Next Level Pros - #20: Weston Lunsford - Founder of Dental Intelligence, Titan Of Sales & Accounting

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Welcome to "The Founder Podcast," where we delve into the captivating journeys of some of the world's most inspiring and successful entrepreneurs. Today, we have the honor of welcoming a truly remarkable guest, Mr. Weston Lunsford. Weston is a serial entrepreneur, having founded six different businesses and successfully sold off five of them. But his story is not just about business achievements; it's a testament to the power of perseverance and hard work. Weston's keen understanding of sales and accounting became the foundation for his future ventures. Through his experience, he came to appreciate that success in any business boils down to two essential elements: effective sales and sound financial management. In this inspiring episode, we'll explore Weston's rollercoaster ride through entrepreneurship, learning how he navigated challenges, capitalized on networking opportunities, and harnessed his passion for business growth. We'll discover how Weston's ability to see the language of business in accounting and sales allowed him to excel in various industries, including starting a trucking company. Join us as we uncover the secrets of Weston Lunsford's entrepreneurial triumphs, gleaning valuable lessons that can inspire and empower anyone looking to overcome incredible odds and create something truly remarkable. Don't miss this captivating conversation on The Founder Podcast! HIGHLIGHTS I started hustling as a young entrepreneur. I believe hard work will always outperform talent." "I didn't know anything about accounting, but people loved our proactive approach to financial consulting." "I learned it's not what you know, it's who you know. Networking is so important in entrepreneurship." TIMESTAMPS 00:00: Introduction 02:14: 24 Years Old 06:11: Opportunity 10:16: Improving The System 16:30: Education 22:47: The Shift 29:30: From Service To Software 31:40: Stepping Down & Moving Forward 37:54: Your Due Diligence 38:20: Family Balance 44:40: All In 🚀 Join my community - Founder Acceleration https://www.founderacceleration.com 🤯 Apply for our next Mastermind https://www.thefoundermastermind.com ⛳️ Golf with Chris https://www.golfwithchris.com 🎤 Watch my latest Podcast Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=dc252f8540ee4b05 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@thefounderspodcast

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, we have Mr. Weston Lunsford. Weston is a father of six and a husband of, I believe, 23 years, you said, Weston? Is that right? Yeah. We're in our 23rd year right now. father of six and a husband of, I believe, 23 years, you said, Wesson? Is that right? Yeah. We're in our 23rd year right now. Awesome. Awesome. Congratulations. So definitely a family man. This guy is a serial entrepreneur,

founder of six different businesses, sold off five different businesses, an investor. He has done all kinds of really cool things in his career. His background is in accounting, which is interesting. Guy got the entrepreneurial bug early on. We're excited to have him. Welcome to the show, Mr. Weston. Thanks. Nice to be here, Chris. Excited to chat with you today. Sweet. Weston, tell us a little bit about your career. So, how old are you today? I am 44 today. 44 years old, founder of six different businesses. How old were you when you started this whole thing? Just so you know, I don't feel 44. I probably look 54, but I feel a lot younger mentally than that.

I was, let's see, I was 24 when I first started my first, well, unless you count little things that I did as a kid. But when I really started my first business, it was 40 or 24 years old. I started my CPA practice down here in Utah County. Awesome. Sounds like we have something in common. I started my very first business when I was 24. I was probably a lot stupider than you. I started it in the midst of the 2008 crash, so not the best time. So entrepreneur, sound like from an early age, though. Let's back up.

So you started your first real business at 24. What are some of the side hustles and stuff that you did at a younger age? Man, I would gather golf balls from a local golf course in wyoming just that were hit off on the fairways and people would be spending i can't remember i think it was like five dollars a bucket to go to the driving range so i would put them in bags and just we would sell them to people as they were driving up to the golf course before the golf course because they didn't let us in the golf course to sell these bags but we would uh sell them for two dollars and fifty cents and so i mean that doesn't seem like a lot but oh yeah i think i was starting

that when i was in like sixth or seventh grade um and then um i started a parking lot cleaning business when i was a sophomore in high school. I lived in Evanston, Wyoming. I actually grew up on a ranch and realized I didn't necessarily want a ranch. I don't mind ranching. In fact, now there's kind of an allure to it. I want to try to get my wife to let me get some alpacas. But we had several head of cattle that I would go out and work. It was my aunt's ranch and we grew up and lived there and did a lot of work. And I realized that this wasn't something I wanted to do my whole life. It was hard work.

So I did something even harder and started going to all the gas stations in Mavericks and saying, hey, you guys have a lot of mud in your parking lots. I'll come clean these weekly. And started getting several accounts where they allowed me to clean weekly. I didn't know it was going to be as big of a deal as it really was. It was a lot of work. I'd spend full days, Saturdays and Sundays, just getting wheelbarrows of dirt and grime and gravel and rocks off these parking lots and did that for a full summer and decided I'm done with this. It was was too labor so those were two experiences

the kids do you remember what you were charging these guys so like what was it yeah i would i would make almost a grand a weekend on a on a parking lot so it was really the maverick stores that would pay me to do that in the way right i. I mean, dude, a thousand, a thousand a weekend as a teenager, especially, you know, 25, almost 30 years ago. That's, that's pretty phenomenal. It was really, really good. I didn't take home all of that because I had to recruit some friends to come in and help me get it done. I couldn't get it done on myself. Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. So started hustling as a young entrepreneur. You know, I think it's interesting.

