[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to wealth on Main street where conversations about growing your wealth are fun and entertaining. Wealth isn't just about money. It's the skills and the knowledge that we develop to pass on to future generations.
Tune in each week to grow your mindset and your net worth at the same time.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: What exactly does landscaping and scale have to do with what we're talking about today? Well, we're going to find out all about it. We are joined today by an amazing individual. We have Corey Brewer with us now. Corey has built beyond landscaping into a multimillion dollar company. He now employs over 40 full time professionals. We're going to find out how has he grown and scaled that business and how you as a listener might be able to do it yourself. Over 250 plus 5 star Google reviews. We know a little something about Google reviews here, Jason. We'll talk a little bit about that. Corey, we're excited to have you on the program as a young entrepreneur sharing your incredible journey.
[00:01:12] Speaker C: Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Corey, it's great to have you on the show. And one of the things that came up for me just in getting a little bit acquainted, you know, prior to with everything that your team shares around your background and what gave birth to, you know, your journey and your business and I am genuinely curious. So take, take Rich and I back to what was going through your mind when you decided to turn a lawn service into something beyond landscaping.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: Funny, I actually never intended to turn my small lawn care company into a large company. I had cut lawns that through university just for beer money and just as a way to survive. And that was never intended to be turned into a business. I wanted to get a sales job. I wanted to get some business experience first and then eventually I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur but I never wanted to do it in the trades. And it sort of just fell in my lap when after graduating university I got my bachelor of Business Administration and I went to my uncle for some advice and I asked him, Jim, like which job should I take? I got a young fun tech company that seems really exciting or do I take like an older established tech company? And he said neither, Turn both down and start your own company right now.
And I'll never forget where I was. I was actually on a roof cleaning gutters out in the rain and I was miserable because I hated, hated working outside. I hated labor jobs. I've been doing it for the last 10 years.
And I was pretty distraught because he had said, well there's only a couple skills that, you know, you know, demo construction and landscaping. So it's got to mean one of those three things. And I think doing it in landscaping will be a lot better than starting a demo company. So that's when I realized that's what I had to do. And thankfully I took his advice and I just made a commitment to myself. I was like, okay, if I'm going to do this, then I'm going to do it well. And I'm going to get out of the day to day as soon as possible, get a first priority, get out of the field, hire as many people as I can just so I can work in the office, which is what I love. I love the business aspect, meeting customers, sales, marketing. And then further along was, let's just get out of the day to day of the business as quickly as possible. So what started as just a fun way to make money during university.
[00:03:27] Speaker C: Actually through university, I also did a class project on starting a landscaping company. But it was just. That was the easiest thing to do. I already had a business plan set because I'd been doing it for a while. But again, even then, I, I never intended to turn that into a business until I had that conversation with my uncle. And then flash forward nine years. We've got 40 field staff, 10 office staff, and we're continuing to grow year after year.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: And an uncle who's a shareholder.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: No, funny enough, is he. I probably wouldn't have started, but he said, oh, don't worry, I'll help you out. You know, I'll. I'll help you out with the financing. We'll get you some equipment and a truck and then, but just start first and see how it goes. And if you prove to me that you're doing well, then, then I'll help you. And then the year went by and I came back to him for help and he said, oh, you're doing fine. You don't need my help. So he gave me the confidence to start a business without any of the actual financial help, which, funny enough, ended up being one of the best things ever for me.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Wow. Sounds like a great uncle and a good mentor. And it's interesting. So you, you've done a lot over that time frame. I know that you're also involved in Toastmaster and things. I'd like to talk a little bit about that later in the program. But you're, you're nine years, you're entering your sixth, tenth year here, which. So congratulations on the decade in business. As we know, the stats aren't always friendly. A Lot of businesses fail in the first five years. And you know, there's a lot of needs that your business has. It needs people, which are hard to find these days. I'm curious what you've been doing there. And then there's equipment that you have in your business as well. So as you started to go through different stages of scale, what did you see? What were some of the, you know, complexities that you ran into where you felt, I gotta get over this hump somehow to the other side. What are some examples of that that occurred for you as you, as you grew the business? COREY?
