‘Who do you serve? What problem of theirs do you solve? How do you do it in a way that’s different or better than other options?’
For CEO and founder of Dew Wealth Management, Jim Dew, there are 3 questions entrepreneurs must ask themselves when they’re stuck. Find out what they are in this episode, along with his inspiring journey from math teacher to door-to-door salesman, to running a business.
‘The best investment you’ll ever make is in yourself.’
Jim has over 26 years of experience helping build virtual family offices for entrepreneurs. He’s also a public speaker and author, sharing his expertise as a wealth management advisor and guiding business owners to find financial success in business.
Listen to this episode to find out
– what are family offices
– why shadowing is sometimes more preferable than traditional training
– how to prepare yourself for transitions in your career and more.
Reach out to Jim here:
Dew Wealth Management: https://www.dewwealth.com/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jim-dew-0ab03a5/
John: Thank you for listening to the business sphere, don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode. My guest today is CEO and founder of due wealth management, Jim Dew. Jim Dew has over 26 years of experiencing, experience helping build virtual family offices for entrepreneurs, he is also a public speaker and an author. So, I’m delighted for you to join me today and interested to learn a little bit of your journey, Jim. So, the first question I always ask people if you don’t mind sharing with the listeners, people that don’t know who you are just share with us how you got started, what the people know you by and you can go as far as you want, Jim.
Jim: Sounds good! Well, why don’t I start right out of college with a mathematics degree in and a minor in physics, and when I was in college actually throughout my upbringing money didn’t matter to me which is kind of a funny thing because my life is all about money now. I was raised by depression baby parents who really live very very frugally and I was trying to make my dad proud so I never cared about money, I wouldn’t let my parents buy me things and when I graduated college I thought you know what do I want to do? I wanna make a difference and I really don’t care about money. Well, when you tell that to a counselor and you have a math degree the counselor says, you should be a teacher. So, I became a public school math teacher, I did that for 5 years in Arizona and loved the kids but really after 5 years hated the system and really I felt like public education has a lot of problems in the system and decided I needed to do something different because I wasn’t working very well in a broken system. So, I did a short stint of door to door sales we can go down that rabbit hole somewhere I did, I did that for a year and a half and learned some great lessons about entrepreneurship from doing door-to-door sales. If you’ve done door-to-door sales you know what I’m talking about, if you haven’t it’s actually an interesting experience that you learn a lot from but I did that while I was finishing my MBA at Arizona State University. My undergrad was at University of Arizona, so I make sure and give a plug to both schools and then decided what could I do? I thought you know to make a difference and I found financial services, I thought I liked numbers, I could help people with their money and that’s also where I can make a difference and then 4 years later after I started that, I had the epiphany that this system seems pretty flawed too because really and still today it’s primarily run by brokerage firms, broker dealers, insurance companies and banks and I went to my wife who, we’ve been together for more than 30 years now and my wife Mimi and she was actually born in Korea and they immigrated to the country when she was 5 years old. So, I went to her and I complained about how the system’s broken and they’re trying to push things through this channel that aren’t good for clients and I went on and on and after about 20 minutes of her hearing me complain, she just shrugged her shoulders and said “start you own company” which is kind of what immigrants do right? They just go the system doesn’t work, start your own company and I said “what are you talking about? I just said banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies.” and she said “I didn’t say I knew how to do, I just said you know that’s your solution.” So, we sat down and talked more about it once I calmed down and decided why not give it a try so in 1999 we formed our own independent company and realized that we’re truly entrepreneurs and that’s why I didn’t work well in systems like education and financial services. So, once we realized we’re entrepreneurs we thought, why don’t we work with people? Like us, so we started serving entrepreneurs and then during the journey of wealth planning for entrepreneurs I reached the point where I thought I knew everything there was to know about wealth planning for entrepreneurs and small business owners and then I learned about this other concept and I don’t know John about you but it was a moment in my life where I just felt like yeah, I know a lot but I feel like there’s a higher level, there’s something else out there that I just don’t know and when I started searching for that you know the mind finds what it’s looking for sometimes. I found what billionaires do and so you may know this but billionaires create what’s called a family office and a family office is where they’ll hire all the needed tax, legal, insurance, and investment professionals, all the attorneys and accountants as full-time employees serving that one billionaire in his or her family. When I learned about that, I thought boy that’s the best idea I’ve ever heard for wealth planning for entrepreneurs. So, I started asking around my network and luckily I got introduced to the grandson of a billionaire who has a family office, the billionaire has a family office in New York city flew out there he made an introduction, I didn’t meet with the billionaire but i met with the family office CEO, learned about their systems and processes and I thought, boy this is the best thing I’ve ever seen for entrepreneurs. There’s just one problem, you need typically 3 or 4 hundred million dollars give or take in liquid net worth before you can build one because they’re very expensive but they’re worth it that’s why Oprah Winfrey has one, that’s why I guess their divorce bill and Melinda Gates have a family office. Virtually a billionaire will create a family office structure so we had the idea, what if we could create a similar structure for entrepreneurs who have successful businesses typically you know making either EBITDA a profit or salary of more than a million bucks. Craft something for them that would create similar results so that’s what we did and that’s kinda been our journey and how we got to where we are today, and now we’re growing very fast and have amazing advisors on our team and really just have a passion for what we do and how we do it, so that’s kind of the journey from college to where I am today.