I know a lot of people that have a similar background, right? Starting kind of like a farming type of community, ranch type of community. They learn hard work, but they realize, man, I don't just want to like beat my head against the wall for the rest of my life. I want to use my brains a little bit. So, uh, that's, uh, that's awesome. So you started hard work though. I always tell my kids that principle, like I'm not the smartest human being in the world by any means at all. So I, I wouldn't say that I'm not unintelligent, but I'm not crazy smart. Hard work, I feel, will always outperform intelligence. I love it. I love it.

So you started your first business at age 24. Had you graduated in accounting? What kind of got you started? No, really unique. I was running a sales floor up in Logan, Utah for a company called Viziplex Family Entertainment, which was a sister company of Feature Films for Families. And that was a good college town. And so there was a lot of young college students that needed work and flexible hours. And so I got offered to be a branch manager of the sales board. My background at that time was in sales. I mean, as I grew from

high school and shortly after my mission, I just went into sales background at that time was in sales. I mean, as I grew from high school and shortly after my mission, I just went into sales and it was over to phone sales. That's a tough game. But I did fairly well there and eventually got promoted to opening up an office in Logan, Utah. And we ended up recruiting an insane amount of college students and we would sell theater ad placements and then also clean family entertainment over the phone. During that time up there, which was about only a year and a half, I got courted by my CPA partner that I started my business with when I was 24, Shalen Peck. And we were actually training and running a marathon together. And he came to the

point in his career, he was a lot older than me, at least 10 marathon together. And he came to the point in his career. He was a lot older than me, at least 10 years older than me. He came to the point in his career where he needed to either decide to partner with his CPA firm that he was working with up there in Logan or start his own firm. And he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. So we would talk a lot about that as we were training and running together. And eventually he just said, Weston, why don't you come do this with me? And I said, I don't even know what CPA means, man.

Like, I have no idea what that even is. And he's like, well, it's accounting and tax and financials. He's like, I don't even know how to budget my own checkbook. There's no way I can go do this. He kept courting me and saying, you don't need to worry about the technical aspect of things. I will handle all of that. But you're really good with people. You're good at sales. You're good at recruiting and managing. And if you just handle that side of our firm, I'll deal with everything else. And so I said, look, at this point, just so you're aware,

I had not done any higher education. I told him that, and I was young because I was at this time, I was like 22 and a half. I was just shortly off my mission. So I told him, let me go take class. I was getting ready to enroll in some schooling anyways. I said, let me take an accounting class, see if I even like it. So I took accounting in one of my classes. I actually really liked it. It's kind of weird, but I did.

I didn't like advanced accounting, but I liked the introductory to accounting because I learned a lot for me personally. And then I ended up taking a tax class. And as crazy as that is, I really liked the tax class, but not because I like tax code. I like that there was actually loopholes that you could find in tax code to be able to preserve more of your money instead of just paying it to the government. You can call them loopholes, whatever they are. They're legal ways of minimizing your tax liability. I learned a lot of that and it blew my mind. So I actually took those classes. I went to my wife and I said, hey, I think I might start this firm with, with, with Shaylin. And she's like, what are you talking about? You're crazy. I was doing really well at my

company that I was working for. But so eventually I just pulled the trigger and said, okay, let's go do this. And so we moved to Utah County because he had a non-compete. And we put together a business plan first. I probably pitched to at least a dozen banks, Chris, trying to get a loan because I didn't have any money. He didn't have a lot of money. And we had to get an office space and just a business started. So we put together a business plan and I got denied every single time. No, no, no. Mainly because I didn't even have an agree

or I'm not a CPA and they weren't, but my partner was, he was certified public counsel. They're like, who is this kid? We're not going to give him any money. Well, I started still selling customers and we started bringing in new accounts and business accounts. We wanted to focus on small business accounting, financial consulting, and management of just their overall accounting affairs and tax. And I didn't like... The one thing that I saw right on early, early on in professional service world was that it was always an hourly rate. It drove me crazy. I hated it. So I started selling customers on paying a monthly fee.

And then I said, here's all the stuff that we will include over the course of the year. So we started building up a recurring stream pretty fast and it was unique. And we took a position statement that we're the most proactive tax and advisory firm out there to ensure that you're going to pay the least amount of tax legally possible. And also ensure that your business is in the best financial position it can be.

And we'll do this by holding these quarterly reviews with you. And it worked. I mean, I didn't know anything about accounting, but people loved it. And so they started coming in. My partner did, though. so we had to start hiring someone i remember i hired kim casper who's still employed with me today she's gone through several companies with me she's my hr director today um but she uh she's like oh you need a loan i'm like well yeah i do so she says oh i'll just call my friend who was the president of Zions Bank Corp.

And I said, No, I've already pitched them. She's like, Don't worry, I'll get you the money. So she calls up her friend. I kid you not. Within an hour, I get a phone call back from the president saying, I hear you need a line of credit. I said, I do. He's like, Tell me a little bit about what's going on. So I told him. And then on that phone call, he's like, go to this branch. They'll have a check ready for you. Wow. That was when I first learned, Chris, it's not what you know. It's honestly who you know.

And if you want to be networking, man, it's so important. You got to network. You got to not try to just fight and trudge through mud all alone. Ask for some help. And it's amazing what can come from that. So we got the line of credit. We grew that firm. I did several other businesses during my 10 years at that CPA firm before I sold that firm.

