Own things, don't run things. That's the secret to living your dream. Well, at least that's the view of today's guest, serial entrepreneur and university lecturer, Reid Tileston. He says it's easy to have a big idea to leverage into a business, but few people understand what it really takes to build something of lasting value. So he's written a book, Grit It Done, which he says sets out a simple and practical path to building generational wealth through entrepreneurial business ownership, while minimising personal and financial risk. Sounds a bit too good to be true, right? Well, Reid says it's all about being willing to do the hard things. And his book outlines the steps it takes to build a business that works for you instead of you having to work for it. And he says, it won't be easy. We're going to talk about that, but it will be worth it. And what does Reid know?
Well, he's acquired, grown, and sold four companies with successful exits. His most recent acquisition resulted in a 10x return. He's worked with Anytime Fitness, Harley Davidson, the Milwaukee Bucks, John Deere, Tough Mudder, MasterLock, and Microsoft. So if those names don't tickle your fancy, what will? He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and other leading publications. He's an adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University, and he guest lectures all around the US on this topic.
So we are the Resilient Entrepreneurs podcast, and we're looking forward to unpacking some of this with Reid. In this podcast, we speak with business owners from all around the world and from all walks of life to give you the insights that will help you lean in on your business to take that next step towards your goal and dream.
Our business Two Four One branding supports new entrepreneurs as you launch your business, offering you the tools you need to succeed. And it's why these conversations are so exciting. Before we get started, can I please ask you to subscribe right now on the platform you're listening or watching on now. It'll help others find the show and you'll be notified of the next great episode. Reid, welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs.
Thank you. I am honoured to be here. Thank you so much for the invite. We're going to have some fun.
Oh, I have no doubt about this because I'm really looking forward to this conversation, especially the link between education and entrepreneurship. So Reid tell us, we'd love to know a bit more about you and your backstory. So what kind of kid were you? What was growing up like? Were you a bit of an entrepreneur in your early days?
I had a formative experience when I was in high school that actually taught me about the value of, which a lot of your listeners are going to be familiar with because you've had guests talk about, this idea of low risk entrepreneurship, just buy into an existing concept that already works or acquire something that's already successful and then just make it more successful. When I was in high school, my parents paid us an allowance and as my older brother got to drive, they said, hey, as part of the allowance, you got to take us to the airport. I grew up in Northern California in the Bay area, which is about 15 minutes away. And then he started taking them to the airport. Then he started to take a couple other people to the airport as well and he actually made a little bit of money off of it. Then when he left to go to college and I got my driver's licence, I took that same concept of driving people to the airport and I extended it to my friend's parents, to other family members, the whole nine yards. And I discovered that I could take this concept, which my brother had kind of founded and just grow it out. And that taught me at the tender age of 16, the power of why start something from scratch, just take something that works and scale it or don't scale it, right? Given all the great lending options these days, you can just simply buy something that's already good, at least in the US, lever up with SBA7A financing, don't even grow it and you can have a good exit on the back end or align it to whatever lifestyle goals you want to achieve.
And what's so cool about this story by the way, my favourite part is that I'd always get invited to charities, whether it was like a church or Boy Scouts, and they'd always be like, hey, can you bring like a baked item or can you have something to give away? What I did is, I would give away these free rides to the airport just because it was pretty low cost to me but what was so interesting is that I'd give away these free rides and then what would happen is that the people would give me such big tips just for doing it, that even giving the service away for free had a bunch of upside to it. Then of course they'd hire me to do it later. Then of course I went off to college and Uber came around some number of years later, but it taught me at the age of 16, why start things? Let someone else do that hard work and then I just take it and go to the next level. So that's how this whole journey got going.
And one thing which I think it's important to note, is that we cannot underscore enough, the importance of resilience. And we can call it whatever we want to. We can call it, like Angela Duckworth and call it Grit and have a nice academic construct to it. We can call it focus. We can call it persistence, resilience. I like resilience a lot. It is just the most critical thing because failure to me is a building block of success.
And if you have that right attitude and when those challenges come, individuals can move forward. I think to me that is the biggest differentiator from individuals that are successful as entrepreneurs, as business owners, really in any arena of life. So I appreciate that the two of you have this podcast to share that message and just to reinforce that message. Cause I think a lot of people know in their head that it's true, but I think that your message helps remind it in the heart and just to just reiterate, reiterate, reiterate that perseverance is critical.