John: And that’s amazing to hear, I’m gonna actually ask you a couple of questions throughout that journey. Transition, I know you went to school for math and became a teacher and then what was the part of the system that was broken that you hopefully won’t mind sharing with the audience members because my son’s in the public system right now and again, yes there’s gonna be issues and I know from a teacher’s standpoint versus a parent it’s completely different. So, you see it from the inside, what did you find that was kinda lacking? Was it more than one-on-one? You know the broken trying to serve everyone and not catered support is that you know am I kinda hitting something there or if you don’t mind sharing, Jim?
Jim: Yeah, it’s a great question. What I would say is if I were in charge of a public education or two simple changes, I would make that would make I believe a huge difference in the quality of education that our kids are getting so when I tell you these two things you kinda see why I felt like and still feel like in a lot of ways broken system. So, the first thing I would do is make it easy to fire bad teachers, when I was a teacher the best I ever saw in any industry or any field were the best teachers, amazing people, selfless people, incredible, life-changing people. The worst I ever saw in any industry or any field were teachers. I saw some teachers that had tenure that should have been fired 10 or 20 years ago. So number 1 make it easy to fire a bad teacher and it’s not easy to fire a bad teacher if you look at the way the systems are set up and there’s no great business in the world, my business Mimi and my business. If we couldn’t fire a bad people we wouldn’t have a great business, so that’s number 1. Number 2 is flip the way the bureaucracy, bureaucracy set up in public school and how people are compensated. The person that makes the most difference in the public school education system is the teacher in the classroom, you put the right teacher in the classroom and life would change those kids will have dramatic improvements and have amazing increases in their knowledge their value as a human being and yet, their classroom teacher is not the highest person, highest paid person in the bureaucracy. The highest paid person are the principals, the superintendents, those people and I knew those people and I saw the jobs they did and and you know what? You don’t need to pay them that much for those jobs and I’m sure I’m gonna offend some superintendents and often you get some amazing classroom teachers that have to leave to become an assistant principal or a principal, or a superintendent to support their family. So, I would flip the bureaucracy and the highest paid professional in every public school system should be the classroom teacher period, end the story. So, if you make those two changes, you change education but I didn’t see those two changes ever happening and I couldn’t live in a system where I can felt like, I could you know no one is helping me become great because you have these teachers that can’t fire and I have no opportunity to make more money unless I wanna be a principal or a superintendent and those jobs are not where the difference is made in education so, I’ll get on my soapbox but that’s from my experience.
John: No, that’s great because great insight coming from an ex-teacher right? I know here I live in Canada so it’s unionized and it’s hard for 10-year teachers who don’t really care as much as the new hungry kinda teachers right? Who wanna make a difference, selfless you know will actually care about the kids but of course it’s years in, it’s more about seniority, it’s all about you know working the system and I love the fact that you mentioned like it should be rewarded for the ones that actually make a difference like there should be a vetting system to monitor, to track record of the students how they perform, how the feedbacks and comments, and suggestions you know get ingrain because in the private world and I know you did sales in door-to-door. I come from advertising sales and then became working at this agency I own but the most compensated ones are 100 percent driven by commission and we are not driven by salary, we’re not compensated unless we perform with a good output, with customer relationship, with communications, psychological selling, right? And that’s how the private companies operate, is that what you saw when you start doing you know door-to-door sales?
Jim: Well, that’s what I saw in teaching, that’s what I saw in the private sector. Door-to-door sales, what I learned about that was first of all, to get rid of my fear of rejection, it also it taught me humility because you know at the time I had gone from being the math department chair at the high school which is a respected position to having people slam doors in my face and act like I didn’t even matter as a human being so, that humility was a good lesson and then the third thing I learned from door-to-door sales was my sales manager, his name was John. He was this huge guy he was like 6 foot 3 or 6 foot 4 probably 260 pounds all he done his entire life was door-to-door sales and once a week you had to go sit down with a big John and you had to fill up this form ahead of time and it had you know how many doors did you knock, how many people answered, how many presentations did you give, etc. etc. and the first time I sat down with him there was a box I didn’t fill out and when I walked into his little office he said “Sit down!” I sat, he said “Give me the form” and I gave it to him and then he looked at it and immediately turned it around and with one of his big fingers, he started pounding on the one square that I hadn’t filled and he said “What number goes in this square?” and as soon as I started to talk, he interrupted me, he said “No, no, no, a story doesn’t fit in that square, a number fits in that square and when you give me the number, I’ve already heard the story.” and it was a shell shocker but you know what I learned? You need to know your numbers and we still meet entrepreneurs who are making a ton of money and they don’t know their numbers in their business, you have to know your numbers if you’re gonna grow and scale and be highly profitable.
John: That’s amazing, I mean it’s so foundational as an entrepreneur to know all metrics, calls, profits, sales, lifetime value of customer, advertising spend, acquisition cost, but if you haven’t read profit first, Mike you know I forgot his last name but it’s a great book. I was very fortunate to have studied finance and I married an accountant so, in terms of numbers we’ve been very fortunate to always watch our books but I also had a sales background for 10 years. And these are some skill sets as an entrepreneur, you need to know because if you wanna be successful, if you wanna endure multiple years of success and continue doing what you do, you got to ensure that it’s you know profitable like you don’t go into business wanting to lose money right? You need to know your numbers, your breakeven, your cash flow, your EBITDA, your everything and it’s great that you learned it in sales right? So, after that sales career I know you went and got your MBA and you got your post-grad, did you work in any corporate or financial institution before you started working and started your own business?
