The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 293: Brent Beshore - How To Get Rich Slow & Live An Optimal Life

Episode Date: January 14, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #293: Brent Beshore - How To Get Rich Slow & Live An Optimal Life Commonalities of sustaining excellence: The usual things like: integrity and hard work But the best... "know how messy they are, they challenge themselves, they have high level of self-awareness, they need people around them to help.  They acknowledge their imperfections, and they give others grace for their imperfections." How to develop self awareness?  Surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth -- "We are all highly imperfect." Give people a true open invitation to criticize, but they also must be constructive, loving, kind, thoughtful people. "They need to be rooting for you."\ What do you look for in someone to work with? Curiosity - an inherent desire to know more, learn, reconstruct reality Self awareness - genuine intellectual honesty Integrity - function of consistency over time.  Have to reconstruct it

Life is gift not gain, right? It's not about how much can I gain, how much can I accrue, how big can my bank account get, how big and powerful can I get my ego and my influence, right? Of course, like, it's not going to matter. In a hundred years, no one's going to know your name, right? And even if they do know your name, they're not going to know you, right? Like, I can read about Abraham Lincoln and I can be appreciative of what he did, but I don't know Abraham Lincoln.

Like I know his name, I don't know him. And so in the moment, relationships are what matter and how relationships formed serving and that's the bond that kind of that is the bond that links all of society together. This episode is once again brought to you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a listener of the Learning Leader Show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll. sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader.

That's g-U-S-T-O.com slash leader. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 4-4-2-2. As mentioned before, some really cool,

one-on-one opportunities for those who text learners to 4-4-222. Now, on tonight's featured leader, wow, it's a good one. Brent, be sure. I love this one. Brent is a CEO of Adventures, a Midwestern-based private equity firm. His firm takes a long-term approach to private equity, investing permanent equity in privately held companies throughout North America. He's also best-selling author of a new book titled, The Messy,

marketplace. A few of the topics we got into. The qualities he looks for and a leader to hire. And specifically what he learned from his lunch with Charlie Munger about how to do this better. Then the 10 biggest ideas that changed his life. Followed up by why boring is beautiful. Brent's counterintuitive approach to life, business, and leadership. This one, very any, entertaining and useful. It's Brent, be sure. All right, Brent, be sure. Man, it's so good to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on. To get us going, man, I want to get right into it. Thinking about leaders, specifically those who sustain excellence is something I study and try to learn as much as humanly possible about.

And you have spent a good portion of your life surrounded by these types of people. And I know you actively seek them out. I like that. So I'm curious from your perspective, what have you found to be the commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence? It's a great question. You know, I think there's the obvious personality traits and, you know, integrity, hard work, all the stuff that I think everyone would relate to. I would say that probably the best leaders that I know know how messy they are, know how challenging people can be, including themselves. So have a lot of self-awareness around their own shortcomings and failures and are constantly trying to learn and be aware.

I mean, blind spots are, they're blind, right? So by definition, you can't see your own blind spots. And I think that we all have a lot of them. And so I would say really great leadership is about acknowledging your own imperfections and understanding and expecting imperfections and others. And when it happens, not overcooking the response, letting people be people and giving people grace and understanding. And look, at the end of the day, we all want to be loved and trusted. And so if you exhibit that love and trust, especially in difficult times, I think that really goes a long way. For the phrase, self-awareness, I think, is really big.

And I've studying this for a while and talking to experts in this. I'm curious, though, from the person listening and obviously selfishly for me as well, how does one go about developing self-awareness? Well, I can, I'm a sample size of one. And for me, at least, I've tried to surround myself with people who tell me the truth and who I give an open invitation to be honest with me, even when I want to hear the truth. It's almost like a stage of, stages of grieving after somebody tells you that you're kind of a screw up, which happens to me far more often than I would like. But, you know, the first is kind of denial. The second is, well, wait a minute. You've got problems too, right? You kind of push back on them. And, you know, I think the quicker you can get through those, you know, stages of grief of your self-denial and the pushback, you know, and just really open yourself up to it. We all are imperfect, highly imperfect. And, you know, because you're aware of your imperfections doesn't mean that they didn't exist before.

It's kind of like people who get a bill in the mail and then throw it in the trash don't even open it. that bill still exists. It doesn't matter if you threw it in the trash. So I would say giving people a true open invitation to give you criticism and not just cutting criticism. Because I think there's two sides. If you have somebody who just loves to tell you how worthless you are, probably not somebody you should keep in your life. Anytime somebody is providing criticism, it should always be constructive and it should always be loving and kind and gentle. I mean, it's not always going to be that way and sometimes our enemies provide us an incredible opportunity to see our shortcomings as well. But I would say, you know, on average, surrounding yourself with thoughtful people who will

be transparent and tell you, tell you the truth is really the only path that I've seen work in my life. And I think those people, obviously, the one, they have to be intelligent, they have to be honest. But I also think they need to be rooting for you. You know what I mean? I think they need to, they, they, those people, you know, they, those people. people that we surround ourselves with that can help us become more aware of where we're good and where we're not, I want them to genuinely want me to be successful because like you said, if every time you talk, they're just killing you, after a while, it gets kind of old. And you're thinking, wait,

does this person, do they have a little envy or jealous or do they not want me to be successful? They have to, I think that those people and that play that role have to be rooting for you. I would agree. And if they're not rooting, for you, what you end up getting is an imperfect view of yourself from the opposite direction. I mean, people that, you know, what is the term, frenemies, right? They'll often throw you off base by saying, hey, I see this, I see this big problem with who you are. And you look at that and you say, gosh, I really don't see it. Now, do you not see it because it's not true? Or do you not see it because you're blind to it, right? And that's the discernment that you've got to have over time.