[00:05:10] Speaker C: Well, it's funny, I think back to a book I read called Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. And my ego is one of the things that I had to let go. Learning how to trust and delegate was one of the first things I'll never forget because I had been mowing lawns for four or five years. I had had maybe six or seven customers that I was mowing regularly. And when I went to hire, when I went to hire my first person, I was like, well, how can I trust them to cut the, the lawns properly? Like, how will they know the proper depths to put the lawn mower on? And that was my big stress in my first year of business is how am I going to trust other people to do what I do really well? And I think back, and I laugh at that now because now I'm having salespeople quote 500 to a million dollar jobs with full autonomy. So it's funny that delegation and trust and letting go of that ego, that you know you aren't the best person at every task in your company and that you can hire some amazing staff to do things for you, that was a big hurdle that I had to get, get past for sure.
Lot, lots along the way as well. Hiring my first office person and trusting that they're going to get back to customers and take over the phone calls and the emails, that was a big hurdle for me. And all along the way, from whatever position I hired, whether it was a salesperson, whether it was an office person, and then eventually scheduling a dispatch every step of the way, was a bit of a challenge to let go and allow and trust other people that they're going to be doing a job almost as good as me.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that's almost just a sharp, another sharp example of a rite of passage as an entrepreneur. You know, we all, we all go through that and in terms of that, that bottleneck and getting past it and setting our ego aside. And I found that what's helped us in many of our businesses is just really providing very, very clear expectations, but also inspecting what you expect so that you can deliver really great constructive feedback, so that whatever the desired outcome is, how manicured the lawn is or what depth and all of those things, that.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: It'S really clear to your team and they understand what the expectation is. And I mean, clearly, I don't know how many landscaping businesses have.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Piled up even a fraction of the quantity of five star reviews that you've piled up in your business. And so that's a signal to rich, and I speak confidently for rich too. Culture clearly matters. And so how do you, how do you build a team that cares enough to deliver that consistently?
[00:07:47] Speaker C: Now we do something very differently. But when I started the company, I took a lot of the learnings I had. I worked at the KEG Steakhouse and Bar. It's a steakhouse franchise. And one thing that I noticed there is people would stay at that restaurant for quite a long time. And it was a lot of the work that the company and the managers did there to build culture. And we didn't stay for the company, we stayed for the culture there. We stayed for the people that we worked with. And in a industry similar to mine, where the turnover is somewhere between three months and a year and people are constantly coming and going, how do you get to, how do you get staff to stay longer term? And construction industry is notorious for short term laborers, people coming in for short stints, hiring and firing quick. And when I started my company, I took a lot of the lessons I learned there about building culture and brought into my business. So some of the things we do are weekly team barbecues. So I find it really important to have a beer with the staff at the end of the week. We get a keg of beer for them, we have burgers, we hang out every Thursday.
I mean, I'm not there every Thursday like I used to, but enough that I still get that time face to face with all the new staff and really get a bond that way. We do as many staff parties as we can, whether it's golf, camping, paintball, anything that we can do to get the staff together outside of work hours and then really bond over a couple of drinks. I find that really helps a lot. And then obviously treat, treating our staff as best we can. You know, we pay them fairly, but more importantly than that, like we treat them well, like we treat them like family.
And we really try and build a really good culture.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: People pick up on that and they appreciate it because you're right, they're not there for the company.
They're there for the people that they work alongside. And it.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: So you're a decade in now?
[00:09:37] Speaker C: Yeah, nine years. It'll be 10 years. February 2026.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Wow. I was sharing with Rich might get a kick out of this. I was sharing with some other entrepreneurs here just yesterday who were expressing that some of their kids were enrolling in trades programs. And I hadn't heard that for a while. And that is where all of the future millionaires are going to be minted most easily is in those trades. If you think of electricians, you think of H vac, roofing contractors, landscaping businesses, the list goes on. That's where a lot of wealth is going to be built over the next decade and beyond.
