Justin Brock - President of Bobby Brock Insurance, Founder of MedicareCon | Leaving The Marines and Making $70 Million

Summary

Success Story Podcast: Episode Summary with Justin Brock

Episode Title: Justin Brock - President of Bobby Brock Insurance, Founder of MedicareCon | Leaving The Marines and Making $70 Million
Release Date: March 18, 2025
Host: Scott D. Clary
Podcast: Success Story with Scott D. Clary

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of the Success Story Podcast, host Scott D. Clary interviews Justin Brock, a Marine Corps veteran who transitioned from military service to building a multimillion-dollar insurance empire. Justin shares his journey of taking over his father’s brokerage, scaling it to national prominence, and successfully selling his businesses for over $70 million in 2024. Beyond financial success, Justin emphasizes his mission to impact others by mentoring entrepreneurs and fostering financial freedom.

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From Marine Corps to Multimillion-Dollar Success

Justin Brock begins by discussing his foundational years in the US Marine Corps, where he honed discipline and leadership skills. After nearly a decade of service, Justin made an unexpected pivot into the insurance industry, inspired by his father’s success. He recounts, “I had seen my dad making six figures in insurance. My thought was always, if they can do it, why can't I do that?” (00:22).

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Scaling the Insurance Business

Justin took over his father's brokerage and leveraged innovative marketing strategies to outpace competitors. He explains how embracing digital marketing was pivotal:

“A lot of people think to make money on social media you got to have a million followers. I would venture that you could have 15,000 if they're the right.” (00:52)

By focusing on targeted marketing channels like Facebook ads and SEO, Justin accelerated the growth of his insurance business beyond traditional methods. He highlights the importance of finding "honey holes" in the market, areas where targeted efforts yield significant returns (05:36).

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Innovative Marketing and Community Building

A significant portion of the episode delves into Justin's marketing prowess. He discusses transitioning from old-school direct mail to modern digital strategies, inspired by industry leaders like Russell Brunson. Justin shares a transformative moment:

“That ad changed my entire philosophy on the Internet... I can throw up an ad and spend maybe $25 a day and just get phone call after phone call after phone call.” (16:52)

Justin also emphasizes the power of community building. By creating a Facebook group for insurance agents, he fostered a niche community that not only provided value but also generated organic referrals and business growth:

“We started creating content online for agents and built a large niche community... it just keeps absorbing more members.” (41:54)

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Exit Strategy: Selling for $70 Million

The conversation shifts to Justin's exit strategy, detailing how he navigated offers to sell his business. Justin explains his decision to retain a minority stake, ensuring he remained involved in the business post-sale:

“I wanted to set my family up to make sure... I still wanted to keep growing the business and the team.” (54:31)

He shares insights on evaluating offers based on EBITDA multiples and the importance of aligning with platform companies that respect his vision and maintain business integrity (58:31).

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Post-Exit Reflections and Relationship with Money

After selling his business, Justin discusses the emotional and financial adjustments he experienced. He candidly shares his initial indulgences, like purchasing a Lamborghini, and the subsequent realization of the fleeting satisfaction they provided:

“I had that Lamborghini for five months and sold it. It was fun for a minute, but the fun wore off.” (83:26)

Justin underscores the importance of conservative investing post-exit, focusing on equity index funds, real estate syndications, and CDs to ensure financial stability without risking principal (87:33).

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Advice for Entrepreneurs

Throughout the episode, Justin imparts invaluable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs:

1. Marathon, Not a Sprint: Justin stresses the importance of long-term perseverance over short-term gains.

   “It's a marathon, not a sprint. You can be a Kenyan in the marathon... making grand strides towards a goal.” (111:27)

2. Ethical Marketing: Building trust through transparent and value-driven marketing strategies is crucial for sustainable success.

3. Community Engagement: Foster niche communities without immediate asks. Provide value first to build rapport and loyalty.

4. Strategic Exit Planning: Carefully evaluate offers to ensure alignment with your vision and protect your legacy.

5. Relationship with Money: Maintain a balanced perspective on wealth. Invest wisely and avoid lifestyle creep to ensure long-term financial well-being.

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Conclusion

Justin Brock’s story is a testament to strategic thinking, relentless drive, and ethical business practices. From his disciplined Marine Corps background to orchestrating a $70 million exit, Justin exemplifies the essence of modern entrepreneurship. His insights on marketing, community building, and financial management offer a blueprint for others aspiring to achieve similar success.

For more information and to connect with Justin Brock, visit justinbro.com and follow him on YouTube.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Justin Brock: “I had seen my dad making six figures in insurance. My thought was always, if they can do it, why can't I do that?” (00:22)

• Scott Clary: “A lot of people think to make money on social media you got to have a million followers. I would venture that you could have 15,000 if they're the right.” (00:52)

• Scott Clary: “That ad changed my entire philosophy on the Internet... I can throw up an ad and spend maybe $25 a day and just get phone call after phone call after phone call.” (16:52)

• Scott Clary: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You can be a Kenyan in the marathon... making grand strides towards a goal.” (111:27)

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This summary captures the essence of Justin Brock's insightful journey, highlighting key discussions and valuable lessons shared during the podcast episode.

Transcript

[Justin Brock]

What has been your key to moving so fast?

[Scott Clary]

In the beginning, the competition against other people. That would drive me because that competition brought me to a level that I didn't think that I would ever achieve or never even really conceptualize.

[Narrator]

How does a Marine Corps veteran go from military service to building a multimillion dollar empire in the insurance industry? Today, I sit down with a man who did just that.

[Scott Clary]

I had seen my dad, to him making six figures in insurance. My thought was always, if they can do it, why can't I do that? Nobody wants health insurance until they're sick and dying and then they need something to pay the bill. Wanted dental insurance.

[Narrator]

Justin Brock started in the US Marine Corps. But after nearly a decade of service, he made an unexpected pivot. Insurance. Taking over his father's brokerage, he scaled it into a national powerhouse. He didn't stop there. Built Goguru Pro CRM and in 2024 sold his businesses for over $70 million. But money was never the goal. Impact was.

[Scott Clary]

It was the vanity products that I sold. And that ad, it changed my entire philosophy. On the Internet, if you just try a bunch of stuff, stuff, eventually you can find a honey hole like that. A lot of people think to make money on social media you got to have million followers. I would venture that you could have 15,000 if they're the right. Following your work in quantity of days is making grand strides towards a goal than you can possibly fathom within that individual day.

[Narrator]

From writing purpose after service. From Marine to Millionaire to mentoring entrepreneurs, Justin's mission is to help others achieve financial freedom. Welcome to the Justin Brock Story.

[Sponsor]

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[Justin Brock]

You went from Marine Corps veteran to selling a $70 million insurance business in 10 years. What has been your key to moving so fast?

[Scott Clary]

I actually feel like, you know, knowing what I know now, I guess everybody would start there. If you started there, it'd be a different, different answer. But knowing what I know now, I feel like kind of move slow. Like most of that progress was made in the last five years. And even as that five year window went on, it was increasingly more and more and more. A lot of that is because I, you, you, you develop this, this confidence in, you know, slowly, in what you know as well as, you know, attaining, you know, new information. But I have to say from the beginning, the thing that made me not settle on my initial goal, my initial goal was just to make, you know, like I said before, 60,000. I was like, I got to replace my Marine Corps income. And then, you know, if one day I get to a hundred thousand, that would be just glorious. That was my thought. But what happened was I entered a space and quickly would find people to compete against. In the beginning, that was individual agents that I wanted to make sure I dwarfed their production. And then that became agency owners that had more people working for them or that they had recruited. And then after that it became kind of marketing organizations that had multiple recruiters under them. So not to make it sound too much like a pyramid scheme, insurance, I always say, is the oldest multi level marketing or network marketing, you know, vertical. And, but anyway, it was really in the beginning the competition against other people that would drive me. And then it was the realization at different breaking points that something else was possible. Because that competition brought me to a level that I didn't think that I would ever achieve or never even really conceptualized. Like the idea of making $250,000 a year as a personal income was revolutionary. And by the time it happened, all I kept thinking was, wow, I never thought I'd do that. And it's not as much as I thought it was. And so then, and Then I eventually, as I ascended through kind of these, these friendly competitors and you know, friends in the industry that I made no money off of. But we had great relationships. I was, I, I saw one sell his business for 50 million. His name was Richard Cantu. And you know, I was in Bora Bora with him right before he started the talks of selling. And when that happened, I was like, you know, if what we're building is that valuable, like, and I'd never heard of EBITDA multiples and never even thought about selling a business. Who sells a business? What is that? So, you know, I know most of the people that like, watch these podcasts have heard of that, but it's, there's these people out there that have no idea what the hell that even means, you know, and that's how I kind of learned about it. And, and so I just had that appetite to keep readjusting, find, you know, find out how to do something more about proving to myself that I could do it. But then when I would do it, it'd be like, okay, there's no going back now. I gotta go to the next, the next level.

[Justin Brock]

Who do you think? Were you competing against yourself? Were you competing against some idealistic version of who you thought you had to be for the world? Your spouse, your parent? Like, you have competitive nature. I think that's a requirement and a prerequisite to entrepreneurship. I think you have to be some level of competitive. But who are you competing against when you first started?

[Scott Clary]

In the beginning, I was, in my mind, I was trying to. My dad was an insurance agent. So my dad was, he never really built it into a business. He had, he was a solo agent. He was house to house. So he would go into houses. So when I got out of the Marine Corps, I was like, I had seen my dad, you know, go from us being very poor to him making six figures in insurance over like a 20 year span, you know, slowly but surely. And so I knew it was possible to make some money in insurance. Right. It's one thing knowing it's possible is another thing knowing someone that is close to you that did it. But he was always kind of a hard ass guy. So when I entered it, the first person I was competing against was him. I felt like to impress him, I just had to do way more than he did. And then that happened. I, I kind of, you know, figured out digital marketing in a way that made it very difficult for him to compete with. It's not like necessarily I was a better agent than him. I Just was able to figure out a marketing path that led to a much more abundant outreach to me. And by doing that, we dwarfed that production. And so then it became about me. But I would find people that were doing more than me to, quote, unquote, compete against. But these were always like friends of mine. But my thought was always, if they can do it, why can't I do that?

[Justin Brock]

You know, it's interesting because when you look for like business opportunities, most people, I, I just had a conversation about this this morning. Most people look for techno, like technological innovation, and they ride a wave and that's how they become successful. They find something that's never been done before and they try and innovate. But there's another way to be successful. And it's, it's distribution, it's marketing distribution, it's media distribution. And what's so interesting and what so many people can learn from your story is you went into a very old school. Industry is basically one of the most legacy, old school, outdated industries you can possibly find yourself in. And a little bit of marketing prowess. It's not like you went to school and then you were like a, you know, you're not like the pick a marketer, a Seth Godin and Neil Patel, these guys that all they do is market all day since they were like five years old. A little bit of marketing and a seventy million dollar exit later. That's, that's fascinating. So when, when did you first understand that media as a form of leverage and distribution was a game changer for you?

