Brandon Dawson - Exited for $151M at 77X EBITDA | Stop Blaming Your Employees for Your Failures

When you see something that makes so much sense and you see how much money is being made, don't go do something else. What happens with a lot of these entrepreneurs, they start becoming successful. They get criticized by their group because here's the thing. Success comes with a whole new series of conditions. And then you finally succeed, those same people say, oh, they got lucky. This is Brandon Dawson. He built his first company at 26 and sold it for millions, but that was just the beginning. Over the next two decades, he mastered the game of scaling businesses, taking one to a valuation of over $150 million, then he walked away. Not because he had to, but because he wanted to build something bigger. If you look at the top three reasons, business owners state the fail, which is a majority of business owners, it's because they, no demand for products, service can't find great people or can't make money. All three of those are an excuse. And then you say, well, there's no good people. Good people don't work for shitty business owners. Today, he partners with some of the most ambitious entrepreneurs in the world, but the road here, it's filled with lessons few dared to share. And the blueprint you're about to hear could change the trajectory of your entire business. The rules of investing are simple. Invest in yourself, invest in the thing that generates the money. And then when you have access capital, go invest in something that you don't have put your energy into and let it compound for you. What I found in life is the more interested you are in somebody, the more interesting they become to you. If you can't be something for somebody else, nobody can ever be that for you. My favorite part of your story is that all this started with a 2.4 GPA. So take me back to that 2.4 GPA brand and talk to me about a major inflection point and sort of pushed you on the path you're on today. Well, I mean, you know, I hate it. I hate it school. And, and, and so, and I wasn't good at it. I love sports. And I only was reasonably enough good enough to get out of school. So I, my dad wouldn't, because he told me you don't get at least a 2.4. You can't play sports. So I was a 2.4. Yeah, if you just said three, I don't know that I would have played sports, right? But, but I could not wait to get out of this little town. I wanted to do something cool. I wanted to do something fun. I was a hard worker. I loved making money. I like to be independent. Those things I liked, but I couldn't stand sitting in a classroom. I mean, I just, that wasn't my style. And so as soon as I got out of high school, then I moved up to Portland and I thought, well, I'll do a little bit of college at Portland State and get a job. And I got a job selling inside sales. One day a week, I was making money. And I loved the inside sales job. And I hated sitting at Portland State. So I dropped out. And when I dropped out six months into it, an outside sales rep territory opened for the company. I was working part-time in. And I was so good selling over the phones. They offered me. They opened a new facility in the territory open. And they said, you can go sell over the phones in Atlanta full time. And so I moved to Atlanta and I was like, oh, here we go. This could be amazing. When you think about, now you teach nine-figure mindset. That's what you've adopted. That's the name of your book. That's what you teach entrepreneurs about. How do you think somebody's starting out? Because when you're talking about your or just or your in Atlanta, you don't have a nine-figure mindset yet. And I don't even think that when most people start companies, you're saying that. Yeah, it's just excitingly. Yeah. You know, it's hard to tell me what to do. Exactly. So when somebody is starting out, mindset's everything. Tactics are important, but mindset is very, very important. Getting off the ground, what's the advice to day zero start to have a nine-figure mindset? That would have made your journey maybe even a little bit quicker, shorter, better. Yeah. So for me, I love the fact that I was my own person. I was 19. I could do anything. You know, it's the first time I moved to Atlanta because in Oregon, I still have family around. When I moved to Atlanta and I landed there and they're like, here's, because I was supposed to be an inside sales rep and they're like, the outside sales rep got six. So starting today at the airport, when I landed, you're an outside sales rep. Oh my god. What's that mean? You get a Ford Taurus and you're going to travel 11 states. And so for me, I felt like I was an explorer, an explorer, right? Because I had never been to the south, didn't know anything about the south. I'd never been on my own. And I was just so excited about figuring it out. But if I could go back to that guy and say a couple things. I had the heart, I had the competitiveness, I had the desire to, but I wasn't even, I wasn't thinking about money, I was just thinking about how to learn to do anything, right? And then be good at it. But the one thing I will say that I thank God for that Brandon back then, because I was like smart enough to go like, who's at the best in this whole company that's doing what you want me to do? What's their routine? So when I went to that first sales meeting and met the number one outside sales rep, I'll never forget this because there was like 200 of them. They came in a ward and I was smart enough to go meet the guy. I was the youngest guy in the outside sales team. And I was like, how do you do it? And he befriended me. And he said, here's how I do my call reports. Here's how many cities I go to. Here's how I speed things up. Here's a kind of conversation. And I studied for that guy. And I just mimicked what he did. That's smart. And so thank God for that for that Brandon who didn't just drift around and take it for granted, right? But if I could go back and tell him something, I'd say to a