The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 486: Brent Beshore - Growth Without Goals, Continuous Improvement, & The Art Of Sales

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." You, along with 10,000+ learners will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Brent Beshore is the Founder and CEO of Permanent Equity, a Midwestern-based private equity firm. They take a long-term approach to private equity, investing "permanent equity" in small to midsize privately held companies throughout North America. He's also the best-selling author of The Messy Marketplace. Notes:   Growth without goals – Listed as one of Brent's foundations. "We believe the best path to sturdy growth is not a plan, but a posture." It's a belief in continuous improvement, optimism shining through some thick scars, and a healthy dose of humility. Growth comes from what you know you don't know. (which feels terrible). The harm comes from what you think you know or what you don't know you don't know. (which feels great or oblivious) Progress isn't made by sweeping proclamation or grand strategy. It's built by unglamorous daily activities that are often overlooked and under-appreciated.  In March 2016, Brent wrote a medium post about how to sell… "Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust." — Zig Ziglar You have 30 minutes one-on-one with someone you know nothing about other than they are wildly successful personally and professionally. What questions do you ask to understand their life, tease out their life philosophy, and get advice? Great questions are the key that unlocks everything. Stop talking about yourself and be a student of others. No matter how important you think relationships are, they're more important. Reliability is a superpower. Do what you say you would when you said you'd do it, for the price you said you'd do it for. Every single time. If you're ever more focused on other people's shortcomings than your own, you're the problem. Important Qualities: High intellectual honesty Humility Optimism Life as a dad: "You will never be happier than your least happy child." "Culture is nothing more than what you reward and punish." Buffett and Munger" - "Both are thoughtful, kind, and generous." Enjoy life: "I didn't enjoy it in my 20's... Try to have an inner temperature of joy." It's important to sit down with sages... Older people: Ask, "How do you mark your days?" "We all have time for things we prioritize." Sales is a dirty word for a lot... It doesn't need to be. The best salespeople Brent knows aren't selling. They share what they know and how it could potentially help others. "Invite people into your world. Share a vision. Help them understand the cause. Give them an invitation to go along with you." Capital Camp - Shock people with hospitality. Help create meaningful relationships. Surround them with care and excellence. Writing - Use humor. Write like you talk. Brent chooses to be light-hearted because that's how he is in real life. Keys to being a great Dad: Love them unconditionally because of who they are We have confused what love is Show them love by what you don't tolerate

Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help. You start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book,

The Pursuit of Excellence, will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866. Now on tonight's featured leader of the great Brent Byshore, founder and CEO of Permanent Equity, a Midwestern-based private equity firm. They take a long-term approach to private equity, investing permanent equity in small to mid-sized privately held companies throughout North America.

He's also the best-selling author of The Messy Marketplace. During this conversation we discussed Brent's unique approach to goal setting and why it might make you rethink how you set goals. Then we discussed the art of selling. We talked about asking better questions. and then finally how to build meaningful relationships. Brent is a super thoughtful guy, and I love the conversations I'm able to have with him.

I think you're really going to enjoy this one. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Brent, be sure. All right, Brent, it's great to have you back on the Learning Leader Show. It's been three and a half years since we've done this. So I thought we were due. We are due to have another conversation and tape this thing, man. Hey, thanks for having me on Ryan. Time flies.

I know, man. It's crazy. So I want to start with one of the foundations of your beliefs and your company, and that's titled, Growth Without Goals. And you wrote, we believe the best path to sturdy growth is not a plan, but a posture. It's a belief in continuous improvement, optimism shining through some thick scars, and a healthy dose of humility. I've really gone from a hardcore goal guy

when I came up through corporate America as a sales rep for 12 years, now towards this posture. So I really identified with this foundational element for how you operate. Can you share more about this growth without goals mentality? Well, I think there's so much of life that comes from experience is counterintuitive, right?

There's an upside down reasoning to the world, which when you're 18, 22, 26 doesn't seem right, but is absolutely correct. And it's difficult to explain without the experience. I mean, because there's, you know, I guess there's two competing ideas. One is you create goals and you drive towards those goals and you sort of manifest your goals. And every time I've tried to do that in my life, it's weird to say this is I failed. and what's come out of it is something far better. So certainly don't take growth without goals to say you should do nothing.

That's not the point at all. It's absolutely go out there, come in contact, collide with the world, go do something. But the very nature of goal setting is based on your limited experience. So one of my friends, Sam Teller, who was Elon Musk's chief of staff for, gosh, five or six years, you know, has this great quote. We had dinner and talked about it. It's like, world class is just the best you've ever seen. And I think that that ties really into this idea, which is the goals that you have are limited by your imagination and limited by your experience. And so I can tell you the goals I had as a 23-year-old law student who really wasn't a student of investing.

I had heard the name Warren Buffett maybe, had no idea at that point who Charlie Munger was. I was not one of these people who started trading stocks when they were six years old and had had some track record before then. I just started learning into it. And I got to tell you the goals that I had when I was 23, 25 even, I mean, honestly, even five years ago have paled in comparison to the things I've experienced. And so what I've learned over time is that by posturing yourself in a way that is, I would say, high intellectual honesty, high humility, and in some ways, a high optimism about the future too. But also understanding that suffering and things that we deem difficult and that there is real evil and suffering in this world, so don't hear what I'm not saying. but that a lot of things that in my life that I look back on and say that was terrible, that was that was a difficult experience going through it ended up being gifts.