[Scott Clary]

So what the, the origin is, I was, I was actually driving house to house doing things through old school direct mailway because you first come in the old school, the old guard, if you will. You know, this is how you do it. So I started doing it that way and it, it worked, but it's very slow. And so I was listening to productivity podcasts and I didn't, again, I didn't know anything about marketing. I was like, I'd be on these long drives from house to house. And so I, I was like, I got to learn something. So started listening to, you know, sales training and then it was, you know, and I was like, my sales are, are good. I don't know if I'm a good salesperson, but I'm closing a very high percentage of these people. I need more people to talk to. So then it was productivity. And then I would listen to the productivity. It's like, well, yeah, that's great, but I still need more people. And so then eventually it was like you need marketing. But I didn't even. Like you said, I'm not a per. I wasn't a professional marketer. I, I just had no idea. But I did grow up in what I would consider the vine era when all these people got really, really famous through vine. And then came you know, the Jake and Logan Paul's and the David Dobriks and, and you know, YouTube famous. And I was one of those kids as a teenager making YouTube content. Then I joined the Marine Corps and kind of quit. But that I had no, you know, we were making it back then we didn't know con like the concept of becoming famous off of content online wasn't really there for me. Looking back I was probably 20 videos away from having some kind of breakout and being some little Internet celebrity. But you know, at the time I wasn't thinking about that. But I understood seeing being a small content creator as a teenager, seeing you know, these guys that were doing it at the same time become these mega celebrities that the Internet was definitely, you know, social media was definitely the way to go. And uh, so about, you know, about really I'm close to 11 years ago now when I got into it. So about 11 years ago, 10 years ago I'm, I'm going house to house. I'm watching these or listening to these productivity podcasts and eventually I came across a guy who was in life insurance. He wasn't doing the same thing vertical I was, but very similar. And he was talking about. His name is Jeff Root. He's a good friend of mine now. And Jeff, he lives in south of France, has a very successful digital brokerage for life and he was talking at the time about SEO for life insurance. He was popping up many sites where he would have very hyper specific. He had1like celltermlife.com but there was a, a lot of websites that he was creating for like diabetes, diabetes or diabetics that wanted life insurance like and he was hacking these, these long tail or mid, mid range keywords through pretty easy SEO at the time. And like it's much more difficult to, to crack into that now. But at the time he was part of that way. And so I was, I realized like something was going on there. And then he made a recommendation. At one point he was talking about something Russell Brunson said. So that was my intro to Russell Brunson early on. Russell Brunson.com Secrets Expert Secrets. I was listening to that, listening to the perfect webinar and that's how I kind of got into Facebook ads. Because Russell was talking a lot back then about Facebook ads. And this was early Facebook monetization, you know, and. And Facebook works now, but back then, it was like, you know, it was like giving cocaine to kids on there. I mean, it was. It's like, so. So, you know, crazy. I mean, you put an ad up and people didn't realize it was an ad because the entire platform had existed for years now with no advertisement. And so. And it didn't say sponsored. And so I made a page that was just Justin Brock. So it wasn't. Because back then, you couldn't advertise from your profile, so you had to make a page. So I made a page, but I named the page my name. And then I'd run advertisements, and then they would go viral because they're getting pushed into these. Into people's feeds because they're ads. And people would share it and like it and comment and. And I was telling them to call my cell phone. This is how dumb the ads were. And my cell phone was ringing off the hook. And all it was was a dental insurance ad, because in my eyes, I was like, what? What? This is probably part of Russell's pitch is like, what do people want to buy? And they say, sell them what they want, then sell them what they need. Well, people wanted dental insurance because they wanted their teeth to look and feel good. Like, that's a different type of thing. Nobody wants health insurance until they're sick and dying, and then they need something to pay the bill. Nobody wants life insurance, really. You know, that's. Those are harder sales. People need some of those things, but they didn't necessarily want them, but they wanted dental insurance. It was always the vanity product that I sold. And that ad, man, it changed my entire philosophy on the Internet, because all of a sudden I'm like, I can throw up an ad and spend at the time maybe 25 bucks a day and just get phone call after phone call after phone call. Now it's not quite as easy anymore, but you know everybody. Like, if you just try a bunch of stuff, eventually you can find a honey hole like that. And the only thing I didn't realize is that honey hole was going to dry up. And if I knew that, I would have spent a lot more money a lot faster.

[Justin Brock]

Hindsight's always 20 20. I mean, but that. But by the way, that is, like, such a good lesson, because I know a lot of people right now are talking about, for example, like, tick tock shop. People are saying, you can make a Ton of money on TikTok shop selling super goods. Now, whatever happens in, in a, in a couple days when, when maybe it doesn't exist anymore in the US that remains to be seen. But the point is.

[Sponsor]

Yeah.

[Justin Brock]

Can you build a foundation? Yes. But then you have to be smart enough to figure out how to diversify and how to go into different channels, how to explore new things like the, the process of testing and finding new like grand slam marketing. Oper, it's never ending. And I'm sure you've gone through a thousand different versions of marketing over the course of actually building this business. And even, you know, tomorrow you're going to see lack of performance or slightly worse performance on one of the million things you're trying right now. And you're going to try a couple new things. That's just business. It's just business. It never ends. I think that you have to keep disrupting and reinventing.

[Scott Clary]

It's kind of like you were talking before this, you talking about the distribution of this, of your platform being on ott. Well, I talk about OTT all the time. You know, that is a medium we use right now for like ott, over the top television advertisements through different streaming platforms. And it's like television for targeted avatars. So if I'm, if I'm going out and I'm able to target a range, an age range and I'm in Medicare, that's always great because you know, I don't want people that are 25 looking at a Medicare ad. Right. But Ott has been great. It's like the best of broadcast television, but like really targeted. But these are. Yes. And I became a junkie on advertising. So you know, now I've, I've done, I've done and do most of these. I've done radio, broadcast television, ott, Billboard campaigns, lots of different social media, done some on Tick tock, done on LinkedIn. I've done, I've, I will try and still use direct mail, but we use direct mail now using kind of the Dan Kennedy magnetic marketing method where we're like trying to send out really high quality pieces that invoke an inbound response. You know, not a, not a bait and switch spammy stuff because the insurance industry is full of people marketing to look either look like a government entity or using a bait and switch campaign. And, and I'm like, if you just come up with quality marketing, quality messaging, you don't have to do that and then you build higher lifetime value customers. And that's just been our approach is like, let's, let's get clever but not gimmicky.

[Justin Brock]

You know, I mean, I think that, listen, there's people like you that are going to come in and they disrupt and obviously, I mean, you look at your own success. So if you, if you do prioritize the customer, if you have like a high EQ marketing strategy, if you actually speak to problems, they have no bait and switch. If somebody does that, it's going to work for a while, until it doesn't, then somebody who actually markets properly is going to come in, they're going to take, you know, they're going to take market share, they're going to clean up because that's what customers want. Customers are smart. Customers aren't stupid. I mean, it's kind of predatory if you're going after old people with these bait and switch tactics, for sure, but even then they're smart or someone in their circle of influence or their family is going to be like, hey, this is, this is not exactly what it seems to be, but.

[Scott Clary]

And that's what we've seen in our it's debate. And switch marketing has plummeted the average lifetime value of the customer. Meanwhile, ours remained really high. But they, they don't understand that like, you know, people would come in with money into this industry and they'd be like, oh, wow, I can spend $200 and acquire a customer that's worth, you know, 1500. That's great. You know, you don't get all that right away, but the lifetime value of that customer, right? And the 1500 is a realistic lifetime value of the customer. If you can keep them happy for a long time. But it's not realistic. If they, if they pop on a plan, realize they got bamboozled and hop off three months later or six months later, then you're actually losing money. And so we've had a lot of these people come in and they think, oh, the customers were 1500, let me get as many of them as possible. But if you go and do it the wrong way, it's not 1500, it's 500, 400, 300. And so that's happened where it's kind of lowered the lifetime value on average. But meanwhile ours has stayed the same. So, um, it's been it all. Honestly, it's refreshing to see when you're in business and you see someone come in and do something the wrong way and then, and then get kind of, you know, capitalism penalizes them for it eventually. You know, the free market works if you let, if you let it, you know, sometimes they'll be like trying to add some regulation to fix something. And I'm like, if you guys just wait, it's going to fix itself because these people are getting hammered on the back end because they're doing business the wrong way, you know?

[Justin Brock]

Yeah, I, I, I think that the way people buy is changing rapidly. I mean most of the research is done before you even engage with the company. Now. It's what it, there's, there has to be so much trust built. People are doing their, you know, people are fact checking. They're not just taking the company's word for it. And that's going to completely, to your point, sort of self regulate the market because the consumer is so smart. I'm, I'm curious. You mentioned something that was interesting. It's a very interesting, I like that Russell Brunson quote idea. What was it? Sell them what they want and then sell them what they need. Why did you not just build a business selling them what they want? Is it too crowded? Like, I mean you, you built a business in a very unsexy industry. You could have kept selling dental insurance. I mean there's companies that do that and probably do very well. So what was the thought process and your thought process, but also help an entrepreneur who's just starting out understand how they should interpret that quote for what they want to pursue.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. So I mean the, the origin of me interpreting that quote was if someone reaches out or expresses interest in a product that you think, well okay, I can help with that product, but that's not exactly what I help with. Then you can you just enter that conversation? I think this is where, where kind of sales comes in. You know, sales meets marketing is like, okay, they wanted dental insurance, so we talked to them about dental insurance. We can absolutely help you with that. This is how that works. By the way. We also help with health insurance, Medicare and life insurance. Do you have Medicare? Do you have Medicare right now? I was specifically targeting people for dental insurance that were close to aging into Medicare because you get Medicare when you turn 65 and retire and that kind of thing. And a lot of these people would be close to that or own it and not really have an expert that's helped them navigate it. And so when I would sell them the dental insurance, it was the lead, the lead in for me to build rapport. And then I could find where they were undercovered or maybe they were paying too much for something they didn't realize they were, they had redundant coverages or you know, or they had chosen something based on a limited set of information. So the selling what they need is like finding what they don't even know to ask for. So from a business standpoint there are things that are kind of commoditized. Like people know people are going to buy gas, people are going to buy electricity, people are going to buy water. Right. You know, there's, there's things that people are just going to buy. And all you got to do is be conveniently there, the most convenient one for them, or have a monopoly on it like utility companies do. But otherwise you can find the thing that they're going to buy, be conveniently there to get on the phone with them and talk to them about it. It's not bait and switch. I can help you with that. Worst case scenario, I helped you with what you wanted. I might make a smaller margin on that product, but then I have other things that I can help you with and I just use that, that, that dental, we'll call it the dental insurance or whatever that lead in is to I help somebody with this problem. If that cost me 50 bucks to get that customer and I make 200 or 150 or whatever, I'm still profitable, but it's also a profitable lead flow that I can use to be like, let me see if there's also this other thing that I can help you with where my margin is better. And I'm not talking about, you know, do it. It's people that actually need the help. So what we do like very frequently in the way I started is I'd find people that have a standardized Medicare plan. There's their supplement plans called, they're like letters, Plan F, Plan G, Plan N, whatever. You'd find the plan that they had, make sure they understood it. But they're standardized. So whether it's Aetna Mutual, Omaha, Humana, United Healthcare, it's the exact same coverage. No difference in network because they're on Medicare so they can go to any doctor they want to, that takes Medicare. The supplement just pays their out of pocket for them. But you'd have one paying 200 when they could get it for a hundred. So all we were doing was identifying that they had it and they were paying double what they needed to and then getting their cost down. So but they didn't necessarily know that that was possible. So the selling them what they need is finding a way to get on the phone with them to build rapport so that they trust you to talk about the top, the other topics and then Proving to them that there is this other thing that they need to do that they didn't even know, and that's why they're not going to reach out. Like, if you just say, if I just was out there all the time saying I help people with, you know, Medicare supplements, they'd be like, well, I got one of those. Well, they didn't know they're paying double the price. What's the easiest way for me to get on the phone with them? And my. Early on. And we do it different ways now, multiple ways, but dental insurance was just a great way to.

