EntreLeadership - #406: Why You Need a Mentor with Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Everyone’s entrepreneurial journey is different, but super successful people tend to have had one thing in common: They had a mentor. Kevin Harrington, entrepreneur and one of the original sharks from Shark Tank, and Mark Timm, serial entrepreneur, share stories from their own mentorship journey—and explain why everyone needs a mentor to achieve wild success, not only in business but in every area of life.   entreleadership.com/podcast Kevin Harrington's website Mark Timm's website Mentor to Millions by Kevin Harrington and Mark Timm Learn more and join the EntreLeadership Elite Advisory Group Waitlist Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know, small business owners are some of the most courageous and inspiring people that I've ever met. But even small business owners eventually get stuck. We all do. It's human nature. And when you get stuck, if you're a small business owner, where do you go? Who do you talk to? Because by nature, if you're at the top of a small business, you're isolated. Now, of course, you've got your team, you got your family, but who do you go to to to ask for advice when things are really hard? from the Ramsey network, this is the Entry Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders

grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and today my guests are Kevin Harrington and Mark Tim. Now, you may remember that Kevin is one of the original sharks on the TV hit series Shark Tank. And Mark is an entrepreneur who found Kevin and said, hey, I need a mentor, and they've been working together every since. And what they figured out is they had something really special here, so they wrote a book together titled Mentor to Millions. And in the book, they walk through their journey to the mentor relationship and how it changed Mark's life and his business forever. Guys, if you're a business owner, you need advisors, you need mentors, don't go it alone. But there's a lot of people with opinions.

So don't just listen to anybody. Make sure they actually know what they're doing, that they've built things and they've succeeded and they failed and they've been around the block, that they actually know something about business. Well, let's dive in. I've been learning about you guys, but I'd like to start just with, you know, introductions. Kevin, I've seen you on Shark Tank and familiar with, I've seen some of your YouTube stuff and love your energy and what you're about. But let's just not assume our audience is familiar and start with maybe, Kevin, your story. And then, Mark, we could talk about how you guys met and what you're about with your business. Is that a good sequence?

Okay, sure. Kevin, fire away, man. Okay, so I'm one of six kids, grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was number four of the six. I had a couple older sisters, an older brother. But my father was a bartender, and so it was a tough time raising a family of six, and six kids, eight altogether in a small house. One day he said, hey, look, I've saved up enough money to open up my own establishment,

and he opened up Harrington's Irish pub. And, of course, I was 11 years old, and he said, I want you in there. Come on in after work, after school, rather. So I was in, I think maybe sixth grade or something like that. But it was a lot of fun because I wasn't just serving food and washing dishes. He would bring me in the back at the end of the day. And we would go through the money and he would show me where the profits were. And also to show me some of the problems.

And so he was teaching me. And then he says, now I'm going to teach you how to get your own business. And so my father was my first mentor. After a number of years there with my dad and his places, he said, you've got to go out and earn your own income. You've got to pay for your own high school. And when college hits, you're going to have to pay for your own college. So I started a driveway ceiling business in high school and knocking on doors and college. Freshman year of college, I needed a full-time income. And I said, what's year round?

Because driveway sealing is a summertime business. And Cincinnati seal those cracks before they get the water freezes and triples the size of them. And that's me knocking on the doors. But when I started the, I said, what's the, I said, what's year round, heating and air conditioning. So I started a heating and air conditioning business. And I was getting the leads from the courthouse. Every person that just bought a new house, they were going to get a phone call from us, from me, one of my people. And we were going to, and we said, hey, look, congratulations on the purchase of the house. Don't turn that furnace on until you get a safety check because it's a dangerous appliance. And while we're there, we'll clean it also absolutely free. So we were getting 20 new customers a week. And by the time I got

at the end of the first year in that business, we had done the equivalent of today's numbers over $5 million in sales from zero. We had 25 employees, six trucks going out every day, and I had to quit college. So that was, I'm not proud to say I'm a college dropout, but my older sisters and brothers, they all had great educations and summa cum laude and all that, but I came along and I was the entrepreneur. So interestingly enough, I didn't want to be in that business my whole life, very labor-oriented. So as I started transitioning, looking at new businesses, I became actually a business broker. And this gave me the opportunity to sell businesses. And and so pizza parlors, delicatessence, laundromats, flour shops, manufacturing companies,

you name it, we had it listed. We had hundreds of businesses listed for sale. But what did we have? The books, the records, the leases, the percentages, everything about that business. why it was successful and why they were failing. We'd sell a business to somebody for, he'd buy a business and it was doing 400,000 in sales a year later. He'd come back. I want to sell that business you sold me. Oh, okay, what's happening?

Well, I'm only doing 300,000. We'd look at the numbers. He stopped all advertising. Okay, well, hey, advertising, oh, he said, I thought that was an expense I didn't need. Well, no, that's not an expense. It's an investment in building your business. So make a long story short, I did this for a number of years, had a lot of fun, and I went to a lot of trade shows in all these different industries, right?

And so I ordered cable television. I was successful entrepreneur, started to buy real estate. I bought a house. I bought an office building. I bought a duplex and multifamily housing. I started my path of investing in businesses and investing in real estate. And here I am watching cable television one night, 30 channels. This is back in the early 80s, you know, like 1982, 83, 84, back in the early days.

I'm watching cable. I get through all 30 channels, but 29 channels were great. We had HBO movies and MTV Music and CNN News. I got to Channel 30. It was called the Discovery Channel at that time. And they said, oh, well, wait a minute. There's nothing there. I called the cable company and they said, well, hey, Discovery, it's a new channel.

They don't have a budget for 24 hours a day. I mean, think of discovery being new. This was way back when it first started. They had an 18 hour a day schedule, six hours a day of dead air. And that's when my life changed. I said, I'm going to give you something to put on that dead air and let's make some money together. I was at the Philadelphia home show watching a guy cut through a Coca-Cola can with a knife

and threw a muffler, through a pair of sneakers. And he said, it's called the Ginsoo knife. And so make a long story short, I was blown away, bought the knife set, As I'm talking to this guy, he does this 40 plus weeks a year. And his name is Arnold Morris. And Arnold, he says, kid, he said, do you think this is glamorous? I'm on the road all the time. And that's when it hit me.

Wait a minute. Arnold, are you familiar with Discovery Channel? He says, I don't even know what that is. No, what is it? I said, it's a channel that just launched. But six hours a day, they've got nothing on. I'm thinking we can film you, put you on there, and let's sell some products. So that's what we did.

