Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Be the Giraffe. I'm your host and guide, Chris Jarvis. Perhaps you're wondering, why be the giraffe? The giraffe literally evolved to be more vulnerable. But the truth is that giraffe gets to see things others can't and reach heights and reach food others won't. If you are looking for ways to stand out and reach higher in business, with money and in life, then you are in the right place.
Welcome to Be the Giraffe.
Welcome to Be the Giraffe. I'm your host and guide, Chris Jarvis. If you are looking for ways to stand out and reach higher in business, with money, and in life, then you're in the right place. On Be the Giraffe, we meet the innovators who dare to be different, stick their necks out. We learn how they broke free from the herd and used their long necks to discover better paths. Today we have an exciting show. My guest is Dan Reuteman. My favorite part of this show is that I get to interview cool people and I get to spend time with my friends. Today I get to do both. Dan's a successful entrepreneur who built a nine figure business in the language learning space. He was awarded the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year award in 2012 in Philadelphia. He also wrote the Miller Mogul series to help teach kids about money.
Dan then also helped launch Jarvis Morris with yours truly to help people, business owners, save taxes, become more efficient, and use those dollars to build a bigger legacy, greater impact, and greater wealth. So whether you're looking to build acquisitions, build your company, or have a greater legacy, you're going to want to learn what Dan has. If you want to elevate your perspective, see a better path and be the giraffe, you are in the right place today. Dan Reitman, welcome to Be the Giraffe.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: It's great. So we're here for a conference and we got a chance to film in studio, which is great.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: You've built a lot of businesses, done interesting things. We've gotten to the point that we're partnering on some fun stuff as well. But you did not have the traditional. I guess there, I guess that there is no traditional path in entrepreneurship. Every entrepreneur's path is crazy, otherwise they wouldn't be entrepreneurs. But I just learned five minutes ago that you did not go to college for entrepreneurship.
You had a scholarship and tell us about that. Because people think they have to have a certain pedigree to get here. You went a really interesting way. So tell us about college, what you were focusing on. And let's start with some early years because I think that's going to resonate with a lot of people in the audience.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I.
I guess I got into music. Well, there were music classes that I guess we had to take in in school. I mean, in elementary school, middle school and so forth. You pick an instrument, whatever. And I picked clarinet originally and then was like, ah, this isn't very cool. So I tried trumpet and.
And found I was getting a lot of headaches, just blowing a little too hard.
And then I guess when high school, when it came to high school, I started playing guitar and I got pretty serious quickly and eventually was practicing three hours a day.
And one day I got this song in my head and it sounded like a giant big band. And I just figured out how to transcribe it onto the guitar where it just sounded like multiple instruments playing at the same time time while I was playing this guitar thing and this song and recorded it and sent it in as a demo tape and ended up getting a full scholarship for music, for jazz, commercial composition.
This was at Towson University. So it was like I was the first person in the state of Maryland who had ever gotten a scholarship for guitar.
So that was interesting. So I started. But I did go.
I did actually go in. And I was pursuing a music degree while I was also pursuing a German degree and a international business degree.
But so it was.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Which is a natural three things to put together.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Well, the thing is, I was actually born in Germany and so I lived there until I was close to nine years old. And when I was in high school, I was taking German classes to just try to keep the language and evolve it so forth. So that was kind of an easier one to tack on.
But yeah, that was the start.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: So you started with music? You started with music, German, went to college and then what happened then?
[00:04:43] Speaker B: Well, I guess I've always had a.
I've always had an interest in business. I mean, I remember my parents used to make fun of me because they would, like, see me, like the way they described it, like writing. Always writing these little figures down and calculating stuff or whatever and so forth.
But I realized early on, I mean, there was this one day that my stepsister came home and she was like.
She was like.
It was during the summer or something. She's like, well, why are you sitting on the couch just like relaxing, laying there and why don't you go do something? And she'd just come back working at Friendly's, like Scooping ice cream or whatever and was dirty and all this other stuff. And I was like, well, you just got back from like a five hour shift and you're making, I don't know what it was back then, like three, four something bucks an hour or whatever it was. And you can do all that. You're working five hours. I can just sit here, do nothing. I go mow a lawn for like an hour. I get $35 and I could just come back and keep watching TV. I mean, so, you know, I definitely was like entrepreneurial when I was a kid. You know, just trying to figure out, like, okay, could I go shovel snow? Could I be useful in some way?
You know, even like somebody, I was, I guess, mowing their lawn and they had me watch their guinea pig when, when they went on vacation or something. Unfortunately, it died. And that's a whole story. But it wasn't, it wasn't my fault.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: You weren't very good at it.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: It was. No, it wasn't my fault. It was just.
