In this podcast, Adam Coffey discusses the importance of culture in business and how it directly affects revenue. Adam, a seasoned CEO, believes that revenue can't be managed from the top down and instead, culture must be built from the ground up. He focuses on creating a strong culture to increase employee engagement and improve customer service, leading to increased revenue. Adam believes that transparency and education are key components to building a strong culture. He concludes the show with sound advice for any business owner looking to sell their company and retire.

You can connect with Adam on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamecoffey/

You can purchase his books on Amazon:

https://a.co/d/6Z154V4

Mentioned in this episode:

1on1 App Information

https://www.thinkmovethrive.com/1on1-app/

Hey, everybody.

We're talking to Adam Coffee today.

What an amazing guy.

He's a best selling author, A speaker, c e o has some incredible stories

about leadership and growing companies.

He's a great new friend of mine.

You don't wanna miss this incredible conversation.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the last 10%.

I am Dallas Burnett, sitting in my 1905 Koch Brothers

barber chair in Thrive Studios.

But more importantly, we have the man, the myth, the legend, Mr.

Adam Coffee with us today.

Thank you for being on the show today.

Mr.

Coffee.

Dallas, it is good to be here.

Hello to all your listeners.

I'm ready to get it going.

Let's

do

Let's do this.

So that sounds like a man who has just come off of an empire building

summit, that you have had people from all over the world come in

and you've been teaching them.

You said you're teaching them how to go from zero to a billion.

Tell us about what you've just been into in doing this past week.

I, I gotta tell you, it was, it was actually the brainchild of

JT Fox who, who has this global network.

And, if Adam Coy wants to do a seminar, you might get four people show up.

If, if JT Fox wants to put on a seminar, you're gonna get

hundreds of people showing up.

So we literally, we had 300 plus people from around the globe come into

Dallas, Texas for a two day event.

It was a 250 page seminar workbook.

We called it Empire Builder.

And I had people coming in from Indonesia and from Australia, blew

me away that, that people would spend 20 hours on an airplane to come

hear me drone on for a couple days.

My, my wife was saying, hell, I listen to you drone on every day for free.

And, uh, I don't know that I'd come from across the globe and pay you money.

But what we did, we broke it down.

over my career, I've had the pleasure and privilege to

build three different empires.

and these were big companies and they started small, they got big.

So I have a toolkit I've developed across 30 years, of senior executive leadership.

10 years at ge, 21 years as a C E O.

I've built three companies for nine private equity

sponsors, did 58 acquisitions.

I have billions of dollars in successful exits.

and so we broke it down on what's important, how to build a company,

going from zero to a million, which is where most people fail out.

There are 31 million small businesses in America.

Only 7% ever hit a million of revenue.

And then from a million to 10 million of feet that only about

4% of those 7% actually achieve what changes in that business.

You gotta get it right small, get the unit level economic dialed in, and

then it's about starting the scaling efforts, making some initial pivots,

bringing on some ancillary revenue streams, perfecting the core, and then

it's 10 million to a hundred million.

How do I then take it and build this thing out to its first exit point, and then

the journey from a million to a billion.

What does that look like?

and I'll tell you, if you could envision the Wizard of Oz, the guy behind the

curtain with all these levers on the machine that he was using, and it's kinda

like you set your levers differently when you're just starting and you

make adjustments at these different.

these different points in your company's progression.

And ultimately it's, you know, we, we kind of walked the walk for two days

solid on how to go from zero to a billion.

And a piece of that then of course was since we got to a billion, how the hell

do we exit it and get maximum value?

right, exactly.

That is so cool.

If you want to check that out, we'll talk about that at the end of the episode, how

you can stay in touch with Adam and know when his next session's going to be, so

you can be a part of that if you want to.

So that, I mean, that sounds like such a cool event.

Oh, and then we created this cool thing that I didn't even know it

when I walked on the stage on day one.

it just got developed.

While we were we, we started, the, this version of Empire Builders.

I'm now the chairman, and this didn't happen until I walked in of 30

different companies who have joined to create, call it the ultimate

high level peer group representing billions of dollars collectively in

portfolios and business businesses.

and we collectively are the board.

I've been elected the chairman of the board, and each of these

companies brings their problems, their issues, and the members of the.

Help everybody.

So you've got literally billionaires helping other people build their

bu, build their empires, fun.

It was a fun

Unbelievable.

And what's that?

What's that group called?

What's the peer group called?

right now it's called the chairman.

I'm the chairman and I'm now the chairman of 30 different companies.

you know that, and again, we didn't see this coming.

I'm Friday when I'm leaving to the hotel, this was not on my radar screen

by Sunday night, I'm now the chairman of 30 companies who've got billions of

dollars in in revenue and portfolios.

And collectively now we are the board for each other's companies.

It's gonna be a lot of fun.

unbelievable.

That is awesome.

So you're hearing it here first, think, move, thrive.

You've heard about the chairman, the peer group, and now you get to hear

from the chairman of the Chairman.

That's, as it good as it gets.

So I want to talk, let's start too, because we've got, , a very diverse

group of listeners and we've got, we've got young leaders, we've got

seasoned veterans, we've got business owners, we've got team leaders.

We've got a lot of different people that's managing groups and organizations and

we like to help people grow and thrive.

You do a lot of mentorship.

You've spoken at colleges like UCLA and you've done a lot of work with MBA

students just to help them get a good start out the gate into their careers.

What's some advice that you would give to people that are young people maybe

coming in, or young professionals, maybe they've come out of college, they've

been in the workforce a few years.

What advice would you give to them in terms of how to maximize their career?

And then we'll get into all the culture stuff and the business stuff where I can.

Sure.

I'll tell you, I think collectively at you, so I, I've been speaking at

top business schools around the world.

For the past 15 years and was an active part of my life, even as a sitting

ceo and I probably have mentored around a thousand people and these are

what I'd call mid-career executives doing an executive MBA program.

They represent the next generation of the world's business leaders and

to have an ability to give an, to make an impact on that group about

how to think about culture and the importance of taking care of employees

and that the concept that profit and culture are not mutually exclusive,

but in actuality to enjoy generating the, the most profit that's possible.

It comes from the base of a very strong culture, but for most of these

people that I'm mentoring, it really started in what kind of steered them

to wanting to have a mentor or have a conversation was really about them facing.

I would tell you, 90% of the cases people came to me with a basic problem

or concept and it was, Adam, I'm faced with a crossroad in my life.

I have a job opportunity, should I take it?

And, they come to me when they're at a crossroad.

I'm standing at a crossroad in life, I'm doing my executive mba.

I've been of of spinning my wheels and I've got this choice

to make and I don't know how to.

Mm.

you help me?

And of course, I would think to myself, not out loud, but

thinking to myself, I just met you.

