Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Leap Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dubay. For context, this podcast is inspired by the book Entrepreneurial Leap by Gino Wickman. Gino is the founder of E o S Worldwide, and an author with over 2 million copies of his books sold worldwide. Now, in his next phase, he's taking his passion for helping entrepreneurs by partnering with five equally passionate, successful entrepreneurs, myself included, who have created the E LEAP Academy, where we teach the content from the book in a one year program guaranteed to increase the success of early stage businesses. Now, a quick note about me, I've been an entrepreneur since the age of 14. When I started my first business selling Blow Pop Lollipops outta my locker with my best friend, I ran a company that I sold to a public company and later bought back. I'm an author, speaker, host of an annual leadership retreat, and I'm partners in several other businesses.

I'll be your host for the Entrepreneurial LEAP Podcast, where every other week you will be hearing life stories from successful entrepreneurs who took the leap into entrepreneurship. You will learn from their mistakes and successes and be inspired as you move forward on your journey. Now, before I introduce my guest, I'm going to share with you a bit about Ewe Academy. The Entrepreneurial Leap Academy provides an immersive nine month experience for new entrepreneurs with a focus on the three Cs, clarity, competence, and community. Let's start with the first C, clarity. You'll learn to be clear about who you are, what you want from your business, and how to get it. The next C confidence, you will learn to be confident you are on the right path, equipped with powerful mindset tools. The last C connected you will become connected to a community of entrepreneurs just like you.

Now all participants receive four full day in-person classes led by experience entrepreneurs to equip you with the tools and strategies necessary to build a successful business. The Academy's dynamic community connects participants with a tribe of like-minded individuals for support and networking opportunities during in between classes. Students also receive a seasoned mentor offering personalized guidance and expertise to help you navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. To start building the business of your dreams, visit our website@eleap.com. Again, that's e leap.com. There you can learn more about and sign up for the next Entrepreneurial Leap Academy. Today's guest is Todd Saxy, the founder and c e O of Saxy Construction, and co-founder and majority owner of Broder Saxy Real Estate. Todd's role is to lead and develop the overall strategy and vision for each of the five companies within his enterprise. Todd has built a strong senior leadership team specializing in commercial and retail construction, real estate insurance restoration, and mechanical services.

Todd graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science degree and he's a licensed contractor in multiple states. In addition, Todd is affiliated with the following organizations, United Jewish Foundation of Metropolitan Detroit. He's a board member past president of United Jewish Foundation, young President's Organization, new Detroit board member Downtown Boxing Gym board member, metropolitan Affairs Coalition Board member Cranbrook Art Academy, board member, past President, Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit. Co-founder and co-chair of Detroit Developer Roundtable housed that for somebody who's involved in the community. Now, a few fun facts about Todd are that he loves to ski, play golf, and of course pickleball enjoys art and he is an avid potter In his spare time, I have to tell you, Todd is such a great person and he is so down to earth. You are going to love our chat. So here we go. Please enjoy my chat with Todd. Sexy Todd, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I'm so excited to talk to you. You are the perfect guest for this podcast. I have to tell you,

If it were just a podcast and not video, then maybe I'd have a voice for it.

You have. You have the perfect voice, but not the perfect face. I disagree. I disagree. So I always like to start each podcast with a quote. And so I'm gonna share this quote with you, and then I would just love to hear your feedback on what you hear. Okay, so here it goes. Failure with clay was more complete and more spectacular than with any other forms of art. You are subject to the elements. Any one of the old four Earth, air, fire, water can betray you and melt or burst or shatter months of work into dust and ashes and spitting steam. You need to be per a precise scientist, you need to know how to play with what chance will do to your lovingly constructed surfaces in the heat of the kiln. And that comes from as biant in the book, the children's book. Does that evoke any thoughts for you?

Well, did you pick that for me? I did. Or did you? Okay, well, that was kind of interesting 'cause you probably know I'm a potter.