man, when you see something that makes so much sense and you see how much money is being made, don't go do something else. Because I had two or three times where I was right in the middle, something so huge. And I didn't see it for what it was. And I went away from it. Whereas if I would have made that where I put my career or I would have adjusted my career and did those things, oh my gosh, I could have killed it. A lot of things happened in innovation in the 90s. 2000s. I knew it was going to be unbelievable, but I didn't do something with it. So you mentioned when you sort of starting off your career, you're hungry, you're ambitious, you're super excited. Which I think most entrepreneurs are. But you made an interesting point. You weren't looking at the thing that made you the most money. You weren't looking at the thing that was like the best possible opportunity. And I think a lot of people that are just starting out. And I know that you're more focused on after they figured it out, they scale up. But I just think the one little bit of wisdom that you have there is when you're first starting out, where do you put your energy? How do you identify that opportunity that you should actually be putting energy and time and yourself into? Because I think that too many people get excited and they jump to the first thing that presents self to them. Well, a couple of things happened. Okay. So let's look at the macro stats. About 83 or 84% of businesses aren't started from somebody who wants to go build a high net worth and be an entrepreneur and be an executive. And if you go back all the way to email, it's almost 50 years now. They all started because they're good at something and they don't want to boss. They don't want to be told what to do. They don't want a limitation on their earnings. They don't want to be held accountable. And they're good at something. So I'm going to go start a business and be my own person. And then and then what happens is as soon as they hire a few people, they want to back off of the thing they're actually good at. Because they've been doing a long time. I'm tired of being the technician. I'm tired of doing so I'm going to have somebody else do it. I'm going to hire a kid to do it or I'm going to, you know, and they start throwing people at the different components of the business. And they're not leading the people doing the things they don't know how to do. So let's just take this for like say I'm a roofer. I'm a great roofer. I can go to any house, convince any owner to have me do their roof. And I can collect the money and deliver the roof faster. And anybody else in it's beautiful. And they always refer three friends to me. I got I'm so I'm natural. Well, I got to hire someone to clean up the mess to drop the stuff off to order the inventory to organize it to make sure that my vendors are getting paid to make sure that we're logging in the names, the information, sending out the right. Somebody has to do all that around me. And so it's not my expertise. So what happens is they get excited and they go to the thing that they're good at. And they actually are so successful at it. Everything else breaks down behind them. Because they have no idea who to put in that position, how to orchestrate it with them, how to organize it with them, and how to hold those people accountable. And then the thing I'm good at and I actually like, I don't like it anymore. Because now what am I doing? I'm solving all the problems. I'm fixing all the the broken things. I'm getting yelled at by clients that and now all of a sudden building a business is hard. It's painful. And maybe if I just went back and they don't say this, but maybe if I went back and controlled everything, I wouldn't have these problems. And then they locked themselves into staying small. I think that most people end up, you believe this for sure, they end up building themselves a job. They don't know how to get out of it. They don't know how to scale it. They don't know what to do with it. And I think that listen, I love entrepreneurship. I love building companies. I think this is something that is beautiful. But I think too many people rush into it without thinking. And then they find themselves locked and trapped. And they don't know what to do. Well, remember, if you listen to my stat, and I think it's important for your listeners to hear it. And the validation of this is email. I mean, it's been going on for 50 years. They didn't start a business because of what they wanted. They started the business because of what they didn't want. And then they struggled because they're hiring people. Think about it. If I started my business because I didn't want a boss. I didn't want a limitation of my earnings. I didn't want to be held accountable. And then I hire someone. Am I going to treat them the way I wanted to be treated or am I going to treat them differently? So now I start hiring people and I ignore them because I think they're going to be like me. But people aren't going to be like you. If you look at every study of every employee segment, they want to be led. They want to be nurtured. They want to be incentivized. They want to be they they want to be inspired. And then they want to be paid paid is like fourth or fifth. Now compare that to the person that started their business. I didn't want a boss. I didn't want to be told what to do. I didn't want to be held accountable. I didn't want to let me take. So so there's this huge disconnect. And then the frustration. And if you look at the top three reasons business owners state the fail, which is a majority of business owners, it's because they know demand for products or service can't find great people or can't make money. Well, all three of those are an excuse because if you were an HVAC tech and you work for an HVAC company, there is definitely demand for the product or service. So you can't say that. And then you say, well, there's no good people. No good people don't work for shitty business owners. So what