Next Level Pros - #10: Brandon Poulin - Founder of Lady Boss, 29 years old, $203M

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Brandon isn't your ordinary Founder. At the current age of 29 years old, Brandon and his wife Kaelin "Lady Boss" have built a health empire on the back of incredible marketing and sales skills. What's next for Brandon and Kaelin? Dive in to find out!

Welcome to the Founder Podcast, where we explore the journeys of some of the most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs from around the world. I'm your host, Chris Lee, a serial entrepreneur with a passion for building and growing businesses. Throughout my career, I founded multiple nine-figure businesses and learned a thing or two about what it takes to succeed in the world of business. I want to share those lessons with you by searching out the coolest guests on planet Earth and have them share their own incredible stories. But this podcast, it's not just for entrepreneurs. It's for anyone that's looking to be inspired by these stories of people who have overcome incredible odds and create something truly remarkable. So join me on this journey as we explore the fascinating world of

entrepreneurship and meet the founders that are shaping it today. Let's dive in. Welcome to another episode. Today, I am joined by Mr. Brandon Poulin. Brandon is a serial entrepreneur with his wife, Kaylin. They have built a freaking empire. Brandon is still a young buck, sub 30, 29 years old. Is that right? Oh, I'm just creeping up on 30 in July, man. Creeping up on it. Getting old.

So Brandon is the founder of Lady Boss. This is a health and apparel company. They built this thing to doing about $50 million a year before they eventually sold it off just over a year ago to Russell Brunson. Brandon is a believer. He is a family man. He a husband and a father of two daughters. Is that right? That's right, man. In the thick of it, bro. Awesome.

So I think that's probably the thing that I appreciate most about Brandon is he puts God first and family and then just is a big dude when it comes to founding businesses and consulting and all that good stuff. So excited to have Brandon. Welcome to the show, dude. Dude, I'm pumped to be here, man. You were on my show. Now I'm on your show. We just get to hang out. I love it. So remind us, what's the name of your podcast? It's called Big Business Mistakes, man. So the idea the idea was basically, um, lots of tips and highlights and stuff. And

so we want to take a different angle, right? Like the mistakes and then kind of learn the lessons through there. So some good stories, man. Do you kill that podcast by the way, Chris, you killed it. I was like, I got off and I was like inspired, man. You did so good. Appreciate it, man. Podcasting is so fun. You know. You get to just spend time with really cool individuals, talk about whatever makes sense in the moment. It's a good time. So Brandon, dude, you're young. You built freaking huge business. Give us the backstory. How old were you when you and Kalen started building Lady Boss? Oh, man. So we launched in like 2014, like Q4 2014.

So I guess I would have been about 20 years old. Yeah, 21, 20. No, we actually launched it. We were engaged. So we weren't married yet. We were engaged. And it's kind of crazy, dude. Like we had like relationship hanging on a thread at one point.

And so we actually hit rock bottom in our relationship while we were engaged. Rock bottom in our business because we were in network marketing, right? That's how we met. So we hit rock bottom in all these areas while we were engaged. And then that company, which was our first big company, and we've got a lot of different portfolio businesses now, and we're doing all kinds of things. But Lady Boss kind of formed out of the pit in a way. So that's pretty wild. I mean, the fact that you guys launched this thing when you're 20, 21 years old,

and it was the massive success that it is, I mean, that's pretty uncommon. I think a lot of people more take the route that I did, you know, start a business, suck, fail, right? Like, you know, try figuring it out. Don't build a very big right off. Like, man, what – so give us the backstory. Like, what led to the launch of Lady Boss? Obviously, it wasn't just some overnight success, right? Everybody's got a story.

Tell us yours. Yeah, man. I mean, it really started in network marketing, right? I followed my first LLC when I was 17 years old. It was an auto glass company. My buddy came back from Arizona and I was in Albuquerque at the time. That's where I grew up. So not exactly the entrepreneurial hub of America. New Mexico? What are you talking about? it's like, I love the weather, man. But, but anyway, it's like, so, so my buddy came back, told me about this auto glass thing, gave me a kit, little, little fanny pack pouch, showed me how to do it. And I was like, I could do this. He's like, yeah, we just go to it,

get a gas station. So like, that was really my first entrepreneurial endeavor, right? Like Googling how to set up an LLC at 17 years old, filed it, walked into a gas station. It was like, Hey man, I'll clean your customer's windshields for you. And then if they have a chip, I'll just offer to fix it for them. You'll be the only gas station around that does that. And everyone will want to come here and I'll pay you to do it. I was like, I think it was like 30 bucks a day. And he's like, okay.

And I was like, really? I was like, really? And, uh, so that's, that's where it started, okay. And I was like, really? I was like, really? And so that's where it started, man. And hired a bunch of my friends, didn't know anything about anything. I was like 17, man. I was just like, I don't know what I was doing, but I made money, right? Made some money. It all kind of- What kind of money are we talking about? Bro, I could make like five, six, 700 bucks in a day at a gas station with a kit. That's pretty good, man.