How the hell can I tell you which road you should take?

And so after a while, I developed a process where I could help these people.

And I would answer a question with a question in order to know whether to turn

left or turn right at this crossroad.

It really starts with, do we know where we're going?

do we understand the road we're about to take?

And I'd run them through some exercises.

So I tell 'em, get a piece of paper.

Write a date 10 years from now on the top of it.

And I want you to describe your ideal life.

Where do you live?

What kind of car do you drive?

Are you married?

Do you have kids?

What's, how are you giving back to society?

What do you want your life to look like in 10 years?

And then the second, thing that I'd have 'em do is that,

let's write your own obituary.

So let's talk about, your your life now, and what did you do

to contribute and who showed it?

Did anybody show up at your funeral?

And what I was doing, it wasn't about goal setting, it was

getting people to define success.

What did success look like to you?

Because the reality is some people wanna change the world.

Hey, I wanna go to Africa.

I want to be a doctor without borders.

I want to cure disease.

someone else would be, hey, I want to be the next billionaire, global

business man who, or lady who, who just got this ultimate empire.

some people are motivated by money, some people are motivated by helping society.

Everybody's different.

So I, I'm an ex-military guy.

You give me a couple different compass or grid points, you

know, I can chart a course, and that's what I'm having them do.

I'm having them chart a course from where they're standing at to where they want

to be in 10 years, and then where they want to be at the end of their life.

I can now shoot a, an azimuth.

We can walk that journey.

And when we come back, now we can answer that question.

now we know where we want to go, and if we know where we want to go, now

let's use that lens and that compass to decide, should we turn left?

Should we turn right on this path at this juncture in our career?

And you'd be amazed when you know where you're going, how much faster

it is that you actually get there.

And then I I would even tell a story and I would say, look, if I told you to

go get in a car and drive you probably wouldn't go more in five miles from

where you're at right now today, because you don't have a destination in mind.

But if I told you when you're in, uh, Los Angeles, go get in

the car and drive to New York.

now you gotta plan.

You gotta find, I'm gonna drive to here, stay in a hotel.

I'm gonna need food, I'm gonna need gas.

I could take one of three paths from west to east across the United States.

I better have somebody get the mail.

Someone's gotta feed the dogs, the cats, And it's like, you'd be amazed.

when you know where you're going, in this case to New York City, now you can plan

all the waste stops and all the details that are required to get you there.

And when employees.

And so I always tell young people coming outta high school, coming outta

college, you need a plan for your life.

You have to know where you're going in order to make sure that the

journey you're on is going to get you there in the fastest amount of

time with the least amount of detours and the least amount of time wasted.

Because we only have a finite amount of time on the planet and

only a finite amount of time in our careers in which to get there.

And if we spend 20 years going left and right and not really knowing

where we're going, we're not gonna get as far as someone who starts

that journey that has a plan.

So that's what I tell 'em.

I mean, it's just amazing how fundamental that advice

is and how you can't skip it.

You can't, it's like advice that you can't just.

Skip over because so many people will just skip that and they'll

try to get the, I wanna get the highest payout, out the gate.

if I come outta school, what's the highest job?

maybe that's the, maybe that's the right thing and maybe it's not.

Maybe that's the worst decision that you could do based on

just the basic fundamentals.

And I love how you described it in terms of the journey, how

it's if I tell you just to drive, you're just gonna go five miles.

But if the more clarity that you get, the more clarity that you can insert, we

talk about that and Move!, the book Move!

Clarity, begets clarity.

If you say New York, all of a sudden now say, okay, I gotta pack a bag,

I gotta let people know I'm gone.

And as soon as you put that out there, as soon as you paint that, clear picture

to the vision, then all of a sudden all these things start making more sense.

And you just get more clarity because you set these boundaries, in, in place.

So now you know the zone that you can operate in and what's outside that zone.

I love how you also pair that with the kind of the ultimate obituary, it's not

just about the journey, it's about who you're being while you're journeying.

And I love that because sometimes those can conflict and you gotta have some

clarity about that because you may have to make a decision on who you want to be.

And part of that journey may include that.

What's crazy?

about those things early.

we can't think about 'em 30 years down the road.

We gotta think about what's the legacy, what's important to us,

what's our moral compass look like?

You know, I'm, I'm, I'm writing five books.

That's the fifth one.

It's already written, but it's not coming out till the end.

it's called Life Lessons from the Corner Office.

And it's all about navigating career and learning how to navigate career

so that you can get to your ultimate destination sooner and enjoy it longer.

Because how many people have you ever encountered in your life

that just, you know, that I, I wish I could, uh, wish I would.

Uh, you know, and 20 years later, I'm still in the same cubicle

and I'm a dreamer, not a doer.

And I, and then, then there's a feeling of, I, I didn't hit my

fullest potential because I was asleep at the switch for far too long.

And so I think for young people that, that, that's the key.

And we don't necessarily teach

no, I think that's lost.

And I think too, what you're saying is, which is fantastic, is that your potential

is not good enough to get you to where your destination, your, you may have

had, great, classes, you may have great grades in school, you may have, but that's

all very clear and it's packaged in the syllabus and given to you execute that.

And the day you walk out is the day you get to choose that destination.

Am I going to Seattle or am I going to New York?

and if you start towards Seattle and then realize it's New York, the further you

get down the road, it's a bigger shift.

And so I think that knowing that and having that clarity

early on is fundamental.

I, and I tell people to review those two exercises often

because oftentimes our lives change.

our objectives change.

And so we, revisit that exercise once a year.

Is, is my path, am I still going to New York

City?

You know that's the end result.

I love that.

I love that.

Now you've had a tremendous career.

you've led multiple companies.

You started in the military.

Tell about how your journey, each kind of stage, you break

it up into different stages.

Tell about how your journey kind of has influenced, your path and like

how that's created, who you are and what you, how you see things today.

When I meet people for the first time, I generally

talk about four experiences.

So for me, first is the military.

The military taught a young kid.

Discipline, teamwork and leadership, I went in a smart ass.

they smacked the, the ass part off really quick.

And, and, you know, I was a smart kid, but you know, it, it gave me a foundation.

It gave me a good, solid foundation upon which to build a career upon.

And it was all about teamwork, leadership, and discipline.

And I was a private in the United States Army.

I went in the bottom, I was bubblegum on the bottom of your shoe.

that's how low I was.

And to be honest, that informed a lot of my thinking about culture because

I've been the guy in the trenches.

I've been the, the smallest, lowest form of life and worked

my way up the ladder from there.

So that was first.

Second was engineering.

in the military I worked on classified air defense, radar, and missile systems.

And I always had a technical background as a person.

engineering as a career led me as a first career after the military.

