055: Unlocking the Affluent Business Owner Market with Value Acceleration: Insights from Casey Clark

In this episode, I welcome Casey Clark, CEO of Cultivate Advisors. Casey shares valuable insights into the transformative power of focusing on enterprise value to significantly elevate a business's market position.

Journey to Business Mastery: From Paper Routes to CEO

• Explore his entrepreneurial journey from his early days managing paper routes to his leadership role at Cultivate Advisors. 
• Discover how personal experiences and challenges shaped his approach to business coaching, focusing on actionable advice rather than traditional methods.

Defining the Edge: Cultivate Advisors' Unique Approach

• Learn about the distinctive strategy of Cultivate Advisors in the crowded business coaching industry. Unlike typical coaches, he and his team offer hands-on advisory services, leveraging real-world entrepreneurial experiences to drive meaningful business growth and enhance enterprise value.

Revolutionizing Enterprise Value: Strategies for Business Growth

• He elaborates on the concept of enterprise value and its critical role in assessing a company's worth, similar to real estate valuation. 
• Casey explains how improvements in this area can significantly increase a company's market value without necessarily boosting revenue.

Key Insights for Elevating Business Value

1. Enterprise Value as a Core Metric: Unpack the importance of focusing on enterprise value rather than just revenue, with practical tips on how business owners can shift their metrics for better financial outcomes.
2. The Importance of Quality and Strategic Risk Management: Discuss the critical role of delivering high-quality products/services and managing business risks through informed decision-making and robust planning.
3. The Power of Expert Partnerships: Explore how working with specialized advisors like Cultivate Advisors can amplify your business's growth potential and facilitate smoother transitions and scalability.

Elite Growth Academy: A Convergence for Collaborative Learning

Anticipate the upcoming Elite Growth Academy in San Diego, where advanced strategies for business growth and value acceleration will be shared. It is a vital opportunity for professionals to learn, network, and collaborate.

About our Guest:
Casey Clark, CEO of Cultivate Advisors

You can learn more about his work at:
Website: https://cultivateadvisors.com/our-advisors/casey-clark/

About Your Host:  Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.

Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Million Dollar Producer Show. I'm your host, paul G McManus. Today I have a special guest, casey Clark. Casey is the CEO at Cultivate Advisors, where he helps business owners increase their enterprise value. Welcome to the show, casey.

Speaker 2: 0:53

Thanks, paul, glad to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:55

In a second. I want to ask you about who you are and how you got to where you are, but to me there's an even more fascinating question that I have to jump in with, which is what is the difference between what you do at Cultivate Advisors and the 10 million a year program business coaches that try to approach me daily on LinkedIn to help me grow my business? There's a lot of them aren't there.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Business coaching has become the new. I'm unemployed and I need to find a job and I have some corporate experience, so I'll go into business coaching and I think there's nothing wrong with that. By the way, I want everybody to eat, sleep and be merry, but it's a hard market to stand out in, no doubt, right, you've got a kind of a total addressable market of about 80,000 business coaches that are registered. You've probably got two to 300,000 that say they're a business coach on LinkedIn. When you really boil it down, there's 10 or 15 companies that have more than 10 employees on their team. We're lucky to be closer to 150 in terms of staff. So I'd say what's the difference? We're all past entrepreneurs. We've all grown and scaled companies before we came together to build this firm, and so we've ran in the seat.

Speaker 2: 2:00

We're not just a specialist in one area, we literally take the business owner, and that's why we call ourselves advisors, not coaches, because what we do is we absolutely ask the right questions to pull it out of you, but we are there to give you advice, give you actual tools to say we've been in your shoes, we know exactly what you're trying to solve. Let's do this and you'll see a completely different turn of results. We do it all in pursuit of enterprise value. So that's the scorecard of business right, like how do you keep score? How do you know if you're doing well, track your enterprise value, the and the scariest part is that 95 to 96% of business owners have no idea where they stand as it relates to enterprise value. They're too busy watching revenue and they're not watching actually the right metric. And we really helped shift that methodology for people very quickly.