you get are you get the people that don't know what they're doing either and they work for someone that doesn't know how to help them do it. So it's chaos. And when there's chaos, it's no longer fun. And the thing you do that you're good at, you're no longer excited about that because you got problem. You're not in your zone of genius. You're doing everything else. Assets under management with card on ventures. Where are you at now? Well, we've engineered a 6.8 billion in businesses. We've run 9.4 billion through our educational platforms and we manage about 2.3 billion right now. That's why I say you work with one or two businesses, right? When you think about the segment that you're serving too. So you're serving a lot of SMBs and mid, right? Well, there's 34.5 million businesses between 100,000 and 125 million. And that's really our sweet spot. We do have larger businesses. They get my attention, but those are all in that segment. And the reason I ask that is because I always hear about all these business owners that are sort of living what you just described, this chaos. And and this is not a conversation that I usually have about entrepreneurship. A lot of people figure out a lot of people want to hear, how do I start? What should I focus on? How do I find my first 50 customers? That's all great. But then once you get that and now you're stuck in this spot and that's who you're helping and that's who you're serving. So when you think about these massive amount of businesses, all I keep hearing about is wealth transfer, one of the largest wealth transfers, all these business owners that are stuck in chaos that don't know what to do. They don't know if they want to sell their business. They don't really know how to scale it because they've sort of and they don't know how to sell it. They don't how to sell it. Maybe their kids, it's interesting because I find that most business owners like sub 30, 40 million that I've met, their kids for some reason don't want to take over the business. I don't really know why that is. You don't? No, and maybe it's just discussed. It's because it's chaos. They've been, they've been listening to their parents come home and bitch about everything for the last succession plans anymore. So like, why would you? If you're a kid and your dad's coming home or your mom's coming home and it's like, we got all these problems. People are letting us down, we're pissed off, fighting because of something that happened at the office and now you're sitting there looking at that. You're like the last thing you want to just take your family business over. That's really what's happened. It's so hard to build a business. And if you're second or third generation you've been working in those companies, here's the problem. Owners treat their kids like, you should work for less and money. You should do more because you're my kid and I need you to be an example, but I'm not going to commit to you how much of this business you're ever going to own and one day it's going to be yours. So just suck it up because that's what I do with my dad because that's how the dads got it from their dads or their moms got it from their moms. We're in a different world today. And that's where we're experts in family businesses. And if you don't engineer that family business so that the family members understand they need to work as much or as hard as your best people, but then they need to be compensated as fair as your best people. So you get this weird thing that happens with family where it's like we shouldn't pay you as much because one day it's going to be yours. But you're not making the kind of money other people around you are making and everybody thinks you're making more than you should. And it's easy for you because you're the owner's family. So you're there's so many lose loses when you're in a family business because all the employees are like, oh yeah, that's the owner's son or daughter. Oh yeah, they get everything they want. Oh yeah, they don't have to work as hard. And then you have your family saying you need to work harder than everybody else and you should be willing to make less money. And so you're getting pounded on on both ways. The first thing you want to do is get the hell out of there. And it's sad because entrepreneurship should be a positive. It should be something that it's hard work, but it shouldn't be something that tears your family apart. It shouldn't be something that ruins a relationship with kids. So I'm assuming these are, you know, you help businesses scale and Cardone Ventures helps businesses scale. But behind the scale, there's all these interpersonal dynamics that you have to help a business owner through and help them understand if they're really going to try and take the business to the next level or sell it or do whatever with it. So when somebody comes to you, where are they in their business life cycle? We just sort of described the chaos we're dealing with. But then like, what's the first piece of advice for them to figure out which direction to go in? Well, okay. So, so that's a loaded question because they, you know, if you're a hundred thousand dollar a year person, you don't have to do something entirely different than if you're a million dollar person, only nine percent of the businesses between between a hundred thousand and 125 million, only nine percent actually break through the million dollar barrier. So, so you're talking about, you're talking about under a million businesses out of 33 and a half million. Here's an interesting thing going back to your wealth transfer. There's five trillion dollars of wealth transfer happening in the small business space. Okay. It's a 16 trillion dollar market right now. And those are businesses that range across the spectrum. Most of the reason the transfer is happening is they're owned by baby boomers who either can't or don't want to work anymore. Those businesses don't have high valuation. That's why the kids don't want to take them over because no one's