But, but, but basically it's just. Yeah, always kind of found opportunities and saw, I guess as an entrepreneur, what you end up doing is you see whatever environment in you see things that are out of place and that's where you see where there's opportunity. And it's kind of like you either fixing something or bringing something new to world is how you can add value. And so I always saw those things.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: I know the music is.
I didn't realize that you were like both of my daughters, where one is very artistic and the other asked for a cash register for Christmas when she wanted the real cash register. I think she was 12.
So it was very into business, but very much.
Yeah. So that's very funny.
But also the person who gets the job done, the entrepreneur is the laziest person. So you figured out, how can I make money faster instead of grinding out the friendlies job scooping a Jim Dandy Sunday, you find a way to make money faster. I mean, that is the entrepreneur.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Well, I think there's a term I guess I've learned to use. It's called being lazy smart.
And so I remember this one time my stepdad came home, he was so pissed, he's like, why is our neighbor's son mowing our lawn?
And I was like, what do you mean?
It's my responsibility to make sure that the lawn gets mowed. And you, you know, you're paying, you know, basically everyone else pays me 35. I think you pay me 25. And he wanted 15.
So but he was just mad. And I was like, all right, is it because I'm actually not doing it? I mean, why are you getting mad at me? And so, you know, interestingly enough, I mean, I. So I had certain instincts, so that was good. But you were asking about college. And so I.
I ended up starting my first business my. My senior year in college. And I had. My dad was living in Europe after my parents got divorced and moved back to the States with my mom. And I had always seen this in Flight magazine for.
Well, I started seeing this in Flight magazine that had a text scanning pen where you could scan printed text, and it converted it into computer usable text. And I'd actually had the idea for that, like years earlier, studying and so forth in college. And so when I saw it, I thought, wow, you know, I would know how to market this.
And I ended up approaching one of my professors who was from Sweden, and I said, hey, I've got this idea, this company, Swedish, that makes it. I want to go fly there, pitch them on this idea to then launch the marketing in the US And I was like, you know, what do you think? And the professors liked the idea and so forth. And off we went. We went to Sweden, pitched them, and I got some funding for it. And that's kind of like. That started my, I guess my true journey.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: And that was in college.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: That was in college, yeah. And so. But that morphed. Eventually this company decided to pull the technology out of the. Decided to go in a different direction. They wanted to, like, use the optical technology for some other application. And so I had to pivot. And so that's kind of. As an entrepreneur, that's definitely something that you have to learn over time, is just accepting reality, moving on, pivoting, trying new things. And so that eventually led me to.
We were already selling online, and this is a tough period because this is basically graduated college in 2000. And so by 2001 was pivoting 2002, and this is after the dot com crash. And there's also a period where you didn't have the kind of tools you had like today, you could just launch something instantly. You know, I mean, even, you know, seeing you like, oh, what do I do for Legion? Instantly, you're able to put a QR code and have an email list and do that in like five minutes. Right. I mean, and it's just back in the day, you actually had to program your own systems and just the tech wasn't there. And so. But I learned all that. I actually taught myself how to program and so forth and was super scrappy and you know, then eventually, eventually, after a couple other steps discovered this amazing, the pimsleur language learning program, which I thought was an amazing methodology and really could help people.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Before we get into that, I want to get into the, I want to get into. When we come back from the break, I want to get into how As a tool 20 year old, you think it's okay to go talk to your professor about, we should go like imagine today the idea, hey, my teacher and I are going to go to Sweden and try to pitch somebody for some money.
That is to me, that is a fascinating story. And I want you to again, when we get back from the break, I want you to tell a story about how you just how your brain works to have the, the belief that you could make that happen. The.
What's the word?
This delusional optimism and how important that is for the entrepreneur. And then I want to get into the journey of the things that you did and you have a lot of great advice for the entrepreneur. So when we get back, Dan's going to talk about his crazy trip to Sweden and then all the other cool things that he learned about entrepreneurship. So after the break, we'll elevate your perspective and help you be a giraffe.
Hey, Chris Jarvis with be the Giraffe. On this week's episode, I have none other than Dan Reitman. Dan was entrepreneur of the year from Ernst and Young in Philadelphia. He built a nine figure business. He's written the Miller Mogul series to help parents help their kids learn about money and entrepreneurship. He started a business and got his teacher to invest and be his partner. The guy's been an entrepreneur from the jump. And if you want to learn how to build your business, how to scale it up, you cannot miss this week's episode with Dan Reitman. Make sure you're there.