Speaker 1: 2:42

There's a number of things there I want to pick up on, just to go a little bit deeper. So first of all, when you say enterprise value, what specifically is that? What does that refer to? Yeah, what's the?

Speaker 2: 2:53

company worth right. What's this business worth right? You're going to have based on your industry. There's probably a multiple that's trading either via a profit EBITDA multiple or there's going to be a revenue multiple, depending on how the industry works and the size and scale of the company could decipher which of those two categories you're going to go down. Once you understand that core data not what you've heard in the papers like actual, true data of companies that have sold then you work that back and start to understand what are all the value drivers that people discount multiples on and how are people going to perceive you in the market.

Speaker 2: 3:25

We've identified there's 24 of these kind of core value drivers and different components of the business that, if you get right, you can take a business that's doing 10 million in revenue that might be currently worth 12 million in the market and, by changing a few things and no additional growth, you might be able to sell that company for 20 million. It's no different than a house, right? It's no different than a house that has a beautiful deck. Right, it has a beautiful deck and the most amazing landscaping, but it's the same square footage of the house next to it and there's no landscaping. There's no deck that house might sell for a couple hundred thousand dollars more in the right marketplace. No different how the business is built. The quality of the business does matter and it can totally differentiate how you're doing on enterprise value and what you'll get when you go to sell the organization at some point in your life.

Speaker 1: 4:10

I guess part of my question that I want to make sure I understand and our listeners understand is that when I hear enterprise, I'm already thinking of some big corporation On the lower end of the scale. What qualifies for a business that you work with? I would imagine it goes up to any point, but what's on the bottom side? Do you take a family business, a closely held business? What qualifies as an enterprise or a company that you would work with to help them scale?

Speaker 2: 4:40

I'm so glad you asked this question, paul, because that's actually the problem is that most business owners think you have to be this big corporation to ever look at enterprise value. I'm actually going to give you our maximum. First, we really don't work with companies. Once they hit that nine figures, once they hit that 100 million and beyond, we're not needed ever. That's just not the case. We're actually predominantly working with companies between a half a million in revenue annually up to about 25 million in revenue. That's predominantly where we live and the companies that we service every day, because, again, that's actually the foundation. If we think about building a house, again, you're going to lay the foundation In those years. That's when the foundation is laid and when you can get the business in pursuit of the biggest enterprise value. And companies running a million dollars in revenue yeah, they have a certain equation for enterprise value the more you understand that you might be able to double your earnings when you go to sell it.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Awesome. That's really helpful for me because, again, when I hear the word enterprise, I'm already scared and think, okay, that doesn't apply to me and the typical businesses that I'm familiar with. But I heard you say, on the lower end, about a half million dollars of revenue and on the upper end around $20 million and really anything in between, and so there's a company that I'm guessing this might be competition, but it's just the company that I hear people talking about. I want to just frame what you do. So Value Builders is a company that I hear a lot of my clients that are either in this space or looking to get in this space a reference or a part of. How are you similar or different than Value Builders? I?

Speaker 2: 6:07

think of Value Builders as like the tools right that wealth managers or accountants and folks can license into to be able to take down to bring some of these enterprise value or value acceleration tools into the business. Nothing wrong with that, that's great. Think of us as more of the service provider that actually makes the change. You would never, as a wealth manager, you'd never go out and like purchase value builder and then also refer people to us. It just wouldn't be. We have all the tools. We give all of our tools for free to the wealth managers and accountants. I would say Value Builder is not really our competition once people find out about us because we give a lot of what they have for free and we've gotten great feedback on our stuff and I think the reason why we do that is we go here.

Speaker 2: 6:46

No, you use the tools. Bring that into your everyday conversations with these business owners to help lift you up and help you differentiate yourself. But then pull it over to us and let us do the value acceleration work when it's appropriate.

Speaker 1: 6:58

I hear you correctly, it really does take advantage of the team-based model and the virtual family office.