And I think that this growth often comes from the difficulty. Like we never grow out of comfort. And yet all I want today, all I want is to be comfortable, right? We crave comfort. We crave security and safety. And yet it is out of. discomfort that we end up learning and growing. And so I think that the posture ultimately matters far more than the goal itself. I would even say it's not bad to set some goals,

but just make sure you keep your parallels open, right? Make sure you are able to not get goal-induced blindness. Yes, working hard does help you achieve some goal that you're working towards. I mean, there's just no way around it, right? So if you're going to work towards something, 60, 8 hours a week, you're going to probably do better all things considered than somebody who works 30 or 40 hours a week. Those goals that you're driving towards, you will get there quicker. The question is making sure that you're winning at the right game, right? I mean, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. And so I think that's where, you know, this idea of the posture comes in not just towards business, but also your personal life, right? Like, how do you

keep yourself open to new ideas. How do you not become tribalized? How do you think about, you know, the world in such a way that, that, that it creates empathy and humility. It doesn't create condescension or self-loathing. But in order to really have humility, you've got to be willing to look stupid from time to time. And that's okay. And looking at that as part of the process and having a demeanor that accepts that as opposed to the goal is to win. And if I don't win, I lose. I think there's a big difference between those things. What do you do to ensure you're on the edge of kind of where you're, so I'm getting at how

do you ensure that you're growing since growth doesn't happen out of comfort? What practices do you have in place? so that you're constantly oscillating between the good stuff that you've earned where you are comfortable, but also not outside of that so that growth is continuing to happen for you. Yeah, I mean, I think life, even for the most materially comfortable people, life still has a way of humbling you and a way of exposing you to difficulty. I mean, look, I have far more than I need, you know, materially. in a very comfortable position and haven't been sort of working with the primary aim of

providing for my family for a long time. So right? So I'm in a very privileged, blessed position to be in. I would say life still comes at you. I mean, my daughter last week suffered a seizure for the first time. Right. And the question is, you know, when that brings that up, what is important in life? What is my focus? What am I trying to do? And what do I really care about? And it helps clarify things. I mean, we've had that happen And over and over, I mean, I think somebody told me a long time ago that you will never be happier than your least happy child. And I think that's, you know, for fatherhood, that's something that that is true.

You know, I think marriage has a way of exposing you to discomfort. I mean, it's the person you live with is the person who is closest to you who knows you the best, knows the best and the worst of you, right? And so, and then having just really close friendships and relationships is another one that surrounding yourself with people who, especially, you become maybe more worldly successful. I think deeply about surrounding myself with people who are willing to tell me the truth. And I think that's where if you get, unfortunately, when I say positive feedback loops,

I mean scientifically in the sense of feedback loops that don't get you brought back to reality, you start surrounding yourself with people who want something from you and who have something to lose if you don't like them, no one will tell you the truth. everyone's going to shade the truth, right? And so I think that's where, you know, putting these boundaries and guardrails around you where people care about you for you and not for what you give them is a really important thing. And then just when life happens, I mean, look, we run, we have 12 companies in our portfolio. There's always somebody getting sick.

There's always somebody's kid who's getting hurt. There's always a customer that's leaving. There's always a, you know, challenge something you get. from the government in the mail that's frustrating. There's always some potential lawsuit that's out there. There's always things that are happening at the size we are now. And that took me a long time to sort of emotionally handle the ongoing baggage of that. And I think that's where again, there's two ways to look at that.

One is, oh my gosh, look at all these bad things that are happening. Another way is to say, hey, what can I learn from this? What does it look like to take challenges in stride? and what does it look like to be supportive of other people in turmoil and to show them what's really important? I said actually on Twitter this morning, I said, culture is nothing more than what you reward and punish, right? And that culture in a family, that culture amongst your friend group, that culture

in a company, I think is really important. And so when you model behavior and you think through it shows people what you really value and when adversity strikes, are you blame? or are you the shit umbrella, right? Those are kind of the two choices that you have to make. And, you know, I want to create a culture around me in my hometown here in Columbia, Missouri, amongst my friends, amongst my peers, in my company, and certainly in my family, where we take care of one another, right? We shelter each other, we help each other, we support each other. But look, when push comes to shove and there's a cost to do that, I have too often chosen to blame

shift. I've too often chosen to look to somebody else and say, hey, it was it was them. It was their fault. Oh, woe was me. And so I think that's where, again, life will happen. You don't need to worry about being humbled. I don't know anybody, including centa billionaires who I've gotten to know who aren't humbled often. And so the question is just what you're going to do with it. What were you've met Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, what were like some of the lasting learnings from those interactions? Yeah, I mean, I think my lasting interactions from those just were the straightforward logic. I mean, they're certainly both incredibly intelligent, thoughtful people. Both of them were kind and generous to spend time with me.

And both of them sort of had a very thoughtful approach to life. And it wasn't like they were trying to create some genius moves. They were doing sort of what made sense at the time using the information they had. I mean, this idea of Bayesian updating, right? So taking new information and incorporating it into your decision making. I think it's an underrated aspect of how success happens in life. I mean, I have no idea what the future holds. And anybody who tells you they do is lying or delusional.

And so all you can do is just say, look, probabilistically, I'm going to make the best decisions I can now. I'm going to try to play the game for the long term. I'm going to try to win together with people. And at the end of the day, I'm going to try to be joyful and enjoy life. I mean, look, I think that's one of the things, it's a little bit of a side tangent, but it's one of the things that I really didn't enjoy my 20s. And if I look back over the last, you know, early 30s also, I didn't, I had a lot of success personally, professionally. I had a lot of markers that the world would look at and say, man, he's got it.

You know, he's got stuff. I mean, other than the fact that I'm a fat kid, I mean, that's the one that I keep battling. But other than that, you know, had a lot of successes. And I didn't enjoy it. And so the question is, if everything's going for the most part to the up and to the right and you're not enjoying it, then when will you ever enjoy it? And maybe the question is how external circumstances affect you, whether positively or negatively, really have very little to do with your sort of inner temperature of joy.

