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Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
The #1 Skill That Makes Leaders Unstoppable (It’s Not What You Think) with Dustin Hillis #245
01:26:41
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- [00:01]
A
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the unemployable podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you were a college linebacker known for really using your head, which led to an early retirement due to multiple concussions, if at your father's advice, you learned sales by joining Southwestern Advantage, selling books door to door, earning $100,000 in your first summer, a record that still stands to this day. And today, if you have risen to CEO responsible for all 30 Southwest owned companies, including standing up $100 million global consulting business rev revolutionary technology businesses and have authored multiple best selling books including his most recent offering capacity building a business bigger than you, your name can only be Dustin Hillis. Wow. Welcome Dustin.
- [00:47]
B
Well, thank you for that amazing intro, especially the part about using your head from football.
- [00:58]
A
Yeah, what a painful memory, right? How old were you when you started playing, man?
- [01:07]
B
8Th grade was my first time playing football and I wasn't very good and worked my way up to a scholar, a college scholarship my freshman year and, and then, yeah, concussions ended my career early and, and my aspirations for making the NFL. So.
- [01:25]
A
Yeah, well, we have to, we have to, you know, we, we, we have to be ambitious and we gotta like set big goals. I mean, I had a goal to go to the NFL and I didn't make it, but I made it maybe halfway there and it's farther than I ever would have would have gone. I mean everybody who starts in a sport should be like, I wonder if, I wonder if I could be that Olympic diver or whatever it is.
- [01:49]
B
But.
- [01:49]
A
And you remember, I don't know how old you are, maybe you're in the same era as me, but those helmets back in the day, man, they were just like, let's take a hard piece of plastic and let's put some hard foam inside of it. That doesn't really fit the head.
- [02:03]
B
That's right.
- [02:04]
A
Put a chin strap on there that looks like a G string and you know, go run into each other.
- [02:10]
B
Well, a couple of things. I think that the helmet definitely played a role and the technology has improved. And my two role models were Ray Lewis and stone cold Steve Austin. So when I would play, I would imagine that I was either Ray Lewis or Stone cold Steven Steve Austin. And if you remember, his signature move was the torpedo. And so I would just lead with my head and I would imagine I'm like Ray Lewis where I could just do anything and, and for the concussion protocol that didn't equal success sometimes, sometimes. It made a good highlight reel though.
- [02:46]
A
It did. I coached 12, 13 seasons of my boys football Growing up and, you know, when we started, it was all head across the front, keep your head up. But I mean, your. Your face mask was part of the. Part of the program and, you know, and that's connected to the helmet for those who don't pay close attention to football. But. And then at the end of it, all of the coaching clinics started teaching this gator role. Get your head behind and you see it now. It's more grappling and. Yeah. Do they give up a few yards? Do they maybe not dislodge the ball like they used to? But I tell you what, player, safety, they've done a really, really good job with it. And anytime anywhere around the head and neck, I mean, they're going to throw a penalty on you.
- [03:28]
B
Yeah, that made a big difference. I didn't do any of that back in. No. And the coaches also, you know, they just say, rub some dirt on it. Like I would stay in after getting a concussion and play the next play, so.
- [03:41]
A
Absolutely.
- [03:42]
B
Yeah.
- [03:42]
A
Well, we'll be very happy in our old age, unaware.
- [03:48]
B
Well, I'm excited here today. Thanks for having me.
- [03:50]
A
Yeah, man. Here's the opener. If you could choose only one business skill to be a superpower, which one would you choose?
- [04:00]
B
One business skill to be a superpower. I would say it is being coachable.
- [04:07]
A
Okay, interesting. I didn't have that on my list. Tell me about that.
- [04:11]
B
Yeah, you know, I think. I think that a lot of people have work ethic. I think a lot of people have charisma. I think a lot of people have all kinds of skills, time management, detail, et cetera. And I've worked with thousands of team members in every department. So this isn't just in business development. I'm talking marketing, operations, executive suite, whatever it is. It is the rare human who is eager and curious to learn to grow, to hear feedback and not only hear it, but to seek out the feedback and to want to be coached, to want to grow, to want to learn. And when I find those rare individuals who ask really good questions, or even if the questions aren't that good, just the fact that they're asking questions separates them from the package. And then not only are they asking the question, but then you see them change and they're constantly iterating, I think somebody can figure out most things if they're willing to be curious, to ask questions, to listen, to think, what am I currently doing? And how do I apply the thing that I just heard to my current situation? And so that's how I define being coachable. Is. Is doing all of those things.
- [05:43]
A
Dustin, I think that's such a great answer, and I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't have it on my list as I was thinking about what my answer would be. I coached my son, my oldest boy, in football from the time he was 7, and I was always amazed that he would ask for feedback. What do you think? What do I need to do? I mean, like, unapologetically just. And I'm like, he really wants to please. But I've seen that in his career, how fast he has accelerated through the various phases to be already an executive at 28 years old, because he's. He doesn't have an ego that he has to be right. He just. He wants the right answer, but it doesn't have to be his. And if he's not doing it right, the worst thing for him is that we're doing it wrong. And I'm. I'm doing it wrong longer. So it's. And it's. Is that. Do you believe that being coachable is innate in people? Are they born with it, or is it something that people can learn?
- [06:35]
B
Great question. I do think it's a superpower, and I. And I think that. That some people naturally come about it easier than others. I do think it can be learned. You know, honestly, I think if it doesn't naturally come to you, humility is one of those things. Be careful if you ever pray for humility, because God will give you the answer to that prayer, but you probably won't like how it gets delivered to you, because usually it's pain and suffering that creates that humility where, yeah, the life. Life is going well. You're kicking butt. You're doing things, you're achieving. And that's not when people are the most coachable, is when they're crushing it. When people really seem to get coachable is after life just knocks you down into the dirt and you're having to get yourself back up and you're trying to figure out what to do next. Usually that's when people are like, all right, that didn't work. I need to find some people that can help me get to where I want to go and not experience that pain again. So for the listeners, you know, if you haven't experienced that, if you're younger in your career, hopefully a conversation like this could kind of trigger, oh, maybe I should, you know, be more humble, put my ego on the shelf. You know, talk to somebody that's gone there, done that, and learn from people that have come before. Me. And if that is possible for you, that's more the innate, like you just kind of get it. Otherwise just keep going, just keep living, just, you know, watch what life will do. And eventually I think that, that humility comes from pain, honestly. Yeah, for sure.
- [08:23]
A
Was Southwestern Advantage to books what Cutco is to knives? Sure.
- [08:32]
B
Specifically educational reference guides. I think Southwestern Advantage taught me a lot and really it's a people business. So I would say that the books are the most revolutionary books ever, but the training is. And so what you learn As a young 18 year old kid, you know, most people don't learn that level of training till they're in their late 20s, early 30s and they have a big, you know, boy, big girl job. And some people never learn it, but, but they teach you time management, they teach you self discipline, personal, personal accountability, goal setting, positive attitude, positive affirmations, how to overcome rejection, how to problem solve. And then they throw you into the toughest environment known to man. I mean, selling door to door, 80 hours a week straight commission, a thousand miles away from home, right? That's about as hardcore as it gets. And there's a 30% attrition rate in the first week. So it's like the military. It's like, you know, look to your left, look to your right, one of you won't be here. And that's kind of what it feels like your first year doing it.