Speaker 1: 7:05

And just to frame this for someone who's not familiar with those terms, both of us are going to be speaking at the upcoming Elite Growth Academy in San Diego and they have a model which is called the team-based model, which typically brings together a financial advisor and accountant as a team, and then they add in the deeper resources of what they call virtual family office experts, and Casey is one of those. His company is one of those virtual family office experts. And so, just to go back to what you were saying, from my understanding of what you just shared with us, is that ultimately correct me if I don't have this right? But you're not recommending to the advisor, to the accountant, that they become the expert in this More, so that they more or less stay in their lane but become more fluent in this language because they work with these clients all the time and at the appropriate point they bring you and your team into the equation to work together collaboratively on these opportunities. That's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 8:05

Yeah, we don't have a desire to become an expert as an accountant. We don't have a desire to figure out where to tell people where to put all their extra profit or, when they do take that liquidity event, what to do with that. We lean on the wealth manager relationship, so we do have a very team approach. We're at the table with several other folks, even from what you mentioned, but I'll just take the wealth manager first and your role. Right, it's all about assets under management. Right, it's all about the portfolio size bill. Every wealth manager knows that the fastest way to grow that is to work with business owners who get large liquidity events. All we do is speed up liquidity events and we make the liquidity events larger, and so if the wealth manager isn't able to speak to some form of methodology or clarity of what makes up that enterprise value and connect the resource of how to do that, you might be left holding the bag when that owner goes to sell. It's very common.

Speaker 2: 8:54

When I sold my first business, I did not stay with my current wealth manager. There was no value. You know what I did? I let my broker talk me into a different wealth manager, right, where that wealth manager was more accustomed to taking on business owners and had a lot more resources to give me to support an owner who had just gone through a liquidity event. If you want to be at the top of your game and be able to bring in as large amounts of assets under management as possible through business owners, you have to be able to speak to it. But it doesn't mean you have to be able to do any of the work. You just need to have a great partner, the same way we're able to speak to. Why should you save money? Why should you do your annual planning? Why should you slow down? And we're always throwing that business back over to the wealth managers to go. This person, we just quadrupled their profit. You need to put a good plan together.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Don't let them take it all home and buy the car they're going to regret, right? It's a nice mix together. I think now you have my attention. So now you have my wheels turning. I'm sure you have our audience's wheels turning as well. So let's go ahead and step back for a second and tell us, if you would, a little bit about who you are. So you're the CEO of the company. When did you start it, what led you into it and how have you grown it until the point where you are today.

Speaker 2: 10:02

I think it's important to know. First off, I've only ever been an entrepreneur. That's actually always been my background from slinging papers on a paper route to play for travel hockey with my father at four in the morning, rollerblading all around because I realized I could do three paper routes in the time of one if I rollerbladed running like lawn mowing company in high school to get myself to college. And then my first what I call my official business is I started a painting franchise and we grew that to about 600 plus employees with a hundred franchisees before I essentially exited. And what I was doing during those franchising days is I was teaching first-time business owners how to grow and scale an organization. I didn't even realize what I was doing. Most people would go you're just running your. It was a painting business, like it wasn't anything sexy or painting homes. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of late nights, a lot of long nights and weekends when all the customers wanted to meet with you nights and weekends when all the customers wanted to meet with you. Over that decade I grew it instrumentally and did very well through that process and, most importantly, I got my MBA in how to run and grow and scale an organization. And when I was looking for the next chapter and I put a successor in place, I said my favorite part of this business I hated the painting, but the favorite part I loved about it was I loved teaching business owners how to grow and scale the company. And I said I wonder if I could go outside of this industry and apply what I've learned to other folks.

Speaker 2: 11:15

And we just took off from there, transparently, right. We've grown to a staff of just over 150. We're spread out all throughout the country. We've been on Inc 5000 five times in a row. We expect that to be six Been named in pretty much any magazine known Entrepreneurial awards. We're really prideful of that. But what we're most proud of is just the growth rate. Right, an average company that we work with is expected to go grow 60, 70% year over year revenue Like we move people very quickly out of their comfort zone and create massive amounts of growth. And that's what we really hang our hat on and you can see that right. We've got hundreds and hundreds of five-star Google reviews because the sheer amount of impact we now make due to our size.