Welcome back to be the draft. I am here with Dan Reitman, the author of Miller Moguls and entrepreneur of the Year from Ernst and Young from many years ago, 2012. But he has only gone up from there and somehow he convinced his teacher to go travel with him to Sweden on a crazy adventure to start a company, which is really a great story. So tell us that story because one of the big things for people in the audience who contact us and talk about the show is that sounds great, I want to do something. But there's always this, not always very often. There's people are waiting for the right time. They want everything to align. They Want things to be perfect.
Nothing's perfect about a 20 year old asking a teacher to go on to go away to a foreign country. I'm not sure that would fly in the US right now. But you did this, you had this vision. What was that? Just what was going through your head or not going through your head? Is it delusional optimism? Is it what, what was that then? I have a follow up question about mindset, but what was going through your head at that point?
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting you bring it up now because now I'm like, actually that is kind of strange.
What made me think I should? Well, I just figured, okay, this professor of mine was from Sweden. And so I was like, well, I mean, I mean, I don't want to go to Sweden by myself.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: How old were you?
[00:14:25] Speaker B: I mean, I was probably 20 at that time.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: 20 years old.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: 19 or 20? Yeah. So I was like, I mean it just made sense.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: You're from Sweden, you must know your way around. You must know everybody.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Hey, what do you think about this idea? You know, this professor, she was into, she taught like business German and she was into, you know, into business. And so her husband was an entrepreneur and yeah, she was. She wanted to be my business partner. So, you know, it worked out so I think. But you know, it's interesting too. I also think back because, you know, something that over time you tune into is like when you're in alignment with where you should go, like magical things start to happen, whether you want to call them coincidences, synchronicities or whatever. So when I was buying the tickets to, to go to Sweden, I call into Iceland air and in the call center I had transferred, so I pursued a music degree. But actually two years in, I was practicing like six hours a day. Between practicing guitar and then you also have to do sight singing and all this other stuff, practice piano. And I just got burned out. And I was just like, you know what? I could be just as creative in business and happy and so forth. And that's when I was switched. And then I moved from Towson University did where I finished out at the University of Maryland, College Park.
And so I call, I call Icelandair and a buddy of mine from Towson is working in the call center and picks up and he's like, hey, you know, hey. Just so you know, we actually have a two for one special or something like that. And so. But I mean, like, what are the odds of that? It's just so bizarre. And so like, you know, like just the world was the universe was kind of conspiring to help me and that's kind of how I felt at some point. So that, that also gave me a lot more motivation.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: So you, so you had, you had a teacher who was your first partner. And in my first business, we had one, one investor who happened to be my business law and tax professor who gave, who gave me money, which was Gordon Klein was great and I'm forever grateful. And nobody believed in you. Having somebody with the power of, the power of telling somebody what you're trying to do and asking for help is valuable.
Some people actually will.
If I don't know what you need for help, I can't help you if I don't know what you want.
But if you tell people.
Interesting. I know you do a ton of mentoring and I'm sure we're going to get into that. I was mentoring one of my family friend who kid. College didn't work very well for Evan and he wants to travel the world and be a cook. Like I gave him this idea that you're 20 years old, college isn't working. You want to be an assistant manager at a restaurant. What if you spent six months, every six months you went to a different country and worked with a different chef and you learned a different cuisine. By the time you're 30, you will have lived in 20 countries.
You'll be a sought after chef at that point.
And so he literally sent me a text last night and said, I just talked to the manager at my restaurant and told him what I was thinking about doing.
And he told people. And all of a sudden people started pulling tips to help me stockpile cash.
Like they're working in a service business, they don't have a ton of money, but like there's just something to telling people about your stuff. And, you know, and you did that. So. So you do this thing with the Swedish, Swedish, German professor and you start the, you start the bug. The whole entrepreneurial thing. What was, where did it all shift for you? Like, when did you. What was the big lesson?
Because it wasn't just meteoric success and everyone got, you know, you didn't just build every year and everything was better and better and better. There's this road is. You've had a crazy road. So tell us about that.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Well, so basically when the CPAN business didn't work out, I mean, I eventually moved back in with my parents and, you know, was trying different things and so forth. And I mean, fast forward a year and a half later, two years later. I mean, it's close To, I mean it was like 20, $30,000 in credit card debt already. I mean, the one good news, the one good thing about college is that I did work while I was in college and I ended up saving a bunch of money and ended up having amazing credit and even like $100,000 in credit availability like when I graduated. And so so basically, yeah, I mean, I tested and eventually we found that this language learning product worked. And.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: And by language learning, tell the art. What do you, the language learning thing you were working, explain it to the people who.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: Oh, so basically this was a language learning methodology that was an audio based language learning methodology. So before we learn to read and write, we learned to speak. Yet most language instruction is teaching you with writing, with reading, with all these other modalities. Whereas, like, just like if you take like there are many music stars who never formally learned music theory or anything else like that don't even know how to read, read music, but they still can, you know, I mean, they've got natural ability to, to create, to listen, to transcribe, to bring their creations to life. I mean, the same sense you don't have to learn, you don't even have to know how to read or write to be able to speak. So it's just a very powerful language learning methodology. So that, that really appealed to me, especially since I had studied, I'd studied Russian in high school and then German as well at the same time. And so I'm in Spanish at one point in my life and you know, it's just very difficult to learn how to learn a language in school. And so that was the.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: So what happened with the language model? So you figured out you were getting, as you were working on that, you were getting some good feedback.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so along the way too, I mean, just going back to asking for help and so forth.