- [09:50]
A
Who were you selling to? Were these business focused type books or were you going residential door to door?
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B
Residential door to door. Moms were the main purchaser. So think of kids reference guides. So math, science, history, social studies, and they're like a homework helper guide is what really what they are.
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A
Okay, that's, that's. Is the company still out there today?
- [10:17]
B
Yeah, yeah. There's kids knocking on doors every summer and there's a strong European presence so that a lot of folks from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria fly over to Nashville, get trained up and they go out and knock on doors.
- [10:36]
A
Oh, outstanding. So you join this organization, somebody says, you know, you say, how do I win at this game? And they say, well, everybody else is going to be selling 80 hours a week. You need to sell 8, 85. Everyone else can have this many pitches, you need to have more pitches than them. So you, you know, like my, I consider myself and a lot of my success being too stupid to fail. Like just do it. And so, so you went out and did it. You, you set this record. Who was it in the organization or when was it? When they looked at you and Said, this is talent. We need to try to get this talent into our organization. Did you go straight into Southwestern or what was it like from your path selling as a college student to moving into the organization full time?
- [11:24]
B
Yeah. So, you know, before I answer the question, you said something that, that, that I've always found interesting. You have to be dumb enough to be smart enough to be coachable.
- [11:38]
A
I like that.
- [11:40]
B
Yeah. So you have to not let your, you have to not let your ego think you know it all. And you have to accept you might be dumb enough to be smart enough to listen to somebody. And I think I definitely had that my first year going into it, where I just heard, hey, this is 150 year old company. They're handing me a script, they're telling me this is how you do it. And actually I went through this funny filter my first year and I thought, even out of selfish reasons, this guy on stage telling me how to do this job, I'm pretty sure he gets paid if I do well, so it'd be really dumb for him to show me how to do this and it not work. And so I kind of went through this psychological thing going, even if this guy is not having my best interest in mind and he selfishly is looking to make more money, he would probably tell me how to do it right. And so I might as well do it exactly how he says to do it. And so my first year, yeah, I did have a conversation with the manager, his name was Roger. And you did a good job of kind of replaying it where he said, Most people work 80. My goal was to be number one. So it was like 2,000 first year salespeople out there. And I was trying to figure out how to do it. And it's funny because I actually didn't do any prep work before that. First years of training, which most people came in knowing the sales talk or having some, some level of training, and I came in cold turkey. So he tried to convince me to stay an extra week because I couldn't get through my approach, which means knocking on the door and having the words to say to get in the door. And. And so not only did, did he try to convince me to stay another week, then on top of that I'm saying, hey, also I want to be number one. And he's just like, what a joke, you know, and he said, oh, okay, if you're going to try to be number one, everybody's working 80 hours a week, you have to work 85. Everybody else is doing 30 demos. You have to do 35 per day. And so I was just dumb enough to be smart enough to actually do it. And I went out and worked 85 hours a week. I went out and did 35 demos a day. And because I didn't have the whole script memorized, I asked one of the senior people, hey, out of this big, long script, which one's the most important part? And they said, oh, the close is the most important part. So I actually flipped to the back and I memorized the clothes first before I knew the demo, before I knew anything. So once I got actually out in the field, and I would just take out the books and hand it to Ms. Jones, she would start looking at it, and she'd go, oh, it has math. And I was like, exactly. And everything else works the same way. And I'd go right to the close. And I found that later that was accidentally a really good thing to do, is most people talk too much. Most people oversell. They go past the buying line. And I never experienced that out of sheer. Just. I didn't know the rest of the script. My second year, a guy followed me, and I ended up. I finished number one my first year out of all the first years. And then my second year, I had a team of eight people, and a guy that had been working with the company for 10 years shadowed me my very last day, my second year. And at the end of the day, I said, hey, man, what'd you get from the day? And he goes, that was the craziest thing I've ever seen. He said, you just sold more in a day than I've ever sold in a day in my 10 years of doing this job. And he goes, you have no idea what's inside these books. And he just shook his head, and he goes, if you ever take this serious and you learn the actual demo, you actually learn the product. You. You take it serious, you're going to break the company record. And that was the seed that was planted in my head. And I remember driving home from Texas, all the way back to Nashville, going, number one. What is the company record? Number two. That's interesting that he said that. That sounds like a fun thing to try to do. And then I just got focused on that goal and spent the next, you know, offseason studying how to break the record. And then I did it. So.
- [16:26]
A
Did you have an early entrepreneurial experience in your life or early exposure to an entrepreneur?
- [16:32]
B
Yeah, my dad started a company. Okay. He started a flooring business. It was called Hillis Metro Flooring. That's how I got tied in with Southwestern was he moved us from Texas to Nashville and was looking for office space. And he literally looked in the newspaper. This is when people actually looked in the newspaper for office space. And there was a lease available at the Southwestern building. So he leased an office space at Southwestern. And this is a crazy story. Twenty years later, my dad came to visit me when I was running Southwestern Consulting, and his face got white when he walked into my office, and I said, what's going on? He said, this is. My exact office that I worked at is now where your office is.
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A
So that's full circle.
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B
Isn't that crazy? He ended up selling his company to Southwestern. So he had a come to Jesus moment. He went to a meeting called Promise Keepers.
- [17:43]
A
Yes. Yeah, I'm familiar with it.
- [17:45]
B
Yeah. So I was about 13 years old, and he just realized, hey, I'm working, and I don't know my kids, and that's wrong. And he came home and told my mom, hey, I'm selling the company, and I'm gonna spend time with my kids. And so he approached Southwestern, which was the building he was in, and he would run into this guy Spencer, who owned the company in the hallway. And he said, hey, I'm interested in selling the company. And Spencer said, let's talk about it. And they bought my dad's company from him. Hmm.
- [18:19]
A
And Southwestern is it Southwestern proper that started acquiring all these different businesses? I know when you joined as the CEO, I think there was 19 businesses. I think you grew that to an inventory of 30 businesses. And in technology and across many disciplines there. How did. Like, what was the philosophy of the company, and how did it choose which companies that it invested in?
- [18:45]
B
Sure. So the name of the global conglomerate is Southwestern Family of Companies is the current name. It's gone through iterations. At one point, it was called Southwestern Company. And that was actually when I became CEO. One of the first things I did was when you would drive in, there was a sign that said Southwestern. Then when you pulled up to the front door, it said Southwestern Company. And then when you walked inside, it said Southwestern Family of Companies. And so we did a huge rebrand. We actually changed the logo, and we got rid of all the other company names that were out there physically on signs and digitally and streamlined everything and rebranded as Southwestern Family of Companies. And that was the first thing I did as CEO. But the. Gosh, I forgot what your question was. What was the question, Jeff?
- [19:45]
A
It was about maybe we can go to that. Acquiring businesses, evaluating businesses. What's A fit. What goes together. So we build. I build franchise brands. And we have a platform of five property services businesses. So they're related in as much as we do work in buildings and homes. And we're a service business. Some of our businesses have more products than others. One's a rental model. But at the end of the day, you know, when we talk to people strategically about it, they'll be like, you know, you need to be able to articulate why these companies go together. And, you know, buyers are looking for that. When I looked at the portfolio of Southwest and some of the things that you've done, really cool. Technology companies, business consulting businesses. What was the. What was the tie or what was the through line that you looked for when you looking to acquire a business?