Jim: I didn’t, I went into financial services but I did have a stint as a manager in financial services so what they did, my first year, I had no warm market so just as you can imagine I only knew teachers and teachers don’t make good prospects for wealth planning typically right? Because they don’t make enough money so when I got the job offer they were reluctant because they said “You have no warm market.” So, luckily I’d done door-to-door sales so I did direct mail to cold call direct mail prospects to see if they wanted financial planning or in those days you know do you want to buy a mutual fund or any of that kind stuff and then I just drive out to their houses so I work my first year I worked like crazy, I was in a cubicle with 30 other at the time it was all guys and this is you know 26 years ago and I said to myself because I saw some guys in the cubicles that have been there 20 years and I said “I’m not gonna be a cubicle in 20 years there’s no way.” So, I was working insane hours working almost every day and having you know really terrible quality leads but I just worked enough of them to where after my first year they, they made me rookie of the year in the phoenix office and then what they did those days, they said “Hey! We need to keep building your practice but we need you to teach young advisors what you did so we’re gonna make you a manager as well as you’re gonna build your practice.” And actually that was great because as a manager I got to see some of the bureaucracy and then I had a mentor who made me a compliance officer and I said “Why would I wanna do that?” and he said “Because you’re gonna get 20 years of experience in one year, you’re gonna go to 5 western states, you’re gonna audit all these financial advisors with experience and not only do you audit them to protect them from in those days the NESD today’s FINRA but in addition, you can ask them any question you want. How did they market their business? How did they grow? What mistakes did they make?” And so, I did I learned so much in that 1 year of doing compliance but I also saw what I hated about the systems and the bureaucracy within financial services about how advice was dispensed about how people were making money, about how advisors made money even without the full knowledge of the client. So, and that drove me to a big argument I had with my manager and then went home and complained to me in him like I said, she said “Start your own company” which was great advice but not what I expected to hear.
John: That, that’s a great summary of that 1 year because if you’re able to ask whatever questions you want in, with successful business owners or people that were able to scale and grow their company. It’s like a gold mine, these are like mentors that you don’t have to pay for and this is being paid to, for you right? To work at a salary job or whatever it maybe so it’s great that you are able to engulf in that kinda work experience right? So coming out of that and so the next stage of building your business right? How long did it take you to figure out what you wanted to do and then what did you actually do to make it happen?
Jim: I only take it to figure out what I wanted to do well, what I wanted to do I didn’t know all that at the time was to serve entrepreneurs but also to do it in a way that was disruptive to the industry and so that came over time and a big part of that was getting to know the billionaire family in New York and a couple of other family offices that I got to know about how they did their systems and their processes but you know what something that gets talked about a lot in any type of wealth planning is, hey we put you before ourselves and that you hear from all kinds of institutions but what does that really mean? How much transparency is there really? And what we kind of learned over the years is to ask ourselves a very simple question since we were entrepreneurs and had started our own company we could say to ourselves well, look we know everything or a lot about wealth planning and that industry. How would we build it for ourselves? And that was the question we asked over and over, how would we build it for ourselves? Not how we build it as a business owner trying to make money in wealth planning but as a business owner that needs help in wealth planning. How would we build it for that person assuming that’s us? Because we’re business owners and so that’s question we asked over and over and we ended up doing things that most financial advisors and institutions aren’t willing or not, or not able to do which is also became a competitive advantage so that was a huge part of our growth and another thing and I’ll just give a shout out to my friend Cameron Herold. He’s written a bunch of books he’s a very well-known entrepreneur, he has a company called the COO Alliance where he coaches coo’s, second commands, he was coo of 1-800-got-junk and he’s got books like vivid vision, double double and you know a bunch of great books.
John: He was actually on the show a couple months ago.
Jim: Oh great! Yeah! So, Cameron so once we had kind of figured out how to serve entrepreneurs, how to create the model, how to make a difference. I was sitting with Cameron and he said to me “You have such a great model why aren’t you growing faster?” and what I said which I regret saying and I’m embarrassed to say it now to you but I’ll just be transparent about it, I said “Nobody can do what I do.” and as soon as it came out of my mouth I knew that was ridiculous and Cameron as, he’s a good friend and very smart guy. He beat me up over it he was like oh really? Like you know a brain surgeon can’t teach someone else how to be a brain surgeon like nobody can do you, do what you do, you’re so smart with planning for entrepreneurs and all that stuff and so, it hit hard and I thought you know he’s right like that’s a story I’m telling myself and he said “The real truth is you haven’t found a way to replicate yourself and to have more advisors like you.” So, I kinda delved deeper into that and I found this amazing talent this advisor that really wanted to do different kinds of work you know and brought them in my firm and I went back to Cameron and said “Okay, How do I train this guy?” and Cameron said “Well, first of all don’t train him.” I said “What do you mean don’t train him?” He said “Well, you’re a crappy trainer.” I said “What, how do you know I’m a crappy trainer?.” “You say, well how often do you train people?” I said “Not very often” he goes “Then you’re crappy, you’re never good at something you don’t do all the time.” I said “Well, what do you suggest?” and he said “Let him shadow you so, do you do things you don’t even know that you do. Let them shadow you, blind copy them on every email, let them sit on every meeting and phone call and he’ll see things that you’re doing you don’t even know about and he, if he’s that good he’ll become great and then you don’t have to block off time you schedule for training you just do what you normally do.” That was the best advice I ever got and then because of that this young talent became an incredible advisor and then we started replicating and so now we have 9 advisors in our firm who have incredible confidence that they can deliver amazing results for entrepreneurs. So, I’m very happy about our growth and what we’ve done and a lot of that lesson you know a lot of times as entrepreneurs we tell ourselves this stories and then we put ourselves in a box without knowing it luckily I didn’t have the filter to keep them from saying that and luckily I had someone as smart as Cameron who just beat me up and straighten me out and that really changed the trajectory of our company.