making any money. Like, think about it. If your dad came to you and said, hey, son, our 12 million dollar business, the one that's been paying me to have the new trucks every year, the Rolls Royce, the six homes, the private airplane that we take on vacation, the speedboat for the lake, you know, you've been a good son and I'm tired, so I'm just going to give it to you and you can start paying yourself two or three million a year. You think that second generation wants that business? They're like, they're fight over. Of course, but that's on your journey. But when you're on your journey, believe now for 20 years, complaining there's no money fighting with their spouse, all these problems, frustrations, anger, drinking, whatever it is. Can't go on vacation because the next guy left and I got to go fix everything. You're not going to take that business over. So who gets that business? No, they don't know. I'll tell you, somebody that's listening to you and me right now, this says, if that's real, what do I need to do to prepare myself? Because the dumbest thing to do in the world today, if you want to be a business owner, just start a business. This is the smartest thing to do. Well, you don't have any money. The smartest thing to do is to go in and train and learn what a great business looks like. Learn from people that are building, learn your communication skills, learn how to sell things because if you can't sell anything, it doesn't matter. And then go work as an apprentice in a five to 10 million dollar business and look around and party your interview process. As owner, do you have anybody that you've already identified that's going to take this business over one day? And if the business owner says, no, I'm still just trying to make it work. You say, I got an older business owner, I got a business been around for 10 or 20 years. If I learned the technical aspects of how to make this business work, I could exit this business owner. And that owner, I'll give you a seller's note. They'll be like, you know what, I make 150 grand, 250 grand. We had this kid is 22. We bought a 15 million dollar business for $225,000 a year for 10 years to the contractor is tired. And we immediately two years later turned it into a 50 million dollar company. I mean, people that are tired and don't want to change and they have that same broken mindset. It's so hard and there's people on the market sucks and nobody's good to me. They're never going to move the business beyond where it's at. That's the reason it's suffering. They're not open-minded to it. A young person comes in there and they're like, hey, just I'm excited. And they bring the enthusiasm to it. Now, if they learn the technical aspect of the business, they could blow that thing off the lid. And that's what I would say to my younger self. Instead of working in a corporation and then weeing in all my own and starting a business from scratch, the first one and trying to raise capital, just go find somebody's got a nice 5, 10 million dollar business. It's tired and worn out. NetSuite is a success story partner. Now, what does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers, full market, bear market, rates will rise, rates will fall. Honestly, I just wish somebody would invent a crystal ball. But until then, over 41,000 businesses have future proof their business with NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid dynamic platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards, and more time on what's next. If I had needed this product, this is what I would use. 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Plus, with Indeed sponsor jobs, there's no monthly subscription, no long-term contracts. You only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to get your jobs more visibility. Just go to Indeed.com slash Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Clary terms and conditions apply if you're hiring Indeed is all you need. When you when you're talking to that person, I love that idea. I absolutely love that because I know that the Cody Sanchez is of the world. They're talking about. She's talking about laundry. Yeah, like Cody's financing and all that stuff. And Cody's awesome. But she's going after a dip. That's a different. That's a cash flow business. That's a business that can pay you and you don't have to do anything. That's she's an expert at that because she is really good at that. And she's good at communicating about it. I'm talking about you know, the people that speak the way I speak, the people that know what I know. Those are her moses. Natalie and I talk about it. There's there's. Oh shoot, I forget what the other guy's name is. I'll think of it in a second. But there's probably three to five people that are speaking the right language to the right people that see this opportunity and know about it and know how to go get it. So for the for the, you know, young entrepreneur that sort of deploys this strategy, they've never scaled the business beyond what, you know, they're going in, they're learning everything about it. And you're saying, well, you know, we could take this business from here and we got at the $50 million in two years or thinking, how the hell do I do that? Different levers you can pull, right? Obviously, you know, with the marketing, the sales, the talent you bring on. Yeah, well, what do you teach people? What do I teach people about scaling business? Anything. I mean, my thing is mostly about how do you, how do you have the mental fortitude to stick with it for a long enough period of time? That's really the game. That's right. So if I was that kid, I'd come learn from you had to have that mindset because if you can stand the game long enough, yeah, you figure it out. Okay. And then then what I do is I go to Alex and Leila and spend a couple days with them. You know what I do next? I'd go to over to Lead Edge or Brandon Dawson or Grant Cardone thing. I would go find the three to five people that are communicating in a way where