Next Level Pros - #36:Brandon Poulin: Founder Of Lady Boss, Marketing Expert, Family Man

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Welcome to another episode of The Founder Podcast, hosted by Chris Lee! In this episode, we sit down with serial entrepreneur Brandon Poulin, who, along with his wife Kaelin, built a remarkable empire at a young age. Brandon is the founder of Lady Boss, a thriving health and apparel company that achieved a staggering $50 million in annual revenue before its recent sale.  But Brandon's journey wasn't an overnight success. He shares the story of his early entrepreneurial ventures, from running an auto glass company at the age of 17 to getting involved in network marketing. It was in the world of network marketing that Brandon and Kaelin found their footing and laid the foundation for Lady Boss. Brandon reveals the turning point in their journey, where they embraced a predictable revenue model, understood customer acquisition costs, and honed their financial strategy. He emphasizes the importance of knowing the math of your business and how it can lead to sustainable growth. As Brandon reflects on his entrepreneurial journey, he offers valuable insights about hiring the right team members and paying competitive salaries to attract experienced professionals. He shares the challenges of transitioning from a scrappy startup to a company with seasoned leaders and the benefits of investing in high-level talent. Tune in to this episode of The Founder Podcast to gain wisdom from Brandon Poulin's incredible entrepreneurial experience and learn how strategic thinking and effective team building can drive long-term success in business. HIGHLIGHTS "It's been a crazy journey for us, but I think the biggest thing is just the impact that we've been able to have." "Being able to retire your wife, give your family the life that you've always dreamed of, that's a really special feeling." "You learn so much from failure, and that's what I've learned." TIMESTAMPS 00:00: Introduction 02:00: Personal Growth  07:43: Network Marketing 10:43: Growth Strategies  17:22: Bootstrapping  21:53: Hiring Your Team 25:06: Hiring High Level Management  30:26: Time Management  36:54: Family Rhythm and Alignment 40:23: Motivation 🚀 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

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 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 want to just learn like sales, man, just go join a freaking MLM. 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. Jeez. 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. love it so remind us what's what's the name of your uh your podcast uh it's called big business mistakes man so the 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 dude you killed 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. I appreciate it. Appreciate it, man. Podcasting is so fun. You know, you get to just spend time with really cool individuals, talk about, you know, whatever makes sense in the moment. It's a good time.

So, Brandon, dude, you're young. You built a freaking huge business. Uh, give us the backstory. How old were you when, when, uh, you and Caitlin 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.

Are you married at the time? Uh, no, we actually launched it. We were engaged. So we weren't married yet. We were engaged. And, uh, it's, it's kind of crazy, dude. Like we, we had like relationship hanging on a thread at one point. And so we were like, we actually hit rock bottom in our relationship while we were engaged rock bottom in our business. Cause we were in network marketing, right? That's how we we met so we hit rock bottom in all these areas while we were engaged and then uh 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 but it kind of lady boss kind of formed out of like the pit you you know, like in a way.

So that's pretty wild. You know, I mean, the fact that you guys launched this thing when you're 20, 21 years old and it was the massive success that 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? Like everybody's got a story. Like tell us yours. Yeah, man. I mean, it really started, it really started in network marketing, right? I followed my first LLC when I was 17 years old.

It was an auto glass company. Yo. 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? Yeah, dude. Come on. So not exactly the entrepreneurial hub of America. But- New Mexico, what are you talking about? Yeah, dude, come on.

It's like, I love the weather, man. But anyway, it's like, so my buddy came back, told me about this auto glass thing, gave me a kit, 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? 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 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? Oh bro. Like I could make like, I could make like five, six, 700 bucks in a day at a gas station

with a kit. Like that's pretty good, man. Like, dude, that's awesome. What is that a year? What is that a year? Like 500, $500 a day is a hundred, 150 grand. There you go. 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 this protein shake in my face. He's like, here, I made you a protein shake. I was like, you don't make me anything. Why are you giving me a protein shake?

Then he sat me down. I watched this video, and it was the first time I had ever seen the network marketing. Tell me it was Amway. Tell me it was Amway. Tell me it was Amway. No, dude. No. It was not Amway. It was Body by Vi.

So it was a 90-day health challenge by Salas. They grew pretty fast. And so I signed up illegally at 17. Because you're supposed to be 18, I think. So 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. 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? Of course. Cratered. Always. Yeah.

Yeah. So cratered, and then that's kind of how, what led to the, 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. Right. And I was like, bro, you learn how to sell when you door knock, same thing with network marketing, your door knocking their phone. Right. And so, so I was out of people to talk to. I talked to every person I'd ever met phone. Right. Right. And so, so I was out of people to talk to. I talked to every person I'd ever met literally in my phone book. And, uh, and we were grinding social media to get leads. And then that kind of started to dry up. And, uh, and then we were pushing and building through our organization and just like the company's momentum stalled. So the belief kind of starts to falter. And then you have like, it's kind of like a, not attrition of customers, but more attrition of awareness, right? That's kind'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 from an integrity standpoint.