And it was really just an eye-opening thing to me because it was a public accounting firm. We got to see a lot of different verticals, a lot of different problems and challenges and how people were engaging in that vertical. And I could see what they were doing well, what they weren't doing well. So it caused a lot of little startup companies that we would spin up and then end up selling off. But that was my introductory into entrepreneurship for sure. What a, what a cool way to see the, the backend of, of everyone, right? Like the, the fact that you're looking at their books, you're seeing, you know, all their gross margin expenses, fixed costs, variable, everything, you know, like being able to really understand, I mean, that's the nuts and bolts. Um, you know, you talk about how,

you know, it's funny that you liked accounting. Um. I was very similar. I never wanted to be an successful entrepreneur. And I think that's two things, two things that you obviously figured out early on in your career that you need to know in order to be a successful founder. One is sales and two is the basic language of a business, which is accounting. And with those two things, you really can accomplish anything, right? You can get into any vertical. You can figure out how to be... I know you started a trucking company later or whatever it is, right? If you understand those two things, you can run it. So that's pretty awesome. Yeah, all business is pretty much... You're right on the money there, Chris. All business, it doesn't matter what you're doing. They have to be successful in those two areas.

They've got to be successful on marketing and selling and successful on then managing, which really is budgeting, accounting and forecasting, creating standard operation procedures. And the reality is accounting degree, which by the way, I went back to school to do this and I never graduated. I still probably need to. I'm like less than half a semester done from graduating. Shailene always told me I didn't need to get the accounting degree, my partner, but I came home after about two months of working. I started coming home every day crying. I'm not kidding you. I cried myself to sleep with my wife. It was crazy hard.

And I kept telling her I made a mistake. And it's because I didn't understand what you were just saying. I didn't understand the language of business. Like that wasn't me. I only knew sales. Yet I was trying to sell. And I could convince people that our firm understood it. The firm did, but I didn't.

It was just driving me crazy. It was crazy hard. So I went back to Shane and I said, I've got to go back to school. I'll do this full time with you, but I'm going to do night classes. So I enrolled at UVU because they're really flexible with your schedule on education. And I did for years. I worked hard and I probably was only at my house maybe four to five hours. And that included my sleeping time during the first three years of starting Lunsford Peck, the CPA firm. The interesting thing is like nowadays, like you don't really have to go to school to get the knowledge that you were out trying to obtain, right?

Like there's so many online resources. There's colleges that you can attend for free if you're not getting the credits. Like literally, I think it's like MIT and Harvard and whatnot, like offer their classes for free. They just don't count towards a degree, which is like mind boggling to me because the only thing that's important in these degrees

is the education that you're actually receiving. But so many people are so focused on this degree that they're... A lot of people do focus on a degree. And I don't care how people get educated. Education's critical. Like even for me still today, I just got off with a consultant that's still educating me. I've always had a consultant work with me for the last 20 years as well. And just got done with a session with him. I read a lot of books. It

doesn't matter how you get educated. Like you're saying, Chris, there are the formal ways and institutional education, but the degree at the end doesn't matter. It's what you know and how you apply. Yeah, man, I'm a hundred percent with'm 100% with you. I'm actually pretty anti-degree myself. But the reason for it is because people put so much emphasis on the wrong thing, right? I am so pro-education, like you're saying, books and coaches and consultants, and there's so many ways that you can learn, but we forget that and we focus on just spending the money to get the degree, check the mark, you know, but it's amazing to me,

I'll be sitting in board meetings or whatever else. And you got all these guys with degrees that like, that do not understand basic business accounting that, and it drives me insane. And I'm just like, guys, like you gotta, you gotta understand your gross margins. Like if you don't understand your gross margins, how do you know what, you know, and your fixed costs, how do you get to break even? And how do you know what is every single deal worth over break even? And like, and like, it's, and it's just like so hard for people to like grasp onto this basic, basic stuff. And so anyways, go to school to learn, don't go to school for an end game of some certificate or degree. Go there. Yeah. I'm very similar to you. I think I have 160

credits. I think you need 120 to graduate, no degree, but I like, but I got all the things that I wanted from school. Right. And like, and once I had it, I was just like, all right, I'm done. So good stuff. So you, you owned that business for 10 years, 10 years.

Yeah. I ended up selling that one to one of my managing tax partners. And I sold it because I got so involved in another, there was another four companies during that time that we had got spun up and grew and then ended up selling off. And this next one that was really big and just took an insane amount of my time was Dental Intelligence. And so after 10 years, I ended up selling my ownership in that firm to one of my managing tax partners. Cool. So tell us about dental intelligence. You spun this up while owning your accounting firm. And what was that like? Did you guys bootstrap that? Did you bring in? I, you know, in 2000, our firm and focus really heavily on real estate taxation.

I mean, if there was anything in regards to real estate, we were involved in it. And that started in 2004 that way. My partner, I would say, was kind of a real estate tax guru. I mean, crazy intelligence with it, had investments in real estate and dealing with cost segregations for investors and then just making sure they're getting the best benefit out of their dollar spent in that market. So builders, contractors, brokerages, mortgage brokerages, it doesn't matter if it was touching real estate, we were servicing those clients. And 2008 hit, which everyone's got to remember that.