- [20:33]
B
Yeah, so the numbers that you were mentioning were a little different. There were a bunch of different businesses that, that had been acquired and rolled up and kind of folded inside of different companies. Part of when I became CEO was sorting through all that. Once. Once I left, I think we had about 19, 20 companies total. According to me as CEO. After four years, we had to kind of. There was a lot. There was a lot there. But we did launch a few. I became president of an insurance company and launched a insurance company over the holidays. I got my insurance license and then recruited. I think we recruited like three or four hundred people our first year and did over a million in revenue. So that was kind of while I was CEO and running the coaching consulting business. I launched the third company and was president of the insurance company at the same time. So that was a. That was a wild and crazy year. That was really a lot of what the book capacity. I started thinking, how can I increase my capacity to run three companies and grow three companies at the exact same time? And it came down to those systems and those processes. And that's really where I started thinking. This is pretty unique. There's not probably many folks that would attempt to do this and so. But there was a lot of things. And I'm very. I'm very thankful for what I learned in that process. It definitely made me a lot of. Of who I am today and develop skills in me and appreciate that and still have friends that are. That are there with the coaching and consulting business that I co founded and beyond. I still think that it's the greatest college training program, but really excited about what I'm doing today. So I think you're also blending a couple of things. So I have a company called All Things New Ventures that I've started after 20 years of working with Southwestern, and I really looked at, you know, a lot of publishing companies and direct sales companies. That was a great experience for 20 years. But I really wanted to get into technology. I wanted to get into, like, military drones. So I did a lot of research, took a year off, and thought, what are the macroeconomic trends that are heading into the right direction, where there's tailwinds and not having to work so hard, do things the hardest possible way, but what's something that would actually. The world wants, the market wants. And I spent a lot of time thinking about that and went to a lot of conferences, read a lot of books, listened to a lot of podcasts, like, hundreds. And what I came to was, artificial intelligence is the future. It's going to be bigger than the Internet. Military technology is going to become a central focus of the world. And by the way, this was three years ago. So you look at where we're at today, and it's like, yeah, that's easy. But three years ago, I saw around the horizon, so to speak, specifically drone technology. And then the sectors that I thought needed the most help was healthcare, education, school safety, specifically with all the guns and the shootings at schools, transportation. And that was really kind of the thinking around it. And I think God works in mysterious ways. And once you set your intentions, once you set your goals, once you set your vision for your life, the world, God manifests things and puts people in your life, that then if it's meant to be and it's in God's will, then all of a sudden you find crazy experiences and crazy relationships and crazy things happening. And so I met a guy named Scott Boroff who had a publicly traded company. It was called Healthcare Integrated Technologies at the time. And. And he asked about my background and organically growing businesses, and I wanted to learn how to raise $10 million. And he said, I've raised over a billion dollars on Wall Street. I'll show you how to do that if you come and help organically grow this business with me. And so that really launched becoming president of what ended up becoming Safe Space Global Corporation. And so that's really the technology piece of it where you were mentioning.
- [25:39]
A
Yeah, got it.
- [25:41]
B
So today I'm doing technology, but really before that, it was mainly direct sales companies.
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A
What does safe space do?
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B
SafeSpace's vision is to be the global leader of multimodal AI technology. And so we have team members all over. We have an office in Hyderabad, India is where our technology team is. And we're in four Verticals. So we're publicly traded. So if you wanted to check us out, you could just go to your publicly traded stock ticker and type in ssgc. And we're a fully audited pink sheet company. Our goal this year is to get uplisted onto the New York Stock Exchange big board. We've checked five of the six boxes to get uplisted and the last box to check is the $2 per share price point. And that's literally just people buying the stock is what drives the stock up to $2. And then once that checks, everything else is our. We have $5 million cash on the books, debt free. It's really hard to get to the New York Stock Exchange. We've done all the hard work. Now it's just people buying the stock to get it to $2 and we're there. So what we do is four different verticals. So number one, school safety. So we have an AI product that does weapons detection and notifies the SRO and we have a partner that then locks the school down. It notifies 911. It routes them to specifically where the school shooting is happening. We also have a partner that has revolutionary technology and we have an LOI with them where we're creating a joint venture and augmenting their sensor to our AI that can detect weapons at distance through a building and through a car.
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A
Wow.
- [27:41]
B
So I'm going to say that again. We have a partnership with a company that can detect weapons through cars. Specifically if it was an AR15 from 500ft away.
- [27:52]
A
Okay. So I have a building, I put some sort of a piece of hardware on top of it. You may not be able to say, but at the end of the day, it's like the Israeli circles of security, right? So you stop the threat. You know, the first stop of the threat is going to be as far away as you can possibly get it.
- [28:15]
B
As soon as a gun goes onto a school campus, this device will tell us that it is there and RAI will tell you if it's a threat or not. So then RAI takes over license plate reader facial recognition. So obviously the cops are coming. You know, the resource officers, the school police, they have guns and we know they have guns. And the AI doesn't trigger on them, but it will trigger on someone who's not allowed to have a gun on a school campus. That then sends it to a human in the loop. They click the button on their cell phone that says, yes, this is a threat. That then triggers the back end. 911 inform takes over, locks the school down calls 911 routes them there before they ever get out of their car. We also have a partnership with, with Skydio. So we could, if they could afford it, they could launch a drone from the top of the school and the drone could be over the car before they ever get out of the car with the pre recorded message talking to them.
- [29:15]
A
Wow. Do you believe that would be a real deterrent to people if they've. No, they've already been found out.
- [29:23]
B
Absolutely. I mean they couldn't even get in the school.
- [29:25]
A
Yeah.
- [29:26]
B
That drone over their head yelling at them. They would have the school locked down. You could have a siren going off and the cops would be there in less than two minutes.
- [29:36]
A
Yeah. Wow. Not a school in the country that wouldn't want it.
- [29:42]
B
We are, we are looking at statewide implementations currently talking to Alabama and Tennessee and we're well into those conversations.
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A
Is it cost prohibitive based on what you've seen with budgets and whatnot?
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B
What's the value of saving kids lives?
- [30:01]
A
See, you are a closer. You went right to the back page.
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B
I don't think there's a budget when it comes down to solving this problem. That's right now it is affordable. It is something that is within state budgets. It's just wrapping their mind around rolling it out to every school in the state of Tennessee and how to do it. So we're in those conversations now.
- [30:32]
A
The book capacity is great. It's like I like to say there's a. It's a mouthful of truth. It's simple things. And I. If you just wouldn't mind sharing the Chick Fil a story real quick because I, it's, you know, I read it, it's right in the front of the book. So you know, it's. Everybody's going to get it. But I found that to be fascinating. Sure.