Dude, that's awesome. What is that a year? What is that a year? $500 a day is 150 grand. There you go. See, I should have just done more of that, but, uh, but it kind of crumbled man. And, and just, just kind of fizzled out. And then, you know, I, I, I came home one day from the gym, um, and I was still living with my parents at the time.

And my dad opens the door with like this protein shake in my face. And then he's like, here, try, I made your protein shake. And I was like, you don't make me anything. Like, why are you giving me a protein shake, right? And then he like sat me down. I watched this video. And it was like the first time I had ever seen the network marketing. Tell me it was Amway.

Tell me it was Amway. No, dude. No, dude. No, it was not Amway. It was Body by Vi. So it was a 90- day health challenge by Salas. They, they grew pretty fast. Um, and so I signed up illegally at 17. Um, cause you're supposed to be 18, I think. So, so I, I don't know, man, rules are like, whatever. Right. So, so signed up and, uh, and that was really like my breeding ground.

Right. So you talk about overnight success. Like I met Kaylin through there. She was crushing it. She's, she always likes to say, and I'll say it for her. She's not on here. Like she was making more than I was. She was crushing it. Right. So, so I actually did pretty well, man. I learned so much, so much in that we came together, started building together, got engaged, and then it all crashed, right? Like all just cratered. Yeah. Yeah. So cratered.

And then that's kind of how- So what happened? I mean, what led to the demise of the network marketing? You know, I think there's a lot of things. I think number one is I had nobody else to talk to, right? And they didn't teach us lead generation, right? They didn't teach us like, it was like talk to everybody around you.

So bro, like I find the common ingredient with entrepreneurs a lot of the time, I find the common ingredient is they know how to sell, right? And you were telling your story and you were door knocking. And I was like, bro, you learn how to sell when you door knock. Same thing with network marketing, you're door knocking their phone. And so I was out of people to talk to. I talked to every person I'd ever met, literally, in my phone book. And we were grinding social media to get leads. And then that started to dry up. And then we were pushing and building through our organization and just like the company's momentum stalled. So the belief starts to falter. And then you have... It's

not attrition of customers, but more attrition of awareness. That's what happens in MLM. It's like, just, oh, I've heard's kind of what happens in MLM. Um, is, is like just, Oh, I've heard of that thing. I've already made a decision about it. And also, you know, in health and wellness, we tend to blame the product or program we buy that we never really tried or didn't put our effort into move on and say, Oh, that didn't work. So I think all those factors, I think maybe there's some leadership things in the company, some weird stuff going on there. Um, integrity standpoint not like not like embezzlement but just like kind of character stuff that was a little weird so all that kind of i think blended together and made this like kind of you know all the ingredients to to kind of start to crash the you know, kind of crash the rocket ship, so to speak. Um, dude, MLMs are wild. Like, you know,

I, uh, I didn't share this on your podcast, but you know, over the years I've been involved with a handful of MLMs, right? Like every, like in my early years of entrepreneurship, you get this bug of like, man, maybe I can make this work. Cause everybody's got a buddy that went and just crushed it or whatever. You know, like right after my mission, I got into quick star, which was Amway, you know, and then I, and then I got into like another juice company. And then this like, cause, cause you know, I had a buddy who his dad was number eight at Tahitian Noni and he was making a million bucks a month. And then I freaking meet my wife. My wife's cousin married into this international MLM company. It's called Sunrider.

They have a big presence over in Asia. And some of the wealthiest people I know, literally worth like $15 billion or whatever. And so like all these different, it's, it's wild because you have the majority of the population sucks, right? Like they don't make anything of it. They try also on their friends and family. And then you have these like crazy outliers that just go and crush it. It's always blown my mind. The whole MLM scene. Yeah. Dude, you know, it's funny. There's this, um, there's this, uh, friend of mine, Josh, he's real good kid. He's like 19. He goes to my church. I see him there all the time. And, uh, and he's just like trying to get going in entrepreneurship. I'm like, dude, just go join an MLM and go sell something. Right. Like, uh, you know, you take

away all of the other functions that you have to fulfill. You take away the HR, you take away the ops, you take away the product development, you take away the finance, you take away all these things that you have to deal with and you just go learn how to sell and you learn people. And that laid such a great foundation for me. You know, so you say overnight success, like Lady Boss was like, you know, 200K the first year, 2 million the second year, 7 million, then 30, and then 33, and then 44, right? So like, it was fast, but for four years, dude, four years, I was banging the phones, speaking in front of living rooms, probably 200 nights a year, I was in a living room, like actually 200 nights a year, I was in a living room, like actually 200 nights a year. I was in a living room,