It brought me to, you know, a a, a place of being, a meticulous planner

and engineers are very methodical.

I can't do step 39 till I've done the first 38, and in many cases

I can't skip the first 38 or I'll have a suboptimal outcome.

So engineering made me a meticulous planner.

Being a pilot made me a meticulous planner.

You don't go, jump in an airplane, take off without knowing where you're going.

You know what the winds of loft are, you know what the weather is,

where you're at en route at the end.

How much fuel I need, what are my alternates?

And there's just so much that goes into it.

So meticulous planning, came out of that.

I'm an anal retentive strategic planner.

GE then 10 years of the glory days, Jack Welsh, it's Camelot.

I call it the Camelot era of GE.

There is no tech, tech doesn't exist yet.

GE is the world's most admired company.

It's the oldest Dow component.

Over a hundred years old.

Stock is splitting every two and a half years, so Jack is in the

early days people called him Neutron Jack, cuz he was blowing it up.

The last 10 years was Camelot.

It was the growth era where a hundred year old business was doubling its

stock every two and a half years.

And, it was a magical time.

And I credit GE with teaching me how to run a business, not this GE

of today, the GE of yester year.

and then from there, it comes down to experience, 21 years as a CEO and,

nine different private equity sponsors.

A along the way, lot of exits and, the 37 year old CEO.

definitely has learned a lot, and now the 58 year old CEO you make every

mistake in the book you can make.

and so experience is something that can never be understated.

And so I think those are the four collective experiences that

bring me to where I am today.

What was the biggest thing when you were going from in,

engineering to more of a executive at GE.

I love how you refer to that as the Camelot, at ge, cuz those, those,

you know, epic times, for ge what was your biggest aha moment or surprise?

Cause you said GE really was formative as it related to leading

companies and culture for you.

Something that you took away with that one of your biggest

surprises or aha moments when you got into that, higher level at ge.

first, let me just tell you that as an engineer,

I was a really good engineer.

And I'm in my early twenties and I'm making six figures a year, and, but I'm,

I'm bumping up against the ceiling of what an engineer can make as an engineer.

And if I think about my own life's journey, I was chasing

money title, and I wanted to find financial security for a family.

I, I didn't have.

And, you know, in the military, you know, when when I was leaving home

for the first time, it was like, you know, what are my goals and objectives?

I'm chasing title and money.

I'm trying to find security.

and so when I've had my own crossroads in the career, when I was a really good

engineer, faced with the prospects of putting away, call it the proverbial

slide rule and toolkit, and jumping over into this thing called management

where I'm now gonna be competing against Harvard MBAs people who were

born with silver spoons in their mouth.

You it's that was a scary time.

But I was hitting the glass ceiling on pay, and if I just stepped over

to the side and got into management, all of a sudden my runway goes

all the way to the corner office.

It's a hard ladder to climb, but the potential was so much bigger.

And so, you know, I took that leap of faith you know, I went to GE

Crotonville , so GE Crotonville was GEs own college campus where they trained

the top 5% of GE people to be their next generation of business leaders.

And it was back in the magical days when the business unit, the, the

Jack Welsh's, uh, the Bob Nardelli's, they were coming to teach and help

educate GEs top young leaders.

Into, the next global leaders GE and business.

So it was a magical time there, and just to show you how far it's

come, e eventually they had a cadre of people, they've now sold it.

GE just recently announced the sale of Crotonville.

I thought, boy,

gosh.

that, that's a sad day when Crotonville bill's gone.

So Camelot needed a castle.

Crotonville was the castle.

and so I got world class leadership training.

And you know what?

I really was a, an arrogant young, you know, up and coming guy.

I, I remember times where so here's, here's, here's

one of these stories, right?

so my business unit, worst of first, that was the goal.

We pulled it off and I'm walking into a board meeting with my leadership team.

I've got a boombox on my shoulder.

I'm wearing dark sunglasses.

Pink Floyd song.

The money is blasting out.

I got a cigar in my mouth, and I'm not walking in all cocky.

My business team behind me, we're doing like this, the shuffle of

the seven Wharfs, the guys in the middle are like throwing up monopoly

money, to, to demonstrate that we are the best business unit in ge.

And the board, talked about a high level risk.

It's a good thing.

We were number one, and not at the bottom of the.

And that's why we did it, of course, but they were like falling outta

their seats, laughing their asses off.

And in that era, you worked hard, you played hard.

But when you were the best, you celebrated being the

Yeah, that's, that is so cool.

That is so cool.

I can see it.

It's a great visual picture.

You coming in with, your entourage throwing monopoly money up on the air.

That's well done.

Well done.

it sounds like it just really was a formative time for you, especially,

being able to just soak up a lot of that, information from Jack and from

all these other great executives.

So that's awesome.

If you were to talk about, I would love to get into a little bit more conversation

about culture with you because you've sat at the top of several different entities

and you've got a different vantage point.

You've seen it from private equity side, you've seen it from the

CEO level, you've seen it all the way down through engineering.

So you've seen it at multiple levels.

Let's talk about it.

what is some of the things that you see now, especially you've just gone

through this empire, summit, empire Builder Summit, and what's some of the

things that you see as really common mistakes that business leaders make or

even team leaders make when trying to develop a strong, sustainable culture?

So let's start with my philosophy after running businesses

for decades is that culture and revenue are directly correlated.

You know, in, in a business, A C E O can't manage revenue from the top down.

You control revenue by building culture from the ground up.

so let's unpack that for just a second.

I've run service companies in my.

Not to sound sexist, but basically it's guys', trucks, broken stuff,

guys', trucks, building things, know, you know, blue collar workers, HVAC

technicians and construction workers and service techs fixing things.

That's been my world.

And in service, you don't have a tangible product.

I can't package a box of service and put it on a shelf, you know, for you

to pull off as a consumer later, or, or customer and, and you know, sprinkle it

on a broken piece of equipment, water, and it magically starts working again.

Doesn't work that way.

in a business, when you can't store your product on a shelf, your product

is actually by default people.

Yes.

They perform a service.

So I don't focus on top line, much to the chagrin of boards.

I focus on do I have a strong culture?

That's the base component.

So instead of coming in trying to force revenue or cost actions,

let's start by looking at culture.

What's the turnover rate in a company I'm coming into?

do we have a problem or an issue with the culture?

If I fix it and build it right, I'm building the base foundational level.

If I build a strong culture, I get an engaged workforce.

Engage workforce takes care of the customers I'm servicing.

They give us more stuff where they buy more stuff and revenue

just kinda rains from the sky.

So someone who comes in at the top and starts measuring from the, and stops

leading, starts leading from the top down, they may or may not find success.