But I've certainly had that in my life as well where somebody who I trusted and thought highly of did not have my best interest in heart. And, you know, turns out the advice they were getting didn't jive with the advice I was getting from a lot of other people. And so I think that's part of the world too, is you've got to test. I always think about it's putting opinions and mixing bowl, right? It's one opinion in a mixing bowl of a lot of opinions. And you stir it all together and see what soup you make. Are there some areas that if you look back on your own career, and we'll get into exactly what you do here in a second, but if you look back on your own career, Brent, maybe five or 10 years ago,

that those mentors, those people in your life, that they've pointed things out, that you have a noticeable difference, meaning when I was X years old, I struggled with this and I had to work on it over the past five to 10 years. Meaning is there is an area that you've seen improvement that's noticeable that the reason I'm asking is because I think I think this could help people as they hear a guy who as we'll get into some of your levels of success was not perfect had issues had flaws and then was able to work through them and it has improved through the course of getting help from trusted advisors and mentors well absolutely um I feel like man we're we're diving right into the deep end Ryan I appreciate it uh yeah no go ahead dread dread it up uh from the past here

So, yeah, I mean, if you look 10 years ago, so I started the firm a little over 10 years ago, and if I try to put myself back in who I was then, I was incredibly goal-focused, and I would argue goal-induced blindness was a pretty common thing. I was overconfident and under-knowledgeable, if you want to call it that, you know, rarely, often wrong, rarely in doubt, right? would be something that characterized my life. I was scared. I knew that I wasn't enough. I knew that I couldn't succeed on my own. And I knew what an idiot I was, kind of in the deep, you know, trenches of the soul. And I was terrified of being a failure and letting everyone down. And it was a

challenging time. Starting a company, starting a company, especially in sort of the trough of 2008 into 2009, it was a challenging time. And so, you know, I think that was a reflected in an incredible amount of self-interest, not rightly understood, to use an Alexis to Tocqueville term. I think it was a lot of self-obsession, and I think it caused me to treat people unfairly, to treat people, if you look at people as the means and not the end, I think you get into trouble in all kinds of ways. And so, you know, where I am, and by the way, I am still highly imperfect and I am still incredibly messy now. But I think I have seen, and I've really tried to ask people around me about this too, you know, seen a change of heart in, I truly care for the people

that I work with and the people that I interact with. I try to focus on creating win-win relationships as opposed to win-lose, which are just inherently unstable and unsustainable. And I truly look at it now as it is far better to serve than to be served. And now with that said, I wake up every day self-obsessed and self-interested. And, you know, I have to pull myself to a place of, you know, reflecting on what I've learned and that this world is far more enjoyable, far more sustainable, and ultimately it's the right thing to do to serve people and not be served. and to think about their interests as much as your own. Was that growth built through life repetitions,

meaning experience in years, or direct feedback from trusted people or probably a combo of both? Yeah, it was a combination of both. You know, I would certainly say that the relational outcomes from the early years of my career were highly suboptimal. And I left in my wake plenty of relationships that should have been fantastic that turned out not to be great, largely because of my own, my shortcomings.

And so when, you know, when you have those relationships that you really value, that turn out poorly, you got after a while ask, what's the common thread? And the common thread was me. And sure, they're messy too, right? I mean, of course, I'm not trying to be go over the top on, you know, it's not like I was some monster. But, you know, I certainly, when I had the opportunity to take a little bit more, I would take a little bit more. And when we got together as friends, it was all about me. And I wanted to talk about

and what I wanted to talk about. I wasn't in the mindset of trying to help them and serve them. And I certainly wasn't in the mindset of being generous and kind. It was, it was, I needed to be successful. And I was kind of willing to do what it took to be successful, or at least what I thought it took to be successful. And, you know, a lot of people came along me and were patient with me. and loved me through that time when I didn't deserve their love. And, you know, I'm forever grateful for that. Wow. Interesting. So, Brent, when you are at a, let's say a dinner party with people who aren't super familiar with you or they don't know you at all.

And it gets to the point where they shake your hand and say, hey, nice to meet you, Brent. What do you do? How do you respond? I usually respond by saying I buy boring businesses. And when I say, when I say boring, I like to joke because it gets people's attention that they're boring because all they do is just make money. So we, Adventures is a family of companies. That's the name of my firm as a family of companies that acquires family owned companies. We deploy capital into these companies in a way that a family would. So like a family, we hold long term. We don't replace leadership. We try to treat people very kind and think long term in how, in how,

We go about doing things. And we have a wonderful team. There's 14 of us at the Adventurers level at this point. And we have six portfolio companies. And, you know, it's been a long time building. And it's been a lot of fun. What's the, so the word boring when you do research on you is around a lot. The more boring, the better.