I'm like all three, four or five of those people are legit. I, I can buy into what they're saying. I don't understand it. And I'd spend a year, the rules of investing are simple. Invest in yourself, invest in the thing that generates the money. And then when you have access capital, either go buy something else that you can add to the thing that generates the money or go invest in something that you don't have put your energy into and let it compound for you. Okay. If I'm watching this and I'm someone that's like, man, I just don't know how to figure, go learn from three to make it a point to actually invest in yourself and go to three to five people that you respect that are speaking a language that you're like, I want to sound like that. I want to think like that and go deep. Don't just go to a Tony Robbins seminar and say, I'm changed. Like actually go frickin deep, right? Like I'm sure you've got a masterclass for people. So go through, go for at the beginning and get to that masterclass and then go do it with Alex and Leila, go do it with Brandon and Natalie, go do it with Grant Cardone and then all of a sudden sit back and go, I'm going to go and while you're doing that, start reading about buying businesses and start going, subscribe for $29 a month to a business buying brokerage account in your market where you can start looking at stuff and then go to our 10x, how to buy a business program. It does, there's enough information out there that if I really could sit back and say to myself, I want to be wealthy. I want to do it the fastest way possible. I want to do a legal moral ethical and compliant. There's five of us that you could start really studying under for a year or two and go kill it. You know what my favorite thing about your story? When you first started working with Grant, you already were incredibly successful, more than 99.99% of people on this planet and you still put money into sitting at growth con and sitting up front and learning from him. And I think that the takeaway from that that kills more dreams and more entrepreneurs than anything else is you remove the ego because a lot of people that would sell a business for nine figures and be like, I don't need to learn from anybody else, I figured it out. I was already worth 70. Well, at the time, I was worth 90 million. I'll tell you what, you know how that doesn't stop. It's one thing to show up and not have an ego, but you want to know what solidified grants respect of me because I was a new entity. He said people make all sorts of promises and let them down two years into our relationship. I bought my first aircraft. And I sent over the paint that I had put on it. And it said, Cardone ventures on the tail and 10 acts on the plane. I didn't know it at the time, but he had two other executives sitting there with them and he goes, that dude has no ego. Nobody buys their first aircraft and doesn't put their own initials or their own name on it. Nobody. I didn't even think to do that because I'm his partner. His name is bigger than my name. So this is the thing. It's not because I think that the biggest issue is when someone like becomes a great salesperson, they're all cocky. Let's just remember no matter what you ever accomplish in your life. And I don't care what that is. There's always somebody that's 10 X bigger, more successful, more accomplished than you. And so if you think you're all that ship because you've made your first 100 or your first million or your first 10 million and you think that makes you special, just remember, there's people that are 20, 50, 100, a billion, 10 billion, a hundred billion, 200 billion. And you ain't that good. There's no end. So if you act like you've arrived, you're never actually going to arrive at any other destination because anybody that could help you spots that in two seconds is I don't want anything to do with this person. That's the fatal mistake. And this is the part of mindset you were talking about. One of my most impactful mentors is John Maxwell. And when John Maxwell was speaking at that Grant Cardone event, John pulled me upside stage with Natalie. And I didn't even know what he was doing. And he was pointing us out and it was all this chaos, 34,000 people. And I'm like, John, we're going to sit back down. I don't know what you're trying to do. And he gets back stage. He says, I didn't, he said, I just want to grant the seed to two of you because on the way to backstage, I looked at Grant. And I said, Grant Cardone, if you can meet those two people, I'm just going to tell you this. No matter what they tell you, you got 34,000 people here. No matter what they tell you, it's the truth. And Grant, the next day ran into me and he was like, man, you got one big endorsement from John Maxwell. I said, because I've been working with John. John, I love John. John's a second father to me. I helped him double his business in 2013. That's why I learned so much stuff about leadership and operationalizing and work alongside him. And he became so close to him. You need those relationships. And at any point, if I always, this, you see this, people come and take your classes and you see him trying to do a social media and they sound like you, they're using your content, but they're not quoting you. And you're like, that's kind of a bitch. I'm spending all this time trying to train him and they're acting like it's them. I have never done that. So John Maxwell, why did John fall in love with me? Because all he heard, everywhere where I was ever on a stage is John Maxwell and Sharon Lector and Jim Collins. And I always ingratiate those people that affected me. And I always give gratitude to what they did and how they taught me. And then I put what I did with it. Of course. And then it's a simple hack. Then I'm like, if you want to bypass reading hundreds of books and 20 years of mistakes, I'll teach you how to do what I learned from them in the next 12 months. Okay. But I don't have to act like I'm the smartest guy in the room and people