like meeting a bunch of people for the first time, making product for them, showing them a video, giving my presentation, my testimony, closing the room, signing up forms. So I knew the health customer, right? I knew the sale part. I knew how to communicate, right? And then you start to build the team. Right. So I knew how to like leading volunteers is way harder than leading employees that get paid and it's guaranteed. Right. So I'm like, if you can, if you want to just learn like sales, man, just go join a freaking MLM. I love, I love it for that reason. I think, uh, you know, it's, it's funny now because lady boss was actually acquired by Russell, who was one of my early mentors and now a good friend of ours and you know him. And, and so he turned it into

an MLM. So, and, and we're part owners in that. And so it's, it's kind of funny now that we, you know, we own an MLM now, right? And it's like, it's like it went all the full circle. Uh, and he's kind of same thing that you were saying. He's like, it's like it went all the full circle. Uh, and he's kind of same thing that you were saying. He's like, all my richest friends are have MLMs. Yup. Yup. Dude, that's, that's the best part. It's like the, the owners, right? The, the owners just, just crush it. Oh, dude, that's a, that's so cool. So man, so obviously lady boss wasn't an overnight success. You'd learned sales. You were pitching living rooms for four years before you started this business. You know, what was the turning point?

$200,000, obviously not a crazy year of sales your very first year. What was the turning point that took you from that to, I think you ended up being like the fourth fastest growing company according to Inc. 5000, right? Yeah. What was your big aha breakthrough that just put Lady Boss on the map? Yeah, man. I think it's so many things all bundled into one. But I would say that the biggest thing that struck my head is, I think what people, and I'm working with entrepreneurs now, enterprise CEO, helping founder-led companies scale. And a lot of these businesses are in that five million-ish range a year. And they're like, how do I grow? And I think that the biggest thing is we tapped into predictable revenue. We tapped into a

consistent customer acquisition model. And so we have these episodic income events when we first start. We're just trying to figure out who we are, right? So we're like, hey, we sell at this fair and we run this ad in this magazine, or we do this commercial, or we buy this ad, right? Or we launched this promo. And so we're just in this launch and just throw stuff out there. And you got to do that, right? You got to just make sales happen, right? That's number one. But what really turned us from a couple hundred K to kind of turn on the jets was we figured out first, it was our pocket personal trainer program. We figured out the math, dude.

And you'll never believe this. This is great. I don't know if I've told this story before on a podcast. So, so we're, we're, we're in Puerto Rico. My wife and I got married, right? This was both. This was right after we launched what was like called lady boss. We changed the name to lady boss about a year in, but so we're in Puerto Rico.

We're like making like 20 grand a month around this 200K mark. And we're enjoying the laptop lifestyle. We're like, man, we made it. This is so good. We got our dog. We're newlyweds. We're just basking in that. Life was good. And so we do this thing as entrepreneurs. It's so dumb, but, but we do it. And, and, and I did it and it was, oh, so we made this successful. It's working. Like, what are we going to do next? It's like, it's like, no, like if I could go back and just slap myself, like I would, I'm like, no, you don't need to create a new diet program. Like we were literally, I think it was called the gladiator diet is what it was

going to be called. We were going to like, Oh, like this is fine. But like, really? Like, I think we need to make this program. And so we were going to like scrap the whole thing, the whole pocket personal trainer we built, like, like scrap it. Like, I don't know what we were thinking. I was like, Oh, we're only getting a couple of customers a day. Like they're, you know, they're not staying forever. It's like, Oh, like, oh, we're only getting a couple of customers a day. They're not staying forever. It's like, oh, we need a new program. This is the thought. And it's like, as soon as you get something and you strike gold, you're like, let's go find another mine. That's the equivalent. That's what we do as entrepreneurs. And I see it even at the millions of dollars a

year revenue point. And even now, like even at, when we were at tens of million, I was like still trying to do this in my head. And I had to like smack that side of me and be like, no. So, so, so I look at the numbers. I'm like, hold on, honey, before we do this, let me go look and see like really what return we got out of the ads that we bought. And so we had spent a thousand dollars on ads. And I didn't even know this at the time. Cause I just didn't understand the math of business. But I, for some, I had this, like, this, like something just tapped me on the shoulder, bro. Like, and I was like, I looked in there, I logged in and we had made $5,000 from that thousand dollars we spent. And this is a

digital product with a hundred percent gross profit margins, right? And I'm like, wait, we spent $1,000 and we made five? I don't think we should do this new thing. And then we turned up to Juice, man. And that's when I realized that the game of scaling a business and growing it is like you have to understand the path of math for your business. Love that. And so this is like a training that I did. I finally pulled it all out of my head after doing it for like seven years.

And it's like one of my favorite things to talk about because we want to just be this episodic thing. Oh, yeah, my business is great. I do two launches a year. And I'm like, that sounds awful. That sounds like no consistent revenue. You have two giant hits a year. You have nothing in between. Your team's stressed out. You have to have consistency to scale. So when I finally tapped into that and started to understand, okay, target customer acquisition, CPA, and then wrapping that into customer acquisition costs from a financial standpoint, tying those advertising to finance, and then understanding the lifetime value. And you start to like, you map that.