- [30:55]
B
So I had the opportunity to eat breakfast and spend some time with Dan Cathy from Chick Fil A. And I was so excited to meet him. Always looked up to Chick Fil A's culture and I found it just interesting. Funny enough, I actually, my very first job as a 15 year old was at Chick Fil A in Dalton, Georgia. So I had this very early affinity to the training that Chick Fil a does for young kids. And so went down to Atlanta. It was a rainy day and my first experience was the guard meeting me there at the guard shack. And he had this smile on his face and this cold Atlanta, Georgia rainy day. And he said, you must be Dustin Hillis. And I'm like, how does this guy know my name? But I guess, you know, it's 6:30 in the morning and probably not too many people showing up right now. And so I said, yes, it is. And he said, well, it's good to see you, Mr. Cathy. He is so excited to meet you today. He is busy, so just go to the park over here at this parking lot and you know, Susan's going to meet you at the front desk and we're so glad to have you. And he sticks his hands out for a high five. And I was like, oh, a high five. And so I'm like rolling my window down and like giving this guy a high five. And he's like, you have an awesome day. And I was like, I will. So I remember like pulling out of the guard shack, entering into Chick Fil a's campus, thinking that was the most positive guard I have ever met in my entire life. So I park, I get out of my car. You have my umbrella, shaking the rain off, walking into the main door. And the lady working the front door sees me. She stands up, runs around the desk, like physically running, comes to the door and tries to open it before my hand can hit the door. And opens the door and she goes, welcome to Chick Fil A. And I'm like, oh, thank you. And she was like, you must be Dustin Hillis. And I'm like, well, why yes, I am. And she goes, welcome, we're so excited to see you. We were expecting you here. Come on in. Mr. Cathy has meetings until breakfast, but our vice president is going to come down here in just a few minutes and give you a tour. Is that okay? And I'm like, that would be amazing. She goes, okay, well, can I get you a coffee? And you could do. Can I give you a tour of our museum? And I'm like, sure, that sounds great. So she gets a coffee, she starts walking me around. And they have a Batmobile inside of Chick Fil a. And so they have all these like, cool, interesting things. The history of Chick Fil A, whatever. And then next thing I know, the vice president comes, he gives me this amazing tour. And I'm noticing the uniqueness of how the culture at Chick Fil A. Every room was custom built based on that team's goals, aesthetic. Like one room looked like a golf like putting green carpet. And the desks were like futuristic looking. Some of the walls were like black where they had chalkboard paint. Some of them were like the glass where you could write on the glass. Some of them had touch screens. And I mean I felt like I was in the future. It was amazing. So then breakfast. Dan Cathy's there, and they had the whole company at a. You felt like you were at church. Like, they had a devotional. They sang worship music. And Dan Cathy was right there, front and center, like, you know, part of it. And after that, he goes, okay, let's go have breakfast. And he stands up, and I'm standing up, putting my coat on, and next thing I know, he is, like, way far away from me, and there's a bunch of people and folks in between us. So, like a linebacker, I'm running and I'm juking and getting around all these people so I don't lose Dan Cathy. And so I barely make it to him. I'm out of breath, and he kind of gives me this funny look out of the side of his eye, and he starts walking down the stairs. So I thought, well, that's weird, but whatever. So I get down and we sit down, and he's taking his straw to, you know, we have, of course, Chick Fil A for breakfast. And. And he's. He's putting his straw in his. In his drink, and he drops it, like, underneath the table. So I was like, oh. And so, like, I bend underneath the table and grab the straw and, like, hand it to him. He's like, oh, well, thank you, Dustin. And he's like, so, do you have any questions for me? And. And, you know, like a proper, coachable nerd that I am, I had, like, my notepad and my pen, and it's like, actually, I do have a few questions. I said, you know, Mr. Cathy, your culture is one that I really aspire to have my company be like, how do you do it? And he laughed and thought about it for a second, and he goes, you know, I think the culture begins with the people that you hire. And I said, man, that is so true. I said, every time I go to a Chick Fil a, I think that you have the best people. Like, every time. Everybody's so nice, including the people I met today. Every time I'm at a Chick fil a, it's so consistent from the owner to the manager to the people taking your order. How in the world do you have that much consistency across hundreds and hundreds of Chick Fil A's? He said, we have a very. He said, we took the recruiting manual that most companies have and threw it out the window and created our own recruiting process based on the culture we wanted to create. And I was like, please do tell. And he goes, well, funny. Enough. I actually did a couple of them to you today, just because I do it to everybody innately. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, did you notice how fast I walked away from you when we were walking to our meeting? And I said, yeah. He said, we actually train all of our managers that when you're interviewing people, you have them walk in the door and you have the check in desk directly in front of the door, and then you put the chair next to it for them to sit to wait for the interviewer. And then you want the interview room to be as far away from that chair as you can, and you have them wait there. And then all of our managers are trained that when you walk to meet the person that you're interviewing, you turn around and walk as fast as you can away from them after greeting them. And that's part of the interview. And I was like, what? And I was like, are you serious? He goes, yeah, we pay attention. He goes, think about it. It tells you if they have a big ego and if they're too cool and if they're going to slowly walk through the hallway to follow you, or if they're going to tear up that cool card and they're going to actually run in a suit to go catch you for the interview. He said, also, it teaches you about their energy level. Like, if somebody doesn't have the energy to keep up with you, then they're not going to have the energy to run one of our stores. And I was like, what a fascinating, cool thing that I've never heard of. And he said, now the second thing we do is once you sit down, they're all trained to knock their pen off of the table. And he said, what we're looking for is again, are you humble enough to get on your hands and knees, bend down? He said, we actually are trained to knock the pen as far away and as far underneath the table as possible to make it actually hard for the interviewee to crawl on their hands and knees and go get that pen and hand it to the interviewer. And I said, well, what are you looking for? There he goes. Look at a chick fil a store. There's trash everywhere. And if the owner of the store is humble enough to see that piece of trash way underneath the table and they get down on their hands and knees and they crawl and they pick that up and they throw it away, everybody in that store is going to see it. All the workers are gonna see it. And that's what sets the tone for the whole Experience. But in the interview, when they're trying to get the job, if they're not willing to get on their hands and knees and pick up a pin for the people trying to give them a job, there's no way when they're on their own and people aren't looking that they're gonna pick up a piece of trash. And I thought, that is the difference between Chick Fil A and all the.
- [39:33]
A
Other businesses that made such an impact on me. And we've had our little things over the years that we've done to qualify people, little secret things like that, just to see. And it's. It's more. And. But I don't think we've institutionalized it as well as we possibly could have. It's more when people get to me, I have things that I do to try to see what kind of athlete they are, how humble they are, you know, And. And a lot of them come from traditional interviewing techniques that I just put my own spin on. But to inst. The thing about Chick Fil A is. And what are they now? 19, $20 billion in sales.
- [40:09]
B
Last time I checked, they were the number one food franchise, and they were number one. I think the average store revenue per day is double the number two competitor. And they're only open six days a week, and their competitors open seven days a week. Yeah. So their per store revenue average is double. McDonald's.
- [40:34]
A
At the interstate where our. Where our business is, there's a Chick Fil A right next to a McDonald's. And the chick Fil A has double lines and, you know, people out of the cars getting the orders. And There might be 30 or 40 cars in line, and there might be four at the McDonald's. My expectation is I will still get.
- [40:54]
B
Better service at the Chick Fil A. Yeah, same. Now, in the book, what I talk about is I grew up going to Bojangles out in Georgia. And I think I like the chicken better there, but I still. If there's a Bojangles or a Chick Fil A, I'm gonna go to Chick Fil A. Because the service, the culture, the experience is so much more consistent. You know, it's gonna be clean. I trust the brand more. And I think that comes to having a company culture is distilled from the company beliefs, the vision, the mission, and the core values. And I think that Chick Fil A has done such a great job from the top down with their vision, their mission, their core values. That. That really has been what drove the culture and the consistency.
