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 Mike Sullivan. Mike built his career building advertising agencies. After spending his early career working for large ad agencies with large clients, his interest shifted to building and growing smaller agencies. As the president of Hadler Sullivan Law, Mike's talent for Business Development helped the agency win recognition from Adweek Magazine as the hottest shop in the Southwest for two consecutive years. As the leader of Loomis, Mike uses strong company culture to help drive growth and distinction for the agency. The company has been recognized as a best place to work nine consecutive years by both the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Business Journal. Loomis also won small Agency of the year recognition from Advertising Age magazine. His experience using company culture as a key component of brand building is the topic of his book, the Voice of the Underdog, how Challenger Brands Create Distinction by Thinking Culture Burst. Mike is a lifelong motorcycle enthusiast, enjoys traveling near and far, and he loves his Texas a and m. Aggie football for Mike Nirvana is participating in any of these activities with his family. There were many nuggets of wisdom during our chat, and I know you are going to enjoy this conversation with Mike Sullivan.

Mike, it's so great to see you today, and I'm just so grateful 'cause I know how busy you are. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me for this podcast.

No, I'm delighted to do it. Thanks for asking.

Awesome. Well, you know, for those that are listening, they know I always like to start with a quote, so I'm gonna read you a quote and I just love to hear kind of what comes to mind for you once I'm done with it. So it goes like this, if we ever want to move from bosses to leaders or from superiors to mentors, we have a real obligation to look for burnout both in ourselves and in our staffs. If it's us, we need to put on our own oxygen mask first and make sure we are not leading from a place of exhaustion, insecurity, and fear. And if we see the signs in our friends and colleagues, it's incumbent on us to step in to help. And that is from you, actually, that's a quote that you wrote, and so it was back in 2019, so I don't expect that you'd remember it, but maybe Wow. Wow. What comes to mind for you?

Well, you know, that, that, no wonder it resonated. I'll say that it really resonates deeply. I I just think that leadership really is all about awareness and self-awareness and you know, especially in the entrepreneurial world, we do get burned out. You know, we do get run down, and the people that we're trying to lead, they get burned out and run down too. And just being present to that, checking in with them is, is really important. And, and starting with yourself, you know, I, I think leadership is an inside job and it starts with yourself. It's about building that awareness and, and trying to stay tuned into what's going on around you. You know, I think that's where it all starts. So I guess that would be my response to my quote. Great.

Did you know that was your quote, by the way?

I, you know, I did, honestly, I That's so

Great. So I love it. I, I got the feeling you, when you said that, when I was listening to it, it, it sounded really like it was resonating. And there you go. So you had some wisdom way back then, and you still have a lot more that I wanna learn about. And we always like to talk about kind of the early days and entrepreneurial, the entrepreneurial story. So can you talk a little bit about your entrepreneurial story and how you got into this whole thing?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I, I always felt like an entrepreneur. I, I always wanted to run my own thing, build my own thing, create my own thing. When I say my own thing, I, I'm absolutely keenly aware that I didn't do any of this myself. And, you know, this whole self main sort of myth is, is just that a myth. I, I've had just a great, a whole lot of, for good fortune, good luck, and just wonderful co-conspirators, you know. But I think going all the way back to really my youth, you know, I've, I've, I knew that I didn't want to work for somebody. I always wanted to work with somebody. I think I'm a great partner. I'm not a great employee, and I just had that sense of myself, even at a, at a, a very young age. When I got outta school, I knew I wanted to be in advertising.

I was attracted to the field, but I didn't, I didn't know enough to start my own agency at the time, for sure. And so I felt like, there used to be a radio show host, his name was Bruce something or other. I used to listen to him all the time. He said, you know, if you wanna run your own business, go, you know, if you wanna run a restaurant, you wanna career, start a restaurant, go work in a restaurant, learn all the mistakes, you know, do do the cycles. And so I jumped off and I started my career to, at, at the time was the largest ad agency in the southwest called Tracy Locke. It's, it's a smaller version of itself now. And again, i I confirmed almost immediately, gosh, I don't like working for people, but I need to learn this business. I left there pretty quickly after about nine months and joined a much smaller agency that was very entrepreneurial and real go-go.