But if you want sustainable success, if you wanna bend the growth curve

and make your company something special, you start at the bottom

and you build up and it starts with,

I think that's so fascinating too, because I've had

multiple private equity companies that I've had experience with.

In fact, one of them I was sitting across, it was a funded startup, and

I went and we were talking, it was the first, few months outta the gate.

and one of the guys sit down with me and we were waiting on a meeting to

start and he's how's things going?

I said, I mean, things are going really great.

We've hired some amazing people and the, you can just feel the cultures

moving in the right direction and we've got a lot of momentum.

And he just looked at me and he said, I don't give a blank

about whatever you just said.

Where's the money?

And I was just like, I just sat back.

I was like, oh my gosh,

And it's guys

like that, that give private equity a bad name,

Yeah, I know.

And so it's just, I think it's really cool that you in as a part of that world

see that and value that, because I think that's really important, especially

if you do have a strong culture.

Having a partner that has your mindset is really important,

Well, I I think in today's world now, in the 21

years as a C E O, we went from hundreds of PE firms to over 6,000.

we went from hundreds of billions in assets under

management to over 5 trillion.

So I've really seen the world of PE mature and grow up.

And I would tell you, when you have 6,000 of anything in an industry, you're

gonna have good, bad, and indifferent.

And I think more and more PE firms, I would even hazard guess to say, majority

of PE firms recognize that multiples are high, they're paying high prices, that

they need to be an active partner with management in order to ensure success.

And I think a lot of people, and especially in today's world, over

the last few years, what we've been through, people get that culture

matters and can't just pay at lip service and expect good results.

You can't get workers right now, in, in most industries and businesses.

And if you've got a crappy culture, good luck, fill in open jobs.

you gotta start by building a strong culture.

It not only leads to improved enhanced economic performance, but

it helps you, attract and retain the best talent that's available

in a pool for a given industry too.

What's some of the drivers?

And when you, let's say you walked into a company and it had, a high turnover

rate or just had some dysfunction.

What are the, what are some of the things that you're looking for

that you would immediately go and say, these are some things that

are important enough to change.

we

So I came into a company, for the first time and a, a company had a 42%

turnover rate and, employee turnover rate.

And I'm thinking to myself, I also saw that they had underspending

in sales and marketing.

And I'm like, yeah, I get it.

we don't have enough employees.

Take care of the customers.

We got, let alone enough employees, go find new ones, right?

So we're not spending any money.

And, and we have this self-defeating prophecy around, half our workforce

is all my HR team's doing is trying to get bodies and seats.

And I mean, you can spot a toxic culture coming in real, real quickly.

So I try to do some thoughtful analysis around what is impacting

culture in different areas.

And it can be different from geography to geography.

And I remember for that business, Pacific Northwest, we had heavy union competition.

So our wage scales were just off.

we weren't paying people enough and the union was picking

off, the non-union employees.

And, in other places, Texas was a good example.

In Texas, we didn't have paid sick days, and some states in the

country require it and others don't.

along with your thinking, the company was thinking, it's not required here,

therefore I'm not going to do it.

okay, you saved a few bucks, but now you got high turnover rate.

I added simply paid sick time to employees in Texas.

And the turnover rate drops 50% in 12 months.

so sometimes it's money, sometimes it's benefits, sometimes, to a large degree

it's usually I've got poor leadership.

I've gotta teach managers who are managing the product, which is our people, how

to be an, how to be an effective leader.

But I really start from it, from one goal in, in objective.

my goal for employees is I want to build a company where employees can

spend their entire career in one place.

I want to become the preferred employer in the industry.

I want them to bring their friends, I want them to bring their families.

I want to be able to attract and retain the talent.

And I do that by instilling a pride in the organization

that, that they, they work for.

Because I'm gonna fix that culture.

I'm gonna be a transparent leader.

And to do that, usually I've got a four-legged stool.

So my goal is I want you to stay for life.

The four things I've got to do, first is pay a fair wage.

In today's world, if I don't pay a fair wage, I'm gonna lose talent.

Rather than recruit and retrain, I'd rather keep the people I've got, so

let's start by, let's pay a fair wage.

People don't usually leave jobs because of wages, but what

happens is they hate their boss.

Their boss pisses 'em off, and so they're like, I gotta get outta here.

Then wage becomes a litmus test.

If I make X, I need X plus one to justify the move.

leaving.

But I wasn't looking until I had this conflict or this hatred, for the boss

or the person that I'm working for.

So I have to pay a fair wage or lose talent.

I wanna provide excellent benefits.

I want to have a strong retirement plan.

But the most important leg of the stool is I have to create

opportunity for personal growth.

And so I need the person who's driving the truck, who wants to be driving the

truck 30 years from now, God bless them.

They become the journeyman that teach the next generation how to

do whatever the job is or provide the service that we're providing.

but at the same time, I need the young kid who's in the truck who

wants to become the service manager.

Who wants to become the general manager, regional manager, vice president,

wants to be a CEO someday that kid's.

and in this country you can accomplish that.

And so once upon a time, I was the guy in the truck, and now I'm the c e o

and I've held every job you can hold in a service company on an org chart.

and so I, I have to create that path.

Some people aren't looking for it, others are.

But if I want them to stay, which is my goal, then pay a fair wage,

give good benefits, have a strong retirement plan and growth gives

them the opportunity for advancement.

lot of small companies, maybe they've got one managerial position and the founder's

name is Smith and the son or daughter's name is Smith and they're 33 and I'm 32.

and I'm never gonna have that leadership position.

And so potentially I don't leave because I don't like the family or the pay

I'm getting, but I need opportunity.

And so I leave looking to find it.

So I find that when I have a strong culture, I create a growth company,

and the growth itself creates the opportunities that provide for the growth.

I love how you structure that from, it's just starting

again back with the fundamentals.

a company like that, that you walk in and has 40% plus turnover.

you look at that and they pr they could even have.

one of our top five core values is caring for the employees.

and then you see in the back office, they're not paying, for

time off, so it's or sick days.

And so it's there's so many things like that where you want

to bring it into an alignment.

Everything has to come together.

and a lot of what you're talking about is saying, look, we want to

create this environment that people wanna be at and people wanna work in.

So what are the things that are outside that purview?

what are the things that are falling outside that, and it's

And by the way, it's, I'm not gonna create an environment that

coddles employees, they need to work hard.

they need to produce, I'm gonna hold them accountable.

So leadership attitude matters.

And, I'm investing in technology to drive productivity.

I'm a transparent leader.

I think in today's world, it's really important that

you be a transparent leader.

So I come in, I look around, I ride in the trucks, I talk to people and I

put together a plan and I articulate the vision to all, look, we're gonna

build a billion dollar business.

And I explain the difference between.

Publicly held companies where stock is traded all day long every day.