That's right. Okay, so you connected that dot, but that was so interesting that you're a potter and I was thinking about your business and how that might relate in some regards. So what, what are your thoughts on that though?

Well, so first of all, being a potter is really my, I'll call it my zen space. So when I'm in my studio, I'm checked out. I mean, the world could come to an end and I wouldn't know it because I'm just kind of, that's the only time that I'm truly just single-minded and thinking of doing one thing and my mind does not wander. So that's just kind of set that aside. Yeah. But you know, I just love, you know, I say in with ceramics what's unique about it and what I love about it is there's kind of three phases to it. There's the craft, there's the art, and there's the science. And they're all very different. You know, in order to be a great ceramicist, you have to be great in all three. It's like, in order to be a great golfer, you gotta be able to drive, hit your irons, put ship.

You have to have all great, I am not great at any of them. I'm good at some and I'm fair at others, you know? But that's okay 'cause it's fun and you can create and make mistakes. And you know, you've put something in the kiln that comes out, looks like crap, and you throw it away. You know, you throw something on the wheel and it doesn't work, and you smush it and throw it in the bucket and you recycle the clay and you do it again. So, you know, it's part of the whole creative and building process, which I, which I love between the, the science, the craft, and the art altogether.

And in some ways, ways. Do you see any sort of correlation to the business that you're in, by chance? Well, I, I,

I mean it accidentally, yes. You know, I mean, it kind of goes back to when I was a kid, you know, when all I wanted for birthday parties and stuff like that was, you know, was Lego or pieces of wood. So my, my, my father used to say that I was, it was the easiest thing in the world for him to get me presents. 'cause he would literally go to the local lumber, lumber yard. He would go back to the lumberyard and they have like a barrel of scrap. So when people would say, Hey, I need a piece of this. And he'd say, can I have some scrap? And they'd give it to him and he didn't pay for it, scrap lumber. And then they'd wrap it and wrapping paper, you know, and I'd open it up and I'd be excited that I got the wood that I could nail together or something like that. That's so great. It's so great. They, they got away with it. I mean, could you imagine today? Totally.

No. Yeah, for sure.

Today. What the hell is this a pile of garbage fire

Wheel that doesn't fly these days? Oh, yeah.

No. Yeah. How do you plug it? Where's the battery for? How do you plug it in? Where's the screen?

Yeah. So it is so great that you, you ca went back to your childhood for a minute because you, you have a great story of your first business. You know, please share, like, how, what was your first business? What did you start doing?

Well, business or how I made money

There. Okay, go. Either way. I think they're both gonna be great stories.

Well, that, I mean, the simple one is, when I was in middle school, there was a, there was a, a candy store that opened up called Sidney Bogg. Probably heard of Sidney Bogg. There was a big deal, and everyone knows 'em today. They were the red hot fireballs. Okay. Yeah. And they were like, the hot thing. And that was like seventh through eighth grade. Everyone thought they're the coolest things. Like, yeah, they were great, but it's like, no big deal. You's gotta go to the store and buy 'em. So I would go and buy a big, you know, I don't know, a hundred of 'em or whatever, you know, whenever they, whatever they were a hundred 'em for $2 and I'd bring 'em to school and sell 'em for a quarter a piece. It was the, the margins were unbelievable.

So great. Right.

It wasn't big dollars, but the margins were the margins.

Right. You don't see margins like that so often. Even

Software, unless you're saw popcorn at a, you know, at a, it's the only the only place you got margins like that. Yeah. So, anyhow, but no. So then, and when I was 16, so actually my brother had some window washing clients. He's two years older than me. So I took that over and the next started a window washing company. Me and a buddy of mine, a friend of mine in high school, his name was Doug. And we came to get a very creative name. It was called Doug and Todd's window washing.