Speaker 1: 11:53

I consider myself a serial entrepreneur. I haven't quite yet done some of the things that are as impressive as you. They're on the drawing board, and so I just want to dig a little bit deeper there, because I always find this fascinating Our audience, of course, most advisors, accountants typically, they run their own business, right, they own their own firm. And what do you think? Whether it's yourself or some of the people that you work with, what is that difference maker? What is it that takes an individual entrepreneur and allows them to achieve the kind of remarkable success that you're describing in terms of scaling the company? You have that first example of the painting company and then now what you're doing. What you're doing? What are some of the through lines there? Just not even the structure, necessarily, but just the personal qualities and traits that you see.

Speaker 2: 12:41

I don't know that a large scale business is the path for everybody either. I don't know if that's actually what creates the highest level of happiness for entrepreneurs. So I think, before I answer this, I have to put out the disclaimer of what I teach is that there's multiple stages of businesses that people get to and it's important to know the size you want to get to and then stop, because you will lose your happiness if you go beyond that and you'll usually be less profitable. I can't tell you how many times I see people get out over their skis and it's I want to build a big business and it's about time they get there.

Speaker 2: 13:08

Actually, I really didn't. I really am not happy anymore. So I'm one to come at it from a little bit more of a wholeness place of saying let's build the business that is meant for you and the size that you're comfortable with. But a few things that come to mind for scale, like what really creates scale and growth for entrepreneurs versus other entrepreneurs You've got to have a really great product quality. If you're not doing a really great job, you're not going to scale anything.

Speaker 1: 13:28

If I can pause you there just for a second, because the first company was literally painting.

Speaker 2: 13:34

This is not a different Outside painting first time. College students who had never painted, who were hung over and had no business being on a laptop.

Speaker 1: 13:40

Exactly so. I just want you to explain this because it's not like you know. You got the next idea for Tesla or AI or something of this nature. You literally it's not the idea, as much as its quality right.

Speaker 2: 13:52

Look, everybody has their own opinions of Elon. The guy is absolutely crazy, but the guy understood quality, like he does understand you have to do it to a certain level, otherwise it won't succeed. Now his risk tolerance is crazier than everybody else's, but he did understand there had to be a quality offering that was unbelievable. Right, you have to have that passion to make the best experience possible as a wealth manager, that you will provide the most unrenowned advice to business owners when it comes to growing and scaling their wealth to make it as easy as possible for them in their future. If you can become the best at that, then now that becomes scalable. So if you don't have that, everything's off the table at that point.

Speaker 2: 14:29

Step two, I think, for me, is risk tolerance. I think that some people just do not understand unit economics. They do not break the business down to math to understand exactly how much they can spend on a cost for acquisition and exactly what lifetime value they need from each client to make the math equation work. That is probably where 70 to 80% of people get stuck. It's all on gut and it's not on data and just how the equation plays out for their business. So I think that's the second one that I really see people get screwed up on. Third is knowing what type of entrepreneur they are. Are they the engineer? Do they need to not move up and actually promote people around them to run the company for them? Or are they the galvanizer? Are they the one that has those leadership chops and has the ability to get people to follow them, and that's their talent? Are they an idealist or are they an executor right? Are they somebody who can just generate ideas and annoy everybody.

Speaker 2: 15:22

Are they the person who likes to get in the trenches and actually do the work? There's different types of entrepreneurs and how you build that infrastructure is very important. Do not try to become all those DNAs. Live inside that DNA and build it appropriately. I'd say. The fourth and final is the people who are super introspective, have low ego and are super open to learning from anybody they possibly can. When they come alongside a coach, not to put the shameless plug, but when they come along somebody who's done it before and they invest in themselves, no different than people invested in going to college to get their degree, to get to the wealth manager position potentially. You have to do the same thing when you run a business. You have to be willing to invest in the resources of somebody who's gone before. You will teach you and show you how to go from a to z faster than everybody else because they've already done it multiple times so let's dial this in for the financial advisor, wealth manager.