I think when I think we as adults now, and with wisdom and so forth, I mean, when we see somebody young talking about doing something cool, your natural instinct is to try to want to help them. You just want them to be successful. You know, at some point you just want to encourage people to go for it, especially when they don't realize, like they don't realize at the time that there's no risk at that age. I mean, there really isn't. And so I ended up with some mentors. I mean, because like one day I was online reading and I read something about conversion rate optimization. I was like, what the hell is this? And like what the blog posts at the time, they were just so, like, mind altering for me, like mind expanding. I ended up staying up all night reading everything this one of my mentors had written. And then in the morning, dead tired, called up and I was like, called him up. And basically my question is like, where the hell did you get this information? Like, where. What was the context that even led you to think this way?
I've done that a couple times in my life where it's like you get exposed to something, you just like, what was the impulse for even those thoughts to form for someone? And then you like it, like in the global economy and so forth, and understanding that a little bit more and finding people that saw the crash happening in 2008 long before it happened. Like, where did they even get that mindset of being able to see that? But anyway, so that person ended up becoming a mentor, you know, wanted to help me, and then he introduced me to somebody else. So I had had like some mentorship along the way by the time my business started to take off in 2002, because it was like something I had learned from Roy Williams, who's famous ad writer and owns Williams Marketing, famous radio, radio advertising agency.
I learned like how to write ads and how to think about persuasion and advertising and that that skill ended up having.
Helping the business take off was one ad that I forced somebody to run who wouldn't.
Didn't believe it would possibly work, and they ran the ad despite that, and the rest was history. And so then really my journey became moving from what I would call entrepreneur to professional manager over time because eventually we had close to $100 million revenue, close to 200 employees. And so it was kind of this journey of just hiring people, great people, and learning how to manage and lead and inspire people and just end up with an amazing management team and just being able to scale up from there.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Well, I want to get into that strategy. I think it's really important, people running companies in the next segment. But in the last minute, we have here talk about mentors and how important that is for people out there trying to get some, like to ask for help. The fact that you said people want to help people with cool ideas, like help the audience.
We got about a minute just for some quick thoughts you have about the importance of a mentor and finding somebody to mentor you.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Well, I mean, one. One fundamental thing there is like, I think successful people always are giving maybe to a fault where they. So in any case, I think it's really important to seek out people who you can learn from. But it can be paper mentors too. Like, we're both friends with Jay Abraham and I only met him maybe 11 or 12 years ago. But when I met him, I showed him I had been on the front page of this magazine and inside it asked like, your top three books. And I showed him. I was like, hey, you know, getting all you, getting everything, everything you can.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Out of all you, you've got.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: All you've got is like one of the top, one of my top three books. And so that formed a friendship from there. But you can have paper mentors too, so.
But absolutely, I think it's key to, to find people that's great.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: So we're going to give you, Dan's going to be your mentor in the next section. Next segment when we come back, we're going to talk about taking that business from a grind and an entrepreneurial endeavor to becoming a truly professional manager who can grow something big and special. We'll be back after the break.
Hey, Chris Jarvis with Be the Giraffe. On this week's episode, I have none other than Dan Reitman. Dan was entrepreneur of the Year from Ernst and Young in Philadelphia. He built a nine figure business. He's written the Miller Mogul series to help parents help their kids learn about money and entrepreneurship. He started a business and got his teacher to invest and be his partner. The guy's been an entrepreneur from the jump. And if you want to learn how to build your business, how to scale it up, you cannot miss this week's episode with Dan Reitman. Make sure you're there.
Welcome back. I'm here with your guru and mentor, Dan Reuteman. He's here to take you all the way to the promised land, literally and figuratively.
In the last segment, you dropped a little Easter egg in there about going from being an entrepreneur to a professional manager. When I did the research for my book Six Secrets to Leveraging Success, I found Emmanuel Saez, who was a guy, he was Cal Berkeley is an economist and he did a lot of research on income inequality.