[00:10:19] Speaker C: Yeah, couldn't agree more. And I always have this motto that I work with quite a lot of my competitors. We're quite friendly. We help each other out. We share tips and strategies in a couple of business groups as well, where I've become quite close with even another landscaping company that does the exact same thing in my city 10 minutes away. And there's two or three of them like that. And we don't compete against each other for customers. There's an endless amount of work out there. I think we compete against each other for employees more than anything. So, you know, good reviews on Glassdoor and Google really help. Good culture referrals, that's, I think, one of the most important thing over, say, marketing strategies, because it's easy to get work in trades now, but it's much more harder to get really good staff and more importantly, keep them and train them and elevate them.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Well, I could tell you if I was in your line of business, I'd be connecting with the competition and exploring collaboration, much like it sounds like you're already doing, just through nurturing relationships, but also wondering, you know, what would it look like if we stapled a few income statements together?
[00:11:28] Speaker A: How much more efficient could we be? How much better can we deliver service? What kind of deals can we work out with vendors who supply us with equipment and so on? There's so much opportunity for collaboration out there, especially in your space, that the business owners like you, who see it are the ones that are still going to be here a decade from now.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Totally reminds me of something from my past. I'm a recovering electrician by trade. It's been. I mean, I've been recovering healthily for almost 16 years, I think almost 17 years now. But when I think back to that timeframe. And I used to work in Edmonton in the commercial sector and I actually quite enjoyed it and loved it. I always worked with great people. But we would have some main, main companies doing a lot of the larger projects. The, you know, schools, institutions, hospitals, like the larger, you know, projects where they're going to take, you know, eight months a year, two years to build and construct. And so you have, you know, a group or organization where they might have 100, 200, 300 electricians, depending on what it was, but there's phases, they're all bidding on similar jobs. And there were periods of time where you, you were in between a large project and you needed to maintain guys and so you. They actually had almost like a loaner program where it's like, you know what, these guys are having a major job, they need some guys. We'll lend you 20, 30 guys for that two month period while we're waiting to go start up here. And so they still got paid by their company and they had like a cross, you know, payment kind of situation. So it wasn't a matter of losing manpower, having to go find and replace people, but you were able to still. So it's kind of a marriage, an area where the rising tide lifts all boats. And so thinking about having those great relationships with similar contractors, similar work, similar types of clients, that could be an opportunity. And the same thing could apply for equipment. So if you're in between large projects, you got some lawnmowers and some bobcats and stuff sitting there doing nothing. Hey, there's rental companies for that. Or these people have it. Could you, you know, can you borrow it for a little bit of time? Send me, send me the bobcat and the manpower for two weeks kind of a situation.
[00:13:26] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity out there, especially in trades. I noticed. Well, when I started my landscaping company, I was very secretive. I wouldn't tell anyone my pricing. I didn't want to work with anybody. And it wasn't until I had some exposure to some business groups where everybody's sharing and helping each other out and going. So above and beyond that really opened my eyes to the power of collaboration. And especially in trades, there's so much room for improvement for all of us that we can do more and more of that. Purchasing associations like you mentioned is one thing that we don't do very well on, that we would just all make more money and our lives would be much easier if we just continue to collaborate.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Oh, what, what a downside there is to that.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Like if More business owners saw the, the, just the, the power, the advantages in collaboration versus you know, thinking about competition. Collaboration opportunities would begin to appear everywhere. And I'm curious in, in your business, I, I'm, I've loved asking entrepreneurs this, especially lately, just given what's happening with AI. But how are you integrating AI into your business and where do you see, you know, those opportunities to do that that maybe other businesses similar or dissimilar might be missing right now?
[00:14:46] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean obviously everybody's using chat gdp. We were probably one of the first companies to jump on that two years ago. You know, we were on the waiting list. We jumped on that immediately. We use that regularly to cut down our workload, help us write emails. All of our staff, all of our virtual from the Philippines use that.
I mean that's pretty basic. I think everybody, if they're, if they're not using it right now, they're probably pretty far behind.