I call it the triangle. It's like the Trinity, bro. That's how I look at it. It's biblical. It's like, it's a Trinity. So once I tapped into that, I think that was like one of the major things and we started to turn things up and then I just caused a slew of other problems because we had all this revenue coming in. I had to figure out, right. Which was, I call those champagne problems. Yeah. No, those are, those are good problems to have,

you know, when revenue is flowing, just figuring out how to fulfill. Love it. So dude, that's dude, that's phenomenal. So basically you woke up to this realization of like, I just actually need to understand my business more. I need to understand the financials, what's driving, what's the fuel to this fire. And then you just dumped and you figured out how to dump more and more fuel. So did you guys bootstrap this whole thing or did you have outside investment? How did you get this thing rolling? Dude, we just bent over and just strapped them on, man, and just trudged right through, bro.

I think we were like glass thousand dollars, bought a program learn digital marketing like just really strapped like i remember filming my brother was the manager at a gym like a local gym and after the mlm stuff had crashed kaylin came back in town she was getting courted by another mlm company and we decided not to jump right a lot A lot of people will jump. So this is kind of like the inception of Lady Boss, right? We're like, hey, like you are an IFBB pro. We understand sales and health. Like we know our customers, like we could do this on our own.

We could do it digitally, right? Like, hey, like that's the era we're in, right? And so just being able to dive in and build the tools out with a computer, man, like what a freaking time to be alive. It's insane. Now it's AI. I'm like, if, if you're like just getting started, like you can basically all these positions, Chris, me and you had to hire like three years ago, there's some low level, like

work that can now just be done by AI hire like three years ago. There's some low level like work that can now just be done by AI in like just two minutes. It's crazy, dude. So, so I think, um, I think bootstrapped is, is awesome. I, um, I like it because you know, you're, you're just getting to that profitable model. I think like later on, maybe phase two, phase three of your entrepreneur career, you start to understand the game of taking companies public, raising money, taking in capital, like bigger, like it just keeps getting eaten by a bigger fish at that. Like that's the game, right? So I think for us, I had no idea about any of that.

I didn't understand that world. I was just like, okay, we got to make profit to pay our bills. So I remember being in my brother's gym. He was a manager of a gym filming overnight. I had like my phone, my iPhone and this stupid, like $30 Amazon thing that I bought that like had a stand and we were filming the workout videos, bro, overnight. Like it was a grind, bro. Like we, we bootstrapped all the way. And, and then we kind of use, it was cool because we use digital products to segue into physical goods and inventory because that kind of generated the cash. So, so we never once had to take any outside money, which was pretty cool.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, dude, the, the bootstrap life is, is definitely different than this old seed and series A, series B, you know, uh, taking on all this other, other capital. So man, mad respect for that. If you could do Lady Boss all over again, what would you do differently? I would hire the team and pay the salaries for the people that it needed. The first time I built my leadership team, I looked around one day and I was like, nobody here has been where we are or where we want to go. Nobody. I'm like, we got great people. They will bleed for this, but they just haven't been there. Right. And it was, it was evident in, you know, the, the it systems breaking our infrastructure there, the mismanagement of inventory, the amount of energy and time that Caitlin and

I still had to spend in the marketing side of things. Just all of it, man. Um, I think we had one person that was originally a part of that come up team, that first 10, 15 employees. I think we had one person who grew and their lid kept growing with us out of the seven people we ended up with that ran the business. And so if I was doing it again, when we started to really spike the revenue, I had all this profit and I just was dumb and thought I was just going to train every, like, so here's what we do as entrepreneurs, right? First we hire friends and family,

and then we end up in this nepotism, right? That's the definition nepotism. It's like, we're, we're, we're hiring friends and family. We're not treating our business professionally. And that's okay. Like we got to get going. But that's one of the things that happens. And then from there, we think everybody will learn as fast as we will, right? Because we think they're like us. Because we just go, oh, yeah, you just watched this course and like did this thing and you just take action and learn.

But like people aren't like you, right? Like listeners right now,, your employees are not like you. If they were like you, they would be you and have the business. Doesn't mean they're not smart. Doesn't mean they can't learn fast, but you're not going to grow into the eight figures. You're not going to grow if no one's making more than 80K a year, 70K a year, and you're trying to train everyone. So if I was going to go back, Chris, that's what I would do, man. I would have paid the right salaries. I would have spent the time that I ultimately ended up spending anyway, building those positions, recruiting for those people that could really,

they had been where I had wanted to go. Because when you start hiring people, you start making profit, right? So you get the consistent revenue. You get the profit. Your business is making money. And then you go and you hire people that have been where you want to go next. It's insane how you can get there. And you know this, but way better than me, bro, you've done it big. When you do that, it's like you just pour gasoline on it. And all of a sudden you're not the smartest person in the room in that area. People start teaching you stuff and you're like amazed at what they're doing. And that's like, that's when it