- [41:48]
A
I'm not sure if I read it or if it was something that I listened to you say on another podcast, but you're a mission first guy. Why? Why? Because you've got your values, you've got your purpose statement, you've got your value statement. Get your vision statement. You have all of those. You, you have all of those to pick from. But you say I start with the mission. Why is that?
- [42:16]
B
The mission is, is the fuel. The mission is really what matters. I think life is too short to do something just to make money. And it seems so shallow to. To have a job. It seems so unfulfilling to do something just because somebody told you to do it.
- [42:45]
A
Sure.
- [42:46]
B
And I think that God has called us to live into our talents and our gifts and to have a be in the service of others. And I think being on a mission, whatever it is, creates that purpose and fulfills your. I mean, when you're on the right mission, you feel as if you're living into your destiny. And when you can tap into like, why did God put you on this earth? What are my unique skills? And what are the problems that I want to solve with that? How do I want to serve humanity with the unique skills that God gave me? Then you're not working anymore. Now you're just like out there crushing it on a mission to fulfill the reason you're here. And when you can really tap into that, you become an unstoppable force.
- [43:51]
A
You've obviously developed your own science and borrowed your own borrowed methods from people around people. And you've done an incredible job leading and scaling businesses. And to me, it's always about the people. Because at the end of the day, I mean, AI is creating certain opportunities. There's robotics. But at the end of the day, it still comes down to a high concentration of a players. People that are aligned, people that are passionate, people that are curious, people that like what they're doing, people that have a responsibility to play for others and to. And to. Everybody wants to be part of a winning team and everybody wants to do meaningful work. And these are all of the things. So what are some of your beliefs around delegation? And you know what it. When you came into this tech company, it sounded like it was very early when you needed to raise money. What are some of the early things around delegation? When you go into a new build one of some of the first things you do around people.
- [45:02]
B
Yeah, great question. And I do agree that you build people and those people build a great company. That's a motto I learned back at Southwestern from a guy from Spencer. So I think that delegation is one of the cornerstones of capacity, and it starts with your executive strategy. So the first pillar out of the five pillars of capacity is executive strategy. And that is where you think about who is doing what. So start with yourself. If you're the leader, you're the owner, you're the entrepreneur. Create a job description for yourself. And I find when coaching and working with other leaders, they rarely do that. They're just kind of the catch all. They're just doing everything. And to say, wait, what are the unique things that I should be doing to grow the business? And you start there, then you build out a corporate structure or an executive team structure to say, all right, well, if I'm doing this, then that means I need other people doing, let's say, finance, I need other people doing marketing, I need other people doing business development. I need other people doing HR and legal. But until you segment, like, all right, as the leader, what are the things that I need to be spending 90% of my time doing, and what can I get other people to do to support the business, to build it bigger than me? And a lot of leaders that start, you know, pretty successful companies, they don't ever get out of their mind that that structure is the thing that creates the growth. So what I hear a lot of entrepreneurs say is, I just got to work harder. I just gotta get that one big client. And they think that there's gonna be this thing that I actually think you can get to about $10 million through sheer willpower, like I have seen it over and over again, that you can just be a badass entrepreneur and you can just grind it and just work and get a team of people that all report to you, that just work their asses off, and you can ring the bell at about 10 million. But to grow from 10 million to 100 million, unless you're in some really, really specific technology business that doesn't need an infrastructure most of the time to get from 10 million to 100 million. That executive strategy is the thing where you have to create departments and you have to create job descriptions and you have to delegate to people that have responsibilities that you empower them. And delegation means you stop doing it as the leader.
- [47:54]
A
That's right.
- [47:55]
B
Now, there is a caveat to that, and I've messed this up. I learned this the hard way, is delegation as a leader, especially to a vital part of the business, should always be done up to 99%, meaning there's always 1% connected back to you, as the leader, where you're still checking in, you're still aware of everything that's happening. And there's not this silo that is completely autonomous, that you have no idea what they're doing, right? So delegating as like the CEO up to 99%. So that's like your top person. You trust them, they have a budget. You, you don't, you don't worry about them. But there's still that 1% where once a month you have a financial review, you look through what they're doing, and you, you just check in to make sure is everything still on track, and you're not oblivious to what an entire department of your company is doing. And so, and then from there, you, you, you find how many times you can duplicate that again and again and again. Often what I, what I start with. So that's kind of, you know, I'm talking when somebody's at 10 million to go to a hundred million, let's talk about the guy that's at, you know, doing 10,000 and they want to get to a million, you know, So a lot of times it's actually hiring an executive assistant. And I meet so many people that they're control freaks. So it freaks them out to give control of their email, of their calendar to another human. And they're just like, I can't imagine somebody else putting stuff in my calendar and telling me what to do. And there is a process to finding a really good executive assistant. There is a process to empowering them and letting them, in essence, they become your manager. So you spend enough time, you train them how to think how you think, so they know how to prioritize, they know how to read that email, they know how to respond, they know what you need to be spending your time on. And ultimately, you get into this flow where you're not having to worry about these emails, you're not having to worry about what's my next meeting, you're not having to worry about rescheduling something. And if you looked at how much emotional energy that takes as a leader of just thinking, there's an email that I need to read, or, gosh, is my next meeting confirmed or not? And if you're personally doing all those things, it will change your life to get a really good executive assistant that, that helps keep you on the right path. And then beyond that, you know, everything else I said about if you're the rainmaker, hire somebody to shadow you and teach them how to, to make, make it rain and, and watch it how your business grows from you not being the only business development person, but training people how to grow your business. And it goes on and on. But yeah, I probably could talk about that topic for an hour. Jeff.
- [51:07]
A
Yeah, I saw something in your book that's very similar to something that I teach our franchise owners on the very first day. And it's kind of two models of thought. So one is that every business has a dollar per dollar per person. And if you're a consulting business, maybe it's, if you're a high end law firm, maybe every, on average, every person generates 3 million bucks. If you're a carpet cleaning business, maybe it's $175,000. So every business, every business, a dollar per person. So it only makes sense that the more people that you can get aligned with your vision, your purpose and all of that, the bigger business you can build. So I see it all the time in franchising, franchisees will grow a business to their own level of comfort or competence. Meaning this person shot up the first year to $500,000. They're making 175 grand. It's, you know, it's more than they used to make. They've got their three to, they've got their, they got their three or four people that do the work and whatever the work is for that particular brand. And then nine years later, they're doing $500,000. Like why, like there was no, there was no net growth in there. So they, they rolled it up to that. And it's just that they have not gone out and said, I need more people doing the things. I need more referral partners, I need more strategic partners, I need more salespeople, I need more technicians. And the more people that you get involved again, the more clear you have to be about what do we do? Who are we? What do we stand for? How does it all work? So that's the one thing is how many people can you get around it? And then the other thing is let's talk in concept about what your time's worth. Okay, well, before you do that, you.