who act that way, nobody wants to help them. One of my favorite ideas is just make yourself easy to help. Make yourself easy to root for. And I think that everything you're saying is that it's like, if you just humble yourself, you remove the ego, it is shocking at how many people want to help you win. Let's see you succeed. The right people. The right people. I mean, the thing you have to address with that, and this is the problem most entrepreneurs, we're talking about entrepreneurs too. So what happens with a lot of these entrepreneurs is they, let's say they start becoming successful. They get criticized by their group because they're, oh, you're working too hard, you don't care about your family anymore. Everyone starts picking them apart because here's the thing. Success comes with a whole new series of conditions. And if you actually go do something, that group of people you're around, if they're not doing it, instead of actually cheering you on, they have to face the fact that if you have the courage, the wisdom or ability to go change your life, and they're not trying, there's this thing that happens with there because you're a mindset coach. There's a thing that happens with their mindset, which is I'd rather see you fail. Well, because they're looking in the mirror going, why don't I have their courage? Why don't I have their ability? Why am I not, why don't I have their strength or their stamina? Why am I unwilling to look stupid when they're willing to look stupid? And then you finally succeed. You know what, those same people say, oh, they got lucky because this is the only way they could justify you breaking out and doing something. Resilience is an important thing as an entrepreneur that wants to succeed and the mental fortitude and strength to be willing to leave behind and move forward and elevate yourself up has to be a core strength. It's tough. It's a tough realization. Grant speaks about this a lot. To get something good, you have to let something go. Yeah, 100%. People are everything. Whether or not it's the people that you surround yourself with that are either pushing you towards your goal or the ones that are holding you back, business partners. Like, I mean, you had a home run with Grant, but I know that first company, you did not have a home run with those people that pushed you out of your own company. So you've learned what those weren't people. That was a financial institution. And but it's a group of people. Yeah, but they're also, you know, look, I had to take ownership. If people listen to me talk, I go back and look at all the mistakes I made. And today, if I was invested in a company like my company back then and I had to do the same thing, I would do it in two seconds. I just didn't have that perspective back then because I made a lot of mistakes. And I I was a cowboy and I lost their confidence. And then when they could get all their money plus all their money, plus 100%. They took it like same thing I'd do today if I was back in the guy that I was back then. So reflection is critically important. And so we need to reflection that you gain wisdom. Because in present time, you never know if anything you're doing is a good decision, bad decision or great decision. You don't know until you look back and go, that was a great. And a lot of people find themselves in situations to where they could have had a great situation, but they blew it. 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You're going to dive into breakout sessions where you can immediately implement what you learn. And plus San Francisco's legendary startup ecosystem provides the perfect backdrop for networking with all these great entrepreneurs, decision makers, industry leaders, peers who are actively shaping the future of business. From September 3rd to 5th at the Moscone Center, you're going to be surrounded by forward-thinking professionals who turn insights and ideas into breakthroughs. Don't just watch the future unfold. Be part of creating it. Visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today. Two things can be true at the same time. The first thing is that yes, you have to take ownership for the situation. You would find you were a cowboy. You weren't acting in the best interest of their investors. But also, say you have a little bit of self-awareness. You realize you're not perfect, but you're kind of on a journey and you want to align with people that will not only support your business and your professional goals, but to also support your self-development goals so that you can sort of like grow together with that person. So you're looking for investors. It's not just about money. There's a lot more that comes with investment than if you find the right investors, okay? My real question, what I want to find out from you is how do you find out who those right people are that you should align with on your journey, with business, with investors, with peers. I mean, it's a whole other conversation about people. But what is like the human characteristics that you would advise somebody to look for when you are bringing somebody into your world? Yeah, well, that's a great question. And unfortunately, people out trying to find money and stuff don't ask that question. They just get stuck in their thing and try to go sell everybody on why they know what they're doing. The most important thing, if you were to ask me 19 years old, and you were to say to me, Brandon, I'm going to tell you what the most important thing is, forever. It's the quality of your relationships. And you'll never have a high-quality relationship if you can't be a high-quality relationship. So you ask me about investors or business partners or things. In fact, top three reasons, business is bust. Even the successful ones is busted partnerships. Ego is getting involved. I say there's two times people fight, no money, too much money. You said earlier, it's all about people. So if I'm unclear, the kind of person I am, and if I'm unclear, the kind of person I