John: That’s amazing to hear and all it takes is one individual or one discussion, or someone to kinda change your perspective on how you run your business or you know and maybe if you don’t mind me asking, were you part of a community? Or how did you come about finding him? Were you reading one of his books? or, if you don’t mind sharing that would be great.
Jim: Yeah, no I have a lot of what I’ve learned as an entrepreneur has been in different mastermind groups and so I was the first group I joined who’s been really a friend of mine for more than 20 years is Joe Polish’s group genius network. That was a life changing event because so many things I can track back to genius network I’m still a member, Joe’s great but the group’s amazing so that’s where I met Cameron Herold was through network genius, from there I met Roland Fraiser joined war room which has also been a phenomenal group. I’ve also from war room, I met Glen Ledwell and joined flight club, I also met Joel Marion and joined 100 million mastermind. So I’m gonna forget some masterminds that we’re in but I’m in some incredible groups with really amazing entrepreneurs and so I always go there and learn from these great talented folks and get better and that was one of the reasons why genius network has been worth every penny I paid to be a part of it because I met a guy like Cameron Herold and got sit next to him and got his guidance that has changed how our company functions and truthfully, we’re better today than when it was just me thinking I was so smart because when you have 9 people working together on giving advice and sharing ideas with the same vision you get better outcomes and so that was something that I learned too is that I don’t care how smart you think you are, you’re always better in a group of smart people than by yourself.
John: That’s a great advice and if you don’t mind sharing like, what triggered you to join masterminds? Was it some person individual because a lot of people get stuck, entrepreneurship, business ownership, everyone feels they can do everything themselves and no one understands what situation they’re in but it’s also a big investment and time commitment for a lot of masterminds. How did you get involved and what triggered you to commit and stay involved?
Jim: So it was just because you know Joe Polish has been a friend of mine a client for more than 20 years as he grew, I grew and what we were doing in our team and so Joe and I were very close and so I was originally joined Joe’s group I think it was in 2009 and at the time his group was really mostly direct mail type of entrepreneurs and I really didn’t feel like I fit in even though I started doing direct mail as I said when I started my career in financial services and then, so then I dropped out and then I just felt like I wasn’t getting the kind of fresh new ideas anywhere and reading books and watching videos is great but there’s something about being together with other like-minded entrepreneurs. So, I actually went to Eunice who’s been Joe’s right arm for I think 25 or more years and I asked Eunice like, “Hey! has the group change at all?” and this is about 5 years ago and she said, “Yeah, there’s a lot more, a lot more diversity of different kinds of businesses and everything else because I didn’t wanna go to Joe because then yeah, I had kinda have to join you know I didn’t wanna express interest in that join because he’s a friend of mine and so I said “Okay” so I joined and then my wife Mimi joined, and that became kinda the epicenter for everything else because we met so many people you know Michael Fishman of Consumer Health Summit. I can name so many great people we’ve met through a genius network and that was kind of the start of it all and just luckily the reason I did it is because Joe was a friend and I thought this, let me give this a try you know it was 25,000 bucks which is a of money but I thought okay well, you know I don’t have to join again the next year and we’re lifetime members now. I mean well, my wife and I both and I both are gonna be a part of it for sure so that’s it, it’s a time commitment but you know I really feel, I saw Jim Rohn speak many years ago and it was amazing I still have things in my mind that I learned from him that day hearing him speak in person but one thing he said is “There’s only two ways you change, the books you read and the people you meet.” and I still think that’s pretty darn true I mean maybe a movie or a video can change you but the books you read and the people you meet and often I think people of all walks of life underestimate the power of the people you meet and being open to meeting those people and being open to learning from those people like I was with Cameron for me to go. Yeah, I’m a dummy you’re right like I am completely creating a story in my head, that’s limiting our ability to serve entrepreneurs.
John: That’s amazing and I love that you’re sharing this because as an entrepreneur, business owner, would you advise people to start that earlier or mid life? Like, because business ownership is not for everyone and it’s a very high commitment level right? For not just your family but it’s your lifestyle right? It’s like how do you commit to all these people and things in your life and that’s always a challenge for my team, myself, my family, my friends, my everything. So, when should you reach out to a mastermind group? Or like there’s EO, there’s all these other ones versus try to learn yourself because maybe at the beginning you don’t have the funds even to start, join a mastermind group.
Jim: It’s very true.
John: So, you know it’s a fine, touchy subject as well because I’m a part of a lot of communities online but I haven’t committed to any of these live ones because here in Canada I can’t even fly to the US right? So, it’s a little bit different in this you know part of the world at this time in the moment of life so, when would be a good time Jim?