But I think the next big focus on us is just going to be AI agents. So cutting down our interview process. An example. So if We've got an AI agent that can handle interviews 247 send us a recorded video of the first interview process, then all of a sudden that just allows us to attract better talent. And again 247 that agent is going to be working for us and interviewing rather than clogging up some of our existing office space. So really is looking at what are those really time consuming parts that we do in the office and then slowly just building out AI agents or buying them off the shelf and trying to cut down and automate the office side.
The luxury of being in the trades now is robotics are going to take another three to five years to make a significant impact in our industry.
When the Tesla robots or whatever brand comes up with field laborers then great, we're going to be all over that. Robotic lawnmowers are a little bit behind. They don't really work well in our, in certain parts of our industry we do quite a lot of residential and strata, a lot of hills here in Vancouver. So it's not like we have big acres where you can just throw a robotic lawnmower down. So right now we're our big focus. Focus is going to be on the back end in the office. How can we just completely automate our back end and office so that we cut our overhead down? Gives us more money to bid on jobs. Google Ads spend more money on recruiting, hiring and marketing.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: That's smart.
That is smart.
[00:16:43] Speaker B: I love it. I love that. Now you know Corey, you'd indicated that you've been involved in Toastmasters a little bit and you've done a lot on working on yourself, it sounds like, in the last decade while you've been operating the business. And so I'm curious to speak a little bit about, you know, what, what is coaching meant for, for you? You talked about being a part of some organizations and how valuable those conversations were being in a group of people who are working on their business in this, in the similar state that you are hearing their stories, hearing from them.
And then additionally, you know, talk us through a little bit about what made you jump into Toastmasters and how has that played a role for you as you've developed with business?
[00:17:20] Speaker C: Toastmasters has been amazing. I actually just celebrated my 10th year at Toastmasters and one of the best things I ever did my grand. Luckily, I've had a lot of good mentors in my life and maybe more luckily. I, I tend to listen to people when they give me good advice. And one of my grandfathers was a public speaker. He worked for the city of North Vancouver here. He was a Toastmaster for a long time. And in my teenage years, he said, look, if you go to Toastmasters, I'll give you a $250 check. You just gotta go and join for a year. And I actually joined for one meeting. And then I was like, there's no way I could do this. I think I was 18 or 19 at the time. I wasn't very confident. And I watched people go up and speak with no practice. And I said, there's no way I can do this. And then five years later, I came back a little bit more confidence. Around this time, I was starting my business and then I haven't left since. And I, when I joined, I thought, hey, I just want to go and learn public speaking in six months to a year and then go and do something else. And I'm still here 10 years later because I'm finding that there's always a new level to reach. There's always, always things to improve.
And that was really a huge part of my success, I think, is learning how to public speak.
I was, I've always been a very shy introvert. And being able to now go to a networking event and even do that completely sober, I'm confident I can go walk around, introduce myself to anybody. It helps in my speeches to my staff as well. If I'm holding a team meeting, I mean, everybody still gets nervous. No matter how long you've been in Toastmaster, Toastmasters, no matter how much you practice. But being able to manage that and.
[00:18:54] Speaker C: Give a great speech to your staff and run a team meeting and look everybody in the eye and engage them is such a powerful skill that I would never have gotten if I didn't go to Toastmasters. So highly recommend it to anyone that hasn't done it. And I tell all my friends, family, even my employees, if you can, if you can do it even for a couple years, you'll have a huge improvement.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: That's amazing and so true. I'm curious.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: If you could narrow it down to one or even more than one, what would be a favorite system or process that you've built that in your view, has sort of completely changed how your business operates?
[00:19:35] Speaker C: Could it be something that I didn't build myself? Yeah, like, yeah. So recently we've implemented EOS Entrepreneur Organizational System. And I think that's been a game changer for us because thinking back to when I worked at the keg, the keg was very corporate restaurant. So, you know, vision, values, meetings, training. And I have always hated that. I've always had a chip on my shoulder for authority and never really enjoyed that aspect. So when I started my company, I said, I'm not going to have any of that. We're not going to have training manuals, we're not going to make our staff sit in team meetings and do all that stuff. And as you can imagine, it turned into complete anarchy in the first three to four years. So you don't say, yes, I learned the hard way how important all those things are.
