

(09:30):
15 this Friday, I think it was.
He said, If you don't have a jobby Friday, don't come home.
Literally, those are the words.
Now, dad meant what he said.
He didn't miss words, he barelygot out of high school, he could
not read or write.
He could just no country boy,you know, born and raised on a
dirt road, just a country boy.
And he said, son, if you don'thave a job by Friday, don't come
home.
And he said, I'm gonna give youa little bit more rules.

(09:51):
You can't work fast food, youcan't work for the grocery
store, you can't work foranybody I know.
Now, it's not Atlanta, okay?
We didn't have 10, 15 millionpeople.
We have 50,000 people, and Ihave a last name called
Goodbread.
There's not that many people whodon't know the name Goodbread.
So I would go out like, youknow, like the Dr.
Seuss book and say, Hey, do youknow my dad?
Oh, yeah, Alan, yeah, we knowhim.
He's a good man.

(10:11):
I was like, I can't talk to you.
Long story short, after thatthree or four days, um, the very
last day, dad comes home and thenight before and he says, Hey,
look, I'm serious.
You don't have a job by thisweekend.
Come, don't come home.
So the next morning, I get upbefore dad does at four o'clock
in the morning and grab the pushmower, went down the street and
went door to door, knocking ondoors and saying, I need to cut
your grass.

(10:31):
Do you know my dad?
No, no, yeah, I know your dad.
Grab the mower and kept himgoing to the next house.
Finally found a guy's house whothe yard, St.
Augustine grass, was like seveninches thick.
Knocked on the door and I said,Hey, sir, do you know my dad,
Alan Goodbury?
He goes, No, I don't reckon Ido.
I said, Well, sir, I'm reckoningI'm fixing cut your grass, so
you can pay me whatever you wantto pay me because I'm going home
tonight.
So I cut his grass, made$40 inabout two hours back, you know,

(10:52):
35 years ago.
And my dad came home from theport.
I never forget this lesson,guys.
Came home from the port, likemost hard-working blue-collar
Americans.
He was exhausted.
He was tired.
He stunk.
I mean, he just he had put ahard day's labor in.
I am clean.
I'd already had a shower.
I'm looking good.
I smell good.
And he says, uh, so you'resmiling.

(11:14):
I said, I made 40 bucks.
He said, Well, first of all, youowe me seven, you owe me like 17
because of rent and gas andeverything on my mower.
So I gave him the money.
He said, Here's your rent.
He goes, here's the principle.
If you go to work for the man,you'll never be in control of
your life.
But you have what it takes torun your own business, learn
business, and go start your ownbusiness.
And that's where I learned tostart business at.

SPEAKER_00 (11:34):
Beautiful.
Man, what a great lesson.
His dad is Yoda.
His dad is.
I mean, I'll tell you what, weneed more of that right now.

SPEAKER_01 (11:40):
We need a lot more of that.
Yeah, there's so much badparenting for just like the last
two generations.
And this guy's dad was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 (11:46):
I'll tell you, man, if you're watching on YouTube,
you saw my eyes coming out ofthe side.
Oh, you can't.
There's only 50,000 people.
The odds are it's gonna bepretty hard to find it.
And he said, You found it.
I mean, you found that lesson,and um, you probably learned
more there again than anybodylearns in high school.
So there you go.
And off you ran and uh neverlooked back, just kept going.
Was there ever a time you'relike, you know what?

(12:07):
Maybe it'd just be easier if Iwent and worked for somebody.

SPEAKER_02 (12:10):
Um, no, I never had that one, Chris, but I had this
magical epiphany.
So we know I'm sure everybodyrecognizes the name Zig Ziggler.
You know, he was a motivationalspeaker of late.
I grew up going to conferenceswhere Zig Ziggler and Og Mendino
and Charlie Tremendous Jones andLes Brown and so many of these
greats of yesterday would be onstage and they'd be pouring into
it.
So at the age of 19, I had hiscompany, it's successful.

(12:31):
We're making millions ofdollars, no exaggeration, in
landscaping in South Georgia,just me and a couple of
teenagers.
We're having a time.
We learn business and how toscale companies.
And so I'm at a conference withZig Ziglar.
It's about 200 people in theroom, and he does something I
never saw any other time he did.
Now, somebody else out there, ifyou heard this before or you saw
Zig do this, please reach out tome on social media because I've

(12:52):
never seen him do it anywhereelse.
He stopped in the middle of hiswater pump example.
You know, he's prime of the pumpand he's telling everybody, hey,
help everybody get everythingout of life that they desire and
you get everything out of lifeyou desire.
And he's priming the pump and hestops.
He gets super quiet.
And he turns around to the smallaudience.
He said, I'd like for you totake out a sheet of paper.
So all of us did, you know, wedidn't have computers back then.
So pull out a sheet of paper,get our pen out.

(13:13):
And he said, I want you to writeyour wildest dreams down.
Three things that you want toaccomplish the next 20 years.
So here I'm at 19 years old.
I'm like, okay, by the time I'm40, let's say, round it up
because I can do that simplemath in my head.
Remember, I am from SouthGeorgia.
We got to keep things simple forme.
So I said, number one, numberone, I'm gonna marry.
It literally says smoking hotgirl.
I'm gonna marry a smoking hotgirl.

(13:33):
Number one, priorities in order.

SPEAKER_00 (13:36):
Yeah, one.

SPEAKER_02 (13:36):
I got the priorities down.
So I'm like, I got that one.
Marry smoking hot girl, numbertwo.
Now remember, I'm 19.
I'm gonna ride a New York Timesbestseller.
Why?
Because just two weeks earlier,my teacher at the University of
Georgia had told me I'm dumb asa box of rocks because I
couldn't spell where it's aflip.
And I said, you know what?
No, I'm not.
I'm gonna ride New York Timesbestseller.
And she laughed at me.
And that became like the momentlike y'all were talking about

(13:58):
before the cameras came on.
It's like, no, screw you.
I'm gonna show you what I'mgonna do.
I'm gonna do this.
So that became the second point.
And the third point, I'm sittingin that room and I have my pen
in my hand, and there's peopleall around me.
I'm like the youngest, and I'mgoing, what's number three?
Okay, I'm gonna have a$10million net worth.
Why$10 million?
Because I had one more zero thana million.
That's literally the way mybrain was thinking.