Jim: That’s a great question and I think the first thing that you have to really be clear of is, is where you are now so, a friend of mine David Bear very smart entrepreneur he said the most important thing in life and I remember was in front of an audience so we asked people “What’s the most important thing in life?” and people throwing out all these things, the answer? Awareness, and I still think about it, I think David’s right, awareness. So, being aware of whatever your situation is the most important thing so awareness about where you are if you’re an entrepreneur in your journey and obviously joining a group too soon when you either don’t have the funds or you’re gonna sit in the room and you’re not with like-minded entrepreneurs they’re way beyond you and really it’s not what you need at that moment. So, I think being aware of where you are is really important, the other thing is you know you wanna think about not only where you are but where you wanna get to and to get from where you are, to where you wanna get to you’re gonna need help advice, mentorship, and shared ideas from people who are a little bit ahead of where you are maybe not way ahead. I remember there was a story that an entrepreneur I know he told me he met a billionaire who he knows he actually knows him now pretty well and he asked him, he said “Hey, I want to so I want to have a 100 million dollar exit, what advice do you have for me?” and the billionaire said “Have you ever had a 10 million dollar exit?” and he said “No” and he goes “Well then don’t worry about 100 million dollar exit, think about how to get a 10 million dollar exit. Once you figure that out then you can figure out how to get a bigger exit.” But you know a lot of people in the billionaire told them a lot of people tell me I wanna, I wanna be a billionaire, how do I do that? Well, are you a millionaire? If you’re not a millionaire, get to be a millionaire first right? So, sometimes having that vision and knowing where you are is really important but then you go to stretch, you got to be only willing to stretch and I always say the best investment you’ll ever make is in yourself so if you’re investing in your capabilities or your network a part of your abilities come from your network. Investing in your abilities or your network, you actually never go wrong again, you don’t want to do it so early that you have to put the 25,000 on a credit card and you get in a room where you’re just trying to get your first bit of revenue and your first customers and people in the room are having millions of dollars of revenue. So, awareness and then be willing to bet yourself and to invest in yourself and your network .
John: You know that’s great advice because I always tell people it’s all about timing and you mentioned awareness right? Because everyone goes through a lifespan from studying experience, working experience, business or you’re working under private or public company and then that whole spectrum of you know people in your life, family, friends, mentors, coaches, as well as managers, CEO’s, VP’s, whatever it is throughout and learn like you know for me and you we’re entrepreneurs, we think differently and we’ve been at it for a little bit longer than yourself if you’re just starting. I’ve only been with this business that I started 8 years ago but 10 years of sales and feel a lot more confident doing what I’m doing because now I’m leading a team right? And it feels much more comfortable talking about it because I’ve lived it just like you said live it, experience it, and hit a threshold where you’re comfortable and stretching yourself to the next level and find people that have already done it before so that you can ask advice and don’t you know try to overstretched yourself like the million to a 100 million or billion like hit those milestones right? 1, 2, 3 or 5 million exit, get to 10 million you know and everyone’s wants to retire with 100, 200 million but in reality there’s only a small percentage to actually do. So make it realistic as well, and having enough time to do it so as much as you’re seeking out advice you need to make sure that it fits your lifestyle because commitment to family or friends, or life is really important you gotta live you can’t just work all day long right? So, I you know from just different discussions with yourself and other people it just opens up you know your mind to endless possibilities because with mentorships and masterminds it shrinks time and a lot of people don’t understand and grasp that because when you’re an entrepreneur and business owner you’re trying to do everything yourself it’s gonna take you way longer and it’s gonna cost you a lot of you know rejections or problems, and issues and stress problems, and psychological problems and money as well right? So, if you’re able to acknowledge your gaps then find a solution to mend that and then finding people to support that by I’ve already done the you know the stuff that you’re planning on doing and they’ll give you advice, I mean that sound advice you would have paid 100 thousand dollars for because now it’s been to grow it you know millions of dollars right? So, I love you sharing that Jim.
Jim: Yeah, and well said John, I agree with what you just said as well.
John: So, if you don’t mind sharing like throughout this journey I know there’s been great masterminds people. What were some of the biggest challenges if you don’t mind sharing and times that you didn’t know if you want to continue or not because everyone goes through it and I’m sure you, me, everyone every entrepreneurs have these weeks or months of like why am I doing this? I just wanna get back to my normal salary and live that life.
Jim: Well, the biggest that I told you is like how to replicate myself and one thing I always tell every entrepreneur about building business value is your company is more valuable when you de-risk it for buyer and one of the best ways to de-risk it for a buyer is make the business less reliant on you. So, obviously in the beginning your business is you and that’s it takes all your time and effort but eventually you want to start thinking about how can you make the business less about you and that not only gives you a more valuable business but also gives you freedom where you don’t have to work so that’s one of the big things that we struggle with another struggle that we had is the kind of the, this the wealth planning industry is very sudden in its ways it makes a lot of money for these you know for advisors and for these big companies and so they, they don’t really change and so because of that I think initially we felt like what we had to do is the same kinda model that exists in wealth planning but just try to do it better service people, better service people, better care, more and all that kind of stuff but really the truth is yeah people care they want you to, they care about whether you care or not but they really don’t care as much as they care about the results you get for them and how easy it is to work with. And so, the 3 questions that I’ve learned, I’ll just pass this on to your listeners and your viewers, here are the 3 questions that we’ve asked ourselves over and over to get through hard times and to come out the other end and to have a better business. So, the first question is who do you serve? Who are your customers and clients, and get very specific if you say everyone or you say women or you say men that’s not specific enough because if you say everyone then you need to be Walmart because Walmart competes on price and they crush everybody on price right? Now maybe amazon now is starting to beat up Walmart but don’t get into the arena where you serve everyone, who do you serve get as specific as you can. The second question is what problem of theirs is do you solve? Be very specific and by the way people will pay more for solving a problem and they’ll be more loyal to solving a problem than they will for giving them some benefit or gain, or make them good about themselves. All that stuff’s are important but people avoid pain more than they seek pleasure so what problem do you solve and then the third question is, how do you do it in a way that’s different or better than there are other options? I meet entrepreneurs all the time I ask them those 3 questions, they can’t answer those 3 questions some of them have very successful businesses so everytime we get stuck or we’d have a challenge we felt like are we really growing? Are we really getting better? Are we adding more value to our customers and our clients? Those 3 questions would always takes us back to focus on what we needed to focus, focus on to get what we wanted to go.