[Justin Brock]

It was like a wedge. It was like a wedge in. It was to break the ice. It was to get your foot in the door.

[Scott Clary]

Yep.

[Justin Brock]

You know, there's something to be said about that, because if, if you, if you are a good entrepreneur, an ethical entrepreneur, you know that the product that you're selling offers tons of value. If you don't care enough about your customer to understand all the other products or services are kind of adjacent to the main thing or the first thing that you're selling, you don't offer those things. I truly do believe you're doing them a disservice because they're going to get that from someone else anyways. So they're getting this at a premium from someone else. Maybe they were bamboozled by another company. If you didn't do that, then you're actually doing your own customers a disservice.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. And that's kind of, that was. That's the kind of conviction. When we build a sales team, you want your, you want your sales team to have a high conviction about what they do. And the only way to really do that is to train them to do ethical things. Like if, if you're, if, if you're somebody who had. And I've worked with sales reps that definitely had more easily fracturable psyches where they're. They can really convince themselves that something is good that isn't necessarily good just for the. Because it's better for them. I work with people that are. There's a spectrum on that. Right. You know, there's, there's the spectrum where somebody's like, so good, where it's hard for them to even be a salesperson. And it's like they can't even, like they, they're. They're buying everything from their framework and they're, they may be overly cynical or something. Right. And then there's the person on the far right side that could sell anybody anything because they're just out to make a buck off everybody. We look for somebody that's on the ethical side of that, but that can also really buy into like you have a set of information, a skill set that you can utilize to leave people in a better place than you found them and make great, a great income doing that. And when you're building a sales team, if you don't have a, a process and a product or a service that can actually do that, then your sales reps, a lot of them are not going to buy into it. You know, they're going to, you're gonna be like, I don't, I don't want to sell this. I feel like a scam artist. People do not want to. People want to make money, but people do not tip. Most people do not want to make money. Like people over, they just don't want to do. You know, a few do, but not the majority.

[Justin Brock]

No, no.

[Scott Clary]

Everybody wants to make better money, but they just, they want to feel good about the way they're doing it too. If I can, if I can feel like I left a wake of people better than me and made a shitload of money doing it, then I can go to bed and sleep like a rock, you know?

[Justin Brock]

Yeah.

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Indeed.com Clary terms and conditions do apply. Just go to Indeed.com/clarity. A huge thank you to NetSuite for supporting today's episode. Now, what does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you're going.

[Justin Brock]

To get 10 answers. Bull market, Bear market.

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That is netsuite.com Scott Clary I know.

[Justin Brock]

I mean that's and by like sales are like, they're one of the most important positions you can hire in an organization. Most people have a really hard time finding good salespeople or hiring good salespeople because you've built out a really strong sales organ. Now I know you have an opinion and you have sort of some wisdom on this because just what you just said. What would be the advice for people who are trying to hire great salespeople who don't have, you know, they're just starting out, they don't know what to look for, they don't know how to gauge the right personality kind of that balance that you just mentioned. Do you do anything more formal like a disc profile or like some sort of other test or what do you do when you're trying to find the right person?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, we, we actually our team has used chat GBT man to make like a really cool Matrices out of the disk assessment. So we have everybody take a very simple paper disc. Then we upload their scores into a. We put it through a form that populates it on a Google sheet that powers all these, like, graphs and stuff. It's just funny. Like, I don't know how useful it is, but it makes us feel really cool. Like, we have this, like, great apple, but we do. We do you.

[Justin Brock]

Has it worked out? I mean, has it worked out?

[Scott Clary]

It's certainly worked. I've had people that, before I was doing it effectively that I had in service positions that, based on the data we've seen in those. Those disc profiles that we've moved to sales positions that they were suffering in service, and we were looking at firing them, and they end up being some of your top salespeople and vice versa. So. So there's definitely. Absolutely. And those sales and service are probably like, you know, the most polar opposite. You know, you have. Your high S personalities, are great in service. Your high D high I are really good in sales. I. I have my own beliefs on it. The way that we sell and because we're dealing with, you know, the elderly, you know, we try to go with, like, high I personalities. They're just bubbly, you know, good people, good energy for our salespeople. But high D personalities do really well in sales. My. I had a video, I did an interview with Sean Mike Kelly, and I said something about hiring, like, alpha personalities or not. I don't, I don't like hiring a lot of them. And then, of course, a lot of people were commenting, you know, that's just because you're not alpha enough to alpha the alphas or whatever. And I'm like, that's because they're. They, they. And this is a blanket statement. There are certainly some great. I would consider myself. I don't know, I don't want to say consider myself an Alpha, because it sounds dumb. But, like, I would say that when I hire those high D personalities, a. A significant portion of them are those people I'm talking about with that fracturable psyche, the ones that can kind of manipulate what is good based on what is good for them. And they can be a little bit difficult. They're great. A lot of them are probably great at running a business. They're great at leading a big team. They're great at, you know, whatever. But if you can find a coachable high D personality, somebody that really values you as a mentor or somebody on your team, some of your managers as a mentor, and they. But they are a highly driven person. They can become one of your apex employees. It's just difficult because high D personalities are sometimes very sure of themselves in a way that they become uncoachable. Right. So high I has been a great, you know, thing for us. But then you know, there's a spectrum. I tell people there's a, there's the, there's their EQ and iq, right? So like if, if they could be a high D personality but be very stupid and, and then he's got a stupid right.

[Justin Brock]

You know, I don't, I don't disagree with you, dude. I would never hire somebody that self labels them like refers to themselves as an Alpha. That to me is like a whole host of psychological issues. If you ever with a straight face look at me and you tell me that's how you self identify. I think you have a lot that you're going through. Like that's, that's a, that is a wild fucking statement.

[Scott Clary]

They probably have a lot of emotional issues themselves to like feel the need to say that. You can feel confident in yourself. Like I'm confident in my abilities. I could lead a team, I could do these things. But I've seen people that have done, have accomplished nothing that call themselves an Alpha. And I'm like, I think you mean asshole. Like I don't mean out like, you know, but you know, that's just. But I did catch some flack from the self proclaimed alphas on Instagram when that.

[Justin Brock]

Oh, you hit the, you hit the red pill community. That's why.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, and I was like, I was looking, I was reading a couple of the comments and I was like, if you are such an Alpha, would you be commenting on this video about this? Like, I just can't really get like, like a super mega alpha would be.

[Justin Brock]

Way too a guy who, a guy who has all the money in the world, all the, you know, whatever relationships, all the, I guess the, the stereotypical alpha male is all the money, all the women, all the success. Are you really sitting at home on a Saturday night commenting on YouTube? I don't think so, bro. I don't know too many cool people that I look up to that have whatever they have and have it all that are commenting on YouTube on a Saturday night. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I know the wrong.

[Scott Clary]

I, I like everybody that I know. That is what it's funny like, you know, because you see those, that type of riff raff and, and I know who I am and I know what I've accomplished and I know What. How I feel and how happy I am. And so, like, I'm. I'm sitting there, and they'll be like, you're just not an Alpha. And I'm like, I don't even care. I don't know what that means. I.

[Justin Brock]

You know, I don't think anyone knows it.

[Scott Clary]

Whatever I am is what I want to be, because I'm happy. I'm. I'm enjoying my life, and I'm good.

[Justin Brock]

Amen, man. Listen, you have a beautiful family. You had. You had a $70 million exit. You built a great bit. Like, I think that this is kind of all the things that most people aspire to achieve. You also served in the core. Like, I mean, there's not too many boxes you don't check. So you're. I think you're good.

[Scott Clary]

I got married at 19, so I don't have all the women. I got the one, and I got my daughter, and that's all the women I need.

[Justin Brock]

I think that's all anyone needs. That's all anybody needs, dude. I think that's perfect. Yeah. So let's talk about. Let's talk about. You found a gap. You found out how marketing sort of leverages that gap in the market. Now you're growing this business. So let's. Obviously, there's been a lot that you do. There's a lot of different ways to market, a lot of different ways you grow systems, processes, people hiring. All of it. You do. You've done all of it. But what are some of the key inflection points, some of the big things that contributed to the growth outside of, like, the running the Facebook ads at the beginning? What were some other major milestones or things that happened?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. So we talked the marketing side consistently, like understanding that honey holes dry up. And so when I found them, I was. I would spend money quicker. Even times when I spent money and lost a lot of it. There were some broadcast TV points where I actually did lose a lot in markets that didn't convert the same as other markets, but the increased willingness to do that. I did go and buy some. Some smaller agencies over time, and I packaged them with ours, so that helped me out tremendously. But I think the. The scaling of the sales team was another one. We were talking about being able to scale internal sales team, and then we actually created a lot of content online for other agents before we had anything to sell those agents, because we weren't recruiting. So there's two ways to do things in our world. You can hire an agent, and so when I would hire an agent, I'd take a brand new agent, somebody that we would get licensed, hire them. All their commissions are assigned to our entity and we do all the marketing for them, we pay for all their licenses, all that. And that's what we call kind of a career agent. They get a salary plus commission, so their commission is lower. But they're in a controlled environment. And you can take someone that isn't necessarily someone that wanted to be an insurance agent. Like I would take people that were like retail store managers or have a basketball coach, just different jobs. Cops. They would come in and do these sales positions like this and they're making, you know, double the money they were making before in these other positions. And they're very happy with that. This is more than they ever thought they'd make in a controlled environment, no risk. And so you can do that, and that's what I did first. Or then you could do the brokerage side. And what that means is like you're taking on the people that are getting the lion's share of the commission and you're making a small amount of override over the off of their production. If they write a policy, if they make 100 bucks, you might make 10 or 20. But your job is to recruit them in, train them, motivate them, whatever. So we started creating content online for agents basically because Gary Vaynerchuk said to, that's why I started doing it. And he said, you know, just put content out and see what happens, you know. So we started doing that and we built this pretty large, especially for our niche online community right now 15, it's a Facebook groups where we started, has 15,400 health insurance agents in there. And that group led into us doing conferences and like mini workshops and kind of creating that entire value ladder for that group, which eventually became a value. A kind of a value ladder where some of them would ascend to moving their insurance contracts through our organization where we may override on their production, which put. Makes us invested in their success. Right. So that, that social. Organic. Social media. Organic. YouTube actually did play a huge part in some of our evolution as well. But I don't.