Thank you, Reid. That's the greatest compliment. Thank you and we also believe that resilience is key. And it's a question we will often ask closer to the end of an episode with a guest. But since you've raised it, we may as well tap right into that now. So you mentioned other words that you might interchange with resilience, like focus and what were some of the other things you said, grit. So what does it take for someone to be resilient in your mind?
I think the biggest single factor to it, and I wrote a book called Grit It Done, Low Risk Guide to Entrepreneurial Business Ownership, where I go into some of the stories behind this. And by the way, in regards to the book, it's a step-by-step process, nine steps of how you can acquire an existing business or franchise, and then ultimately run it, grow it. I've been doing this successfully for 16 years and the key to it, the first step in the process is assessment, right? And that's to understand what it is that individuals actually want to get out of business ownership or whatever endeavour they go through in life.
Understanding the assessment, understanding the alignment and giving you that level of congruency is critical because that leads to being all into the endeavour. I believe that if you're not all in, you're in the way. If I'm halfway in, I'm halfway out. How do you get to being all in? Do the proper assessment of what your motivations are, what your goals are, and then just tap into that incessant energy and that incessant passion and that incessant drive, that will lead to the perseverance, that will lead to the grit, that will lead to just going through and getting everything done. So I think that that assessment is a critical part of it.
There's four fundamental avatars for people out there in the workforce. One is that you can be an employee, right? Employees are great. They're the backbone of the entire world economy.
Second, the good ones tend to get promoted, the bad ones eventually will find the door.
Then you have what I'll call an equity employee, and that's a CEO. Equity employees are great because by virtue of the term, they have upside into what they're doing. They're typically able to work on the business and not in the business, and they're creating equity value, but they're not the owner, they don't control their destiny.
Then you have business owners. I love business owners. I have been one for a long time. I think they're fantastic. You have autonomy, you have freedom, you own the upside of what you do. Ultimately though, you know, you probably work for the business more than the business works for you. I want to be clear though, that is not a bad life. I'm a big fan of it, but the better option is to be what I'll call an entrepreneurial business owner. And that's where you work on the business and not in the business. And that to me, is a manifestation of what I think currently is the American Dream 21st century style. And because contrary to what we believe, the American Dream is not dead, it's alive and well and I obviously wrote a book that outlines the steps to getting there. But to directly answer your question, it is understanding the assessment part of it. That is where you can dig deep and find the fuel to have that resilience as one moves forward into an endeavour.
Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that anybody can be an entrepreneur or is it for a certain type of person?
There’s a lot of academic research around that and first we have to agree on what an entrepreneur actually is, which if you look up, you could ask 10 different people and they'll give you 10 different definitions of it, there's no clear definition. To me, my definition of an entrepreneur, it's very simple. It's somebody that takes action.
Now I talked about the importance of assessment before and that's critical. There's a cool academic study that came out in 2017 - and we're just gonna talk about two binary states. One state is a state of assessment where you're thinking about what you're doing. The second state is a state of locomotion where you're taking steps towards that end goal. Question for you two, what do you think, at which state, assessment or locomotion, do you think people have higher levels of fulfilment?
Oh, definitely the locomotion.
The locomotion.
Definitely the locomotion, right?
Didn't they write a song about that?
Yeah, it's locomotion. And by the way, the moderator of that, which just means what actually drives more of that happiness and fulfilment in the state of locomotion is how purpose driven it is. So the roadmap is so simple.
Think about what you want to do, align it to your purpose, then just go take steps towards it, and the real key to that is that it means that whether or not you have your end goal achieved, whether it's ‘I want to make 3 million bucks’ or ‘I want to have more lifestyle’, whatever it is, it means that you'll enjoy the process towards getting there because, hey, to me, my real metric is how much am I enjoying the journey, not what the end destination is. So again, critical part of it, do the assessment, align it, but then just know that as you're going through that painful process, that you're really going to be able to enjoy the journey and you can enjoy the journey even more if you align it to what your purpose is. So to me, an entrepreneur is somebody that just takes action. So anyone can be an entrepreneur in that regard. I think the more critical question is do people want to be a business owner, right? Because being a business owner, that's where the mentality is - the buck stops with me. I own my actions, right? I own the responsibility. I can't punt it off to anybody else.