John: That’s amazing tips, thanks a lot Jim. Regarding the timing I know you’ve been at it for 26 years, when did you decide that you, you can’t do it yourself to start replicating yourself? Did you and in the meantime, did you already start working on systems and processes making sure that everything is as efficient and making sure that whoever is replicating it knows exactly how to do it properly like at what stage in your journey, did you decide to start implementing some of that?
Jim: Yeah, when I got to a point where I felt like I was starting to burn out because it was all up to me and I also felt like I was not able to serve as many entrepreneurs as I would like to serve just because I have only so many hours in a day and I also realized that there is no way I could sell my company because my company was me. So those, all those things those ingredients came together and I thought okay I need to figure out a way and so I started doing systems and processes but here’s the thing about entrepreneurs, most entrepreneurs are not good at creating systems and processes especially things about standard operating procedures and all that kind of stuff that a private equity firm loves to see when they’re buying a company, entrepreneurs are usually terrible at that stuff. So, I started putting that together it was more of a framework of how to give advice, how to deliver advice and how to think about serving clients than it was the actual details of everything that then create all the standard operating procedures so, I had that in my head and then as I started to add employees I found people that love to do that. So, just think about it, anything that you hate to do there’s somebody who loves to do what you hate and I don’t care if it’s cleaning houses, I hate cleaning pretty much you know the house or anything else like that but there some people that love that. Now, maybe the people cleaning your house if you have house cleaners maybe they don’t love it, maybe they are the people that love it, that like they should but there’s someone who’s gonna love what you hate and there’s people who love to put together standard operating procedures and help build those parts of the business. So, once we got people to do that and then I could share my vision then we started ramping up on that kinda stuff because remember same thing when you’re, when you’re building a business entrepreneurs get rich by being concentrated in the business I mean 95 percent, this is statistic I heard not long ago, 95 percent of Americans who have more than 20 million dollars of liquid net worth and I call that seriously wealthy, 95 percent of them owned a small business. So, we know if you wanna play in the probabilities I always say, live your life in probabilities not possibilities that’s kinda my math background always bet on math but the probability is if you wanna get rich in America and that’s the definition of rich that we could use for this conversation. Your best bet is to own a small business and be concentrated in that small business but ultimately if you wanna have freedom you’ve got to get that business to run without you whether you’re gonna sell it or continue to run it without you being involved in the day-to-day operations so that’s critical piece I think for every entrepreneur to understand now when you first start out you’re not even thinking that but eventually you want to get to a point where the business runs without you or with very little of your input because then you have a sealable entity that you can have a life-changing liquidity event or you can just run it as a cash cow and still get to take trips to Europe and do stuff with your family and see your kids grow up.
John: That’s amazing because what a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs don’t see is the big picture, they’re so in the business they don’t ever work on the business and we always talk about the gaps. What you mentioned is what you enjoy doing? Hire people for things that you hate doing just like your home if you hate cutting the lawn, you hate the plumbing issues, and you hate cleaning, cooking, there’s a restaurant out there, there’s cleaners, there’s lawn care people, there’s junk removal, there’s right like things and within your business is the same thing. There’s accountant, bookkeepers or people that hate numbers there’s sales reps for people to do the sales if you hate talking to people right? In terms of customer relations there’s account managers there’s things that you enjoy doing, focus on what you enjoy and then work on the bigger vision the goal, the core values and understanding like when you scale and grow and you’re kinda a brand as opposed to an entrepreneur or you’re the business right? A lot of professionals however, like the dentists, the lawyers they’re branded by them, their name right? And for them to remove themselves to them work on the system the challenges they’re so into the process, they’re so into it and it’s hard to replicate because their you know mindset is like they know more than anyone else and they can’t replicate it. How do you, you know talk to those type of people that may be listening.