I thought we were going to go bankrupt. In fact, I do remember having that phone call from my office, calling my wife saying, I don't know if we're going to weather through this. All of our clients were in that market and they needed us more now than ever before, but they didn't have any money. So we were occupying all of our hours on non-paying clients, but we wanted to help. And so we spent the time doing it. But during that time, there was another company that I saw just a problem that surfaced up. It was called CSG Workforce Partners, the company we first spun off in 2008. And it was creating a co-op of skilled tradesmen because all the tradesmen were losing

their jobs at this time. The masons, the framers, roofers, and painters, they were all losing their jobs because work was just ending. And they were still skilled tradesmen. And so we created a software at that time, a friend of mine, Rob Bay, and I partnered on this and created a company where we basically build out technology on the platform of Salesforce, where we had baseball cards, if you will, for these skilled tradesmen, but they were searchable cards. who's a huge builder in Utah because they always build all these big apartment complexes. And let's say that they needed some framing. They could go into our software and very quickly identify by skill level, by rankings, see the profile picture, have all the contact information, the experience of this framer and quickly filter this down and have a crew of 15 people. It submit, it would go out to the mobile devices. They would receive the work order with the rates,

could negotiate if they wanted to on that mobile app, and then send back finally acceptance. And then also- What year was this? This started, we started this in 2008 is when we started building it out. We deployed it in 2010 and it grew crazy fast. It's like we were doing...

Yeah, that's advanced software for 2010, right? I mean, nowadays you're like, oh yeah, they're similar competitors or whatnot, but we're in the day and age of apps and all this software development. But man, 15 years ago, that's impressive. Yeah, it was fun. We just saw the huge need to be able to deploy these tradesmen.

And we worked out a deal with these generals that when they used our skilled tradesmen, that they would pay us 10% fee on it. And we grew that thing to where that 10% fee was just over $15 million in the first nine months. A lot of legislative problems with this one because we were taking a lot of skilled tradesmen from the unions and so i felt like i was on capitol hill for most of that year but we ended up selling that to an individual that's also in the construction industry corey and he's done a really good job with that, developing that out. But it's a lot of fun. After that was over though,

that's when I asked Rob, who did that with me, hey, I really want to work with Dennis, is what I told him. And specifically, I had a handful of healthcare tech. So we had to shift from real estate. Just keep that in mind. So real estate was falling. I had to start picking up different clientele and we started

focusing in the healthcare and the oral healthcare space and doing consulting with them. And I came across some doctors that were doing extremely well. And it was coincidental, Chris, that a doctor following one of my very successful doctors came in and I was reviewing his plan with him for the quarter. And I saw some huge differences and variances. The interesting thing is their top line revenue was very similar, but the bottom line revenue was drastically different. One of them was taking over half a million dollars a year. The other one was taking home less than $100,000 a year and had buried on student debt. That was not enough for him to survive off. And I think he had over $500,000 of student debt and

another practice debt of close to a million dollars. The guy was hurting and you could see it on him. And so it was coincidental that I just got done working with the other orthodontist before working with this orthodontist. And so I said, hey, any chance I could get you in a room and we can just learn together from this other doctor that I just met with. I'll call him up if you're open to it. And let's just create this working session to where we're learning together. And that was my introduction to seeing what this doctor was doing very manually of getting data information on activities, not outcomes, but activities with his patients and activities with his team members.

So human being performance tracking, right? And it was all done on Excel. And when I saw it, I was like, well, no kidding. I mean, this is just business 101. You've got to track activities and performance to lead you to the result. The funny thing is there was no technology at all in the healthcare space about tracking clinicians and clinical teams performance. Like it didn't exist. And I thought, this is crazy. Because as soon as I saw him doing it manually, I started going searching for the technology because I wanted to deploy that across my customer base that I started building up in healthcare.

And it just wasn't there. And so we started building out this system in Excel, all these macros and glorified sheets and started pushing that up into the cloud. And I think we used Tableau, no, ZydDashboard so where we did our data visualization and we started selling this data mining and visualization and consulting package for about $2,500 to healthcare professions and it grew fast um there was there was no residual it was it was only an upfront cost they didn't pay like no they were? No, it was monthly. They were paying me monthly that fee. Oh, I got it. It included an hour consulting monthly. And then there was the data that we were exposing to them, Chris, was like life changing. They've never had access to this. So they could see very quickly with these dashboards that we gave them what was working, what wasn't working, and what needed to change.

I mean, it was easy once we got it. But getting the data out of their systems was not easy i mean we pull this from their crm system their practice management system their communication system their google analytics and we'd aggregate all of this information and put it in a single single place in excel and then make it visually so i had my first, um, at my, about after a year of doing this, I had my first phone call of a doctor saying, Hey, Weston, you changed my life. In fact, his name is Dr. Maxwell in Boston. He literally said, you saved my marriage, like in this conversation, because of the amount of time we gave him back to his family. Um, in the same breath though, Chris, he's canceling his service with me.

He's saying, I just want to buy the dashboards, but I don't want to buy your consulting anymore. And so how much will you charge for that? And at that time, the amount of work it took a team of analysts to get all this data aggregated was where all the heavy lifting was. The one hour consulting on the phone with me was really nothing. And he proceeded just to say, I feel like I've learned everything that you can teach me now. This has been great. You helped me. Now I just need the information. So how much would you charge for that? And without thinking much about it, I just said, I don't know. That's an hour of my consulting time that you want to drop off. So maybe I'll knock off $300.

So I'll charge you $2,200. And he got mad. He's like, wait, you're telling me you're going to charge me $2,200 for the dashboards and you're paying me $2,500 right now for the whole package? And I said, well, yeah, I mean, I'm just looking at my costs and getting all this stuff put together. And that's about what I can do it for. He's like, well, I might as well just stay on the consulting if I'm going to keep doing it.