want to become, if I'm unclear about how committed I am to making that happen, I'm going to be unclear about who to attract into my life. If I am transactionally just trying to get something done like I just need money so I can start my dream. You're going to accumulate a lot of problems there because you probably don't know what you're doing and you're probably going to lose the money. So friends and families, not a good way to raise capital, by the way. So I would look at the person. If you want an investor, I would go look at what has that person done. I would never take money from somebody early days that with their money wouldn't take an active interest in me in helping me because I know I don't know what I'm doing. And so the people that helped me, even in my first company that I screwed up, they didn't invest enough into the company because they were all really super wealthy. So put in a million bucks and a million half bucks and they all pop a John, pop a bear, a marquee mark, all those initial five Dougie, Dougie, Dougie, Dougie, good was his name. So I come doogie. But these were all my original investors, all older guys that were worth money. But you know what, they loved me because I loved them and I was appreciative and I listened to them. You just played golf and picked their brain. You want the right investors to take an active interest in successful people and what they've done and really respectfully try to learn from them. What I found in life is the more interested you are in somebody, the more interesting they become to you. If my interest, if I'm being interested in you because we're playing Call of Duty and smoking dope and getting drunk on the weekends, I'm going to gravitate to that and you're probably not going to help me much. If I go find a successful local business owner and I said, I'll work for you for the cheapest you've ever paid anybody for the next two years, I'll become your most valuable employee. I'll never ask for anything with the hopes that if I prove to you that I could be the best apprentice you've ever had here, I'll do anything at any level. Give me two years that if I proved to you, I can master this business and create value and have the humility to never ask for anything and always be the best example. Would you consider expanding this business and making me a partner in the future? Imagine somebody coming into a business owner and asking that question, what would most business owners say to that? Yes, for sure. Unbelievable. But no, what do they do? I demand more money. I not be in treated fair. This isn't, I want more. That's how a majority of people think and act and those people are always going to struggle. So the more you can lay yourself out there and appreciate the people you want to mentor you, respect them and actually really care about them and try to drive so much value for them because here's what I've learned. If you can't be something for somebody else, nobody can ever be that for you. Why am I a great partner with Grant Cardone? Because I'm a great partner. If I couldn't be a great partner for Grant, Grant would not be a good partner for me. Grant would spit me up and chew me out. And he has multiple partnerships because people didn't do what they said they were going to do. People weren't respectful. People wanted to tread on his brand and then spin off other companies. I mean, we just had a situation where we had a partner. We had to exit because they were setting up all these side companies using our relationships and our vendors and all this and that and hiding things with family. Like, that's shit. That's not a good partner. So you will attract what you are. So if somebody wants to know how to be successful, define what you are and then choose what you're going to become. Last thing I want to ask, I know that people's lives change after they work with Cardone ventures and work with you when they understand themselves, when they understand the right people to bring into their world, when they understand all the tactical scale, strategy, direction that they want to go in, just paint a picture for the before and the after. When somebody leans into all the ideas that we're talking about today, what's the outcome? It's a great question. Here's the thing you have to know about scaling anything is that there's three levels of expertise you have to have to scale. First is personal, second is professional and third is financial. There's no such thing as scaling to massive success and not having all three of those things have to scale because if you professionally are scaling and you're smart and you're blown away, but you don't scale your financial acumen and awareness and understanding you'll bust out. If you become the most successful business owner and you throw everything at it and you ignore your family and your friends, you'll bust out personally. And you're also guaranteed in those break points as you're getting big and encountering all these new things because you're going to have to change as a human being literally break point one, three million or less, break point two, eight million or less, break point three, 15 less, break point four, 25 less, break point five, 45 less, break point six, 75 less and break point seven, 125 and then eight, nine, 10, 11 to a billion dollars. Okay, every time you enter a new break point, you will be an entirely different person that entered the break point before. And if you haven't personally, professionally and financially grown at the same time you're going through those revenues, you will break as certain as gravity. Something is going to break you and you won't see it coming. When we interviewed thousands of business owners that went broke, one consistent thing, what caused you to go broke? You don't wonder what everybody said? The thing I didn't see coming. It was never the thing they worried about. So you're not going to see it coming. So contrasts at the people. What allowed you to succeed? Think about this. I didn't see it coming because