So lesson, lesson number one, don't obsess over the name,

Don't obsess over the name. Right. It's simple that you're not gonna win because of the name. Right. So yeah, it was a window washing company. And what we wa, we wa most of our clients were retail stores. We just wash the windows at retail stores, so Great. You know, so, and now I, we look like I go to strip centers, I'd walk in and say, hello, where's the manager? Blah, blah, blah. Hey, I wash your windows for, you know, $5 a aside, you know, every other week we'll be here. So it'll be $15 a month, two, we call it two out, one in outside, twice a month inside, once a month, $15 a month, piece of cake. You know? So kind of did that through high school, then spanning through college, and then my junior year of college started maid service. That's a whole nother funny story.

I'll give you the very short story. I don't wanna kill all that is, the original idea with me and a couple of my buddies was there's gonna be a student made service. Okay? Right? So we get on the phone and we're calling students, Hey, how much would you pay to clean your, have your apartment clean? You know, nothing, you know, $5. Right. You know, right. The idea, the idea didn't go very far, but we said, okay, we think actually real people might want their house clean. So we started maid service and learned pretty quickly that real people, non-students that live in Ann Arbor want. And so we started maid service and kind of grew that through through college and expanded that. But one other funny, the funniest story of all about that one was, and again, it's gonna show you how, how stupid you can be, right?

So we, we said, okay, how do we kick this thing off? We're gonna put an ad in the Ann Arbor news. Okay. And so we counted the Ann Arbor news, I gotta make this quick. And the circulation was 52,000 people. Okay. Or 50,000 homes, right? So we're thinking, oh my God, that's a lot. Right? So we do the math and we say, okay, if 52,000 homes get it, and if 10% of the people actually see our ad, that's 5,000. Right? And then if 10% of those people actually call, that's five. Oh my God. We're gonna get 500 phone calls. Okay. So, so we said, okay, well we, we got, so what we did is we said, all right, we have to schedule, so between eight and five, somebody has to be here to answer the phone. So we looked at our class schedule, okay, you're on the phone from, you know, eight to 10. Okay. I got a class at 11. So literally for like two weeks, we, we, like, we're on phone duty. Okay. I think two people called two weeks.

So, great. It's classic. It's classic. The 10% and the, just the numbers, that 10%

And then 10%, right? Yeah. So it's only we're asking for 1% of the people to call.

That's so great. And by the way, no, not to age you, but I think we're similar in age of 54. And no cell phones back then. Really?

Oh, this was, we're this was 19 80, 83. Yeah, yeah,

Yeah. No cell phones. So now, now you did mention one thing though, that I always like to ask, because, you know, we talk about should we go to college, should we not go to college? So, talk about your college experience. Did you feel like, and you went to University of Michigan, was that a good experience? If you look back, are you glad you went? Do you feel like I didn't need it, really. I could've just jumped right into business?

So, well, first of all, I had a phenomenal experience. I was actually pre-med. So I went interesting all the way through pre-med, took the MCATs, got into medical school and decided I didn't want to go. Which is a another story. But again, we can't get too many stories here, but stories are good. You, you, you, you know what I, you know, what I tell people is that if you have the ability, the resources, and the commitment to go to college and get a four year degree, what you learn the most is how to learn. So, I'm gonna say it again. You learn how you learn because in any business that you're in now, I don't care. You're an entrepreneur, otherwise you have to be a lifelong learner because things are constantly changing. And if you're not a lifelong learner and you haven't learned how to learn, so one of the greatest skills that I think I learned in college in my four years is how do I learn? So when new things come up, whether it be technology or whatever it may be, I know how I learn. I, I've learned the skill of learning. And I don't think you'll really learn much of that skill in high school. Maybe some people do. I think it really becomes refined in college because you're so independent and you gotta figure it out. It's not spoon fed to you anymore. So you gotta figure out, how do I learn if I'm gonna survive? I learn how to learn. Yeah.

I this, well, you know, whether you're a poly-sci major or a, I did biochem. I taught biochem in college. You know, I, I, that's the skill that I learned is my, in the fact that I learned r n a synthesis and the prep cycle is that, you know, is that helping me in business today? Of course not. Right. You know? Right. But, but it's the whole learning how to learn. That's my,

Yeah. That's great. And then when you came out, what was the first real business that you started?