I think even the imprint for your book, the messy marketplace, which we'll talk about is you use the phrase boring from a publishing perspective. What is your obsession with boring? Well, so life is going to be inherently exciting, right? I mean, I think all the messiness that we previously talked about is reflected in. It's never boring for very long at least. And so when we joke about boring in our minds, we think about sustainability. We think about being steadfast. We think about being kind and generous and win-win and long-term. These are all the things that kind of swirl about. And we kind of package those all up and say, hey, let's have a boring relationship. When you have a boring relationship, you think about just loving people and being kind and

just being a sort of wonderful experience for everyone. When you think about exciting, you think about, you know, hot, you know, one-night-stand relationships. You think about, you know, sort of the rocket ship that goes up and comes back down pretty quickly, falls back to Earth, right? We would far more rather build relationships that build sustainably over time and companies that sort of take step-by-step progress rather than trying to go after a moonshot investment or something that, you know, is going to sort of turn us into a massive company or put us under. And I think that's when we think about boring, it's just being stable and being sustainable. And we joke a lot about get rich slowly. Why is that unique? The way you explained it made it seem, well,

shouldn't everybody be doing that? Or why isn't everybody doing that? Well, so I think there's a couple things. If you think about what do we pay attention to, there's certainly a bias towards outliers. So what makes it on magazine covers is not the guy who let's say took over for his grandfather's business when he was 35 years old and faithfully served the employees and customers and took it from $40 million a year to $240 million a year over 30 years. And I know that guy, by the way. That guy lives in Iowa and is one of the finest human means I've ever met. and the family and the employees have reaped incredible rewards by that sort of steadfast growth. Or the entrepreneur who built brick by brick and started something and just, you know,

grinded on it for decades and treated people well. I mean, I've never been more convinced that if you get into something that people want, and that is sustainably necessary for life, and you treat people well, and sustainably over time. I've seen incredible wealth created and wealth beyond financial wealth, relational wealth and community wealth. It's just a wellspring of flourishing, I would say, that occurs. But that's not what makes magazine covers.

What makes magazine covers is the hot new app that came out of nowhere and now is over a billion dollar valuation. And usually when that happens, not always. I'm not going to hit it with a blunt hammer, but when that happens, it usually is the result of catching fire and something, expectations getting completely out of whack within the company, and personally, those people struggling mightily with it. I think that instant or close to instant success is a flame that virtually no one touches and doesn't get badly burned. And I see that over and over and over again in the people that I work with. And so what I have found to be the case is everyone wants to get rich quick. Everyone wants to have the hot romance fast.

And it's just not the way we were designed. You know, God created us for sustainable, kind, generous, long-term relationships. And those don't come from one-night stands. They can. I mean, God can redeem whatever. But what it comes from is great marriages are built on hardship and built on getting through it. with love and passion still intact and serving one another. And I think that's the big thing is that, you know, are you serving, are you being served?

And great companies are built the same way. Is the company built as a milking mechanism for the employees, especially the executives, to get rich as fast as they can? Or is the company built to create sustainable service-based relationships to vendors, to clients, to communities? And again, create that flourishing. I think it's all about, you know, are you giving or are you taking? And look, when you're giving and giving well, there's plenty to go around. That's the beauty of it. It is not a zero-sum game.

But very few people look at it that way. And I think that the natural default of the media, of society, and look just how we're wired in general. This is not anything new. Human nature does not change. We are built with a scarcity mentality. We are built to think about ourselves and to be terrified of losing what we have, right? The loss aversion principle kicks in. And so, you know, what that means if you don't check yourself and if you can't sort of look around the corner, what that means is you try to get as much as you can, as quickly as you can in an unsustainable fashion, if that's what you need to do. And then you try to hoard it and hold onto it at all costs. And I think that when you look at a lot of the behaviors of the world, that's what you see.

Let's talk about specific leaders. And maybe it's different, but we'll see because I'm Thinking of the person who is a, let's say, a mid-level manager at a big company right now, which is not necessarily where you play, but I think it'll relate here and I'll bring it around. Leaders are tasked with hiring, adding people to the team. And this is a lot of people would say, and I would most times say maybe the most important decisions you'll ever make is who, who you will bring as part of your team. And so I would imagine that you guys have really thought this through of whether it's someone to invest in or someone to hire. And so this is pointed towards that person who is a hiring manager.

And they're thinking, and regardless, obviously there are specific job functions where they have to have those skills. So take that out of the equation. But I'm talking just in general as people. And we're managers now. And we want to hire a team that's going to be excellent. and I mean sustain excellence. What are some of the things that you look for and people to either add to your team or businesses that you're going to, the people that you're going to invest in? Great question.

Say, probably three that immediately off the top of my head jump out are curiosity. And we can come back to these self-awareness and integrity. And I think these can mean different things. We can throw around these buzzwords and they get kind of hollow. But for me, curiosity is just an inherent desire to know more, to grow as a person, and to be curious about how things work, constantly, you know, deconstructing and reconstructing the reality around them. Self-awareness, you know, we've talked about a little bit, is this genuine intellectual honesty and desire to understand who they are and how they fit into the real. reality around them. And then, you know, when it comes to integrity, this is probably the hardest one, because integrity is a function of consistency over time. That's a way I think about it.

So if you're hiring somebody by definition, you haven't usually been able to see a window into their consistency over time. So you have to reconstruct it. And what I would say, I got a chance to to have lunch, quite a long lunch with Charlie Munger, who is the Berkshire vice chairman and kind of well-known now. And I asked him, this is actually the question that I asked him. I said, you know, how do you identify talent? And he said, by what somebody's done. And I said, well, how do you know what they've done? And he said, you got to ask them.