Speaker 1: 16:10

Perhaps the cpa is listening to this and would love to be able to help their clients and create more opportunities like this. In conjunction with a company like yours Speaking at the upcoming event next month in June, how do you support and develop those opportunities in such a way that it's a win, meaning that ultimately, you're serving the client and their best interests. You're coming in with your expertise and your experience in the client and their best interests. You're coming in with your expertise and your experience, but the financial advisor and or CPA they're not simply referring out work and not getting compensated, but they're actually part of this and their business is growing and thriving as a result of this win.

Speaker 2: 16:46

Collaboration, yeah look, we absolutely run a rev share. I will just get that out of the way, right, but it should never be the reason why somebody chooses to partner with us. That's always my disclaimer.

Speaker 2: 16:56

And if it's done, they will win way more with asset center management, increasing services, increasing as the accountant. They'll win way more that way than they ever will with the RevShare. But you're right, any partnership has to have all the win right. The end user, the actual business owner themselves, has to win. So how do we help them do that? We've really created this amazing tool that we let our partners utilize where they go out into the market and can provide a valuation tool for free and it helps them ask the 24 value questions and helps create a health score and it's 25 customized page report that kicks out instantly upon the owner going through the process and the accountant, as well as the wealth manager, whoever's our partner. They have rights to use this tool inside of their ongoing meetings, as long as that client will share that feed that information back with them, obviously for protection of data. And so, as we work with folks, we give this unbelievable experience to where they can go out and say I have a value acceleration firm that will help you take this assessment. Sit you down with a past advisor as an entrepreneur has been super and give you two, three, four hours of their time to help you build out a growth roadmap and dissect and prioritize everywhere you need to focus.

Speaker 2: 18:01

Now for us, how do we win? We bat very high. About 50% of those people ask what do you do and can you help me? Because you obviously know how to? That's our job is to show our competency. So we win because we get new clients right, our wealth managers and our accountants and our partners. They win because they're going to retain their clients. They're going to be able to attract way more business owners into their world because they can actually differentiate themselves and stand out, essentially in the sea of sameness.

Speaker 2: 18:27

But what we also see is this for instance, a wealth manager coming back and doing this annual planning. When you know the value of the company, what metrics are moving, what profit is expected, you have all the data insights on the business. You can be a way better wealth manager. When you know that profits are getting ready to grow by 60%, you can start to put a forecast, a plan together of where we're gonna put those financials and how that all works, and you come off amazing to your client because you're so attuned. All of that that's our job is to bring back to you so you can go do what you do best.

Speaker 2: 19:02

So really, all three of us win because the owner is winning If they choose to go further. If not, there's this amazing free offer, no strings attached, that makes our partner look great. Our partners are winning because they're increasing their service side and, more importantly, they're giving a bigger impact to the business owner. And then, third and lastly, we win because we love to give away all this free time. This is what we're passionate about doing every day, and we're lucky enough to be strong enough to where people naturally raise their hand and go. Can you help me implement this roadmap? And we go? Yeah, it's what we do all day, every day.

Speaker 1: 19:32

What are some of the questions that an advisor and accountant should be thinking about or asking when it comes to determining if this is a path that they should go down?

Speaker 2: 19:40

Most of our folks that work with us. It's very it's tied in and integrated into their program. So they usually have some type of meeting cadence with the client, if it's quarterly or annually, whatever it might be and so a lot of times we have a set team. This is all we do is help support wealth managers and accountants by the way, literally our whole team that this is all they do. So we've got all the software and all the resources. So I would say the best way to know if this makes sense for you is to go. Would you like to take a look at the process you're running? Would you be willing to explore how to bring value acceleration strategies to attract more business owners and retain those business owners much longer for a higher yield back to whatever your service offering is? If the answer to those were, yeah, I would be open to exploring.