Well, I still had the maid service and the window washing company. You did? Yeah. So, so that's kind of what it was, is I graduated and I said, okay, am I gonna to medical school or am I gonna wash windows and clean toilets? I mean, that really was the decision. Yeah. I chose to wa and I chose to wash windows and clean toilets instead of gonna med school.

And then how did that business evolve?

You know, I had, so I had the window washing business was kind of, kind of southeastern Michigan. 'cause it was routes, the maid service at that time was only in Ann Arbor. So right when I graduated, I expanded the maid service to Farmington Hills, which is a suburb of Detroit. Yeah. And so I had an office in Ann Arbor and office in Farmington Hills, and we had the window washing company in Ann Arbor and, and in Farmington Hills. So, so we had, like, I had two offices. Actually the one in, in Ann Arbor start was in my house. Okay. In college. It was out, out of our apartment. And then when I graduated outta the house, it was in the house. And then eventually got an office. The Farmington Hills was, was an office that I had, that I had rented. So yeah, so was it, it was basically that, I mean, when I graduated I had, God, there was probably, I think maybe a half a dozen like housekeepers that worked for us. And I think I had four windows washers, and I was washing windows too. So I was doing a lot of the window washing myself. And I was cleaning a lot of houses when, you know, Stacy didn't show up. I was, you know, you were right there. I cleaned more toilets and more kitchen floors than most people.

That's right. That's called working hard, really hard. Which is one of our must doss Moss des. Yes. Yeah. Right. And then, so did, did you, did that business evolve into the business that you're in now? Or did you get out of that business and start the business? Te tell the story around that. So,

So that, so I just kind of get the dates. It was graduated college in 85. And so I had the, had those businesses. I started buying student rental properties in Ann Arbor houses and student rental properties. And I was the maintenance guy and I was the leasing person. And, you know, so, you know, and when I, when, you know, when the, you know, doorknob fell off, I'd go there to my Jeep and I'd fix it and I'd hang out with the student. 'cause I was 23 and they were 21 or 20, I would have a beer and fix their, fix their doorknob. Right. So, so that was going on. So I, that I had the, you know, the, the maid service, the window washing company. And then four years later, so 1989, so when I was 26, had an opportunity to buy some land in Ann Arbor with some other guys and build a hundred in apartment complex.

And I had absolutely know what I was doing. No clue. But you know, when you're 26 years old and you're doing, you just say, I just say yes, I sure, okay. Yeah. We'll do it. Right. I'll figure it out. So I was the one, only one in Ann Arbor. And so I hired the architect and I kind of became the local onsite guy. Ended up hiring a superintendent to run the construction project, and I basically became his assistant superintendent. Okay. I was like, I was his bitch on the job site Okay. For 14 months. So I had that going. I had the office in Farmington Hills, I had the office in Ann Arbor, the window, Washington. I had all going on working 120 hours a week, seven days a week, six in the morning till midnight every single day. But loving it. I mean, I, and I loved being on the job site.

I mean, I had so much fun. I mean, it was really, I mean, I got, I'm a lot of stories. So that was, so that project was done in 91, beginning in 91. And I just said, you know what this is, I love this. So I sold my cleaning company. So I sold the Ann Arbor window washing and maid service operation to one guy. I sold the Farmington Hills window wash to a different guy. So different people bought each one of those. And I said, I'm gonna start a construction company. And here's where I got creative again, the name Saxy Construction.

You went to the last name this time, this. I,

It wasn't Todd. I figured I had to, I figured I had to get a little more sophisticated

Odds. Construction just wasn't gonna cut it. That was little

Bit. Right, right, right. And I, yeah, I rented a 10 foot by 10 foot office in somebody else's office. Put an ad in the, in the, in the yellow pages. Your listeners probably don't know what that is. Most probably don't.