(14:19):
Well, if they can do a million,why can't I do 10?
So, to your question now, thatwas in my mind at age of 19.
I had this crumpled up sheet ofpaper, these three wildest
dreams on it.
At the age of 36, my wife was inmy life.
Thank God.
She is beautiful, have threekids at this point.
Life is amazing.
And already sold threecompanies, but we had just gone

(14:40):
through seven years of hell,seven years of tribulation.
Anything that a business ownercan go through, we faced it.
From legal battles through deathin the family, through
miscarriages in the thirdtrimester of my wife and I,
suicide, my dad, my hero, diedunexpectedly in the midst of all
this stuff.
Just seven years of hardship.
And I find myself on a WestVirginia mountaintop with a

(15:00):
friend, and he makes thisstatement.
He said, Justin, I'm broke.
Now, I don't know why thatstatement did what it did, but
it triggered my mind to go back19 years or year when I was 19
years of age.
And I looked, remember thatsheet of paper.
Well, Emily's in my life, mywife's in my life, thank God.
But I had not written much morethan a paragraph because of that
stupid red squiggly line thatappears anytime I type because I
can't spell where it's a flip,and it's always there.

(15:21):
These little red squiggly linesjust drives me crazy.
So I'm like, I had to neverwritten anything of$10 million
net worth.
No, we had just come out of thistribulation.
We were poor.
We had like six O's between theP and the R.
As we say in South Georgia, wewere poor.
I mean, we were broke, dude.
So I'm like, how in my how inthe world are we gonna do this?
So that was the point.
I didn't really come back andsay, I want to go work for

(15:42):
somebody.
It was the opposite.
How in the world am I gonnaclose this gap in four years'
time frame?
That was the calling.

SPEAKER_00 (15:49):
Beautiful.
So you took that challenge on.
Uh, but I think you hit onsomething a lot of people love
to hear, you know.
So you talk about the zigs andthe lesses and uh the the
motivational speakers.
Um, a lot of people want to justfocus in on that success and
what it looks like, and theythink, oh my God, I you know,
he's killing it, right?
Everybody else is always tonningit.
Oh, he's doing it.

(16:10):
And people get on and talkabout, and you you even said it
too, you know, I have seven toeight million or figures and
eight to nine figures, andeverybody's like, Oh, I want to
be like Justin.
You're like, um, you know what?
Uh it wasn't always roses, man.
Um, so talk about how you cameand turned that around.

SPEAKER_02 (16:28):
You know, there's a certain tenacity that I believe
we as business owners have.
I believe we have this burningcalling in our life, if you want
to use that word.
We have this vision, if youwill.
We see a glimmer of somethingout there.
And we know that as Zig says, ifwe can serve our audience
properly, we can radicallychange our lives.
The most business owners I knoware not the mean or the

(16:50):
narcissistic people that themedia often relates them to be.
They're the most caring and themost selfless people I know.
They will sacrifice everythingfor their communities, for their
for their team members, fortheir clients, for their
vendors.
They sacrifice so much.
And so whenever I saw thehardship in that time frame, it
wasn't a sense of, oh mygoodness, woe is me.

(17:12):
I've got to go, you know, eatsome worms, as the old South
Georgia song says.
None of that nonsense.
It was, okay, life suckssometimes, but that's water
ain't the bridge.
What can I, what principles canI gather from that, change my
focus and shift forward and lookto the future?
I believe this with all myheart.
I believe that everything thatwe as human beings face in life

(17:33):
is preparing us for what's infront of us.
I believe that.
I believe if we're walking thisearth today, that there's
something that only the threeyou can accomplish, only I can
accomplish.
There's this path that we're on.
I believe that with all myheart.
And so if I'm here on earth andby God's design, I'm sitting
here, I'm walking forward, thenthat purpose has yet to be
fulfilled.
So everything is a lesson in thebackground.

(17:54):
How do I apply it going forward?
So am I at this crazy age of 36and I'm sitting here poor with a
lot of O's and I'm beat up.
I mean, we're bloody.
We had just gone throughliterally hell on earth for
seven years.
We took a million plus dollarpaid-for house, no exaggeration,
had to borrow against thedecover lawsuit bills, and then
moved my wife and three kids ina double-wide trailer in the

(18:16):
country where we had to pull thetrucks out on a regular basis
because I got stuck in thedriveway.
We had rats running through thedriveway through the house.
I literally could shoot a BB gunand kill the mice in the house.
People don't talk about thehardship of life.
What they see is, oh mygoodness, Justin writes for
Forbes.
Oh my goodness, Justin has twobest-selling books.
Oh my goodness, Justin reachedsome sort of net worth
statement.
Oh my goodness, Justin's onstage.
All the hardships, whatever theymay be.

(18:39):
Hardest one is my dad passingaway, killed me.
My wife walking out of thehospital whenever our third
child, third one, guys, in thethird trimester, we are
preparing for a baby.
She walks out and her shouldersare slumped.
I mean, I can't even slump overthat much.
And my bride, my beautiful, myeverything to me is broken in
that moment.

(18:59):
People don't hear about thosebecause it's not glamorous and
it's not sexy and it doesn't getthe hook on the sizzle reels.
But that's life.
But in that hardship, there arelessons that, as we teach on our
show, it's called the DecaMillionaire Way, the
Decamillionaire decoding.
What I notice withhyper-successful people,
however, you want to definesuccess, either by finance or by

(19:19):
fitness or by notoriety,hyper-successful people take
those hardships of life and theyfuel them.
Those hardships are there asinternal jet fuel to push them
forward to their ultimatedestination.
So on that mountaintop, thatprinciple that I just described
is burned inside of me and it'sburned in the people that I know
who are the most, quote,successful, whatever, however,

(19:40):
you're going to describe that.
On that mountaintop, I'm sittingthere broken, tired.
I've been a business owner for20-something years, dude.
Poor with a bunch of O's.
It didn't happen overnight.
And I remember sitting there andmy country friend, he said, How
are we going to close this gap,dude?
He was a little older than meand he was looking at
retirement.
He can't retire because all thiswealth is in his business.

(20:01):
How are we going to close thisgap?
I said, I don't know, but I knowhow to find it.
He said, What are you going todo?
I said, I'm going to go findsomebody who's been there, done
that before me.
And I'm going to pay themwhatever amount of money they
want me to pay them so they canshow me the fastest way.
Because here's what I learned asan early child.
Wealth loves velocity.
See, most broke people willtrade their time, their finite

(20:25):
for the infinite money.
We trade our time for money.
That's not the successful.
The successful will go out andtake money, the finite, the
infinite thing, and trade theirmoney for their time.
So what I looked at is I said,How in the world can we take
brokeness, mentally,spiritually, physically,
emotionally, broke, just brokendown?
How can we radically change ourlife in four years?