And we're not going to open up an income inequality conversation with two white guys sitting here. That's not really our what do we know about that? But the idea, what he came up with was that people who get to a certain level of wealth, if you get to making 3, $400,000 of wealth, which gets you into the top 1%, the odds are very slim that you will ever get to the 0.1% of wealth, the $2 million.
If you do have years where you make 3 and 400, you will never make $2 million a year is essentially what he came up with. And then Nito Cabane, who's the president at High Point University School I love and really impressive guy. He talks about you're more likely to become a billionaire in the United States if you weren't born in the US like the odds of actually. So basically hardship requires gets you because you don't have the opportunity to get to the. You don't get any of those good paying jobs. You have to create them for yourself. And sometimes you create something and it's lightning in a bottle and it becomes really big.
So with all of that said, this idea that what gets us, what got you from here to there, the grit getting your teacher to take you on the trip, the figuring out the guitar was cool and then recording something and sending it in that the grind that I had with Guardian Publishing and Triarch and the early J and M and the other firms when I just. Even in a crowded space, I didn't see a way not to be successful. That same mentality is the thing that can ultimately hold you back.
So you went on this journey to help people. Talk about like what you realized in yourself and what you realized with the business owners that you mentor.
That difference between how you get your brain in the right place to go from I'm an entrepreneur, I'm the founder who's really pushing to get this thing off the ground to the really hard difficult things with scale and systems and the professional management.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: I think a lot of it's mindset, I mean, well, one thing is you learn to delegate. I mean that's got to be foundational because I mean there's only so many hours in the day and unless you want to run yourself ragged. And I did have an early experience where I did run myself ragged. And I was reflecting on this a couple days ago where I had.
I'd been working like 16, 18 hour days and back then it was like I didn't have a laptop I could have, but I just, I had a desktop trying to be scrappy and I was programming. It was also like working on like programming our systems and getting them ready with the secom stuff. And I would go over to my professor's house, like former professor's house, business partner's house, and work there in this basement office, carry the giant CRT monitor with me both directions. And like after like a while this like I just ended up, I ended up just like burning out and working 18 hour days. And so at that point, I mean I remember that I was telling my friend, I was like, you know, I get home, like, I can only.
It's like five o' clock and I gotta go home. And then all I can do is just like, I have no energy. All I can do is like, watch TV for like four hours a day.
And he's like, so wait, you're telling me you. Okay, so you leave work at 9, you leave work at 5, and you go and watch TV for four hours a day. So it sounds like you're normal now.
Okay. But anyways, I learned through that that there were some other, like, key moments in my company where I had to try do something differently. I mean, you just have to. You have to. Like, I realized, oh, gosh, I mean, there was this huge crisis and one of my best friends was working for me, like, quit that day.
And he, like, goes down the stairs and he comes right back and he's like, dude, I don't have any money for the bus.
But anyways, that day, like, I broke down and.
But I realized the next day, and that's actually one of the only times I think I ever cried in business. Called up one of my mentors. This is so hard. And it was, you know, we were talking for a while, and then the next day I realized, wait a sec, there's temp agencies. I could just call because things were just going nuts. Things were scaling up. I could just call temp agency and get someone in. And then from there I learned, okay, I don't trust every temp. One stole a checkbook and had to file a police report because he had spent $700 on his, like, phone and phone bill or something like that.
You learn, you just learn along the way. But I guess what I was going to say is it's really mind shifts. And I put this presentation, I've given a keynote presentation before called 120 mind shifts to go from seven figures to nine figures.
And I started with personal related ones, like things that you have to do in your personal life and how you have to think about it differently. Because one of the challenges that a lot of entrepreneurs have is they don't realize they've reached a new level.
And it's kind of like there's a new. The thermostat has changed. I mean, and they are still acting in, in usually in a very scarcity survival kind of mindset. And so, like, even something simple, like, of like, I mean, I'll have. In these 120 mind shifts, they're all like dualities. And so like one of Them, for instance, is going from doing the dishes to being a diva.
And so what I mean by that is that you have to be willing to spend the money to gain your freedom, because freedom isn't free. It's something you have to pay for.
You have to invest in that to be able to have the free time to think, to have to have creativity and so forth. If you're always in the grind, you're going to be in a bad spot. So when you start to value your time that way, it really shifts things for people, I think. So if, you know, if your time is worth a thousand dollars to $500 an hour, $1,000 an hour, hey, there's $10,000 an hour work you can be doing. I mean, for short bursts of time, you know, you can't be doing the $10 stuff. You can't be doing the $100 stuff. So I mean, that would be like a simple one, I mean, as an example of how somebody has to change. But there's so many of them across different dimensions of a business.
But it's just being willing to keep evolving. Because I always see a business as like, in some sense, it's kind of a crucible. I mean, for personal growth. I mean, who do you have to become to be worthy of or capable of running a business at a certain size?