Right,

Right. And started to call on everybody I knew that said, Hey, let me try to build you something

Amazing. Amazing. And you know, as any entrepreneur is going along in this journey that you already mentioned some great stories, but I always like to ask, what was the nightmare story? And I'm sure there's more than one, but does one pop into your mind? You know, the story of the nightmare?

So it's funny you say that. It's, when I look back at them, there's so little, but in the moment it was such a big deal. Okay. I know that sounds crazy. No, it's not. But, but I'm gonna give you, I'll just tell you one that literally, it was probably nine months, maybe a year into the construction company. Okay. And it basically, it was me in the office and I had a bookkeeper person. Her name was Robert Roberta. Robert, I forgot. Okay. And, and that was it. Okay. And I'm running around again like, you know, working like crazy and she quit. Okay. And I freaked out. I literally like, oh my God, I, I don't have time to bid the jobs. Run the jobs. Yeah. Pay the bills, da da da da. I mean, I remember, it's funny you to say that. I remember that. And going, oh my God. And I remember talking to a friend of mine at that time, and his name was Danny, and I was telling him again, and he looked at me, he goes, Todd, and by the way, he's a doctor. He said, Todd, you'll survive it and be better off for it. Okay. I'll never forget that advice. Right. He just said that all these

Years later, you remember this. I

Remember that. Great. Yeah. And by the way, of course he was right.

That's right. That's right. Okay, so let's go to the other, there's

Hundreds of other ones too, but

I'm sure Yeah. And many are gonna come out as we keep talking. But what was the dream for you? What was the story of the dream? What was one thing where you were like, wow, this is unbelievable?

So, I mean, to be perfectly frank, when I started the, the, the construction company, my goal was if I could make a thousand dollars a week, I'd be the happiest person in the world.

I love it.

That was it. Like, the thought of being able to have literally 52 weeks a year to make a thousand dollars a week. That I, I've made it.

That's amazing.

But that was my, that was literally, that was my financial goal. Right. You know, if I have financial goal, but, you know, I just was figuring out, I was going along.

And you're a humble person. I know, but I, you know, just for the listeners, your, your company is huge now. I mean, how many team members do you have at Saxe?

There's five companies now. And the whole, we call it the enterprise of company. There's five companies and there's about 350 team members Okay. Across the five companies. So

Think about that from Todd to three 50 if you're listening, you know, and you can feel the passion to this day coming through the audio and the video for how you feel about this business. It's truly amazing. Is, is there one thing that you wish you knew in the early stages as you think back? You know, if I just knew that it would've been so helpful.

So I wouldn't say no, but I, 'cause I didn't know anything then, and I don't know what's loud because one of my favorite proverbs is the more I learn, the more I realize a little I knew. Because the more you learn, you go, I was so dumb. I didn't know, I didn't know that. So as you get, as you learn more, you actually realize that you get dumber every day because you realize that you didn't know anything. Right. You know? But one thing that I would say that I didn't really learn until later, and I tell young people this all the time, which is the value of relationships. Okay. So I was so much of a head down through college, you know, pre-med work, do my thing. I was a workaholic getting the job done, servicing work service. And I didn't, I didn't focus on expanding relationships. Right. Yeah. My whole thing was, I'll just, I just, I I can outwork anybody. I'll win by just outworking. Okay. You know, so, and it wasn't until later probably I would, I'm gonna give you my guess, probably until I was in my mid thirties, until I realized that relationships are really, really important. And had I known that earlier, I think it would've benefited me in a lot of ways.

Yeah, that's great. I always like, I always like to ask about mentorship and I, I have another quote it, and it's from you. You said, if you are fortunate enough to find mentors who are older, experienced, and you respect, that's wonderful. Recognized very early on that you are the dumbest one in the room, not the smartest one in the room. So, you know, building a little bit after off of your last, what you just said a moment ago, you know, did you have mentors? You know, how useful were they? What do you, do you encourage finding a mentor?