gets cool, man. So, so that's what I would do all over again. Not be cheap. What you're sharing is so valuable and so such a hard lesson to learn as a, as a bootstrapping entrepreneur, right. Um, you know, allowing, dude, it's so hard to transition from these people that have bled for you and have worked so hard within your organization yet their ability is capped, right. And it's not that they're not great people, right? And it's so rare for someone like that to actually, yeah, grow or graduate to the next level of what you need. And so you kind of go through this transformation as a business where you have to go out and find higher level leadership, higher level management that have done things that you want to do, like you're saying. And, you know, that's, that's the, that's the hard thing. So one,

one thing that actually worked for me in building, building my business SoulGen was we kind of did a hybrid approach in the fact that we went initially. So we had some just scrappers, right? And like scrappy people people like you're talking about, but we also went after people that had done some really cool things. And we said, hey, come work for less and share in the upside. And so we brought in some equity holders early on that were earning sweat equity and had done some really cool things. And so you kind of get that hybrid of the scrappy, but also extremely capable. And no, dude, that is such wise words to share. And I think anybody that's listening to this is building a business. Listen up to what Brandon's talking about. Go and spend the money on the right management,

on the people that have gone and done it. Bro, like on this topic, on this topic for a second, like, like one of my clients that I'm working with that works with me on a yearly basis, I was talking to him and literally the guy wanted to just like quit and throw his whole business away. Right. Like making like 50, 60, $70,000 a month in profit, right? It's just like hating it. And I'm like, and then you go look at the org chart and it's like, dude, you're a creator. You're a visionary.

You like marketing and sales. You have nobody that makes more than $50,000 a year in operations. And so you're dealing with this, like you're just, you're just doing administrative crap and operations that you don't need to be doing. And it's like, if we would just, sometimes like, if you just, you got to sacrifice some of that profitability, right? If you're making 50 grand a month in profit, go pay 10 grand to that and go find yourself someone who

you can hand off all this crap that you don't want to deal with, right? The basics, the operations, the create this system to run this play over and over again, right? Like there's, there's one time projects and then there's ongoing responsibilities. And like you slowly peel those off of yourself and navigate them to other people. So you can do the thing that makes the money. You got to make it rain. Right. It's like, so it's like, but we're like, oh, like we're cheap, dude. I was cheap. I was like, I had hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in profit. And yet I still had what I think one person that was making six figures at the company and we're at 30 million a year, bro. And I was like, I was running around like a one man fricking band. And I almost like, I almost went insane.

Like I had to work so long. Like I became a fricking machine and I, I just, I just grew into what was required of me, but it almost fricking killed everything else in my life in that year because I, I just didn't realize it. Right. And it was so simple. I just didn't see it. Yeah.

You know, two, two pieces of advice of advice that really helped me along my career path in regards to this topic was, one, if I am doing certain work and I could hire it for less than what I would be willing to do for myself. For example, if I'm doing $25 an hour work, but I would never work for $25 an hour, right? Like, what are you doing, right? Go and hire somebody to do the $25 an hour work. Or if I'm doing $100,000 work, right? And I can go and I wouldn't take a job for $100,000 doing that. Like, what am I doing? Go and find somebody that somebody that will do it. Right. And, and just like you said, you know, sharing, sharing those profits. And the other, the other thing is, I don't know, do you know Brooke Castillo? Yep. Yep. So Brooke, Brooke shared some advice with

me. We did a, um, a mastermind a while back and which was phenomenal. She doesn't have a person on her staff that makes less than $120,000. Love that. And I was like, wait, what? You don't have one? No. She's like, I only hire high level people and I've hired very few of them and they take care of everything. And I was just like that, after I met with her, something really clicked and I really upped my management game and people I was bringing in and what I was willing to pay because of that one interaction. But yeah, it's something that every entrepreneur needs to learn. And another thing on that calculation, right? Like if you take your net income in your business last year, divide it by 2080, you're basically

going to get how much money you make per hour in a 40 hour work week, right? So, you know, if that number is $200, right? That's how much your time is worth as the entrepreneur. And that's like what it was worth the last 12 months, right? So, so if it's $200, anything that you can pay someone to do for less than $200 that frees up your time to go do what you should be doing is worth that money.

And even further so, if you believe in yourself and you know you're growing, what's your time worth the next 12 months? Where are you projected to go? You could even go as far as say, what's your projection? And it depends how risky, risk tolerant you are, conservative, whatever. But the bottom line is like, what's your future worth of the time that you could spend in the future 12 months, the next 12 months?

Maybe it's 400. And you say, hey, if I can pay someone less than $400 to do this, then I should be doing that. And then you just develop this muscle, man. It's like every time I'm like, I need to do this. Okay, what's going to move the needle in my business? I wake up in the morning. I plan my week on Sunday. I'm like, all right, plan for the week. Go and look at my quarterly strategic, roll that stuff down. Okay, here's the stuff I need to do that's going to move the needle. And then I'm like, who can do this for me? It's like that delegation lens. We're always like, you have to develop that muscle as an entrepreneur. You just get stuck in the hamster wheel.