And I was playing sideline to sidelined. I learned a ton. I loved it. And that's where I really did confirm for myself that, gosh, someday I really wanna run my own thing. And, and also, Rob, this is important in the advertising agency business. I mean, it is just known for instability. You know, accounts come, accounts go, people come, people go. And while I was attracted to the business, and I love marketing and advertising, that aspect of it really didn't appeal to me. You know, I didn't wanna be job hunting and, and fired and let go for things that I didn't do. And so I really realized early on that, man, I need to get to the top and I need to, to create some stability for myself. You know, if you want it, you gotta create it for yourself. From that small agency, I realized, hey, I, I, I still need some more reps with a, a, a big brand agency.

So I left there, went back up to my home state, my original home state of Michigan, and went to work at j Walter Thompson in Detroit, working on Ford and Goodyear. And again, loved that experience, but also confirmed, gosh, I'm not a big agency guy, you know. And so after a couple years there, I decided to bounce back down to Dallas, back down to Texas. And I took a real flyer with my career at the time, you know, I left this big global brand and I joined a little four person shop in Dallas named David Hadler Associates. And I thought I would try my hand at, at business development. And you know, there, there's two functions in, in most businesses, it's, it's running the business that you have. And so being an advertising practitioner, but then you've gotta go win business, and that's a very different function, you know, that's a sales function.

And it turned out I was pretty good at it. I had good instincts around it. My dad was a great salesman, and I think just sort of living with and listening to him benefited me. And I started to win new business at a really young age. So at like 26, I was winning new accounts for this little agency, 26, 27. And we grew that shop over the course of five years from five people to about 125 people. And it was exciting. You know what? I made all kinds of mistakes, which we could talk about, but I learned all kinds of great lessons, and it was a lot of fun. And I, I also learned what kind of company that I, I, I wanted to build, well, my name was on the door, you know, the, the guy who started it was like, man, I don't wanna keep this kid, so we'll call it Hadler Sullivan.

And, and Ewing was the, the creative guy. I was president at 28, you know, which was pretty heady for a kid at, you know, 28 to be president of 125 person firm that was growing and blowing. We were named Adweek's, how to Shop in the Southwest two years in a row. But I didn't have any equity. And this is, this is the end, the big lesson that I took away from there. It's like, you know, it's, it's great to go build something, but, you know, make sure you get, you know, a stake in, in what you're building. And just real quickly then I I, I wound up leaving there. I was recruited to a much larger firm, an Omnicom agency, and again, confirmed the fact that, gee, I don't love, you know, the big agency brands did that for a couple years. And then a friend of mine introduced me to my partner, Paul Loomis, here at the Loomis Agency 22 years ago.

And Paul was desperate for someone to come in and help him build an ad agency. He's a musician by background, had built this wonderful studio, little side story on Paul. He's the guy who, who discovered Vanilla Ice, you know, who was then Rob Van Winkle Ice Ice Baby. And he produced his to the Extreme. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. And so Paul, Paul made a little bit of money on that, and he's like, man, I'm gonna go build my, my passion project. And he built the studio here that is the nicest studio between here in LA and here in Nashville, at least, it was circa 1999. And there's a lot of great competition now, but, but his unit economics changed dramatically. He went from paying $3,000 a month at this little studio. He had, you know, across town in a, in a not too great area to you, about $30,000 a month.

And he's like, oh my gosh. And so we joke today that I, I built an ad agency to support his music habit, and, and that's what I did. And so over the last 20 years, that's been the journey, you know, come in and I, I made some mistakes, I've learned some lessons, and I applied them, I made more mistakes here, learned more lessons. It's, it's a big journey. But, you know, 20 years later, we're about 65 people. We've got a, a great regional, semi national reputation. We, and the thing I think I'm most proud of is that we're a best places to work environment. And we've been awarded that, that distinction by the Dallas Morning News for nine years in a row. So, yeah, that, that's kind of the, the, the snapshot of the journey. Robin, that's

Great. Thank you. And I love, you know, we talk about going out and learning from others and learning from their mistakes, maybe sometimes before we do our entrepreneurial leap. And you did a lot of that in the early days, and, but I'm excited to hear about some of the mistakes and the successes along the way. Before I ask you, though, I know you went to college, we talked a little bit about that before we started recording, and you know, this is a thing nowadays that a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to decide, should I even go to college? And I'm just curious, you know, what, what's your thoughts on that for yourself and the experience that you had? What did it do for you?