Yeah, so I'm the luckiest person in the world because I didn't have a mentor. Okay. I effectively had four. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And I, and I, I mean, real mentors. Okay. One of 'em has passed away and one of them, you know, quite well, which is Gino, I consider him one of my mentors. And thank God he came into my life. He's been a wonderful person. But I had three other gentlemen that I had met. You know, first one I met when, right after college when I was 22 years old, who to this day, and his name is Neil, who I has been like just a wonderful person. He's helped me along the way. And, you know, I said another story that he, and, and he introduced me, another gentleman, his name is Ron, who was like, who was 88 years old now, and who being a mentor to this day.

And then another gentleman, his name was Bob, who since passed away, who was actually a fa, a friend of my father's. My father passed away when I was in college, who was a friend of a family friend who was a mentor also. So, you know, these were just, these, these men in my life that, you know, I would go to and ask questions and they would ask me questions and, you know, and it wasn't just, wasn't just only about business, not just about life and how you approach things and what's important and priorities and challenging me and, you know, so I was just so lucky to have that. Yeah.

Did you seek them out or? No. Did so. Okay. Did was

It was, it happened,

It just happened, but you were paying attention. And then how did you cultivate the relationships?

You know, that's, that's a, that's a good question. You know, I don't know if I were to think back on, it's probably just being responsive and Yeah. You know, and being humble and saying, Hey Neil, I'm looking at this thing. What do you think? Oh my, I totally screwed this up. You know what, yes. What do you think? Or, and then what's really fortunate, I mean, particularly Ron is one of the gentlemen who, who helped me with the apartment complex. I told you that. Yeah. They built, he, he actually took me under his wing. He actually, you know, really, it was probably weigh him more than me.

Interesting.

Yeah. He would call me a ton of times and just check in with me and what's going on and how you doing and what about this and what about that, what's happening here? What's happening there? So he, he was more proactive with me, almost like a surrogate father. Wow. That he, you know, so that was very blessed that he did that. So that's why I say I'm just lucky that that all happened. You know, that's very serendipitous, you know,

To him. And so I mentioned earlier, must these must dos that we talk about, and one of them is get feedback from customers and clients early and often. And you say, at Saxy we thrive on feedback to this day. And one of the things I noticed when I was doing some preparation for this is 350 employees. Your email is right where your profile is on the website and you're inviting people to contact you, customers, clients, et cetera. Who, whoever else may be perspective and my, and my cell phone and cell. No, I didn't even see that. Okay. I didn't notice I overlooked that. So talk about the importance of this.

Yeah. Well, so we say we actually, Erica, we have five obsessions. Okay. And it's funny you mentioned it. One of them is feedback. And we tell everybody, we are obsessed with feedback, obsessed with it. And it's not just from your customers. So we say, who is your customers? Everybody's your customer, your team member's, your customer, your vendor's, your customer, your customer's, your customer. If you are not begging for feedback, like asking for it in a true, sincere, humble way, how do you know what's going on? You know, think about it, you know, I like to do sports analogies. You know, if a basketball player or a football player, all they do out there at practice all day long, and no one is telling 'em to improve or giving 'em feedback and say this better, that better. Well, they're never gonna improve how what we do same thing over and over again.

And it, it kind of surprises me that think about anybody who's great at what they do, they got great at it because they were coached, they were supported, you know, somehow that happened. Yeah, okay. It came from other people. So if you don't open up your world in your mind for that feedback, and, and it, and it actually goes back to one of our core values that everyone in our organization, which is, you know, strive for excellence by constantly raising the bar. That's one of our core values. What that really means is if you're not somebody who wants to raise the bar and get better and better and better, well then you can't be part of our organization. Yeah. So it's that same concept. And if you don't have that, you know, you're not gonna, you don't want feedback if you don't want to get better. Right. You wanna get better at something, you want feedback.

And, and you also said at some point ask more questions and do a lot more listening. The old saying is, I never learned anything while I was talking. And you said you learned that at an early age. Yes.