(20:47):
So I did what most successfulpeople do.
I found somebody who hadjourneyed on this path before
me, and I met with this guy,South Georgia.
If I called his name, manypeople would recognize it
because he's now since gone, buthe's a good man.
And he told me I never couldtell his name, but I can tell
you this very successful.
He's sitting down by a spoolguys in South Georgia and he's
smoking a cigar.
And I sat down and met with him.
I said, Hey man, I want toaccomplish this.

(21:08):
He goes, How bad do you want it?
I said, I want it pretty bad.
He goes, No, no, not pretty bad.
How bad do you want these twothings?
Do you want to ride a New YorkTimes seller?
I said, more than anything.
He goes, You want to be worth$10million in four years?
I said, Yes, more than anything.
He goes, How bad?
I said, dude, I can taste it.
I'll never forget theconversation.
He goes, Okay.
I'm going to charge you$10,000 amonth.

(21:28):
And if you listen to what I say,you'll accomplish it.
Now think about this.
We broke.
We live in a trailer, man.
Our trucks are stuck in thedriveway.
We don't have a pot to pee in.
I mean, it is, we are poor.
I said, okay.
How am I going to get$10,000?
He says, that's for you tofigure out how bad you want it.
Within 90 days, I had what Iconvinced my people to do is I

(21:49):
said, I'm going to pay this guy10 grand.
I went out and found five peoplethat I was going to take what he
was teaching me and I was goingto teach them, and they were
each gonna pay me$2,000.
I was playing on the house'smoney within nine days, 90 days.
Why?
Because I wanted the outcome.
That's what those hardshiplessons taught me.
That's what those things in lifewill teach you.

(22:10):
Whenever we all go through thispain, it's how do we apply it?
How do we accelerate?
For me, it was finding somebodywho'd been there, done that, and
saying, No excuses.
This is what I want.
I'm gonna charge hell with awater pistol until we get it.
And guess what?
It wasn't it wasn't hard.
It was, I mean, it wasn't easy,it was stinking hard.
Yeah, stinking hard.

SPEAKER_00 (22:26):
Yeah, I can say, yeah, yeah.
So uh so you do that you foundthe way to fund it.
Let's talk about some of thosefirst lessons because you gotta
implement them.
And I think for a lot of us, Iagree with you, you gotta have
tenacity.
I mean, one of the things, youknow, 3 30 in the morning when
I'm curled up on the couchgoing, what the hell did I just
do to my family?
What have I done to myself?
I can't believe I just did this.
And then, you know, the alarmclock goes and it's 7 a.m.

(22:48):
and you're still not sleeping,and you're like, Oh, you guess
what you gotta do now?
Go solve some problems, get itall taken care of.
So you gotta have the tenacity.
But what are some of thosebecause a lot of people talk uh
you know a lot of times I thinkit's a lot of like flowery big
things.
But for for me, what's alwayshappened, it's the small little
things and the accumulation ofthem that works.
Where were some of those smallthings you learned right off the

(23:10):
rip?

SPEAKER_02 (23:11):
Yeah, so I'll walk you through the exact saying.
So I don't mind this is what wenow teach.
This is what my new book's gonnabe is coming out about early
next year.
The very first thing my coachdid was he spent six months
working on, as I say it, mynoodle.
He would literally listen to thewords I was saying, he would
dissect every word and say, Hey,Justin, you have scarcity
thinking, you have victimthinking, you have this mindset
does not look in abundance.

(23:31):
You're looking at principleshere that's never gonna allow
you to reach it.
And until you actuallyphysically internalize what
that's gonna look like when youreach that destination, you're
not gonna go through thehardship.
So literally six months, not ofthe technical stuff, not of the
tactical things that we all wantto know as business owners, six
months, 60 grand.

(23:51):
Now, this is over a decade ago.
And remember, we're poor, likelots of O's in between, right?
He's sitting here talking to mynoodle, man.
Six months of this.
So everything I would say, hewould kick back and say, Nope,
you're not there yet.
So not only was he working on mynoodle, the second thing, and
you guys are picking on me, youknow, because I'm physically fit
a little bit, but he hired mehire a fit coach.
He said, if your body is not atpeak performance, you're not

(24:14):
gonna be able to accomplish thisin business.
Your body has got to be at peakperformance for you to hit what
you want to accomplish in yourbusiness.
So I hired a fit coach.
It was a green beret.
I had a dietitian.
I heard a dietitian.
We're drinking bourbon.

SPEAKER_00 (24:26):
Yeah.
Here we go.
I can handle bourbon.
So I'm not gonna get there, butI am gonna have some fun getting
there.
Maybe there's another way,Chris.
Yeah, I you know what?
I'm gonna challenge you back.
I'm like, you know, nothingwrong with a little bourbon.
It's not got sugar in it, youknow.

SPEAKER_02 (24:40):
I like me some bourbon now.
Yeah, so no, he had me hire afit coach, he had me hire a
dietitian, he worked on Mondayfor six months, and then we
walked through what I call nowthe Decamillionaire framework.
He didn't teach me this exactframework, but it's what I wrote
about.
And literally, I startedrecording a podcast when he was
teaching me.
Everything he would teach me,I'd turn around and record it
into a microphone and just teachit to whom everyone to listen.
And so after three years, we hadmillions of followers.

(25:00):
It was crazy to see what wouldhappen.
So the very first thing hetaught us was is that you have
to clarify what do you want.
So many of us, I ask thisquestion to business owners all

the time (25:10):
what specifically do you want to achieve?
Well, I think, or and peoplecan't see it.
So he taught me that basicallyto find something I want.
So literally, I would say thispink beach house example.
This is the tactical nature ofwhat we deal with.
So whenever I say, Hey, I wantto buy a pink beach house, then
y'all might say, Okay, cool,where do you want it?
Well, I want a Floridapanhandle.

(25:30):
That's a big, that's a big area.
Where specifically, I destinedarea.
Okay, you say you want a pinkbeach house, and just you know,
yeah, I want a pink beach house,three stories, and put the car
neath the front that has a poolin the back of the house, the
second floor.
You know, so if I get superdetailed, you can visualize and
see exactly this pink beachhouse.
The more details I give, themore visually it becomes to you.