Yeah, well, for, for me, it helped me kind of grow up and mature. I was real young when I graduated high school, you can't do this anymore. My mom started me very early, and so I graduated at 17. I was always a little bit behind, so, so it helped me mature. It also, I, I wasn't a really great high school student, I'm gonna be honest. I mean, I, I, I think Gino talks about graduating with a 2.03 or something like that. I was maybe a, just a click up, but not much. I just, you know, I was more into dirt bikes and racing motocross and all that in, in college or in high school than, than really studying. So, so I, I kind of got my act together in college. I needed the time to just sort of cure a little bit. I was a journalism major at Texas a and m I loved that at the time.

They had a great journalism program. I'm a creative person. I'm a writer. It let me hone my craft, it let me learn grammar, which is kind of crazy. But I used, went into college not really having a great handle on the basics. Amazing. Yeah. And so it, it really, it helped me in that respect. Some, some kids are further along, you know, but I, I do, I do think you need a little time to mature and, and, and make some mistakes and just learn a little more about who you are. So for me, that's what I did. I, I can't now, you know, back then when I went to a and m my first semester, I, I, I think it was 15 credit hours, and my tuition was $214. Now it's such a ridiculous, and I don't know what we're doing in this country, and I can go off on a tear on that.

I think we'd want a more educated populace, but we're, we're creating such barriers to education. It's just crazy. So I don't know if the ROIs is, is, is, you know, what it used to be that, that's a hard one to, to answer. Depends on what you want to do. You know, if you wanna start an agency, you want to get into advertising. Man, one of the most successful guys in our field, Alex Bogusky, you know, he, he graduated from, I think it was Miami High School, and went straight in. You know, he is a great art director, and they built a terrific shop. And there's lots of the, I I think the advertising industry is one place where you can navigate it without, you know, any academic credentials. And that's, it's pretty cool that way. Yeah. So I, that's, that's an interesting question. Yeah. I don't have a clear answer on it, but that path worked for me. And also, I'm not sure I would've gotten a crack at the, the big agencies that I wanted to get into at the time. I mean, they, you know, that's, you gotta know what are the requirements to, to get the experience that you want to get. Tracy Locke wouldn't have hired me for sure. The other agencies I was looking at wouldn't have, Jay Walter wouldn't have the little shop that I went to might have, but, you know, hard to say.

Okay. So now when, once you got with your partner and you have your own firm now, can you, we always like to hear the story of the nightmare and the dream? Oh,

Yeah. So

Share 'em both if you have 'em top of mind. Well,

Yeah, yeah. I'll start, I'll start with the Nightmare. So, okay. Yeah. I got over here and, and remember I'm a journalism major, so I, I don't have the, the, I at the time didn't have the strongest financial background. I really didn't understand a balance sheet. I didn't understand financials the way I really probably needed to. And I got over here and it became apparent very quickly that Paul didn't have enough money to pay me. Really. I mean, he was going backwards in a hurry. And so I, you know, at the time when I left, I had two young kids. My, my son was maybe two, and my daughter was three. And my wife was, you know, she was a nurse, but she was taking care of the kids. And man, you know, I I, my dad at the time said, Mike, why don't you start your own agency?

Well, that was the reason I didn't, I didn't have any money and I had a lot of obligations and responsibilities. So it's easier, I think, to catch a train in motion, which is what I felt like I was doing all kinds of opportunity. But when I got in, and I, and I started to sort out the financials and realized how underwater we were, man, Rob, that was a wake up call. I, and Paul, Paul and I talked about this conversation on occasionally, but I went into him, I said, dude, you, you can't afford me. I need to move on. And I had some options at the time, and I really was thinking, wow, I need to go back to Omnicom. They wanted to send me to Connecticut to run one of their offices. And I was, those, those opportunities were still there. And we had a, a, a great conversation.