And that's just something I've been thinking about a lot. It's like, how do I enjoy daily life more? And I'm relating it back to something actually Charlie Munger in the discussion said. He said, you know, it took me until my 80s to sort of not be hyperjudgmental towards people. I think, I mean, Charlie, we all have our, we all have our piccadillos, right? We all have our challenges. And I mean, you see Charlie, you know, spout off about people even still today, right, in his late 90s.

But, I mean, he was, he sort of had a moment of vulnerability, you know, in this discussion and was, you know, was really being serious and honest about. He was like, you know, I, I was still learning how to sort of treat people into his 80s. And he probably, if you asked him today, would say, I'm still learning how to treat people into my 90s. Man, I respect that so much, right? because it's easy to get locked down on your beliefs or just kind of say, I am who I am, right? And I think that maybe it comes down to this idea, and I've been thinking about this one too. Recently, I heard a friend say this, that there's a big difference between being an elder

and being elderly. So being elderly means you sort of have kind of given up your pasture prime. You have, you know, you've locked down on who you are. right, you're no longer growing. And you know, people kind of got to put up with you. Being an elder, it has nothing to do with age, right? Because elderly and elder are the same age. But being an elder is that you've turned outwards instead of turned inwards. So there's, there's sort of an outward focus on others as opposed to like an encirvature on yourself. And instead of being, hey, I am who I am, it's how do I help the next generation or next

generations to learn things that I fought hard for that I paid a lot of tuition in. And I think that is really the key. I'm 39 now. I feel like I've lived a lot more life than those years. But I am constantly in awe of people who are older. My favorite conversations are sitting down with I call sages, right? People who have just been there and done that. And ask them, how do you mark your days?

How do you think about what matters in life? You know, how would you go back and tell yourself when you were my age? And oftentimes the answers they give are remarkable and truly things that I hadn't thought about or thought about, you know, deeply. So gosh, my hope is that when I'm older, I'm way less self-focused, that I'm way more focused on others. And I think that is the true humility, right? So C.S. Lewis says, you know, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking about yourself less. that is such a powerful concept. And I think that relates to joy.

I think we are joyful when we are externally focused, when we are thinking and helping others and trying to achieve together versus focus on, hey, what do I need? What do I want right now? What am I not getting? And I hope that extends into my old age. This entire conversation is built upon things you've decided to get, take out from your mind and put onto the page you've written them down whether it's in a book a blog

post tweet anywhere right my my prep process was just to essentially read all the stuff that you've written i share that to say it feels to me like writing is a huge part of your life um and publishing your writing and i and i know it can be one of the most magnetic activities in the world is if you're willing to share your thoughts, one, because it creates clarity of thought, which is a great practice, and all leaders should do it. I've been beating this drum for seven years, and I'll continue to do it moving forward because I know how it impacts me, and I've seen how it impacts guests on this podcast. Can you share more overall about your thoughts on writing and publishing

and how it impacts you as a leader as well as your business and how it's attracting the type of people that you want? You are 100% right. And the way, if you're going to think about first principles on this topic, there's only one way to scale conversations. And that is through content. I mean, content is the only way. So recording yourself, whether it's the written word, audio, visual. And, you know, I've taken that seriously because I want the right people to be attracted and the wrong people to be repelled based on what I say. And I think that, you know, look, there's a lot of people in this world and there's a lot of different ideas and there's a lot of different motives. And I want to attract the people that I think I would be able to do well for and do well with. And so it's been a backbone of our strategy at permanent equity. I mean, we are, you know, I joke that the laziest private equity firm in the world because, you know, all of our deal flow comes inbound from people, I mean, heck like you who.

are out there looking for opportunities and say, hey, we'd like to introduce you to my friends at permanent equity. And I mean, that's, that's 100% of how we generate opportunities to date. We may experiment in the future with outbound. But, you know, it's created, I mean, like a joke, some laziness too, because, I mean, we just have such great relationships based on people that come inbound to us. They already, they've read everything we've written. They've listened to a lot of stuff we've said. And it resonates with them. And if it doesn't resonate, you don't contact us, which is equally as important, right? So we don't have to filter people nearly to the degree that I think if you went outbound,

you would. And so, yeah, I mean, I would say it's been critically important. I would also say that I've gotten out of the habit of it, and that's a problem. Like, I think there's always the choice between doing the important and the immediate is something I battle almost constantly. you know, at the size we are of the organization and what we've got kind of going on, there's always another thing that I can prioritize over sitting still, silence and solitude, and certainly kind of in that category of things is self-reflection and writing.

And writing is always, I think, a form of, you know, thinking that really helps clarify how you think in the form of cohesive written thought or, you know, talking through something. And so I've got out of the habit of it. I used to write almost every day. And there's a lot of stuff I didn't publish because it was crap. And there's a lot of stuff that was crap that we did publish. But you know, you can't be, can't be perfect. But, you know, I have just gotten out of the habit.

And so I'm only writing now. Well, I get up every morning and I read and pray. And then I do a journal every morning, sort of a reflection on what I've read there. And that's been great. But that's not publishable. those are, you know, super personal thoughts of mine and, you know, purely for my benefit. I'm really not writing too much on the business side anymore. And, you know, this is the prod.

I think we need to get back at it. You know, we've got a great team now around us that we've realized this as a team. We used to write all the time as well. And then look, you know, I hate to say this. It sounds like a, like the meaning to writing, but it's like we all got real jobs. And, you know, when you got a real job, like, you just, it's easy to not find time to do it. Now, the irony is the thing that made us successful is the thing that we're not doing now as much. And I think that it's hurt us in some ways.