So we did a lot of things backwards. In I think our eighth year, we started self implementing eos. So we went back to the basics. We built out a vision, values and organizational structure and really started dialing in that and then did some other things we never really did, which was weekly team meetings, daily team huddles, and just building that structure of accountability and organizational structure has been one of the biggest game changers I've ever implemented in my business.
So much so that I've now started two other businesses in the last couple years. And from the day one, I said, I'll never run another company without eos. It's just such a game changer.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Talk about eos, because last week I was actually with, I'm sure I was with no less than 15 or 20 different EOS implementers at Colbycon. And so you may have your Colby. I'm not sure if anyone's introduced you to that or not, but there's a lot of people who are Colby certified who Also tend to be certified and trainers with the EOS system. And Jason and myself were part of Strategic Coach. There's a lot of overlap between EOs, people who operate that in their business as well as people who are with Strategic Coach. And they tend to really connect with one one another really effectively, both from a mindset and tools perspective and a accountability, regular recurrence kind of perspective that us brings. And so I'm curious, have you had much exposure to those types of things as well since you've been implementing us?
[00:21:48] Speaker C: I have, and I'm not too familiar with those, but I am familiar with scaling up very similar to eos.
I'm also a mentor and coach to up and coming entrepreneurs for the entrepreneur organizational. Sorry for EO entrepreneur organization. I'm a member of that. And the members that are a little smaller and can't get in that, we teach them scaling up. So very similar to us, but a lot of great things in there as well.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: We teach them scaling up.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a whole methodology. There's actually, there's a great, a great book. Well, there's more than one, but there's a really great book on that, which I think is titled Scaling Up.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: And it's a very good read. And the framework that's outlined in there is really good. And so now that you're engaged in more than one business.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: What, what are some of the metrics that you personally care most about?
[00:22:48] Speaker C: Well, if you asked me five to 10 years ago, revenue, Revenue. Revenue.
And then thankfully again, I had some great mentors along the way.
One gave a presentation in one of the business groups I'm in Breakthrough Academy. Tommy Mello. I'll never forget that he said revenue, vanity. Oh, you know Tommy.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: I know Tommy, Yeah.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: Yeah. He did a great panel at one of our, our summits and he said revenue is vanity and profit is sanity. So that's definitely one of the biggest metrics we look at now is I never really cared about profit in the first six or seven years. I just saw the revenue going up and I didn't really notice the profit going down or cared too much. And now obviously things are, we're going back to the basics and caring about profits significantly more than revenue. I think that's a really significant one.
[00:23:37] Speaker C: For me. Google Reviews is a big one. Like that's always been one thing that I've really focused on is what is our. Does our NPS score with our customers? What is our.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: How are we ranking with our staff? Are they happy? And also of course. How's our online reputation? Those are two of the big things that I always really focus on.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Those are the right things to focus on and shout out to Tommy, just an amazing human being. And Corey, you may be aware of this, but he's building a pretty amazing lakefront property that is going to double as a retreat and he's going to be hosting a number of events at that property and he's been posting some really great content just around the progress that's in terms of how it's been coming along. But keep a close eye on that because when, when he grew his business from 30 million to 250 million plus and you know, he sold a really good portion of his interest, you know, in a one, but definitely someone to keep a close eye on as that property comes together. Because the events that he's going to host there are going to be just out of this world amazing. And the relationships that'll get cultivated there will be life changing.