[Justin Brock]

And now it's like niche community building. That's really what it was.

[Scott Clary]

And I think that's an interesting thing. So a lot of people think to make money on social media you gotta have million followers or whatever. I would venture that like you could have 15,000. If they're the right following, you can do really good. I mean, and that could be like one Thing here's a mark that I missed though, right? So we're, we're, we're marketing direct to consumer. Two people going on Medicare. I started making the agent community and I'm, I started building YouTube content for them. I think we're like at 100k YouTube subscribers now. But the, all that content was going out towards insurance agents while we were growing a sales team that marketed direct to consumers. And we would use our direct to consumer efforts to document what was working and what wasn't working for the agents. So it was like we were pr, we were practicing it and then preaching it versus you know, just preaching it, you know, which does happen. But what I, where I missed the mark was at the same time a friend of mine decided, well, I'm going to make a Facebook group for the consumers. Her Facebook group for the consumers is like 200,000 Medicare beneficiaries in there and she just gets hella referrals off of this thing. I didn't even think to do that at the time. I was sitting there making an agent group and then I went back and tried to make a consumer group. But there's waves, there's timing with stuff. So like, you know what I would tell people? Like you remember when Clubhouse popped up and people were, there were people that were getting famous off of Clubhouse really quick right? Now Threads is a thing, you know, and it's, is it a big thing? I don't know. But you gotta, you have to throw Hail Mary's into platforms and concepts on platforms when they're new to get that wave. Because that Facebook group wave is, I'm not saying it's gone, but like for that exact niche, we're so far ahead of any competitors that it would be difficult to catch up, you know. And now anybody that pops up a health insurance agent Facebook group. Now once someone finds their group through an invite, they then say, well what other groups are they? And then ours being the biggest, continues to absorb. So every time someone tries to come and compete now, ours just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So we probably have 15 to 20 agents a day right now just joining that Facebook group.

[Justin Brock]

Organic just keeps compounding. It just keeps compounding. And then, then eventually some of that revenue just starts to trickle into you because they see the value. I'm curious if you're trying to build a community because now you have your friend that built a community of the actual individuals. You said the 200,000 person community. That's a different kind of content and different kind of value add. But if you are trying to create a community around professionals in your industry. What's the value add that you give them? Like, what do you give these agents that they. They not only like to consume the content, but they also want to bring their business over to you. Like, how much do you have to give them?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. So I think what worked for us in the beginning of the community building was that we didn't have any ask, like I would say for a solid year in the beginning when I built that community. And I know that's tough, but that's what Gary Vee was saying. He was totally right on this stuff. For a year, I didn't sell them anything. I didn't ask them to go to an event. I didn't try to recruit them. I just put stuff out there. I just basically what. And I was still at the time selling insurance. We started it in beginning of 2018. I had a small sales team. We were growing. We were probably. I would say we were grossing maybe a couple million a year at this point and probably had five or six employees at the time. And. But I was still selling, you know, I was still like hyperactive and. Which also meant that I was living through what they were living through daily, but I was doing it at a higher scale than most of them. And I would just put that out there. Here's what I did today. Here's a snag. I ran into here's a problem. And. And then they would start. They would start putting their problems up or what they had done. So it would be. They'd put their wins, they'd put their problems. And we were just encouraging everyone to share that. Share wins, share problems. And then anytime they had a problem, I was there answering. And so in the beginning, it was. It required an immense amount of time for no payoff from me. But I kind of looked at it as a hobby, man. I was like an outlet, you know, I was working all day and then in the evening I'd sit on there and just talk to these people. So instead of watching Netflix, I was on a damn Facebook community every night talking to insurance agents about what we had done that day and that it just built a lot of rapport. Now that Facebook community, I don't post in there personally ever. Now we have a marketing team. I have a couple of videographers. We have a filming day. You know, once a week I film content. They put it in there and they pull up popular posts. I do video answers to them. But we still just share practical content of. Here's what we're doing in marketing. Here's what we're doing. So I think what, what they're after is just somebody that feels like they're actually going through the same struggles that they have or they have been through them being open and transparent and sharing the information ahead of time. And I think that's like Gary Vaynerchuk, the original, I think the original book was the thank you Economy. And it was basically like, you know, the economy's changing to do business with people that give them information they used to. It'd be like, you know, insurance agents, like, hey, you can sign up for a free consultation. Well, no, that's a. Nobody's signing up for your free consultation. You know, tell them, give them the answer to their question and if they like your answer and they like how you gave it to them, then they're probably going to come back to you for more answers and eventually you're going to build rapport. And so I think that's really the main thing is people are just looking for transparency ahead of time. And then, and then another thing to notice is you're not going to be everybody's cup of tea. And that's okay. Like of that, of that Even of that 15, 400 agent group, if 3,000 of them, you know, choose to do business with us, I'll make plenty of money. Like, I don't need, I don't need all 15,400 of them. Some of them might think I'm, you know, maybe they don't want to do business with a dude. Maybe they want to do with a woman. Now where you really get good is when you, you facilitate, you have those people. So like, if I have a person who has a different, it had to be gender, but like, if somebody has a different personality type than me and then I partner with them and then I edify them, then some people are going to be drawn to that person. But I'm still connected to them, so I still have a leg into that revenue as well. So instead of being like narcissistic and thinking like, everybody should like me, who cares? You know, who cares build.

[Justin Brock]

You know who I noticed does this? Well, I mean, we're talking about insurance, but these lessons are very applicable. And now I'm just thinking about other other notable people that do this very well. Dave Ramsey does this very well because he hires all these different content creators and he puts them under the Ramsey brand and they all have their own audiences and they all have their own content style and they all have their own super loyal followings and he kills it. A lot of people have trouble. I think it's an ego thing, saying, don't just follow me, there's other people in the world that you can listen to as well. But listen, if you don't like Dave Ramsey, you got like, I think three other, three other guys that I know of that you can go listen to all their content. And it's all kind of adjacent, it's all kind of finance, faith, family style content. But if you don't like his personality, you got three, four other options. And all of that, like, make no mistake, all that feeds back to his brand. So it's smart, dude, it's very smart. And just the absolute immense amount of value that you give people and you don't expect anything in return. Like I'm thinking about, as you're saying this, I'm thinking about maybe I should start a Facebook community for helping people learn how to podcast or solve their podcasting problems. Because then they're going to listen to me, who's maybe a little bit more advanced than them a little bit later on in my journey. And I'm not going to get anything out of them immediately, but they're going to become huge fans of, I guess, me. They're going to talk about my show to all their other friends that ask, hey, what other podcasts should I listen to? So you're going to see this trickle down effect eventually. Very, very smart.

[Scott Clary]

There's so many things that came back to us. So one thing that started happening is all these agents around that they might be in West Virginia or they might have been in, you know, Milwaukee or wherever they're at, you know, they're like different areas of the country and they would get a referral somewhere that they weren't licensed. And instead, and you know, we kind of made it known that we were licensed in all 50 states and instead of getting that license and going through it, they started referring them to. So now at this point, our agency here where we have, I have 52W, two employees and 21 of them are agents internally, that right. Business are all over the country and they refer those to us. We probably get a couple hundred just free referrals that are like 100% signup rates a year and it's not tons, but it's when you do the math on it, if you look at those as all around 1500 dollars in lifetime value times 200 with no cost per acquisition, it's just like free revenue. But we get that. We created that value ladder where we'll have kind of a free workshop that will go around and do these cities. We'll fill them with 50, 75 people and we just go and add value to them. Then that's. That teeters them into, like, signing up for our big conference. We do each year is we do one big Medicare event for Medicare focused agents. About last year's 12, 56 agents there, they'll buy a ticket to that. Even that event is not made to be super profitable because we spend a ton of money on the event. But once they're there, they'll sign up for software products with us. They'll join our hierarchy. They'll come to bigger workshops that we charge 5,000 for, which those are profitable, very profitable events. So. And a lot of that too. Like, once we had the audience and we started getting the audience going, you know, you just look at, like, the way that other people have set that up. You could look at the, the card, like, the way the card owns and set that up. The way Patrick David set his up. Like, oh, and you just talked about Dave Ramsey. I was trying to think, who else does that? Patrick bet David's doing that a lot. He's a lot of other brands and pouring into the, like Adam in his office and Vinnie and then his cfo, like, he's really pushing those other brands to try to grow their presence. So there's, there's, there's several people. I think it's the, it's an ascension from the ego of, like, I have to be the guy. Like, the real guy is the guy that facilitates a lot of other guys and gals that are fault leaders.

[Justin Brock]

Yeah, I think it's a, it's a smart play. I mean, that's sort of, you know, a little bit more advanced once you've built a community or built an audience.

[Sponsor]

Or built a following.