So, yeah, 100% agree. It's incredibly important to be writing your thoughts. It's important to scale the conversation, to attract the right people, repel the wrong people. You should do it. And don't be me. What about the person who doesn't have a job like yours, but let's say they're a VP of sales at a Fortune 500 company? And they're, that's a, that's an avatar for this show, that they're, they've built a great career. They're building teams.

They're hitting their numbers, right? They're doing what they're supposed to be doing. And they say, dude, I hear you harp on this all the time. I don't have time for that. What about to that person who, who uses that excuse? Well, I mean, we all have time for the things that we prioritize. I mean, you know, I need to prioritize working out more than I do. I hate working out, but I know I should.

you know, we all have time for it. It's just an excuse to say we don't have time. I would say that the problem, to be frank, and I think it's always important to explain to people how anything works that you've been through, you write into the darkness for a long time, typically, before anybody notices. And it's really frustrating.

So, you know, I would say there was a five-year period there where we were writing a lot and no one cared. And it just slowly over time, you know, you'll have these breakthrough moments and it's on the things that you never expect. And I would just encourage you, if you're committed to doing it, do it from sort of an intrinsically motivated position because it helps you clarify your thoughts and because you are a better leader as the result of it. And the benefits of it will come over time. You'll also learn that you're a pretty crappy writer when you first start writing. And it takes a long time to get

good at doing that. I mean, I would, I would say shout out to David Perel and, and his sort of coursework around this. I mean, I've heard from, I'm pretty skeptical of courses, right? Like, if you can't do, you teach, you know, and David's, David's done a great job of scaling incredible writing workshops that actually transform people's writing ability. It's amazing. I've seen them at work. And so I'd say, you know, getting involved with something like that or, or finding somebody who you think is a, is a writer that you aspire to and reading a lot of what they're writing and then trying to mimic. Like, you know, we're memetic, right? This is Renee Gerard idea, but like, use it to your advantage, right? Don't use it and say, I want what everyone else has.

Use it to your advantage and say, yeah, I want to what they have, but I want to do the work. So I want to figure out how to, how to mimic what they're doing. So anyway, I would just say, you know, seek expert help, have low expectations. And, um, Be really brutally honest with kind of how your writing's going and where you're, yeah, where you're thinking well and where you're not. I've been a big fan of David. I've had him on the show. I've talked to him a lot via email and on this podcast about this.

And it's amazing what the guys accomplished and the people he's impacted at such a young age. So I'm a huge proponent of all this stuff too. So I appreciate you saying that too. You wrote a post years ago about sales. You probably don't even remember. this post, but you still work in sales every day. We all do, whether you have a quota or not. Everybody works in sales. Dan Pink has written a lot about this over the years. And you said every sale has five, this is a quote from Zig Ziglar, but every sale, and you answer it,

has five basic obstacles, no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust. But this is another important element to leadership is the ability to sell, whether you're actually selling something or you're selling an idea, you're selling yourself, you're going for a big job, and explaining why you should get it. Right. There's elements to selling all the time. I would love just get your high-level philosophy on the art of selling and how we all can get better at it. Yeah, so you're correct.

Sales is, well, maybe we can back up. Sales is kind of a dirty word, right, for a lot of people. And I think a lot of people avoid it. If you think about it, sales is persuasion. And at the end of the day, you have a view about how the world should work, how people should treat you, what you want to accomplish, what you're driving towards, you know, you're trying to motivate others. And leadership is a lot about motivating others to share vision, to share what those things that you want to see manifest in the world, how they come together, what those look like. You're describing your vision. it's critically important.

I would say it's also dangerous because the better you get at sales, the more manipulative you sort of naturally become. And I think that that's where I've seen the truly best salespeople. There's a guy in Chattanooga who I'm friends with who's the best salesperson. I think I may have ever met my life and he never is selling. And so let me back up and explain kind of when I say that is he is, he has a group of interests that he is trying to advance. But the way he looks at it as every person he meets could be a potential partner of his in what he's doing.

And he's actually advancing some not-for-profit interests, right, even. But he's doing it in such a way that is inviting people into his world, inviting people to see a vision, inviting people to share in a cause. he's not trying to manipulate somebody into writing a check. He is offering them an opportunity. And I think, you know, that to me is the ultimate form of sales. He's incredibly effective, has been as a whole practice now sort of in this space. But when you hear him talk, you know, it is not any of the traditional ways in which people sell. He is just abandoned over time.

And I assume that when you're not. I assume that when he was younger, he's probably in his 50s now. When he's younger, he probably engaged in them, right? Trying to get people to do what he wanted them to do. No longer is it he knows that what he, you know, what you should do. It's not that anymore. He wants to give you an opportunity to be with him. He wants to give you an opportunity to go with him on the road, right?

And so I think that that to me is the sort of ultimate form of sales. And I did write that article a long time ago. I don't disagree. I haven't read it in probably a couple of years. I don't remember disagreeing with anything, you know, five years after I wrote it. But what I would say is it's incomplete in the sense that the heart behind, people can tell what your heart is. People can tell what your motivations are. And when your motivation is purely to use people as a means to your end, it will always go poorly.

You will get what you deserve, right? So if you sell like that, you will get clients that will use you the same way you use them. It always comes back around, full circle, right? So what you put out there is what you're going to get back. What I would say is the really beautiful friendships, business relationships, highly profitable relationships even that I've seen develop over time all started with an invitation and not a presupposition.

They all started with an invitation to go along, to be along, to do something bigger. And really, this is the way, I mean, you know, in the traditional sense, I'm selling all the time. We have three things that make our business go. We have investors that give us their capital. We have sellers who want to partner with us and sell us their business. And we have employees and partners that want to come along and do it with us. All three of those groups require some form of sales.