And the rest is kind of history. We ended up creating a massive business with Arnold, Ginsu, knives, walks, mixers, blenders, choppers, Jackal Lane, juicers, you name it. George Foreman, Tony Little. That was the beginning. That was my birth. And I call it the birth, really, of the modern day infomercial because there was nobody doing this prior to my entry there. So anyway, that was, I'm almost done. as I get through the infomercials, then I finally did get that amazing phone call from Mark Burnett,

and he said, hey, I'm doing the show Shark Tank, and I'd love to talk to you. So went out and met with Mark, and it was pretty easy because when he explained to me, I said, what's a shark, Mark? I said, it sounds a little crazy. And he said, no, he said, people are going to come out. They get three minutes to pitch. There's going to be five of you, five sharks, and you have three minutes to make up your mind, whether you're going to invest in that deal or not. And I said, Mark, I said, I've been doing that for 30 years. He said, what do you mean? I said, I go to the houseware show, the hardware show, the fitness show, the beauty show, the golf show, toy fair, you name it. I take pitches and I invest. And I've invested in hundreds and 700 plus projects. So that's my story. And Mark wants to probably talk

about how we met. But I had a lot of fun doing a lot of those things that I just discussed. So thanks for letting me share that. You know, I love it. And I want to get to Mark in a second. But I want to highlight something that's fascinating to me about your story. And that is that you figured out that you could go to school on the mistakes and failures and then also the successes of other business owners. You talk about the early days of seeing the numbers and paying attention. And I have found that many successful entrepreneurs, they're really good at not just tunnel vision on their thing. They're watching what's going on out there in business. They're seeing what's working, what's not working. They're in constant research mode. Say more.

just a second about the importance of paying attention in that way. Oh, I mean, absolutely. I think because I was selling businesses, but I really, what I was doing, I was making an income while I was finding out what I really wanted to do. So I had, so as I was looking at these new businesses and in existing businesses and franchise companies coming out, I took a look at them as if, is this something that I may want to buy or I may want to be into because I had sold my heating and air conditioning company. I was 20 years old.

I had a pocket full of cash and I was ready to buy something, ready to get into something. But as a broker, I had now had the opportunity to see everything. And so that was my vision, was to play in that game until I found something that I really wanted to focus on. I love it. So fast forward, you're meeting a lot of people. You're having a lot of successes. You're buying and selling businesses. And then you meet Mark.

and you guys hit it off. So, Mark, tell us about that experience. Yeah, it's really, you know, something that I'm really proud of because we write this book together, Mentor to Millions, and it turns out the book itself would never have happened if it wasn't for a mentor that I had in my life by the name of Zig Ziglar. So I had a mentor when I was young. I know Dave Ramsey had Zig as a mentor as well, and I was very fortunate to have Zig in my life. And he just, he was my first real official mentor.

and he just showed me so many things that really paved the way for me in the next stage of my life. Well, here's the cool part. I had obviously seen Kevin on Shark Tank. I didn't know Kevin. Kevin didn't know me. But what I didn't know about Kevin was back there in the early 80s when he is founding the infomercial, guess who his mentor was? None other than Zig Ziglar.

And I've got behind me, Kevin, the secrets of closing the sale, one of the originally published book signed by Zig. And so Zig was Kevin's mentor. during that pivotal time in his life where he's beginning the art of the infomercial. And so I don't know, Kevin. Kevin doesn't know me, but we have a mutual mentor in Zig. And Zig passed. And so here we are. We've got children.

You know, Kevin's a dad. I'm a dad. We want our kids to have this legacy of our mutual mentor. So we reconnect with the family, the children of Zig Zig. And it was actually the son of our mutual mentor after Zig had passed this earth that introduced me. Kevin. So I met Kevin through a really cool connection because we had this in common with Zig Ziglar. But I also picked up very quickly that he was one of the busiest people on the planet. I mean, this guy's schedule

makes me dizzy just looking at it. So here I am. I meet him. I know him. I like him. We develop some trust with each other. So how in the world am I going to get him to be my mentor? So he's a guy who's received all these pitches in his life and I thought I got to put my best pitch ever together. And because people ask me all the time, how did you get a shark from Shark Tank to be your mentor? And I went to him and said, Kevin, you are busy. Your schedule is crazy. I'm going to make this easy for you. I'm going to make sure that this is not difficult for you to mentor me.

And I'm going to value your time every minute that we spend together. And then I commit to being your best student. And that was the pitch that sealed the deal. Now, this is a guy who's seen 50,000 pitches, but he's never had someone come up. up and say, I will be your best student. And I think that's so important for people to hear that when you raise your hand and say, I'm ready to be mentored and you get in front of the right person, you need to be committed to be their best student. And if you are, then when the student's ready, the teacher will appear. And Kevin showed up in my life in a very big way. And we developed a personal

relationship, a professional relationship. We've done business together. But it all started back from that mutual mentorship. And quite frankly, that's why we wrote the book. because we want everybody to know super successful people have one thing in common, and that is they had mentors in their life at such an important point in their life to help their unique ability find the world. We actually believe that if you've got a purpose, a product or a passion that the world needs, the fastest and biggest way to get it to the world is through mentorship. I love it. And we agree. Completely agree. You know, I want to talk about the book, but first, I want to underscore something you did that I think is really profound.

and really special, frankly. And we've all had people come and ask us, hey, could you be my mentor? And you know that feeling where you're like, you know, I want to, but I'm busy. You know, and I'm glad you want mentorship. You know, but when you ask somebody to be your mentor, you know, by the nature of them being your mentor,

they're busy, they're successful. They've got a lot going on. And it strikes me, Mark, that you knew what you wanted and you made it easy for Kevin. And you had a deck ready to say, this is what this could look like. And it wasn't just this vague, will you be my mentor? and putting the burden of all that thinking on Kevin to figure that out, you actually came in and you

had something and you knew how to ask for what you wanted instead of this vague request. Definitely. And, you know, we, we, one of the things that Kevin and I've talked about is, is there's really a formula for getting the most out of a mentor. So, you know, if you're out there and you're saying, man, I want a mentor in my life. I need a mentor my life. I'm ready for a mentor in my life. The formula goes like this. Number one, you've got to be, have the confidence, the courage, the vulnerability to raise your hand and say, I'm ready, you know, and say, I'm ready for a mentor. I need a mentor in my life and get the right mentor. And by the way, that mentor's probably busy, just like you said. I mean, if they're sitting around with nothing to do, they may not be

the right mentor for you. And so, and somebody that's failed, you want somebody that's failed for two reasons. One, they've learned a lot from that failure. And number two, they'll let you fail because failure is part of the entrepreneurial journey. You want someone that's going to let you fail. And then help you see the learning that you've got. So step one is get the right mentor. Step two, we just covered it. Be their best student. Act now.