I've been lucky enough to be a business owner since I was 23 years old. I've been doing this for over 16 years now so I kind of take a lot of things for granted around it. But the critical thing is that if you take the idea of being a business owner where the buck stops with you, you own the upside, and then you apply the entrepreneurial mindset to it, of taking action, and I agree with the entrepreneurial mindset that it's about at its core, working to maximise returns while minimising or mitigating risk. If you apply an entrepreneurial mindset to business ownership, that is where there's just a sky's the limit because you own your upside, you have the autonomy, you have the freedom, and then you have this action-oriented results taking, risk minimising strategy, and that's what I've outlined in the nine steps of the book. And it's critical for me to come at it from the perspective of, all right, you can look at what are the steps to do this, but the real key is that being a business owner, it's in the trenches.
People are the biggest source of pleasure, they're the biggest source of pain, right? Being a business owner is an interesting, good lifestyle, but I wanted to write a book where you have both the frameworks, the things that I've done successfully over the years that I've learned that I apply in my own endeavours, coupled with the actual anecdotes, most of which are mine, but some are from others as well, to get a true sense of taking what you can see in a framework, what you can see on a spreadsheet and actually marrying that with what it's really like to be there in the trenches. Because being a business owner is a great life, but it is certainly not for everybody. It is a lot of work, it is high risk, and if you're going to lever up with, at least in America, SBA7A loans or real estate personal guarantees, the risk is being very intimate with bankruptcy in Chapter 11, right? Not a chapter in my book, but you know, we don't want to get to Chapter 11. So it's not for everybody, but it's just critical to understand if it's the right fit for people. And I think it's a great one, quite frankly, but it's certainly not for everybody. So with that, I'll stop and let me know what questions you have.
There's so much there to unpack.
We've talked with so many different entrepreneurs through this podcast, and everyone's path to entrepreneurship is so interesting and different. And a lot of people find themselves falling into entrepreneurship because Plan A didn't work out. Either they lost the job or something happened in their life and they sort of had to turn towards entrepreneurship as the Plan B, ‘okay, maybe I can make this work’, which is exactly my story. I didn't set out to be an entrepreneur and I ended up one because of the way life worked out, which is a great thing by the way. I'm not saying that's a bad thing at all, because sometimes it's just that last little push you need to take on such a big step. But I'm always wondering, is there an easier way? I'm a mom of a teenage son who's an entrepreneur. He's 15, he's been running his own business since COVID. And every year it gets more and more successful for him. Of course, he's just doing weekends and holidays and things but he's looking to college in the next few years and I'm thinking, what is the path if he wants to be an entrepreneur? He's got great grades, he could obviously get into a good school. Does he go to college? If he goes to college, what does he study? Does he follow his passion and the thing he loves to do, his purpose? Or does he go study business and go learn all the things you need to learn to be a business owner one day? That path is very unclear. And that's a personal something of mine that I really want to help people to get, is there another path for young people especially, but even people with a change of career or in a midlife and they're so unfulfilled and they want to do something, they've got a great idea and they're not quite sure how to get into entrepreneurship or how to take the leap. Because like everything you just talked about, the risk, the upside, but there's also downsides. So how does one learn about just what's the right pathway, how to step into entrepreneurship?
I created a tool which is step one in the book and you can go to www.grititdone.com available for 99 cents till the end of May to buy the book, you can also go to grititdone.com and just put in a little information to get access to these tools. It's a basic assessment, very simple, very clean, not gonna take you more than three or four minutes that asks a couple of just gut level questions about if what I'll call entrepreneurial business ownership is the right step for you.
So that's to answer that exact question because I do these calls with people all the time and the key is that oftentimes they overlook what life they want to have and what they want to accomplish out of their next endeavour. And it's really simple, if you don't know what you want and you don't know what you're really willing to do or not do, how are you ever going to get the end result that one desires? So my guidance is buy the book, take the assessment, or just go to grititdone.com and put your email in and take the assessment and it'll get you a good baseline on if this is a path that makes sense for you. Because if it's not, that's fantastic. The best things in life that we do are the ones that we don't do, because that leaves the opportunity for what we can ultimately accomplish going forward.
And time, whether it's as an entrepreneurial business owner, whether it's as a mother, whether it's as a husband, whether it's as the governor of Texas, is the ultimate commodity. So take the time you need for assessment, but just know that if you don't do that assessment and you go down a path that’s not the right fit for you, you can't really claw that time back. So short answer, take the assessment, grititdone.com, and it'll give you some guidance and insights into that.