And then I said, OK. But he was not happy. I said, Dr. Maxwell, let me get this figured out. I'll come back to you. You changed my life, but I hate you. Yes. I ended up going to lunch that next day with Alex Dunn. Many of your listeners may know who he is. He was the

president of Vivint, worked with Todd Peterson for years, and now works at the Miller Company running one of their funds over there. But he went to lunch with my wife and I and his wife. And I got another call from another doctor, the Smiths. And this was a husband-wife practice, both of them dentists. And I'm telling you, it was a similar conversation, Chris. I took the call because in the service world, if you're getting a phone call from someone that's paying you north of 2000 bucks a month, you've got to take these calls. And so I took the call to see what was going on. And I hung up. It was almost a mere conversation. I kid you not. And it was the first time in my mind where it registered in the middle

of that conversation. I tuned out the customer and I was just thinking, I've got a retention problem. Like now that it's been a year with these accounts, they're going to start churning. And this is a problem. And I didn't even want to be at lunch anymore, to be honest with you. I wanted to go back with my team and solve this problem. And Alex could see I was frustrated. So he says, tell me what's going on. And I didn't want to tell him what's going on, but he got it out of me, told him what was going on. And he looked at me and I kid you not, Chris, he says, you're an idiot. I'm like, what? What are you talking about? He's like, if they just want to buy the technology and not buy you, your consulting time, that's capped. Your technology is never capped. Then you need to just focus on selling that. And that kept me up for two weeks. Like, how do I turn from a service organization to a true software organization? I didn't even know if it was possible. I had a friend of mine that was selling one of his software companies at the

same time. And I said, can you take a look at this with me? This is about a week after our lunch. And just tell me if I could turn this into what's known as a software as a service. I mean, I didn't really understand that at this time. And he spent about two weeks looking at what we were doing and told me, not only can you do it, but you need to do it. Like the market's crying for this. There's nothing out there in healthcare tech that does what you're talking about. And so I took the risk and I put a bunch of my own money into this sucker. And actually, I started doing it and building it out, hiring some engineers. And then Bodie Gardner, if anyone's ever talked to him, found out about it. It was a long-term friend and client of mine and said, hey, I know you're doing this. And I had several other successful companies that we had started up and

sold. And Bo was part of one of those before he's like, I hear you're doing something newly. And I just give you 500 grand, no documents, no paperwork. So I said, Sure, we agree to some value, which I had no idea because there was nothing even built yet. Then Alex Dunn and Casey Bogg got wind of this and said, Wait, we want to put some money into it. Before I knew it, I had a million and a half from these guys, still no product or software, just an idea of what I wanted to build and no paperwork. Like I was like, what are we doing?

But I took it and we ended up growing this thing. And today they're close to 50 million in ARR. I did a transaction after about seven years with a private equity firm where I sold 50% of my shares. Still participating in the board meetings and on the board there, but ended up not really liking the PE world. I mean, the guys are great. They are.

Like John Marquis. Providence is who we sold to. The human beings are incredible and they're brilliant and smart. This is a different world for a founder CEO as compared to now working on this stage of business that I would say is a 7 to 10 range. And I'm more of a 0 to 6 range. So we ended up hiring another executive team and I stepped down about 2 years ago. And since that time, I've just been doing investments and managing portfolios. But I did take on another CEO role of one of my investments right now. And we're getting this company up and running. So a little bit of history. That's an awesome,

awesome story. So you built that thing up to 50 million in ARR. And how many clients is that? We are the category leader in the oral health care space. So today, dental intelligence touches about 15,000 different dental practices and well over hundreds of thousands of users. That's so cool. That's so cool. So I'm hoping you got a software type multiple on that private equity deal. Oh, man. We did the deal before the big crash. So I guess you just count your timing and blessings there. Some would call that luck.

And I don't. I mean, there is luck out there, but a lot of luck is just doing the work it takes to find the right opportunities, too. Right. But the company's performing great. They're doing great. The PE firms are going to win off on this as well i mean every there will be multiple wins along this journey so are you guys hoping to take that public or what what's the plan there no i think we'll look for some strategic there's already strategic players talking to us and so at some point we'll end up doing a strategic transaction.

So I know you kind of just mentioned and you mentioned to me briefly, like private equity isn't necessarily the direction. Give us some feedback there. I mean, you got a lot of young budding entrepreneurs and founders that are listening to this podcast that are thinking, exit strategy three, five years down the road? Like why private equity? Why not private equity? Well, there's pros and cons of private equity. So I mean, I'm an LP in several of those groups now. So I don't want to badmouth them because there are some really pros and cons. Here's what I would say are the best things about private equity. They have a core discipline around the four functioning departments of organizations, dealing with your finance and HR, dealing with your go-to-market, so your marketing and sales, dealing with your operations and what I call customer success, and then dealing with your

product and engineering. And they seem to all have experts in all four of those areas. There's some pros to that because you can learn and glean some information that you just were not effectively working on in those areas. But there's also cons with those experts. You know, as a founder and as someone who's very passionate about what you're trying to get done, areas that you've got to put your time and energy on. And sometimes they shift that energy to other locations. And sometimes it can be healthy. And oftentimes I found that it's not necessarily healthy because what you end up doing as a founder now is working twice as hard as you were already. If you can even comprehend

that, like I didn't even think I could work harder and longer hours than what I was working with before, but somehow they pulled that out of me and they weren't necessarily trying to intentionally pull it out of me. Right. They just had other priorities that I had to execute on as well. Same time of my priorities that I had to execute on. So it just caused a lot more headache and work and honestly stress where I was. I wasn't necessarily stressed before, even if we hit our quarterly marks and we were hitting all of our growth marks, I'd still be stressed about that next board meeting. And I didn't ever experience that before. And so I would say that those are really the cons. But at the that today would be where we're at without doing that transaction.