Implement the things that they tell you to do so that you can go back and say, this didn't work or this did work and you can learn from that. But then step three is probably the most important step of all, and it's the part that a lot of people look over, and that is you've got to take everything you learn from your mentor, and you have to teach someone else. You must teach someone else. That's what locks it in.

Up to that point, you're just a collector of wisdom. if you're just collecting the wisdom for your mentor. Once you teach someone else, then you've locked it in in your life. Then it becomes foundational for you that you can build a business on, that you can build relationships on, that you can build a family on. You know, what's crazy is Kevin showed me how to scale. My first business is on its way to do $100 million. And I could never have achieved that kind of scale.

I always tapped out at a certain level. And that's why I originally asked Kevin to be my mentor was to help me learn how to scale. But in reality, I figured out that I could take those same lessons I was learning from him, apply him back to my family, and scale every area of my life, not just my business. And that's what's really cool. When you have the right mentor, you double down and learn everything you can't and you start teaching other people, you are then on your way to impacting millions. So, Kevin, I'm curious from your vantage point when you get this introduction. And I'm guessing, is it Tom Ziegler that connected you guys? Yep.

Tom's a good friend. Zigra. Yeah. I was kind of geeking out because Zig was also a mentor of mine, and I've got the autographed books. And I just, the tapes, the cassette tapes. I was selling newspapers door to door in high school and I'd listen to Zig. And we could talk about- Automobile University, right? Amazing.

Amazing. We could talk about Zig for an hour and that would be fun. Maybe we'll have you back to do that someday. But Kevin, when Mark gets connected to you, I can imagine this is not the first person who's asked for your time. What was it about Mark that you saw in him or how he framed this that made you say, I'm going to make time for this guy. So great question. I think, first of all, Mark is, he's very understanding of the commitments that I already had.

And so, for example, Mark actually, he said, hey, Kevin, I'm going to be actually hanging out in St. Pete for about a month, bring the family down. And, like, kind of couched it like he had some things to do. And maybe they were going to hit the beaches or whatever. but what he was doing was he didn't he wasn't saying i'm going to be at your your office or your house every single day it's like as there were availabilities or get this as we would as we would fly around to different events we got a four hour flight to this place and another four hour flight back well what are you doing on those flights well this is a chance to really hang out and get to know each other very very well and and by the way there's there's eight hours of potential mentoring that you

can do on flight. So, so I, the thing that that just blew me away about Marcus, how much he respected my time, as well as making sure that he would always make it as easy as possible for me to do the mentoring services, right? So whether it would be a breakfast that we were, you know, at an event together or a flight like I mentioned or whatever it might be, he was very concerned about making sure that it was easy. And as he said, said this was his goal to be my best student. And I can honestly say, I can't think of anybody in all my life. And I've mentored, you know, hundreds, if not thousands now, that has actually been a better student than Mark. It's interesting about, you know, this idea of making it easy for you.

Some of the people that I've said yes to the most weren't necessarily in my radar, but they were the ones that said, hey, I know you like to work out. Can I just go on a run with you? Well, I'm running anyways. Sure. Why not? I didn't. some company. And they weren't asking for everything in that first conversation. It was building a relationship. And, you know, in my experience, I'd love for you guys to say more about this, when somebody comes to me and they're asking for my time and mentorship, almost like I'm a vending machine, like you put a dollar in and I'm going to kick out mentorship. You know, I kind of feel used. Like, I want to have a relationship and relationships cook over time, just like in sales,

just like with your team members, just like with your social life. You know, you don't get married on the first date. It's a process of getting to know each other. And both sides are kind of figuring out, hey, is this working for us? And it's really on the mentee to put in a lot of value for the mentor and make it worth their time. I actually have coined the phrase because people ask me a lot, you know, hey, did Kevin sit down and like teach you or whatever? No, man, the guy is constantly going. You know, I mean, his whole life is scheduled in 30 minute blocks. And so the mentorship I got from Kevin, I call contagious proximity. Like, I learned more watching him do business than I ever did him teaching me business.

Like, I watched him negotiate deals. One of my favorite lessons from Kevin was most people think of a shark, okay, as I got to get the best deal and the most equity and the most cash or whatever. And I'm watching Kevin do deals. And also, I realize, wait a minute, he's putting, like, way more time into making sure this is a fair deal. And, you know, I watched people offer him. 50% of their company, just right off the gate, no negotiation whatsoever. And him come back and say,

no, you know, I think the fair place for me to be is 25%. And I'm thinking he just left 25% on the table. What's, what's going on here? Man, this guy's Uber successful. And then through our conversations, I started realizing the reason that most deals for entrepreneurs fail is because they're not scalable. A shark deal is not scalable. It's a one-time deal. We brag to our friends. I got this great deal. It's a one-time deal. So you structure a deal or a partnership with somebody. If you got the best part of that deal, as soon as it scales, it fails. Another deal that's not scalable is generosity. If you're just helping someone out to get them started, as soon as that scales, if they come back to you and expect that, you're like, whoa, wait a minute, I was just helping you out. But they expected that

to be your deal. So generous deals don't scale. Shark deals don't scale. But Kevin figured out that a fair deal is the only scalable deal. And it's scalable to a million, to 10 million, to a hundred million to a billion. You structure the right deal up front and be fair about it. I caught that in contagious proximity. And I've now put it in place in my life. I mean, I live by that lesson that I learned from him, but I watched him do it in proximity of him. It wasn't something he sat down and said, let me teach you a lesson number 38 of, you know, of being successful as an entrepreneur. And so that's what you're talking about. You know, my dad was one of my mentors and a business guy, often with deals, he would say a great deal is one that you would take either side of. Kevin, what do you think?