Oh Reid brilliant. Let's talk global economics, are you good with that? Let's look at entrepreneurship as a path, not just a career path as Laura was just talking about, but also a path to economic recovery, to economic stability. We see more and more small business owners and business owners. I think, I mean anecdotally it seems that people are more into business ownership and creating business versus working the nine to five, which is maybe two generations ago, that was the norm. So what are your thoughts on where we are now and what the future might hold in this regard?
Well, what the future might hold in this regard, I have no idea. I'm smart enough to know that I never will predict what will happen in the future because the truth is none of us know. And if we did know it would be a much different ballgame. I love the advice that I once read from Tony Blair, he said it in the context of after the Iraq war, he said, “I don't predict anything ever, no matter what”. So I think that is just a sage thing to live by. And it’s certainly like that in the case of entrepreneurial business ownership, because who would have guessed that we would have had COVID-19 come about, right? And all the upheaval with that. What I can tell you is what's happening right now. And this is happening globally, the silver tsunami, I'm sure that you've heard about that. There's just a lot of retiring business owners and despite what people say, there's no firm number on this, it's trillions of dollars. Trillions of dollars of wealth transfer is happening. Not yesterday, right? Not 20 years from now. It's happening right now and it's going to happen for the foreseeable future. And trillions of those dollars are in the forms of small businesses that the wealth transfer is happening. Some of those business owners would have thought about their succession planning, ‘I'm going to sell to a private equity firm and make my 30 million bucks and go from there’, others are going to pass it on to their kids and that's great. But a lot of them frankly just don't have succession planning in place and because of that there's just a really good opportunity right now to acquire existing businesses and become a business owner, become an entrepreneur, become an entrepreneurial business owner, and take concepts that are of varying degrees of success and become an owner. Now in the U .S. the government is great. SBA7A loans allow individuals to, let's just take the average American, okay, average working American, $1118 per week is the current median U .S. wage. Let's gross that up with some benefits and paid time off and all that good stuff, let's call it 70K a year, keep it simple. What I would tell you is that an individual is better off buying a business that's making $500,000 of adjusted EBITDA, so cash flow to the owner, seller's discretionary earnings, whatever you want to call it, making $500,000 of cash flow, using SBA7A financing to say put 80% of the purchase price into that, get a 10% seller carry, 10% of their own equity into it. If they have the money, great. If not, borrow it from friends and family. If you don't have friends and family, you can talk to someone like me that will bridge that gap for you. During the process of owning that business, assuming that there's no growth, so just assume that things stay the same, they're gonna make more money while they actually own it versus that 70k a year. After year 10 when that debt is paid off, because these are typically 10-year fully amortising loans, they're going to have a seven figure exit if they bought it for the same multiple they sold it at. Or sold it for the same multiple they bought it at. That's assuming zero growth, zero multiple expansion. It is a great path to wealth generation.
Now, that's really one reason to do it. I think the second and third more important reasons are 1) people want the autonomy and they want the freedom which comes with small business ownership, which can come with small business ownership if you follow some of the steps in the book and that's the actual life that you want. More importantly though than steps two and three is steps four and five.
Step four is that in that process, especially if you're all into it, you're going to meet some pretty interesting people. It's going to be team members, vendors, peers you might meet in other business owner groups, life changing relationships can come when you're engaged as a small business owner. And to me, not even close, not even close, the most fulfilling part for me has been the people that I have met along the way. And in particular, it's what I call the entrepreneurial employees that I've had work for me over the years, and this is with companies that I no longer own. The relationships still go to this day, and they have enhanced my life in ways that I did not even think was possible before I became a business owner. So the relationships, critical. Last but not least I mean small business owner the pile of paperwork is this high. Because of the personal investment, you get to see how the sausage is made of all of our great governments out there and by virtue of that, I think that business owners become what I'll call more government-minded, more civic-minded, they become improved citizens because of that experience. And so let's just recap, more autonomy, more freedom, more money, relationships, and a better citizen. That's what it's done for me over the last 16 years of doing this and I want to caveat it, path, not for everybody, right? The buck stops with you.