[00:24:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I haven't had an opportunity to go to any of his events, but when he has that, I certainly will. But I think that what you touched on relationships, I think is such an important one that I've, I think is also a big pinnacle of my success is through my different business groups. The amount of people that I've met that have changed my life and the relationships I've built is a huge part of the success of all my companies.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: It's incredible.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Well, and so with the, I'm curious, the other companies that you started, is there some overlap or some economic value add? Are they in a similar style? Are they completely different? Is it you partner with anyone else? Walk us through a little bit about where the decision came to. Say, you know what, this requires a new business to get going because there's a, there's an element of I'm running something already. It's a large organization, it's a growing organization. We've got more people, we've got more of this. Hey, you know what I should do? I should totally take on something else and add to the stack of the things I already have to do. And some people would be like, that sounds really exciting. And other people would be like, you know what, I'm going to go golfing instead. So what. What transpired to have you make that decision?
[00:26:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, first off, I'd recommend to not do that. Don't start another business or two if you can avoid it.
There's a really good book, Built to Sell by John Warlow. I'd highly recommend anyone to read that.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: And we've had him on this program, actually.
[00:26:20] Speaker C: Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, that book changed my life and changed the course of Beyond Landscaping. Because when we started the company, I was doing everything that was the way I was taught. Like if a customer wants something done, you just do it and build them for it. And then we actually, after reading that book, really scaled down our operations to just focusing on a couple core services.
So after reading that book, I always knew that I wanted to start other companies, but I wanted to wait until I was fully out of the day and beyond. But what ended up happening was a lot of our leadership team and management are remote based from the Philippines. And I'd been helping probably 20 to 30 other companies in Canada and the States hire remote staff. And I was just giving away all this advice and telling them how to do it for free. I always knew I could turn it into another business, but I never wanted to start another one because I had too many glaring issues going on with Beyond Landscaping.
But then I really learned, I think it was after reading Dan Martell's buy back your time the power of having an executive assistant. A couple other guest speakers we add on as well, and they all talked about how important having an EA is. And I ended up having a conversation with my cousin who was a EA for several C suite executives. And we got really excited about the idea of the fact that most entrepreneurs don't have an executive assistant. And yet every speaker that I've listened to in the last couple years has talked about how important that role is. And if they were to hire a first employee, they were going to start from scratch. The first employee they'd always hire would be an ea.
That really got me thinking that, hey, there's this huge need for, especially for small businesses and like, why don't we all have executive assistants? We. I guess I always thought that that's something you get when you're really successful, like Richard Branson size or you're running numerous companies. But really it's anyone that runs a company, even one, should have an ea. So we partnered on a company about a year ago and we hire and train remote executive assistants, primarily based in the Philippines, but other countries as well. And our customers are entrepreneurs in Canada, in the States that are tired of running on the hamster wheel and buried in emails and calls and just kind of want to buy back their time. So it's been a really fun company that kind of just fell on my lap. But I didn't want to miss that opportunity and it gives me way more opportunities to do things like this and meet and talk to really successful entrepreneurs, which I really enjoy. And it's just a breath of fresh air.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Love that. Yeah, we should connect him with Tim.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Yeah, the old profit factory Tim would be a good idea.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Tim. Tim Francis.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: He's got a program called Get a Great Assistant. So they do a lot of stuff. In fact, we talked about Colby briefly, and he's also Colby certified, and he uses that index which explains extinctual strengths a lot in their hiring process and understanding how you can kind of match people together a little bit based on how they actually conduct work. Not based on personality or based on other behaviors, but based on instinctual problem solving.
[00:29:20] Speaker C: Love it.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Corey.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: We're going to do a bit of a rapid fire round of questions. I wanted to give this a shot today in, in the program and maybe our editors can do something really special of kind of bringing this up in words on the screen or something.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Um, you ready?
[00:29:39] Speaker C: I'm ready. Hit me.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: One word that defines your leadership style.
[00:29:43] Speaker C: Go. Favorite Failure Almost bankrupting my company last year.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Most underrated book every entrepreneur should read.
[00:29:50] Speaker C: John Warl, Built to sell.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: Morning ritual that sets the tone for your day.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: Mobility, flexibility, and a black coffee.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Nice. I like a little honey in my black coffee. What's the biggest lie about entrepreneurship?
[00:30:02] Speaker B: That people still believe that there's work.
[00:30:04] Speaker C: Life balance and that it's easy.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Okay, we're close. We're halfway there. A saying or a quote that you live by?