- [53:01]
B
Just hit a really good topic and then let's do that next. So what you're talking about is the business model. The model matters. If you're going to grow a business bigger than you, being able to reverse engineer your goal as the leader down to not only the revenue per person and what each person's worth, but even drill it down farther to figure out what is their activity worth. So you could go all the way down to what is one phone call worth. So every time somebody picks up the phone, how much is that worth to the business? And you can do this. And it takes a lot of discipline. It takes a lot of effort when you figure out the okrs for your business. Like John Dewar's book, Measure what Matters. You know, I'm a, I'm a big proponent of measuring what matters. I'm a big proponent of reverse engineering your company goal down to daily activity. And from there you can scale. But if you don't have a model that pencils out, like, if you can't do the math to figure out how to get to $10 million, you probably won't get to 10 million. And you're, you know, you could get to 100,000. You may be, you know, 500,000 or whatever, but I mean, even getting to a million, you, you need to know how to get there typically. And, and it doesn't usually happen by accident. So when you can model out well, and in order to know how many people you need, I think you need to know to your point, what one person is, is possible for producing. So that comes down to drilling down to daily activity. So a quick overview of how to do that, and this is in the book Capacity. If you wanted a breakdown to remember how to do it, is you start with, what's your average customer buy? So what's the package that you sell? What's the revenue from that? And if you want to figure out profit, you could also do it with profit. And then you say, all right, now how many customers do I need to hit? You know, how much money I need per month? Then you can figure out how many customers you need. And then you can figure out, all right, can one person sell that many customers? The two people need to sell that many customers, do three, do four, to do five. So then you can figure out how many customers does each person need to sell per month to get to that company budget? Then you reverse it from there and say, all right, in order for us to get one customer, how many presentations do we need to do to get one customer? So then you can figure out how many total presentations do you need per month? And how many people do you need to do that many presentations per month? Then you reverse from there and say, all right, for us to do one presentation, how many phone calls do we need to make to get one person to see a presentation? And then from there you have that number and you figure out, can one person do that? Can five people do that? And then you can drill that all the way down to say, how many phone calls do you make in order to do that? And then you can say, well, shoot, we only have to make a hundred phone calls to get to one customer. Each customer is worth $100,000. So therefore every phone call's worth a thousand dollars. And then you can start setting pay plans based on that too. So you can say, hey, I could probably afford somebody for $100,000 if they're going to produce a million dollars and we're going to make $500,000 off of the person that's making 100,000. So you can really start making everything within your business model an roi. And when you can ROI all the decisions you make, it gives you confidence as a leader to hire more people. And because sometimes that's where people get scared to grow, is they think I can't afford it. And it's like, well, you can't afford not to if you understand your business model and you realize that these people are the way to that growth for the trajectory. But again, the model is what gives you that confidence and that model is what matters. And I've seen it where people don't have a business model and they're just hiring people without understanding the math. And that's when things can flip upside down. That's when you can have more overhead and you could have a fixed overhead where actually the more you sell, the worse it becomes because you keep having to hire more people and you lose money as the revenue grows. And that's the worst case scenario. So I know that was kind of a lot, but you really hit an important topic there about really dialing in your business model.
- [57:59]
A
Some of the things you talked about are forward looking metrics. I was in Vistage and they did, they shared a case study about how they grew Vistage, which is a CEO organization and they brought in a new CEO. And he basically did the math because the math is always the path. And he said, okay, if we're going to have this many new members, then we need to have this many new interest meetings. And if we're going to have this many new interest meetings or one on ones to ask people to join, then you've got to have the interest meetings. So to have this many interest meetings, you've got to make this many phone calls and you got to get. And he just did the math backwards. And sure enough, over the next three to five years the system doubled because they would know based on the phone calls and the interest meetings that were being held, whether they were going to hit their numbers. Or not, because it's just a, the conversion was relatively static, like you could, you knew what the percentages were going to be. So if you just focused on the top of the funnel and put more, made more phone calls to get more people in the interest meetings, to get more people to the one on one, you know, altar calls and say, are, you know, you really need this? That was that. And so the, the discipline of, the intention of knowing your business model is what keeps small businesses from staying small.
- [59:14]
B
Yep. And when you can pencil it out, when somebody can show me mathematically how they're going to get somewhere, I believe them, then it's just execution. But if you can't show me the path of how you're going to get from point A to point B, you're just gambling, right?
- [59:32]
A
Yeah. You're hoping.
- [59:33]
B
Yep.
- [59:34]
A
You're hoping. And I think that the second concept that we were going to talk about was this what's your time worth thing. So my talk track around that is okay, if I wanted to make $50 an hour, what is the subset of things that I could do? I could, there's a lot of, that's about a hundred thousand dollars a year. And there are many jobs, side hustles. I could do wholesale real estate, I could, I could sell cars, I could take a marketing job. I could, there's so many ways that I could make a hundred thousand dollars a year. Now if I, if I decided that I wanted my time to be worth $200 an hour, I wanted to make a million dollars a year, now my choices become much less. And so now what happens is as you ratchet up your dollars per hour from 50 to 100 to 200 to $500 an hour, then the things you have to say no to get to be much greater. So you can't do things right. So to your point, and I think I've heard you say, you know, you built $100 million consulting business. Well, the next thing is you want to build a billion dollar business. So you took a year to say, I'm going to build a billion dollar business. Maybe that was your thinking, maybe it wasn't. But you know, I'm gonna, I've built a hundred million dollar business. The next logical thing is to build a billion dollar business or a business that's worth a billion. So I better do a lot of research because I'm gonna have to pick very carefully. And because I'm gonna have to pick carefully, I've gotta have tailwinds. It's gotta be a market that's big enough so that I can compete in it without running out of saturation, you know, running up against any kind of saturation. So you come up with AI, military, technology, health, education, transportation. And inside of that now you manifested because now you show up at places where those people are and you know what you're looking for in terms of partnership? You, you, you're a who, not how guy like I am. I'm a big, I'm a, I'm a. Dan Sullivan's a good friend and, and I'm a big fan and I'm in Strategic coach. I'm, I'm 58 years old. I've been building businesses my whole life. I still go to Strategic coach. Love it, you know, and so at.
- [61:49]
B
The end of the day that my dad was an early adopter of that.
- [61:53]
A
Really?
- [61:54]
B
Yeah, that was my first exposure was him. So yeah, it's Dan.
- [61:59]
A
They're, they're just, the tools are good. The, the. I, I had so many executive assistant fails until I got into strategic coach and I used their tools. And then all of a sudden my executive assistant works and you know, it was, I just didn't, I just wasn't holding my mouth right. You know, I just wasn't doing it right. And so at the end of the day though, if you're an entrepreneur and, and like you, you have to be very careful about the things that you choose and what you say no to. And the other thing that you can do, you can toggle the time invested, right? So like right now I know that if I'm going to get into a business that I better be able to do the math out to a hundred million dollars because I've set a dollars per hour on my time and I know that. And the way I calculate that, I include the money that I'm going to make along the way and then I include the pre tax exit. So if I'm going to generate this much value back to myself and then of course you have to figure out what percentage of it do I own. So now what are the variables? You've got your time that you're going to invest in something, you've got your along the way compensation, board fees, consulting fees, whatever you're going to get out of it. And then you've got your exit value based on a percentage of what you own of the business. And then you've got to say that's how much time that I can put into this if it's going to conform to my personal business building model. And I think when, when, when people get to your level, whether knowingly or in knowing unknowingly, it's like, if I'm going to do this with my time, then it's got to be worth a certain amount. And I think that that thinking, especially for first time entrepreneurs, is pretty foreign, but I also think it's helpful a hundred percent.