So if I really reflect and look at it, I don't think we would have grown as much. There's different levels of PE firms, too. So I think that that's what's really important. Providence, we did a transaction with them. They took a majority control. So they really ended up controlling this still, which that was challenging. If you're not ready to step aside as a CEO, you may not ever want to do that. K1 though, pretty early on, I did a transaction, a series A with K1 out of California. And man, I would do transactions with them again and again and again and again.

It was honestly the best experience I've ever had working with what I would call a PE firm, but they didn't get involved unless I was asking them to be involved. And it was really nice. So I think that it just also, Chris, depends on the firm and doing your diligence and talking to former CEOs that they have worked with. And you've got to realize that they're going to give you references. You need to call the people

that they're not giving you as references. And you can find them. There's ways of doing that. But of course, they're going to give you the ones they love. But you need to talk to the other ones as well and figure out what's going on. So money's good. Yeah, a couple good takeaways that you're sharing, like the pros and the cons. Obviously, the pros, these guys are going to push you.

They're going to give you access to assets and people and whatnot that you didn't previously have access to it. You know, that's, that's been my experience with, with, uh, selling my company to, to a PE firm. Right. But at the same time, like you said, like levels, like you're accomplishing bigger goals than you ever have. And there's the level of stress is like insane because there is different focuses, right? Like whenever you're dealing with somebody that isn't a founder, that doesn't necessarily, isn't necessarily connected to the culture that's just pushing numbers and spreadsheets and everything else, you're going to have to,

you're going to have some of the adverse reactions to that. But exactly to your point, every PE firm is different. And you know, there's, there's, there's companies out there that just want to invest and let you let you do your thing. And then there's other ones that want to sink their teeth in and be actively involved. And I love I love the advice of like, do your do your diligence. Make sure you're talking to the references, you know, because because you're exactly right. They're going to give you a list of three references that are their best references.

But we got you got to be able to get in. And I think that's great advice for young entrepreneurs that are looking to someday do an exit, whether it's to private equity or strategic or whatever, maybe. So appreciate that, man, Wes, and this is good stuff, man. Um, so let's shift gears family. So you have six kids and you know, you've built all these businesses. How do you balance that? It's hard. Um, it's hard. I, I, at first I don't think I did a good job balancing it. I mean, during the first startup company that I did with Lunsford Tech, it was crazy challenging and I wasn't around. Fortunately at that time, I only had my oldest son as I was spinning that up and my daughter was just being born. And so he was three to four. But even then, all the way through his adolescent ages, I was not home a lot. I had a crazy supportive wife.

And one thing that I found that if you do have a family and you're an entrepreneur, you've got to have a support system at home because you're not going to be able to be successful if they're not willing to support you in it. And it does require some sacrifices. Some people will say balance, healthy quality, this work-life balance. I'm going to say BS for a minute, Chris, because it's just not possible if you're trying to get something up and really see crazy high growth success. There's not a balance. And balance is not necessarily 50-50, 50 life, 50 work, because I think that's what some people think in their mind. That's not the case.

A balance to me and what I had to work through with my wife was, this is what I can give you right now. And this is what I got to give my company. And are we in alignment there? And then if we're not in alignment, we've got to get on the same page of what more I've got to bring over this way. Because family honestly is the most important thing to me. But it's tough when you get caught up in this circle of who do I serve more and who needs my time more at this time. And the easy answer for people to hear is, well, of course, that's your family. But that's not always the reality. You got to remember that if you got 250 employees or 500, you've got all of their families that you've got to worry about too. And the reality is as a CEO, I mean, one of the things that I've learned,

a successful CEO has to have the ability to focus and make the best moves when there really are no good moves. And you can't do that if you don't have a really good support system at home. So I would say early on, my balance was rough. It was really hard. I wasn't around. I think that as my intelligence and my emotional awareness started to grow, I started realizing that I can delegate a little bit more and make sure that I follow up on those delegations rather than have to be involved in every single decision-making process. And to be honest with you, that actually helped helped our company grow but that took me a long time to learn that um to step aside from some of the details and allow team members to really run with those

without me and then come back and just revisit and address issues if we saw them um but yeah it's tough i i do have later on though as I got older probably into my 30s so this definitely didn't happen in my 20s right but in my mid to late 30s I started realizing that it is important to have a better balance I just don't think that's necessarily possible right on the onset of a startup like your balance has to be alignment. I spend a lot of time with my family. We're outdoors all the time. I coach a mountain bike team. We have over 200 kids on our team. I've been doing that for eight years now. I've got three mountain bikers on my team and my family right now that are on the team. My oldest son is serving an LDS mission today, comes home

in, in about a month and a half. My next daughter is in pre-med school. She just graduated this year. And then I, I go all the way down to a little eight year old. So that's so cool. You know, uh, you're, you're sharing some, some awesome, uh, some awesome truth bombs here, you know, as far as like balancing family, um, you know, that one thing that aligns with that, I had a mentor a few years back, um, coach consultant, whatever you want to call him, uh, Travis. And, uh, one thing he talked about, he said, you know, time balance is a fallacy. Impact, impact balance is achievable. And, you know, in, in like he said in 15 minutes with your kids, you can have as much impact as spending two to three hours with them if it's just concentrated