Not like embezzlement, but just like kind of character 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. Dude, MLMs are wild. Like, you know, I 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 Quickstar, 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, and then, and then I freaking meet, do my wife, my wife's cousin married into this, this international, uh, MLM company. Uh, it's called a Sunrider. They have a big presence over in Asia. And some of the wealthiest people I know, literally worth $15 billion or whatever. And so all these different... It's wild because you have the majority of the population sucks. They don't make anything of it. They try all selling 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 how to sell and you learn people. And that laid such a great foundation for me. So you say overnight success, like Lady Boss was 200K the first year, 2 million the second year, 7 million, then 30, and then 33, and then 44. So 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 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. And he's kind of same thing that you were saying. He's like, all my richest friends are, have MLMs.

Yep. Yep. Dude, that's, that's the best part. It's like the owners, right? The owners just crush it. Oh, dude, that's so cool. So, man, so obviously Lady Boss wasn of, 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 5,000, right? Um, like what, what was your, what was your big, like, 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 like, I think what people and I'm working with entrepreneurs now, enterprise CEO, helping founder led companies scale, right? And a lot of these businesses are in that 5 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, from, you know, a couple hundred K to kind of turn on the jets was we figured out first, it was, um, our pocket personal trainer program. We figured out the math dude. And you'll never believe this. This is crazy. 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 got married. This was right after we launched what was called Lady Boss. We changed the name to Lady Boss about a year in. So we're in Puerto Rico. We're making like 20 grand a month at 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 like basking in that, you know, life was good. And, 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 we just, we need a new program. Like, this is like the, 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. This is what we do as entrepreneurs. And I see it like 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, 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 $1,000 on ads.

And I didn't even know this at the time because I just didn't understand the math of business. But I had this like, something just tapped me on the shoulder, bro. 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, I'm like, wait, we spent a thousand dollars and we made

five. I don't know. 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 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, we want to just be this episodic thing and we launch we, oh yeah, my business is great. I do two launches a year. And I'm like, that's like, that sounds awful. That sounds like no consistent revenue. You have two giant hits a year. You have

nothing in between your team stressed out. Like you have to have consistency to scale. Right. So when 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's like a, 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 good problems to have you know when uh revenue is flowing just figuring out how to fulfill love it so dude that's uh

that's phenomenal so basically you had this you woke up to this realization of like i just actually need to understand my business more i I need to understand the financials, what's driving, what's the fuel to this fire. And, uh, and then you, 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, how did, how did you get this? How'd you get this thing rolling? Dude, we, we just, we just bent over and just strapped them on man and just trudged right through bro i think we were like thousand but like last 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 of people, they'll 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 customer, like we could do this on our own we could do it digitally right like hey it's like that's the era we're in right and um and so so just being able to um 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 and 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 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. It just keeps getting eaten by a bigger fish. 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. Cause 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 bootstrap life 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, mad respect for that. If, uh, if you could do lady boss all over again, what, what would you do differently? Oh, I would hire, I would hire the team and pay the salaries for the people that it needed. The first time I built my leadership team, um, 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. And it was evident in the IT systems breaking, our infrastructure there, the mismanagement of inventory, the amount of energy and time that Kaylin and I still had to

spend in the marketing side of things, just all of it, man. 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, you know, the seven people we ended up with that ran the business. Um, and so I would, 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, That's the definition of nepotism. It's like we're hiring friends and family. We're not treating our business professionally. And that's okay. 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, like your employees are not like you, right? 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 gonna grow grow into the, into the eight figures, right? You're not going to grow with, if no one's making more than 80 K a year, 70 K a year, and you're trying to train everyone. Right. 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 way better than me, bro. You've done it big. Like 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. Right. 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 such a hard lesson to learn as a bootstrapping entrepreneur, right? 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? But, 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? You know, like scrappy people like you're talking about. But we also went, we went after people that had done some really cool things. And we said, hey, come work for less and share in the upside, right? 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, like go and spend the money on the right management on the people that have gone and done it. Um, 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. 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, 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 be, 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 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 that really held to 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, right? Like 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 want to take a job for a hundred thousand dollars doing that. Like, what am I doing? Go and go and find 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. Yeah. So Brooke, Brooke shared some advice with me. We did a mastermind a while back, which was phenomenal. She doesn't have a person on her staff that makes less than $120,000. Love that. that 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 and i was just like that that after i met with her something really clicked

and i really upped my my management game and like people i was bringing in and what i was willing to pay um because of that one interaction but uh yeah i 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 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 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. You know, it's like, it's like every time I'm like, I need to do this. Like, okay, what's going to move the needle in my business, right? I wake up in the morning. All right. 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, right? We're always like, do you have to develop that muscle as an entrepreneur? You just get stuck in the hamster wheel. You know, 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 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. That's so good, man. We're motorboat in the pie. We're motorboat in the pie right now. Let's go. Oh, man. Hopefully, motorboat in a pie. We're motorboat in a pie right now. Oh, man. 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.