Yeah. Well, actually I, yes. And I love that. 'cause I, I tell people it all the time, but the other thing I say, there's, there's one word in the English language is the most important word, which is the word why. Right. You have to have curiosity. Yeah. So somebody tells you something, do it this way, why? And then they say, because of this. And you say why? And then just keep asking why, because that's how you learn and grow. If you just ask why I learned, I really learned that from, from Neil, one of my mentors. The mentors, every time I would ask him a question, he would never answer it. He would ask, he would turn it into a question back to me.

That's good.

Good. Okay. That's

A good mentor.

It used to drive me crazy. Sure. I mean, I'd say, Neil, just tell me what you think. Right. And he would never to this day. Right. He just, he would, you know, that's great.

Yeah. You know, there's different stages our businesses go through over time. And one of the things that we talk about is generating cash as early as o as early as possible. And I was thinking about, you know, your business and how cashflow worked, especially in the early days. So, you know, can you share your insights on how that was for you and how you were able to manage and generate cash?

Yeah. It's really hard at the beginning. Both. Yeah. Thank you for

That.

Yeah. You have to, first of all, you have to, if you're starting from nothing and you're not, you know, I say, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, a member of Lucky sperm club. Okay. Where, you know, you're, you're don't have to work or whatever, which I was not in that position. You have to be prepared to live very poor. You, you, you have to be prepared to be poor. Okay? Yeah. And, and do that. I mean, that's just, that's just part of it. It really, it really and truly is, you gotta be like, you know, like living in the skinnier teeth there kind of a thing. Yeah. So, you know, when I started the, the ING company, I'll just say exactly what it was. I literally was fortunate enough to borrows $25,000 from the bank. I got a $25,000 bank line. I think in 60 days it was up to $25,000.

Okay. And you know, I I think it was 19 months before I took even a call it a paycheck, any money. Right. Okay. I mean, you know, I don't know, I can't tell you what it was I'd be making up if I did, you know, my guess it was hundreds of dollars at the time. But, you know, literally, I mean I was effectively working for free for that period of time. And to build what you gotta build, you have to, you have to, you have to sacrifice you absolutely. Unless, I mean, I didn't have investors. I mean my, my business all was organic, different. Some entrepreneurs will start, they'll have investors to, to capitalize a business. And I, and I will tell you that in my opinion, as you grow, if you, if you don't capitalize your business, if you don't build a balance sheet, you cannot grow and it's unsustainable and you cannot scale. So you must build a balance sheet, which means you'd have to be be very, very disciplined and sacrificed for a lot longer than you want to. 'cause otherwise all you're gonna do is build yourself a job and not a business. Yeah.

Which

Is all another conversation.

Yeah. I know. We could go off on a whole, that's a whole nother episode, actually

Another episode. Yeah.

Please take what Todd is saying to heart, and if you don't know what a balance sheet is, by the way, that is not uncommon. And I just will encourage you right now to just begin to become financially literate and that will serve you well in the long term, I promise. Now one of the things I, as I was again doing some research, I was think one of the things we talk about is staying in your personal sweet spot. And I noticed that, I think it was back in 93, according to what I have on my notes, you ventured out to California and did a job out in Universal City and even went out and did a hotel about 10, nine or 10 years after that. And I thought to myself, you know, how, how does that play into your personal sweet spot? Especially as a company? You know, you, you mentioned you were in the Detroit, Michigan, Ann Arbor area, but here you were out in California, you know, doing that, or you went from doing other kinds of things like apartments to a hotel. Yeah. So can you talk a little about a bit about that?

Yeah, I mean it's, I mean, it comes down to one word or two words. It's risk and confidence. Right. You know, so, you know, you gotta be willing to take risk and you have to have confidence that somehow you're gonna figure it out. And I'll admit, in most of those cases going into it, I didn't necessarily have any idea how I was going to do it. You know? But my confidence, whether it be in myself or other people that I had working with me, is that we're gonna figure it out. You know, we're going to, as I said, whether it be outwork at the other people or we're gonna dig deep and yeah, we're gonna ask a lot of questions. And you know, I, I'll never forget which kind of, kind of this, this will, I think tie to it is remember one of my early team members, his name is Jeff, which to this now he's one of my partners, actually, lemme move over 25 years.