[Justin Brock]

But it's, it's. I think it's an important thing to think about because you don't have to do it all on your own. If you're trying to build an audience, there's multiple ways to do it and maybe helping other creators, influencers, industry leaders, sort of separate themselves out from the pack and be thought leaders in their own right. Maybe that's just a, a way to fast track the audience and the community that you're trying to build, which is like, listen, at the end of the day, I don't care if people discover my show, or I'm sure you don't care where your leads come from. I don't care if it's from Me, I don't care if it's from, you know, my, my mom talking about my show to somebody at the grocery store. I don't care who talks about it. You're looking for the end result, like that's really it. You want more revenue, more followers, even though it's a little bit of a vanity metric. You want more of X Result, Find a way to optimize for X Result. There's more than one way to do it. But. Okay, let's talk about, let's talk about, you know, you've scaled this business now you sold a majority stake for 70 million, you retained 49% of the business. So help me understand what drove you to sell? What was the offer? Who approached you? Why did you. Well, actually we can start there, then we'll go into all the other stuff.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, yeah. So the, so I mean, you know, I had the friend that had sold his business and then after I had continue to grow our operation, I continue to have other friends and acquaintances that I would see exit. When an industry, like when certain industries hit this kind of plat, like this stride, where private equity starts to flow through them, there starts to become an appetite and it can be a little bit of a domino effect. You'll start to see a lot of businesses partner with PE firms and then they'll develop a platform company. So in, in our industry there's a couple of platform companies and these are just the way I view that is they're just companies that buy other organizations, platform them, meaning kind of take some of the redundancies, the legal, the accounting, the, you know, it, whatever, off the table, hr. And they can take smaller to mid sized businesses and then say, okay, now you can grow without the worry of that. You focus on sales, marketing, whatever it is you do. And so in our business that was what happened. There were some platform companies that came in and so some of them started approaching us in the beginning. And then I had a buddy that sold to, to a carrier, mean he sold to Humana. And so, and the, the multiple, the valuation he got when he did it was far beyond what most of these organizations were paying. And so I decided, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk to them. And he's like, yes, you'd be a great fit. And we started talking and then Humana decided that they weren't buying distribution anymore because that was a big buy that they had just done and they wanted to get it under control and they were going to talk later. Well, at that point I had kind of gotten it, we were at, we were three years into a Biden administration was heavily regulatory to us. And I kind of gotten into this in heat mode where I was like, man, I'd really like to entertain an offer at this point. And there's a lot of psychology of selling a business. Like, you know, I feel like people probably are some books on it, but I feel like I could write a book on now, like the, the ups and downs of how many times I was like, I'm, I'm, screw it, I'm not going to sell this. I'm not dealing with this, you know. But I went out and found a group that did retained equity buys. They wanted to buy a majority equity, but they did not want to buy 100 of anybody because they wanted their principles to still skin in the game. So they wanted people that would voluntarily take less for the back end opportunity and they'd craft the back end opportunity to be very attractive, like more attractive than the front end opportunity. But I wanted to make sure it was a way that I could take enough off the table to like set my family up to make sure, you know, no matter what happens, especially considering we're in a market that is under a little bit of scrutiny from the federal government or, you know, from the Senate Finance Committee and stuff. But with being private health insurance, you kind of never know. I mean, I have my suspicions that we're going to be around for a while because I don't think they have a viable alternative that they can afford currently. But, but anyway, when that was what I wanted, I wanted that security, but I wanted to still be in the hunt, in the game, you know, because I enjoy growing the business. The team members that I've built are amazing. They're like family to me. So I wanted to keep going and I knew that my business wouldn't thrive very well if I was like selling and just hopping out the way some people do. So anyway, that when the company that bought into this is called Amerilife, they're a platform company, been around for a long time in our space, but they started doing mergers and acquisitions a few years back. They bought 100 companies now. So they're in our kind of in our similar space and they'll probably take on more capital and buy some more now that Trump was elected. And that is not, it's neither here nor there. That's just the way it is. It's a, it's a good sign for our industry right now because it's a little deregulation for private health insurance markets. Is probably on the horizon.

[Justin Brock]

But why would you not want to get out completely? I mean, you looked, you looked for somebody who was looking for somebody to stay on.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, I, if the, I had considered doing like, if the Humana deal would have came through, it was so much money that it was, it was such a high multiple that was being floated at the time because it was difference in. So we're, we were at 10x with a 1x earnout, which was probably like right at what I was expecting our industry to be. For a company my size, they were offering 15x on a rolling forward 12 for 100% of the company, where that was the floated idea. So it was, it was just so much where you'd almost be stupid not to have taken it because it was so many more years of earnings up front. And so anyway, when, you know, I didn't really necessarily want to sell 100, I enjoyed what I'm doing. But you know, with business, man, it's like 90% of the time I love it. And then 10% of the time I'm like, oh my God, I got to deal with this more, you know. And so it depends on the time they catch you. When you're on one of those 10 days, you'd be like, man, I take 6x, just take it. But you're on a. You know, when you're on that high, man, most of the time you don't want to do that. You want to keep growing.

[Justin Brock]

It's fun, it's interesting. I know some people that, they do that. It was 15x EBITDA, correct? Yeah. Yes.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, that was, that was going to be theirs on rolling forward 12. So they were projecting your growth rate 12 months in advance and then paying you on that up front.

[Justin Brock]

Damn, dude, listen, you're not hurting.

[Scott Clary]

I got the, I ended up getting the 10 plus one that, that publicly traded organization. And the difference is if you get a publicly traded organization that buys you. Their accounting is just so much more wonky, you know, it's not the same. So they, they can technically afford to pay more, you know, but they just, they just get in. Their accounting is like 606 accounting. And I don't pretend to even understand all that, but they, they can do a little bit of voodoo math that I don't quite understand.

[Justin Brock]

I think that's how, I think that's pretty much how Enron got in trouble.

[Scott Clary]

But hey, but you know, they probably bought some companies that. That guy got out and he didn't do anything wrong. So.

[Justin Brock]

No, no, I'm sure, I'm sure some people made money off of Enron. Yeah, definitely. No, I was, I was just thinking about like all the different opportunities. Right. Like you could have taken that 15x with a 12 month and then waited till the non compete expires and then just start right back up again. Or you can just keep building the thing you're building. I think that it's very personal. Like you mentioned before, there's a lot of emotion and psychology that goes into exit and it doesn't really matter how much you listen to podcasts or read books. I think that there's a lot of, a lot of emotion tied up into selling the thing that you basically it becomes part of your business, becomes part of your identity. So that, that definitely impacts your judgment. Is there any advice that you give an entrepreneur that is having offers? Just some things to think through, some things. It doesn't have to be business. It could be family, it could be anything. Whatever. Whatever thoughts you went, you know, that you've had since entertaining. Exiting.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, I mean, I mean the big ones that seem maybe too obvious are like, you know, any. Just with anything when you're, you've got to control your emotional range. So like don't, you know, don't implode a deal over, you know, something you don't like that someone said, like if you're going through that process and there's multiple lawyers involved and mergers and acquisitions professionals, you're going to. It can be, it can get a little exhausting. There's just so many variables and details, you know, depending on the deal. But you know, once you're, once you're in the tens of millions of dollars, like that's not going to flow from, you know, one body to the next without, you know, a lot of scrutiny typically. So, so just kind of take it one shot at a time and, and decide if it's best for you. It's. It is a very personal decision. If somebody like people have come to me and they'll say, hey, I'm getting offered this, you know, should I take it? And I'm gonna tell you I'm never gonna tell somebody they shouldn't take it. You know, part of that is because I don't want the blood on my hands of me telling you not to take something, your business imploding and then being like, Justin Brock talked me out of taking this deal and now I'm broke. You know, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush now at the same time, that's the advice I Give other people. Because I'm not, I'm not you, you know, And I did have 100 offers and I did turn those down for retained equity. So my retained equity could plummet and I could look up and be like, man, I'm shorted. You know, I'm shorted 50, 60, $70 million or whatever it is, because. And that I could have had. But I'm taking a gamble on myself, right? There's other people that'll take even a bigger gamble where they wouldn't have sold any of their company. And I think you have to look at your business, though. You can look at this framework from the Boston Consulting Group where they talk about the four types of businesses. It's the cash cow, the star, the dog, and I can't remember the other one, but there's like four categories. You can Google this, like, but it's a quadrant of, based on what market you're in and how big you are as an organization within that market. So if you're the dominant shareholder of the market you're in and it is a growing market, you're considered a star. If you're not the dominant shareholder but you're growing in a market that is still growing, you're a cash cow. On the other side of that quadrant, you get markets that are shrinking. Once you're a market that's shrinking and you're the biggest one in the market, this is a shitty company. Like, you should fit out of it as soon as possible.

[Justin Brock]

No, I just, I just googled it. So you have dogs, cash cows, question marks, and stars. Yeah. So dogs are low market share, low market growth, question marks are low market share, high market growth, Cash cows are high market share, low market growth, and stars are high market share, high market growth. I've never heard of this chart before. That's amazing.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, it's a cool way to look at, like, should I sell? Should I? Not that I. Should I go. Even if you're going into a new vertical, you know, do I want to go into it like you, you, you know, I would. It's not necessarily that you wouldn't go into a vertical that's not growing anymore if you had some sort of, you know, way to, to grab up a bunch of the existing market share. But I mean, really, if you have a, if you have a, a sophisticated or out of the box way to grab market share in a growing market, and that's going to be your biggest opportunity. So when I was looking at it, I, I started looking at is my market growing? And Is, and, and how big am I in these markets? So I was not the biggest, but I was one of the faster growing ones in our market. And the que, the, the, the, not to use the term question mark in, in conjunction with that, but the question mark for me personally was is our market growing? And you know, fortunately, and fortunately, I mean we, we're in a market that's heavily tied to federal government contracts here with Medicare. There's, there's federal contracts involved. And so it kind of depends on who's elected. Like, I hate to, like, I never want to be the guy that's like you, you know, I love, I love the feedback from like the card owns and those guys that say, you know, the government is never going to make or break me. However, it can certainly have impact and the bigger you get, the more it can especially if you're participating in a market that is, that's heavily regulated by the federal government, you know, so, and I would soon, Grant would agree with that. Now when, when you own, you know, billions of dollars worth of apartment buildings, there's, there's clearly he does believe that because he got involved in politics pretty heavily this last cycle.

[Justin Brock]

I think that is funny. That is very true. Government doesn't impact me. But I'm going to go on the campaign trail, I'm going to start speaking. So maybe, maybe the government just makes it a little bit easier depending on which way it goes to help them.

[Scott Clary]

Get out of my way for.

[Justin Brock]

Yeah, exactly. I think, I think most business owners inherently are not libertarian in the traditional definition, but libertarian in the, in the definition of. I wish I could just ethically and responsibly build a business without too much heavy handed government oversight. Now obviously I get why regulation exists and protects people, but sometimes just because the government is the government and it moves slower than innovation and it moves slower than, my God, it moves slower than almost anything. Regulatory doesn't catch up with reality and that's when there's friction, that's when it hurts.

[Scott Clary]

Like a lot of the regulation we were seeing in the industry last year, 2024, they're coming out with regulation based on data from 2019 that any insider would know. That data is so antiquated now. Like it's not relevant to the current landscape and because it moves so fast and, but government officials are, you know, and some of these people are appointed to head up bodies and organizations that they don't really have any experience in that, that field.

[Justin Brock]

That's an issue.