Speaker 2: 20:19

You really should sit down with us and let us show you our tools, see how the process works, and then we'll just have you pilot, we'll have you pick one company, go through it with them, so you see the entire process from start to finish, and then you'll know if you want to integrate that into your methodology or you don't. Luckily for us, most have wanted to and it's been a really great fit. But absolutely there's been some times where we go. I just don't think there's that big of a matchup. I don't think we look at the business the same way and that's OK, there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 1: 20:46

I believe I heard you say that you have around 150 people that work for your firm. How do you attract and retain the right people for your company that ultimately then are effective in working with both the end business owner as well as the financial advisor team?

Speaker 2: 21:03

What's funny about your question is that we talked earlier right about how most people can't figure out how to scale these companies, and literally what we do is our whole job is to have to scale our own company. So I've always found that to be a head scratcher. I think the root of why so many business coaching firms haven't got off the ground is it is hard to lead entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1: 21:20

Most entrepreneurs, they start out because they value freedom, and then it's okay to benefit from some collaboration, but then it's like how much collaboration and control do I want to give up as part of this process? And then that's where you have to really, in my experience, you have to really find the right partners. And when you find the right partners that balance that sense of freedom with the tools and effectiveness that they can bring to the table, then you really create that synergy that allows you to grow.

Speaker 2: 21:48

You're exactly right and I think, because of the uniqueness of our business, that I've got all these entrepreneurs right on our team. We've had to get really creative of how to create our models and compensation and things to keep people aligned in the right pursuit. But we do have a set role. It's called the Director of Partnerships. We've got a big team of those folks. They work alongside and they're only allowed to really work with 40 partners at a time. They cannot work with anybody any more than that and their only job is to service the partner and help them look amazing. Right. Help be the discussion back and forth between our advisors so they always get the data.

Speaker 2: 22:22

Again, we do have proprietary software that we use that houses a lot of this that they have access to. We even help bring the partners and put them on that software so they can visualize what's going on with the company. So we've had to really go above and beyond to build the infrastructure in place to be able to support people the way that we do. But I think that's why we've become the largest value acceleration firm in the country, because it's what we do all day, every day, and we've got a set system to help support that, but it starts with acknowledging, like everybody on our team is past entrepreneurs. They know how the wealth manager is feeling. This is all we're used to do is servicing this, so we know the level of ownership and the ability and the level of execution we're going to have to deliver on if we want to sustain a long-term partnership Awesome.

Speaker 1: 23:05

I'm going to shift gears a little bit. Is this your first time to be speaking at the Elite Growth Academy or have you spoken before? Nope, this is my first time coming. What made you decide to speak this year at the Elite Growth Academy and, in addition to just the conversation we've had so far, what is the core message that you want to communicate specifically to the advisors and accountants that will be in attendance?

Speaker 2: 23:29

I think one. We speak at a lot of places, right, so we're invited to a lot of conferences with business owners and we've had a lot of success partnering up with folks Exit Planning Institute, where we'll speak in front of thousands of wealth managers and help support speak in front of thousands of wealth managers and help support. We've gotten on all the approved lists for all the big wealth manager outfits, from UBS to Ameriprise, everything in between, and I think so one. We love this space. This is one of our best partners as accountants and both wealth managers. We've just had a ton of success with both. So I think when we met Anton and we became aware of the group and he had asked us to come on stage and share our story, it was a very easy yes. So let me just start there, because the success we've had in this space has just been through the roof of helping everybody win.

Speaker 2: 24:07

But I think the biggest message is this If you want to attract and retain business owners and you want to increase either your asset center management or the amount of services you get to charge and go deeper with your clients, let's just play to what the owner is most interested in.

Speaker 2: 24:20

Once they learn about enterprise value and how to measure what their company is worth, they start to become obsessed, they start to focus on where that growth will take them and why are they growing.

Speaker 2: 24:30

And it just connects that deeper purpose and they're more likely to go out and execute and achieve their goals as a business owner.