He had a little investment from a friend and, and he said, dude, I can afford you for about a year. I was like, oh boy, you know, that's, we gotta get busy hustling new business and, and really rocking and rolling. And thankfully we did. I, I, that was what I brought to the table was that business development Yeah. Talent at the time. One of the, one of the crazy things though is that he had this, this little place at the time, I think there were about 15, maybe 18 people. And one of his, his big client was a car dealership, which, you know, it, it wasn't a great client at the time. And Paul didn't really know how to organize an ad agency. It was not set up traditionally. It was really set up like a car dealership with commissioned salespeople and just all kinds of craziness going on.

And so I went out and we won a really tasty new piece of business called Community Coffee out of Baton Rouge, so I could pitch and win business holding that business with another, another story. So three months later, they were gone, you know, which was really, and, and we, that happened several times. We started to develop this little reputation locally of this agency that seemed to be able to win business, but boy, they lose it quick. So look at what they're doing because we'll, we'll catch the rebound, you know, you know, that kind of thing. Kind of waiting one, a big regional co-op of the Dairy Queen business. And gosh, six months into that, I got a memo about this long from the, the president of the, the co-op saying, you gotta cure all these things, or the business is going away. Well, long and short of it, we did cure all those things. We became a much better agency. We, we held that business for about 13 years the first time. And, and we just started to build a roster. And, and as we built a roster, we were able to, to recruit the, the right kind of talent to help us handle and, and scale the business. So went from scrambling to, to scaling and, and yeah. You know, that's

Kind of one of the things that I'm noticing in that story amongst many things, is getting feedback from your customers early and often. You know, we talk about that as one of the must dos in your business. And, you know, you had, you got the business, you messed it up some way, you learned you got better next time, et cetera, et cetera. And then I think it was the Dairy Queen group that you were able to make that one. Right. Right.

So,

Huge.

That's a, it's a, it's a really good point, Robin. I think, you know, sometimes we're afraid to ask for that feedback. It's like, let's not stir the pot. The, the pot is stirred, whether you know it or not, you need the information. Yeah. And you gotta lean into it. And so while in, in the Dairy Queen example, I wasn't exactly soliciting it in, in that case, that did become a, a sort of a, a core practice, you know, on an annualized basis at a very, at the very least, we're, we're formally asking our clients how we're performing. But man, if you're staying close to your clients and you're having real conversations with them, you know, you stay in the discussion constantly. And our, our folks all do that. So, and, and you know, that's a, a big part of our method. We, we tend to hold our clients something like two and a half, almost three times the industry average and, and our team members as well. So that's a, a concrete metric that creates stability in the agency. And again, you know, going back to what I was saying earlier, I like stability in business. We don't like the ups and the downs and the air pockets and the crazy stuff. You know, I've got some stories around that too. And yeah, this is better, much better to, yeah,

Much better. Yeah. Yeah. And then what about the story of the dream?

Yeah, the, the dream was, you know, always to, to build a, a well-respected top agency, certainly in this market and regionally. And, and we've really done that in 2016, advertising agency recog, or I'm sorry, advertising Age magazine, recognized us as the best small shop in, in the Southwest, which is great. That was a nice accolade. We've got, you know, shelves full of, you know, trophies for our creative work. We have creative people who want to come work here, account people who wanna come work here. You know, I, I've set, you know, we, we built, I've built with the team here, what I think is sort of a, just a beautiful little company. You know, we've got our values all really well articulated. I've got this little purpose book. You know, we, we've taken the time to really lay this stuff down. We operate on what we call a stakeholder model, where we're, you know, we're not, everything is not in service of the share, the, the shareholders.

It's in service of all of our stakeholders. Our team members are a key stakeholder. My aspiration for them is that they have what I call peak career experiences that, I mean, when I hold this up at we, we have quarterly blueprint meetings where we celebrate our work and talk about the agency. When I hold that up, I talk to our team about, look, this doesn't mean that we're perfect or we always get it right, but we've got a target. We know what we're aiming at. We know what our values are. We know what, we know what we're aspiring to on behalf of all our stakeholders. We know what our mission is. And so we know when we're hitting it, and we know when we're missing it. And so we're, we, we tell our folks and they do hold us accountable to this. This is something we are co-creating.