[Scott Clary]

So yeah, regular and yeah, and I would say that I'm very much libertarian because I mean, I was definitely a Ron Paul, Rand Paul guy. As I've gotten older and paid more taxes and stuff. I get why people get pushed to the right.

[Justin Brock]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

But I'm genuinely a, you know, leave me alone, get out of my way. Lower taxes, you know. But you know, that, that definitely, I guess is rightly, I'm probably right leaning libertarian. But. But I don't want to, I hate to be too aggressive on any of that because I don't want to be associated with some of the far right stuff either. Like, it's like, you know, A big.

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[Justin Brock]

No, and by the way, I think that's an important point. Like most, I think most people who are successful are libertarian and they're fiscally conservative and they're socially liberal in the sense that I don't care what you do, just leave me alone. Yeah, that's really it. Just leave me and my money and my family. That's it.

[Scott Clary]

80% of Americans feel that way. And then now they get us all arguing about the way this 10% feels and the way this 10% feels and we're all in the middle like, oh my God, what's going on?

[Justin Brock]

Yeah, I think, I think that's actually pretty accurate. Twitter. Twitter is not representative of the majority of Americans.

[Scott Clary]

Oh my gosh, man. Yeah, you get Twitter and Reddit. I was reading it.

[Justin Brock]

I, I don't go down the Reddit hole.

[Scott Clary]

I read it is crazy. We've really hit it. It's funny because you know, recently the United Healthcare CEO murder. Yeah, that's in our, our industry. He was in the, the kind of vitriol that has come out and they eat the rich mentality against like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Like Mark Zuckerberg comes out with this kind of like where he swings back centrist, you know, on free speech and stuff. Right. And I'm kind of like, he took a 180. Yeah.

[Justin Brock]

Recently.

[Scott Clary]

And I'm sitting there thinking, hey, good for Mark. But then you read the comments and you're like the right wing people and the left wing people just both hate him, but for different reasons. And it's like this, you know, and I'm like, you know, if you're that wildly successful, there's just going to be a group of people that just, you know, hate you. And then we saw that with the United Health Care CEO murder. Because I know a lot of people that know, knew him. This is a guy that grew up in Iowa, farm town, worked his way up as an accountant, graduated valedictorian of a local high school. This was not like silver spoon, you know, Rothschild becomes. But that's the way they paint it. And actually the guy that killed him did grow up rich.

[Justin Brock]

I know. It's actually ridiculous. It's absolutely insane. I researched the, the, the CEO, I can't remember what's his, what's his name?

[Scott Clary]

Brian.

[Justin Brock]

Yes. I research his background and it's actually a very humble. Yeah, it's very humble.

[Scott Clary]

Super humble American story. Like, you know, bootstraps like Norm, like, good family, grew up on the farm, becomes valedictorian, becomes a cpa, works as a private accountant, you know, in the private market, gets hired at a, you know, lower mid range job at UnitedHealthcare, works his way through the ranks by working hard, showing up. And everybody I know that knows him was like, he's just a super nice guy, very relatable, but by position, this rich kid, this guy, this kid that grew up rich thinks he's evil. And I'm just like, oh my gosh. Like, I don't, I don't get it. And then people celebrate that and I'm just like this wild stuff.

[Justin Brock]

No, that was disgusting. Some of the, some of the things that I saw.

[Scott Clary]

And that's not, I'm not even defending, you know, necessarily. You know, I know that there are problems with private health insurance. Like, I'm absolutely not oblivious to that. Like there are, there are, I think that some of it's overstated. Like I know people that. So many people that work at these companies and the people that work in these companies are making the claims decisions and stuff are like normal lower middle class, middle class people. They're not sitting there saying, Yep, let's kill Mrs. Jones to save money on the claim. Now is some of that happening by proxy and bad process? I really think it could happen for sure. Like I'm not like, like I'm not an idiot. But, but I think that this idea that the billionaires and the millionaires and the powers that be are orchestrating this plot to get the little guy, it's not really true, man.

[Justin Brock]

It's just, but what happens is that message, that message is social, fuels a lot of this. Social media fuels a lot of this. So what happens is somebody sees something that is, you know, this idea just pisses them off and they echo that idea on Twitter or Reddit or whatever. And because of algorithms and echo chambers, the people that see that idea all kind of think the same way. So then your message and your anger and your vitriol is almost reinforced and justif in your mind justified because you think everyone else around you feels the same way. And it just, it's this flywheel of negativity and hate.

[Scott Clary]

That echo chamber gives them the confidence to say things. So now you have people that would have never said that, even though they thought, well, maybe. But then they see somebody else say it and then they're, now they have this reinforcement of like, well, I can say that too. And then it becomes like nuts if.

[Justin Brock]

I mean, you're, you're obviously sort of in this industry. I, I didn't even think to take the conversation there, but maybe you have some ideas because I don't have any. Because I'm so far from this industry. I don't know anything really about fixing it or. Obviously a lot of emotion and ideas came to light because of this. Because of the, the CEO's murder, because of his murder. Do you have any ideas about what could be done to sort of fix either the actual industry or public perception about the industry? Like there's obviously something broken. Whether or not it's, it's real or it's perception, something's off.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, yeah, no. So there's definitely some shortcomings. It is a highly politicized and I think that this is important. It's a highly politicized niche because private health insurance is a very conservative concept. It's like, hey, we believe that bureaucracy and governments are inefficient. We should allow private markets to compete in healthcare to try to drive the costs down because we're having a budget crisis on Medicare. And so federal Medicare, federal health insurance and these subsidies, whatever, it's costing us too much. Let's see if we can get health insurance. So the health insurance companies are initially tasked sort of with reducing overall healthcare costs. There's a couple ways to do that. There's not pay as many claims, but the other way, the long term way. And what's actually being tried to happen is, is value based care or health maintenance, which is where you take people and you get earlier diagnoses of symptomatic stuff that you can treat before it becomes a bigger more expensive issue. And this requires the entire health care system to kind of work together, but they're not really working together. You have like a lot of these rural hospitals that will complain that the value based care system doesn't fit their revenue cycle. So anyway, but it's it. The problem with this is is that the, the and I, I hate to say it this way because and this is what I think I could probably get away with saying it. Politicians can't say it. The American public is wholly unqualified in total to chime in on the concept because Congress and, and the evolution of the healthcare industry has made this shit too fucking complicated for most people to really grasp. But the problem is when you have the federal government saying hey, let's take initiatives toward value based care where you get people better earlier and save the money to save us money, but we're also having to force you into only spending this much per head to be profitable, then there probably are things that are like where are we losing money? I don't think that there's a lot of claims that are getting denied when people are terminally ill. Now when I say that yes, it happens, we're talking about anecdotal things. We're also seeing people I believe spread lies or stories online to try to get clicks because let's say I all that's coming out and I want to be a famous tick tock influencer. I could go up with a woe is me story, especially if I'm a young lady and I talk about my mom dying or whatever and I say it was blah blah, blah, very easy to go viral on one of those stories in the heat of all that moment and then all of a sudden it looks justified. I think a lot of those weren't even true. As a matter of fact, I believe most of the claims denials are. They come down to a couple things. You know the guy that killed UnitedHealthcare CEO by the way, didn't have UnitedHealthcare. Never had it before. Odd. The other thing is the, the, a lot of their denials, when they say UnitedHealthcare has 32% denials, they're only, that's only using Obamacare as a sector. So it didn't use any Medicare plans, it didn't use Medicare supplements, Medicare Advantage didn't use private health insurance, it used Obamacare. So but then I take the Obamacare. Some of those denials are because they hadn't met their deductible. So it's not a true claim denial. It's you still have, you have $1,000 deductible. We haven't met it yet. Some of those denials were, you are not insured here. Well, that's not, that should even be included in the statistic, you know, so when they float this 32% claims denials, it's like we're not even viewing real numbers here.

[Justin Brock]

But so if somebody calls United and they've never paid United a dime in their life, United says, yo, you're not a customer. We don't know who you are. And that's considered a claim denial.

[Scott Clary]

So the way it will happen is let's say, let's say you had United, but you changed to Blue Cross Blue Shield. And when you went to the hospital, you forgot that, or somebody else pulled out the cards, you were in an emergency, and they gave them an old United card when they filed a claim. And then United says, well, they're no longer a customer here. They're not a United. They're not a current UnitedHealthcare customer. They file that at the hospital as a claims denial. So that's, it's a. And I'm not saying that's all of them, but that is a factor in that.32.

[Justin Brock]

Yeah, but, but, but if you're going to cite data, the data has to be good.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, and there's, there's. The problem with data is if I'm, if I'm the Wall Street Journal and I'm writing an article about this, I want the data to be shocking. You know, media has to. The media is competing with National Enquirer type headlines, and so they have to come up with shocking shit. And if there isn't enough shocking shit, we have to paraphrase it in a way to make it seem more shocking than maybe it is.

[Justin Brock]

Yeah, no, I listen, that's why, that's why I think the healthiest thing the average person can do is just limit themselves to, you know, as much traditional media and social media as possible. I don't think it's healthy for most people because you have all these messages just really just with you.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, I try. I try. I say try. I don't like the word try, but I turn off as much news as I can, and there's definitely periods where I watch it and I get sucked back in because there are things that are important in the world. But like I, you know, sometimes I wonder if I just was completely oblivious to ever to all social media trends, all the news, all the politics, and just living my life with my family, you know, I'd be happier.

[Justin Brock]

I think most people would be. Yeah, I think most people would be. I think that there's. The media just creates a ton of fear and anger on average. Okay. I want to, I want to really understand a little bit about the exit. I think that's, that's interesting for, for people that have never gone through one before, because obviously that changes your relationship with money, with, with wealth. So you sold 49%. I mean, I could talk to you about healthcare all day, but I also want to talk about money. It's also a fun topic. So you sold 40, you sold 51%, you retained 49%. So that was a nice check, a nice wire. How did it feel when that came in? What, what was the emotion surrounding all of that?