Personal guarantees? Failure. It's much lower failure rates than starting a business, but failure definitely happens and the cost can be high. But with that said, I just get super excited about teaching this, showing the path for people out there, because despite what we hear, the American dream is alive and well with entrepreneurial business ownership. And I think at the very least, everyone should be able to analyse this opportunity and see if it makes sense for them. Now, I have an MBA and I'm also working towards a PhD, so I believe in formal education in a lot of ways. And an MBA is a great path to go down this route, but you don't have to go that way. You could also, you know, sign up for a weekend workshop or go to a conference, right? Those are all great options, or you could do none of those things. But intrinsically, I wrote this book and it's 99 cents and three hours to read. It's pretty quick and pretty easy. I think we'll bump the price to $8 at the end of May, but it's probably the most, if not the most time efficient, lowest cost, first step to think about if you want to do this path. And it's not just a framework of, hey, follow these steps. It's a framework coupled with the actual on the ground, in the trenches experience about what this lifestyle is like to understand if it's something that you want to do. And no matter what, you'll probably love your neighbour small business owner more after you read it.
I love that. You'll have a much deeper understanding and appreciation of what small business owners go through. Now, while you're talking, Reid, you're very much talking about business ownership through this conversation as an investment. So who do you have managing or working in the business? Are you proposing that a person owns a business but doesn't work in it at all?
Yeah. Heavens no! I think that's, if that's a lifestyle that you want, that's a great end goal to work towards and I think that that's the vision that so many people have is, ‘yeah, I want to have all this absentee income’. The way that I've personally gotten to that point, and what my recommendation is, have complete expectations that you're going to be very involved in the day-to-day side of the business after you acquire it, or if you do a franchise, after you open it because you really need to earn that absentee ownership going forward. You have to earn the right to be not the business owner, but the entrepreneurial business owner. You'll get there eventually. In no way, shape or form am I proposing, Oh, this is an easy, just count the money off in the sunset type of thing. No, you got to do it in the trenches. But what I would also say is to me, the most great path to get there is if you as the owner understand the business by spending some time working in the business, then that's going to make you a more effective leader. So by virtue of the industrial services business, it was a 10X return. When I was doing diligence on it, I pretty quickly realised that the gold in this business is that it's very technician driven, this is very dirty work, grease trap pumping, kitchen exhaust cleaning, factory exhaust cleaning. This is like very, very dirty work. The best kind, because it's the kind of work that keeps Western democracies like the US and Australia running, right? That kind of work.
I realised though that, you know what, in order for me to be the leader that I want to be in this business and in order for me to make the kind of changes to the business when the time is right, I'm really going to have to understand what it's like to be a technician. So I decided that the best way to actually work on this business was to spend time working in the business. And because of that, I could make the operational improvements that ultimately led to better profit margins, more revenue, being able to put processes in place to hire the right people.
So in this case, working in the business was like working on the business, but I really think it's critical to be able to get in there, get one's hands dirty, understand the roles, understand it all. It's a better way to be a leader and doing that will ultimately lead to better financial outcomes and it'll allow you to have the processes and the people in place to have that, what we'll call entrepreneurial business owner mindset, mentality, and lifestyle where you working in the business is now optional, right? That's where every business owner wants to be because you don't know when the right offer to sell the business is going to come, whether it's an offer or it's like a health issue for you. My guidance to business owners is, and it’s easier said than done by the way, all this stuff is easier said than done, put the pride aside, just put your personal pride surroreqaside and adopt the mentality immediately, today, that you are gonna run the business, the business does not need you in any capacity, that you are completely meaningless to the business. Take that mindset shift and apply it immediately. That's step one is just own that mentality. Step two is surround yourself with the right peer group. And I go into peer groups in the book, it's an exceptionally important part of it.
Surround yourself with other people that have either attained the point where they are not required in the business or at the very least they're on the same journey that you are getting to where your presence is optional, right? Because whether or not we want to, we become like the people that we surround ourselves with. So if you have a goal that you want to achieve, make sure that you're surrounded with like-minded people because you're going to become more like them. So critical part of buying a business, both when you're searching for it, right? Because you want to be around people that also are trying to buy a business or business owners, but also while you operate it. Common misconception, which I wrote a whole chapter on this in the book as I outlined, is that people think that you join a peer group once you become successful. Complete opposite. You join a peer group to become successful. Not to mention we talked about relationships. I mean join a peer group and do that good, deep vulnerability work, it's a strong container. And some of the value that I've seen people, myself included, get out of peer groups, it's just transformational, life-changing type of stuff that really I don't think anyone thought was possible before they got into it.