You got to ask people to know them. And you got to look at their track record. And he said, the only way that I found through my entire career to predict somebody, future trajectory is based on their past trajectory. And it's really true. If somebody comes into your organization and is willing to nibble at the edges at every turn and take when no one's looking, you're going to be able to see that fairly quickly, but you're also going to see it in their past behavior. Are they always looking for kind of the next deal for them? Are they incredibly, what I would say, career focus? Career focus is not a bad thing, but it's a bad

thing if all you care about is your own career. Because again, that's goal-induced blindness. The way people win in their careers is by serving not being served. You serve enough, you create an abundance and you get to share in that abundance. But if you're always looking for what's in it for me at every turn in every way, I mean, it's just a mindset. And so I think that a lot of our interviewing, a lot of how we try to get to know people really focuses on those things. Sure, intelligence matters, but look, intelligence is also a weird thing. Like, I feel like part of my brain is missing and part of it supercharged, right? And I think everyone's this way. We all have, you know, talents and skills that come easy to us. And we all have talents and

skills that feel like we just cannot make progress no matter what we do. And the whole goal of a role within a larger organization, regardless of where you are in the organization, is optimizing your time, attention to things that you can do far better than anybody else, right? This is the concept in economics of comparative advantage. And so what you can do better than anyone else is what you should be focused on. And I think that when you hire people and you focus on the three things we talked about, I think that should come through pretty loud and clear. How do you not get fooled through this process?

What is your mechanism in place? We all get fooled from time to time. I've hired, I think about more than probably 90 people in my career. And I've definitely been fooled. and some of my blind spots are, I guess I've never told them myself like this before, but some of my blind spots are, if someone had a military background, let's say, sometimes I just overlook any other red flag because I see the discipline, the service to our country, and I just put them in the, yes, I'm going to hire them box.

And in some cases, it just, they shouldn't have been hired because it wasn't a right fit for the actual role, despite their history of discipline and service. And that has been one of my blind spots. that people listening that I've worked with right now are saying, oh, yeah, I know some of those guys. And that's, that's, I've tried to learn from that and get better. What, how are you, how, what's, what's your process that you have in place to avoid getting fooled? I'm going to be really honest, we get fooled. A lot? Or, I mean, you had, I assume over time you've been able to get better at this. I mean, you'd like to hope that you, that you start gaining discernment. And I think that certain

we look at we look for different things and have have learned some things but I mean part of this is you know you want to also not be the guy who touches the hot stove right and thinks that all stoves are hot no matter you know if they're turned on or not and so I think um how what we try to have a lot of people meet them so I certainly don't trust my judgment in a vacuum and nor do I think there anybody on our team that should trust their judgment in vacuum it's a collaborative process and we all come at things very differently I think this is the value of an organization is, you know, diversity of thought, of perspective, of outlook, you know, how your tendency, we all have tendencies to be sort of cheerleaders or highly skeptical, right? And we all fall on a spectrum. And so whenever we are considering, actually, let me back up. So we recently hired a gentleman by the name of Tim Hanson, who's our new CFO. He came on a couple months ago. And we did an 18-day. month search looking for a CFO of our organization. And if that sounds like a long time and sounds

painful, it was. And we interviewed, I mean, really high level candidates from around the country. It was a national search. We, I don't know how many people we looked at it, you know, probably close to 100, you know, really legitimate candidates. And, you know, ultimately we decided on Tim because, you know, I put him through the paces, Suzanne Bilele, who's the president of the firm put him through the paces. We had to meet the entire team, hang out with them by themselves with us. I mean, I can't remember how many total hours we probably spent with Tim before we may have been offered, but it was a lot because it's a really high-level position in our organization. We wanted to get it right. You know, you always don't

have those resources and sometimes you've got to move faster. We were in a position, fortunately, that we could take our time. And by the time we hired him, we were in screaming pain, but it was worth it. And I think just that process of collaborating and here where we think is concerned. We have concerns in these areas and we think it's fantastic in these. And, you know, you're just trying to get a picture of reality. So I think that collaboration is probably the key. We still make, we still make bad calls, though, sometimes. Certainly we're not perfect. I like that, that idea of not just trusting or believing in your own judgment, but having your team, the people that you obviously believe in and trust and you have a track record with them, right?

You've seen them in the decisions that they make. And then collectively, you do your best to make the decision. I think that's a good idea that people could incorporate if you're currently in a position where you're a manager and you're building a team, bring in others who you trust and who you believe have a similar, I guess, growth-oriented mindset where values, integrity, that type of thing to help you and also be willing to do the same for others, help them. I think that could be, could create a much more collaborative environment regardless of where you work and regardless of the culture above or beside you, because that's the other question I get a ton brand is, well, I'm into this learning. I'm curious. I, you know, have high integrity. However,