Yeah, I agree. And because Mark was talking about this deal where they were offering me 50%. Well, of course, what did they want? They wanted me to do 50% of the work and 50% of every aspect throughout the whole process. And that's why I said, no, you're the founder. You're going to do the work. You're the CEO. I'm going to be providing advice and services and this and that. I don't want 50%. I want 25%. And that's a fair number for me. And you go grow the business because maybe you're going to need somebody that you can bring in at a point. If I had 50 and you had to bring somebody in and give them 10 or 20 or 25%,

you would have less than me and you're the founder of the company. So, you know, you've got to position this. So I'm almost mentoring on the front end of doing the deal the right way because I don't want them. And I've had this happen. Oh, they go back to their, they talk to their lawyers or the this. or that, how dare Kevin try to get 50% of your company, right? I mean, like, and is he going to do half the work? You know, so, no, it's all in the expectations and the deliverables are important to

discuss on the front end. So that's one of the focuses for me. When I get involved with the relationship, is to make sure that we both understand what it is I can and can't do and how that's going to work. And then I want to be compensated in an equity way in a fair fashion, but not too much. And I'm going to tell on Kevin a little bit because he won't brag on himself, but he mentioned early on Gensu Knives and Arnold Morris. So they did hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, right? And so everybody knows Gensu knives. What they don't know is that at a certain point, Kevin's

CFO came to him and said, you cannot write that guy another check. These checks have more zeros than, you know, I've ever seen. And not only did Kevin say, oh, we're not only going to write him the check, but you hand me the check so that I can go hand it to him myself. And what ended up happening was because of the fair deal that he struck, and it was a fair deal, Arnold Morris went out and literally introduced Kevin to anybody that had a cool product. And so the abundant way of structuring a fair deal is that it has legs that you can't even anticipate. And so here Arnold Morris got a fair deal with Kevin. So he wanted to go tell all of his friends, this guy, if you're even thinking about doing business this way,

There's only one guy in the industry you talk to, and it's Kevin Harrington. And so there's a contagious ripple effect to doing business that way. The phrase comes to mind that you can shear a sheep a thousand times. You can always skin it once. And there's this idea of when things are good for everybody, then everybody wins. And the rising tide races all ships. And, you know, we're not here to take. We're here to give.

We're here to serve. We're here to contribute. And as our friends Zigler would say, if you help enough people get what they want, you get what you want. So I love those principles. You know, Mark, it strikes me. You were saying that essentially more is caught than taught. When you're hanging out with Kevin, he's not just sitting there enlightening you and you're taking notes.

You're watching him in action. As business owners out there who are busy running their business are trying to figure out how they can go shadow or be in the trenches with somebody else and get that mentorship, how did you find the time to hang out with Kevin and actually get in the trenches with him while you're still also trying to run your business and do your thing. Yeah, well, it's one of the ways is that, like I said, it wasn't a tough sell to get my family to go from Indiana to St. Petersburg in January. You know, I'd like to say I'm good at sales and learned a little bit from Zig, but that was one of the easier sales that I've ever made. And so, yes, I did have businesses that I was working on, but I found that Kevin and I got involved and we were, one of the things we were doing was extending the legacy of Zig Zig Ziglar. We got involved in a project where we were extending that legacy, and we had to travel to different events. and places. And so Kevin hit the nail on the head. I'm traveling from Indiana. He's traveling from Tampa and we're meeting up different places. And it hit me. If I was to go to Florida and we had to

travel, we traveled together. We were in Ubers together. We were at airports together. We were on flights together, sitting together. You know, I'll never forget the first flight I took after coming down to St. Petersburg. And I'm sitting there and he shows up at the airport and he's got two bags. One bag I recognize as his computer bag. The other bag I never seen before my life. And the other bag was like bulging full. We get on this flight. It's a three hour flight. And so I've got three hours and I'm like, all the things I can think about to ask him and learn from him. But instead, this bag just had me, you know, so curious. And so the ding went off and I got my computer out. I'm going to try to get on Wi-Fi. And he gets this bag out. And all of a sudden, he starts pulling out

magazines and newspapers. And I didn't ask any questions because I'm like, what is going on? And he's ripping pages out. And he's got this manila folder and he's sticking pages in. And he's throwing all this stuff on the floor because he's going through it so fast. And almost like I was on can of camera, the stewardess comes up as I'm sitting here just going, what is happening? And she shows up. Mr. Harrington, you know, can I remove all that for you? And she's got a trash bag just dedicated for him.

And she fills up this trash bag. She carries it off. And then he goes at it again. And he gets another huge pile and she shows up and she takes it all away. When it's all done, he's got this tight little folder. of exactly what he was looking for. And this was my introduction to aggressive curiosity. He was looking for the eyeballs.

Where are people looking? What are they looking for? Why are they looking for it? But he could have told me that story, but I saw it happen over a three hours. It's three hours from Tampa to Toronto, three hours. And he got through that huge bag in three hours.

And he knew where the eyeballs were at. And he knew what kind of businesses lined up with where people were looking. That's aggressive curiosity. I couldn't have learned it any other way than being in contagious proximity. So, yeah, I was busy. I just made sure I aligned myself in a way that I could be in that proximity, that I could be in the audience, listening in on stage, backstage, supporting, helping him, doing what Zig Zigler says.

I was helping Kevin be the best version of Kevin so that I could learn from him in the process. Well, and don't miss this. You also started a project together that puts you in that proximity. I think about Dave Ramsey, my CEO. He's been one of my top mentors. In 17 years, I've learned so much from the guy, but it's never just sit down and drink coffee and take notes. I mean, we're working together. We're building things together.

And there's nobody here in Nashville that Dave just sits with and meets with to mentor. But there's a lot of people that get mentored by him that don't work here. But we've got some kind of mutual project that we're working on. And in working together, you build a relationship and you get to see, oh, here's how this guy works. And I just think those lessons are so much more powerful than just, dictating advice, you know? And there's a place for that, certainly, but it sounds like you're saying that if you could create an environment where you guys have something to work on tactically, it'd be a lot better than just talking through things. Completely agree. Absolutely.

I mean, as Mark and I were developing the, we created Secrets of Closing the Sale Masterclass, a digital version of everything Zig had done. And so we had a great passion for that. So, Both of us had been mentored by Zig. We had relationships with the family. And we also had kids that didn't really have the knowledge of Zig's teaching. So we're like many, many people want this. And let's work on this together. So that was a great project for us to work on together.

As Mark says, we both were pushing the day-to-day of that across all spectrums and traveling and doing everything together. So eventually you guys say, okay, let's put together a book about this. When did you know this was going to be more than just a great mentorship relationship and become something that would be a book and start spreading the word about why this is important and then how to do it? You know, I know for me, I would go to these events and Kevin being on Shark Tank, when he would finish speaking to a room of 1,000, hundreds of people would line up. They wanted an autograph.

They wanted, but they actually all would say, I just need five minutes. Like that was the normal. I just need five minutes. If I could ask you one question, I know it would change my life forever. And so he was so gracious that he would take a lot of these, you know, these five minutes or these one questions. And it turned out to be the same question. What's the one thing I need to do to grow my business? What's the one thing I can do to start a successful business?