Now with peer groups, critical to find the one that's the right fit. So my guidance is do not sign up for the first one that you see, talk to at least three, but talk to four or five or six and just join the one that just feels right to you That feels gut level right and I wouldn't tell you join the cheapest one, join the most expensive one, join a free one, just join the one that in your gut feels like it's the right one for you. And if you do join one, it's not and you feel like I made a mistake then get out of it and find the right one, right. And don't just join one, I say join two
at least depending on how much time one has but peer groups, a critical part of this entrepreneurial business ownership journey.
That's so true because we know that it can be a very lonely journey. Entrepreneurship, especially when you're the solo owner or you're taking over a business and now all the employees are looking at you sideways like, who's this new guy? It can be lonely. It can be lonely there at the top. So any advice for that?
The crown is heavy at the top. And I think it's important to realise, I wish loneliness upon nobody, by the way. Um, nobody, I mean, loneliness is terrible. So not just being painful, it has a huge cost, right? I mean the decisions, I think a great thing is, listen to people but don't always follow their advice, right. But being lonely has a cost to business owners, it shows up on the P&L. Yeah, I could not agree with that more. But the real key is, find what the right peer group for you is. It could be the peer group that you meet at an MBA program, it could be, I'm a member of Entrepreneurs Organisation, EO. I love my forum. I’d give nothing up for it, but find the right peer group that is the right fit for you because peer groups, they will have the potential to save you from yourself.
One story which I go into more detail in the book is, I was selling a business and I had a very strong emotional attachment to one of the team members. I had invested a lot in this individual over the years, so I was very emotionally invested in him. He decided that he wanted to go pursue a different endeavour right around the time that the business was getting pretty close to closing. This was emotionally very devastating to me. I thought it was a much bigger deal than it actually was and I was almost ready to torpedo what would have been this just, what was it eventually a huge victory for me and my wife based on this. And my peer group just said, listen, why don’t you follow your own advice, man. Just grit it, go out there, hire a replacement, grit it done, it's not that big a deal. Sometimes we think it’s a bigger deal than we think it is and they told me exactly what I did not want to hear at the precise time I did not want to hear it. And they pushed me. They ungently push me to go out and just solve the problem. And if I didn't have that peer group, I mean, counterfactuals, right? Who knows what would have happened? I will tell you that in the moment, the peer group was there to push me in the right direction and it's been powerful stuff and I've seen that happen in countless other contexts.
Yeah, I love this. They un-gently pushed me. I love that. That's great. And that's what you rely on your group to do. We're there for others as they are there for us. So this whole concept of, I like to call it business as therapy, having a business is like, I suppose, having a child. I'm not a parent, but it's the thing that brings out the best in you and the worst in you. It's the thing that makes you go deep and really understand so much about yourself. I think people who don't do well in business perhaps aren't tapping into that personal growth side of it.
I think the best way to minimise risk in a business is to go all into the business. And I think that skipping the assessment part of it and answering that key question of ‘why’ is what the biggest cause of failure is. If one is halfway in, by definition, they are halfway out. If one is not all in, they are in the way. So I think that when it comes to what you're talking about there, I think that the best way to mitigate that is just get intrinsically aligned to go out there, have a grit it done mindset and delve deep into it. And know that if you don't go one route or another, that's fantastic. That just means that you're still searching for that right one. Now, can you search forever? No, you got to choose something eventually.
And, you know, I was talking to an M &A attorney and he was great. He's like, there's just some sellers which will never sell their business, there's also some buyers which will just never buy a business. When they get to the finish line, they'll always back away. So those people definitely exist and don't be that person. But if you do the assessment on the front end, you're likely not to get to the finish line and back away. And if you do the assessment on the front end, you're likely to not have as much of that burnout, as much of that hit a wall, and ready to quit. You're likely to have much more of that, wait for it, resilience, right? Much more of that grit, much more of that, I'm just going to do, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to do it, do it no matter what. And that takes the form of different things for different people. Me personally, I bought an industrial service business after the fitness businesses. I didn't even know what the term ‘mechanically inclined’ meant. I'm not even making that up. On paper, I was the exact wrong person to buy this business, but I love small business. And as I learned more about the business and I wasn't even looking for industrial service, I was looking at fitness and franchise and what I already knew to minimise risk. But I found this business that fit every criteria I was looking for, like fragmented customers, I go into what the frameworks I use to look at businesses are, in the book along with outlining the actual tool that I use to put numbers in and run through it and everything.