It's so easy too. Absolutely. Dude, this is great stuff. I think these are real tangible nuggets that guys can take and apply into their business that both you and I have gone through and, uh, can, can drastically change the course of your business. Good stuff, man. No fluff and buff, bro. No fluff and buff today. No fluff and buff.

We're motorboat in the pie. We're motorboat in the pie right now. Hopefully they know what that means. Dude, I don't think, I haven't shared it on this podcast yet, but yes, if you guys want to know, stay tuned. More motorboat in the pies happening. It's not what you think. It's not what you think. It's not what you think. We're talking about time management, impact've sold off your business. You're kind of, you're young. You obviously have a ton of left life. Life left. What motivates you right now?

Like what's your passion? What's pushing you? Oh, that's a great question, man. Right now, you know, I signed the paperwork. I went to Europe for two weeks with my wife, had a blast, and then got back and was like, I'm ready to go. I'm like, I can't like sit around, you know? So I think really I've found purpose right now in business, in the arena business. I found purpose in serving who I used to be. So Kaylin and I are advising and investing in companies, helping them grow, founder-led companies, changing the way they scale. All the stuff we're talking about, it's like having someone one-on-one to see those things in your business. So for us right now, that's what we're excited about. We're working with a select handful of

people. It's just been a lot of fun, man. I did one thing for like a decade, like health, weight loss, built this company. And now I get to go and just play in other people's sandbox and like one pivot just for my experience. Not like, you know, I kind of have like, I had a bad taste in my mouth for like the, like coaching, like consulting, like investor kind of industry. Um, because most of those people haven't really done anything. And so I just felt, I just felt like, Hey, this would be a lot of fun. So that's what, that's what we're doing. That's what, um, we're excited about. And we're building as far as like from a business standpoint and really it's people that I really like

and companies that are doing things that matter to me, right? So we've got, they got one company. So it's for Christian entrepreneurs. It's a mastermind community. Like that thing is so much fun. The King's Brotherhood, like the transformation in there from a spiritual side, business side, all that. That's super fun. We're working with a company in the jet industry right now.

A little bit less than half of jets, private jet flights are empty and there's no marketplace for empty legs to shop those actual legs. And so that's a really exciting like tech project we're working on. We're helping a lot of health, health companies, um, you know, that are, that are similar to kind of what we did at lady boss supplement brands, um, you know, high ticket coaching brands and, uh, and some other things. So really just playing that kind of advisor, like the person I wish I had to talk to when I was like in the thick of it, bro. Like there just aren't a lot of people that could relate to my problems, you know? And I didn't do a good job of like continuing to elevate my mentorship, right? I did a bad job of that as an entrepreneur personally. I think I left a lot on the table and I think I made some massive mistakes. I know I did. I'm like, I can quantify them table and I think I made some massive mistakes. I know I did.

I'm like, I could quantify them, right? I made some massive mistakes because I was in masterminds. I was learning from people, but there were just few relationships where people had done bigger things than I wanted to do that I really could connect with and learn from. And so I regret that. And so I think I'm kind of like going back and like, you know, reconciling that in a way for other people and helping them do that, which is a lot of fun right now. So. That's cool, man. It sounds like a lot of, a lot of exciting things. So family, business, like how, how do you balance it all?

Love that, man. Good question. Well, this is where you taught me about motorboating the pie and he's like, no, no, you said, I got to tell everyone. Cause now they're like, what the heck is this guy saying? Like you said, Hey, they're not, they're not a, it's not one pie with all sliced up, right. In the different parts of life, they're all one pie and you got to go all in on each area when you're there, i love that man that's great um i think it's more like yeah yeah dude i love it i love it in case you weren't paying attention we're back. Um, I look at it like rhythm, man. It's like, it's like rhythm for me. So, so I'm big on kind of the reoccurring cadence of thing. I'm really scheduled, man. I'm intentional about it. So it's like, I've got a cadence to my health. And like, when I do, when I work out, when I do cardio, when I eat, like I dial in a system and

a cadence. So I'm successful in that area. I had the same. Dig into that. Yeah. Yeah. Dig in, give us some, give us some details on like, what is your cadence? What is it? On the family side or the health side? Family, health, all of it. Like what is a day in the life of Mr. Brandon Poulin look like? Bro, I do a couple's alignment with my wife every week, right? And so we have an agenda we walk through. There's about 12 things on it where we're dealing with our kids, having conversations about them. We're having conversations about our marriage.