[Scott Clary]

You know, thankfully, I'd watched a Ryan Panetta interview with Brandon Dawson before talking about it. So I was. So, I've told several people I was kind of wondering how I would feel. But he had talked about how he felt, like, and he kind of had that now. Now what? Moment. And, and I did have that. You know, it's, it's not like a really real feeling. So the platform company that bought into us when they sent the wire, they called me for a congratulatory, like, the deal is closed. We've sent the wire, congratulations call. And so that was kind of like, okay, now what? Well, then I just go on the bank and I'm. I mean, this is what anyone would do. I'm refreshing the bank accounts over and over, just waiting for it to show up. And one time I refresh it, and the first, they did it in two wires to a couple of different accounts just because it was multiple entity type of transaction. And that first one came through and, you know, more money than I'd ever had in the scene in the bank. And I had had, you know, I had a business that was doing volume, so we had, you know, we've had a couple million dollar balance in there before, but this was way more than that. And then, you know, when that first one hit, you know, I immediately was like, I gotta figure out what to do with this money now. Like, what do I. Where do I put it? Because, like, all I kept thinking was like, oh, my gosh, the FDIC only insures this account up to 240,000, which is, you know, most people never think about that, but, like, once you get it and you're like, I gotta, you know, something crazy is gonna happen. And this is right around the time that all that Silicon Valley bank stuff was going on. So I'm like hyper alert to it. So anyway, so then I started talking to kind of, you know, money managers and different groups to try to get it out, diversify, put some in real estate syndication, put some in equity index funds. And then I put some in, um, and I. A Rich and Tang fund that like puts it in multiple CDs with multiple institutions so that all of them are backed up to that FDIC insured amount. Anyway, I just kind of went on that mission and I, I did spend, I did splurge a little bit. I went and bought a Lamborghini, I bought a new watch. I did some, you know, stuff that you just. That I could have afforded before, but I just never thought, I just didn't want to afford it. Like, I was like, I'll do that when I'm like really rich, you know, and all that stuff was like fun for a minute, but I had that Lamborghini for five months and sold it. Like, I just, I just didn't. It was like, it was fun for a minute and then the, the fun wore off of it. It was. That's not like something I.

[Justin Brock]

And then you're driving a Lamborghini to Target and you're wondering why.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, it just seemed like I made it, it made me a lot of friends because like, you drive places and people would want to talk to you about it. But then, you know, I just, I don't know, it did change my relationship with money because you buy these things and somebody told me the other day, you buying it, getting it is more fun than having it. So, you know, and that's why we go back to work, right? That's why people that make money, like, you don't. Like, how many people do you know that are very wealthy that don't work anymore?

[Justin Brock]

None. Like literally zero. And I've interviewed people that have had hundred million dollar plus exits that are on paper billionaires. All of them work harder, even though they'll never have to work again in their life. They could live off the interest, obviously, you know, people very similar to me. And they all work and they all work a lot.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, that's the thing. And it's, it's because you realize the most gratifying thing you've ever done in your life is creating something, whether that's a product or a team or momentum or an idea, whatever it is.

[Justin Brock]

So you, so you splurged, then you sold some of the things that you bought. And where, where do you sit now in terms of your relationship with money? Where do you. Because also another, another idea is just because you're a good operator or a good entrepreneur doesn't mean you're a good investor either. I think that people lose a lot of money when they first have that windfall, when they first get that wire, because they have no idea what they're doing.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, I was afraid of investing it. I went hyper conservative. I, I mean I, I had, I had already read Money Master the Game by Tony Robbins and he, you know, he didn't interview. I think it was a Jack Vanguard who had talked about people. People can't think. Nobody can time the market, you know. And so, you know, taking money. He had talked about equity index funds. And so I went and put a bunch in equity index. And you know, there's. I have friends that have sold that was like, oh, I made this in bitcoin. I made this and that. And I was like, that's great. I'm so happy for you. Like, I'm never, like, I'm not a. I, I'm not going to be jealous because you won. Because I avoided the potential loss. So I'm, it's funny how aggressive I am when betting on me and my business is things I can control and understand versus investments. And I did do some real estate syndication, which is still a pretty safe bet because it diversified over like apartment buildings and stuff. So everything I've done is. And then like I said, a bunch of CDs. Man. How much, how much more conservative can you get than that?

[Justin Brock]

That's pretty much. That's about as conservative as you can be. Well, kind of if you look at sort of your portfolio even being hyper conservative, this is more just a smart investing lesson for people. What kind of returns can you get on your money with a very conservative portfolio. Portfolio, excuse me, like what you built.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. Extremely conservative. You could. And this is like I'm talking cash on cash, 5 to 6%, the very conservative right now. And that's because where CD rates and stuff are right now, now that could change in the future. But I would say, you know, a lot of people will give you these like other higher numbers. But like real estate syndication, when you look at total return, it's different because you're talking about tax advantages, you're talking about potential for, you know, them to refine and cash out. Refi. Part of that there's like all these different variant talking about future exit value, increased rents. So like you might look up one day and be like, oh, that investment did 20%. But what I'm talking about is true cash on cash that you could live off of. And I would say you would do me at the 4 and a half to 6% range of just basing it off of that. You know, I am. And I know that somebody's going to watch this and be like, that's crazy. You get 10, 15, 20. I'm not saying you can't get that. I'm just saying, like, if you're talking about truly safe cash on cash, that's where it's really.

[Justin Brock]

Do you live off interest? You don't dip into the principal anymore or how you. How have you structured your life?

[Scott Clary]

I'm probably after that first few months of, like, taking some trips with the family, I probably spend less. I spend less now than I did the year before I sold the business. I don't know why. I really don't. It's like, I don't really understand. I don't know. It's like it came into focus that, like, we just decided we wanted to really pile that money up and, like. And then you. There is this thing that happens where there are some stuff. There's some things that you want to do that are so extravagantly expensive that you're willing to, like, live, you know, what would still be a cushy lifestyle, but, like, to save for the extremely extravagant, like, experiences like, you know, renting mega yachts in the Mediterranean for three weeks in the summer and stuff. You know, those are things that, you know, that I don't have enough money to do that, you know, all the time. I don't, I don't have yacht ownership money or private travel money everywhere. But if I want to take one badass trip like that every couple years, all I got to do is not be an idiot the rest of the time, you know?

[Justin Brock]

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I think that, you know, I think that lifestyle creep is a big issue. When people start to make that kind of money if they're not smart. And you just have to be careful. You just have. I mean, any amount over, say, 15 to 20 million, I would say less than that. You can, you can screw it up pretty easily if you're not careful. If. But any amount over 15, 20 million after tax, depending on, you know, how much you get taxed if you invest that properly, you should, you should always be able to live off of the interest from that. From that investment.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, even.

[Justin Brock]

Even. Go ahead.

[Scott Clary]

My monthly expenses are certainly less than the, the conservative interest on our. Well, look at. I, I probably. I probably on a typical month, I don't know, we probably spend 30, 35, 000amonth. And then, you know, which I know is like out of touch for some people. But like, in the, in the grand scheme, it's not a, you know, but. And then there might be a month where we spend a hundred, you know, but like, you know, but then like, I'm always thinking, like, when you tiptoe into, like when I tiptoe into what is possible. I think, I don't think, because there's a lot of people, like, you're saying lifestyle creep. It's like they, it can be really expensive to fake being a billionaire. And these people will buy all the watches, all the cars, all the stuff. And all of a sudden it's like, technically you're doing really well, but you're spending so much on extravagant things that your overall solvency of your lifestyle and the peace of mind you have is suffering. And so I'm like, I feel like I have enough now where it's like, why not feel content? Like, I'm not content in my. Because money isn't a part of the, the goal anymore. It might be like a score metric, but, like, because it's not a part of it, I can be content in what I can afford in my lifestyle while being aggressive toward the pursuits of my future business endeavors. Right. Like that. That's kind of where my relationship with money is right now. And I'm not saying it won't change again because it always changes. Like, things just change in your psyche and, and you might, you know, hit different strides. But I'm in the stride right now where I'm enjoying being at home with my dogs and my family and just not having to worry about money at all. Like, that's, and that's, you know, and, and, and this is more speaking to the people that maybe have made money or are going to make money or making a lot and may sell in the different, you know, audience. And I hope that there's a part of this audience that's, that sees that and understands that that there is.

[Justin Brock]

And I, I think that I was going to say one thing. Like I mentioned like 15 to 20 million in total exit value or total check size. But the reason why I'm talking about those numbers is because, say you had a $10 million exit. I don't want to seem, listen, sometimes no matter what I do as a disclosure, this conversation will seem out of touch. But if you have $10 million and you have, and it's taxed and say you walk away with, I don't know, like say 6 million or something like that. And you do very conservative investment and that like 4%. And you're really only making about 240, $250,000 a year, which is a good. It's a, it's great. But the, the point of this game is to not have to dip into the principle so that you don't have a clock on your money.

[Scott Clary]

Right?

[Justin Brock]

That's really the goal. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to point out why I was saying those numbers right is.

[Scott Clary]

And like, you know, the, the goal, like my goal at one point became like potentially the exit. But the. Eck. I wasn't even thinking about the true wealth. And it's funny because all this information's out there in like Napoleon Hill books, you know, like, or Robert Kiyosaki or whatever. Like these people have already outlined all this rich dad, poor dad stuff. And like the. The ultimate wealth person is the one who's the investor that's just living off of the proceeds. But I never really thought about it. I guess I almost stupidly thought me as the business owner is I'm the investor, but that's not the investor. Like, that's. I'm. I'm the driving force behind that business in my, you know, I might have employees and that do really, really well, but I'm still like this driving force. And true investment is syndication equity index funds, stock portfolios. Maybe I have some ownership in a business, but I'm not even like, manage. I'm just like, yeah, I'll just invest in your business and you kick me back the proceeds, but the true investment. And so it has gotten to the point where I have like these. I do have some superficial goals where, you know, I, I have like, I have superficial goals of like passive income monthly, you know, like. And I've talked to a lot of guys like, like Grant and Brandon Dawson and you know, just Patrick Bed David. These are all people that have had large exits or just amassed large portfolios. And you hear some of, some of what their, what their passive income is at this point, and it's like, you know, yeah, that's what I want. You know, when you hear people that are making a couple, you know, two or three million dollars a month off of the conservative cash on cash return, you're like, I don't even know that I would spend it. You know, like, I don't know. It's a weird thing. And it is a superficial like talking point to the, to the outside looking in and I'm sure that this is why some of the people are like, eat the, you know, eat the rich. But the point is, like, you want enough money to be able to. Like, I. I want to be able to give money, and I want to be able to go places. And I want. It's a freedom aspect of, like, doing things.

[Justin Brock]

It's freedom. It's. If something happens, then you can take care of it. If there's emergency medical, you can. You can give back, you can donate. And also, I think the inverse idea you're talking about after the exit, the inverse idea, which I think is a comforting idea, is to have an exit like this. It does not take your whole life. It takes a lot of work and a lot of perseverance and probably more work and time than you think it does. But you were 10 years. You were 10 years to a $70 million exit. And it could have been more.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Justin Brock]

When you figure out, first of all, you only have to figure out once. You really don't have to figure it out. I mean, multiple times. You can if you want. Some people, I think most billionaires have a little bit wrong with them because they keep trying to figure out new ideas and make new businesses work, but you really don't. If you figure it out once you're.

[Sponsor]

Basically set for life, most things that.