- [63:45]
B
So a huge part of everything you just said is actually getting into the mind frame that you already are earning that much money. So convince yourself of whatever your number is that you are making that much right now. So if you want to make a million dollars a year, then now the per hour piece is interesting because lifestyle might play a huge role for certain people. So I hear this a lot. Yeah, I want to make a million dollars a year, but I also want to be able to go on vacations and have a great life. And so there's still a mathematical way to do that. So you could say, all right, in order to do that, you need to be really dialed in when you are working to be able to take that time. So that means you don't have 365 days a year to reverse engineer your per hour rate to make a million dollars. You might have 220 days per year. Take a couple weeks to go travel the world. You take weekends off. So if you want to work Monday through Friday, you want to take a couple of weeks off, you're talking 220 days. So you don't need to divide your year by 365. Divide it by 220 or hey, you want to be nuts, let's divide it by 200. Let's say you take another couple of weeks off. Now how much do you need to make per hour? So you actually can build in like a lifestyle component to figuring out that the hourly rate. Then once you get it down to saying, hey, I need to make about a thousand dollars an hour or more to get to this number, then you have to start putting yourself into the mind frame that you actually already are paying yourself that much money per hour. And when you get really big numbers, you actually have to take it down to per minute. I think this is like the Elon Musk example where Elon Musk thinks in per minute. A five minute meeting with Elon Musk is worth what most people make in a year. And so he treats it that way where if you waste five minutes of his time, he feels like you just stole a million dollars from him, which you probably did. And so that really gets you into a different way of thinking. Where all of a sudden, like, man, this does not make sense in the middle of the day for me to go to the bank. This does not make sense in the middle of the day for me to go wash my car. This does not make sense in the middle of the day for me to do anything besides the thing that's worth a thousand dollars an hour or whatever your number is per hour. So in essence, if you spend five minutes in the middle of your day doing something that somebody else could have done for less money than what your value is, you just cost yourself that difference. So that allows you to start creating these systems and to build processes to say, I am so hyper focused on achieving this goal that if it's not worth financially this number, I will find somebody else to do all of these other things because my number is X. And there's people that'll do it for $20 an hour. There's people that'll do it for $50 an hour. You know, there. There's people like, depends on the task, like walking your dog, you can find somebody for $10 an hour to do that. And, you know, for you in the middle of the day to go walk your dog, you just. If you're making a hundred dollars an hour and you leave your office to go walk your dog instead of somebody doing it, you know that that cost you $90 to go walk your dog. So. So I. I think it actually is a mindset. More. More than anything is you figure out what the number is you think you should be making and that you're worth and you make all your decisions towards. I'm already making that. And what's cool, Jeff, is when you do this for long enough, once you finally have that first year in your life where you make a million dollars a year or $2 million a year. And when you set that goal, it was like the wild and craziest thing you could possibly think of is like, man, I'd be somebody making a million dollars a year. When it actually happens. And you look back at your W2 and you're paying taxes and you're like, holy shit, I made a million dollars a year. You actually don't experience that. You actually just go, yeah, that's exactly what it should have been. Because for years I was acting as if I was making a million dollars a year. And then when it actually happens, it's not that big of a deal.
- [68:43]
A
Right, right. You had mentioned lifestyle. Lifestyle plays into this equation, because I believe that. And this is a Dan Sullivan thing, but if you're Ambitious enough. That doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice other things that matter to you as well. Your faith, your family, the, you know, the things you want to do. It's just, you're just having to do the Rubik's Cube a little bit differently to make sure that everything fits inside of it. And then it forces you to be more critical about things you do and you don't do. You find capacity inside of things. So one of the things, and I mentioned to you before we started that I went to your book and when I got to the last chapter, it was basically said optimal capacity. And I've written a few books and my editors are always like, Jeff, this isn't a book. You're not supposed to write everything you know about everything in a book. You're supposed to be on topic. But to me, I saw that chapter and I'm like, okay, these are the things that are left on the right side of the table that didn't fit anywhere else but that Dustin still thinks are important to put in there. And boy, I was like, man, this last chapter, we could do a two hour podcast just on that last chapter because it was nugget rich environment back there. And one of the things I want to ask you about is you made some comments about family and one of the rules that you set was this three day rule where if you were going to be out of town for three days, that your wife and your daughter had to come with you. And it's just not perfect. It doesn't happen every time. But tell me about that or, or how somebody has been as successful as you building businesses multiple, multiple market segments, size scale, all types of different public, private, and then yet you still keep your family as a priority. And then actually you went on a sabbatical and you made that work.
- [70:33]
B
Yeah, so. So it actually happened when we were pregnant with my daughter. So this was 14 years ago. And at the time my wife was an entrepreneur. She started Nashville's first fashion mobile fashion truck. And so she was driving around selling her jewelry to different boutiques. And then I was running the coaching consulting business and there was this moment in time where it was like, holy crap, how are we going to have a kid and do all this? So we sat down and set a vision and set some goals and said, hey, nothing's more important than our family. I need to figure out financially how to be able to support us. And I think you helping support me through building this business seems to, seems to take the stress off. And so she sold her Mobile fashion truck ownership to her business partner. And we created this three day rule which basically said, if I'm gone more than three days, they come with me. And so it was actually in the early days it was probably one of the biggest things we spent money on was bringing my wife and my daughter on all these international trips. You know, we had an office in Estonia, Latvia and London. And what was cool was through that process, the unique experience that our family got. My daughter, by the time she was 10 years old, had 30 stamps on her passport. And still to Today as a 14 year old, she looks back and you know, a lot of her friends in eighth grade, they've never left the country, they don't even have a passport. And so for her to look back and go, that's pretty cool. I've been to 30 countries already and she's old enough to appreciate it now. I'm just thankful we did it and I'm thankful that we had the ability to do it. So that's something that I don't take for granted. And yeah, the other thing was walking in while on the phone and I used to be bad at that and I think it was causing problems. And I just made a decision that, that no matter how busy I am, no matter how crazy the fire was that I'm putting out, I found through a lot of pain and a lot of messing up, that when I would walk in on the phone and even being five minutes late, you walk in late, you're on the phone and your wife hasn't seen you all day, it's sending a message, it's saying you're not the most important thing and what I'm doing is more important. And it took me a long time to realize this, but once I did, it made a huge difference. So I would just tell people when it got to, you know, 5:59, I gotta go right now, and I would just hang up the phone. And it's interesting is people are always reacting to the boundaries that you set in your life. So if you tell people you're gonna end that phone call at 5:59 and you do it 10 times in a row, all the people you're talking to will realize they need to talk faster because you're not going to be on the phone at 6 o', clock, like the phone call is going to end and you might have to hang up on a few people for them to realize, oh, I don't have five more minutes to finish my thought here. And then when you walk in, there's like a Mental shift. I had to do this little visualization that the door threshold to my house was just a new realm. And like all the other shit from work was in this other world that I was leaving. And then I'm walking into a new world where they didn't just experience the 12 hours of insanity that I just went through and nor should they. And so I shouldn't walk in and be like, well, you won't believe what happened today. I mean we just, you know, did all these crazy things. Instead it's more, how was your day? And like, tell me, gosh, you know, tell me about the soccer match or practice and you know, how was your lunch? And like you just gotta, you gotta go into like a different mode. And the quicker you can do that, I think the more your family just doesn't feel like you're a workaholic. Like. Cause if you walk in and you show them I'm late and I'm working when I walk in. Oh, the other one was no phone calls at the table. So just like the phone, if you have to put the phone in the other room, turn the phone off, don't have the ringer on, whatever. Cause some of us are add and it's impossible not to look at the phone. But you know, if you only get one hour with your family per day and you have 12 hours with everybody else you're working with, give them that hour and, and give it everything that you got. And I'm not perfect. Again, this was just a goal and I do think that it was, it made a huge difference. I've been married 20 years now. I just celebrated my 20 year wedding anniversary and there's some years that were really good in this category and there's some years where I needed to improve and re. Look in the mirror and remind myself of these rules and principles and ideas that do work.