(25:51):
It's interesting when I talkabout the pink beach house,
there's only two on A1A down inFlorida.
And whenever people hear it,they literally text a page, take
a picture of it now and theytext and they tag me on social
media because I talk about theclarity of a vision.
So the very first thing hetaught us was hey, you've got to
have crystal clear vision onwhat you want to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 (26:09):
And that's the heavy lifting right there, right?
That's hard, that's the hardpart.
You gotta have clarity right upfront.
You're like, Yeah, well, we'llget to that.
We'll get to that.
So, Justin, should I start alandscaping business?
Well, hang on, big boy.
I mean, let's uh let's back up.
What do you want?
Yeah, what do you want?
That clarity.
I would say that's that's beenmy biggest uh growth success at
my company was closing my eyesand saying a year from now, my

(26:31):
office should be looking likethis.
You're sitting there, I'msitting here, you're sitting
over there, she's sitting there,it looks like this.
Wednesday mornings we havetraining.
And I remember when I had that,and uh, if you come see our
training here in Atlanta, whichwe just got then hosted another
guy uh to show it off, you know,he he's like, Hey, when did you
have that?
I said, No, I had I had thisvision um 14 years ago.
I've been at this for 17, butit's that third year in where I

(26:54):
was like, uh I just don't see itbecause I was working sublis
from a guy, had a little spot,cubicle, a little of that.
You're right, but that that isuh that is so hard to work on.
And look how long it took you toget there.
You talked about six monthsworking on the noodle.
Maybe the pink house came prettyquick, but uh I it takes a
minute.

SPEAKER_02 (27:10):
Well, whenever you find your vision, then here's
the hardest exercise that mostbusiness owners don't deal with
that causes more problems inyear two, three, four, five,
six, whenever you start to scalea business.
And that is many business ownersdon't take the time to identify
the values that they have, theethos in which they operate, the
non-negotiables they have fortheir life.
Because if you don't identifythose the values that you're

(27:33):
gonna operate your company offof, then whenever you have a
misalignment, what we often dobecause of our tenacious type of
attitude, and because we canroll up our sleeves and get to
work, we jump in and we jumpright back into the middle of
the problem and we fix theproblem as the business owner,
which is the opposite of what weshould do.
And the danger is that if youtake the time on the front side
and align, what is what are yournon-negotiables?

(27:53):
What is a business owner are yougoing to do and not going to do?
And why does that matterspecifically to you and your
vision?
So in the very first phase, wespent a lot of time talking
about our vision, our vision,our vision values, those two
things.
Then we shifted to the secondphase, which was examination.
We walk, we walked our companiesthrough an examination loophole
every 90 days.

(28:14):
What we are specifically werelooking at is what is the
enterprise value of our companytoday?
Because remember, I wanted agoal of a dollar figure.
Some people might not want that.
I wanted a$10 million plusvaluation so I could be a DECA
millionaire within four years.
So our measuring point, ourchief KPI, or what I call
critical success factor, was thevaluation of our company.
So every 90 days, we had ametric in which we would value.

(28:36):
That means that anything thatgoes in our third pillar, which
is execution, what I callrelentless execution, when we
begin taking those small babysteps every 90 days, every
action had to move that onething.
And so the singularity of andthe simplicity of what he was
teaching me was contrary to whatI had done my previous 20 years.

(28:56):
My previous 20 years, I've donewhat the most business owners
do.
If it can, if they can fog amirror, come on, they can be a
client of mine.
Oh, you want me to serve youwith this?
You want me to give you vanillaice cream and chocolate and
Rocky Road and put a swirlingmachine inside here as well?
Absolutely.
But we'll give you whatever youwant.
No, Justin, what specificallyare you going to do for them and
how specifically you're going toserve them and how singularity

(29:17):
and approach can we get?
So we broke it down to oneclient.
We called him Frazzle Frank.
Frazzle Frank had one offer.
One client, one offer, one pain.
We can move our client from hispain to his payoff.
And if he followed this process,it would yield every single
time.
That is so vastly different thanthe mass majority of business

(29:38):
owners out there.
We want to get our hands ineverything.
We have that squirrel moment andwe run off and we chase it.
He was saying, no, get stupidsimple.
Get stupid simple.
And then what that led to wasour fourth thing was always have
your business ready for a buyer.
Always.
You never know.
If real estate's about location,location, location, the business
is about timing, timing, timing.
There will be come a time whenme, the ultimate control force.

(30:00):
Freaking my business will wantto leave my business or be
offered to leave my business.
And then finally, freedom.
How do I get the freedom Idesire?
So those were the things hewalked me through over that
four-year journey.
Get stupid laser focused, stayfocused on my vision, mission,
values, serve one client, oneclient good, simplify the offer,
and then deal with all thenonsense that happens with it.

SPEAKER_01 (30:21):
You ready?
I noticed that he's really goodwith his back against the wall.
Yeah.
I mean, his dad can dig out of ahole.
Yep.
And then this guy, you know, 10grand.
The guy on the mountaintop, youknow, I'm poor.
And it's like when your back isagainst the wall.
He he I love the fact that hedoesn't look for excuses, he

(30:42):
doesn't look for somebody toblame.
It's like, I gotta get out ofthis.
Where do I need to go?
How am I gonna get there as fastas I can?

SPEAKER_00 (30:49):
Yeah.
And that again goes back to it.
Sounds simple.
It is simple, but it's so hardto execute.
Just do one thing really well.
Back to Frank Frazzo or FrazzoFrazzo is what he said.
You know, it's that it it's it'seasy to say it.

SPEAKER_01 (31:03):
It's so hard to do it.
I mean, you hear that a lot, andI don't know if I see that many
examples of people doing justthat.

SPEAKER_00 (31:11):
No, you really don't.
In fact, I you know, I I think Iwas as he was talking, I was
doing some self-evaluating, andum, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 (31:17):
I know I got into uh because you're not gonna work
out and you're kind of a bigwhore and you'll take business
from anybody.
And I mean, we've covered allthat stuff over the last four
years.

SPEAKER_00 (31:24):
Well, and I do, and I I'll offer all kinds of ice
cream to everybody.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Oh, you look for a handyman?
I'm your guy, baby.
Um, but no, but it's it's hard,it is really hard.
I'm pretty proud of myself insome things, but other things
you're like on the fringe,you're like, yeah, probably not
there.
You know, we're really good athandyman and doing that, and we
think that's a good niche.
But I started doing remodeling,and that's why I just was on a

(31:46):
podcast telling somebody else,I'm like, don't do it.
If you're in remodeling now,don't think you want to be a
handyman because doing both ofthem, you're it's hard.
And that's what I that's what Ifound out in a very bad way.