Amazing. Very early in our career. And he came in, he said, I don't know anything about the electrical. I don't know anything about plumbing. You know, what do I do? I said, ask the electrician, just, you see some of the drawings, you know what it is, electrical. Just pick up the phone and call Sparky and say, Hey, I'm looking this thing, and I'm looking at sheet E five. Could you explain that to me? You know, just be humble and ask the people who are experts. So, you know, some people think that you're, you can't, you should think you should know everything. It's the exact opposite. Just ask. So I give a lot of presentations and training and I, yeah, they kind of say, I don't know, this may be politically incorrect, but I really don't care. I'd say there's something about on the y chromosome that which men have, by the way, those of you that took genetics, we have y chromosomes, women don't. On the y chromosome, it's somewhere it says that you're not allowed to say, I don't know. It's like, it's like it's somewhere in that you have to know, right? If you don't have a y chromosome, you're allowed to say that. Right. So I tell particularly our men, I say it's okay to say, I don't know, let me find out. That's great. Right? So just having that, just, just do your homework, ask all the questions and dig deep. And that's what it comes down to.

Right. And you know, I wanted to end with this because your culture is, you're an award, you have an award-winning culture, and your core values are so clear. And, you know, this is another one of the key components that we talk about. And so when did you incorporate core values and how have they played out for you? All

Right. So first of all, one thing as, as you probably know quite well in the whole e o s program and stuff like that, is we did not decide what our core values were. We discovered our core values. Okay, yes. I use the analogy that, you know, Einstein did not, you know, you know this, you know, designed the theory relativity, he discovered it. Okay. We discovered our core values, what they already are, just had to find out what they were. And that was in 2003 through a process we did with Gino, Gino Wickman, who kind of introduced to the concept. And it was a whole, a whole day session we went through, as I'm sure you, and hopefully some of your, your listeners are aware of. And to this day, we established those in 2003, our four core values. And that one word has changed in 20 years. It is exactly the same. We've never, you know, in every quarter we review it and we ask ourselves, I would, do we, do we hire and fire? Do we live this and breathe this every day? And as our team members are breathing it every single day, and if the answer's gotta be yes. So it's, it's biblical.

And so at what stage would you see an entrepreneur, a kind of an earlier stage business? When's a good time to discover your core values?

That's a great question. I don't think I know the answer, but I'll tell you what I think the answer might be. Is that you have to have enough critical mass of people, right? It doesn't have to be 50 people, maybe it's 10, maybe it's five, maybe it's 20. And that you can have enough to see kind of what are you attracting? What, what, what, what is your world? And if it feels right, and can you say, all right, these five people that are here at this company really exemplify who we are, not what we do not, I always say it's nothing to do with the what, you know, what you do. You might be, you know, whatever consultants for building bridges. Okay, what, that's what you do. It's a relevant what you do. It's the who. So these five people really exemplify who we are. I relate to them as the, you know, principal or founder or whatever you want to call it. And we just, I can be friends with these people because we just kind of think the same and we have the same core. Now you can say, I have something here. Now let me discover what they are and put words to it. But you can't sit alone and say, oh, I want them to be A, B, C, and D. 'cause they're not gonna be real.

That's so great. Thank you for that, Todd. And thank you for taking the time to chat with me today. I know how busy you are. So it just means the world to me. Well, we,

I love what you guys are doing and what you and your partners have done, have, have helped me for decades. And so I love to be able to, to share and give back and, and also hopefully other people that you are touching can leverage what you guys have created and do great things for great people all over the place.

Thanks Todd. Yeah. And to all the amazing entrepreneurs listening today, as always, I greatly appreciate you spending time with us and I wish you all much love and gratitude.