and done right. And so, you know, even if you're working a 12 hour day, if you are very deliberate and on purpose about those 15 minutes and you're engaged, you're not on your phone. That is the only way you achieve true balance is through impact. Yeah. Even if you take a week off on a vacation with your family, but you're still on your computer and your phones, that's not going to have near the impact that it does when you say, Hey son, let's go to lunch and you don't take your phone with you. Like I, I actually love that you're saying this Chris, cause I need reminded of that too. And that, that is important with your spouse too, not just your kids. I mean, it's, it's important. Yeah, man. It's, it's, it's awesome that, uh,

the, I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs need this need these type of examples in their lives, right? Like what's being preached today is like put off being a family man, right? And like build a business and then try to build a family around that. One philosophy I've always lived by is build family unit and having a supportive wife and everything that is like has helped me be a successful CEO and a successful founder, you know, like outside of all my business experiences. And so it's important that you include your family, too, in the business. Like they take a lot of pride and i i don't think i realized that until one day i came home and my daughter was in a dental intel hat dental intel shirt she has her dental intel socks on and she was headed out of the house to go hang out with friends she was

just a walking advertisement for my company and it was at that moment that it really dawned on me like it was just this light bulb my family has been just as part of growing this i remember that we were all in when we moved into our space i was so cheap this is the accountant side of me so cheap on spending money that i recruited my family to go put together all my chairs that i bought like 200 herman miller chairs and we needed to get the base on we were doing this overnight but include them in the growth of the company because that's also quality time. And then they get to see your passion and what you're working on. And they feel equally part of that.

I can remember when my son was on his mission and I told him, hey, son, I just want to let you know that I'm going to be going to the board and announcing to them that I'm going to be stepping down and we need to find a new CEO. And he just went white. To him, he's like, what are you talking about? Why would you do that? This is who you are. He was so proud of it. I do feel like I did a good job over the years of making sure my family was part of the growth of the company, too. And my wife, man,

so important that they're a sounding board to you. You got to be able to come home to her and tell her the good things and things you're struggling with. I wouldn't ever tell your wife all the bad stuff, but I would tell your spouse, wife or husband, whatever it is, I would tell your spouse the things you're struggling with, meaning seek for some counsel and advice because they've really got good advice and they know you better than anyone else. So they know what you can and can't handle. And I've learned that a lot with Kirsten. She's been a huge support for me over the years.

So good. So good. So advice. So young entrepreneur looking at starting his first business or her first business and got that entrepreneurial bug. What advice do you give to that young 20-something that feels like they can take the world by the horns? Well, number one, I would say number one advice, don't just do it for the money or for some exit. Be aware of what those exits look like and what you're working towards. But being a good company in itself is an end in itself.

So just remember that. Like be the best. I don't care what industry you're in. You have the best product and the best team and the best leadership. If you are the best in that, that is an end in itself. I mean, you've just created something worth sticking around with for the rest of your life. And so that's really important. Don't just look for some, oh, I want this big exit down the road. I would always tell my team members because they would always ask, what are we going to do? And

I say, what do you mean? We're doing it. We're doing it. What do you mean? What are we going to do? We have the best place to work in the county. Our customers feel like we are the best company for them to work with in the, and you absolutely focus on that being your number one, everything else will eventually fall. The money will fall, but you've got to make that your priority. I love that. So I actually just searched up on my Audible. I couldn't remember the name of the title, but there's a great book by the founder of Tom's, the shoe company. It's called Start Something That Matters.

So for anybody that's like, you know, listening to Weston, he's exactly right, right? It can't just be about the money, the exit, like there's got to be some, it's got to be something that matters, something you're passionate about, being a great company, doing, doing great things. Love, love that. And the other, the other thing that I learned as a, as a young entrepreneur, it can't be just about the pride and ego of being a business owner, right? Like, you know, just to look good to others or whatever it may be, right? Like doing something great is, um, is very, uh, very respectful. So love, love that. What, uh, what, what kind of advice would you give to somebody that's thinking about giving up? Man, first of all, if you are thinking about it, just know you're not alone. Every entrepreneurial,

everyone will always ask the question, why did I start this to begin with? They all will. I would just strongly tell you to persevere and have grit. There is a book actually, Chris, called The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Have you heard of this book? Yes, great book. It will have you, if you're struggling right now, it'll have you in tears because you'll finally be like, whoa, this guy's got it. He understands me. But it'll also at the same time have you belly laughing. I remember reading this section in this book and it's called, I think this section of it is called The Hard Thing,

about hard things. It's a paragraph in there that he calls it The Struggle. And he walks through this struggle. And I'm telling you, it is everything that you will go through or have gone through as a founder, CEO of a company. And one of them simply is, why did I do this? And you're going to ask that question, like, why am I here? You'll have moments where you'll say, I'd sell this thing for a dollar. And then you'll have moments, maybe even the very next day, where you say, I wouldn't sell this for $100 million.. Um, so just know that it's okay. You're not alone. And, um, just there, it's not as bad as it thinks. It's not as bad. It's crazy in that book. He, I think his stock cause he takes his company public and it's like

$4 a share or something at one point. And then it goes down to like 50 cents a share. And he's just like, dude, this thing's worthless. Let's just kick it to the curb and then they push through and they you know they have to build culture when culture just does not want to be built and yeah and then eventually and then eventually i think they sell it off for like 12 or 13 bucks a share um and or that's that's when he gets out or whatever. And, and, uh, just remarkable. Yeah. I love that book. Thanks for, thanks for.