- [76:04]
A
Dustin, what are the most important things you're spending your time on now? Are you speaking, are you building the tech companies? Where's most of your focus and energy?
- [76:16]
B
Yeah. So you know, outside of family and all of that, work wise, I would say, yeah. So Safe Space Global Corporation. Again, the publicly traded stock ticker is SSGC. The website is SafeSpaceGlobal AI. SafeSpaceGlobal AI and growing that. So I really feel that our four segments with schools, healthcare, transportation and correctional facilities all are the most vulnerable populations that are out there. I believe that AI is the most powerful tool that's ever been created. And I believe that we are training the AI to be modeled, to Save lives. And we're focused on the people that need the most help with schools. So we have a vision to be part of the group of people that eradicate school shootings. So we have a vision that 20 years from now, there are kids that can't even fathom the possibility of somebody walking into a school and being able to shoot people. And we want to be part of that team to make it actually impossible for it to even happen, no matter how many crazy people are out there trying to do it. And so that's the one that I'm like just fired up about and on a big time mission towards. Same thing with senior living. Like, each one of them to help elderly people have safety. I mean, the things that happen in some of these senior living facilities, and my grandmother's in one and she has dementia, it's scary. So being able to go through your twilight with peace and using our tools, that's a big mission. Correctional facilities. I have a heart for the incarcerated and helping make a true impact with recidivism and actually giving them a safe environment to serve time. And for the guards that are protecting those people, I think that can impact the whole world when you get to people that are in that world. And then transportation, I mean, safe transportation for people to not. I mean, that stabbing that happened on the bus with the Ukrainian girl, that just breaks my heart. And we want to make it where that's actually impossible to happen through our technology. And then Tough Stump Technologies is the other company I'm the chief strategy officer of, to see that grow and to see us add more capabilities to save our war fighters. That is the most patriotic thing I've ever done. And I'm a true patriot and I believe in America. I believe in our core values as a nation. And I believe it takes people focused on protecting the values that built America or we could lose it. And I think that we're pretty damn close on some fronts of losing the identity that made America America. And so with Tough Stump Technologies, I feel that that's actually me being in the game and actually making a difference at a bigger level. It's easy to turn on the news and to see all the problems and get frustrated about it, but I think what the world needs is people to just go, I'm going to get in the game somehow, some way to make a difference with all these things that I'm seeing.
- [79:50]
A
What does Tough Stump do?
- [79:52]
B
So it's a military drone technology company. It does tracking and training for special ops. Okay, so TAC is kind of the ecosystem team awareness kit. So imagine Google Earth for mission planning and Tuffstump trains special ops guys. Well, in the entire military we have an online learning platform called Tuff Stump University. And so you can go and get certified on how to use this platform to do mission planning. And, you know, I mean, all the stuff you see on the news is probably getting planned on TAC before they go do it. And then they're using that as their platform to go do all the things that the military does. And so Tuff Stump is the top trainer and integrator. So think of all the technology that would need to integrate into that. And Tough Stump is the top integrator at a very specific and high level. Drones tracking training. That's kind of the bread and butter for Tuff Stop, man.
- [81:01]
A
Cool. You have found your way into some very, very cool businesses. And in the, in the senior centers, it's. Are you trying to reduce elopements? What are you doing there?
- [81:10]
B
Yeah, exactly. So we have the number one elopement prevention product. The biggest competitor is this product called Wonderguard. And we have a non wearable solution to help people with dementia from elopements. So it's facial recognition. It's tied to the door locking mechanism. And an alert goes out through our AI to not only not let them walk out the door, but then notify the rns and anybody working there, hey, somebody's trying to get out that shouldn't be getting out. And the wearables hurts their skin. They cut it off like they. You can actually, you still can escape with a wearable. So that's what Scott Boroff, the CEO over at Safe Space saw. And he wanted to create a non wearable solution for elopements. So we currently are in 24 locations. We just expanded to almost double that. We have new healthcare facilities that are getting integrated right now and we want to be the leader in elopement prevention with our AI software.
- [82:24]
A
Awesome. Dustin, it's been fascinating. I've got a curveball and a fastball for you if you want to play a little ball. But before that, tell people how to get in touch with you.
- [82:33]
B
Oh, great. So my website is dustinhillis.com d u s T I N H I L L I S dot com. You can also go check out Capacity, my new book. It actually came out today. I don't think we mentioned that. So Capacity actually is now available in all the bookstores. There it is. You got it right there. So you can go to Amazon. I think most people that's where they get their book. So Amazon, you can buy it. Today the audiobook came out. I'm actually listening to the audiobook again right now. And I excited about actually has an actor that kind of sounds like me that has a southern draw. So you can imagine it's me listening to the audiobook and it's in all your bookstores. So Ben Bella was the publisher, and it's available pretty much everywhere. So check that out. And then dustinhilis.com is the best way to reach me. And if you wanted to check out Safe space, it's the stock ticker. Ssgc.
- [83:41]
A
Awesome. Here's the curveball, Dustin. Gun to your head. Although your technology would prevent it. Gun to your head. You have to start a business in the next 30 days. It can't be something that you're currently doing. Where do you see the opportunity in the market to create a business?
- [84:07]
B
I mean, honestly, it's exactly what I'm doing. AI safety. The application of AI is the riches are in the niches. And I think nothing is bigger than AI. I think AI is the market capacity is bigger than the Internet. And so finding ways to have AI help serve people in meaningful ways is the future. And so if you don't know how to use AI to actually, like, have boots on the ground. So I'm not talking just chatgpt. I'm not talking just like, fun. I'm talking like, how do you solve a problem using AI? So I feel that's what I'm doing every day. And I'm finding new ways for our team. You know, we started off in healthcare, and then we expanded last year from healthcare to schools, to correctional facilities to transportation. So for me, it's just finding more, way more verticals where it's like, where's the biggest need? And I think that's what most people should do. Instead of thinking of how to make money, think of what's the biggest problem that I need to solve. And when you solve the biggest problems, the money comes. So don't think of it of like, where can I make the most money? Think of it as like, what's the biggest problem? And what are the tools that are available to solve that problem? And AI has changed the ball game on the tool available to solve problems that maybe five years ago, you knew was a problem, but you didn't know how to solve it. I'm willing to bet if you take the time you lean in, you don't think, oh, I'm not a tech guy. Now everybody's a tech guy. AI has made it where everybody can be a tech guy. So just kind of get curious about how you can apply that to solve really big problems. Problems.
- [85:55]
A
Fantastic. Last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [86:05]
B
God loves you no matter what, and he designed you for a specific reason. And for you to walk into that purpose and to not shy away from that light and to accept who you are and to fulfill the reason you're here. There's nothing more important than that.
- [86:30]
A
Perfectly said, Dustin. Thank you for being on today.
- [86:33]
B
Thanks, Jeff.
- [86:34]
A
I'm Jeff Duden. We have been here with the incredible Dustin Hillis on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.