We're having conversations about our schedule for the week. We're having conversations about our faith, about the food we eat and like everything, bro. And if I'm like, Hey, we're struggling in this area. I just add it to that list. And so I've got that, that alignment, right? The Bible says that two can't walk lest they be in agreement. And so if you're in agreement, you're in alignment. And so with your spouse, if you're married you have to be aligned, bro. Like you, you have to be aligned, bro. You have to be. Otherwise, everything else is going to suffer. So I think it really starts there in terms of that side. I've got a cadence with my kids, bro. I see my girls every morning for breakfast. We sit down and eat breakfast together. It's a

solid 20 minutes. It's all in on family. So I get my health stuff. And so a little bit of work done before that, but I have that breakfast time with them. And then after, after work, it's, it's dinners being made. And like, I could have someone make dinner. I could, I can afford that. I have that luxury. I'm blessed, but my wife loves to make it. It makes us feel like we're not just like outsourcing everything, living some like takeout lifestyle. Right. And then we sit down as a family. So I play with the kids and I have intentional time with my children while she's doing dinner. And that's like in our, in our home rhythm. And then on every Saturday morning, we do like a family outing. Right. So it's, it's like the jumpy park, the amusement park, the park, the whatever. Like we went to, where was that place we went to?

Oh my gosh, I'm blanking on it. Bro, ever since COVID, I'm like, sometimes short for memory. I'm just like blocks to lose it. But we went to this, we go to like Tomfoolery water park place. So we just do something like that on Saturday mornings. And then we do a once a month trip, my wife and I do, with the kids, like a family trip. And then my wife and I do a once a month weekend, like getaway. We leave the kids with nanny or grandma and do a weekend getaway for us.

So like there's this whole like cadence that I i've like really like this year started pushing really hard we were kind of doing it before um so that's the that's the family side man i could i could dig into the meat of it all but no that's that's great i mean living it by design you know like uh one of my mentors you know always shared you know, you create culture either by design or by default. And you never, you don't get a choice. If you don't choose design, you don't get to choose whether or not it's by default. It just happens, right? And nobody's life just turns out right, you know, without being very intentional about it.

So appreciate you sharing, you sharing those. What are, uh, what are some of your biggest, uh, what's some of the best advice that you've gotten from a mentor? Uh, recently, um, you're not going to lose it all. You're not going to lose it all. Nice. What was that? Like what, what, what, why did that hit for you? Man, as for me anyway, um, and I think other, I've shared this before other entrepreneurs are like, yes, we have this, like this away from motivation, right? Like we're motivated away from what we don't want. We're motivated. We're more motivated by pain than we are, than we are, you know, pleasure or the dream we want. And so, um, I, I can get in this place sometimes of like operating in lack or operating out of like,

I'm just trying to get away from like what I don't want. And when reality it's, it's not even, it's not real. It's just like how I've like wired myself to be productive in a way. And so, so recently a mentor gave me this advice. Cause I'm just like, man, I'm like, I got so much I want to do. It's never fast enough, bro. And then people look like you're 29, like all this. I'm like, dude, it doesn't, it don't matter, bro. You're, you're turning 40, bro. Or you're 40, you're 43. 39. I'm 39. Oh, you're 39. You're about to turn 40. That's right. You got the big four. Oh. So like, even you probably, bro, you probably were like, man,

I'm not doing fast enough. You'll have this voice. Like, oh, you're not, you're not there. Oh, bro. Your, your, your growth isn't where you want it to be right now. And then you start to just like go into this place that's so dumb. And anybody else, anybody else would look at you and be like, I couldn't even fathom having what you have. And so I just want to tell you right now, like no matter where you are, like you're not going to lose it all. Like if you take a night off, if you take a day off, if you get sick and you need to recover, your body needs to recover, you're not going to lose it all. If you go out on a Saturday and spend time with your family, don't check your phone all day, you're not going to lose it all.

If you go two days without making a social media post, you're not irrelevant. And I'm like, dude, everybody deals with this, man. Every freaking high-performance everybody deals with this, man. Every freaking high performance entrepreneur deals with this. If we didn't deal with this, we wouldn't be high performers because we just have this. We're psychopaths. There's no other way to say it. It's like, we're just psychopaths. We're just like, so that was really good advice for me recently, for sure.

That's incredible advice. Thank you for sharing. Best couple books, two books that have changed your life, been pivotal in, in your, in your success, in your career, in your family. What, what are they? Bro, I'm going to go Proverbs on this one. Proverbs. I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to go straight to the Bible, bro. I'm going to be like, I'm going to love it. Hopefully you air my episode and I'm just playing. I know, I know you will. Uh, I think Proverbs blew my mind when I read it. Like go read

all the translations of Proverbs, bro. You'll be like, so fricking mind blown with wisdom, like business wisdom, family wisdom, communication, wisdom, sales wisdom. I would say like, like hands down, one of the best books I've ever read. And then, um, man, a number two book. Um, that's a, that's a tough one, bro. There's so many that come to my mind right now. Um, dude, I want to shout out my buddy, Alex Hormozy, who, uh, was a huge part. We were, we were buddies for a long time. Um, I remember he made his first sale at gym launch. We picked him up, took him to the gym. And so he's got a book called a hundred million dollar offers.