And private equity backed companies where capital comes and goes about every

five years and what the differences are.

I try to deconstruct, call it the mysteries of business so that I don't

have to be hiding, things in a closet and then spring them on people,

Hey, I just sold the company today.

in my world, people are gonna know that I'm gonna sell that company the day I walk

into it, and I'm gonna sell it every five years and bring in different shareholders.

And they're my tool for growth.

And what they need is performance and return.

And we're on a journey to build a billion dollar public company

empire where we can all be owners and enjoy the fruits of our labors.

and it's the gospel according to Adam, as it relates to business and leadership.

And so I'm constantly educating, I'm transparent, during covid I would

hold a town hall with 3000 employees.

I'd get more than a thousand on a call at any given time who just want to tune in.

they had no idea what the hell EBITDA is, but they know how much we have, right?

and they know when the next shareholder's gonna come or go.

And, I'm investing in them.

And the growth allows continued investment in them.

And so, you know, it, you know, transparency is a piece of this.

I love how you do that, and it's transparent regardless.

I love how you said, look, I got people tuning the call that don't

even know what EBITDA is, but they are on the call and that it's almost

more important and for those people that they're invited to be on the call

than it is that they even understand all the information on the call.

Right?

Because it's just the idea of transparency, the idea that we're in

this together and you bringing them on the inside has as much impact as them

actually knowing, the definition of ebida.

So think that's fantastic.

You talked a little bit about a change in leadership in some toxic areas.

I'd love to know, there's, there is a difference between being

a manager and being a leader.

and a lot of times we see in cultures that maybe are stagnant, we've gotten

into the point where we're in a rut.

We may have either managers, either leaders acting as managers, or just

lack of leadership and just managers.

So talk a little bit about your, the idea of what, how you see managers and

leadership and the difference between

doing

Yeah, sure.

so managers handle the affairs of an organization.

Managers handle things, leaders inspire people to act.

and that's the basic, fundamental difference.

but where it usually starts to go wrong in a company.

You think about my typical companies, it's, it's, we're

providing a product or a service.

and so who becomes a service manager, probably the best service.

Technician in the truck, after some time period gets tapped to be the first, to

be his first management position or hers is gonna be as a service manager, okay?

They're a great technician.

Who the hell taught them how to be a good leader, right?

and all of my organizations, I would have requirements, look, my product

is people, culture is everything.

If you're gonna take that first promotion to a leadership position, I'm gonna

require you to attend leadership training.

And if I don't have my own GE Crotonville, which, I don't, I can leverage, Dale

Carnegie or some other organization that for a relatively low price, might be

a thousand dollars, 1500 couple grand.

I can send a first time supervisor or leader to a school that lasts

weeks and, they're going a couple nights a week for eight weeks or

whatever it is, and I'm gonna teach them how to be a leader of people.

Because being good at a job doesn't prepare you to lead people.

So I think it starts going south in an organization when we fail

as an organization to prepare people for leadership roles.

And the most critical role as a leader is the first, because the

vast majority of our employees report to the first level of leadership,

yes, absolutely.

Let's get it right there.

Let's have a program there, and if I make the proper investments there,

I have a much higher probability of preventing, just call it the classic

mistakes first time leaders make.

and it's so easy to, because there's so much transition

from that like high level technician to that first level leader, whether it's a

project manager or whatever it is that's managing people, that's team leader.

there's a lot of people that's either moving up, moving out, but they're

moving into those positions a lot.

That's a very broad base of your first level leaders.

and there is a tremendous gap in training from that zero to one.

I mean, it's just that, it's like almost once you get up higher in the

organization, it's more, there's more available, but there's so many companies,

and so I guess if you're listening to the last 10, And you're a young leader.

If you've just been promoted in this position, you're

leading an organizational team.

I love what Adam's advice is.

Take his advice.

If the company's not investing in your leadership ability, go get it

personally, cuz you are going to need it and is different than being a

technical expert, a manager, an sme.

Those are great tools that make you very powerful at your production or

your job, your technical, your craft.

But when you're going to lead people, it's a different set of skills.

And I think that his point to that is so powerful, so important and it's what

allows you to continue to progress and not do the Peter principle where you just got

promoted to your position of incompetence and you're stuck there, right above

this team that you don't enjoy, leading.

in Dallas.

I can tell you the vast majority, overwhelming majority, if I had to

put a percent on, I'd probably say 90% of companies in, in, in the

country, in the world don't provide that first level of leadership.

So here's some statistics for you.

There are 31 million small businesses in America, and they represent 99.9%

of all businesses in America, and they employ 50% of the workforce.

Now, the government defines small businesses under 500 employees.

And in those statistics then, of those 31 million companies, only

7% have a million in revenue.

So we're talking about a lot of little companies and it's, there's

0.1% of the companies that are bigger than 500 employees in the country.

Those might have first level leadership training, but even there, it's not, it's

hit or miss as to whether they do or not.

But the vast majority of small businesses in America, they think they can't

afford to have a low level, some kind of training for low level leaders.

And so they forego the expense.

And what winds up happening is they probably pay more in lost employees

and employee turnover and customer dissatisfaction than if they had just

spent a little bit of time, effort, and money on educating first level.

I agree.

The opportunity cost is so great.

That is so true.

It you just don't, you've got to calculate the opportunity cost of losing customers

or losing your employees if you have a bad

And I like your point, I like your point about if your company's

not providing it, go get it yourself.

you don't even have to spend a whole lot of money.

I think about LinkedIn and I think about some of the educational

opportunities and the videos and the courses that you can take just online.

And I think there's a small fee that's charged monthly, but it's like in today's

world of digital information and chat, g p t and all this other crap, it's like,

boy, if you wanna learn about leadership, you, all, you, what it takes is effort.

That's it.

But you're investing in yourself.

So it's not that your company requires it.

You want to be an effective first time leader so you can get the next

promotion and you can avoid the pitfalls of leadership that are

predictable, but you might not be seeing cuz you haven't been there before.

So investing in yourself is the best investment you'll ever make.

I love that.

Let's talk a little bit, and then I would say too, just to, to piggyback on

what you just said, it's, Getting that information is fantastic, and you have

to start with some basis of knowledge.

But I would say to your point, it's about action and about actionable leadership.

And sometimes we can gather the information and say we can take

it in, but we don't know how to connect the dots and apply it.

So if you're leading a team, if you're leading organization, if you own the

business and you're going through this, I encourage you to go out and find either a

mentor or a coach or someone that can help navigate how you implement some of this.

How do you connect the dots between this value or this information that you've

just pulled in and how you actually apply it to your team, to your situation,

to your, to the people that you're managing and your leading at that time.

So I think that's fantastic.

I want to jump in because you literally have written the book on,

on exiting your best seller on Amazon.