I work at a place where it's not all the way like that. And I've heard that heard this from people and great, great companies and, you know, not everything, you know. What would you expect though? Yeah. Right. Like, people are messy. Right. Exactly. Like, I mean, and part of this is in any organization, I always think about it in terms of looking up and looking down. So wherever you are in the organization, you're always going to be looking up to something and having imperfect information and then looking down and not being able to see the weeds. Right. So whenever you see something, you know, that looks like a lack of integrity, maybe it is or maybe you're just mistaken. Right. And you don't know the full picture. Right. You don't have the full picture. And look, you can,

if you want to be judgmental and you want to assume the worst, you can see problems and you can see issues everywhere. And I'm not arguing that there aren't issues everywhere because it's people and people are messy, right? So of course there's going to be issues everywhere. But the question is, how big of a deal is it and how does it compare to the issues you have in your own heart? Right. I mean, I think this is always the rub, right? G.K. Chesterton, who's one of my favorite authors, the Times of London asked him, you know, who is the worst person in the world and why? And to write it this essay, right? It was part of an essay grouping of essays, a bunch of prominent thinkers were asked to do. And, you know, other people were talking about, you know,

the horrors of the past and wrote these long essays about how terrible these other people were. And he wrote back probably the shortest letter in the history that was published at the Times of London. And he wrote back and said to your answer, to, you know, to answer your question of who's the worst person in the history of the world? I am G.K. Chesterton, right? Like, his whole point was look in your own heart and know what you're capable of and then give people grace. And all you can do is do the best you can and treat people really well and control the things you can control. That's all you're asked to do. Right. And so I think a lot of people, you know, spend a ton of time fantasizing about how things should be different and fantasizing about how other people should be different and how they should be treated differently.

And if I were king for a day, I would do this and this and this. So stop fantasizing and start trying to make those things reality, right, is what I would say. I think this was a big moment for me as I made the transition from individual contributor to manager for the first time. And I thought, oh, my goodness, I was so stupid because I had no idea everything that involved. And then I try to catch myself when I was judging a, let's say the CEO of the big company where I'd work. And then I'd have to say, wait a second, I don't know what's going on. Like I don't know what he's going through. I don't know what the board just said to him.

Let's say there's cuts or something. And it's easy just to say, well, the CEO is a bad person because he's cutting jobs. I don't know. I don't know the circumstances enough to judge him so I shouldn't. Right. And I think that's the other things. We always think that others that we could, you know, like you said, if I were king for a day, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't make any cuts.

Or I wouldn't do those bad things that he or she is doing. And as opposed to, like you said, looking inward and thinking, well, I'm not really certain. I don't know what's going on there. So I shouldn't be so judgmental of other people. I like that outlook and also. leading with grace. I think that's a good mindset that could be helpful for all of us. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly been made a huge change in my life. And again, delivered imperfectly, right? Like too often I find myself in traffic, right? Everyone who goes faster than you is a lunatic and everyone

who's going slower than you is an impediment. Right? Like only you in the speed you're driving is the appropriate speed on the road. And I think if you think about that as a mental image for just life in general, right? Everything in an organization is either going too fast or too slow. Everyone's either too self-interested or not focused enough, you know, right? It's like you just got to understand and be self-aware that maybe reality is a little bit different than your default assumptions. Yeah. Brent, one of the reasons that I reached out to you and I told you this initially was you wrote a tweet storm, a thread that was what are the 10 biggest ideas that changed your life. And I like it when I see leaders are able to really get introspective

and put great thought into this. And that's what this thread is. It's very useful. I said we could probably have a podcast episode on simply this one thread alone. And one of the things that I'll hit a few of them, and you feel free if there's others that you'd like to before we talk about the messy marketplace. But one of them that I thought was particularly meaningful, and you use that word, is is that everything worth doing is hard. It's really hard. And I think that's something that we should be thinking about. If it's meaningful in your life, it probably means that it's hard. I think as the way you wrote, if something worthwhile appears easy, it means I got lucky or I've never done it. Crucial to setting opportunity costs, evoking gratitude, and suppressing envy

and cheering others on. I'd love for you to go deeper on that one. well i you know i would say early in my career anytime things got hard i always looked for a way out and i always looked for something else that i should be doing right man this is hard like i had no idea how hard this was going to be surely if i was doing something else uh it would be less hard and it's just never true i mean like like everything worthwhile will be hard full stop like marriage will be hard. Relationships will be hard. Business will be hard. I'm in awe of anybody who can make money, right? Like anybody who can create a company that sustainably makes a living for them and their employees is an astonishing accomplishment. It is so hard to do it. It's unbelievable. And only until you've gone through it, do you understand the nuance of why it's so difficult? Just yesterday I found this incredible resource of what it takes to run a site. Subway Restaurant. So Subway puts together an operator's manual for their subway restaurant. So this is a single subway

restaurant. Guess how many pages are, guess how many pages this document is? A lot. 800, 800 pages of explaining how to run a subway restaurant in excruciating detail. Now, think about that. That's a one single restaurant that's probably doing $600 to $800,000 a year of revenue, right? Think about running a $50 million manufacturing firm. Think about running a $50 billion revenue company. How incredibly challenging it is. Think about creating that from scratch, right? I mean, we are all standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before us,

all of us, full stop, right? No one is self-made. And I think that when you consider the principles of opportunity cost, right? If I do something, I can't do something else. The only way to set that opportunity cost correctly to calibrate it is to understand that everything's going to be difficult. And as I said in that in that tweet, like, if you think it's not going to be hard or you look

back on something and say, wow, that was really valuable and really easy, it really means you got lucky, right? That's the only outcome. Because if it was easy and value creative and everyone could just do it and it was super straightforward, well, then, you know, we'd be, we'd be walking around with, with, you know, no poverty and no war and no disease. And right? I mean, like, everything's going to be hard. And so I think it's just, to me, it's something that I've learned over and over again. And every single time, despite how much I think about this concept, every single time I do something new. Every single time I underestimate how difficult it's going to be. Mm-hmm. There's one of the one I want to hit. Serving versus served, the great paradox of life is self-sacrificial service. More I give with no expectation of reciprocity, the better life goes for others and me.