I think for all three, I went through a period of time in my life where I knew best and I was trying to tell them what they needed to do. And I get frustrated if they didn't do what I said. I should because I know, right, and they don't. And just come on, come on, come on. Come on. It's the exact opposite. I try to talk sellers out of selling their business. I tell them, hey, this is what the journey is going to look like. It's kind of like the Shackleton approach to taking Antarctica, right? It's like, we're looking for a few good men who are willing to, you know, brave terrible temperatures and no food in darkness for months on end, right? Like, that's the type of thing that, we try to say because that's the truth.

Like any type of partnership, especially long term, is going to be difficult. You know, same thing with hiring people. You know, it's, hey,

this is what we're doing. If this is attractive to you, would love to have a conversation. If it's not, I'm not going to tell you why you should uproot your family, move to Columbia, Missouri or take this job or whatever it should be. It is,

hey, let's just, as a partner. So let's just talk through what are the possibilities. And let's just be honest. There's no games being played. And I think that's maybe the root of it is, you know,

games obfuscate the, truth and just the best sales in the world is complete manipulation-free truth that you're just exchanging with somebody else and trying to understand what their needs and desires are and trying to understand if those match up with your own and if you'd like to do something together I'm curious about my own business because you talk to business owners all the time so you're able to gather mastery and expertise through the course of your life experiences, which are unique because not many people probably have had the type of conversations you've had. For someone like me who stumbled into this, started a podcast on the side of a corporate

America job working as a VP of sales, and then the market told me after a few years, you should do this, right? Some of the media content creation slash the consulting elements, which I had no desire, no goal. I loved my job in my company and my team and it was really hard to leave in 2017

to do this full time, but I thought it was a cool opportunity because of what the market was saying, hey, come help our team, do this leadership thing, do this talk, you know? And now I'm to the point where I go back and forth between, okay, do you try to really build like an actual big, real,

company or keep at it with your team of contractors that help you do what you do, but it's kind of a company of one with a team of contractors. And I know that's not nearly enough context for you to give like sage advice here. I understand that element. But I am curious of just like when you hear that, and I'm sure you've talked to people like this before, what is your thought process around? Oh, what should you do? How should you move forward? Because these are questions I ask myself and don't know the answers to because it's really hard. Well, I think it's a great question. You're asking the question in business, which is, you know, what does scale look like and how sustainable it is? And then ultimately how

transferable it is because I think the core issue, most businesses, let me back up. Most businesses start with one, maybe a handful of people who are deeply convicted about something they should do, exactly like yours. And then they, they catch product market fit and then they start building, right? And over time, they're building and building and building. A lot of that value, though, the competitive advantage, the moat, whatever analogy you want to use, is all intertwined and tied up in the goodwill of the founder owners. And so we see this in our area of the market a ton.

So we're acquiring companies that are typically between $3 and $8 million of earnings, you know, kind of call it 30 employees to 300 employees. you know, revenues of, gosh, 12, 15 million upward from there, right? So these are still sizable organizations. And I would say most of the organizations that we see that are even of that size can't be transferred. They're basically apprentice businesses. And so, you know, somebody has some form of secret knowledge or relationships. And it's really difficult to transfer that. I mean, if you think about it, it requires bringing on somebody else who can learn all the hard lessons that you learned over a long period of time. And I think this is where the

way you're thinking about is correct in the sense of you're trying to imagine a future where you can do more of what you're already doing, but with the same quality and with the same sort of care that, you know, has built your business. And look, at the end of the day, it's hard. I think it requires meeting somebody or meeting a group of people and you meet a lot of people, but coming in contact with people and having, again, inviting them into what you're doing and seeing if it sticks. And I mean, I would encourage you, we're doing this live, but like, you know, I'm happy to talk to you more about this offline as well.

Like, I would encourage you just to throw things out there to see how people react to them. And oftentimes, you know, I don't think people do that out of fear of rejection. But also, if people are excited about what you're doing and are happy to come on board and you see talent in them to be able to progress, like you should absolutely bring somebody on and try an experiment. Just run an experiment. And tell them it's an experiment. And I mean, I think the personality-driven sort of personal branding side of what you do is going to be difficult to replicate. It would take a long time to sort of build somebody else up into that sort of that level.

But the ability to coach people and sort of the other side of your business, there are really thoughtful people who just don't have the brand or maybe even the desire to be sort of as public as you are that really could come alongside. you could use your media side of your business to generate opportunities for the consulting side of your business. And that's what a lot of people have done. I mean, if you look a considerable number of people who have large public personas, brands, footprints, will use that to then build a group of people who are able to go out and, in some ways, be better at the thing that they're doing than you. I mean, I think they're probably, I mean, I know you're great at what you do I'm saying there's probably somebody better out there on that side than what you do.

And so if I were you, I'd go try to find the best people I possibly could that did that with excellence and say, hey, we're going to form a partnership. And then over time, you try to transition the media, the media side to being more diversified and maybe more sustainable beyond you. But it's hard. Almost no one does it. Yeah. Almost no one does it because it is so hard. So, you know, anybody who says like, oh, that's an obvious thing. You just need to do XYZ.

one either got lucky doing it or has never done it. That brings up the element of risk, right? And how much do you want to bring on? How do you think about risk in your life and with your business? I'm actually incredibly risk intolerant. I'm always thinking about risk. I'm always thinking about what are the possible things that could happen that likely won't happen.

I think it's honestly, if I'm being sort of vulnerable, here. I've, I've battled that so much in my, my personal life and professional life that, that I think that's where it sort of saps joy out of it, because you're always considering, you know, this new piece of information and where that may lead. And there's a lot of different trails that you can go down. And I tend to quickly run down a lot of them and think about sort of the worst case scenarios, which, you know, sort of give a tinge to life that can be dower, right? And I think that's where I have to fight that a lot of looking and sort of resting that things will happen and it'll be okay. Right.