So good. Just about how to craft an offer. Like if your offer sucks, like it's hard to do everything else. Right. So, so that's a, that's a great So that's a great book that I reference. He's just put it together so well. So those are two solid books. By the way, Alex has got to be probably the smartest dude I know.

For sure. When you hang around him, he's like Harvard level education to the nth degree plus street smarts. And it's just so refreshing to hear his take on pretty much everything. He's such a stud. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely, man. Kalen and I were the only two people at his wedding and I love the guy to death. And he's like him and another guy I'll shout out is Josh Ilzeche, founder of Snow. Basically, both guys like my age that I'm like, damn, bro, I just ain't that smart. Like, I think I'm smart, but I'm like, I listen to two of them and I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not that smart, man. I'm not that smart.

You know, I'm a big proponent of most entrepreneurs are somewhat dumb. Otherwise, they wouldn't be willing to take all the risks that they do. So feel comfortable in the fact that if you feel like you're not that smart or anybody that's listening to this that doesn't feel very smart, the smart ones typically overanalyze and work for somebody else. It's true. So true. So true. Good stuff. Well, dude, uh, it's, uh, it's been fun. What, uh, what give us, give us a couple more, a couple more things. So one for a budding entrepreneur, that's just starting out. He's thinking about taking the leap from being employed to going and starting his or her, uh her business, what advice you giving to them?

Oh man. I would tell them, I don't think that, I don't think that you have to just like cut your whole job and your whole thing and just like have some, like, look, if, if you're like me, right? Like I'm, I was 17. I haven't had a job since I was 17 years old. Right. Some of us are just like hardcore and that's just like our risk profile, right? Like we just have that tolerance. So I think if you're that kind of person, like go move in with your parents, just build your business. Right. If you've got, if you've got kids, you've got a family, you've got a life that you want to support and you have people that are relying on you,

you don't have to give up everything to start a company. Like do it in the spare time, do it in the nights, do it in the weekends, right? Like do it in the edges. I think there's so many opportunities right now. There's so many things. Like I just look at some of the,. There's Airbnb, there's crypto mining, there's be a content creator. There's so many ways that you could just use a cell phone and a laptop

to be an entrepreneur in 2023. There's just no excuse. If you just haven't taken action, you're just lying to yourself. It's never been easier. Oh, there's a recession. No, it doesn't matter. There's so much opportunity. Go learn about AI. Look, here's what I would say. Go learn about AI and then go sell companies a package to implement AI workflow so they can reduce their overhead and their salary. I would hire someone to do that. It's like, go do that if you don't know what you want to do that. Yes. You know, it's like, like go do that if you don't know what you want to do. So, so I think just go get after it, man, go get after it. And you don't have to go all in. You don't have to quit everything. You could do it on the side, but, but not taking action. That's the only excuse that you have. Amen. Amen. That's, that's good stuff. Uh,

last question. So somebody is thinking about giving giving up. They're feeling like just the world's collapsing around them, whether they're thinking about giving up on their business, giving up on their marriage, giving up on their life. What advice are you giving them? Giving up on their life? Just giving up. Dude, they're thinking about giving up. Come to Austin and come to City Reach Church with me this Sunday, and I'll meet you there.

If you're at that place, bro, I'm like, we can talk about tactics and business and all that, but if you got a hole in your soul, which everybody does, in my opinion, I think we go into a face side of things. So if you're at that place, hit me up in the DMs, come fly out to Austin and I'll have you at my church. I'm dead serious about it too. I'm dead serious about it. Dude, as a believer, I agree.

I think with a perspective on what life is all about, it gives you hope and direction and everything. So I appreciate that, that share. Brandon, where's the best way to follow you or get ahold of you via social media? Bro, I'm on social. I mean, just type in my name and you'll find it. I also, Chris, for your audience. So I've got a CEO's 360 degree audit, right? So I made this list. It's over a hundred items long, and it's just straight from my brain over the last decade. And so it's just identifying holes and recognizing opportunities. And ignorance isn't bliss, it's poverty and what you don't

know hurts you. So I put together this audit. I give it to my private clients, but I just want to throw it out to you guys for free if you guys want to grab it. So the- Where can they snag it? Yeah, yeah. Theenterpriseceo.com slash 360audit, 360audit. And so it's theenterpriseceo.com slash 360audit. If you guys just want to grab it, that's the value that I want to drop.

And then I do podcast, big business mistakes and stuff on social. So whatever fits your fancy, man, I'd love to help. If you aren't following Brandon along with his wife, Kaylin, they are great follows. They're amazing people. Brandon, thank you so much for your time. If you guys are still with us and made it this far, please go ahead and share in the comments on YouTube or in the reviews on the different podcast platforms, some of your favorite nuggets or takeaways from this podcast with Brandon. Brandon, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for your time. God bless, brother. Look, Chris, I just want the audience to know, I just want to be like you and I grow up where I have a half a million

dollar pair of shoes in my collection, bro. I'm like, that's what Chris was telling me before. Thanks for having me, man. Bye.