It's counterintuitive and countercultural. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but this has been, this has probably been the biggest, if not close to the biggest. idea of my life, that changed my life. If you give somebody a gift truly for their benefit, right, whether that's gift of wisdom, whether that's, you know, something thoughtful, whether that's an opportunity. And you get it with no expectation of getting anything from them. And I mean anything. I mean praise. I mean recognition or that they're going to do you a favor in the future.

absolutely nothing, you will experience a joy that few people do. And conversely, if you give that exact same gift, exact same gift, and you expect recognition, you expect praise, you expect notoriety for it, you expect reciprocity for it, it will destroy that very joy and it will make you envious of them, it will make you judgmental of them, no matter what they do. No one will ever serve you the way you want to be served. Full stop. This is why marriage is dissolved. This is why relationships break up. This is why companies go under. No one will ever serve you the way you want to be served.

The only way to go about life sustainably is to serve with no expectation of being served in return. Full stop. That's it. And it's hard, right? It's almost impossible. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Like I said, I could go through all 10, but I do, and I appreciate you expanding on that because that's very helpful. and it was just poignant when I was reading through him. I thought, yep, yep, that's it. That's it. I read a book and you probably read it called Give and Take by Adam Grant and that had a big impact on my life leading up to that point. I did see the world a little bit more zero sum and that book kind of opened my eyes that that's not the way it works. The world is not zero sum. Perhaps I was colored by the fact that I played quarterback in college and lost out the starting job as a sophomore. And I thought, well, he won and I lost. And I guess that's the way the world works. And the world, it's not. Maybe as a starting quarterback it is, but in the book and the rest of the world, we all, both of us could win in that setting. It's not, it's not, it's not I win, you lose or you win and I lose. That's not the way the world works. I think this maybe brings up a point about how do you, how do you think about hardship, right? And this is a lot of, you know, centers on my faith and I try to be open. I don't want to beat people over the head with it, but I think the major change in my life was realizing God loved me and that God was real. And that God was real.

and that he works out all things for my good and his glory and that he doesn't give me what I ask for. He gives me what I would have asked for had he known what he knows, right? Which is incredible, right? Just that concept alone is such an incredible concept that you losing out on the starting position at the time seemed probably devastating. Yes. Right? It was a, it shook your identity. It shook your significance. You know, you probably had feelings of inadequacy that you, you couldn't, you didn't know how you're going to face the day, right? And the interesting part is now you probably get the perspective that it was probably for your good. And maybe it's not still, you don't understand exactly how it was for your good, but I'm sure if you reflected on it,

you would say, wow, that actually was an incredible thing that happened to me. That is wonderful. And when we go through hardship, you know, you have to look at it if you believe that that, that true what I said, you have to believe that it's for your good and you should meet everything with a joy and an appreciation that the hardship in itself is a gift. And I think that that's a very different thought process than perhaps stoicism. It's a very hot thought, you know, different thought process than like a, you know, self-interest rightly understood those types of concepts. It's a, it's a concept that, you know, we are called to give and to serve. And at the end of the day, let's just remember, in 100 years,

no one's going to know your name. Like, your family's not going to know your name in 100 years. Like, no one, there have been billions and billions of people that have come and left this earth. And as much as we may think that podcasts may live on and that we're smart and that we're doing something meaningful,

like at the end of the day, what you do is far more important and what you leave behind is far less important. Right? You know, you just got to leave behind a vapor of a, legacy. And when you put things in perspective like that, it really frees you up to live with joy and to live with appreciation, right? Like life is is gift not gain, right? If you just think, I think about that, I thought about that this morning. Life is gift not gain, right? It's not about how much can I

gain, how much can I accrue, how big can my bank account get? How big and powerful can I get my ego and my influence, right? It's not going to matter. In a hundred years, no one's going to know your name. And even if they do know your name, they're not going to know you, right? Like, I can, read about Abraham Lincoln and I can be appreciative of what he did, but I don't know Abraham Lincoln. Like I know his name. I don't know him. And so in the moment, relationships are what matter and how relationships formed by serving. And that's the bond that kind of, that is the bond that links all of society together. Love it. You wrote a book called The Messy Marketplace. Selling your business in a world of imperfect buyers. Imagine the process of putting this thing together was soul crushing

and hard. I know this because I'm doing it right now and I sometimes like fall over. It's hard. And I appreciate you putting it out. And I'm curious, what made you, why was now the right time to write a book and why write this book? Great question. So I, a little bit, I feel badly that I wrote a book because I feel like I still don't have enough experience. And I'm sure the things that I put into the book today are things that I'm going to be, feel differently on. 10 or 15 years. But the way we think about content in general, if you want to think about it, whether it's writings or doing a podcast, is being able to scale conversation. So relationships start with conversation. And a way to jumpstart a relationship is to be able to put thoughts out there that allow other people to get a view into who you are and self-select in or out,

right? And I think repelling the wrong people, attracting the right people is something we think about a lot, creating a selection bias. And then once that selection bias is created, how do you scale the conversation? And so put very simply, the book is the first five to seven hours of conversation that we want to have with every single person who owns a business. If you own a business or you're the spouse or child or niece or nephew or uncle or cousin or helper, CPA, a lawyer, you know, wealth advisors. This is a conversation starter that kind of gets you five hours into it with a base of common knowledge. And that's how we use it.