[00:30:11] Speaker C: Saying or a quote that I live by? Ooh, you're gonna have to skip that one. Come back to it.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: The best piece of advice you've ever received.
[00:30:19] Speaker C: I have to go back to that conversation with my uncle when he said, you've got to start your company now because if you don't start it now, you're going to get comfortable in a sales job or a career and you're not going to want to do that later. And I think that was one of the best pieces of advices I've ever gotten.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: That's great. The worst piece of advice you've ignored?
[00:30:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, recently I had somebody tell me not to start a personal brand.
[00:30:41] Speaker C: And I think that that was pretty bad advice.
[00:30:46] Speaker C: I've also.
[00:30:49] Speaker C: Piece of advice that I've ignored.
[00:30:53] Speaker C: I mean, go back to when I started my company. I had numerous people telling me not to start a company and that I should save up money first and get a job and get some experience first. And I ignored. I think that was horrible. Advice that, thankfully, I ignored.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. Two more. If you could have dinner with one business icon, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
[00:31:14] Speaker C: I really have been enjoying Dan Martell's content in the last year, and I think he would be up there. Richard Branson as well, I think, is another idol of mine. I've read several of his books, and his lifestyle is just fantastic. I don't want to be the entrepreneur that works 80 plus hours a week for the rest of my life. I want to be the Dan Martell or Richard Branson life instead. Very good.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: And what does success mean to you now compared to when you first started success?
[00:31:41] Speaker C: When I first started meant growth in a large company and building and feeling my ego. And now success is completely different. Success for me is health, wellness, financial security, and building something that I can be proud of. Not necessarily the largest or the biggest, but something that is the greatest. So a great place for my staff, great foundation for me to build off of, to be able to travel, to be able to enjoy my life. And I think that's really the difference between from when I started and now.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: That's amazing. Can I tell you a quick story about Richard Branson, please. So I was blessed beyond the definition of good fortune to be on Necker island with Rebel Dad Mastermind group, and.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: It was an amazing experience. Now, Richard was there the entire week with us, and one of his team members had said, you know, entrepreneurs love to talk business, and Richard doesn't mind that. But if anybody's contemplating pitching an idea or a business plan or something to Richard, you'll likely not see much of him for the remainder of the week that you're here, because that's typically not the environment that, you know, that resonates with him. And we were sitting down to breakfast, and it was amazing. He said, you know, tell me a little bit more about your group of companies and what you do. And he said, I've got a question for you after this breakfast conversation that was absolutely amazing.
He said, do you have an office at your headquarters or your home office?
I said, well, we refer to it as a team support center.
And yeah, I do. I have an office there. And he said, let me see if I can help you.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Let me see if I can walk you through what a typical day would look like with you going into the office. And he's describing it perfectly. He's like, you walk in, everybody wants to talk to you. You want to connect with people. You become the distraction in the building. And I said, yeah. And he said, you Know, I'd recommend that you consider not having an office in your team support center.
And I said, why would you do that? And he goes, well, I experienced the same thing, and I haven't had an office in any of our HQs for the number of decades I got home, and from that day, I haven't had an office in our team support center.
And what do you think that's done to the productivity of the teammates that work there every day?
[00:34:17] Speaker C: Huge. I think, second, I remove myself from the business. It forces people to solve their own problems and not rely on me. And I love that. That's fantastic advice.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: The truest measure of strength of your team is how they handle something knowing that they can't get in touch with you.
[00:34:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: And so I just thought I'd give you a little antidote on Richard, an amazing guy, too. And if you ever have the opportunity to visit Necker island, take full advantage of it. It is an amazing experience, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. Okay, let's go back. A saying or a quote that you.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: Live by, your network is your net worth.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Ah, nice.
I've heard that one.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Good? Yeah, it's good. There we go. That's the first. First edition. I'm sure of many rapid fires that we're probably gonna. Oh, yeah, Institute going forward. Yeah, I did like that a lot.