Like I'm okay. I'm safe despite a lot of things that could happen that likely won't. Personally, professionally, I mean, I think that I, I guess I'm willing to take more risks personally now. My faith has a big part of that. I feel like God loves me. I feel like he's for me. he sees me. I try to rest in in his love for me and my identity is in being a son of the king, right? And that's a beautiful thing that that's opened me up to be more risk tolerant,

certainly personally, getting involved in messy situations and trying to be helpful, pouring myself out for the good of those around me. It's something I actively try to do. I would say on the business side, I have become as I've gotten older, you see more stuff, right? So I can't remember what golfer said. He was like, you know, under the age of 25, I made every putt because I didn't know you could miss. Right. And then, you know, you sort of, the implications are once you miss and you realize you can miss, you miss more putts.

And I think that that's where over time I've seen enough missed putts now that I've become more skeptical of things that are successful. And anybody who's created something out of nothing blows my mind. I mean, I've seen so many things that should have worked that didn't work, that it's just such a beautiful thing and not to be taken for granted if you have success that it was not a given. And so when we think about risk as a firm, we're thinking about what is the maximum sort of likely loss as a result of, you know, if you want to think about in terms of mathematics, standard deviations, right?

So you push out to sort of two, three standard deviations. What are the likelihood of loss? And what would have really bad downside scenario, not like aliens invade and the world ends type of thing, which, you know, that's a whole separate thing and you just can't plan for that. It's just what is the likelihood of maybe we go into recession. Maybe we, you know, have political unrest. Maybe there's a regime change in terms of government policy. There's, there's all these things that you want to constantly be thinking about and pinging. And then also, you know, combine that with sort of the trends of capitalism and where the economic trends and what's fad driven,

what's not. I mean, we think a lot about. in our business getting involved in things that have high durability. And, you know, like our pool business, we've joked that, you know, people have been dipping their bodies in water for pleasure for millennia. And we think it'll continue for millennia. We're not worried about an app replacing it. Now, we want to use technology to help build better pools and faster and cheaper and serve the customers better.

But we're not worried about a technological replacement for a swimming pool. Like, we think people will be congregating around water and they look beautiful and cool, you down in the summer and those types of things. So we want to get involved in things that have high durability. And that also comes into to account when it comes to risk. So, you know, we want to be aware of all the risks. I think was it Keynes who said that the time that you're tolerating the most risk is when you think it's less risky or least risky. And so, you know, we are always trying to be risk aware so that hopefully it allows us to de-risk in any situation. I love the look of Capital Camp.

Capital Camp, you write, 400 people from 16 countries descended on Columbia, Missouri for three days of investing conversations and more importantly, great food, drink, and fun. It seems like from the teaser video you guys published, I've talked to Clayton about it too, who's in charge of putting it together for a while because I would love to at some point be able to do something like it. But can you share your thoughts?

on why it's important to bring people together and what you've learned most now from doing Capitol Camp a few times. Yeah, so Capital Camp, my partner, Patrick O'Shauncey and I got together and said, why don't we create something that we would love to attend? We had each attended a number of sort of financial events and they were in impressive places, usually in the nicest hotel ballrooms you could find the coffee was mediocre at best. It was done. You sort of had all the trappings of success, but the actual, like the food was subpar.

It was kind of an afterthought. And everyone was transactional. It's all puffing up to one another, right? You sort of got your blue blazer on and you're ready to rock. You got your, it's like your cape and your shield and you slinging business cards and trying to make stuff happen. And it's just a terrible environment for creating real relationships, which we believe are crucial to long-term success. So you can, you know, this goes back to sort of game theory, but, you know, are you playing a one-times game or a multi-player game, multi-time game?

And over what time horizon are you playing those games? And your optimal behavior changes dramatically depending on how you think about life. So if you look at, you go to a conference and you say, okay, look at all these talks. targets for me to go sell something to, to manipulate, to get what I want. You may have some initial success, depending on your personality and depending on how skilled you are at that form of sales. I think you'll end up in a suboptimal position. Versus if you go and say, who are all the people that I can invite in to go on this journey with me? And I wonder if I could find the people to sort of go together with me on that and

give an opportunity to have really to give them more opportunity than they had before, right? I mean, that's the ideal. And that comes from meaningful relationships. You know, speed of trust is a real thing. And shared experiences, when you're relaxed and you can let your guard down is the ideal situation in which to build meaningful long-term friendships. And it really comes down to friendships. And so we want to create that environment. So we think deeply about curating the people. You know, we don't want the turd in the punch bowl. And occasionally it happens. And, you know, occasionally it happens. to deal with that. But we want to think deeply about the people. We want to create an environment

that allows people to dress down both physically and emotionally and open themselves up to meaningful conversations. And so the food is world class. The drinks world class. We hire like literally the best chefs in the Midwest who just do a phenomenal job. The Nation brothers out of St. Louis. and we just try to shock people with hospitality, try to shock people with the intentionality. Every little detail is meaningfully done. And we want to surround them with sort of care and excellence to get them to think about how they can provide hospitality in their lives, maybe personally, professionally as well. And then form these meaningful relationships over shared experiences.

So we have, you know, former special forces, do all the security, often do some fun activities around it. We have world class trail runners and crossfitters and all these, you know, different athletic activities. We've got art installations that we do. And we have cooking demonstrations. And, I mean, just all the things that, I mean, honestly, it's all the things I want. So we just created for Patrick and I. And, and yeah, it's resulted in far more success than we could have imagined. I mean, we're not doing it to, I mean, it's not a business in the sense of it's going to affect Patrick and I's like sort of overall, you know, business strategy or net worth.