What's this one thing? And we started having this conversation offline, you know, flying back in a hotel or restaurant. And what we figured out is that super successful people have one thing in. common. They all had mentors. You talked about your mentor being Dave Ramsey. We've talked about Zig Ziglar. Guess what? Dave Ramsey had mentors. Zig Ziglar had mentors. Super Uber financial successful people all have this one secret. They have mentors. If you Google mentorship, there are the haves and the have-nots. And sadly, there are more have-nots than there are halves. And so we basically said, if there's this one burning question out there around success and

growth in relationships, business, and life, it is the haves, have people in their lives. We were not put on this earth to be alone. We were not supposed to do this entrepreneurial thing alone. We're not supposed to lead entrepreneurial endeavors alone. And there are people willing to help. And we've got to tell that story. And so that's how it became a book. And that's why the book is not a how-to book. It's not a one, two, three, you know, six steps to whatever. It is a journey of a relatable entrepreneur with his mentor, some unbelievable stories of Kevin's life, because he's had an unbelievable life, and some really practical ways that those lessons can be applied every single day. We end every chapter with how you can take the business lesson

and bring it home to your most valuable business, which is likely the one you went home to, your family, not the one you went to. And so that's when just this constant, just yearning for this answer that entrepreneurs had for Kevin. And so, and it became this book, a best-selling book now on mentorship. And we turned it in before COVID. Never has there been a more important time for people to have mentors than right now. Oh, it's great timing for that message. Kevin, when you're answering those questions in that line and people are saying, okay, I just need five minutes. I've just got one question. You know, I've had this experience where people are saying, okay, what's the one book I need to read or what's the one thing I need to do? And I, I try.

try to stop and say, I understand what you're getting at, but you're asking the wrong question. Because what you guys are talking about with mentorship is there's really something about constantly being hungry, always being a sponge. You know, and a book that changed my life is going to be different than a book that changed your life. The one thing you need to do is stay hungry and be reading books all the time. There's no silver bullet book, if you will, or no silver bullet course to take. You need to be consuming all that stuff over time.

That's how we transform and grow as leaders. And so one of the things you guys talk about in the book is the idea of building a dream team, not just hiring people that can fog a mirror, but the people that are really going to take you where you want to go. And that's attention, especially if you're small and cash is tight, paying for the talent that you need tomorrow and not just who can do the job today. What's the importance of a dream team? Well, I tell you, for me, you know, I, and I'll kind of begin this and then Kevin can really bring it home for us. But what I learned from Kevin and watching him was, that up until the point that I met Kevin, I always hired, as he said, I always hired who I could afford, like 99.9% of every entrepreneur out there. Whoever I could afford, I hired. Well, that is a way of growing your business through the rearview mirror, because what you can afford is already where you're at. And so I'm having this conversation with him one day, and he said, and I'm, I'm challenging him because I'm listening to his stories. And I'm like, well, how did you afford that guy?

And why did you pick that guy? You know, that was so, you know, far out. And he's like, look, I'd rather have, I'd rather have 10% of the time of a CFO that can take me to 100 million, than 100% of the time of a CFO that's going to go to a million. And so, you know, so the concept is, is that who do you need to go forward? What does your business need to accomplish the vision or the purpose? That's the dream team. And what I learned from Kevin is you've got to get creative. You've got to get creative sometimes to put the right team together. And he's got this great story that he can share around the concept of the dream team with the L'Oreal folks.

And I'll let him share that because that's when I started to really learn that as an entrepreneur, if you can put together the dream team, and that's why the business I currently have is doing so well because I'm not, I didn't hire who I can afford. I hired who was going to take me where I wanted to go. And I had to get creative. I had to involve some equity. I had to involve some, you know, some creative ways of incentivizing them, but I now have the dream team. And that's why I'm scaling beyond where I've gone before because I was in the way.

So, Kevin, you want to share your dream team story that kind of inspired me? So I had an idea. This is back probably five, six years ago now, but I said we were launching a mobile app. And I'm like, how do you, what's the most important thing in launching a mobile app, getting users to download the because it could be a great app, but if no one's using it, there's no real business. So I went to Sprint, and I ended up through layers, got up to the CEO, Marcelo Clare, and I pitched him that just like the downtime of TV in the old days, Discovery Channel, it's six hours of downtime, when you get your mobile phone, your screen has open spaces that you could put a mobile app,

and how about we do a venture? You put my app on all your phones that you sell, and I'll give you equity and I'll give you a percentage of sales. And this guy, he's six foot six. He got up. He was all excited. He'd bring people in. We're going to do this deal. And he said, yes, he says, I'll put you on six million phones, a million a month, because that's how many phones Sprint was selling. So now I had the deal with Sprint, and we signed a letter of intent. They were in. They were going to invest money with us also. But I needed a management team and I needed experts and we also needed to go raise the capital. and so this app involves celebrities and beauty products in the beginning, in the very start. And so I found a gentleman, I said, boy, to get the right guy is going to be expensive because

this is going to be a big business. And so make a long story short, I live in St. Pete, Florida. I found a gentleman that was retired. He had been the president of L'Oreal Beauty, lived out in Clearwater. But he was still, I love getting these retired guys sometimes because they've got, just because they're retired doesn't mean they don't have a lot of time and a lot of energy to do things. So make a long story short, I brought a man. He said, I'd love to help you out. This is great. He says, I make a million bucks a year. And so hire me for a million dollars. I mean, you know,

happy to do it. That's what L'Oreal was paying me. And I said, look, this is a startup. We don't have that. I said, I don't need you full time. I said, what if I could, what if I just needed you like a couple days a month. Do you think you could make it on 10 grand a month? And he's like, 10 grand a month, this opportunity, yeah, maybe there's a little upside for me. So you know what? Let's make that work. Okay. He says, I can do that. So then I said, well, let me tell you how you're going to get paid the 10 grand a month. Okay. We're going to go raise the money and that's going to take a few months. And so let's say it takes three months or maybe it's four months. You're going to have accrued four months at 10 grand a month. So we're going to, oh, we're not going to pay you until the money comes in.

but we'll owe you 40,000 then when the money comes in and you'll get paid. So in effect, what we had is a million dollar a year guy that we got for no money down for four months and then he started getting paid. And this all worked and this is, you know, so sometimes you, again, we couldn't have afforded this person, but the way we structured it and we ended up bringing him on as the CEOO with the company and of course other opportunities that equity wise and things like that. So I just, I say, you know, another much quicker story, but it's, I live in Tampa, Florida, McDill Air Force bases here.