You have to become, I think, more compassionate in certain ways. Like, you can't, you know, somebody.
Like, you can't be somebody thinking like, oh, God, I have to. Every second of somebody's time better be productive, or they're stealing from me or something like that. You know, there's all these strange thoughts you have as a. As a business owner, as an entrepreneur. And eventually it's more like inspiring people, trusting them, and then knowing they always have your back and you've motivated them, elevate them to the next level. And so. And then you're investing in them and showing them what their strengths are and where they can become great. And so it's just. It's an evolution. It's a personal evolution. I think as you get older, too, at least I found for myself, you become even more compassionate and understanding of things because you have more life experience. Because I started early, and so it's not like I had, you know, I couldn't relate to people who had kids or had other kind of obligations. And you kind of look at them like, you know, with like, damn, they're slacking, you know, or what. I mean, that's probably more the mindset, but now it's more like. No, that is an important part. You know, it's not just about this one limited aspect of, I guess, of your existence. It's about having it all in the whole and trying to, you know, everything is just a means to an end. I think of some sort of like personal spiritual evolution in some sense.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: So I like one of the Freedom isn't free.
You have to pay for that. I like that one a lot. And then you talked about compassion.
Talk about the irony of the business owner who's the business owner is not particularly kind to himself or herself.
Like they treat themselves so poorly in so many ways or they like that's part of the mind shifting too, that you shouldn't be doing. You think you're doing the. You think when the business owner doesn't see themselves as an asset and doesn't see their time as an asset. You talked about doing the $10,000 job or the 500. If someone for the audience, if you fancy yourself as a $200,000 a year person, that's $100 an hour. If you're a million dollar a year person, that's $500 an hour. So if you could, if you're cutting your own lawn in the middle of a day on a Tuesday and you could be working on your launching your business, and if it takes you two hours, that's, you know, that's a $200,000 job you just paid. And we could go back to your having the neighbor do it for 15 when you were a kid. But the talk about, like, talk about the challenge that partners or founders have entrepreneurs have with not seeing themselves as an asset, like not recognizing the value of their time and that everything that they do is they're not doing other things.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, 100%. So I, the, well, the other thing too is the question is, let's say you were making your businesses, you're making a million dollars from your business. Is your time really worth $500 an hour or is it really worth what ultimately the enterprise value of that business could be worth? So that's a whole nother view on that topic, but I forgot your question.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: It's the treaty.
It's not recognizing that the most important asset you might have is your own time.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Right, right, right.
So as far as, you know, as far as an entrepreneur goes, or let's say a CEO, like, fundamentally, let's start with the CEO role. I really believe ultimately in a business, whatever you want to call the title, your title or the title of somebody helping you, you need this inside Outside leadership kind of approach to a business where you have the luxury of time as a CEO to be networking on the outside, learning, bringing in big ideas, maybe forming big relationships, finding big money, if that's what it is, getting publicity, whatever it is. But you have to learn to free yourself up so that you're working effectively on the business instead of in the business. And then you have somebody who's like your coo, VP of operations, director of operations. I mean, don't, don't create title inflation in a small company, but have somebody else who's basically got your back and is making sure the day to day stuff is getting done.
So there's a, that's a different, that's a big mind shift for people. And then in terms of investing in yourself, well, that investment in that other person is the investment in yourself. And that's how you have to see it. You have to see that every time you're hiring these amazing people that are just way better than you are in their respective areas, that it's an investment in yourself. It's creating your freedom. And most people go into business for themselves because they want freedom. They want to have the flexibility. They don't want to have to work to work for someone. They don't want to have to answer for someone, answer to someone. They want to, they just want, they want to pursue their dream in their own way. And so to me, it's just an investment in yourself.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: I love it. So what you're going to do is freedom isn't free, but for the next three minutes, you are free. And invest in yourself. And come back for the next segment, the last segment with Dan. It's going to be fantastic.
Hey, Chris Jarvis with Be the Giraffe. On this week's episode, I have none other than Dan Reitman. Dan was entrepreneur of the Year from Ernst and Young in Philadelphia. He built a nine figure business. He's written the Miller Mogul series to help parents help their kids learn about money and entrepreneurship. He started a business and got his teacher to invest and be his partner. The guy's been an entrepreneur from the jump. And if you want to learn how to build your business, how to scale it up, you cannot miss this week's episode with Dan Reitman. Make sure you're there.
Welcome back. We're with Dan Reitman talking about all things entrepreneurship. This is a man who's built a nine figure business. He's actually building a business with me, which is impressive in itself that he's found a way to wrangle me and he gives great advice. He's been very helpful to me. So I am sharing all of that with you.