You've ta you've written the book on exiting and how you do that effectively

and work with private equity.

we have business owners that listen to the last 10%.

And so I wanna spend just a l a few minutes talking to specifically

to business owners about how they can prepare, what mistakes you

tend to see business owners make, and then how they can exit well

or at least begin that process.

Oh boy.

We could be here for hours.

This will be fun.

the, let me start with a couple of the biggest mistakes that

I see business owners making.

and the first is assuming that because you're an expert at building

a business and building your business and you know your business inside

out, Somehow they think that expertise will transcend and make them an expert

when it's time to sell their business.

And like anything in life, for most entrepreneurs who've built

a business and put 20, 30 years into it, it's your first exit.

It's your last exit.

it's your life's work and you think you're an expert and you

have an arrogance of success.

It's not intentional, but it happens.

And I see it every day.

You assume because you are an expert, you built a business

that you're an expert at exiting.

You don't know anything about exits.

I bought 58 companies.

I can tell you that, I could sniff out an expert from a novice in about

three minutes of casual conversation.

And if you're a novice, I'm a good guy.

But there are a lot of sharks out there in this world who will absolutely

take advantage of the fact that you are a novice at selling a business.

So first, first golden rule, if you're thinking about an exit, is

recognizing that you're gonna need help.

You're gonna need a team of people around you doing different types

of activities to help maximize the potential o of your business.

so that's the first mistake that I see predominantly.

Second biggest mistake I see them make is when they are actually exiting,

is they're chasing highest priced only, and they're not thinking about

the future, and what the potential is of the business and what kind of.

Gets them to the promised land.

There's a lot of different kinds of buyers.

There's strategic buyers, financial buyers, strategic buyers who

turn the lights off, who keep the lights on, private equity.

Do I wanna, I could be a rollover investor in a private equity back company.

I could get a second bite of the apple, potentially a third, my personal

record sell in the same company five times and getting multiple paydays.

It's the world's most sophisticated asset class.

And a lot of people, a lot of business owners, a mistake they make

is thinking, look, if I sell, I want to take all my chips off the table.

there's no way anybody's gonna, I'm not gonna be a minority

shareholder in my company.

That's a bunch of crap.

it's and I can't make any money, other than unless I've got control.

and I mean, that's just an arrogantly wrong thinking that your God's gift

and the only person who can make money, because the asset class known

as private equity on average beats the s and p 500 by a two to one basis.

And they didn't go from a few hundred firms when I started my CEO career

to 6,000 by sucking, these are the world's most sophisticated investors.

And if you can ride their coattails using a rollover investment, then,

know, what's the problem when you sell a business, you get a pile

of money, you sign a non-compete.

So you can't go back to doing what you just did.

So the first thing you gotta do is figure out what the hell's next?

I got a pile of money and I'm now a no.

Who doesn't know anything about anything's, gotta go back and

start a new business or invest, and I'm outta my comfort zone.

Why leave something you already know, unless it's just time for you to retire.

Potentially you take a first bite of the apple, stay running the business,

and build, but now you're using other people's money to grow it and grow

it faster because you don't have the same kind of limitations you did when

you were a sole owner of the business.

So many different paths that you could take.

So many better outcomes than.

And so if you take those two experiences, those two observations of mine in buying

companies, those are the two biggest mistakes that I see entrepreneurs make.

that's amazing.

Great advice.

I love it.

And you just went through so much, so fast.

I gotta pull back and just cuz I know people's heads just went, what, when you

said you sold the same, your record is selling the same business five times.

Te what in the world?

Tell us how you did that.

what was that like?

And tell us that process.

Cuz I'm sure people are like, how does that, I didn't even know that was.

So most people, again, think about, a business as a one and done event.

My exit's gonna be a one and done event someday.

I wrote an article for Forbes not too long ago, and I coined the rule of one 30.

and here's another, here's the third biggest mistake, entrepreneurs.

They assume that nothing bad can ever happen to their business and

that the value of that business is at a base level forever.

planes fly into buildings, wars start pandemics happen.

Imagine that you owned a chain of movie theaters in January of 2020.

What happened to your business in March?

You were out of business by summer, or you were taking P loans

trying to hang on and survive.

Bad things do happen.

And so I coined the rule of one 30, which is you take your age, you add

to it the percent of your net worth that is tied up in this illiquid

thing known as your business.

And if it equals more than one 30, chances are it's time for you

to think about diversification.

And that doesn't necessarily mean a full exit.

So I see guys all the time, or business owners, ladies who are in

their forties, early fifties, and they're like, I'm not ready to retire.

I got lots of.

But I am nervous.

I'm nervous about the general broader economic environment

that I'm seeing out there.

And there's so much happening in, and a lot of it's negative.

And I get concerned about my financial future.

And so I start to make mistakes.

I start to get ultra-conservative as a business owner.

And I'm not taking advantage of opportunities that I have cuz I'm afraid

that my nest egg is gonna go away.

And so when you get into these positions, it's time to potentially think about

bringing on a partner and when you do, you can accelerate your growth trajectory

with the access to unlimited capital, that, that can be brought to the table

by a private equity firm and the debt relationships that, that they have.

And by nature of a private equity fund, and you learn all this in my

first book, which is the private equity playbook, which educates you,

everyone on what private equity is.

Hey, I just had a room of 300 people.

I gave them a basic 10 question quiz on private equity for the first time ever.

I had one person score, a 10 out of 10 and she told me she

had just read my book the night.

so that was good.

But the vast majority of people in that room flunk.

, and these are people who potentially even owned a billion

dollar business and they flunked.

The world does not understand private equity or how it works.

You need to get educated as a business owner because they're buying more than 50%

of all companies on the planet right now.

They're the reason multiples are high, and you need to

understand how that vehicle works.

So the nature of private equity fund is, it exists for 10 years.

It generally buys company in the early years of the fund.

It improves 'em in the middle years.

It sells 'em in the back half, typical whole period's, five years.

So I know if I'm a business owner and I sell to private equity,

first of all, they bring a checkbook, not the leadership team.

So I'm gonna keep going.

They want me to go, they want me to roll over, they wanna align interest.

I also know they're gonna exit.

I know they're gonna exit in five years, which gives me the economic event that's

gonna give me a second bite of the apple.

So if the average private equity firm is seeking a three times multiple of

invested capital or a three times return, if I'm a founder and I sell the business,

all I have to do is roll over 34 cents on the dollar and my second bite of the

apple is gonna be bigger than my first.

And my third bite will be bigger than the second, and my fourth

bite will be bigger than the third.

and in my case, my average career, multiple of invested capital is a

five times return on investment.

So if I roll over 21%, I'm gonna get.

A bigger payday the second time than I did the first time.