It's more of, you know, we want this for us because we want to enjoy it and spend time with people. But we have 2,000 people on the wait list now. And it's, it's such a fun thing to see and really being able to curate a mix of ages and stages with all, sort of shared vision for excellence and having a great time. Sounds pretty cool. One of the things that you also lean into is humor. It is really hard to write funny stuff online. Just try to do it.

I challenge anybody and you do and you're like, wait, that's not funny. But I watch, I look at Brent stuff, I'm laughing all the time, right? So can you talk to me about humor? because I did this little study for my last book where I discussed transformational friendships, which you just, that has happened at Capitol Camp

and other elements of your life, it's obvious. And a big thing that popped up through the course of interviews when asking people about transformational friends, meaning the friends who change you for the better. That's what a transformation is and the ones that you wanna be in the foxhole with. And it shouldn't have been surprising,

but maybe it was at the time for me was, They talk so much about how much they laugh with each other and about humor and about fun and busting up on each other, right? And you and you and Morgan Housel have your thing, another guy who's been on the show who I love his writing. Can you just share more about the importance of humor and then how you've actually gotten good at it when it comes to writing

because it's a lot harder than it looks? Well, I'm glad you think I'm funny. I think you may be the singular person. Maybe there's not a huge crowd about my life. not true. This is the reaction of how it is online. Like it's yeah. Well, so here's what I would say is I like to write like I talk and I like to write like I live. And so my most enjoyable times are when I'm just with friends, having a good time. And it inevitably comes back to like being lighthearted. And, you know, look, there's plenty of

things to take this world seriously about and there's plenty of tragedies and times of mourning. But joy is real, man. Like we should live with joy and just have fun and be a little lighthearted. Like it's a weird condition being a human. And we should make light of it in some ways. And plus, like, it's just good for the heart, right? I mean, there's all kinds of studies around laughter and the release of endorphins and all the things that sort of lower your heart rate and lower your blood pressure. and all these things. I think it's good. Like I feel light and free when I laugh and I enjoy,

you know, laughing with others. And I think the danger is online too often laughing comes at the consequence of somebody else. And, you know, I try to stay away from that as much as I can. I don't want to, I don't want to put other people down to, to make a funny joke. Not always, I don't have a perfect scorecard on that. And I've actually had to apologize, multiple times to people for sort of off the cuff, you know, cracking, cracking a joke that it was funny. A lot of people thought it was funny, but it wasn't actually funny because it hurt somebody. And so I think that's the, you know, that's the key is be lighthearted and positive and see what comes out of it. But I just like to live, I just want to be who I am, right?

I kind of got into the age and stage in life where I'm not trying to be somebody else. and I just want to take the masks off and be me. It's not always there, but I don't know, trying. Did you ever think you'd become, I don't even know the right terminology for this, a meat slash grilling influencer? No, but I love it. I think that's what I'm, I think I'm going to quit private equity and just, just grill things and put pictures online.

It works. I think is my new career. There'd be some disappointed people around the office, but, or maybe not. Maybe things would go better around here. But yeah, I got into grilling and sort of smoking barbecue, all the whole thing right before COVID. And then obviously COVID hits. And it's like the perfect opportunity.

So I bought like a crazy amount of meat and a deep freezer. And I would just every day, I got to the point where my wife was like, you have to stop. Like we're eating so much meat. because I would experiment with different temperatures on the smoker and then how it interacted on the grill and what was the finish temp and different types of meats. I got into game meat for a while and was doing like quail and some exotic meats that I got out of like Texas. That got weird for a while. I've just really settled on. I love sort of off cut grass fed wagu beef.

So shout out to 7x farms in Colorado and Snake River Double R Ranch in Idaho. I'm paid for neither of those. And actually recently, did you see, I don't know if you saw this right or not, but I was actually approached by a company to sort of like do paid tweets about meat. And it just was, it just cracked me up that I've reached that level of of meat fluencer status. That's what I mean. Yeah, you became like a meat, it's grilling influencer. It's hilarious. I politely turned it down and said, no thank you.

But I, yeah, I still love it. I'm actually, I'm holding out some hopes that, uh, you know, that Trager gets cheap enough that somehow I can take it private, but you know, that's a whole separate. And by the way, that is not financial advice, all the disclosures I need to give for SEC FINRA registration. That was a complete joke. I'm not thinking about that at all. But no, seriously, it might be awesome. But anyway, so yes, I'm a huge Trager fan. Love, love my Trigger, the easy bake oven for dads. And I just love playing around with it. I love hospitality. I love, I had a potential employee and his wife come in and, and, and, and,

other families over from the office. And we just had like the most joyous time, grilled up a bunch of meat and vegetables and just, you know, we open bottles of wine and just have a great time. Like I love showing people like food is an expression of love. And I just want to love on people. And I think Sam, Sam Hinky joked with me. He was like, you can really tell who somebody is once they get rich. And he's like, you know, Brent gets rich. And all he wants to do is grill meats and have people over for dinner. And I'm like, that's pretty much true. Like how good, like those nights though, when you have those, your wife, maybe another couple or a few couples, and you share a great meal,

maybe you actually made the meal, which I think makes it better, or you make it together even. And then you have that shared experience. You're breaking bread, the conversations that flow, the laughter, of course. And every time we do one of those, every single time, always look at each other and my wife and say, why don't we do that more often? Like, it's the best. Like, that's what life's about, isn't it, you know?

It's just, it's perfect. And look, it goes back. Like, we're not the first people to discover this, right? I mean, like, look at Jesus. Jesus feasted constantly. He was constantly having a party. People called him a drunkard, right? Like, he was like, he was the king of the feast, right?

The Lord of the feast. I mean, it is something that's deeply embedded on us that we want a feast. We want to party. We want to enjoy each other's company. That's what it means to be human. Yeah. What does it mean, Brent, to you to be a great. dad? What are the behaviors, the mindsets, the thought processes of being a great dad?