Speaker 2: 24:36

For us, we want to help bring those strategies into the accountant process, into the wealth management process, and for you to go do that on your own right now would be terribly difficult without a very simple methodology. So what I'm going to present is I'm going to present a really simple methodology called propel your business that they can take immediately, at no cost. They have to come to us and get approved to become our partner, but we'll let them take that down into the work and make them look amazing in front of their business owner clients. Just because we know a few of those folks will naturally raise their hand and come our way and that's just the way that we can give back to accountants and wealth managers. So that's what I'm going to slow down and teach with the actual strategies of how to bring up value acceleration and how to tie that back to show a bigger win that you're giving each time when you work with that business owner client.

Speaker 1: 25:24

I'm going to ask you a question, given that you started from a paper route and you excelled from there. Who have been some of your personal role models or people that you've looked up, whether the movies, tv or real life people?

Speaker 2: 25:37

I'm going to keep it in the family. I'm going to first talk about my father. He worked for a factory, fortunately died younger than he should have. What I don't tell you about the paper route, what I don't tell you about, like why I was washing cars, going door to door with Dawn's soap for $5, as a seven-year-old, eight-year-old, was because we didn't grow up with much and he came home and I remember talking about don't work for the man, and I remember him. He didn't mean actually not having a job or being an employee, he just meant the people that are greed monsters and what I really appreciate about him. I don't think he even knew what he was doing. But when I said, hey, my friend's got this really cool BMX bike, I want one. Here's a bucket, here's some soap, go knock on doors and you can earn $5. And if you go wash about 60 cars, you'll have enough money to go buy the bike. I want to play travel hockey. You should go do paper routes. Dad, I think I want to go to college. Go convince your friends and go pass out 10,000 flyers and mow lawns. And that's what I did. He taught me how to earn what I wanted and I didn't even realize what he was doing. I hated him for in the moment. Love him for it now. He's definitely been my biggest mentor in terms of teaching me the right habits.

Speaker 2: 26:36

I would say the second person was my grandfather. Just to stay in the family, he owned a really small vacuum repair shop. He was the one that let me know that you could run your own business. It wasn't crazy, but you know what he had. He had his name decaled on the back of his truck.

Speaker 2: 26:50

It said, mr Cliff, and when you're 12 years old and you go there and your grandfather gives you the best Christmas presents and that he has his name on his truck, that imprints a memory in your mind of maybe I should be an entrepreneur too, and I think that gave me the confidence you always hear that story right About what that looks like. And then the third person I would say is honestly, I'm chasing the person I want to become. I have this insane amount of ambition and I want to make a legacy and an impact on the world and that's why I'm so damn motivated. And for me, I just keep chasing and every time I reach a destination I just set it out as far as I possibly can that my mind will let me go, and then I just don't stop working until I get there.

Speaker 2: 27:29

And honestly, those three people didn't exist, one being a little more idealistic there. But if I didn't have those, I don't think I would have ever achieved what I've achieved today, to be honest.

Speaker 1: 27:39

I can relate a lot to what you're saying.

Speaker 1: 27:40

And I can see how that has guided you in your career. One of the people I think we both know, john Cutton yeah, he's a client of mine and we're in the process of helping him write a number of books, and so, just to share a little bit insider stuff, it's interesting because, for someone that doesn't know John Cutton, he's at the top of his game. He does $10 billion currently. By the time this comes out, it'll probably be higher. He has a growth trajectory like no one else, and the book that we're currently working with him on is called Quantum Growth for Financial Advisors, and so it's interesting because we're on these calls and Zoom calls, ostensibly getting information for his book.

Speaker 1: 28:17

I'm also sitting there taking notes and saying, okay, what is it that he's doing that I need to pick up on? And one of the things I've picked up on from him and I'd love to get your reaction to this it's the idea of needs versus wants. A legitimate business coach, big organization, dan Sullivan, says essentially something along the lines of a lot of people once they hit a certain income threshold and they met their needs, then they don't have that ambition to further grow, and I know that I've struggled with that at times. And so, in order to really get to that next level, you have to take your wants and make them your needs, something along those lines. Just. If you have anything to add to that idea, we'd love to hear it, and then we'll go ahead and wrap up shortly.