Freedom isn't free, but you have to free yourself of time.
The things that entrepreneurs don't do.
We started talking about that in the last segment. In the last segment. What are the things as you're mentoring people? What are the most important things for the business owners at home who are watching this? Who they've got a business, it's off the ground, it's somewhere they all fancy the nine figure, the ten figure exit. But it's a way different thing than getting something off the ground.
But it's actually more work to get a company off the ground and get it launched. But then people get stuck. So talk about the big things for people at home running a business who want to get to the next level, but they seem somewhat stuck. What are two or three really important things that you, you get into and you see in mentoring that people need to embrace things they need to think about just to help them get into that mindset that you find so important for the high, you know, for the really high flying, super efficient entrepreneurs.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: Well, you know, might be helpful to share like the way I frame what I do when I am doing mentoring and I mean I've been mentoring entrepreneurs now on the side and I really enjoy it last 10 years or so and always kind of have like a handful of people that I'm helping one way or another. And so I always kind of say my job is, I'm kind of like the maximizer.
How do you 20x the value of a company? So like let's say we could grow EBITDA 5 to 10x over the next 5 years and increase the multiple 2 to 4x.
And what do I mean by increase the multiple? Well, if it's just you running the company and you have no management or something, I mean maybe you can get one times earnings. I mean if you're going to sell the business versus you have a management team, everything structured and so forth, then you start to get in the realm of five and up.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: And what you're talking about is when you say ebitda, it's earning before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which really means profit the money you're making.
And then when you say the multiple is the idea is that the amount of the amount that you would multiply the earnings by when someone buys your company, if the company is well run and has a lot of systems that can scale with the right love and care and capital, people Will pay more.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. So you're talking about paying more for safety.
[00:41:47] Speaker A: Paying more for safety and for the opportunity to grow it because it doesn't do any. An old mentor of mine, Hunt Ramsbottom, he talked about, he did roll ups and he said if I buy a bunch of companies for $100 million, if I can't grow them to be worth 300, I'm not making any money because I got to pay all the people back who gave me money and I got to spend a bunch of time and money growing it and making it better. I have to find better system. I have to really make this thing better, like a lot better. And so that, so just for the audience that, that this is talking about making more money, but it's not just making money.
You can make more money with lower expense, which will make you more money this year, but you won't be able to sell it. And that's part of the paradox for the entrepreneur. Right. The system that makes a lot of money is not saleable.
That's what we're talking about.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: Yeah. That's also one of the early things in a business that's trying to cross over into that next level is there is that dip where you have to invest into it and you'll make less money as you're hiring people and putting out that profit back, reinvesting the profit to be able to get to the next level. But I guess on the revenue side, so the big idea there is like, are you thinking big enough? Like are you thinking 10x instead of, you know, there's a book dan Sullivan wrote, 10x is easier than 2x and I mean it makes us. Makes a strong point for that. But you have to be thinking big. So it simplifies the present because there's only a few things that will allow you to get that big. And you might be focusing on like, you know, what is it majoring in minors or you know, and so forth. So there's the revenue piece. Then there's the other thing too. I guess when I think about mentoring, it's bringing operational know how. So I've just done it all, seen it all. So it's just when there's a challenge in the business, whether it's putting in new systems or changing something around or an employee issue or whatever, or how do you do this with performance evaluation or I've done it all, or how do you, what's this thing on the legal side? Or how do you buy a business? Or how do you raise capital? So there's the Operational know how then then a big one is avoiding mistakes. So I've made over $100 million in errors of I guess you could say omission and commission. Things I've actively done that were stupid and things that I should have done that to avoid stupidities, you know, and, and those are costly. So but as a result of that I'm still making mistakes like six figure mistakes probably every year at least six figure.
So I'm constantly still learning and so I can see a mistake a mile away. And so that's why I think it's good to surround yourself with people that are other business people or mentors or whatever just so you're getting perspective and they can help prevent like million dollar plus mistakes.
The next thing is like relational capital.
So this is having a network knowing exactly whom to potentially bring in to fix a certain problem. Like one of the a company I mentored for several years that ended up selling for very high multiple to a Fortune 50 company.