Key takeaway with that is that I run the numbers on it and then I, I don't tell people what I thought about it, but I share the same business and the same opportunity with others and I get at least, usually at least four people to give me their input on it. Then I average mine with theirs because so many biases plague our thinking. Again, the critical part of having peer groups around to push you. You don't have to listen to them, but it's good to get the data points nevertheless. But I look at the business and it's like, you know what? I can do some good stuff here. I really think I can get in there and invest in the team members and really improve some lives. I love small business, I love getting my hands dirty, I love dirty work, this is cool. And I get myself fired up for it where I'm like, ‘yeah, I can go, I can do this. Like I'm super excited to do this. Nothing is gonna stop me.’ And the real critical part of getting to that point of it is that even if that particular business, which ended up being like a life generating wealth for me, I mean, I'll work the rest of my life but working is definitely optional. And all the money, not that I'll make money from this book at all, but if I do, any money from that or the money from the teaching that I do as a professor, the classes I teach, the weekend workshops I do, executive programs, all that money, I will take it and back people who take the classes because I back people with that stuff. But the critical part is that even if I failed and went bankrupt out of the situation, I wouldn't actually care because I was so all into it that the failure would not have bothered me. The only failure I actually judge myself on is if I'm doing something with mediocre, moderate or 50% effort. I want to be at that 100% because when I get there, that's when I really enjoy the journey. What I tend to find is that that's where my radiant, positive, engaging attitude attracts the right people to want to join me in that journey. And that's where the great relationships come out of it. And shoot, as long as I'm enjoying the journey and I meet some cool people along the way, I wouldn't actually care if I had Chapter 11. I'd actually have probably a pretty cool story to tell about what happened when I got there. And that would just, you know, following the lead of Abraham Lincoln, that failure, whatever it was, would lay the groundwork for future success. I talk about it a bit in the book, but the first fitness club I opened, Anytime Fitness, it did not do well. I had two partners, one of which was my brother. It had a very negative outcome on our relationship, it was just, it was just a bad outcome. I eventually got it to make money by dressing up in a purple superhero suit, which is a cool story I tell in the book but, you know, it wasn't a victory. But that setback, that failure, that pain and that suffering laid the groundwork for a lot of future success.
And I just don't know if I would have gotten there without it. But before going into that endeavour, I was all into it. And again, when I'm all in, good things just come my way. And sometimes I don't even know what they're going to be. So that's my general guidance.
Oh Reid, I feel like I want to rename your book to 100% In Get It Done.
Yeah, no, totally. But you know, it's interesting too, though, is that the way the book title came from, I love Angela Duckworth. I love Grit. That book has been transformational for me. It was one of my team members, it had already been a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible day, everything had gone wrong, emergency calls, stressful. She was having to balance the books between field service management software and accounting software, which it sounds easy, it's really very difficult. It was late. She was struggling with it. It was a tech issue causing it, that was on the provider's part, and I was like, Marilyn, she eventually got it done, I'm like, “Marilyn, you incessantly inspire me. You have an ability just to Grit it done”. Then, so that's the power of an entrepreneurial employee. Then I was at a peer group a couple of days later telling that story. And then one of the guys was like, ‘Grit it Done’, that's a cool saying, man. You should trademark that. So I did. So again, entrepreneurial team member and a peer group is where the title of the book came from and it was also the mantra that we eventually used at that business. So again, two key takeaways as an entrepreneurial business owner, the team members, the relationships are the most fulfilling part, also the biggest source of pain, but we'll talk about that later, and the power of peer groups and all that good stuff. And that saying is not even mine. All in, I actually heard it from someone else in a peer group at one point. So two key takeaways there.
Brilliant, I love them. So, Reid, we're gonna flip the hot seat here for a minute and we're gonna relax you from being in the hot seat chair and turn it over to us. So we'd love to give you the opportunity to flip the script and ask us a question. So any thoughts on what you wanna know about Vicki and I?
Yeah, we'll just keep it fun. No restrictions, any time, any place, whole nine yards. Who's your ideal dinner guest? And why?
I'm gonna let Vicki go first on this one, because I gotta think.
You want to think about your ideal dinner guest. Whew, there's so many. I'm going to go with Nelson Mandela.