And what you wanna do is learn about this economic behemoth, who, by the way,

if they were a separate country, would have the third largest GDP on the planet.

You're talking about a 5 trillion animal that buys 50%

of the companies in the world.

If you learn how it works, you can feed it what it needs and take from it what

you want, which is generational wealth.

And you do that by engineering exits for them to get their money out because this

is an illiquid private company investment.

I know that what they buy, they have to sell in order to return

the money to their shareholders.

So while they have average pe whole periods, five years, I try

to engineer a three year exit.

And if I can do a three year exit, then in a 21 year period, I got a

lot more exits for myself, right?

And I see where this is going.

So if I learn about PE and I can build a company that meets their needs,

they're not, when you think about a 10 year lifespan, the average whole

period being five years, usually the three year exit is a good exit.

It's a company that's growing really fast, and they're measured by I

R, which is a percent of return.

and it has a time dependency.

So if I get a quick, three bag or four bagger, and I can do that in three

years, it's like a 50 plus percent i

raise your i r That's.

so that helps me raise my next.

Which I don't wait 10 years to do.

I'm raising it early in the, I'm deploying money from one fund.

Couple years later I'm raising my next fund.

I can point to that fund and say, looky lucky.

My early exits are at a 50 plus percent.

I r gimme a bunch of money.

The dogs with fleas are the ones that go seven to 10 years, and those are the

ones I need more time to try to fix 'em.

They're gonna be a low i r and they're usually sold towards the end of a fun

life when I've already raised three more funds in the 10 years that, that those

dogs with fleas were being deloused.

So at the end of the day, it's, you gotta learn as an

entrepreneur how this thing works.

And when you understand what its needs are, you can feed it.

And as you're feeding it, it goes away.

New one comes in, I get another payday, put more money, off of the shelf.

I'm diversifying my asset base and yet I'm still running the same

company and I can keep on going.

And so that's the mechanics behind it.

that's incredible.

that's incredible advice.

and I know that the listeners, if you're a business owner and you're even

remotely close or thinking about an exit, definitely by Adam's book, by both, by the

one on private equity and the exit, cuz

you

lemme put it to you this way, Dallas.

If they go into Starbucks and they buy a scone and a grande soy vanilla latte.

For less than that price.

They can buy both of my books on the Kindle version if they want, and they

will learn everything they need to know in about eight hours reading both in order

to maximize their potential and build an

And there's a lot more, there's a lot more to be gained from

your books Than a latte and a scone.

Sometimes they need a lot

going, but, you yeah.

I just, and you, lemme just talk about coaching for a minute too.

I, I left the CEO seat because I wanted to help multiple companies at a time.

I wasn't enjoying running one company anymore, but I loved teaching and I

wasn't making any money teaching, but I was making a lot of money as a ceo

and I wanted to come up with a model where I could flip these things around.

And I wanted to be helpful to other business leaders and owners.

And so I started my own consulting business and I thought about, to

work with me on an entry level.

it, it costs less than the cost of hiring an entry level employee.

And so whatever the entry level work is in your business, Walmart just raised

their starting wage to 15 bucks an hour.

to work with an expert coach who's built billion dollar businesses,

you can do it for less than the annual cost of a new employee.

and yeah, I'm not giving you 2000 hours at 15 bucks an hour.

I promise you that.

, but I'm gonna give you more value in, in the time you spend with me for 30

grand a year than you are ever gonna do.

in with that entry level employee, and I have some people who are, who pay me

hundreds of thousands of dollars, to have me consult in their businesses.

putting me aside, you raised the point.

Business leaders, need to recognize that they can up their game by

working with people who can help them maximize the potential.

Whether that's a coach, a mentor, it's a practitioner like me who's

been there and done it, or it's someone who does it from an academic

perspective and they've got a model.

it's like business owners and leaders just need to be open to the fact

that they don't know everything and they can accelerate their learning

and maximize the potential of their business by working with others.

Whether it's a peer group, or it's a coach or mentor, that it

can help them amp up their game.

I love that.

And I think that's, so important and I think that you engage

people at so many different levels and I think that's awesome.

I think that you, having the books out there, you're obviously a,

an absolute world-class expert in private equity, world-class expert in

transitioning and retirement and how that process all works and everything.

and then to be able to give that back and also business running businesses as

a CEO and that high level executive view from that seat in the ballpark, I think

that's just awesome because people can engage with you in that different ways.

that seminar I just finished, empire Builders people paid

a thousand bucks, 300 of 'em to come in and sit there, and I gave them 30 years

worth of executive knowledge and a 250 page workbook that they walk out with.

That's essentially the toolkit to build a billion dollar business.

I wish to hell somebody had given me that when I was 20 years old, or 30 years

Yeah.

That's a lot less than an nba, but I know just based on our show today there,

what, that was a heavy workbook they left with I can assure you that Oh my

yeah.

Cause of the price, it was a pdf,

Yeah.

at end, at the end of the day though, a lot of people said,

Jesus, I spent 150 grand on an mba, and I have learned more here in two days.

That's actionable than I did in 18 months at this top

business school.

You know, it, it was, it's the School of Hard Knocks, mba,

And I think that's what you just said is exactly right.

There's knowledge is.

, but knowledge is not actionable.

You have to get to an actionable place.

You have to know how to apply that knowledge and

that's what experience gives.

That's what experience does.

And that's why you can have people fly in from all over the world, sit down and

be so grateful to get that information.

Because it's not just, pie the sky theory.

This is an, this is, these are actionable things that they can do

to help and grow their business.

And I love how you go zero to a billion.

That's just that's just, it's just awesome because it's so oh my gosh,

that's, how is that even possible?

But you're laying it out.

And I think there's so many things that we've talked about today that can

help business leaders, can help team leaders, can help business owners.

One last thing I'll talk about private equity.

If you were to advise, because you made some bold statements about the market

of private equity, the industry and how it's grown over the last few years.

I've experienced that and seen that in myself and in other businesses.

And so if a business owner was thinking about transitioning, they

go and read your book, how would they go about, how would you advise them

going, cuz this went from a several hundred to 6,000 different PE firms.

How would you advise them in, in, in general about picking a

partner that's right for them?

that's

so.

and again, I'm not trying to Hawk books because I donate

all my royalties to charity.

Let me just start with that.

But on the exit strategy playbook, I really lay it out step by step.

When you're a business owner, how to think about, an exit.

And it starts, first of all, before you ever head down that

path, about helping you to define what your goals and objectives are

that you're trying to accomplish.

As an example, let's say you're in your fifties and you don't want to retire and

you want a second bite of the apple, then you're looking for, either a financial

buyer because they'll give you the opportunity to stay, or you're looking

for strategic buyer, potentially backed by private equity, which will still give you

the same action if you're a small company.

but you want one that keeps the lights on.

and if you're gonna sell to a strategic who's then gonna ask

you to leave, you, you didn't accomplish your goals and objectives.