Speaker 2: 29:00

I love Dan Sullivan's work. He's like the matcher of content and perspective, of how to think. He's always had that mindset, just in lock of the entrepreneurial journey and John Cutton's a wealth of knowledge.

Speaker 2: 29:12

He's a really successful partner of ours. We love the partnership we have with him as well. We've got a lot of great clients shared there. But I think you find this with any successful person and I'm not even to put myself in that camp I just think that most people, when they go off and do something ambitious without some crazy lucky idea, luck is always part of it, but it's not just the luck of the idea that creates it. I think that there is something where it's a mindset where you shift to where you say I know I don't need this, but I want it and I am going to create the need, and I think I also think people start to tap into a completely different level of vision, right? So for me, like one of the things that helped me transparently is when my father passed like I.

Speaker 2: 29:51

It made me realize at a very young age how short life was, and I took risks that I never thought I would take, right To get this to where I've gotten at the speed I've gotten it. There are elements of things that have happened in my life that have triggered me to go when I'm on my deathbed, how do I want to be remembered? What's going to be the legacy I'm remembered for? Now I need this. I refuse to keep on living until I achieve this. There's just a different level of conviction that has to come together, and I think the people that bring that conviction and tie it and make it feel like a need, even if they're just manipulating themselves, they just achieve a different level of success.

Speaker 1: 30:27

Is there any question that I haven't asked you that you'd like to share?

Speaker 2: 30:29

with our audience. If you're coming right to the Elite Growth Academy, come see me on Friday. I'd like to share that, and additionally, I would say that a lot of people have asked me how do we work? What does the service actually even look like? Let's say, one of the companies did come along and love the free assessment. We did love getting their head wrapped around the value of their company so their wealth manager or their accountant could do their job better.

Speaker 2: 30:49

What we do is we're really only working about four to six hours a month on average with each owner, so it's a really nice touch, and people are spending anywhere from $2,500 to $4,500 a month with us, so we're actually a very reasonable cost structure for the amount of growth and impact that we make, and so I just like to share that openly, because I find that's usually the question they're dying to know, so that way people have more clarity that it's really approachable. And what really is our secret sauce is we're matching the right advisor on our team to the right owner. That's if we get that, because we're really just taking an entrepreneur's strengths and exploiting them, and then we take their weaknesses and we partner them to an entrepreneur that's done the business and been successful themselves. Where that's their strengths is, the other is the client's weaknesses.

Speaker 1: 31:34

Put them together and it's a match made in heaven someone that's attending the elite growth academy definitely friday you're speaking I'm assuming that you're on the school platform as well for Elite Resource Team members For someone who's listening to this and they're not part of Elite Resource Team or they're not going to be attending the Elite Growth Academy, but they're a financial advisor and accountant and they listen to our podcast what's the best place for them to learn more about you or your company and go further?

Speaker 2: 32:00

Yeah, I would just go to CultivateAdvisorscom. All right, you can learn all about us. We've got hundreds of case video, case studies. Just get yourself familiar with who we are. If you're ready to learn more and you want to have a call to explore what it looks like, just hit the initial call at the top right Schedule a call with us. We'll get you the right person. We'd love to learn more about your book of business, what you're trying to do with it and see if there's a synergy and we'll talk shop.

Speaker 2: 32:22

And again, we're always one to pilot. For us to give all this free time. We can't just let every partner come in the door right. So we're always like why is this a good fit? How do we know we'll both win from it? And then we take that and move the momentum forward by saying let's identify a business or two we can take through the entire process. So we process, so we all get to experience it, and then we forge the partnership from there.

Speaker 1: 32:44

Prowalkrun, essentially is our model Very cool. Thank you so much for your time today. I enjoyed learning more about what you do. I also enjoyed just from an entrepreneur's perspective and hearing your enthusiasm and your journey really from starting out to now and just your purpose, very inspiring. Thank you for taking the time to be with us on today's show. Thanks Paul, thanks everybody.