Hmm, okay
Nelson Mandela. I have a personal affinity to Mandela's story. I've been to Robben Island. I've really just followed that journey. And we were talking about journey today in this episode, you know, and it's about the journey and resilience. And some people who were around when Madiba was, before he was imprisoned, and I've had conversations with people that he wasn't the saint that we make him and he was out there, basically, they say he was a terrorist. The guy was, in my opinion, fighting for something that he truly deeply believed in and there was a great injustice served. And I would love to have a conversation about that experience and that journey and just learn more about the guy, the human experience.
Oh, it's so hard to follow Vicki, I should have known better! That was such a good answer. That was such a good answer. So I could think of a million who I'd love to talk to but I think right now I'd love to fly to Necker Island and have dinner with Richard Branson. And I have to have a microphone and I’d have a podcast with him because he's our dream podcast guest, of course. Let's talk about resilience. Talk about incredible entrepreneur. Talk about the person who has probably the most creativity and crazy risk-taking, bananas ideas to get attention to build and grow what seems like random businesses but all flow so well together. I think he'd just be absolutely fascinating. I read his autobiography and I’d just like to sit down and ask him questions about his life and his why and his purpose and all the things we talk about on this show. But certainly what's it all for him? Like what's it all come to for him at this point in his life? Because I think he's just fascinating and incredible. And there's so many lessons that he could teach people about being brave and taking chances and doing crazy things and having fun along the entrepreneurial journey. Because it can often be something we forget is to have fun and to just enjoy it. And I think he's somebody that, at least from the outside, seems like he enjoys the journey and what it's taken to get here. So that's my answer.
And you’d take your 15-year-old son with you, I hope? OK, just checking, I've got his back! Thank you for your question, Reid. That was fun.
How about you, Reid? Who would you like to have dinner with?
Well, I asked this question a fair amount, so obviously I've given thought to it. I don't have dinner with my dad at my age. He would not know that I was his son, so I'd be disguised up and would not have the same looks and everything. It would just simply be like, almost like a blind date. Someone at work would be like, hey, I want you to go meet this guy, Jesse, for lunch. I think you're gonna have a lot in common. And then I'd just get to know my dad at my age, see what he was like, see what his ambitions in life were, just get a sense of what the guy was all about. He's still alive and well, 77 years old. We have a great relationship. It'd be fun to see him at my age.
That's really cool. I've thought about that too, what my parents were like when they were younger. It'd be really interesting to have those conversations. I love that answer. It's a really good one. So I'm going to have one last question for you before we wrap up. What's the best thing about entrepreneurship? What do you love about it most?
Well, we'll take my definition of entrepreneurship, which is just taking action. And what I love about it most is that on that state of locomotion, if you align it to your purpose, I can find myself all in. When I'm all in, I'm able to enjoy the journey. So that is the best part about it. A lot of cool studies out there that show that switching from being an employee to being a business owner drives happiness. Ironically, switching from a failed business owner back to an employee also drives happiness, but it drives less happiness. So change always drives happiness one way or another, but it's just interesting that going one way or another, you can see which one's actually higher. And what's more fascinating is that the formative studies that did this, by the way, trust the west, right, a natural experiment when the Berlin wall came down and East Germany had access to entrepreneurship and business ownership for the first time. They can actually do some really cool data analysis to show what happened when people had opportunities for that for the first time in their life. So key takeaway about entrepreneurship is that taking action feels good and it allows one to go all in and if you're not all in, you're in the way.
All in or you're in the way. I love that and that's the perfect line to end on today because that exactly sums up everything we've talked about. The joys of entrepreneurship, the challenges, the risks, how to take less risks, the importance of the assessment. I love that and we'll definitely link below in the show notes how you can take that assessment and see if entrepreneurship really is for you. So if anyone out there listening is on the fence, not quite sure, maybe about to take the leap, have a great idea, wherever stage you are in your business, in your journey, an assessment can really help you to know when the right time is. Because a lot of it is a little bit of a right time, right place, a little bit of luck, a little bit of hard work, a little bit of everything, it's a magic mix. There's no one straight path to entrepreneurship. In fact, I think it's quite a twisted, coily, spirally path to get there. But there's a lot of happiness and joy on the other end, especially when you go all in, like Reid said.
So thank you so much, Reid. I really appreciate your time and this amazing conversation. Thank you so much. Best of luck on the book. And again, we'll link that too so people can read that as well. So thank you so much.
Thank you.