You know, more motorboat in a pie is 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 management here. Good stuff. Dude. So, you know, you've, you'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, what, what's your passion? What's pushing you? Oh, that's a great question, man. Right now, 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 sit around. So I think really I've found purpose right now in business, in the arena of 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 like, you know, 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. Um, 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, and just play in other people's sandbox and like one pivot just for my experience not not like you know i kind of have like um 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 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 uh we've got they got one company so it's for for christian entrepreneurs it's a 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, 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, 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 continuing to elevate my mentorship. 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 could quantify them, right? I made some massive mistakes because I was in masterminds. I was learning from people. But there were just few, like 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 wrecking, 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 not they're not uh 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 which i love that man that's 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 i think 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 in a cadence so i'm successful in that area i have 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 what does it look like on the family side or the health family health all of it like what is your cadence? What does it look like? On the family side or the health side?

Family, health, all of it. Like what does 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 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. 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 it's a little bit of work done before that, but I have that breakfast time with them. And then after work, it's dinners being made. And I could have someone make dinner. 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 sometimes short for memory i'm just like blocks to lose it but we went to this uh we go to like tomfoolery water park place so we just do something like

that on saturday mornings yeah and uh and then we do a once a month trip um my wife and i do with with the kids like a family trip and then my wife and i do a, 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, whole like cadence that I've like really like this year started pushing really hard. We were kind of doing it before. So that's the, that's the family side, man. I guess I could dig into the meat of it all, but. No, that's, that's great family side man i guess 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 that you know you create culture either by design or by default and 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 just

happens right and and nobody nobody's life just turns out right, you know, without being very intentional about it. So, uh, appreciate, uh, 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 in reference to like what what why 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, 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, 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 if people look like you're 29, like all this, I'm like, dude, it don't matter, bro. 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 4-0. So like, even you probably, bro, you probably are like, man, I'm not doing fast enough. You'll have this voice like, oh, you're not. Absolutely. 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 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, 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. Right. If you, 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. Right. And I'm like, dude, 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, so, so that was really good advice for me recently for sure. That's, that's incredible advice. Thank you for sharing. Uh, 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.verbs i'm gonna go i'm gonna go i'm gonna go straight to the bible bro i'm gonna be like i like i'm gonna 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. 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, a great book that, that I reference. Um, he's just put it together so well. So those are two solid books. books by the way alex has got to be probably the smartest dude i know like when you when you hang

around him he's like harvard level education to the nth degree plus street smarts and it's it's just so refreshing to hear his take on pretty much everything he's he's such a stud yeah yeah definitely man kaylin and i were the only two people at his wedding and i love the guy to death and uh he uh he's like him and uh another guy i'll shout out josh ilzeche founder of snow basically both guys like my age that i'm like damn bro i just ain't that smart like like like i think i'm smart but but I'm like, I listened to two of them and I'm like, nah, nah, I made that smart, man. I'm not that smart. You know, I, I'm a, 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, feel comfortable in the, in the fact that you, 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. So, uh, 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, business. What advice you giving to them? Oh man. Um, 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 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, like I just look at some of the, like there's Airbnb, there's, there's crypto mining, there's be a content creator. Like there's so many ways that you could just use a cell phone and a laptop to be an entrepreneur in 2023.

Like there's just no excuse, right? If you just haven't taken action, you're just lying to yourself. It's never been easier. Like, oh, there's a recession. No, it doesn't matter, right? 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. Like I would hire someone 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 take an action. That's the only excuse that you have.

Amen. Amen. That's good stuff. Last question. So somebody's thinking about 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 you giving them? Giving up on their life? Just any, giving them? Giving up on their life? Just any, 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, if you're at that place, bro, I'm like, we, you know, we can talk about tactics and business and, and all that. But, but if you got a, if you got a hole in your soul, which everybody does, in my opinion, I think we go into a faith 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 share. Brandon, where's the best way to follow you or get a hold 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 100 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, you know, 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, um, the, where can they stay? Yeah. Yeah. The enterpriseceo.com slash 360 audit, 360 audit. And so it's the enterpriseceo.com slash 360 audit. If you guys just want to grab it, um, that's the value that I want to drop. And then, you know, I, I do podcast, uh, 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 life, his wife, Kaylin, they are great followers. 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 when 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. Easy, easy, easy. Thanks for having me, man. All right, appreciate it. Have a good one.