And it's always in the process of creation. So I, I think the dream side of it is we built this really cool little agency that people love working at and hanging around and, and we're, you know, people are earning really good livings and having, they're, they're building great careers. I also just love it when our team members, when they decide, Hey, I've, I've gotten enough of what I can get here, and they want to go on, they go on to just great positions with, you know, really nice, you know, wonderfully successful agencies around the country. So that's really satisfying. Yeah. You know, just the impact on other humans, basically.

You know, one of the things we talk about is the six essential traits of an entrepreneur. And I'm curious on your feedback when I read them to you, if you feel you have the six essential traits. Oh, boy.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah, I hope so. So they are, they are visionary, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker, and responsible. How does that land for you?

Yeah, I feel like every one of those, you know, the, it is funny, the visionary one, I, I sort of, I, I, I definitely am the visionary for the company. I, I hold visionaries up to as such, like, wow, you know, Steve Jobs and know some of these other, you know, luminaries. I just think that's, it's such an aspiration. So I'm a visionary in my own context for sure. In terms of what I want to build here. Yeah. That's the one I kind of swallow on and go, wow, am I a visionary? And it calls me into something, you know, it calls me into a great responsibility, which I really feel like I have a huge responsibility on behalf of everybody who's dedicating their careers and their lives and their daily toil, you know, to this place. And so that's the one that I go, Hmm, yeah. Risk taker, you know, grew up racing, motocross, you know, little, little risk taking gloves,

Still ride motorcycles. Yeah.

And now it's mountain bikes and Okay. They can be more dangerous than dirt bikes and Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. And, and every one of the other ones sort of, sort of hit me. Yeah. Right. Well, you know,

What about mentors in your life? Have they been, have you had mentors? And if so, have they been important to you? And how have you worked with them?

Yeah, you know, one guy comes to mind, the guy that I, I went to work for at, at j Walter Thompson, a guy named Robert Toussant. And, and I just had breakfast with him about a week ago. He now lives here in Dallas. Man, he was, it was the hardest interview I ever did. And I walked outta there going, man, I didn't get this job. You know, he's just like, grilling me on these questions. And they called him the cowboy at j Walter. 'cause he was soldier. He had long hair and he wore boots. And this is back in the suit and tie days, Robert. He, he was definitely a, a mentor. You know, just everything that he accomplished in the business, just his philosophy about life and about business always resonated with me. Did I like everything that he had to say? No. But by and large, he became just a great friend. And I, and I think a real influence, and I think that's important, you know, in life. So yeah. Mentors and just people I look up to. Yeah. Plenty of those.

Yeah. And then, you know, you, you showed the book, which you called the Purpose book.

Yeah. This, this

Little book. Yeah. And for those of you that are listening, yeah. Mike's got this great book, and if you, if you go on YouTube, you can actually see it. Yeah.

It's on our website too. I think we've got a P D F on our website. Oh,

Okay. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. So, you know, can you talk more about that and how that relates to what you do with the team? And is, is this part of the, you know, the communication of the vision and what the Yeah. The values, all that kinda Right on.

Yeah, right on. So, and, and so this is something that I, I do, I did for our company, and I do for other companies as, as well. Our clients have invited me in to help them through this process. But it starts with your values, you know, getting really clear on the things that are important for you as an organization. And, and that really starts individually as well. And then from there you sort of build out your vision. What are you trying to create? You know, which, which feeds into your positioning, you know, for in, in our industry, you'd think that ad agencies would be really good at, at positioning themselves, but we don't really eat our own dog food. We're, we're great at, at giving this guidance and, and advice to clients. And we don't do it for ourselves. And so many ad agencies try to differentiate on capabilities.