I was dealing with a gentleman that had a business selling to the military. And I said, let's go out to McDill. McDill, there's retired generals there. And they want to help business owners. And this is their, this is one of their business models is mentoring and helping entrepreneurs get access and open doors. So you got to go for the gusto. like Mark said, how did he get a shark? He had to ask, right? If you don't ask, you're not going to get.

Well, he had to ask. You know, the thing that you guys are talking about is being creative. Like, if you're going to attract top talent, you have to think differently than all the competitions thinking about this stuff. Now, here at Ramsey Solutions, we don't do debt. We don't do equity. We don't do partnerships. I say we. I mean, Dave doesn't. So therefore, we don't. But I'm so privileged to get to work at a place where, you know, I have this entrepreneur spirit. And sure, I've got the skill set to go build and do my own thing. But I've been here a long time. And Dave, he didn't sell me just on the job that I was going to do when I came in. He sold me on the opportunity of where we're going.

And he gave me a comp plan that gets a percentage of when this thing grows, I get to benefit as if I'm an owner. I get paid today effectively as an owner, small percentage of a really big bottom line. But that small percentage is more than many CEOs make. And I'm going, are you kidding? You know, I get to participate as if I own this. thing and I get all the benefits of the platform and, you know, what Dave has built this thing to, and I've been able to build it with him and an incredible talent that I get to work with. I mean, that's another thing people miss out on. They want to work with other talented people.

You know, you bring in eagles, you want other eagles around because if you bring in somebody that's a thoroughbred and they look up, it's a bunch of donkeys. I'm mixing metaphors now with animals. We're running in a zoo. But the point is, you go, I don't want to be around these people, you know. And so you've got to be creative when you're attracting and recruiting people and think outside the box a little but it sounds like that's the kind of the core principle, what you guys are saying. This is why I say aggressive curiosity is important because what I was doing, I was hitting all the trade shows.

I went to the hardware show and the houseware show. Oh, what am I doing at the houseware show? I'm connecting with the guy that writes Homeworld magazine. He's the editor-publisher. Why? Because he's going to want to write about my new products and my new relationship. So I would go into each one of these shows with a mission. I want to find new products.

I want to connect with the media. And because now, as I'm growing my business, I mean, I met the publisher of Homeworld magazine almost 30 years ago. He's still the publisher of Homeworld magazine. And every year when I see him at the House for a show in Chicago, except for this last year, COVID, right? I've been 33 out of 35 years in a row outside of the two years of, you know, one of COVID and another one I was deathly ill.

But this is how I like it. to make deals is go to these shows, aggressive curiosity, meet the right people, and then when you need some help, when you need that dream team, hey, do you think the guy that writes for Homeworld Magazine might know a thing or two about some of the top people in the industry that might be able to help you out with distribution or development or packaging or whatever the needs may be? So we've got that in all the industries that we've been involved with because of that aggressive curiosity for the last 30-some years. So, Mark, I'm curious to hear from you this idea, this notion of aggressive curiosity. Clearly, you know, Kevin has this. It seems like he was

innately born with this a bit. Have you always had that, or do you sense that it's something you can develop with training and like a muscle that you exercise? No, you definitely can develop it. And for those of you that want even a simpler version of what we're talking about here, it's the concept of where are the eyeballs? So so many people, you know, they'll develop this amazing business. And it's over here. And it's the best business that anyone's ever had, but nobody's looking in that direction. And so, you know, Kevin was basically showing me that his different business ventures, you can set up a business that is a good business.

But if it is in the direct thoroughfare of the eyeballs, it's going to be successful. You can have an extraordinary business over here. And if nobody's looking at it, it's bankrupt. And so that is the difference. So many entrepreneurs are so passionate about their business. idea that they don't stop to say, where are people looking? Where are people focused? And that's why there is a record number of new businesses being started right now. Why? Because our eyeballs have shifted. Like during this time of pandemic and COVID-19, eyeballs are shifting. And so that's why there's never

been, in my opinion, a better time because not only are they shifting, but they're also new habits being formed. So the real kind of multiplier is if you can set up a business, in the path of the eyeballs, use aggressive curiosity like Kevin has taught us, to basically ask yourself all the time, where are people looking? Well, right now, guess where they're looking? E-commerce. They are looking right now on their computer screens because what happened in the world, we're now shopping from home.

So if you're out there and you have a business that is an e-commerce-based business, likely you've seen an uptick because the eyeballs are there. So then you say to yourself, okay, now I'm in the path of the eyeballs, what habits are being formed and specifically what problems can I solve? So one of the problems that we decided to solve is that people didn't want to go to the doctor because that's where sick people were.

But they still had bumps and bruises and aches and pains. So we started an e-commerce business in the path of the eyeballs and we started selling products that help people take care of themselves at home, whether it was sniffles or muscle cramps or arthritis. And so we put it in the path of the eyeballs and then we put it in the path of a new habit that was being formed,

which is, I want to be healthy, but I'm going to try to be healthy at home and not go somewhere else to be healthy. I mean, try to find some fitness equipment right now. Forget about it. Oh, my gosh. Can't be found, right? And so that is an example of path of the eyeballs,

new habits, we're working out at home. And so I do believe this is a muscle that you can make stronger, and it's just a way of looking. So if you've got a business out there, you need to be asking yourself, your team, the people on it, are we in the path of the eyeballs? Are we solving a problem, a new problem that's likely going to stick? And if you can answer yes to those, you've got a good chance for success. If you're thinking about starting a new business, where are the eyeballs, what problem

are you solving, and likely it's going to be successful. So it is a way of thinking. I love that example. It's a muscle that you can develop so that it's automatronic on. every idea you have, where are the eyeballs, am I in that path? Because I feel so sorry for people that I meet that have an extraordinary product or idea, but nobody's looking in that direction. You talk about swimming upstream, walking uphill. That's what it looks like. It's really good. Well, and you're also talking about what's going on in the marketplace.

A lot of people that have been disrupted by everything going on with COVID in the pandemic, you know, there's two groups. Some have said, oh, we don't have a business anymore. Let's wait for this to pass. and then another group is going, look at all the new opportunities this is created. So it really is about that mindset. It's totally about the mindset. I mean, the first chapter of our book is actually mindset, you know, because if you, some people say, I need a mentor, I want a mentor. Well, guess what?

That's very, you know, that's selfish, quite frankly. I mean, it's the whole saying is that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And so the real question to ask yourself is, am I ready to learn? Am I ready to be that lifelong learner that you were talking about a little earlier with Kevin? Am I ready to be coached? Am I ready to be real, raw, vulnerable? Am I ready? Because if you're ready, if you have the right mindset, again, we'll go back to Zig Zigler.