Jim: Well, I think that one thing and it would take so we have dentists who are entrepreneurs and doctors or entrepreneurs who have you know multiple type, multiple facilities or multiple practices. So one thing is I think you have to put your hat on as an entrepreneur and not a professional and so, if you’re truly professional and you’re gonna be a lawyer or a doctor, or a dentist or something like that and your gonna do your work and you’re gonna have your assistance or your nurse or whomever is helping you do that kind of work then that’s what you do but if you wanna grow beyond that where the business isn’t dependent on you then you’ve got to put on your entrepreneur hat and the entrepreneur hat would say “Okay, can I create systems processes? Can I create a business around this? Where I have other doctors, dentists, or lawyers who are doing the work then it’s less dependent on me or not dependent on me at all. So, can I create value in a structure like that so that I can have these great professionals who wanna be professionals but I can be the business owner entrepreneur.” So again awareness, if you don’t have the chops to do that then just be happy you’re professional and and serve your, your patients well or your customers, your clients well and accept that and understand that about yourself because not everyone’s entrepreneur. I mean it’s a sexy thing to think about but if you really don’t have the chops to do it you can get yourself into trouble and spend a lot of your and your family’s money if you’re not, if you’re not careful. The other thing I’d say about your, your point that so well taken about do the things you like and hire people to do the things you don’t like. In the beginning, the successful entrepreneurs are the ones that are willing to do the things that others are not willing to do. So, when I was a teacher I used to mow my own lawn and I told my wife and this is the problem when you’re with a woman for when you have a spouse for you know 32 years, they remember everything and they bring it back and remind you and so when I was mowing my own lawn, I said “I am never gonna hire someone to mow the lawn.” she said “You’re never?” and I said “Never!” and she goes “But you hate it.” and I said “Yeah, but there’s no way I’m paying someone to mow the lawn, I’d rather keep the money for myself.” She’s reminding me of that because guess what? I don’t mow, I don’t mow my lawn anymore but I did for years until I was speaking to a friend of mine and another entrepreneur and he goes “What are you doing this weekend?” and I said “I’m mowing my lawn.” he goes “Oh! You like doing that?” I said “Hate, I hate it,I hate mowing my lawn.” he said “Well, then what are you doing? I said “Because I’m not gonna hire someone to do it.” “Just wait a second because what do you make per hour? I said “I have no idea.” so he goes “Let’s write that down” he goes “How much revenue does your company generate? And let’s divide that by 2,000 that’s 40 hours a week time 50 weeks.” and you know he said “You could go in the office and work for and hour and you could pay for someone mowing your lawn for an entire year. Don’t you like what you do?” and I said “I love what I do.” and he goes “Why would you mow the lawn?” Boy that’s smart, so I stopped mowing the lawn now we have a pool person, we have someone that does the grocery shopping, someone that cleans the house and all those kinds of things. My point though is in the beginning when I was a teacher, I should have been mowing the lawn because I would make more, it would cost me more the guy mowing the lawn would make more than I did as a teacher. So, there are times in your life you got to do the things that you don’t want to and sometimes I see young entrepreneurs like “Okay, I’m gonna outsource all the stuff I hate to do.” No, no, no the first thing you have to do is get to revenue. The second you have to do is get a profit and once you get to profit, don’t lose the idea that profit is important that you wanna keep growing your profits over time that’s the lifeblood of your business that allows you to invest in yourself and in your company to grow and to get bigger and do better things. So, in the beginning do the things you hate and just you know like my mom used to say, my mom grow up on a farm she said “You know whistle while you work.” think of it as I’m grinding this stuff for something better because one day I’m not gonna mow the lawn but today I’m gonna mow the lawn.
John: Yeah, and this is well thank you, Jim. I mean I love everything you mentioned there because it’s still to the core and it’s so authentic right? When you’re starting off you’re gotta put your hat on and get grind and dirty right? You gotta like learn everything but as you mature and maybe it’s not for everyone too a lot of people have to figure out like what is their thing? They might wanna be a dentist or a lawyer or whatever and never wanna grow a business and they’re okay with that stable income and that’s fine right? Because more income, more revenue, more profits means more responsibility and also more obligations, more stress and so therefore, you have to see what lane you wanna go in right? Like, if you wanna like my goal is to hit a 100 million well, you gotta reverse engineer like at what stage do you feel you need to hit in terms of revenue and how long are you willing to put in the time and effort and you know can you do your bandwidth right now in your life to commit to it right? And timing is everything right? It’s like different life stages, different lifespans you know when you’re in your 20’s you’re just discovering yourself but as you mature in your 30’s, that’s when you maybe take some risks right? But family obligations like there’s a lot of things to consider and you only know it better than anyone else. So, figure it out and have fun right? I always tell people like you gotta enjoy what you do or else why do what you do? Right? And people can see it like your clients will know if you’re passionate doing what you love or not and if you’re in business ownership and you’re stressed, you’re miserable and you’re talking bad about your staff or your clients people see it right? So, is that something you wanna continue doing? Or find something that actually you enjoy waking every morning doing because you’re serving value to your clients right? And people or people that you serve so, have fun a lot of people forget that.
Jim: Definitely and even if it’s not fun you can create a compelling vision about what you’re trying to why like why do you want to get wealthy? Why do you, why do you wanna have a successful business? And create some big dreams out there you know some want to create a dynasty and a dynasty is multi-general, generational wealth that goes on more than five generations right? That’s a compelling thing that could pull you forward, others wanna you know build orphanages in Africa or other wanna have a private jet and house on the water and passive income of 50,000 a month that’s okay too, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m saying create a vision of what’s gonna pull you forward because they’re gonna be times when it’s no fun. It’s gonna be times when you’re grinding and in times when you ask yourself why the heck am I doing this? That’s when you grab that vision about the future about what do you want? Why are you even doing this? And then that can pull you through those hard times.
John: That’s amazing, Jim. Just the final last couple of questions, this has been so much fun I could go on for hours by the way but I wanted to ask you, networking with some of the people that you’ve met over the years. Is there anything in there that actually pulled you in the right direction where you can now say these people or during this time in my business or life stage this one nugget changed the outlook of what I wanted to now see for my next generation or my next 10 years, 20 years in my life.