Look, we, we all do the same thing. Some variation of that. So we struck on a positioning around challenger branding you about, gosh, 15 or 16 years ago. And it really resonated with our clients. Our clients are all challenger brands. We're a perfect size agency for challenger brands. Challenger brands aren't number one in the category. They're gen, generally speaking, every following brand. It goes a little deeper than that. And I, I won't get into that right now, but it spells all of that out. And, and, you know, tracking back to the values, values are really important for helping you make decisions, you know, what you stand for. And really importantly, Rob, what you stand against. It's helped us make really important client choices. We don't take every client that comes knocking on the door. There was a time back in the day when I was scrambling that, yeah, you know, if you had a budget and you wanted us, we're, we're your agency.

We can be a little more discriminating now. And it's really important based on our values, based on what's important to us and, and our team members. You know, so we, it you we're very careful about who we invite into our organization, not just from a, a team member standpoint. And notice I use the word team member. 'cause I hate employee. I never wanted to be an employee. I don't know why. Right? So this just, so this is my thing, but also from a client standpoint. So, you know, what kind of people are they? Let's start with that first and foremost. Are they respectful? Do they think that we have value to add? Do they treat us kindly? And we know that, you know, it's, it's kind of a war out there, you know, in the world of marketing and advertising, it's very competitive. But are these people who keep their, their heads?

We don't, we don't, you know, all the bad behaviors we, we just don't tolerate. And at one time, you know, we did, sadly. And there's no way as a leader that you can, you can invite sort of that toxicity into your organization and then tell your folks, Hey, this is a, this is a wonderful culture and we're, we're, we really are concerned about you and your mental health and your wellbeing. It just doesn't, those two things don't add up. And so you have to make very difficult choices. And we have over the years, you know, I always, I can count on several clients that would've added significant billing to the agency had we brought them in, but they would've added, you know, things that we just didn't wanna incorporate into our culture. And again, values can help you steer towards categories of business that you wanna work with, steer away from categories and so on and so forth.

Yeah. You know, in the early days, I'm curious your experience, which one of the must doss that another must do that we talk about is you have to work hard, really hard. Oh,

Yeah, yeah. So this is interesting. So, you know, some, and I'm a man of a certain age, you know, I'm 58. And so, you know, you know what it's like in the eighties when you come outta school, it's like, if you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday. You know,

Kind thing.

You know? And, and, and there was, I'm not saying it was healthy, but people sort of wore their, you know, their hard work as a badge. And yes,

That's

True. My friends who went for the big six accounting firms back at the time, they were the big six. I don't know what they're now, you know, they were 80 hour work weeks and all that crazy stuff. But, but it's true. The harder you work, the luckier you get. That's something my dad used to say within limits. You know, we opened this thing with a quote about burnout, man, you gotta balance it. You've gotta figure out what's right for you. But yeah, you know, I mean, you gotta hustle or you'll get out hustled. And then at a certain point when you build in the scaffolding, you build in the structure and you've got some rhythm to your machine, you can, you can sort of ease back. But there is a go-go hustle sort of phase to, to building any business. And man, if you wanna do it, you, you know, you might not be an entrepreneur. I don't know. Right.

No, you gotta get out. I mean, I, I think in one of the gifts that you, you were so fortunate to have is this ability to go do business development. Yeah. And a lot of entrepreneurs, maybe like your partner, from what I'm understanding, you know, they, they are great at the craft maybe, right? But getting out there and selling it is kind of the stuck. And so talk about that perfect match when you have two people like that come together to help grow the

Business. That that's a really important point. So if you're gonna partner with somebody, make sure that you understand what, what, what you're each bringing to, to the game. And make sure that you, you know, respect one another and stay out of each other's lane, you know, to as, as much as you can. Paul is great at the craft of music development. He's a pretty good ad guy too, but music composition man, that is his jam. And he's, he's written and produced more jingles and you can shake a stick at, you know, many of them, you know, without singing 'em, I'm not gonna do that to you. But what he needed was somebody who was good at bd, you know, and, and somebody who could actually build and structure an agency, which is both those things I'm pretty good at. Now, I will say that when I got here, there was one young lady at the time, Julie Dusik, who's my partner today, who was just like a diamond and she didn't have a lot of formal training. This was her second job. She'd only, you know, she came right out of school and had a, a quick job and then jumped over here. But man, Julie today is, she's our operator. You know, I, I I I I you guys in the e o s model, you've got visionary and operator. Rob, tell me if I'm getting that