Zig used to say you can change who you are. You can change where you are. And you can even change what you're doing by simply changing one thing. And that's what's going in between your ears, your mind. You change. You don't have to have a new home. You don't have to move somewhere. You don't have to change what car you drive or even change jobs. You can simply change right up here what's between your ears and you can change who you are, where you are, and what you're doing. And that is within your control. And by the way, the fastest way to change it is by what you're listening to. You know, people were talking about the super successful people that are crushing it right now during these crazy times. We're putting awesome things in their head. garbage in, garbage out. They weren't binging on Netflix for 28 hours in a row. They were listening to podcasts. They were listening to recordings. They were listening to Dave. They were listening to you. They were filling their head with good stuff and good stuff is now happening for them. Well, and for everybody that believes in God and things that the Bible says, you know, at Romans it says you don't conform to the pattern of this world, but you're transformed by renewing your mind. And that's exactly what we're talking about. The more we read, I mean, there's a biblical principle that, Mind renewal, day in and day out is the way that we end up getting transformed. I want to talk about one of the most important conversations you can have when you're talking with a mentor, and that's this idea of failure.

It's important that your mentor has actually experienced failure. But also, I think we have this sense that we have to have it all together, or we have to impress our mentor or impress our team members. And the truth is, nobody gets to the top without failing. It's a part of the journey. Well, it's been something that I had to learn very early on. The good news is in the early days, we got lucky, I say lucky, because not everything in the world of product launching is going to work. And so Ginzu was a good one. It worked.

And we got some good guys. We got Billy Mays and Tony Little and some pretty cool things in the beginning. But instantly, we were launching new products that were failing and failing. And so we would have one success, five failures. And by the way, when you're going from the third to the fourth to the fifth in a row, you're thinking you're out of business. This is over. You had, oh, you got lucky once in your life.

But all of a sudden, boom, another one's going to hit. So, you know, we ended up, I mean, I'll never forget when I brought my 32-year-old son into the business 10 years ago. He had just gotten out of college, Penn State. And he's, and we're launching a product. and he was so excited about this product launch. And, but, you know, it's a three, four month process of launching a product. And boom, on the day that it launched, it was, it was just devastatingly terrible.

Okay. So he's, he's like, dad, we're out of business. And I'm like, no, Brian, I said that you're O for one. Okay. Now let's go do another and another. And so I learned early on, not everything's going to work. and just to try to, you know, you identify the things that are making it work. So we found certain things and certain kinds of products, as Mark said, where are the eyeballs?

Kitchen products work. Everybody's got a kitchen. Can you make it demonstrable? Can you show me some magical transformation? So we started developing checklists of how to make things successful, but we realized that failure was part of our day-to-day life. In fact, as Winston Churchill, I love his quote, success is being able to go from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm.

And so I think it's hard to get enthused about failing, but I realize what my focus is now is because the old days, we'd spend 90 days, 120 days, $200,000 on a product launch because we had to shoot an infomercial. We had to buy media. We had to get, you know, the website set up. We had to do all this preparation. And we would spend all the time and pretty much get it to. 99% of the way there, and we'd spend 200, 250,000, and it would fail miserably. And we're like,

wait a minute, can't we do this in a different fashion where we can find out that without spending the quarter of a million in four months time, is there a way if we can get it to 80%, fail fast, fail cheap, and not have these big problems? So this was the direction that we had. We said, we're still going to be failing, but we need to be able to fail faster and cheaper. And so now we have a formula, we can, for less than $10,000, we can shoot videos, build a funnel, run some ads, get some traffic, and we're going to get a good read on a new product for less than 10,000 and in less than 30 days. Well, what you're saying is that failure, you know, you're paying a price in failure, but what you're gaining from that is the learning and the wisdom of here's what's going to work. And I love the distinction of failing cheaper because, you know, when you say fail, it doesn't mean you have to fail and it's a fatal failure. It shouldn't have to cost a million dollars to qualify as a failure.

You can fail with a little test on something and still get that learning. It sounds like that's what you're saying. Exactly. And also, we don't run for the hills if something tests a little soft. We have what we call our tweaking processes. And I mean, a friend of my Carl Dykler who started Beachbody, he likes to tell the story when he was doing P90X. It was, I think, either 12 or 13, maybe 15 versions.

a P90X before he got it to work. And so you don't necessarily, you know, when you have an investment, you want to, you don't want to just run from it. You know, you do owe everybody involved because there's partners and there's people that own, you know, maybe the patents and things like that. So you want to give it a full effort and try to make it work. But I mean, one of the great things is being able to do what I just talked about, spending 30 days and $10,000 in this test and then seeing big success.

I mean, that, I mean, that is an amazing feeling. And so even if it's, we figure we bat about one out of three, one out of four, one out of four on the outside. So, you know, if we can, one out of three is in the baseball world, as I say, batting, that'd be 333 percent. that puts you in the all-star game every year if you can bat 330 percent. So that's kind of what we try to focus on is hitting one out of three of the things we do, but being able to get there quicker and cheaper. Well, tell them they need to work on P90X a little bit more because I bought the videos and put them on the shelf and I still didn't lose any weight.

So I'm not sure what's going on with their product. You know, as we wrap up here, I know you guys have families. You've referenced your families. And we all know that in business, we typically, start out to do this because we care about our families, but if we're not careful, we end up being married to our business and the family struggles as a result. How do you keep the boundaries balanced, if you will, because it can be all-consuming. There are times that family needs to be deprioritized to give the business what it needs, but you can't do that long-term or the people

that you care about the most are going to suffer, and that's not why we've got into business to begin with. Yeah, most entrepreneurs actually get into business because they want to be a better husband, and wife, they want to be a better parent to their kids. And then very quickly, that business becomes the very reason that they are not able to spend that time and to make that investment into their family or their relationships. And so we see this happen so many times. And so that's why Kevin and I wanted to give a big priority in the book to making sure that people knew that they can win at home like they win in their work world. So if someone is successful, we believe that if you're successful in business in any form of success, you can be that successful at home. The question is,

are you willing to apply what you've learned? What if everything you're doing in business is practice so that you can get it right for the most valuable business you'll ever own, ever operate, ever even be a part of, which very well may be the one you're coming home to, not the one you went to? If you look at your life in that way, if I say Kevin Harrington was my mentor, not just so that I could be successful in business, but so that I could scale my family. And I'm here to tell you that, you know, and it's a spoiler alert because the magical transformation that happens in the book, yes, there's a lot of lessons about business. Don't get me wrong. You can grab this book and learn a lot. But the magical transformation is in the epilogue. Tom Ziegler wrote the forward to this book.