[Justin Brock]

You'D ever want to afford, you can afford. Right. Not everybody wants to buy an NBA team or the Jets. Like, most people are just happy living in a nice place, take care of their family, take care of their parents, go on trips, just comfort. It doesn't. It's not like, out of touch. And I think the audience, hopefully my audience in particular, understand how close it can be if they find the right product or the right idea and they put a little bit of work into it. That's really the other side of that.

[Scott Clary]

I actually wanted so badly to, like, reach this audience at one time. Like, if you could just get into the heads of the 18 to 25 year old, you know, because it's a different point of maturity. And there's some of them, some. Some kids are at 18 already thinking about this. Some of them is 25, 26, 27 before they start to really think about what am I going to do with my life. And. And I just want to find that kid at the, like, I'm taking my life serious like that point, like, and I embark on that journey. And you just get them to understand that if I can get a. If I could build a landscaping business that's doing, you know, that gets a yard, an amount of yards and projects where it's doing, you know, let's say a million in Ebitda and I can get, you know it to 7x or whatever and I make 7 million. And let's say I keep 75% of it. I got 5.25 million. And then I sell that and I make, let's call it 6%, cash or cash, I make 315,000. Let's say I did that. I started when I was 18, I worked for 12 years fully intentionally, at 30 years old, I could sell that. I can make 315,000 a year for the rest of my life. That's not a superficial goal, but there are many people that will work for 25 or 30 years to make 100,000, 150,000. And what I'm trying to tell you is that with the, if you could just program the intention that of doing it, it's not like you would know everything right away. Because most people that do this don't know everything. They're just constantly learning what they need to, to take that next step. But if you could learn enough to do that, you could build it in a simple business model. Landscaping, H Vac. These trades or service based businesses right now are trading at such high amounts. I mean, you know how many people that have crawled around in shit for the last 20 years being a plumber, making a quarter, making 200, 250,000 a year because plumbers make good money. But now are realizing so many of them, I've got a freaking business here that I can make, you know, 5, 10, 15, $20 million off of. And these are not superficial amounts. If you think about putting that money back and then living off of it, the thing that's really superficial or I don't know if it's superficial, but it's fucked up. Is pretending that you can work a job making 60 or $70,000 a year your entire life, pay into Social Security, save up half a million dollars and live for 20 years in retirement and be peaceful. It's going to be. Fuck. I talk to these people, I built my entire business talking to these people that were living off of Social Security and had tiny nest eggs. And it's stressful because even if they pay their house off and they pay their cars off 10 years into retirement, their callers are falling to pieces. They need a new roof, they don't have any money for that. And so then either the kids are helping out, which puts this undue strain on them, they're liquidating Any investments they have, there's no legacy involved in their life at all. And this is the American condition because you're told that the pursuit of wealth is too much. And I'm like, it doesn't have to be 70 million, dude. Like, but you could build something in 10 years that makes you more money than your entire 30 year, 40 year career. Did you know?

[Justin Brock]

Yeah, it's. I think that that's why this edge, these conversations are important because it, I mean, you don't have these conversations when you're going to school. And if you don't come from a family who's entrepreneurial, you kind of look at, I don't want to say you look at like wealth as if, as if it's like for other people, but to a degree you do, because we don't have any millionaires in the family. We don't have any people that exited companies in the family. So I don't even know where to start. Maybe it's not for me. And that's, that's the wrong idea because it's not that far away. It's not, it's not a lifetime of work away. And I think that, you know, when you, when you break it down like that, it becomes very, it conceptually becomes very manageable. You can start to understand, okay, let's get started. Let's figure it out. It doesn't, doesn't take a Einstein.

[Scott Clary]

Let's say you wanted to be a missionary and you wanted to just witness to people all the time, spend 18 to 30 building the landscaping company, sell it, and then the, then the interest would finance your family's life while you go and do charity work or whatever you want. So like, it's almost like whatever effect you want to have on the world could be financed by a debt. Like dedicate a decade. That's a good slogan. Let's dedicate a decade to getting my, you know, house in order so that I could spend the rest of my life on adventure or charity or for calls or whatever. You know, I've actually found that building a business in itself helps a lot of people because people got to work somewhere, people got to make money. They have to have opportunity. And when you build a business, you know, these billionaires get to a point where nobody likes them, you know, but like, in the pursuit, like, how many jobs is. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon. Like, people have helped the world and they get on, but it is what it is, you know, so until I'm.

[Justin Brock]

Sure that, yeah, I'm sure they're not. I'm sure they're not complaining, but I get it. I get it. Listen, I just hope that some people that are listening to this who, you know, are sitting on the fence, are younger, take these words to heart, and they use it as inspiration to go build something incredible and understand that it is not, you know, out of reach. But, yeah, so we spoke about a lot. What did we. What did we not go into? I'm just, I'm thinking now, we spoke about everything that you've achieved after your exit, sort of the journey and the come up. What did you. What did you. What was the most surprising thing that you experienced or you learned after achieving sort of financial freedom or success? What was something that you didn't expect?

[Scott Clary]

I didn't expect, you know, some of what we're talking about earlier. I didn't expect what my heavy. Like, I didn't expect to have such a desire to keep working. Not that I thought that I wouldn't work, but I thought I would feel a little bit more relief in the intention. And then I realized that, that that drive wasn't money. That drive was something else inherent. I didn't expect. I didn't know how to expect for my employees to react or my, My family, you know, like how different family members would react. And it's actually been overwhelmingly positive. And I think that's a testament to the people that you're act. You have a great relationship with, that you've helped, will be overwhelmingly happy for you. If you have people in your life that aren't happy for you that have that kind of, you know, sentiment or negative sentiment towards it, probably not worthy of even being in your life at all. So I, I didn't know. I wouldn't say that I didn't expect it, but I didn't know what to expect from family members and employees. But it's been overwhelmingly positive. And. But I do. I think that that is because I have spent a lot of time, especially with my team members and people that work for me. I've always tried to help them anytime they need help. I've always tried to be there financially for them and stuff. And so I don't. I think I've kind of like earned that goodwill with them that, you know, good for JB I know he's always got my back, so.

[Justin Brock]

Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Last thought on this. When you do get that check and now you're minority shareholder in the business, you're minority owner. How did you set your company up, your team up so that there wouldn't be any, any negative after you give up control. Because that's the biggest concern that people have. It's if, if I, I built this baby from scratch, now someone else is running the ship. I don't have control over what they do.

[Scott Clary]

So I was very thankful that I had friends that I had built in the industry that had sold to this particular platform company or before me. And I was well aware that as long as you were growing and making money and not doing anything criminal that they would stay out of your way. There have been some, I've learned a lot. I mean, man, you want to get a PhD in high level accounting, sell a business, man. Because like I, we had to convert from cash to accrual accounting. I've learned how compound annual growth rates work. I've learned I had a great lawyer on my side and so we were just reading through tons and tons of that. But like on the back end, I've learned a lot about the conversion of accrual accounting and I've learned a lot about things like working capital contributions. It's just these concepts that like at the time you're going through it and you're just like, you know, whatever. And then later on you're like, okay, had I known that I would have done this differently or glad I didn't do that. Now that I understand this, like, there's a lot of faults like that and, but like they haven't, thankfully, you know, they still let me steer the ship. You know, there's, there's certain things like they have a legal department. So like there's things that I used to just willy nilly sign off on that now they want to run their legal team, which probably protects me, but it is a little bit slower than I'm used to. Because when you're running a small and rapid growing business that you're at the helm of and you're the ultimate decision maker, you can make decisions quick and you can move fast and swift. And it's kind of like we're still a really fast little tugboat, but we're, but we have a chain connected to a huge barge and we're kind of like, you know, having to get permission to unleash that chain every now and then. So.

[Justin Brock]

No, that's good. And that's, that's also very smart. I mean, if you, if you are, if you are selling, I mean, I think the, the quote is companies, the best companies don't get sold, they get bought. Right. And if you, if you position yourself properly so that you do have people that are interested in you. Do your due diligence as the seller, as the entrepreneur and choose somebody who you've checked the references. They're not going to destroy your company, they're not going to destroy the livelihoods of your employees. This is a very important idea that if you get too excited about selling and you don't do your research, these are real things that can happen. So just be aware of them.

[Scott Clary]

Told me when he sold that selling your business is a lot like sending a kid off to college. And so. And he sold 100%. So. But the, that the same concept even, even in my deal is like you, there's such an emotional attachment to what you built that even if you sell 100% you do not want to sell it to someone that's going to ruin it. Because these are people's people that you care about work there or they should be. And you know that's everybody I know that's built a business cares about the people that work at their business. So you just don't want anything bad to happen to it.

[Justin Brock]

Of course. Okay. Where can people connect with you? What do you want people to know? What in terms of an entrepreneur, where can they consume more content? Where can they learn more about what you're doing? If you want to actually, if you're in the industry and they want to work with you, where did they go? So give people a couple reference points.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, I mean, you know one of the main places we're trying to grow is Instagram. Instagram.com/the Justin Brock or at the Justin Brock swear. I should have said YouTube.com justin brock and then just straight to justinbro.com okay, cool.

[Justin Brock]

And, and when they go there, what kind of content are they going to see? What, what, what type of education do you put up?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, we, we put a lot of stuff like on YouTube right now it's, some of it is, is very specific to just business owners selling business that we're trying to be more broad, not just completely niche down for the insurance industry, but we do a lot of insurance industry stuff there too because that's where a lot of our audience is comprised of Instagram. Same thing. We do try to put up some funny stuff as well to keep it light hearted. But that's what we're doing. It's very business and in insurance industry mix. 50 50.

[Justin Brock]

Amazing. Last question I like to ask. So you've had great life, great career, you built an incredible business. If you had to distill some of the most important lessons that you've learned over your life and the lens that I try and put this through is if you can only pass this one lesson onto your kids because that's the most important lesson that you've ever learned, what would that lesson be?

[Scott Clary]

It's a marathon, not a sprint. That's been the big thing, guiding light for me when I got out of the Marine Corps and came into the industry. My dad told me that and it has, it has proven true. Now I try to, I try to have an adaptation to that. I say it's a marathon, not a sprint. But you can be a Kenyan in the marathon. You know, you can run it as a pacesetter and run it really fast. Just, just know that you're having to set a pace where you can finish a long race. I, I have many people that I work with that really burn themselves out quick trying to, you know, sprint to the finish line and not knowing the compounding effort of daily time and pressure. Just, you know, and, and it's a marathon, not a sprint. It's not a cop out to relax. It's just understanding that, you know, your work in quantity of days, you know, over time, like every day, making progress, one foot in front of the other is making much bigger, grand, you know, strides towards a goal than you can possibly fathom within that individual day. Every little thing that we do is, is really getting us so much further because it's, it's compounding effort.