Visionary integrator

In integrator. That's right. I, I always mix that up because she's my c o o partner. I mean, she doesn't miss a detail and she's a, a student of the craft. She's awesome. I could not, there's no way this could be done without, without Julie by my side. And, and as we talk about next step, it's like her timing in terms of what she wants to do and when she wants to go is really important to me. 'cause I'm not doing this without, without Julie. So finding, finding great partners is really important. And then really being clear on what you're bringing to the party and what the others bringing to the party is, is critically important too. You know, getting good around that.

You know, we talk about these different stages of business and you had mentioned at the outset with Loomis, you know, where your partner said, oh my God, I can't even, I don't know if I could pay you. You know, can you talk about like, the focus of generating cash flow when you started to really notice that and how important it is overall as somebody who's an early stage entrepreneur?

Okay. Well, I noticed it pretty quick because about two months after I got here, he was writing paychecks out of his personal bank account. So, and, and, and his personal bank account was getting really going

Down. It was dwindling. So,

Yeah. So it was, you know, I always, the, I don't know why the Napoleon Dynamite with Uncle Rico throwing footballs over the mountain. I mean, I just felt like I was scrambling just trying to hit anything. And we were, we were winning enough projects to kind of keep the lights on month over month. And then we just sort of began to catch catch wind and the sail started to fill. We didn't earn a decent profit for probably four or five years. And, and then it was sporadic. And, and only since really I, I'd say in the last decade did we start to become really nicely stable and profitable. And, and frankly, that was after hitting a huge air pocket too. About 10 years ago I had I think 50, 55 people working for us. And in the span of 90 days, I lost 50% of my top line through no fault of our own. And you talk about an existential crisis, you know, I mean, wow, it's all fun and games as you're building and going, but you know, when you got personal guarantees, which I did, you know, you've got money in it, which I did. It's, it's a, it's a story. It creates a lot of stress. Yeah. So,

And can you talk about the impact that a business like yours can have when your makeup of your total business is with, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 accounts? Yeah.

Hmm. You're talking about the concentration issue? Yeah. So it's wonderful to go win a big new account. And for us, back in the day, I think it was the Texas Dairy Queen account, the very first one that we won. And I mean, from the jump there, probably 40% of our revenue, maybe, maybe as much as 50. At one point, I was able to work that down by pulling in new business to about 25%. But, you know, not still we had a concentration issue. Yeah. You know, and if they leave, you know, that, that, that creates a, a real problem. So it's wonderful to win new business, but it, it, you gotta double down on continuing to win new business. And this is the other thing I think that happens to entrepreneurs a lot, and it did to me early. It's like, wow, we went out and won this great new piece of business, guess what?

Now it requires all my talent to keep it and hold it. Guess what? I don't have time for now new business. So it's like this, woo, it's this crazy, you know, it, those were tough days because, you know, I, I felt like I needed to run the business I needed to be, to be, to be working in the business, but I also needed to be working on the business. And those are two just very different things. And so we did, we, we developed a, a concentration issue and I had 50% of my top line revenue tied up in three pieces of business. Dairy Queen at the time was 25%, had another brand called Logan's Roadhouse, which is now, I think defunct. They were 15%. And then there was another regional mattress chain called sleep experts that we really helped build. And they were 10%, and again, through no fault of our own, and it hardly matters why it happens, right.

It all went away. And from that was the, you know, I, I'd put such effort and energy into building this. I had kids going into college. I had personal guarantees out the yin yang. I mean, it was just the most stressful time in my life. And it, and it did, it, it caused a legitimate mental health crisis for me, you know? Yeah. Real world. Thankfully I was able to come through that and y you know, got back to my game and just started to hustle hard and, and did win new business. And frankly, we rebuilt much better, you know, than, than we were went leading up to that. Right. We come back a lot stronger. We don't have the concentration issue at all anymore, which is really nice. You can sleep better. Yeah. Taught me a lot of lessons and, you know, I, I also developed some, some real personal practices to kind of, to help smooth me out around that, you know, you, you make meaning a little differently. It's, it's one big journey, you know? Yeah. Place has taught me a lot.