SPEAKER_02 (31:56):
Uh that we're well as you think about that, here's
a here's a here's a pictureillustration to how why most
business owners don't do this.
So I was about 16 years of age.
My dad was he had me workingwith him and he gave me a big
heavy sledgehammer.
Now, at the 16 years of age, Iweighed 110 pounds.
I was like soaking wet, little,little, little kid.
And he said, Hey son, I want youto beat this wall down.
I want you to knock this walldown.
So, like most business owners, Igrabbed the sledgehammer and I

(32:19):
swung it with everything I hadand hit the wall all over the
place for about a minute and ahalf and it didn't fall.
And he came over and he said,You tired yet?
I said, Yes, sir.
I'm pretty tired.
He goes, Can't quit till thewall's down.
Yes, sir.
He said, He goes, I'm gonna showyou something principle of life.
This is where so many businessowners miss the mark.
Again, if you want to become aDECA millionaire and break away
and be in the top 1%, if youwant to get to that level, this

(32:42):
is a principle that works everysingle time.
Take it to the bank.
Friends, this is it.
What he do is he grabbed a canof black spray paint.
And Chris, he reached down andhe painted a little dot in the
bottom right hand side of thatcorner and he said, hit that dot
over and over and over.
Okay, guess what?
That wall fell down in aboutfive minutes.

(33:02):
That's right.
Because as long as I kepthitting on that one dot over and
over, the wall cracked.
But we as business owners, wewant to take our service or our
product or our offer and try toget it at anybody and everybody.
And so we just bounced againstthat wall like that, like I was
doing when it tried to hit thatwall all over the place.
Whenever I got laser focused onthat one thing I could serve,
that one person, that oneproblem I could fix, and how my

(33:24):
solution would radically changeour life.
Whenever I broke through thewall, then they literally lined
up.
Now, here's what's crazy I wasin the most regulated industry
in the world building thisbusiness, a financial services
industry, the most regulated.
We had literally dozens ofqualified clients begging to

(33:44):
come work with us.
We applied the same principlewhenever I re-launched my
coaching business.
In less than a year's time,we're at nine months now, we're
already at seven figures andrapidly growing.
We're gonna break aneight-figure income in the
coaching business in threeyears' time.
How?
Radically attacking that onepoint.
Now it's contrary.
It's contrary to everything wethink about because we see Fran

(34:05):
Flintstone over here and BarneyRebel over here doing their
thing.
We want to follow them becausethey look good on social media,
this, that, and the other.
That's the noise that so many inthe millionaire status get stuck
with, and the DECA millionairessay, no, no, no, no, we're gonna
fast, we're gonna get hyperfocused.
That's what my coach wasteaching me.

SPEAKER_00 (34:22):
Huh.
How about that?
He's right.
I mean, you think about it,niches bring the riches, you say
what you want.
But uh, and I've said this inmarketing too.
You know, when I ask people whoare trying to get started, I'm
like, so what are you doing tobring in business, right?
Because again, cash is king, butyou know, sales is what brings
the day, right?
So in marketing, you know, Ijust had somebody say it again.
Um, yeah, I'm just looking forhomeowners.
I'm like, yeah.

(34:43):
Um, how do you think you're justgonna find homeowners like that
doing that?
I mean, especially here inAtlanta where we have six and a
half million people and you haveuh, you know, millions of
houses.
I see you can't do that, man.
You've got to get yourselffocused in.
Or I mean, yeah, you could spendmillions and millions of dollars
on marketing and never getanywhere.
Back to the point that Justinbrought up about the whole wall.
You got to find that one spot.

(35:04):
And then, you know, and again, AB tests and marketing is one
thing, but you know, it'sfocusing on that one problem for
that one guy at that one time,it changes the way you think
about marketing and bringing inbiz.

SPEAKER_01 (35:13):
So I sit here and I I imagine myself being somebody
in a truck uh driving down theroad, listening to this podcast,
and they're like, a painter,house painter, and they're like,
How what does this mean for me?
I mean, I I understand the wholevisualization of where you want
to be.
I want my boat, you know, and Iwant it on this dock.
But how do I differentiatemyself when I have that kind of

(35:35):
a business?
What is what does laser focusingon one thing mean?
Well, I'm gonna ask you.

SPEAKER_00 (35:42):
Justin, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 (35:44):
Yeah, great question.
Fine, great question, Alan.

SPEAKER_00 (35:49):
Okay, shut up, let's go.
Yes, we keep track.
Yes, we keep score.
Yes, we're competitive.
Yes, he got a good question in.
Thank you, Justin.
I'm down one-zero.
All right.
Well, before we go any further,what bourbon are we pouring
everything?
We're doing Jefferson's.
Jefferson's, yeah, and bought itjust outside of Athens, found a
new place for us to go becauseI've got a division up in
Athens.
On the way back, my uh mymanager said, Hey, you gotta

(36:11):
stop at this place and get uhget some bourbon.
And sure enough, man, greatprices, good selection.
So we're drinking of that.
Cheers.
Cheers.
All right.
Now you can answer Alan's greatquestion.

SPEAKER_02 (36:24):
So the the reality is our wildest dreams, whatever
they may be, is on the oppositeside of the resistance that
we're gonna face.
So, what is specifically what isthe payoff that we want?
So, for some, they may say, Iwant to work 180 days a year.
For some, they may say, like Idid, I want to have a bank
account that would put me in afreedom position where I never
had to work again in my life.

(36:44):
That may be some.
Others may say, I want to visitall my kids' sporting events.
Whatever it is, if you getstupid clear on what that what
that becomes is then youbackwards analyze if you're in
business, what is the one thingthat matters most?
So I no doubt you had somebody,y'all have heard of yourself.
If you're listening to us ridingdown the road in Atlanta, pay
attention to the road becauseit's psychotic down there.

(37:06):
But um, you've always heard therule of 80-20, 80 percent,
80-20.
You know, you get 20% of yourinput regenerates 80% of your
output.
Here's something you may havenever heard before.
What if you 80-20'd your 80-20?
Now, here's a little bit ofmath, so I'm gonna do it for
you.
You're in your head.
The 20%, if you 80-20, your80-20.
So the 20% becomes 4%, the 80%becomes 64%.

(37:29):
4% and only 4% of your businessinput produces 64% of its
output.
You can run this through yourclient list, it's the exact same
thing.
I've done this thousands oftimes with business.
That's not an exaggeration.
I literally have walked hundredsof business owners on how to
double or triple the value oftheir company, and it works
every single time.
Take your clients, 4%, your top4% high of your segmenting, does

(37:50):
roughly 64% of the revenue for ahealthy business.
How do you break through thewall?
What service to which client,which avatar generates 64% of
the output?
I can promise you that if youhave three or four or five
different service offerings,let's say in the construction
world, you have three or four orfive different service

(38:12):
offerings, there is a service.
Now, it may not be plumbing inthe sense of, hey, I'm only
gonna replace toilets, but itmay be an offer, a simplified
offer that you can offer thatkey clientele, and that
particular offer will generate64% of the revenue.
So whenever we have a client whosays, How in the world am I
gonna achieve my wildest dreams?