And when he finished reading the epilogue, he said, this is not an epilogue. This is an epic log. He said it's the most powerful, compelling epilogue I've ever read. Because the magic. The magical transformation was not the business over the years that we spent together. The magical transformation was my family, and it was the lessons I learned from Kevin, how I applied those back to my family, and what happened as a result of that. At the beginning of our relationship, my kids didn't love me being an entrepreneur. I was missing things. I wasn't there.

I was always gone. They didn't understand what I did. I don't think they could even spell entrepreneur. But as a result of starting to put in my family what I was learning all the lessons and bringing them home, I made them my most valuable business. From that point forward, I don't think I did. I did very few trips down to Kevin's or masterminds without one of my kids with me. For a period of three years, I had one of my kids with me all the time because if they were my most valuable business, they had to be with me. And the magical transformation happened when they got pulled up on stage unannounced and the event,

promoter said, I just want to ask you guys one question. You've been here with your dad. What was it like to be the child of an entrepreneur? And when they got done sharing the magical transformation of how they literally hated what I did five years earlier, but then they became my most valuable business. They love what their dad does. It's transformed their lives forever. It's transformed the path that they're on. They've met some crazy amazing people and they don't want their dad doing anything but being an entrepreneur. And there wasn't a dry eye in the audience because every entrepreneur out there wanted their kids to say that about what they do. So when you truly make your family, your most valuable business, you give them your best and your first, you practice

to the outside world so you can perfect it at home. It's not about work-life balance. It's about work-life integration as an entrepreneur. And when you do that, you will look back and see that you truly are CEO of the most valuable business in the world. Well, that's such a beautiful story. And I love the image of your children standing on that stage and the audience crying and being moved. It's just, it's so inspiring to think about that. And what you're saying is what we talk about here all the time at Entree Leadership. And that is that it starts with you. When you work on you, you become a better leader.

You can build a better business. But it doesn't stop there. It's you're a better husband. You're a better father and better wife. And you become a better person and the radiation out of you and everything that you interact with. The ones that you love the most and your family all the way out. to your team, your customers. Everybody wins when you grow as a leader.

And that's what you guys are talking about here. And it's been an incredible conversation. Kevin, Mark, thank you so much. The book is called Mentor to Millions. You guys go out and pick it up. It's an incredible read. And these guys have some amazing stories and experiences that I hope you guys will check out. Thanks for your time today.

Hey, great being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Well, you guys heard something today that you already know. And that is you got to be hungry. You got to be curious. You've got to be growing all the time. And there's several ways to do that.

You can read books. You can watch YouTube videos. You can go to courses. You can attend conferences. There's all these things that we should be doing to get better as leaders. Because when we get better as people and our leadership grows, our business grows, our families grow, everything gets better when we get better. And one of the best ways to do this is to put yourself in proximity of other people who are going to push you. You almost have to volunteer to make yourself uncomfortable.

and expose yourself a little bit and go, hey, I need you to get in my face when you see me about to do something stupid. Because I'd rather have the short-term sting of somebody saying, hey, you're headed the wrong direction than the long-term death spiral of flying off a cliff. You're smart. You make a lot of good decisions. I'm not worried about the good decisions. You're doing a good job on that part. It's that one bad decision that we make and we didn't realize we're about to make it. And we didn't check in with somebody who's going, whoa, whoa, slow down. Have you thought about it? it from this perspective. Who's that person for you? Who are those people for you? Not just your team, not just your family. Who's in your community? Who are the people you could say are going to mentor and walk with you? Who's your coach? Who are the people that are going to push you really, really hard for your benefit? Find those people. Make the time to make that investment and get

those people around you. The people who do that, the business owners who do that proactively, those are the ones who win. I've seen it thousands of times. The ones who win and get to the stop. They've got people around on the ones who don't. They got so far and then they failed because they tried to go alone. Don't do that. That's not you. You deserve to win. Your business, your purpose, your people, they deserve for you to walk with a team. That's why we offer coaching. That's why we recommend it so much. It's not because we just to say, hey, we should have a coaching program. It's because we believe that's the critical element to success over time is that we need people in our corner. It doesn't matter what you call it. Mentor, coach, advisor,

here's the point you've got to have people around you that are smart that care and are going to tell you the truth so i want you to stop right now and ask yourself who are those people in my life am i being honest with myself do i really have the right people around me am i checking in with them consistently or am i trying to do this all on my own guys it's been proven time and again Dave Ramsey himself, every great leader, every successful entrepreneur you read about, they don't do it alone. They have mentors. They have coaches. They have an advisory group. This takes on different shapes and forms. You can do it one-on-one. You can do it virtually. You can do it through a formal coaching program. You can do it by getting some people at church together. I don't care how you do it. Just don't go it alone.

We believe in this so much at Entree leadership, this principle that business owners being isolated creates death and business owners coming together, creates life and success. We so believe in that that we designed our entire coaching program around that very concept. It's hard to find the right answers, you know,

what's really working for other business owners, not just theories. Here's the good news. You don't have to figure it out on your own. I got to just join a group. Every day, an entree leadership elite, there's hundreds of business owners getting answers to their questions,

and you can too, as a part of an entree leadership, Elite Advisory Group. Now, our advisory groups are about to open up in 2021, so you want to join the wait list because they're open for a minute and then they're closed again. So you don't want to miss out. All you got to do to get on the wait list to learn more information, just text the phrase, Elite 2020 to 33444.

That's Elite 2020, no spaces to 33444. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entry Leadership podcast. Hey, do you know somebody that would also enjoy this? content. We'll share it with them. Send them a link. Be the hero. Thank you for helping us get the word out. That is how this thing grows, and that's how more business owners get hope. Hey, if you didn't know this, you can now watch interviews and highlights from the Entry Leadership podcast on YouTube, and it's another great way to share it with people, so check that out. You can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership, and you can follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. We'd love to hang out

with you over there. And for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the link in the show notes. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Rudder. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like Borrowed Future. Not so fun fact, America has a $1.6 trillion student loan crisis, and it's out of control. George Camel, host of the Borrowed Future podcast, where we uncover the underbelly of the student loan industry and show you what you can do about it.

It'll inspire you to see that it is possible to avoid student loans and graduate college debt-free. Listen to Borrowed Future wherever you listen to podcasts.