Jim: Yeah, I’d say that I had an epiphany where I started losing passion for what I was doing and what I realized was the way we were serving clients wasn’t the model that I wanted to have, I wanted more transparency, I wanted more clarity for our clients and I wanted I just reached a point where I talked to my wife Mimi about it I said “You know what we make enough money, I don’t need to make more money.” and as I said when I was a kid I didn’t care about money at all, I care now because I see it at you can create freedom you can help others there’s so much you can do, you can have great life experiences but I reached a moment like that and I started to feel like, okay let me really think about what, how do I want this business to be? And, what do I want this business to be remembered for? And forget the money, we make enough money, I don’t need to make more money and once I did that and really started digging into what that would look like then, we started creating a new vision for ourselves and for the company and I have to tell you I’m more excited than I’ve ever been in my life for the business we’re creating, for the way we’re serving entrepreneurs, for the friendships, and the wisdom I get from our clients you know I mean I have the lucky position that we have some of the smartest most talented entrepreneurs in the world who are you know clients of ours and people that we know. So, I learn from our clients every day and we have a great team and a great culture at our, at our firm but all that happened just because I stopped and said “You know I don’t feel like I’m having fun anymore, why?” Well, because we’re doing things that we’re the way we’ve always done them, why don’t we do them different? And find something that is more exciting and more compelling and that’s made all the difference, of course now one of the problems when you love what you do is trying to turn it off and so, sometimes you know my wife Mimi will go, okay because we run the business together so she’ll say “Okay, enough business you know it’s Saturday night at 6pm I don’t want to talk anymore business, let’s go out to dinner.” and that’s also a healthy thing because you know workaholism is the respectable addiction and as entrepreneur I really can resemble that and I know that I feel in that mode a lot. So, having some checks and balances being aware again of like family relationships and what’s most important because my mom used to say no one in their deathbed says they wish they had worked more so make sure you’re also having life experiences and investing in the relationships that matter most to you.
John: Amazing, I always tell listeners that it’s the relationships and experiences that people remember in their 90’s and 100’s and if you do not cherish these micro moments on a daily basis and living presently then why are you doing what you’re doing? So, live life right? Don’t feel like you’re you know in this rat race like you gotta maybe early days like you gotta figure out how to do things smarter but as you mature and gain some wisdom and insight from others then you’ll acknowledge what you need to do to leap forward so I love that. So, where do you like go from now like, what if you don’t mind sharing with the listeners like your drive, your passion is now focused on this next stage. What keeps you going like, what is the one thing that motivates you more than ever family? Is it the business? Is it the relationships? Like what drives you, Jim?
Jim: Well, I’d say number one be my marriage my marriage with my wife, Mimi is the most important thing in my life and I hope she’d say the same but also the, I’d say the most proud of is my marriage so that so that would be by far number one and then you know friends and relationships would be close behind and then after that I’d say you know what’s most important to me is serving our clients in a way that’s different than their other options in a way that’s more transparent than their other options and you know to get results that we feel like we can get with clients and really help them in their entrepreneurial journey and then our team, our employees, the people we work with you know creating in a great atmosphere for them and a great future for them is important to me as well and I’d say those would be the most important things in my life in that order.
John: Well, thanks a lot Jim. It’s been a pleasure to have you on this show. So, tell us a little bit about the book that you wrote and how people can reach out to you or check you up.
Jim: The book is Beyond a Million the entrepreneurs playbook for expanding wealth freedom and time. Actually my friend Dave Asprey came with the title when we were hanging out in Alaska together so thank you for that, Dave and it’s really a book for entrepreneurs are at a level yeah, there’s Dave, yeah right, absolutely. He’s by the way Dave sold a few more books than I have so yeah Beyond a Million, it’s a great book for entrepreneurs I put a lot of good ideas and value in there and I really wrote it for entrepreneurs who have successful businesses already but I’ve had entrepreneurs who told me it was a great read and gave them a lot of ideas and a vision about where they could go to so, I think and I even had you know my one of my best friends who introduced me to my wife Mimi, we were college roommates. He’s been a professor of social work so, what would he care about my book? And he actually said he got a lot of value out of the book so, I guess it could apply to a lot of people but it’s really written for entrepreneurs and then really if you wanted to check us out our website is dewwealth.com that’s our last name Dew the word wealth “w-e-a-l-t-h.com” and that’s kinda about what we do if you’re interested in that but the book’s a good read it’s also I did the audio book as well as I did the kindle versions on there as well. You know one funny side story if we have time is who passed away a couple of years ago when she was in the hospital my book came out so my book’s been out for about 3 years and she calls me up from the hospital and she’s all excited and she said “Did you know your books on Amazon?” I said “Mom everybody’s book is on Amazon.” and she was so excited and I said “But how’d you know?” because my mom was not on the internet at all, and she said “Well, the nurse came in and I said my son wrote a book, and she said “What’s the name of the book?” and she pulled out her phone and said “yeah he’s on Amazon”” So, anyway it is on Amazon which everyone knows, everyone who has a book is on Amazon but that’s a little funny story about my mom.
John: That’s amazing. Well, thanks a lot Jim. All the show notes, all the contact information will be there again, I wanna thank you for your time great insight, great value that you brought to the listeners and I had fun hopefully you did as well but I do wanna thank you for presenting and sharing with the listeners some valuable tips, tricks and insight on your journey and for sure we’ll stay in touch. Thanks a lot, Jim.
Jim: Thanks John! I enjoyed myself, I appreciate it.