(38:32):
We come back to what is thewildest dreams?
Number one.
Number two, look at yourbusiness and what service or
what is it that your audience,your current clientele, is
looking for that they'reengaging.
We can dissect that out.
We use 256 points of metricsthat we can examine a business
on, and you can determine whatthat service is.
And then you put everythingtoward that service.

(38:53):
Every single thing.
Here's where most businessowners lose.
We take our money, our talent,our team, we take our money, our
talent, our team, and we spreadthem thin.
Whenever I take, let's say I had$10 as an example, and I was
gonna use my$10 to accelerate mybusiness.
If I put all$10 behind oneparticular initiative, and all

(39:13):
my clients behind all my teammembers behind one particular
initiative, and all mystructure, my systems behind one
particular initiative, I'm gonnakick your tail.
Here's why.
Most business owners want to putall 10 things on 10 different
initiatives.
And so they spread hyper thinand you don't get the
penetration into the market andyou don't get the recurring
revenue that you need no matterwhich business you're in.

(39:34):
So the simplif simplification isfind the 4%.

SPEAKER_00 (39:38):
That I was typing that down as he was talking.
I just sent that to Cindy.
I said, remind me of this one.
Because again, again, it's notlike playing roulette wheel,
right?
If you go down to roulette, ifanybody's ever played it, you
can put your chips all over thetable, but that's for fun and
gambling.
But if you want to be successfuland do things, you're gonna have
to find those one.
And you know what?
You find out pretty quickly ifthat was the wrong one.
Because that's my big question.
You know, is you're right.

(39:58):
If I took all 10 and I did um,hey, I'm gonna uh offer this
maintenance program, and I foundout it just didn't work.
Uh, you know, people weren'twilling to buy proactive
maintenance in their home justyet.
Um, but if I offered thehandyman for a day, it blew up.
And uh, but it just took us alittle while to figure it out.
And I think that's a practicalexample of something I learned,
and that's why all of our uhadvertising and marketing is

(40:21):
going all around handyman for aday, handyman for a half day.

SPEAKER_01 (40:24):
So that really is taking off.
It is that's really cool.
Yeah, so design like a beta testor something back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 (40:30):
You work, absolutely.
Uh, and we've really figured itout.

SPEAKER_01 (40:34):
I mean, I loved it.

SPEAKER_00 (40:35):
Yeah, I mean, people say, but if I turn around and
say, look, for uh$19.99 a monthor you know, uh for a couple
hours service, I can put you onour home service program.
I'm not getting that one.

SPEAKER_01 (40:45):
I'm so tired of being dripped to death.

SPEAKER_00 (40:47):
Yeah, that's what I'm hearing too.
Subscription services,especially thinking about your
home in a proactive way.
Most people don't do it.
But when I say handyman for aday, get your wife off your ass,
you fuck it up, we fix it.
I mean, it's handyman for a day.
That's been killer.
We sell more of those inhandyman for a half day than
anything else in our company.
That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 (41:05):
Yep, that's awesome.
That's the representation of thefour percent roll.

SPEAKER_00 (41:08):
That is, yeah.
In fact, that's why I saidremind me of this, because I'm
gonna go back and look becauseuh you don't know where that
four percent is coming from.
That's the thing.
I think what's the uh adage inadvertising?
50% of your money's wasted, youjust don't know which.
Yeah, right.
So that's that's the killer onthat one.
So uh Justin, we're coming tothe end.
Uh, but I one of the things Iwanted to talk about, you said

(41:29):
it at the end, is that youshould always be thinking about
the exit of your business tomake sure that the business
you're running is good.
I mean, that's the way Iinterpreted.
Talk a little bit about how youdo that while you're actually
running this thing.

SPEAKER_02 (41:40):
Yeah, so let's let's talk about some statistics and
the reality first.
For small business owners outthere, whoever you may be, more
than likely your businessrepresents the vast majority of
your net worth.
And the reason for it is becauseunlike our W-2 counterparts, you
probably haven't been saving inyour 401k.
Every bit of money's been pushedback into your company so you
can get off the ground.
And now you perhaps at thispoint are making some income.

(42:02):
But when you look at itstatistically, you're way behind
on the amount of assets you haveoutside your business.
So the Exit Planning Institutedoes some studies and they show
that for most service-basedbusiness owners and most, which
is 30 million plus people in theUnited States, that we have 80%
of our net worth in ourbusiness.
That means that this lifestylethat we're used to living is
only going to continue if webuild the business where it can

(42:25):
operate without us, or somebodycomes in, they're gonna fund the
business and pay us for whatit's worth.
So when we fast forward to whatwe truly want, oftentimes when
I'm talking with businessowners, their desire is hingent
upon the business beingcapitalized, either by an
internal employee, an externalperson, a competitive buyer, et

(42:45):
cetera.
So the goal around business isto treat it as your best asset.
If I had a rental property and apipe's busted, I would fix it.
If I had a rental property andmy cap rate was below market, I
would adjust it.
If I had a rental property andthe renter inside the business
was tearing it apart, wastearing the house apart, I would
kick them out.

(43:06):
Most of us in business, we don'tsee that the day-to-day
activities that we do as ownersactually affect the valuation of
our companies and it affects itsreadiness and attractiveness.
So our job as business owners isto build a business to where
it's all the time attractive tosomebody.
Typically, you will hear thatit's an employee.
Oftentimes I don't hear anymorethat children want to come.

(43:27):
Most of our kids don't want tobuy our business.
They've seen how stressful weare.
They don't want any part of it.
They so you're more than likelylooking at a key employee or a
competitor or some type of abolt-on to another company out
there that wants to buy yourcompany.
So why would they buy a businessthat is stressing you out?
So when we think about the exitin mind, what we're
accomplishing as the ultimatecontrol freaks, because that's

(43:49):
who we are as business owners,I'm right there with you.
We want to have control ofeverything except for our exit.
So if we really build a businessto where an investor wants to
come in and give us some cash,ultimately what we built was a
business that's not dependentupon us, which then gives us the
freedom we desire, anyways.
So when you think about yourexit, you're accomplishing,

(44:10):
you're killing two birds in onestone.
You're building a business whereit can operate without you
simultaneously, the less, themore that it can operate without
you, the higher the enterprisevalue is for a buyer out there
to come alongside.
So if we if we realize that mostof the lifestyles that we live
as business owners are going torequire either an annuitization,
the business to be able tooperate without us, or a buyer