So we are using it ourselves when we have inbound people come in and say, who's adventures? We say, well, let me tell you about the process. Read this, right? Come back in two weeks or whenever you're done reading it, right? We give them kind of some homework. And that's the way we think about it. And we want that to be accessible, not just for us. I mean, we would be, we wrote it actually initially with the intention of not publishing it and it being something we just gave out to people.

And then we said, no, wait a minute, wouldn't it be, we went to all this work and all this trouble, wouldn't it be great if, you know, the wife of somebody who owns a business could say to her husband, hey, I got you this book and we've been talking about, you know, transitioning the company. Because let's remember all businesses go through one and three fates, right? They're either gifted, sold, or shut down. That's it. Gifted, sold, or shut down, all businesses. And so, and there's a lot of opacity around what that process looks like. And so we created this book as a conversation starter with a to create a base of knowledge. And we hope that people can find it useful. You said that, um, you wanted to pull back the curtain on how companies are bought and sold. And I'm not going to ask you to give a two minute version of a seven hour book. but I would say at a high level, what is it, what is some of the components of pulling back that curtain? And for those of us, because I think actually the majority of people listening, Brent, don't

own a business. Sure. Most people work at a company. I mean, that's just math. But I think we're all interested in this, or maybe we've had interest in potentially working for a smaller business, one that might be in your orbit, or starting our own business at some point in our life. I think people have that thought. And so that's why this could, on top of all the great stuff you already share, I think this particular aspect and why your book

could be helpful, even for somebody who is not in the direct kind of space that they would be interested in reading. Because I found it fascinating. And not only, and obviously you, or you use the word we, was this written from a, as a team perspective, or you just use we a lot because you're the leader of a good business. Well, so I wrote the book, but certainly had tremendous input. I think over 50 people did edits on the book and suggested changes. And that was over a year of that process. So the book was pretty much done.

I would say 95% of what you read was done within about three months. And then it took another 14-ish months, maybe 15 months to refine. and gather feedback. And again, this is kind of what we talked about before, about collaborating to make sure that you hire the right person, feel very strongly that if I'm going to put something out there that is in a book form, I want it to be worthwhile. And I hope we got there.

What I would say, though, to your point about summarizing the book or how could it be valuable, you know, chances are that even if you don't aren't directly in the leadership position at a company that is sort of the size range that we discuss in there, You're probably the son or the daughter or the grandson or the granddaughter or the niece or the nephew or the cousin of somebody who owns a business. Very good odds. Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and an incredible grouping of people that make the world go round. These are your local plumbers. These are the people that, you know, own the printing shop and own restaurants. And chances are that you're either friends with them or you're a family member of one of them.

And so the way we think about this is all of them, again, the forcing function of life is death. Everyone's going to die. All businesses have to either be gifted to somebody, whether that's a family member or gifted to employees, have to be sold. So either the shares are be sold or the assets as a whole will be sold or the business will be shut down. And unfortunately, in our segment of the market, there's a pretty large chance that people don't do enough planning early enough on, don't create a strategy that will be sustainable to be able to transition the company. And what it ends up being is, unfortunately, the wheels fall off and the company shut down,

which harms everyone. It harms the communities. It harms the people that were working there. It harms their customers. It harms the vendors. And so the goal of the book is for people to be able to read it and be a great resource to those that they love and trust about how they might go about planning and how and setting the table for who are the people that are involved in transactions.

So money is a commodity, but money is always tied to people, and people are not a commodity. And when you think about it, who buys a business or who buys into a business, right, whether it's a partial sale or a full sale, really matters. Like, that person now has an authority and has a responsibility, and how do they take those responsibilities on? And are they incredibly self-interested and want to sort of get as much out of the company as fast as you can, which is kind of historically how private equity, at least, is viewed? and to be honest, very much part of the industry is how do you get rich fast and how do you sort of milk everything that you can possibly get? You know, we try to go into a lot of detail about the different profiles of buyers, what their interests are, and just really pull back the curtain on how the entire thing works. In a transaction, there's probably 400, 450 decisions that have to be made that are, you know, of material significance. And if you screw it up, they really matter a lot.

And so you want to be knowledgeable, at least that there are those issues and how you navigate them. And so, you know, our hope is that somebody who's maybe not directly involved in running a business reads this and helps their neighbor, reads this and helps their friend, reads this and helps a family member, or says, look, I read enough of it to know that this seems like worthwhile advice and gifts it to them. We hope that there's a lot of gifting and regifting that goes on. And that's why we made it a hard back. Hopefully it endures. Well, it's extremely well done, man. And just the copywriting on your website, by the way, is Adventure with dot-es, which I think is unique and different. And I like that.

But the copywriting on that alone, which I would imagine you had a big role in, is really well done. And I rarely say that on this show because that's not usually something that's the case. But it's really well done and fascinating. I enjoyed getting to learn more about adventures and you from just reading your website. And I also, to circle back one more time to, I think, a common thread, the through point of this conversation, I was watching one in your speeches and you started it and you said, quote, what you get makes you a living, but what you give makes you, makes a life. And I thought that was really interesting.