Now, Corey, you've shared a lot of great aspects with this year about your journey. About 10, you know, almost, you know, closing in on 10 years of successful growth, scale and business ownership, but also not just the business itself, but the growth of yourself. Because in order to have the business grow, you have to grow for the business to grow. And you've really demonstrated that through explaining your experiences and the different stages that you've kind of gone through. And I'm sure there's a lot more growth to happen. You're a young man. You got a lot, a lot of business roadway ahead of you, which is fantastic. You know, when we do this program, a question that we like to ask is one that we got from Dan Sullivan, who is the founder of Strategic Coach and Shout out to Dan and Strategic Coach, of course, in Babs. And what we always want to know is while you used to start mowing lawns and maybe you had different marketing ideas. I'm guessing wearing a cape while you're out mowing lawns wasn't one of them, although I think it would have made people call you. You may not show up dressed like a superhero, but when you employ People, you grow the team and you create a culture where people glue together, they have fun and they bond and they develop powerful relationships. You actually are showing up as a hero to their family. So our question for you is who, Corey, is it that you would most like to be a hero to?
[00:36:22] Speaker C: Wow.
Who would I most likely like to be a hero to? Well, I think, I think what you said about two of my employees, I think if my employees think of me as a hero, then my, then I'm doing a good job. And if they don't, then I have a lot of work to do. So I really like that and I'm going to steal it.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: That's amazing. And I'm curious, given that you're still, by all accounts, you're early in your entrepreneurial journey. As Richard mentioned, you've got a lot of Runway in front of you and now you're mentoring other entrepreneurs and you're, I think, proving that success doesn't have to come at the cost of burnout. And so when you think about a bigger future for Corey, whether it's 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, whatever that bigger future timeframe looks like for you, what do you want people to say your journey stood for?
[00:37:18] Speaker C: I would want people to say my journey stood for growth. Because I think anyone that knows me well to know how far I came from, from a personal development journey from where to where I am now, and when they see where I'm going to go in the next five to 10 years, I think I would love to just be able to share how much growth there is in entrepreneurship. I think that's one of the greatest things about running a company is it does force you to grow as a person. And I'd really like that to be my story is growth and continued fortitude in the face of non stop failure. I mean, I've failed constantly for the last nine years. I've made so many mistakes and fallen flat on my face. Made some big ones in the last couple years as well. And I just constantly learning from them and growing and just plowing through them and always looking forward to a bright future.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: That sounds like a lot of great advice that entrepreneurs listening and tuning in will really benefit greatly from.
[00:38:18] Speaker B: One of the things that you indicated, of course, was a focus on changing from revenue to profit. And so we've had Mike Pacalowitz, who wrote the book Profit first, perhaps you've read that as well, on the program Profit first coaches, join us on the program. And one thing that we really love about the Profit first model is how well it integrates with what we learned from our mentor Nelson Nash in the book becoming your own banker and how to really get clear on having more control, more intentionality around the financial aspect, not just of your business, but of your personal life. And so we would recommend growing your own capital, our newest book, and it's all about how you can control how you finance the operation. In this case, we're talking about farmers, but replace the word farm and put business owner. It's kind of the same, creating the ultimate line of credit and keeping the farm in the family or keeping your business in the family or who you want it to be with. And so I think we'll make sure we try to get a couple of copies of those out to you, Corey, so you can dig into them. You might enjoy those. It sounds like you're an avid reader, not unlike Jason is. So we'll make sure to load up your bookshelf a little bit more with a few elements and I think you'll learn quickly how powerful it can be when you take what you've already done, the systems that you've already put in place and then you layer on top of that another system of efficiency for your financial life and the business life so that you can harness and control the power of the decision making power for the revenues that flow through the business for much more than beyond even your own lifespan.
That's the true power of thinking about doing things differently. And so we hope that you enjoy those when we get them sent out to you. And we want to thank you for coming on the program today.
[00:39:51] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. I had a lot of fun.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Likewise, having fun exploring the infinite banking concept. Want to learn more? Well, add to your reading list. Check out all the incredible books that we
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