I would say first and foremost, it starts with believing as I do and telling my girls, showing my girls that, so I've got three little girls and showing them that I love them unconditionally, not because of what they do, but because of who they are. and that there's nothing they can do to make me not love them. There's nothing they can do that would cause me to leave or to go away. I want them to feel completely safe and secure in my love. Now, I get frustrated with them and rightfully so. Like anybody who thinks that we're born good and that somehow the world negatively

influences us to behave poorly has never had a child. because children pop out wildly sinful and difficult, right? And so, you know, I think it's important for them to know that I love them. You know, in this day and age, and this may get, I hope this doesn't get political, but we have confused what love is in the sense that we are, this idea of accepting everyone for who they are, even if they are actively harming themselves, that somehow that's the loving thing to do. it's just completely wrong, right? I mean, we all know there are there are things that lead to flourishing and there are things that don't. And so as a father, I want to show them my love,

not just in that I accept them unconditionally and that I love them unconditionally, but I also want to show them my love by what I don't tolerate and what how I steer their thinking and behavior in a way that helps them develop good habits and helps them, think rightly about the world. And so, like a good friend does, right? Like you wouldn't have a friend who's like a heroin addict and say, you know what, I just love you. Good job, you know, on the heroin side. You know, I know it makes you happy. You know, can I help you get some more heroin? Because I think that would be really good for you. But I feel like that's what we're doing with a lot of things these days. And showing people, it's loving yourself more than the other

person when you know that they're doing something harmful and you don't help them to see that. That's what it comes down to. It's selfish. And so, you know, with my girls, like, I spend a lot of time with them. My daily routine, I travel a decent amount for work. It's just part of the job. But my routine when I'm in town is that I try to help them get out of the house in the morning, maybe making breakfast, depending on what kind of what's going on. And then I always try to be there when they come home from school or as close to when they come home from school as possible. So that looks like a pretty short in the office workday compared to, I think, most people in private equity. And it's a choice I made.

At night, I will, so my phone habits, maybe this is actually something to talk about, which I think does have to do with my kids and my wife. You know, like everyone else, I struggle with being phone addicted. And I put up some guardrails in December of this last year that really have transformed my home life. So I took off all social media. I took off email. I took off Slack off my phone. In fact, I have my phone to where if I spend more than 15 minutes on any given app, outside of like Google Maps, if I'm in a location, I don't know, right?

So like within reason. But I try to delete that app because I want my focus to be on the real world that's in front of me and not on this piece of glass that transports me to all these alternative realities, right? I want to love the people that God's put into my life that are in front of me. And so that also is something I take pretty seriously in terms of I will take occasionally calls at night. I will occasionally do some work in the evenings, but I really try to spend time with my family, with my children, with my friends. And we entertain a lot. Like we love having people over. And we love sort of the fellowship that comes through that. And we want our girls to see that

and to model that behavior as well and to know what's important and what's not. Like work is absolutely important. I don't want my girls to ever think work's not important. Work is a good thing. Work was pre-fall. Work is a gift from God that we're allowed to co-create in this. world with him. It is an amazing gift, but it is not the end-all be-all. It is for a purpose. And we are called to rest hard. We are called to love each other and to turn it off and to trust that God's got it. And we don't. And that's okay. And so I think it's a lot of that stuff that my wife and I think about with our children. And yeah, we're trying. I don't know. We're a highly imperfect parents. I'm sure, you know, we've saved a college fund slash therapy fund so they can

choose to spend it whatever way they'd like. Hopefully they want more college than therapy, but we'll see. Man, the reason that I followed up and said, we just have to do this again is because it's just so obvious of how thoughtful of a person you are. And I personally love having conversations with thoughtful people, and you just are a 10 out of 10 when it comes to that. So I really appreciate the work you do, the writing. the publishing, the willingness to really share who you are, is inspiring.

It really is, man. And so I just, I think I want to acknowledge that and just say, I appreciate the conversations and I absolutely would love to continue them. And I hope to be able to send people your way because if I have a friend who is in need or they're selling a business and who better of a guy to get involved than you. So I'll continue to do that on my end. love just to continue our conversations as we both progress, man. Well, I so appreciate the kind words and having me on and admire the heck out of what you're doing.

And we got to get you to Capitol Camp. I mean, there's a wait list, but I know a guy. So, you know, let's sidebar on that. And it would be fun to spend more time in person as well. Thanks so much for having me on. Thanks, man. Appreciate it, Brent. One of the best things about hosting this podcast is that I get to have a long form,

thoughtful and thought-provoking conversations with people like Brent Beshore. And I do them all on video now, which you can watch on YouTube, and to see how much thought and intention Brent puts into every single question and answer is awesome. That's why I do this. So I'm very grateful for him. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. A few takeaways from my notes. the most effective sales professionals invite people into their world and share a vision and a cause.

And then they offer an opportunity to work together. And I thought that's so true. That's what the most impactful and effective sales professionals are able to do. And we're all in sales every day, regardless if we carry a bag or have a quota. And that's something for us to think about. And then his growth without goals mentality, the best path to stir. growth. It's not a plan, but a posture, as Brent says. It's a belief in continuous improvement. I would say that means being a learning leader. It's optimism shining through some thick scars and a

healthy dose of humility. I've certainly evolved on this growth without goals mentality. It's more of a posture. It's this desire to get better each day, to go to bed just a little bit wiser each night than when you woke up. I think that's a great goal. And then being a dad, the number one priority is making sure your children know that you love them unconditionally for who they are. It's the hardest job in the world, but definitely the most rewarding. Again, I hope you enjoyed that one as much as I did. If so, I would love it if you would tell a friend or two.

Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Brent Bishore. I think he'll help you become a more. effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcasts, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talking soon, can't wait.