(44:30):
to come alongside and buy thebusiness, then it behooves us to
understand valuation and howwhat makes a business valuable
to an outside buyer.
Most of us don't think that way.
Most of us think how do weincrease our income?
And that's very rookie.
And that's why most businessowners are broke.
If you want to become adecamillionaire, you've got to
build a business to where it isgoing to thrive without you and

(44:52):
be attractive to somebody on theoutside.
That's why we think we startwith the exit in mind at the
beginning.
So if you even hadn't eventhought about your exit, today's
the day.
You're like, I'm 40 years old, Idon't give a flying flip.
Today's the day.
Because as I mentioned earlier,real estate's location,
location.
Business is about timing,timing, timing.
You don't know when somebody inthe in your particular industry

(45:12):
is going to come alongside andthey got some family business
money out there, some VC money,venture capital money, some
private equity money.
And they're like, hey, we wantto give you 5x what your
business is worth.
That's what happened to me.
Because I had my business builtproperly.
Whenever my wife was laid upsick in the hospital, my coach
was pushing on me, and I and hesaid, Justin, what is the one
thing that you want to do?
And I said, Man, I'd be onstage, I'd be writing books, I'd

(45:34):
be talking to business owners.
There's a way in order for youto achieve your wildest dreams.
He said, Then why aren't youdoing it?
So because my business isn'tworth 10 million.
He said you passed that a longtime ago.
What?
That's why it's important.

SPEAKER_00 (45:46):
I think that that you you hit on the thing, it's
it's hard.
You got to let go uh as acontrol freak.
Um, but you got to empowerpeople to be able to make those
decisions.
And that's one of the reasons Igot this podcast.
I get to sit here and do this uhduring the business day or
towards the end of the day, andyou know what?
Uh the the cha-ching cha chingis ching is going because I got
sales guys out there selling, Igot remodelers out there making

(46:07):
projects happen, I got handymanmaking things happen.
And um, but it was hard to doit, but also we've got it now.
You know, you've got a process,you've got to develop it.
Uh, it's a lot of hard work, andit costs you a lot of flipping
money.
Oh, brother.

SPEAKER_02 (46:21):
A lot of you each you find out what type of leader
you are when you go throughthat, as you know, because most
business owners, we know how towork hard.
We do, we know how to do thehard work, we don't do the
difficult work.
The difficult work is lettingyour hand off the wheel and
trusting somebody else for yourbaby.
Yeah, and that's why most peopleare broke, most business owners.

SPEAKER_00 (46:38):
Justin, how can everybody get a hold of you?
This has been Dynamite.
Let's talk about your podcast,your books, your coaching
programs.
Let's let's hear all about that,and then we're gonna get to our
final four questions.

SPEAKER_02 (46:46):
All right.
So, yeah, so the DecamillionaireWay is our podcast.
We teach you literally, sorry,sorry, Decamillion Decoded is
our podcast.
We literally decode the exactsteps that every person, every
business owner needs to do inorder to reach a decamillionaire
status.
You can find my last name,Goodbread, on any social media.
I'm the only one out there.
You can look at me in any socialmedia, YouTube, et cetera.
Connect with me.
I love Instagram because that'swhere I live my life.

(47:08):
I'm gonna be elk hunting in acouple of weeks.
You're gonna see photos of meelk hunting and mule deer
hunting.
I'm all the time offshorefishing.
We live a life that is funbecause I have a life of
freedom.
If that's what you're lookingfor, hey, connect with me there.
As far as our books go, I'vewritten two books.
One's called The Ultimate Sale,end up selling millions of
copies internationally.
Not as many here in the UnitedStates, but Your Baby's Ugly was
my second book.
It ended up number one on theWall Street Journal bestsellers

(47:31):
list.
Um, it's a lot of fun.
It talks about why your businessis not attractive and why you're
not going to cash it out, how tofix it specifically, as it goes
to the technical.
We coach around the DECAmillionaire way.
There is a framework.
I walk through the high level.
There is a framework that if youfollow the framework, it will
take it to the bank.
It will help you radically growyour business.

(47:52):
When I say radically grow, I'mtalking about you realize you
could double or triple your networth in as little as 18 to 36
months.
It is extremely possible.
How do I know?
I've done it too many times, notmyself and other business
owners.
We took an eight-figure businessand doubled it to a low
nine-figure business in 18months.
It can work on every level,every structure, every size.

(48:13):
So we teach around thedecaminaire millionaire way.
You can check it all out atJustinGoodbread.com.

SPEAKER_00 (48:18):
Beautiful.
All right, guys, go out thereand do it.
He's taking you up on it.
You just got a little tasteright here, gives you an idea.
And I think if this is the placeyou want to go, you want to hold
yourself accountable, go make ithappen, you got to go check out
Justin Goodbread.
And again, he's right.
Goodbread is a unique name.
Here I thought La Lamia was aunique name, but no, it's good
bread.
All right, man.
Let's get to these final fourquestions.
So, sure, what is a book you'drecommend that's not yours to

(48:40):
our audience?

SPEAKER_02 (48:41):
I read five books a year.
I've done it for over 25 years.
The first book is, I believe, Iread the book of Proverbs every
year.
It's a lot of wisdom in the bookof Proverbs.

SPEAKER_01 (48:50):
Powerful book.
Okay, powerful book.
A lot of business wisdom.
You're right.
A lot of business wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 (48:55):
I like to read Robert Kiyosaki and Dave
Ramsey's book in contrastbecause they think differently.
You know, Rich uh Think and GrowRich.
I'm sorry, Rich Dad, Poor Dad byRobert Kiyosaki and The Total
Money Makeover at Dave Ramsey.
I think it gives us two bookendsfor the financial world.
I like Napoleon Hills, Think andGrow Rich.
I literally, every time I get inthe car, my children, we play
that, we play that nonstop.
And then the fourth one isGeorge Clausen's The Richest Man

(49:16):
in Babylon.
It's the principle of payingyourself first.
As a business owner, payyourself first.
Build a business that pays youfirst.
Now, there's a lot of runnersup, but those are my five books
that I've read for over 25 yearsnow.

SPEAKER_01 (49:28):
So when you say you read five books a year, you
reread five books a year.

SPEAKER_02 (49:31):
I'm sorry.
Thank you so much.
Yes.
I reread those five books.
I read a book a week.
I have read a book a week forover 25 years now.

SPEAKER_00 (49:38):
Beautiful.
Love that one.
All right.
What's the favorite feature ofyour house?
I'm thinking it's say it onemore time.
What's the favorite feature ofyour house?