So it starts by trying to understand what your own personal goals and objectives are

in selling the business, aligning yourself to the universe of buyers that are

gonna allow you to achieve those goals.

From there, I help you build a team of advisors in this book and who

are the four people you need to help you down this road to exit?

It's the largest asset you have in your life.

It probably is the largest transaction of your life to date.

I want it to, I want your next one to be bigger, but for right now, today,

this is the biggest transaction of.

You're a novice at selling.

I teach you who the four people are, you need on your team and

how to find them and what role it is that they play in helping you.

And then I walk through what a typical lower middle market type, PE process

would look like from cradle to grave.

Maybe they hired an investment banker because they were a little

bit bigger and they were able to, and run a traditional process.

Maybe they had to hire a broker dealer, or a business, broker to help

represent their business or business was a little bit smaller, wasn't big

enough for a, an investment bank.

And so I walked them through how to decide what your goals and objectives

are, how to build the team of people around you that will level the playing

field between you, the novice seller and the world's most sophisticated buyer.

And then, as a part of that journey, what the process looks like.

And then finally how to make that decision.

So there's a lot that goes into it, from a soundbite perspective, but it

starts by just like in the beginning where we started, this podcast comes

down to, filling out that forum 10 years from now, what are you trying to.

You really gotta put some forethought into selling a business

before you start down that road.

And boy, there's preparation work that needs to happen.

I see it too often where entrepreneurs wake up and they say, today's the

day I'm gonna sell my business.

I'm gonna chase the highest damn dollar I can find, and I don't give

a crap who buys it and I've taken all my marbles and I'm going home ready?

Go.

And they wind up, hitter, first of all, they don't know what they

don't know, so I guarantee you they didn't maximize their outcome.

But they don't know what they don't know.

So they didn't know that they just left, 50 million on the table by not planning.

But think of it this way, imagine you own a business in

California, Nevada, as an example.

California has a 13.6%, capital gains tax.

You own this business.

You live in LA and your business is also in Nevada.

If I sell it in California, if I don't have my tax and trust,

structure set up properly of where the windfalls gonna come into, bing.

I'm going give 13.6% of all this to, what did my brother call him the

other day instead of Gavin Newsom?

It was gruesome.

and your money's gonna get just peed away, in the general state budget really quick.

But if I had a couple years in advance, picked up steaks, checked

17 different boxes, how do I know 17?

Because I've done this.

and I left and I set up shop in Nevada and, and then sold my business.

I pay zero.

It's unbelievable.

So there's tax planning.

I need help from accountants because my first thing I'm gonna get asked

for is three years worth of clean and potentially reviewed or audited

financials, depending on how big I am.

And right now, I got the boathouse in there.

I got Uncle Jimmy, who's been dead for three years on payroll.

My wife hasn't worked a day in the business in 20 years, but

I'm paying her 200 grand a year.

when you're a business owner, you're programmed to not pay taxes.

When you're a business seller, you gotta normalize all your financials

because it's gonna hurt you, in a sale process, if all that stuff is clouded.

If you hand over a QuickBook file, you didn't work with a transaction

advisory services team, you didn't do a sell side Q of E, you're listening

to me and you're saying, I don't even know what the hell a Q of E is.

ed, so there's a process.

There's things that you need to do to prepare for sale.

And if you do these, I guarantee you, you're gonna find maximum outcome.

from this asset that you spent a whole life building.

You spent so much time building and caring for it.

I can't believe how little effort people put into actually

maximizing the potential of an.

it, what you've just said.

I mean, it's unbelievable.

And if you're listening to the show, I know we've got some listeners, if

you're listening to the show, bare minimum, you should be buying at least

the exit strategy playbook at bare minimum, because what he's just covered

is phenomenal and worth millions of dollars in just what he just said alone.

if you love the book or if even if you just say, I wanna circumvent

that, go to one of his Empire Builders seminars, it's thousand bucks.

go to him on that.

Or it unbelievable that you could have access to Adam for such a low rate in

his advisory and consulting practice.

You're, you're talking, you have the ability to talk to

the chairman of the chairmans.

So this is, this is big time,

Yeah, we gotta work on that branding.

I'm the chairman.

We dunno yet what the

the

but I already had, a ton of people sign it up to be part of the thing,

good.

we're excited to hear more about it.

Maybe in a year we can have you back on, you can tell us all about

the new, that new venture and what you're into then and everything.

But I want to make sure where can people find you?

We're gonna, we're gonna post, we're gonna post, in the show notes.

We're gonna post all the links to your books and Amazon, your Amazon bestseller.

Easy to find there.

Where would you like to engage people if they want to get to you more

about talking about more advice and things to how you can help their

Yeah.

So let's do two, two primary ways.

Go to LinkedIn first.

I'm Adam Coffey, c o f e y.

you'll find me and I love to connect and talk to people, via LinkedIn.

I also have a lot of content there that you can plug into

and always know what's going on.

And then I have a website, it's Adam e coffee, c o f e y.com.

You can come find me there as, as well, and happy to, engage

with, that's why I did this.

I quit being the ceo.

I was bored.

I wanted to help multiple companies at a time and to help

multiple companies at a time.

I gotta find you, and you have to find me.

So I try to make it as easy as possible to en engage.

But those are the two primary.

Adam, it has been such a pleasure to have you on the show today.

You are a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.

Thank you for sharing that with us today.

It, we could just, I could just talk to you for another three hours.

this is, there's so many things that I would love to talk to you

about, but we're gonna have to save that for another episode.

But thank you again.

We'll be putting you, into oh one last thing.

and this is something you may, you we always ask a guest at the end

of the show, and it can be someone that you know personally, it can be

someone that you would like to hear.

But if there's anyone that comes to mind that you would like to hear on the

last 10%, who would that person be as someone that you would like to hear, and

it may be somebody you know or don't.

Who would you like to hear on the last 10%?

I know some other entrepreneurs who are

on the journey right now.

there's a young guy out there named Robert Brier, who worked

at ge, worked for me at Cool ci.

he now owns a, an electrician, company up in, in Northern California.

He's a, an Annapolis grad, a former Navy Seal officer, and,

led Seal teams during the Gulf Wars, or during the War on Terror.

And he now runs business called Triad and Electric.

he's another great guy that could tell some great stories about his

experience building a business.

Fantastic.

Adam, thank you for being on the last 10%.

We look forward to having you on another show sometime and

and we just appreciate you.

Thank you, Dallas.

Thank you to everybody out there who's listening, build

your business, build an empire.

I wanna see you at one of my upcoming events.