One of the people that I had recommended to them ended up probably accounting for about 40% of the value of that sale because he had been able to manage and grow a certain marketing area of the company. And so that's like another aspect. So it's really like who do you have in the company and how can you keep getting better and better people into the business? And then I guess the last one would be the personal side. And more and more over time I've put attention on this, removing personal blockers, things that are inhibiting people or like I mentioned earlier that thermometer or temperature change kind of or circumstances change issue where you just have to encourage them to spend more money. Like it's just like no, you need to be spending at this level. Now you're at a different level. And like why are you I guess totally politically incorrect but we used to call it like Holocaust survivor syndrome. You know, it's just like you're still stuck in the shell shock aspect and you just have to move beyond that. Like you're, you're at the next level. And so but that's just like that's one of many types of personal blockers. But, but I think so if you're broadly think about those areas and who can help you maneuver in those different areas, I think you're, you're going to be on your path to be successful.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: Really helpful. And I think for me when I'm dealing with the entrepreneur post sale who has a lot of money, there's a lot of different blockers there too. And it's one of the interesting pivot. The people who make a lot of money, they worked really hard to get it and then they feel guilty that they're not giving their kids the same opportunity because it's that challenge of I want to be successful and enjoy my success without spoiling my kids.
And that's a big, that's a big challenge. You did some interesting stuff as a kid. And I know for you a big thing you have is helping, is helping these entrepreneurs not just with their own business, but also helping them with their families and with their kids.
And you went back to your early language learning and education background in the beginning business and you started a new project which we have. So tell us about the thing that, tell us about Miller Mogul so people can know, here's something to help them value their time so they can lean on some resources to help them with what's really important to them.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's an interesting point you mentioned about, you know, your kids and wanting to make sure that they have, they have opportunities in some way but not spoiling them at the same time. I mean I kind of, a lot of my friends, friends and I discuss kind of this idea of like the gift of hardship.
And so like even with, with the pandemic, I mean I felt like, I mean my kids, like I didn't feel that was a hardship for them at all. I mean, felt like we lived in a frickin resort, you know, the whole time. And so it's, you know, it's, it's, it's something that I worry a lot about. And we, my wife and I are very, you know, constantly thinking about this, like just making sure that the kids don't grow up with too much of a privileged mindset and so forth and that they have opportunities and that they're, they hustle in their own way. Now I don't also want to be the parent that's like, oh, my kid needs to be a doctor or an engineer or whatever, a lawyer. And then you're like pushing them into those professions. I mean to say, hey, I want my kids to be entrepreneurs would be doing the same thing. So I want them to be whatever they want to be and to be happy. I mean happy, productive, you know, service, providing service to others in some way and so, so forth. So anyways, I wrote, I got inspired one day when we were going on vacation. I saw my youngest reading a novel we had just bought her for the flight. And she loved this story and it's just like tearing through it she's like, oh, I'm on page, like, 40. I'm on page 50. And then like, that night, she wasn't asking for phone at dinner or whatever. She's bored or something. And she just wanted to, like, just keep reading her book. And so, you know, I was thinking after seeing that, wow, you know, what if. I mean, I'm happy she's reading. I'm excited for that. But is she getting anything, like, practical out of what she's reading? Are there any takeaways from that? So that kind of thought bugged me for. For a couple of weeks. And then I got inspired to write the Miller Mogul series. And so the idea there was, I wanted my daughters to have a book that kind of, like, as I was describing the, you know, my. My parents see me write on a pad of paper, like these numbers or like, how I happened to get the neighbor to mow the lawn. Like, there's no context I had for any of that. I was just kind of like, going out of instinct or whatever or just seeing opportunity. And so I just wanted to put something in on pages, onto paper where there's these super interesting stories where you see fiction implies conflict. So there's constant challenges happening along the way. You can't have a novel, adult or children's novel without. Without conflict, without some sort of obstacles that are happening. So, yeah, I wrote the stories for my kids and, you know, I felt like I wish I would have had those stories as a kid because then it would have inspired me a little bit more. Would have seen what, like, hustle and grit, resilience. And like in every book, they have the idea for a business that actually doesn't work, and then they find the idea that does work, and then it doesn't quite work, and then it does work. And, you know, so it's.
So it's. It's a nice advice.
[00:50:17] Speaker A: Sounds great. Where in the last couple, where can people find Miller Moguls?
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Just go to millermoguls.com millermoguls.com and how.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: Can people who might need some coaching, where can they find you?
[00:50:28] Speaker B: That is a mystery.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: Freedom is not free, and it is also going to be elusive. If you want to find Dan, you're going to have to find him somewhere else. But that is. We'll put something in the notes when you get a chance. Dan has been a mentor to me. He's my partner in another endeavor, is helping me scale up a lot of things I'm doing to help businesses and their families.
He's got a great path. If you haven't watched his whole thing, watch it, go back and watch it from the beginning. You'll get a lot of great, a lot of great insights from Dan Reitman. Definitely check out Miller Moguls to give to your kids.
He's a wealth of information, really thoughtful. He's a good friend and I'm grateful to have him in my life. And so make sure to watch this again. Share it with your friends and any entrepreneurs who need to level up. It's time for you to elevate your perspective and see a better path. We'll see you next week on Be the Giraffe.