You said you were told that a long time ago. And I think that that kind of sums up the way that it seems that you've now developed just your standard operating procedure of that your life's made from giving and serving. And I think that's impactful for those and inspirational for people to learn from because you're leading a business that, like you said, it's really hard to be successful. But a mindset like that is certainly possible, not only possible, but advantageous. for us to move in that direction and to be more of service and giving. And I just want to say I really acknowledge that and appreciate that mindset and getting a chance to talk more about it with you today, man. Well, it's been a pleasure and thank you for the kind words. It is certainly something that I aspire to to live up to those words and often fall short, just to be completely honest. And so I think

that's the process is the joy, right? You never arrive at the destination. And, And yeah, I've really enjoyed the conversation as well. I really appreciate you having me on board. And if anybody wants to get in touch with me, I try to make myself very available. So connect with me on LinkedIn. If you do that on LinkedIn, try to write me a note so that I know who you are and that you're not just a bot. Or, you know, I'm at Brent Beshore on Twitter or go on the Adventurer's website, which is literally just Adventures with a dot before the ES.

And as you said, it's an unusual web address. It's the hack domain. It's the shortest domain available for that name, which we thought was clever. I love it, man. Maybe too clever. Dotty, yes. No, it's cool. It's cool.

And Brent, one of the things I've done before, we want to do it again is create, my friend Neil Preserich has started this. And I've been doing it when I'm a guest on other podcasts, but I want to do it on this one, an end of the podcast club. So for those of you who've made it all the way through, taking pages of notes like I have, kind of got all of this wisdom and knowledge from Brent. The best way to probably connect with both of us is on Twitter, I think, and tagging both of us. So Brent, what is your Twitter handle? Just my name at Brent Beshore. Okay. And I'm at Ryan Hawk 12 to connect with us and say, I made it to the end of the podcast club and then give us one specific that you enjoyed from this conversation. I'd love to read it. And then we could spread that to others. We want to to be amplifiers and multipliers, as my friend, Liz Weissman might say. So let's, for those who make it to the end of the podcast club, connect with us there on

social, and we can hopefully continue to spread this message. And Brent, for you, I'd love to obviously continue our dialogue as we're both progressing, even though we'll never arrive, but we're always becoming. And I really appreciate this one today. It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot, ma'am. Thank you, sir. It was a pleasure.

All right, ma'am. Thanks, Brent. that was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. I found it useful, entertaining, informative. Brent just seems like a genuine, introspective, intelligent guy, and I really look forward to conversations like that, and I learned a lot, have pages of notes. I hope you did as well.

If so, I love it. Instead of worrying about iTunes, how about you just tell a friend or two? spread the message to those that you care about. Tell them how you think this could be helpful and useful to them. Perhaps they've never listened to any podcast before. You could introduce them to the world of podcasts and potentially start with this one. Please feel free to continue to spread the message. It gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

And I'm so grateful and appreciative to you for doing that. Thank you so much. Talk with you next week. Can't wait. This episode, is once again brought to you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag.

And as a listener of The Learning Leader Show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll. Sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader. That's G-U-S-T-O.com slash leader. All right. You're there? Yeah. Thank you, man. That was so cool.

That was awesome. Thank you. I really appreciate it. And I'm super impressed with just the manner. I look forward to getting to know you. You're really sharp. Yeah, I can, you are, you are excellent at this. Thank you.

The way you ask questions, the way you kind of, you directed the conversation, but also let it kind of go. It was really impressive. You were, just to give you some feedback that you were excellent at this. Absolutely excellent. I hope you continue to do it. Oh, yeah. It's my favorite. My favorite thing to do, man.

I'll tell you, honestly now, I don't want to say it ahead of time. I don't want it to skew the way you thought. I was nervous for this because I know how smart you are, and that sounds funny. I'm not trying to blow smoke. I mean, that's just for real. And so I think, like, but I learn the most that I'm stretched and really can try to improve by talking to people like you. And so I really appreciate how willing you were.

I did not expect the beginning to be this kind of session where we talk about Brent's failures. But for whatever reason, it just kind of, or your growth, it just kind of went there. And I'm really glad it did. And I appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing. I think that is meaningful to people to see that you, even over the course of 10 years, which in this scheme of our life, hopefully, is only 10% or maybe a little less, that you've had this growth. And because, you know, when people googly you and look you up if they haven't heard of you before this, they're going to say, whoa, this guy's big time. And that and that is really, I think, self-aware to be able to talk about that.

So I appreciate you doing that. Yeah, well, I appreciate too. Now, remind me where do you live? Dayton, Ohio. Yeah, it'd be great. It'd be great. I just landed in Dayton. Are you serious?

Like a week and a half ago. Wow. To refuel. Oh, okay, okay. But if I'd known you were there, I could have made it a longer stopover. If you ever get to near Missouri, I would love to connect. And obviously, I appreciate that you live in Dayton and not San Francisco or New York or, you know, wherever. I know you're very proud of where you live.

And I am, too, a home with the Wright brothers. They're bicycle shops a few miles down from where I live. And so I'm very proud and usually bring that up, actually. but yeah yeah we plan to continue to raise our family here it's a great place and uh but yeah i would love i meant it when i said that i'd love to continue this this this dialogue and certainly it'd be cool to to follow up the next time maybe we could record again uh when when we're in the same location it would be fun that'd be amazing that'd be amazing and please let me know if i can be helpful in any way um and uh yeah look forward to same touch thank you again for today awesome appreciate it yeah man thanks brent

all right talk to you man bye bye bye Thank you.