You know, there's, there's different stages we talk about again, and one another one is changing to plan B, c, D. So I'm hearing that as you're speaking there were, there were things that, how you had to evolve and look at things, but thank you for bringing up the personal practices. Yeah. And I'm just curious with the practices that you have nowadays that kind of keep you in the right state of mind, looking back in the early days, had you known what you know now? Would you have had that self, you know, that, that part, would you have done that? Would you have incorporated these practices and would you have had time to even do them?

Well, 100% I would've wanted to. And knowing the benefit of them now, it's like, yeah, that's magic. The time is the issue. Because again, I had small kids, like one of my real cornerstone practices is meditation. And I, and I was never, I'm an a d d guy, you know, I'm all over the place. And so, you know, the zazen and, and some of the other traditional forms are really hard for me. But I went and I got trained in transcendental meditation. And so two times a day for 20 minutes, it's easy. And it really, it's just, it's just like magic, you know? It, it is not like, you know, take a pill and you're better, but it, it really smooths you out. Over the course of time. I walk three miles a day, it takes me at least an hour or two, about an hour and 20 minutes, generally do that in silence, or I listen to a podcast that's helpful for me, whatever. And then I'm a big mountain biker now, so I do that two to three times a week. Those three things. And there's others as well, really smooth me out. Well, when my kids were, you know, little, I didn't have a ton of time for that on the weekends, you know, my son and I used to go and, and race off road motorcycles, so that was good. But again, that was pretty intense, right. And so I was going from a competitive weekend into a competitive weekend. I, I, I was just like, go, go,

Go, go, go.

I was like wide open. And it turns out that that doesn't trend well, you know, but you couldn't tell me that at 30 and even 40, you know? Yeah.

You know, I think whatever the modality is that one finds, and, you know, I'm a meditator as well. Yeah. It's, you know, there's such magic as you say, really just in settling down for a little bit of time. Right. I don't know what it is for the listener, but, you know, meditation's been useful for Mike and I, and just that time each day to settle down Yeah. And let your body and your mind kind of catch up. Yeah.

You know, it's funny, I think people think that they, they're doing it wrong. You really can't do it wrong. That's right. And the longer you do it, it's my physician friends will, will tell me like, your automa autonomic nervous system just sort of settles on you recalibrate it completely, very much. And sometimes I'll, if I'll sit for 20 minutes, it's like the first 15 might be like, Ooh, I'm kind of all over. But that last five is just

Smooth.

Yeah. You know, isn't that

Interesting? Set you up.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Keep track. Okay. So one last question. Does d I mean, you've, you've already given a ton of advice, so no pressure, but do you have any final piece of advice or wisdom that you might give to an early stage entrepreneur?

Yeah, the, the piece of advice that I would give is to work on your personal leadership. You know, just because you employ somebody doesn't mean you're a leader. You know, you might be a boss, but who wants to be bossed, you know, think about that. You wanna be bossed. I don't want to be boss. I'd like to be led and, and thoughtfully. And you know, unless you've done some leadership training, maybe in the military, I don't know if that's, sure that's a good place to do it. Or in other, other places nobody really teaches you how to lead. And so be deliberate about that. I didn't catch onto that until gosh long into my career, probably in my late thirties, early, early forties. And it was a game changer for me. It really was for me and for my organization. So, work on your leadership and, and I think the foundational element around that, as we talked about at the beginning was, you know, really building your self-awareness. Yeah. And, and that is a, that it's not like, Hey, I have self-awareness. I'm done. Check that box. That's a constant work in progress. 'cause we can fall asleep at any given time. So continue to work on your self-awareness because when you've got more self-awareness, you have more choices and optionality. And when you have more optionality, you have more success. And, and it also brings with it a real responsibility to, to bring people along, people who aren't always seeing it the way you do. So that's, that's my, my advice. That's

Beautiful advice. Beautiful. And thank you so much, Mike, for taking the time to chat with me today. I'm just so grateful to you.

I loved it. Yeah. Thanks so much, Rob. I appreciate

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