It's so good. And if you can't read the whole book, just go Google the struggle, hard thing about hard things and read that one section, especially if you're struggling right now, thinking you want to give up, read that one section. I mean, it you'll get it. And at the end, he just simply says, most people will give up. That's why so many businesses fell. Most are not strong enough. Every great entrepreneur, he will tell you, has gone through this and will go through this multiple times. So you're not alone.

But he ends up saying in the last of that paragraph, that doesn't mean you're going to make it. In fact, he says, most don't. Most don't have. And I think he uses the word perseverance or the grit to get through this. That's, and then he ends it last sentence. That's where success is born from is pushing through that. I I've taught my mountain bike riders and even team members at the pain gate. I push through it. If you get to a gate and your destination is well beyond that gate, some people will get to that gate and think, oh, I can't get through it.

You've got to somehow figure out a way to get around the obstacle. Once you push through it, that's where true growth actually happens. And you'll look back and you'll think, man, I'm a much better individual by going through that, not giving up. So just don't give up. Persevere. You've got to be a realist, Chris. If it's a business, it's not going to ever be profitable because it just is not a good product. Then you got to own that.

So make sure you do your research before diving in. I love that. Such good advice. Sweet. Wesson, are you on social media at all? Anywhere that we can find you? Yeah. I mean, I'm on LinkedIn.

I'm on Facebook, which my kids say is outdated. I have an Instagram account and don't do much there right now. But yeah, anyone has any questions or comments or just wants to sit down. I love talking with young entrepreneurs. I love it.

And I love investing in there. So I typically will do rounds, seed rounds, anywhere from $500,000 up to $5 million investments. And so if there are good startups out there and you're looking for someone that might be able to be a mentor to you and help guide you through that, I'm more than happy to take any phone calls. So just hit me up on LinkedIn. I love it. I love it. So outside of the hard thing about hard things, favorite book, couple books that have changed your life, changed your trajectory of your career? I'm reading a really, really good one right now that I absolutely love. It's called The Compound Effect. And I had no, have you read this, Chris?

Yes. so long to read it. And it's my daughter that introduced it to me. She's like this 4.0 straight A student. And she mentioned, you know, the impact that just eating that one more cookie can have on you, dad. And she went through this whole process of how it could literally ruin my entire life. But the funny thing is this book, I've started reading these paragraphs on it. And it's amazing, like all the little decisions and choices we make, the compound effect that they have in areas in our life that you wouldn't even think that they would have. And so it's a really good book. I'm enjoying it all the way through it. But hands down, my favorite book of all times is The Power of Habit.

And after I've read that at least six or seven times. And I've established since doing that some really good disciplined habits that I follow unless I'm sick and something doesn't allow me to do it. And it's absolutely changed my overall happiness, just my look on life and my success rate on starting something and seeing it all the way to the end. So yeah, it's a good book. If you haven't read that one, it's phenomenal. Yeah, that is a great book. Have you also read Atomic Habits by James Clear? Yeah, another one right there. I mean, that would probably be my favorite other than I read Power Habit first. And so it locked me into that concept, but yeah, they're

both great. So you talk about some habits that have changed your life, like share with us like some of your daily best practices that, uh, that are being compounded over time. Well, starting early, I mean, getting up early five o'clock and then getting a really good vigorous workout in. And then as soon as that's done, just taking some time to reflect on what's most important for the day. So I call it a gratitude reflection, like what has happened? What what needs to happen? How can you have an impact on people? Those are two big things that are really important to me not to ever miss. And by the time that's over now, I mean, seven o'clock starts rolling around. So you're probably waking your family up. But you've accomplished so much for yourself in those two hours that you've already just filled yourself up and you're ready to go accomplish a lot. That's really important to me.

And then another habit that I have every single night right before I go to bed is just to do a review. What went well? What didn't go well? What didn't go well? And what do I need to change for the day? Just do a quick check on what's going to happen. And then I review what's going to happen. And then I review what's going

to happen tomorrow. So I just have really clear what my game plan is going to look like, how I did and what it's going to look like for the next day. And then another habit that I involve myself heavily in is just doing weekly review. It's a little bit longer process, but I spent about an hour on that. And I do that on Sundays where I'm just going through my last week, identifying, did I accomplish everything I needed? And if they were priorities, I ship them for the next week. And then I make sure I get all my priorities done. And honestly, if I do that, I don't let the days control me.

I go get my priorities taken care of in that week. So those are just some habits that I started doing since I first read that book years and years ago and life-changing telling you, you can get a lot done. So love that when, when the day, man, these are, these are great, uh, great nuggets that you're sharing. So for, for anyone that's, uh, listening and stayed with us until this moment, uh, I want you to jot down a few of the takeaways that you have, maybe leave it in a review. You know, we read every single review that's left in this podcast. So I appreciate your time, Wes, and it's been very valuable today. You've dropped a lot of

great nuggets. You know, you've had a very successful career, a successful family. You know, like it's so good to have incredible people with you. Any final words that you'd like to share with our listeners? Just go make incredible happen, guys. You're going to fall into this imposter system of thinking, I can't do this, or am I an imposter? Can I really do this? You can.

You can do great things. So go make incredible happen. Thanks, Chris. Love that. Until next time, we appreciate you.