they relied on them, me, I, my, the people that succeeded. I surrounded myself with loyal, great people and we were in the trenches together. I might not have seen it coming, but my partner or my friend or my, my, my loyal employee did. So we were able to attack it before it killed us. Strengthen numbers. But if you can't be it, you won't attract it. Where do people connect with you? Where do people find it about Cardone Ventures? Cardone Ventures.com. You can go to 10xhealthsystem.com. You're going to find me. You can go to be Dawson.com. You can go to app branded in Dawson on my Instagram and social media that's been shadow banned for the last three months now. You'll find me YouTube. You can find me on YouTube, but I'm pretty, I'm pretty out there. We post consistently. My beautiful wife is blowing up right now on social media. And if you just Google branded Dawson, I'm going to pop up and you can find me however you want to find me. Look, if you're ambitious, you're excited. You want to do something great. You got to listen to this guy. You got to listen to the people that are proven experts out there. Stop wasting your time getting sold a bunch of bullshit stuff. Go find the experts. Go find people who've really done it that are willing to commit. You know how much time energy and effort. You know, it takes to do all this and you waited on me. I'm so sorry. You waited on me. I want to cram as much in as I can, but here's the thing. We're doing this because we're trying to add value to someone on the other side of that. That's it at the end of the day. And if they don't respect that, well, then they should go play call duty. Every answer that you ever need is out there. You've got to be willing to listen, pay attention. And here's the thing. If you don't know what your destination is, you haven't set that. It doesn't mean you have to, you don't have to go. I want to be worth 100 billion. Okay. You know what the biggest impact for me was when I asked my mentor at 26 years old, how much money do this guy's worth hundreds and hundreds, maybe even billions? I said, how much money? Papa John, how much money do you have to have? We never have to work again. And he literally he was like, well, if you had five million and then 25 million at 75 million, 150 million. And here's what your life could look like. Do do do do. And he said, but look at Warren Buffett at 27 Warren Buffett was worth a million at 37. He was worth 10 million at 47. He was worth 75 million. But at 53, it compounded to 350 million. And then boom, it took off because Warren lived like he was making a hundred grand a year. And all the access capital he threw into a compounded event for him. I never forgot about that. I wrote it all down. I sketched it all out. 20 at 27. I was worth a million. I was worth 10 million. Sorry. And I'm like, I'm I am 10 years ahead of Warren Buffett. That's right. But the problem was my that was at 27. The 32 has back to zero. But when I sold my company at 47, think about this. So 27 37 47 Warren was worth 75 million. I was asked, how did you set the price of your company? Because it was such a high price. Nobody's ever paid that for a business. I said, because I had partners and my employees and after taxes, I needed to put $75 million in the bank. Because that was my target from 20 years. And I did, I put 76.2 million after taxes. If I had not had that conversation and I had not thought about it, I might have sold my business for 50 million. And been happy I got 25. This is why Grant talks about those targets. When I met Grant, I shared that story. I said, but I have a new problem. And Grant says 350 million. I'll solve that one for you. So we partnered. I'm now 57. We partnered six years ago. In six years from dead-stopping, the best what I have, the best what we have, putting it together with my wife as partners, we built an enterprise that last year did $245 million in revenue. And it's worth about $750 million right now. And this year ago, it'll be over a billion. And for context, that is revenue for the or not this portfolio companies, which is that is my revenue. That is your revenue. I am managing partner, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Cardo Minchers and Grant, my wife and I, my wife and I and Grant are 50-50. And then Cardo Minchers, I bought 10x health inside of it. It was a little $1 million, $1.5. And today that business is $150 million. So between Cardo Minchers, $120 million in health, we ended last year. They both were 120. From zero invested capital, zero debt, all internally cash flowed, we owned 99% of the equity of Cardo Minchers and 10x health, Grant, my wife and I. And when we do what we're going to do with that, that'll be worth about $3.5 billion in another 18 to 24 month. That takes care of the 350. But that takes care of the 350. And can I tell you, Grant's like, Grant will have to me when we were doing the math two years ago when I hit my 350 number. He goes, I said, I knew you're going to help me do it. You know what he laughed at? He says the thing that surprised me, I almost blew the deal, Brandon. I go, what? He goes, you were thinking so small. I said, I wanted a 350 net worth. He's thinking, why don't you want a billion or two billion? You know, when I spoke to him, he was telling me about how he wishes he was 10x, saying everything from day one, he would have been worth tens of billions at this point. The guys on machine, dude. And he's, he's, he is. But direction, nor star and direction is so important. Got to pick your target. And then you got to look for the clues to get you there. If you're drifting and wandering, it's going to be horrible. If you're intentional, and you take the right action, law of attraction, like it's not a real thing, but it is a real thing if you do it this way. If you have intention, you take action towards the right objectives, eventually you attract your target. And that's how you get it. Dude, thank you for having me. I appreciate so much, dude. Thank you so much.