SPEAKER_02 (49:46):
Because I mean it's being built right now.
So as of present, my favoritefeature is inside our home we
have um uh rustic floors.
We have barn wood floors to thewhole house.
I literally built my housemyself after the lawsuits ended,
took uh six months off and builta house with my own hands, and
we have barn wood floors to thewhole house.
But right now, I'm building thethree-car garage with a studio

(50:07):
over it and a swimming pool inthe backyard, and we have 200
acres with no neighbors.
So the Shelby Cobra is going inthe garage, the the Raptor R is
going in the garage, my otherhot rod's going in the garage,
and I'm gonna enjoy that featureliving out in the woods with
deer and turkeys and no oneelse.

SPEAKER_00 (50:24):
Oh man, heaven, love that.
Oh my god, that's cool stuff.
In fact, I just did an estimatefor guy who had a Raptor R.
And my uh tech is the one whopointed it out to me.
He goes, That's a Raptor R.
He goes, Rich people have oneletter on their cars.
I'm like, oh wow, thanks fortelling me that.

SPEAKER_01 (50:39):
All right, let me go jump in my MDX.

SPEAKER_00 (50:41):
Yeah, yeah, I've drive my Chevy Silverado out
there, but uh, that's awesome.
All right, one of the thingsthat uh Alan and I talk about,
we haven't talked about it muchtoday, but uh really, but we are
customer service freaksabsolutely into it.
What is a customer service petpeeve of yours when you're out
there and you're the customer?

SPEAKER_02 (50:58):
Whenever somebody represents a service and what
they represent and what theydeliver are two different
things.
It irks me beyond measure.
If I if it's a bait and switchand they put something out there
and they said, Hey, this is whatyou can you're gonna expect.
Maybe that's expectation bydelivery time, maybe the
expectation of showing up ontime, maybe it's the expectation
of treating whatever the serviceis with respect.

(51:19):
I I fired a contractor.
He told me he's gonna be at myhouse at 7:30 in the morning
with his team members.
I was I canceled a$10,000appointment to meet him there.
And he called and said, I can'tmake it.
I'll meet you at 3:30 thisafternoon.
Like zero respect.
Nope, get out of here.
Don't have time for that.

SPEAKER_00 (51:35):
Yeah.
Woo, it's so hard, especially inour world where you get a break.
Uh, you do in the in the worldof tradesmen and what we do, we
get a break.
So you and we still still findways to screw it up at my
company.
But um, again, we we alwaysreinforce that you just can't do
that because that makes youbetter than everybody else.
When you show up, you're ontime, you're early this morning.
That job I was talking aboutwith the Raptor R, we were there

(51:56):
15 minutes early.
Uh, we were waiting for him touh do whatever.
I don't even know what it wasbecause we were uh doing
something that took a lot oftechnical expertise.
So I was out there, I had mylittle thermal camera and
everything else.
But um, you got to do it, yougotta show up on time, guys, and
you gotta underpromise andover-deliver.
And that's something in ourworld, especially in tradesmen,
that you can do.
All right, I gotta get to thisone because you built your own

(52:18):
house.
I know this has happened.
I want a DIY nightmare story.
Don't tell me about acontractor.
Yeah, I want to talk aboutsomething you did, and you're
like, fire, floods, pestilence,bugs, something.
Because I've done it, that's whythese fingers are all screwed
up.
I want a DIY nightmare story.

SPEAKER_02 (52:35):
Um, so the DIY nightmare story is has to do
around the stairs.
So we we hired a general con wehired a framing crew to frame
our floors, and in wrong in KnoxCounty, Rome County, Tennessee,
where my house is, there was abend in the stairway.
So you had to come up two steps,turn, and go up the rest of the
steps.
And this particular um, thisparticular inspector had

(52:57):
something that he must have atebad that morning because he was
angry.
We, my daughter and I spent fourdays custom building the
stairwell.
Hand, hand, I mean, worked on myhand-hued American chestnut
wood.
It is gorgeous.
We spent three days.
She was about 12 years old, shewas helping me.
He comes in, he he took his tapemeasure out, and he measured,
and there was a quarter inchvariance between the bottom step

(53:20):
and the top stent.
It was it was within the regs,but the quarter-inch variance
was off for that particularcode.
And he looked at me and he said,You've got to either redo these
steps, and when you redo these,you've got to raise your top
floor up a quarter inch or loweryour bottom floor up a quarter
inch, which made no sense to mebecause he would think he was a
moron.
And I'm like, What?

(53:42):
So yeah, my DIY, because of myignorance, cost my daughter a
lot of tears and me a lot ofstress, and three weeks of
tearing that stairwell out andgetting it down to where there
was not a quarter inch ofvariance.
And I had just ignorance, didn'thave a clue.

SPEAKER_00 (53:57):
You know what?
We've talked about this, and Idon't think we brought this one
up.
We've talked about fire, we'vetalked about flooding.
Love that.
Or impaling.

SPEAKER_01 (54:04):
We've talked about inspectors.

SPEAKER_00 (54:05):
Well, we haven't been, we have not talked about
making your daughter cry.
No.
Wow.
That one would be a killer forme.
In fact, I will take three morenails through the fingers, which
I've done plenty, uh, than tohave my daughter cry because of
something she helped me build,and I blew it because I didn't
get it right.
I'm gonna say you blew it,you're right.
Uh, quarter inch is well within,man, three-eighths is the uh is
the code.
So um I but I know what youmean.

(54:27):
It's just tough, but you did it.
That's awesome.
You know what?
Take some pride in that housethat you built because that is
awesome.
I think I'd be I'd probably bemore proud of that than I am,
you know, doing the stuff you'vedone.
But you can tell that JustinGoodbread is out there for you
trying to make shit happen,trying to help you get better in
your life.
You can tell it through hispassion, man.
Alan and I are just sittingback.
I was actually taking more notestoday than I've taken in a long

(54:48):
time.
I noticed that.
Woo, dog, I got some work to do.
My boy from South Georgia.
Go, dogs, it's gonna happenagain.
Oh, yeah, might be triple.
Uh-oh, don't know.
Go, Rocky Top.
We gotta go make this happen.
Hey, if you didn't learnsomething, man, it's on you,
man.
If you didn't go out there,follow good bread.
Go out there and check his shitout, man.
Go go see what's going down.
Make it happen.

(55:09):
Keep making those steps up thatmountaintop because we're all
gonna get there someday.
Just keep going up thatmountaintop and let's make it
happen.
We gotta go.
Cheers, everybody.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of the Small Business
Sephari.
Remember, your positive attitudewill help you achieve that
higher altitude you're lookingfor in a wild world small
business ownership.
And until next time, make it agreat day.

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